Auld Lang Syne

For me the time leading up to the New Year has long been a time of remembrance and reflection.

Perhaps it's a Scottish thing: when I took up the Great Highland Bagpipes almost 30 years ago I was becoming immersed in things Scottish (my surname is Scottish) and I was often around those who speak in "braid Scots" (broad Scots -- whether it's a dialect of English or a sister tongue is an old debate) and later, as a result of our Gaelic classes, Scottish Gaelic.

But there is a Scottish tradition of "remembering" at the New Year. One Hogmanay (Scottish New Year) tradition is to gather at midnight, hold hands in a circle and sing "Auld Lang Syne" ("Old Long Since," or "Long, Long Ago"). For Seattle's Gaelic community there is a similar tradition: closing events (including Hogmanay celebrations) with the equally longing "Chi Mi Na Morbheanna", literally "I [Will] See the Great Mountains [of home]."

Both songs speak of separation by insurmountable distances, the latter from the Highland Clearances that sent so many Scots to North America -- it is recorded that some Scots emigrants wept when they sighted Nova Scotia because it looked so much like home.

Interestingly, although Robert Burns' Auld Lang Syne is sometimes touted as merely a song of a long-separated friend, it isn't. In Scots the word "jo" means "sweetheart." In the Scots chorus of Auld Lang Syne:

For auld lang syne, my jo,
for auld lang syne,
we’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet,
for auld lang syne.

Further evidence is in an earlier song, pre-Burns:

Should Old Acquaintance be forgot,
and never thought upon;
The flames of Love extinguished,
and fully past and gone:
Is thy sweet Heart now grown so cold,
that loving Breast of thine;
That thou canst never once reflect
on Old long syne.

CHORUS:
On Old long syne my Jo,
in Old long syne,
That thou canst never once reflect,
on Old long syne.

But I digress.

For me the annual remembrance had started in Advent with the carol "O Little Town of Bethlehem", in particular the lines "Above thy deep and dreamless sleep / The silent stars go by." Two conflicting images always presented: one a middle-eastern scene, the other an image of Midland, winter '67-'68. The only "deep and dreamless sleep" there was in my own mind -- once I lost all contacts with Midland friends in the early 70s I had only memories to draw on.

New Year/Hogmanay still brings me back: where are my old friends, what have they achieved? Questions with no answers. And "Chi Mi Na Morbheanna" brings a fine contradiction: the home I remember has no mountains, no hills. But the song is really about coming home to the people who live(d) there.

This summer I saw that the Midland I held in memory is unsurprisingly long since gone. Now I have new memories of it today. Though many of my classmates and other folks there now say, "It's a great place to be -- from" I missed it('s people) for a long, long time.

But as a result of this visit the triggers of such remembrances are gone, and maybe that's a good thing. I know I can never go home again, but I'll forever remember fondly the Midland where I once lived, auld lang syne.

Merry Christmas to you

who continue to check on this blog.

Recalling many merry Christmases there... of a time a long time ago.

Blog end -- for now

There having been no visitors to the blog for many days now, it is perhaps safe to say it's ended.

At least for now, though I will likely return to the blog when we begin planning our "Tour of Michigan," including of course another visit to Midland. Currently it looks like that won't occur in 2011 but could in 2012. I'd love to visit in late September, but that may depend on work -- my fall travel season starts about that time though if we have completed the development of the Smart Grid by then (a distant possibility) I won't be traveling as much as I am now.

Cheers.

Happy Thanksgiving

It's snowing here. Ice and steep hills are not a good mix -- a problem Midland doesn't have.

Midland Trail

It doesn't take long after I think I've made the very last posting on this blog that something else comes up. In this instance I headed out last week for a trip with stops in West Virginia and Virginia followed by a week in Atlanta. While driving from West Virginia to speak at a conference in Virginia, I started seeing freeway signs touting "Midland Trail."

I had seen "Midland Trail" on maps before I left but had pressing issues to put to bed before departure so I didn't investigate. But seeing the name on freeway signs made me take note -- and hassle with pulling out the "big" camera to snap a picture in passing, just for my records if nothing else.

Today, just returned from that trip (home at 1:30 AM PST), I got time to look up "Midland Trail" online. Of course, Midland is a popular name for towns, cities and regions -- there's even a Midland less than an hour's drive south of here. though it might just be a "district" of Tacoma.

But adding "Trail" promised something else, something historical. And so it is! Not an old pioneer trail as I had thought, such as the Oregon Trail (which ends three hours south of here), but a national auto trail, possibly the first transcontinental auto trail, ca 1913, from D.C. to L.A.

Back East Route 60 follows much of the old Midland Trail, it turns out. In a way reminiscent of Route 66, part of which I walked in Albuquerque during a conference this summer, and another part in Kingman AZ which I encountered in a break from a conference in Las Vegas a few weeks ago, and which I will see again this January.

None of which has anything to do with Midland MI other than the name Midland. Though if I'd not been a Midlander I would probably never have encountered this little bit of history.

Apples and Autumn

On some flight from Seattle earlier this year, my seatmate was in the apple distribution business. I had to ask him which were better in his opinion: Michigan or Washington apples? He put it slightly to Washington. I remain unconvinced, though it's been decades since I've had a Michigan apple. (Both are better than the New Zealand apples we get here -- a bit mealy-tasting.)

In any event, for me autumn will always be associated with apples, in so many ways. Trips out to someplace forgotten (the name "Apple Mountain" sticks in my mind, can anyone confirm?) where one could get fresh apple cider and other apple products, I think, while watching the press. The tradition sort of continues here with a "farm" in Woodinville that also sells fresh cider this time of year. Kathy says they use a special variety of apple developed right here -- whatever the case, it's good.

And as it gets colder and nearer winter another memory comes forward: the heady smell of bushel baskets of apples on the Hensons' enclosed back porch. Sadly their house on Ashman Street (at Nelson) is gone now, along with all the apple trees we kids played in, from the huge old tree out front to the small young trees, some barely large enough to climb in. I really wonder about that property -- it doesn't seem to be a park though it's kept. Perhaps the current owners of the Caldwell and Putnam houses (to the north) own it now?

And one more memory I can barely place: a church youth group party in 1967 where, among other things, we bobbed for apples. I don't remember where it was, other than in somebody's basement, but I'm guessing the Fayerweathers'. I seem to remember a hayride along with it, but that's stretching things.

Not that unusual?

Was chatting with my seatmate on the flight to Atlanta Sunday. Friendly fellow (it's always easier with an empty seat between), born and raised in North Dakota but now living in Seattle. The interesting thing was that he said he frequently runs into folks from North Dakota -- if I remember correctly, he said there are little things that identify them.

I didn't mention Midland but just filed that little tidbit away. Perhaps if one has one's antennae up one would have similar experiences; perhaps mine is not so unusual.