It was one of those books, I'm sorry!

Have managed to raise my nose from the grindstone to read a few chapters of

Palestinian walks, notes on a vanishing landscape by Raja Shehadeh.

Very interesting.

Boy we think we have got problems. You spend your life building a cast iron case against the illegal annexation of your land by the Israeli State and its head banging extremists. Land which most of the world regards as little better than a rock strewn rubbish dump but which you recognise as the gentle soul of your nation and wham, bahm, thank you man the PLO have sold you down the crapper!

So it goes!

And then today I read

good gracious!

Prairie Dogs and Buddhists

I am full of admiration Susan McCarthy's post on the not precisely lonesome prairie.
What more could you want in a blog? Eactly, you would want to include:-
Prairie dogs, Tibetan monks, Santa Fe, buddhism, Willie Nelson, beer, Ted Nugent, People for Native Ecosystems, Jehovah's Witnesses, the possible conversion of owls and coyotes to vegetarianism, freedom from religious persecution and a sweet little photo of a prairie dog.

Go look!

It's worth it just for the photo, though I guess from his proud and arrogant bearing this little dog is a fundamentalist christian cracker just waiting to bend your ear about creation by design.

Wild Things

My, literary, thirst for wilderness and wild things continues unabated.
Again, the workers at SCC Libraries have provided me with:–

Robert Macfarlane. The Wild Places.

all for the price of a few electrons!

I am, enjoyably, working my way through it and what do I find but a reference to Sandy Mc Rory (page 138). He has appeared here briefly before .

I must admit it was so long ago and the occurrence so unlikely that I had begun to doubt my own recollection. Good to be shocked in this way!

Sandy lived in a ’bothy’ in Strathchailleach just to the north of Sandwood Bay.

I remember the name now and the translation; but that's another story!