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I have always been a fan of Conrad Black and so thought I'd bring you his views on the Trump win...
Conrad Black: The free press failed and the Clintons, Bushes and Obamas are finally finished
There are many who will or should engage in some soul-searching, following the U.S election, in which for the first time in the country’s history, someone came from no background in public office or military command and seized control of a major political party, running against all those who had led it for the last 20 years, then defeated the incumbent party, defeating all the Clintons, Bushes and Obamas together. The Clintons and Bushes and Obamas are finally finished. Their entire era, though it had its moments, has been a worsening disaster as the United States has been in absolute and relative decline. The media have been exposed in their biases, their overwhelming hostility to Donald Trump, as not just irrelevant, but the object of hatred as intense as that which overwhelmed the political elites who failed the nation and imperilled the alliance America founded and led for many decades.
The public’s loathing and distrust of the media is richly deserved and indicative of one of Western society’s greatest failings: the free press has failed. Only the fact that there is no alternative keeps it going. Few people now pay much attention to the common misrepresentation of public issues and people; nor should they. The American media turned itself inside out trying to portray Trump as a misogynist, a racist and an authoritarian populist whipping up mobs and inciting violence. All this was unmitigated rubbish. President Barack Obama strutted about the campaign trail in a last-ditch effort to salvage the Clinton campaign (despite the notorious absence of any affection between the Obamas and the Clintons), and accused Trump of being a sympathizer of the Ku Klux Klan. The president would have his listeners believe that Trump, who has an unblemished record as an equal opportunity employer, approves of thugs surging about in hoods and bedsheets, burning crosses on the lawns of African-Americans, Jews and Roman Catholics (most of whose 30 million voters cast their ballots for Trump).
The media screamed for Trump’s blood when the Clinton campaign released an 11-year-old tape of boorish remarks about women, though what Trump said was the bland and pious reflection of a Baptist minister compared to the normal conversation of Lyndon Johnson, or the actual conduct, while discharging presidential business, of Bill Clinton. It was magnificent watching the Clinton News Network (CNN) robots on autocue scurrying around like asphyxiated roaches as it became clear that Trump would do the impossible and win, and that the public saw through the animosity of the lazy, complacent, boot-licking, myth-making claque of the Washington media, with its liars, defamers, frauds and idiots.
Last Sunday, I was a token expositor of a positive view of Trump, though I am no Clinton-basher, on Fareed Zakaria’s television program GPS. Fareed, a pleasant and capable man and a friend of many years, opened with a frenzied recitation of Trump’s status as a sexist, racist, xenophobic and crooked demagogue. What followed for 45 minutes, apart from Zbigniew Brzezinski’s artful debunking of the Obama foreign policy (“engaged but ineffectual”), was a sequence of Clinton-parrots. There was a debate between two pollsters about the breadth of Hillary Clinton’s almost inevitable margin of victory. I politely demurred from all this when my turn came after 50 minutes, and Fareed has generously invited me back this Sunday. But his program wasn’t fair comment or thoughtful information: it was propaganda, less virulent and hateful, certainly, than that of infamous promoters of the big lie in totalitarian states, but almost as lacking in integrity or balance.
The most powerful mea culpa from the media was from Will Rahn of CBS. He blogged on Thursday against “the unbearable smugness” of the media, including himself:
“We were all tacitly or explicitly #With Her.… Had Hillary Clinton won, there’d be a winking ‘we did it’ feeling in the press — we were brave and saved the republic.… Trump knew what he was doing when he invited his crowds to jeer and hiss reporters covering him. They hate us. And can you blame them? Journalists love mocking Trump supporters.… We diagnose them as racists in the way Dark Age clerics confused medical problems with demonic possession. Journalists at our worst, see ourselves as a priestly caste, we believe we have access to a greater truth.” Instead of humility, Rahn expects the media to be confirmed in their view that Trump and his followers are racist and sexist, “so there must be more racists and sexists than we believed.”
Even Rahn’s mother, the saintly Peggy Noonan, while saluting Trump’s victory and acknowledging the general failure to appreciate the depths of public anger, called upon the country to “help him” because he doesn’t know how to be president. As long as the president does not seriously violate the Constitution, the presidency fits its occupant, not the other way round. George VI stammered something to president Franklin D. Roosevelt when he visited in 1939, and said, “This Goddam stutter!” and Roosevelt said, “What stutter? You are the King and you speak as you speak. I could say ‘this Goddam polio,’ but our peoples support us because we hold our positions legitimately and do our jobs adequately, and having shortcomings themselves, aren’t overly concerned with ours.”
Trump will build on his elegant remarks on election night, and can rally the vast centre of American opinion with a tasteful and magnanimous demeanour and the recruitment of competent people who reflect the diversity of America. He has a clear mandate to reform Obamacare, reform the tax system to provide lower rates for the working and middle classes and less of a free ride for the financial industry, to shrink government, reduce the trade deficit, use workfare programs to reduce unemployment and modernize infrastructure, create a southern border, escalate counter-terrorism, reinvigorate the Western alliance and redefine national security between the trigger-happy interventionism of George W. Bush and the Obama attempt to exchange its friends for its enemies, especially in the Middle East.
All this will get him off to a good start, keep faith with the believers and debrief the brainwashed skeptics, but will leave three vast problems. Standards of information and education have withered. The American people, and most other advanced nationalities, are less well-educated and less well-informed than they were 50 years ago. The teaching and academic professions and the journalists have failed. They have not failed completely, of course, and there are many individual exceptions, but they do not get a passing grade. Government can do something about the schools but can’t really touch academia or the free press without threatening the foundation of free society. There is no obvious solution.
http://news.nationalpost.com/full-co...ing-in-america
Scottish News from this weeks newspapers
Note that this is a selection and more can be read in our ScotNews feed on our index page where we list news from the past 1-2 weeks. I am partly doing this to build an archive of modern news from and about Scotland as all the newsletters are archived and also indexed on Google and other search engines. I might also add that in newspapers such as the Guardian, Scotsman, Courier, etc. you will find many comments which can be just as interesting as the news story itself and of course you can also add your own comments if you wish.
UK could become part of new trade area with the US, Canada and Mexico after Brexit
Conservative MPs describe prospect of joining a new version of Nafta as an opportunity
Read more at:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/wo...-a7412791.html
SNP MP Mhairi Black held her nose while voting Remain
But Holyrood’s opposition parties said Ms Black’s suggested lack of enthusiasm for a Remain vote further undermines Nicola Sturgeon’s case that Brexit could justify a second independence referendum.
Read more at:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016...voting-remain/
Political elite facing bitter backlash
Sunday Post poll delivers vote of no confidence in leaders
Read more at:
https://www.sundaypost.com/fp/politi...tter-backlash/
How unequal are people in Scotland?
Throughout the week BBC Scotland news will be looking at how equal or otherwise Scotland is.
Read more at:
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-37935557
Edinburgh Military Tattoo to give clan members starring role
Clan members from around the world will get the chance of a starring role in the Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo for the first time.
Read more at:
http://www.scotsman.com/lifestyle/ed...tion-1-4288029
Scottish councils spend hundreds of millions on servicing debts
A typical council spends the equivalent of 42% of its council tax money servicing the debts, the research indicated.
Read more at:
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-37988682
The hidden reindeer nobody knew existed
In the Sahtú region of Canada, science has identified three distinct groups of caribou but the local people believe there is a secret fourth caribou
Read more at:
http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20161...-never-noticed
Hedge fund Eclectica betting on break up of EU
European politics posed the biggest market risk of 2017, with an impending French election the most likely trigger of fresh market ructions.
Read more at:
http://uk.reuters.com/article/us-inv...-idUKKBN1391JI
Plans to enshrine a right to access to food in Scots Law
It would mean the government and other public bodies had a duty to ensure everyone has secure access to adequate and affordable food.
Read more at:
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-...itics-38015408
St Andrews visitor attraction named best of 2016
MUSA beat fellow finalists the Royal Lochnagar Distillery Visitor Centre and The Helix to take the accolade.
Read more at:
https://www.thecourier.co.uk/fp/news...-best-of-2016/
Electric Canadian
Chronicles of Canada
Added Volume 5 - The Seigneurs of Old Canada
You can read this at: http://www.electriccanadian.com/hist...cles/index.htm
Cariboo
Found a couple of books about this town in the Gold Fields of British Columbia.
You can read these at http://www.electriccanadian.com/pioneering/cariboo.htm
Big John Wallace
By Archie P. McKishnie.
This is a novel which is a good read so hope you enjoy it. You can read this at:
http://www.electriccanadian.com/pion...ohnwallace.pdf
Dent, John Charles
Lawyer, journalist, author, and historian added to our Makers of Canada section and also added 8 books of a series on Canada which were designed for children.
You can read all this at http://www.electriccanadian.com/makers/dent.htm
Electric Scotland
Barbados-POW Scots 1650
Got told about this site which has some interesting information. Thanks to Mark Elliot for the link which is at:
http://gorrenberry.com/barbados-pow-scots/
Bush Life in Australia and New Zealand
By Dugald Fergusson (1893) (pdf)
This is a book by a Scot who tells his story of life in Australia and New Zealand. Didn't read the entire book as I just didn't have the time but I did read some 70 pages or so and very much enjoyed it. I do hope to read the balance over the weekend.
You can download this book at: http://www.electricscotland.com/hist...naustralia.pdf
Beth's Newfangled Family Tree
Got in the December 2016 issue section 2 which you can download at:
http://www.electricscotland.com/bnft/index.htm
Then and Now
Dennyloanhead, Bonnybridge, Haggs, and the surrounding district— Past and Present. A Lecture delivered at a Meeting of Dennyloanhead Church Guild, held in the Muirhead Memorial Hall, on the Evening of October 19, 1921, by Rev. David Keir, M.A.
A lot of people mentioned in this account.
You can download this at: http://www.electricscotland.com/council/thenandnow.pdf
Excursions and Adventures in New South Wales
With Pictures of Squatting and of Life in the Bush by John Henderson in 2 volumes (1851)
You can download these volumes at: http://www.electricscotland.com/hist...southwales.htm
Robert Burns Lives!
Edited by Frank Shaw
Burns and Broadside Publication "The Chevalier's Lament" at Auction in Macon, Georgia by Patrick Scott
Once again Professor Patrick Scott has stepped to the forefront of our contributors to offer an unusual article on a Burns Broadside at auction in Macon, Georgia, an unusual place to find an original piece of the Bard’s works for sale. It is with deep gratitude that I thank Dr. Scott for his many articles to Robert Burns Lives! and once again salute his scholarship. Over many years he has been of enormous help to this website and to me personally. With his being a member of the top echelon of Burns scholars, our readers have benefited greatly from Patrick’s contributions. It is always a joy to have him share another of his articles. Yes, as the old western saying goes, “He will do to ride the river with.” (FRS: 11.17.16)
You can view this article at: http://www.electricscotland.com/fami...s_lives247.htm
The Story
They were the Mothers of Florida
An account of a McLeod family
From Tampa Tribune Kan 1, 1956 by D. B. McKay
Mrs. Sudie Knight send in another interesting story of pioneer life in South Floida, based on an interview with a highly esteemed old lady who was born in Hillsborough County and who passed on to her home in Heavan but a few months ago. In Mrs. Molly McLeod Whidden's own words, Mrs. Knight presents a realistic recollection of frontier life.
"My father was Wfiliam McLeod and his father was born in Scotland. Grandfather McLeod married Emily Sloane, and all their children were born in this country—though not In Florida. In Georgia, I think. They had four girls and four boys. Father married Susan Howard, a widow with two daughters, Virginia and Missouri. Her parents were Seth Howard and Harriet Weeks.
"Father and mother were married in Tampa. They had 10 children, three boys and seven girls. I was the oldest. We were always happy at home. We loved each other and we were brought up right and did not see other people enough to learn anything bad. We didn’t have many neighbors, and most of them were good people.
"Mother was converted when she was a girl. Father was converted during the Civil War and baptized at night. I do not know why It was at night, unless it was because they did not have time for church in the daytime.
"He was usually cheerful, but when he did get mad he really got his Scotch up. His mother died of smallpox during the war while he was gone, and was buried by Grandfather and a colored man. Neighbors were afraid to come to help them.
"FATHER FOUGHT through the Civil War. He was never wounded, although he fought in the battles of Chickamauga and several others I don’t remember. He almost froze one time when he was barefooted and it snowed. He caught a cold, and couldn’t speak above a whIsper for three years.
"His captain was named Josh Riggs. He used to come and stay all night and he and Pa would sit up till alter midnight talking about the war. We children loved to sit up and listen.
"He fought in an Indian war, too, and my father-in-law Whidden was killed in a battle with the Indians at Payne’s Creek.
"OUR HOME WAS about four miles from where the New Zion Church now stands. Most of. our children were born there and Pa and Ma died there.
"All of us children learned to work as soon as we were old enough. Ma made all of our clothes. We’ raised the cotton and bought the wool. Pa did the carding till we older ones got to where we could do it He would card the rolls at night after working In the field all day, and Ma would sit up and spin and weave.
"As soon as we could all of us girls learned to spin and weave and that kind of work and remember she used copperas In making yellow.
The first sewing machine I ever saw was a little thing that sat on a table and turned with a handle. You had to crank with one hand and hold the sewing with the other. It didn’t sew very fast.
"The first calico dress I remember was bought from a peddler. He had one piece of calico with blue and white stripes about two fingers in width with red roses in the white stripe. My two half-sisters got dresses off that piece. Mine was pink with fine white pin stripes and white flowers in it.
"We wore home-woven dresses for everyday. We went barefooted all Winter around home and saved our shoes for Sunday to wear to church. We had church.then under a brush arbor.
"MA COOKED in the fireplace and used a.long iron rod to hang pots on, called a crane. We didn’t can anything. I never saw a glass jar for canning until alter I was married. But we dried a lot of things. We dried green beans, corn and pumpkins. We had to soak them before cooking.
"Most every family had a cook scafold to use in the Summer, when it was too hot to have a fire in the house. The men folks built a stout table about waist high and put boxing around it. Then they filled this box with sand. They made it large enough that when we built a fire in it the wood planks would not catch on fire.
"There were no orange groves in this part of the country then. There were a few orange trees In Tampa, and Grandpa Howard had one in his yard. My father bought two and set them out on our place and. soon we had oranges of our own. Sour oranges and lemons grew wild In some of the hammocks. Grapefruits got scattered through the country while I was growing up, but I never knew of a pineapple in this region until several years after I married.
"WE DOCTORED with home remedies, and one of them was Jerusalem Oak. it was a weed that made an awful bitter tea, and all of us children hated to take It. But all the same they gave us a lot of it.
"One day Naaman. my oldest brother, and I thought of a way to keep from taking the tea. We took Pa’s hatchet and went all around the yard. and in all the fence corners and chopped down every Jerusalem Oak on the place.
"Almost everything we had cooked the juice till it was ready to go to sugar and then would have holes bored In the bottom of the barrels and let the syrup drip into a pan. He stood up stalks of sugar cane in the barrels so he could stir the sugar every few days to keep the crust broken so it would dry out and drip better. When it got dry and crumbly he would take it out and stack it in another barrel and it was ready for use.
"Old Man Strickland and his boys used to make sugar barrels of cypress. They bent the staves while they were green and then seasoned them. We saved our barrels and used them year after year. We children used to slip to the sugar barrel sometimes, but we had to be careful, for they thought that too much sugar was not good for us. We used to beg for lumps of sugar like children nowadays beg for candy,
"PA ALWAYS raised enough rice to do us. He built a tight little room to put the rice in after it was threshed out and cleaned.
"I remember one Spring there was a late frost, in April I think It was, and everybody’s gardens and truck patches were killed. Many families were already about out of what they had saved over to run till Spring, and some people were absolutely without anything at all and moved away. We still had plenty of rice and we had cabbage.
"That is what we lived on until Pa could put out another garden and it grew up. We would eat rice one day and cabbage the next till one time Ma said ‘Let’s try a cabbage and rice pilau.’ So she made it and we all liked it, but we sure did get tired of cabbage and rice. Pa gave lots of it away.
"We generally had plenty of meat. There were lots of deer in the woods in those days and a lot of venison was wasted. Deer hams could be sold in Tampa, and some men would cut out the hams and leave the rest of the deer wherever they had killed It. But Pa never did that. He sold hams In Tampa to buy our shoes and other things, but he always brought the deer home, and if we didn’t eat it at the time we would dry it.
"We dried turkey breasts, too. If we had two or three turkeys at a time Ma would cut off the breast meat, salt it down and then after it had taken salt would string them up and hang them in the sun to dry. When it was sliced and fried It was fine. Of course we had plenty.
There were not any free schools in those days. The neighbors who lived close together would join in and hire a teacher. My first teacher was an old man named Davis. He taught school in my ‘Grand. father Howard’s barn. The men made benches and put them along the sides of the wall, they were split logs smoothed with a plane with wooden legs pegged into them.
We didn’t have any black boards nor any slates. A few had pencils and paper, but paper was scarce. When a child got a sheet of writing paper he thought he had something wonderful.
At my second school the big boys and girls had slates. We little ones had the Blue Backed Speller. It had reading in It, and that is all we had to study out of. I went with my two elder half-sisters, and besides us there were my grandfather’s three boys and two girls, the Roberts children, Lizzie Tucker, two Hendry girls and a boy of the name of Dan Pate. Yes, there was an Arnoa girl, too.
My next school was taught by a young man named Buddie Payne. The schoolhouse was in a harnmock this side of where the New Zion Church is now. I’d not learn much from him, for be put in all his time with the big boys and girls. We little ones had only one lesson a day.
"My third school was taught by Miss Lizzie Berry, It was called the Taylor school and was five miles from home. My two half-sisters, my little brother Naaman and I went from our house. The other childreni were the Taylors, Knights, Wingates, Stevens, Harrises and Pitts, I studied the Blue sacked Speller and a reader. I had a pencil and paper. I don’t remember any blackboard in this school.
"WE CARRIED OUR dinner in tin buckets—if we could get the buckets, Some of us had to use homemade baskets that some of the family had made out of strips of inner bark of certain trees.
"They were all right, but everybody had baskets of this kind of all sizes from little to big, while tin buckets had to be bought at the store. and that made us feel like they were more valuable.
"Our dinner usually consisted of corn bread, rice, and meat of some kind. Sometimes we had biscuits, but flour wasn’t as plentiful as corn was. We didn’t always have flour, but we always had corn meal, grits, and rice. One of the best things we had was sweet potato pone. It was made of grated sweet potatoes, eggs and spice and sweetened with some of our homemade sugar.
"We had to walk five miles to Miss Berry’s school. We took a path through the woods and we often saw wolves.
Sometimes mother would carry Naaman part of the way on her back. She would talk and laugh with us and tell us stories, and we loved for her to go home with us to stay all night. Then, of course, we would have her to go along with us back to school the next morning.
"AT RECESS WE played ball and Three Old Cats. Sometimes the boys played Bull Pen. Boys and girls did not play together. We girls played such games as Dare Base, Poison Stick and Wood Tag. I was almost grown before we learned to play Handkerchief and Go In and Out the Windows. Singing games like Skip to Ma Lou came in at about this same time.
"We had recitations on Friday afternoons. Some of the neighbors would come in to hear us and most all, of us learned little pieces to recite. We would sing songs, too. We never had a Christmas tree at school nor at home either, but we always hung up our stockings. Sometimes we would get a little toy made out of wood, but we never got any china dolls. Our dolls were all homemade. We always got candy and sometimes an apple.
"We never had parties. I didn’t know what parties were. If we had anything like that we would all get together and go to the creek to fish and have a fish dinner. Of course we went to church and had church dinners on Sunday. We generally would camp out on Christmas night and next morning kill deer or wild turkeys to cook for our dinner. Times have changed a lot since then."
Aunt Molly died last June 28th In the Palmetto Clinic at Wauchula and is buried In the New Zion Cemetery, between ,Wauchula and Myakka City.
And that's it for this week and hope you all enjoy your weekend.
Alastair
http://www.electricscotland.com/
Electric Scotland News
I have always been a fan of Conrad Black and so thought I'd bring you his views on the Trump win...
Conrad Black: The free press failed and the Clintons, Bushes and Obamas are finally finished
There are many who will or should engage in some soul-searching, following the U.S election, in which for the first time in the country’s history, someone came from no background in public office or military command and seized control of a major political party, running against all those who had led it for the last 20 years, then defeated the incumbent party, defeating all the Clintons, Bushes and Obamas together. The Clintons and Bushes and Obamas are finally finished. Their entire era, though it had its moments, has been a worsening disaster as the United States has been in absolute and relative decline. The media have been exposed in their biases, their overwhelming hostility to Donald Trump, as not just irrelevant, but the object of hatred as intense as that which overwhelmed the political elites who failed the nation and imperilled the alliance America founded and led for many decades.
The public’s loathing and distrust of the media is richly deserved and indicative of one of Western society’s greatest failings: the free press has failed. Only the fact that there is no alternative keeps it going. Few people now pay much attention to the common misrepresentation of public issues and people; nor should they. The American media turned itself inside out trying to portray Trump as a misogynist, a racist and an authoritarian populist whipping up mobs and inciting violence. All this was unmitigated rubbish. President Barack Obama strutted about the campaign trail in a last-ditch effort to salvage the Clinton campaign (despite the notorious absence of any affection between the Obamas and the Clintons), and accused Trump of being a sympathizer of the Ku Klux Klan. The president would have his listeners believe that Trump, who has an unblemished record as an equal opportunity employer, approves of thugs surging about in hoods and bedsheets, burning crosses on the lawns of African-Americans, Jews and Roman Catholics (most of whose 30 million voters cast their ballots for Trump).
The media screamed for Trump’s blood when the Clinton campaign released an 11-year-old tape of boorish remarks about women, though what Trump said was the bland and pious reflection of a Baptist minister compared to the normal conversation of Lyndon Johnson, or the actual conduct, while discharging presidential business, of Bill Clinton. It was magnificent watching the Clinton News Network (CNN) robots on autocue scurrying around like asphyxiated roaches as it became clear that Trump would do the impossible and win, and that the public saw through the animosity of the lazy, complacent, boot-licking, myth-making claque of the Washington media, with its liars, defamers, frauds and idiots.
Last Sunday, I was a token expositor of a positive view of Trump, though I am no Clinton-basher, on Fareed Zakaria’s television program GPS. Fareed, a pleasant and capable man and a friend of many years, opened with a frenzied recitation of Trump’s status as a sexist, racist, xenophobic and crooked demagogue. What followed for 45 minutes, apart from Zbigniew Brzezinski’s artful debunking of the Obama foreign policy (“engaged but ineffectual”), was a sequence of Clinton-parrots. There was a debate between two pollsters about the breadth of Hillary Clinton’s almost inevitable margin of victory. I politely demurred from all this when my turn came after 50 minutes, and Fareed has generously invited me back this Sunday. But his program wasn’t fair comment or thoughtful information: it was propaganda, less virulent and hateful, certainly, than that of infamous promoters of the big lie in totalitarian states, but almost as lacking in integrity or balance.
The most powerful mea culpa from the media was from Will Rahn of CBS. He blogged on Thursday against “the unbearable smugness” of the media, including himself:
“We were all tacitly or explicitly #With Her.… Had Hillary Clinton won, there’d be a winking ‘we did it’ feeling in the press — we were brave and saved the republic.… Trump knew what he was doing when he invited his crowds to jeer and hiss reporters covering him. They hate us. And can you blame them? Journalists love mocking Trump supporters.… We diagnose them as racists in the way Dark Age clerics confused medical problems with demonic possession. Journalists at our worst, see ourselves as a priestly caste, we believe we have access to a greater truth.” Instead of humility, Rahn expects the media to be confirmed in their view that Trump and his followers are racist and sexist, “so there must be more racists and sexists than we believed.”
Even Rahn’s mother, the saintly Peggy Noonan, while saluting Trump’s victory and acknowledging the general failure to appreciate the depths of public anger, called upon the country to “help him” because he doesn’t know how to be president. As long as the president does not seriously violate the Constitution, the presidency fits its occupant, not the other way round. George VI stammered something to president Franklin D. Roosevelt when he visited in 1939, and said, “This Goddam stutter!” and Roosevelt said, “What stutter? You are the King and you speak as you speak. I could say ‘this Goddam polio,’ but our peoples support us because we hold our positions legitimately and do our jobs adequately, and having shortcomings themselves, aren’t overly concerned with ours.”
Trump will build on his elegant remarks on election night, and can rally the vast centre of American opinion with a tasteful and magnanimous demeanour and the recruitment of competent people who reflect the diversity of America. He has a clear mandate to reform Obamacare, reform the tax system to provide lower rates for the working and middle classes and less of a free ride for the financial industry, to shrink government, reduce the trade deficit, use workfare programs to reduce unemployment and modernize infrastructure, create a southern border, escalate counter-terrorism, reinvigorate the Western alliance and redefine national security between the trigger-happy interventionism of George W. Bush and the Obama attempt to exchange its friends for its enemies, especially in the Middle East.
All this will get him off to a good start, keep faith with the believers and debrief the brainwashed skeptics, but will leave three vast problems. Standards of information and education have withered. The American people, and most other advanced nationalities, are less well-educated and less well-informed than they were 50 years ago. The teaching and academic professions and the journalists have failed. They have not failed completely, of course, and there are many individual exceptions, but they do not get a passing grade. Government can do something about the schools but can’t really touch academia or the free press without threatening the foundation of free society. There is no obvious solution.
http://news.nationalpost.com/full-co...ing-in-america
Scottish News from this weeks newspapers
Note that this is a selection and more can be read in our ScotNews feed on our index page where we list news from the past 1-2 weeks. I am partly doing this to build an archive of modern news from and about Scotland as all the newsletters are archived and also indexed on Google and other search engines. I might also add that in newspapers such as the Guardian, Scotsman, Courier, etc. you will find many comments which can be just as interesting as the news story itself and of course you can also add your own comments if you wish.
UK could become part of new trade area with the US, Canada and Mexico after Brexit
Conservative MPs describe prospect of joining a new version of Nafta as an opportunity
Read more at:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/wo...-a7412791.html
SNP MP Mhairi Black held her nose while voting Remain
But Holyrood’s opposition parties said Ms Black’s suggested lack of enthusiasm for a Remain vote further undermines Nicola Sturgeon’s case that Brexit could justify a second independence referendum.
Read more at:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016...voting-remain/
Political elite facing bitter backlash
Sunday Post poll delivers vote of no confidence in leaders
Read more at:
https://www.sundaypost.com/fp/politi...tter-backlash/
How unequal are people in Scotland?
Throughout the week BBC Scotland news will be looking at how equal or otherwise Scotland is.
Read more at:
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-37935557
Edinburgh Military Tattoo to give clan members starring role
Clan members from around the world will get the chance of a starring role in the Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo for the first time.
Read more at:
http://www.scotsman.com/lifestyle/ed...tion-1-4288029
Scottish councils spend hundreds of millions on servicing debts
A typical council spends the equivalent of 42% of its council tax money servicing the debts, the research indicated.
Read more at:
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-37988682
The hidden reindeer nobody knew existed
In the Sahtú region of Canada, science has identified three distinct groups of caribou but the local people believe there is a secret fourth caribou
Read more at:
http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20161...-never-noticed
Hedge fund Eclectica betting on break up of EU
European politics posed the biggest market risk of 2017, with an impending French election the most likely trigger of fresh market ructions.
Read more at:
http://uk.reuters.com/article/us-inv...-idUKKBN1391JI
Plans to enshrine a right to access to food in Scots Law
It would mean the government and other public bodies had a duty to ensure everyone has secure access to adequate and affordable food.
Read more at:
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-...itics-38015408
St Andrews visitor attraction named best of 2016
MUSA beat fellow finalists the Royal Lochnagar Distillery Visitor Centre and The Helix to take the accolade.
Read more at:
https://www.thecourier.co.uk/fp/news...-best-of-2016/
Electric Canadian
Chronicles of Canada
Added Volume 5 - The Seigneurs of Old Canada
You can read this at: http://www.electriccanadian.com/hist...cles/index.htm
Cariboo
Found a couple of books about this town in the Gold Fields of British Columbia.
You can read these at http://www.electriccanadian.com/pioneering/cariboo.htm
Big John Wallace
By Archie P. McKishnie.
This is a novel which is a good read so hope you enjoy it. You can read this at:
http://www.electriccanadian.com/pion...ohnwallace.pdf
Dent, John Charles
Lawyer, journalist, author, and historian added to our Makers of Canada section and also added 8 books of a series on Canada which were designed for children.
You can read all this at http://www.electriccanadian.com/makers/dent.htm
Electric Scotland
Barbados-POW Scots 1650
Got told about this site which has some interesting information. Thanks to Mark Elliot for the link which is at:
http://gorrenberry.com/barbados-pow-scots/
Bush Life in Australia and New Zealand
By Dugald Fergusson (1893) (pdf)
This is a book by a Scot who tells his story of life in Australia and New Zealand. Didn't read the entire book as I just didn't have the time but I did read some 70 pages or so and very much enjoyed it. I do hope to read the balance over the weekend.
You can download this book at: http://www.electricscotland.com/hist...naustralia.pdf
Beth's Newfangled Family Tree
Got in the December 2016 issue section 2 which you can download at:
http://www.electricscotland.com/bnft/index.htm
Then and Now
Dennyloanhead, Bonnybridge, Haggs, and the surrounding district— Past and Present. A Lecture delivered at a Meeting of Dennyloanhead Church Guild, held in the Muirhead Memorial Hall, on the Evening of October 19, 1921, by Rev. David Keir, M.A.
A lot of people mentioned in this account.
You can download this at: http://www.electricscotland.com/council/thenandnow.pdf
Excursions and Adventures in New South Wales
With Pictures of Squatting and of Life in the Bush by John Henderson in 2 volumes (1851)
You can download these volumes at: http://www.electricscotland.com/hist...southwales.htm
Robert Burns Lives!
Edited by Frank Shaw
Burns and Broadside Publication "The Chevalier's Lament" at Auction in Macon, Georgia by Patrick Scott
Once again Professor Patrick Scott has stepped to the forefront of our contributors to offer an unusual article on a Burns Broadside at auction in Macon, Georgia, an unusual place to find an original piece of the Bard’s works for sale. It is with deep gratitude that I thank Dr. Scott for his many articles to Robert Burns Lives! and once again salute his scholarship. Over many years he has been of enormous help to this website and to me personally. With his being a member of the top echelon of Burns scholars, our readers have benefited greatly from Patrick’s contributions. It is always a joy to have him share another of his articles. Yes, as the old western saying goes, “He will do to ride the river with.” (FRS: 11.17.16)
You can view this article at: http://www.electricscotland.com/fami...s_lives247.htm
The Story
They were the Mothers of Florida
An account of a McLeod family
From Tampa Tribune Kan 1, 1956 by D. B. McKay
Mrs. Sudie Knight send in another interesting story of pioneer life in South Floida, based on an interview with a highly esteemed old lady who was born in Hillsborough County and who passed on to her home in Heavan but a few months ago. In Mrs. Molly McLeod Whidden's own words, Mrs. Knight presents a realistic recollection of frontier life.
"My father was Wfiliam McLeod and his father was born in Scotland. Grandfather McLeod married Emily Sloane, and all their children were born in this country—though not In Florida. In Georgia, I think. They had four girls and four boys. Father married Susan Howard, a widow with two daughters, Virginia and Missouri. Her parents were Seth Howard and Harriet Weeks.
"Father and mother were married in Tampa. They had 10 children, three boys and seven girls. I was the oldest. We were always happy at home. We loved each other and we were brought up right and did not see other people enough to learn anything bad. We didn’t have many neighbors, and most of them were good people.
"Mother was converted when she was a girl. Father was converted during the Civil War and baptized at night. I do not know why It was at night, unless it was because they did not have time for church in the daytime.
"He was usually cheerful, but when he did get mad he really got his Scotch up. His mother died of smallpox during the war while he was gone, and was buried by Grandfather and a colored man. Neighbors were afraid to come to help them.
"FATHER FOUGHT through the Civil War. He was never wounded, although he fought in the battles of Chickamauga and several others I don’t remember. He almost froze one time when he was barefooted and it snowed. He caught a cold, and couldn’t speak above a whIsper for three years.
"His captain was named Josh Riggs. He used to come and stay all night and he and Pa would sit up till alter midnight talking about the war. We children loved to sit up and listen.
"He fought in an Indian war, too, and my father-in-law Whidden was killed in a battle with the Indians at Payne’s Creek.
"OUR HOME WAS about four miles from where the New Zion Church now stands. Most of. our children were born there and Pa and Ma died there.
"All of us children learned to work as soon as we were old enough. Ma made all of our clothes. We’ raised the cotton and bought the wool. Pa did the carding till we older ones got to where we could do it He would card the rolls at night after working In the field all day, and Ma would sit up and spin and weave.
"As soon as we could all of us girls learned to spin and weave and that kind of work and remember she used copperas In making yellow.
The first sewing machine I ever saw was a little thing that sat on a table and turned with a handle. You had to crank with one hand and hold the sewing with the other. It didn’t sew very fast.
"The first calico dress I remember was bought from a peddler. He had one piece of calico with blue and white stripes about two fingers in width with red roses in the white stripe. My two half-sisters got dresses off that piece. Mine was pink with fine white pin stripes and white flowers in it.
"We wore home-woven dresses for everyday. We went barefooted all Winter around home and saved our shoes for Sunday to wear to church. We had church.then under a brush arbor.
"MA COOKED in the fireplace and used a.long iron rod to hang pots on, called a crane. We didn’t can anything. I never saw a glass jar for canning until alter I was married. But we dried a lot of things. We dried green beans, corn and pumpkins. We had to soak them before cooking.
"Most every family had a cook scafold to use in the Summer, when it was too hot to have a fire in the house. The men folks built a stout table about waist high and put boxing around it. Then they filled this box with sand. They made it large enough that when we built a fire in it the wood planks would not catch on fire.
"There were no orange groves in this part of the country then. There were a few orange trees In Tampa, and Grandpa Howard had one in his yard. My father bought two and set them out on our place and. soon we had oranges of our own. Sour oranges and lemons grew wild In some of the hammocks. Grapefruits got scattered through the country while I was growing up, but I never knew of a pineapple in this region until several years after I married.
"WE DOCTORED with home remedies, and one of them was Jerusalem Oak. it was a weed that made an awful bitter tea, and all of us children hated to take It. But all the same they gave us a lot of it.
"One day Naaman. my oldest brother, and I thought of a way to keep from taking the tea. We took Pa’s hatchet and went all around the yard. and in all the fence corners and chopped down every Jerusalem Oak on the place.
"Almost everything we had cooked the juice till it was ready to go to sugar and then would have holes bored In the bottom of the barrels and let the syrup drip into a pan. He stood up stalks of sugar cane in the barrels so he could stir the sugar every few days to keep the crust broken so it would dry out and drip better. When it got dry and crumbly he would take it out and stack it in another barrel and it was ready for use.
"Old Man Strickland and his boys used to make sugar barrels of cypress. They bent the staves while they were green and then seasoned them. We saved our barrels and used them year after year. We children used to slip to the sugar barrel sometimes, but we had to be careful, for they thought that too much sugar was not good for us. We used to beg for lumps of sugar like children nowadays beg for candy,
"PA ALWAYS raised enough rice to do us. He built a tight little room to put the rice in after it was threshed out and cleaned.
"I remember one Spring there was a late frost, in April I think It was, and everybody’s gardens and truck patches were killed. Many families were already about out of what they had saved over to run till Spring, and some people were absolutely without anything at all and moved away. We still had plenty of rice and we had cabbage.
"That is what we lived on until Pa could put out another garden and it grew up. We would eat rice one day and cabbage the next till one time Ma said ‘Let’s try a cabbage and rice pilau.’ So she made it and we all liked it, but we sure did get tired of cabbage and rice. Pa gave lots of it away.
"We generally had plenty of meat. There were lots of deer in the woods in those days and a lot of venison was wasted. Deer hams could be sold in Tampa, and some men would cut out the hams and leave the rest of the deer wherever they had killed It. But Pa never did that. He sold hams In Tampa to buy our shoes and other things, but he always brought the deer home, and if we didn’t eat it at the time we would dry it.
"We dried turkey breasts, too. If we had two or three turkeys at a time Ma would cut off the breast meat, salt it down and then after it had taken salt would string them up and hang them in the sun to dry. When it was sliced and fried It was fine. Of course we had plenty.
There were not any free schools in those days. The neighbors who lived close together would join in and hire a teacher. My first teacher was an old man named Davis. He taught school in my ‘Grand. father Howard’s barn. The men made benches and put them along the sides of the wall, they were split logs smoothed with a plane with wooden legs pegged into them.
We didn’t have any black boards nor any slates. A few had pencils and paper, but paper was scarce. When a child got a sheet of writing paper he thought he had something wonderful.
At my second school the big boys and girls had slates. We little ones had the Blue Backed Speller. It had reading in It, and that is all we had to study out of. I went with my two elder half-sisters, and besides us there were my grandfather’s three boys and two girls, the Roberts children, Lizzie Tucker, two Hendry girls and a boy of the name of Dan Pate. Yes, there was an Arnoa girl, too.
My next school was taught by a young man named Buddie Payne. The schoolhouse was in a harnmock this side of where the New Zion Church is now. I’d not learn much from him, for be put in all his time with the big boys and girls. We little ones had only one lesson a day.
"My third school was taught by Miss Lizzie Berry, It was called the Taylor school and was five miles from home. My two half-sisters, my little brother Naaman and I went from our house. The other childreni were the Taylors, Knights, Wingates, Stevens, Harrises and Pitts, I studied the Blue sacked Speller and a reader. I had a pencil and paper. I don’t remember any blackboard in this school.
"WE CARRIED OUR dinner in tin buckets—if we could get the buckets, Some of us had to use homemade baskets that some of the family had made out of strips of inner bark of certain trees.
"They were all right, but everybody had baskets of this kind of all sizes from little to big, while tin buckets had to be bought at the store. and that made us feel like they were more valuable.
"Our dinner usually consisted of corn bread, rice, and meat of some kind. Sometimes we had biscuits, but flour wasn’t as plentiful as corn was. We didn’t always have flour, but we always had corn meal, grits, and rice. One of the best things we had was sweet potato pone. It was made of grated sweet potatoes, eggs and spice and sweetened with some of our homemade sugar.
"We had to walk five miles to Miss Berry’s school. We took a path through the woods and we often saw wolves.
Sometimes mother would carry Naaman part of the way on her back. She would talk and laugh with us and tell us stories, and we loved for her to go home with us to stay all night. Then, of course, we would have her to go along with us back to school the next morning.
"AT RECESS WE played ball and Three Old Cats. Sometimes the boys played Bull Pen. Boys and girls did not play together. We girls played such games as Dare Base, Poison Stick and Wood Tag. I was almost grown before we learned to play Handkerchief and Go In and Out the Windows. Singing games like Skip to Ma Lou came in at about this same time.
"We had recitations on Friday afternoons. Some of the neighbors would come in to hear us and most all, of us learned little pieces to recite. We would sing songs, too. We never had a Christmas tree at school nor at home either, but we always hung up our stockings. Sometimes we would get a little toy made out of wood, but we never got any china dolls. Our dolls were all homemade. We always got candy and sometimes an apple.
"We never had parties. I didn’t know what parties were. If we had anything like that we would all get together and go to the creek to fish and have a fish dinner. Of course we went to church and had church dinners on Sunday. We generally would camp out on Christmas night and next morning kill deer or wild turkeys to cook for our dinner. Times have changed a lot since then."
Aunt Molly died last June 28th In the Palmetto Clinic at Wauchula and is buried In the New Zion Cemetery, between ,Wauchula and Myakka City.
And that's it for this week and hope you all enjoy your weekend.
Alastair