Shetland: Finally Home

The hardest day in my life was when my parents moved our family from Shetland to Midland, South Dakota. The second hardest day of my life was when I had to say goodbye to my Mam, Dad and 3 brothers; when I left America to move home (finally!) to Shetland.

My parents are celebrating their 25 wedding anniversary on the 14th of November. In all my life I have never heard them argue. I'm sure they have had different opinions over the years, but I have never seen them cross with each other. Reflecting on that, I feel enormously lucky to have been raised in such an atmosphere. I could not have hoped for a better upbringing, despite the transatlantic move that scarred my childhood.

I designed a book (not a photo album) with images chiefly from my most recent visit to their beautiful farm in southern Minnesota. This is my gift to them, on their Silver Anniversary. I thought I would share it here on this blog.

No one could quite recollect the last rain. Grandpa reckoned it was the worst heat wave in 35 years. He was an old cowboy then. His blue work shirt had worn thin from years of toil.

The creek over yonder ran dry, leaving catfish to fester under a cruel Dakota sun. Only cracked clay remained. Turkey’s roosted on a dying cottonwood tree, like ripe fruit on each stark branch.

Gramps studied the horizon, leaning on the porch banister. The log rail had been smoothed by the hands of our ancestors. No rain clouds, only billows of dust on the lonely prairie.

The cowboy shed his battered hat and closed his tired eyes. No one would suspect the ornery cuss (between muttered curses at the dogs) had been praying for rain.



[Just some prose poerty about the ranch in South Dakota my father grew up on. Memories of my American Grandfather, who died slowly of cancer, inspired the piece. I treasure the memories, but I will never live there again. Shetland is home.]

There is a great feeling of potential, when one starts to develop a plot from fresh seeds of inspiration. I'm on my 5th year of college study in Creative Writing. I just received a critique on my last piece, and it is time to start another. Past themes in my stories have included: racism and the Neo-Nazi punk scene; methamphetamine abuse in the mid-west of America; spousal abuse and paedophilia; homophobia. I like to write about (what I consider) social diseases, and the people who overcome them.

What will my inspiration be this time?

The answer comes from a poppy. Chosen to signify the blood shed by lost soldiers for Remembrance Day, it also is a symbol for (arguably) Shetland's worst social disease. Heroin abuse. It is destroying lives of many people my age. I read a few years ago that Shetland had the highest number of 18-25 year old heroin addicts per ca-pita in all of Britain. I do not know if this statistic is still true, but I fear the worst. In the last month, over £60,000 of Heroin was busted here, on my island home. That is pretty astronomical, for a population of 21,990.

I've been considering writing a piece about heroin abuse in Shetland for a few years now. In the past, felt as if I did not know enough about the problem. Unfortunately, now I've watched someone (who is a good person underneeth it) turn grey and lethargic. I don't need to say that smack ruins lives; we all know this. However, we must remember that the addiction effects everyone connected to the addict, and not just the one abusing the chemical.

My first published short story involved drug abuse, in 2004. I have not published anything since, but I know I am a better writer now than I was then. Wish me good luck on this painful story. It will be a truly hefty task to do this new piece justice.



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" WARRANT to apprehend a former heroin addict who previously had admitted supplying the Class A drug to a Lerwick teenager was granted at Lerwick Sheriff Court yesterday. [...] Ross had admitted supplying the drug to Megan Chapman [...] Miss Chapman died in early June this year of a suspected, unrelated drug overdose."

[http://www.shetland-news.co.uk/news_09_2007/Heroin%20dealer%20to%20be%20apprehended.htm]

"THERE have been a further two seizures of heroin in the last 48 hours in Lerwick..."

[http://www.shetlandtoday.co.uk/shetlandtimes/content_details.asp?ContentID=23751]

"James Anthony Farrell, of 100 Athol Street, Liverpool, made no plea or declaration. [...] His arrest followed the seizure of heroin worth around £35,000 at the Holmsgarth ferry terminal, in Lerwick, on Tuesday morning. [...] Police said last night that since beginning of the month they had seized heroin worth almost £60,000."

[http://www.shetland-news.co.uk/news_09_2007/Police%20seize%20more%20heroin.htm]

"Lerwick men [...] pleaded guilty on two separate and unrelated charges of being involved in supplying heroin. Thomson was found to be in possession of around one ounce of pure heroin at the Holmsgarth ferry terminal, in Lerwick, on 6 August last year. [...]Meanwhile, Cheyne was found to be in possession of a similar amount of heroin when searched at Sumburgh Airport [...]"

[http://www.shetland-news.co.uk/news_09_2007/Two%20admit%20drug%20dealing.htm]


"A 33 year old woman was arrested for possession of heroin and other suspected drugs in Lerwick..."

[http://www.shetland-news.co.uk/news_09_2007/Police%20weekend%20report.htm]

"THE MOTHER of a Shetland heroin addict is setting up a group to help the growing number of families plagued by drug abuse..."

[http://www.shetlandtoday.co.uk/Shetlandtimes/content_details.asp?ContentID=23765]

This is some art I made, inspired by Anne Lindbergh’s Gift from the Sea. If you read the book, you will find a piece titled Channeled Whelk. When I first read it in a college, the words took me aback. They rang true.

"The shell in my hand is deserted. It once housed a whelk, a snail-like creature, and then temporarily, after the death of the first occupant, a little hermit crab, who has run away, leaving his tracks behind him like a delicate vine on the sand. He ran away, and left me his shell. It was once a protection to him. I turn the shell in my hand, gazing into the wide open door from which he made his exit. Had it become an encumbrance? Why did he run away? Did he hope to find a better home, a better mode of living?"

Her words bring memories. Twice in my life I have had to discard all of my possessions, save what I could put in my backpack. First, when I left my parents house and then when I moved back home to Shetland, from America.
These experiences changed me, as a person. When you prune your wardrobe down to what you can carry, you’re forced to see your own vanity. Once you’ve seen it you cannot go back down that path.

“One does not need a closet-full," Lindbergh goes on, "only a small suitcase-full. And what a relief it is! Less taking up and down of hems, less mending and--best of all--less worry about what to wear. One finds one is shedding not only clothes--but vanity.”

When you are on your death bed, do you think you will wish that you had spend just one more day at the office? “If only I’d made it to upper management...” will you utter on your last breath? I was dismayed at how many of my college classmates in Iowa were getting degrees in things they had no real intrest in; for the money. Fewer and fewer go to college for the pure joy of learning. I look around and everyone has the same goal in life, it seems: to acquire more possessions.

There have been studies about lotto winners and their happiness. Does money make you happy? Psychologist Cary Cooper, who has done reserch on that very topic, concludes: "...those who are dissatisfied with their lives beforehand are not rescued by money."

There will always be a bigger house and a TV with a bigger screen. What are their real worth? We sell our lives for wages; both too survive and to feed our addiction to possessions. No matter how much people have, we always want more; human nature perhaps. But where does true happiness come from?



“The bare beauty of this channeled whelk” Anne Lindbergh says, “tells me one answer, and perhaps a first step, is in simplification of life.”







SOURCES:

"Anne Lindbergh’s Gift from the Sea" 22 September 2007.
[ http://www.spiritsite.com/writing/annlin/part2.shtml ]

"Can a lottery win make you happy?" 22 September 2007.
[ http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/3479213.stm ]

Watching someone you love slowly die is life-changing. Like most people, cancer has touched my life. A few years ago, my 27 year old cousin died of Leukemia. Both of my grandfathers have died of cancer; I have an aunt with breast cancer, and uncle with skin cancer.

I need to cut my hair; it keeps getting tangled in my belt. I said the same thing a year ago, but never got around to cutting it. Now its about 27 inches long. I've taken good care of it. It seems like such a waste to dump it all. I've read that a wig can be made out of as little as 6 inches of hair!

Anyone with info on donating hair to a chemo patient in the UK, please let me know.



www.leukaemia.org/leukaemia

www.nfcr.org

www.Cancerbackup.org.uk

To cling on masts in churning seas;
she sings to me seductively.
With every ebb she pulls me more;
where selkies bide on Clousta shores.

She sings of knots I cannot tie;
on boats I cannot sail.
And clinging upon rigging;
in hurricane force gales.

In my veins salt water flows;
a new moon pulls me out the voe.
Should a skerry takes my life?
I'll come back as a selkie wife.

-- D. M. Schofield
2007 Formal Review
Open College of the Arts

There is a strand of DNA within the mitochondrion organelles of each of our cells that has been passed from mother to daughter since the very first human. I've always found it fascinating that we can each trace out ancestry back to mitochondrial Eve. I've read pretty extensively on mitochondrial genetics, and how the earths population is related to one another.

Now, I'm taking it a step further. I submitted myself to have my own mitochondrial DNA analyzed for the Shetland Mitochondrial DNA Project. It's purpose is to help find genetic cousins and estimate Pictish and Scandinavian ancestry in Shetlands population. Not everyone who lives in Shetland is eligible. The following Shetland surnames are all found within my maternal lineage, which makes me able to participate: Anderson, Balfour, Cumming, Hay, Jacobson, Leask, Mowat, Nicolson, Tait. A whole list of surnames who are eligible to participate in this Shetland genetics project are available at the following website:

http://www.davidkfaux.org/shetlandislandsSurnameList.html

If any of these names appear in your maternal ancestry, you are can be a part of the mitochondrial DNA study. If any of these surnames are in your paternal ancestry, you are eligible for the Y-DNA study.

Anybody have further information about this project? Please comment! Do you find this type of scientific discussion interesting, like me? You should check out these websites and books:

http://www.davidkfaux.org/shetlandislandsmtDNA.html

http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/AJHG/journal/issues/v68n3/002146/002146.html

http://www.clan-leask.us/active/index.asp?tlvl=stdy&sctn=ydna

Power, Sex, Suicide: Mitochondria and the Meaning of Life by Nick Lane

The Web of Life by Fritjof Capra

Human Mitochondrial DNA and the Evolution of Homo Sapiens by Hans-Jurgen Bandelt, Martin Richards, and Vincent Macaulay

Auld Bertha, shu win up da brae
Dispite her widden leg
An’ in aboot da sheltered piece
Her moorit lamb wis dead.

Abune her head shu saw braa wings
Da culperate o’ dis crime
Da greatest muckle black-back
Shu'd spied in aa her time.

Noo Bertha’s husband Tammie
Wis burried at da kirk
An’ when h’it cam tae shootin’
Shu wisna muckle wirt.

Regardless shu win doon da brae
An’ hocked oot Tammie’s gun
An’ up da brae shu guid again
Her task widna be fun.

Shu had tae kill da black-back
Wha pluckit oot da ees
Auld Bertha aimed doon Tammie’s gun
Da devil shu could see.

Da weapon gein wi such a blast
it caaed her in da stank
Her widden leg wis laid a bruck
An’ so Auld Bertha sank.

In da bog shu had tae stay
'til some idder body cam
Aside da a ormals o' da bird
An' Bertha's peerie lamb.

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I thought I'd share a poem I wrote, in the dialect. I'm on my fifth year of college study; I'm a creative writer. I want to write more in dialect, but my tutors are all English and cannot understand it. It's frustrating, because my second novel (attempt) is set in Shetland and the characters dialogue comes to me in broad dialect.

While hill-dwelling, I came across a cirular ruin of large stones. Upon more investigation of the area, I found a large quern. I left it there of course, it was as large as the examples they have on display at Jarlshof.

I want to go back and take some photos of it, while the heather is in bloom. It is a 2 mile hike through the hills with no foot path, in one of Shetlands great hidden spots. There are no roads, houses, or even electric poles visible there. The only evidence of humans ever being at this place was the stone ruins and the large quern.



Ordnance Survey Map:
http://getamap.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/getamap/frames.htm?mapAction=gaz&gazName=g&gazString=HU307554