“Scotland the Brave” (Scottish Gaelic: Alba an Ă€igh) is a Scottish patriotic song. It was one of several songs considered an unofficial national anthem of Scotland. My cellphone ringtone is Scotland the Brave. At any rehearsal, everyone knows it’s my phone, if one is ringing 🙂  I posted a bit about that here: http://maryoblog.com/2015/08/ Below, the …
Category: Memories
Feb 25
The Music Man
TCM is currently doing 31 Days of Oscars.  I first sort of noticed this when I looked ahead in the scheduling and noticed that all TCM shows were alphabetized.  At first, I thought maybe that this scheme was some sort of placeholder before I realized what they were doing. Personally, I preferred when 31 …
Feb 22
Hot Cross Buns
My husband came home from the grocery store last night with Hot Cross Buns. Â I was surprised because they had never had them before Ash Wednesday in past years. Â I almost refused to eat them because they were “seasonally incorrect”. Â Of course, I did try one to be sure that they weren’t mislabeled or …
Feb 19
President’s Day
Today is President’s Day, a combo of holidays for George Washington’s and Abraham Lincoln’s birthdays, making a new Monday holiday. These days people don’t seem to celebrate much except for having car and furniture sales. When I was a kid, we lived in a small town (Pawcatuck, CT and Westerly, RI are sister towns, virtually …
Dec 21
Lockerbie Anniversary
The Lockerbie Cairn, through its 270 blocks of red Scottish sandstone, memorializes the 270 lives lost in the terrorist attack on the United States when Pan Am Flight 103 was bombed Dec. 21, 1988, over Lockerbie, Scotland. It is a gift of the people of Scotland to the people of the United States, financed …
Dec 18
December 18
I was always very proud of my paternal grandmother. In the early part of the last century she had been living in Scotland with her husband and they had a young son – my father.  My grandfather was in the Black Watch during World War I, and he was killed in Peshawar, India. My grandmother left …
May 31
Memorial Day 2023
Thanks, Grandpa… You weren’t American, but you fought valiantly for the cause overseas. I never met my grandfather. He had died in Peshawar, India, fighting for the Black Watch during World War l. Peshawar was on the northern frontier of British India, near the Khyber Pass. In 1947, Peshawar became part of the newly …
May 25
Don’t Forget Your Towel!
Each year, May 25 is Towel Day. Â Do you know why? Towel Day is celebrated every year on 25 May as a tribute to the author Douglas Adams by his fans. On this day, fans carry a towel with them, as described in Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, to demonstrate their appreciation for …