Guest Blogpost from Paul Wiessmeyer – a Family Waits to be Reunited After Many Years.
Letter from Scotland

Guest Blogpost from Paul Wiessmeyer – a Family Waits to be Reunited After Many Years.

Paul Wiessmeyer, who I wrote about this week on my “Boson Blog” contacted me about this family of refugees who are hoping to be reunited Monday. On DECEMBER 18, a Turkish Airlines flight 1525 that originated in the Sudan, will land in Dusseldorf, Germany at 13.05 PM. Among the passengers will be an Eritrean mother and her four young sons, recently granted permission to leave a Sudanese refugee camp to be reunited with their father Asmerom in Germany. This will be the first time they see each other in four years.

Mairi Campbell’s Journey of Personal Growth on Stage in Massachusetts
Articles

Mairi Campbell’s Journey of Personal Growth on Stage in Massachusetts

There is a point in Mairi Campbell’s one-woman coming of age show Pulse where in an attempt to convey inarticulable emotion she writhes on the ground speaking gibberish. As she plays wild notes on her viola, animated scribbles light up the backdrop. Struggling with unrequited love for a priest, travelling alone in Mexico, in a culture she doesn’t understand, she has lost her way.

The Violin-Maker’s Quiet Anger
Letter from Scotland

The Violin-Maker’s Quiet Anger

 

A middle-aged man stands  at a street corner waiting for his customers, wrapped up against the December chill. Master violinmaker Paul Wiessmeyer, along with several others, has been summarily evicted from a Harry-Potter-ish building in Boston’s music quarter.

The place, 295 Huntington Ave was easy to miss – you could walk past the unprepossessing entrance without guessing what was inside up the narrow staircase. Built as a hotel a century or so ago, it became a cultural ecosystem about 60 years ago. There was a symbiosis in its corridors where music students, performers and media types rubbed shoulders.

Politics

What We Talk About When We Talk About Self-Driving Cars

 

Photo: Rob Bruce and William Bruce

This is a think piece about atonomous cars. it is written as a dialogue between three characters. Jim is visiting old friends Roy and Elspeth in their Boston apartment after a conference. Roy is a neoist, enthusiastic about new develoments. Elspeth is a Luddite. Jim is an environmentalist who loves trains.

In the corner apartment overlooking the city, Elspeth was unpacking a Whole Foods bag, in between flipping a clean towel onto the bathroom rail and kicking her gym shoes under the sofa. She greeted them at the door. “Jim! How lovely.”

After Jim had admired the view – two windowed walls overlooking the nexus of highways leading commuters out of the city, they sat at the breakfast bar and shared a bottle of wine, chewing over old times, while Roy and Elspeth produced dinner, chopping vegetables for a salad, frying fish.

After dinner, the argument began. Moving to the sitting area of the tiny living room area of the Webster’s apartment, set like an eyrie above the city’s nexus of highways, they surveyed the jammed outward-bound traffic across three lines of the interstate.

Arts

Robert Kemp – 50 Years After the Death of a Scots Playwright, a Memoir

This month marks 50 years since the death of the playwright Robert Kemp. To commemorate this, I have created a memoir which is downloadable here as a PDF, readable on Kindle or any other device. This is a work in progress – a corrected and finalised version will appear soon. Comments and contributions welcome via Facebook or Twitter @jackiekemp.

Social Affairs

Some Thoughts on Scotland’s Implementation of the Curriculum for Excellence

Earlier this year when writing for the Guardian about the ongoing political row around Scotland’s performance in the international comparison table known as PISA, I visited Currie High School on the outskirts of Edinburgh and spoke to a group of young people who were gathered in the lab to discuss their experience of science at school with me. After the chat, where the students were generally enthusiastic and complimentary about their science lessons, I asked if anyone would consider becoming a High School Science teacher. Silence. Why not? “I just can’t stand children, Miss” answered one bright spark. After a pause, another offered the reason that it would be just “too much hard work” – and there was a chorus of agreement with this sentiment.(some students from Currie)

Mairi Campbell performs ‘Pulse’ at Shea Theater near Boston and joins the cast of WGBH Celtic Sojourn
Arts

Mairi Campbell performs ‘Pulse’ at Shea Theater near Boston and joins the cast of WGBH Celtic Sojourn

Scots musical artist Mairi Campbell is in Boston to perform in WGBH Celtic Sojourn at the Cutler Majestic and touring. On Dec 2 at the Shea Theater in Turner Falls she will perform ‘Pulse’, a musical drawn from her own life which she performed throughout the 2017 Edinburgh Fringe, gaining some five star reviews.
Not many musicians could hope to fill a theatre with a one-woman experimental musical about their own lives. But Mairi Campbell’s ‘Pulse’ in which she acts, sings, plays the fiddle and dances the story of her own musical coming of age has been touring Scotland for the last two years, showcasing the best of modern Scots culture at Celtic Connections in 2016 and at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2017. Mairi is an old friend of mine and below is a piece I wrote about the show at its inception in 2015.

‘Spirit of 47’ – A Member of the Edinburgh International Festival Audience for 70 Years Looks Back.
Arts

‘Spirit of 47’ – A Member of the Edinburgh International Festival Audience for 70 Years Looks Back.

The theme of the 70th Edinburgh International Festival this year is remembering the ‘Spirit of 47’. Among the audience is at least one faithful festival-goer who was there at the start – my uncle David Kemp. Here are some of David’s reminiscences of his many Festivals, stretching back to those post-war years when the colour and beauty of art returned to a traumatised world.

David Kemp outside the Usher Hall, Edinburgh before the Mariinsky/ RSNO concert on 23/08/2017

Poems

Snowflakes in Summer

The summer after leaving for Uni They all came back, trailing clouds Of crazy hair and bad tattoos. The brought us new words: “Heteronormative”, “Post-democracy” Changing all, like snowflakes, which, When…

Poems

Lament for Eilidh MacLeod

Back in Scotland, on a visit to a friend in her 70s, She talked about two girls from Barra Who were caught up in the Manchester bombing She thought of…

Finding Art in the News.
Arts

Finding Art in the News.

Real newspapers can be used for many things that their digital counterparts never could – from lining the veg box to making paper boats and beyond. Artist Jane Couroussopoulos finds a novel use for the pile of old Guardians she keeps in her studio, turning them into works of art.

 

Jane and Poppy in the studio.

Politics

A Visit to the Doctor: Why American Health Care is Sick

American health care is a racket run by scammers who prey on the sick and the worried. Its health professionals behave like escorts in a hostess bar, prompting drunk punters to order the most expensive drinks, knowing they will get a portion of the proceeds. It is a fundamentally dishonest system, heartless and duplicitous. But as well as its immoral base, it is bankrupting America where health spending is heading for one pound in every five of economic activity. My personal experience is trivial but salutary. This morning I received two bills for seeking medical help, totalling $600. As a freelance content creator this is a sum that in itself will cause stress. I am kicking myself for going near the doctor in the first place. It turned out that what was ailing me would get better by itself – which it did, within a week. 

Politics

Brexit is an immediate threat: – Remainers should vote SNP; Indyref 2 is a battle for another day.

Every democratic election is a choice, to a certain extent, between the bad and the worse. In that sense, it is much like life. There is seldom a perfect option. And every voter who takes pencil in hand in the privacy of the polling booth will assess the issues, compromise on some and prioritise others.

In the First Past the Post Westminster election, we also vote for – or against – an individual whose name appears on the ballot. It seems likely that across the UK on Thursday night some big names will lose their seats and be subjected to the kind of ritual humiliation by media that goes with the job of MP these days. Alex Salmond and Angus Robertson may be among them.

I am not a nationalist but I will be voting SNP. More specifically, I will vote for Tommy Sheppard in Edinburgh East. Sheppard seems to be a man who takes an international view, not a narrow nationalist one. But my decision is based on his party’s strong pro-EU stance. In the event of a hung Parliament – unlikely though that may be  – the SNP would be a voice for staying in the single market, the customs union, for freedom of movement.

Politics

Rowling, Kuenssberg Enter Rape Clause Debate – But Low Response From England.

UJK Rowling made an influential contribution to the debate on the so-called “rape clause’  by tweeting about it this week to her ten million followers. And BBC journalist Laura Kuenssberg came in for criticism for a tweet accusing the SNP of trying to make political capital out of it. But despite the social media interest, the issue doesn’t seem to have the same traction in England as it does in Scotland. A petition calling for a debate in Westminster has attracted few signatures south of the border, in contrast to an impassioned debate at Holyrood, where all four main parties except the Conservatives oppose it.

Politics

The Scottish Economy – Could it Survive as an Independent Country?

The debate about the Scottish economy centres largely on GERS which looks at public expenditure – the taxes raised in Scotland and the government spending. These suggest an independent Scotland would have a massive deficit.

This reflects the fact that Scotland has a shrunken private sector. Scotland has a very big public sector and those people are paid, of course, with money that has to be raised from taxation. So if Scotland were to have a sustainable future as an independent country, it would have to expand its private sector and create more profitable businesses.

Politics

The SNP and 50 Years of Parliamentary Democracy, some dramatic moments.

November 2017 marks the 50th anniversary of Winnie Ewing’s election as the first SNP MP. Here is the late Arnold Kemp’s account of some of the history of the SNP in Parliament after that iconic moment. (Excerpted from “The Hollow Drum” and the anthology of his journalism “Confusion to our Enemies” )

The devolution years really began for me in 1967. It was after midnight and on the Scotsman we were holding the Glasgow edition for the result of the Hamilton by-election. Seconds after the declaration – a stunning victory for the SNP candidate Mrs Winifred Ewing over Labour – David Bradford, one of the political editors, came on the line and bawled out the intro which I took down in longhand and sent to the composing room. I can remember that it began with the phrase, ‘The rising tide of Scottish nationalism …’ and it expressed the mood of excitement. Mrs Ewing, though she lost the seat later, launched the SNP into the stratosphere of concentrated London media attention and from her victory is often traced the party’s modern prominence.