Issue 101 | August 2019

Hello and welcome to the August edition of the Voice for Arran.

We have a wide-ranging mix of items for you this month, and a distinctly global feel to the issue.
We hear from Alice Maxwell of Lamlash who reports on her recent trip to Tibet, and from a family in Australia who are looking for information about their family’s connections with Arran. We also have a notice on the forthcoming anniversary of the bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the commemorations that are taking place in Arran and across Scotland for this. There is also more news from the on-going campaign against fish farm expansion, an issue current in Arran, but also across the world. The write up on the recent film screening of Artifishal describes the situation in the west coast of America but it also shows clear links to the Arran case, and both are encompassed in the industry’s global ambitions.

In his article Doom and Dharma that we publish here, Alistair McIntosh grasps these global implications with his analysis of dharma, of finding and living our truth across time. Such is the far reaching nature of global industry and business, in the current times of increasing climate change McIntosh argues that instead of jumping to short term deadlines to hold off the inevitable, to counter these powerful interests we too need to reach beyond lifetimes and grasp a more timeless way of being in the world. Citing Ghandi, McIntosh says for things to fundamentally change, we have to understand and go with the dharma, the unfolding reality of time. At a personal level, he says, this means walking in the path of truth that leads to life.

On a lighter note, on Arran it is nearly McLellan Arts Festival time of year again! August begins with the Arran Open Studios weekend, where artists all over the island open their studio doors to the public, and ends with the start of the Festival and the poetry competition prize giving on the evening of the 31st. See here for the full festival programme (PDF) and the fantastic line up of events that the team have organised. There is everything from theatre, film, poetry, music of all kinds (from opera, a community chorus, the annual festival ceilidh), and also a Clamjamfry. For those of you who don’t know what a Clamjamfry is, the word according to the online ‘scotsdictionaries’, covers all manner of things, from riotous crowds, to joyful assemblies, to cheerful and inclusive occasions. The McLellan Clamjamfy will certainly be one of these, and all must surely be part of the dharma!