Hello, and Happy World Book Day! (To those of you reading this on the 1st March)
I’m very pleased to be here and to have the opportunity to keep the Voice for Arran ‘in print’. Alan’s very competent editing will be a hard act to follow but I will try and continue with the particular flavour of the Voice which readers have come to expect and enjoy.
So in this edition there are pieces of local and international interest. With the celebration of the centenary of votes for women last month, there is an article about Scottish suffragette and lifelong peace campaigner Helen Crawfurd. This coincides with a current exhibition at the Glasgow Women’s Library, Our Red Aunt, about her life and work, which runs until the middle of March. There are also updates on activities happening across Arran including from the Community Land Initiative and COAST, as well as some previews of things to come.
We have a couple of items on the very hot topic of plastic waste and micro plastics, with a report from a successful evening at COAST and some tips on how to reduce our own use of single use plastics in particular. The brilliant wee campaigners who came to visit Arran last month – the Ocean Defenders, from Sunnyside Primary School in Glasgow can be an inspiration to us all.
If readers have anything they’d like to contribute or get in touch about, please do contact us. We are always happy to hear your news, views and suggestions… Elsa
With the Sunnyside’s school #NaeStrawAtAw Campaign gathering pace, and their Ocean Defenders visiting Arran early on last month, February was a month of action concerning Arran’s plastic free status and the campaigns around it. After the Sunnyside school visit, there was an evening at COAST hosted by Sue Weaver and Deborah Maw, both crew on last year’s sailing eXXpedition round the British coast testing the water for the presence of microplastics. At the COAST event there was a showing of the film made of this research trip, A Plastic Voyage, and a panel discussion afterwards, ending with the launch of a steering group to help make Arran A Plastic Free Island.
On 14 and 15 April 2018, Race Race Adventure Sports, the UK’s favourite adventure challenge event organiser, 50% of whose annual events are staged in Scotland, will add The Ultra Tour of Arran (UTA), a two day, fully supported and waymarked, off-road adventure run, packing a 100km Ultra distance route and an overall vertical gain of 10,679 feet, to their 2018 event programme.
Mary Reid, the internationally distinguished harpist, is coming to Arran next month. Her concert for Music Arran is at 7.30 on Saturday, 17th March, in Brodick Hall. Mary grew up in Edinburgh, and began learning the clarsach here, but as a teenager she moved with her family to America, and continued her musical studies there in Los Angeles and Chicago. On her return to Britain she graduated with great distinction from the Royal academy of Music in London. Since then, as a soloist she has played a huge variety of classical music on many occasions in many countries, including Canada, Russia and the USA, as well as venues all over the UK. She has also played with orchestras such as the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, the Hallé, Northern Ballet, Opera north and the Royal Opera House. She toured Moscow with the London Sinfonietta. She is also a passionate participant in chamber music. She loves to perform for audiences who normally miss out on classical music, and gives workshops in special needs schools and dementia care homes. In the course of her outreach work, she has played at the UCH Macmillan Cancer Centre many times as a Concordia Foundation Artist. Mary’s programme on the 17th March includes pieces by Bach, Benjamin Britten and the contemporary Scottish composer James MacMillan. This top quality concert is sure to be enjoyable, and will be in the popular café style. You can bring a bottle if you like, too. Tickets will be available on the door on the night, in advance from Inspirations of Arran in Brodick, or online from www.arranevents.com And please note that children are admitted free, together with one accompanying adult.
Arran's annual one act drama festival took place this weekend, presenting 5 plays from Lamlash, Whiting Bay and Shiskine drama groups.
The Lamlash Juniors presented the hilarious and bizarre Platform Party in which Shannon Galbraith won best actor for her part as Madge Davenport.
This was followed by Happy Deathday which won best play and also produced best actor (Allan Little) and best support (Steve Garaway). This was a chilling comedy-come - murder mystery.
On Saturday night the newly formed Whiting Bay juniors (all of primary age) presented Super Secret Surprise Casserole, which was an absolute joy, especially from children so young. This won the best moment of theatre award.
This was followed by AutoGeddon Revisited, written by Whiting Bay's David Simpkin. A thought provoking polemic about the damage the oil industry (and cars) are doing to our planet. This unusual, well delivered play won the Millhill Players Trophy.
The evening was rounded off by Shiskine Juniors' Catch as Catch Can - a spoof on Shakespeare's Othello. Innis Thorburn scooped best youth actor trophy, and the play won Best Youth Drama Award.
The evening was adjudicated by the humorous and fair Dr Paul Dougall.
When you live in the middle of the biggest sacrifice zone on Earth, how do you keep up your spirit? When the plants and animals that sustained your community are gone, how do you pass on land-based cultural teachings to the next generation?
The Beaver Lake Cree have witnessed their homeland in northern Alberta scarred and polluted by numerous in-situ tar sands projects. The sheer size of the area occupied by a criss-cross of oil and gas wells has displaced moose and elk, and most traditional hunting and gathering grounds are no longer available. Jets from a military base constantly roar overhead. Yet the Beaver Lake Cree have not only endured and survived, they are envisioning and proactively building a very different future for their land and their community. Most RAVEN supporters are familiar with the Beaver Lake Cree vs Canada and Alberta – a colossal and costly legal battle the Beaver Lake Cree have taken to the courts in order to protect their land for the long term.
Fruit Walk under way
The planting of the new orchard is well under way with all our helpers from Arran High, Arran Outdoor Education Centre groups and other volunteers. There will be signage going up soon and a lovely fruit walk to explore and learn about the fruit trees, different ways to grow them, their crops and what we can use them for. Watch this space to find out more or have a wander around site to see for yourself!
Soft Fruit
100 soft fruit bushes are also being planted as part of our CCF project – gooseberries, red currants, black currants, raspberries and lots more types. Signage will go up on the varieties and uses of all that yummy fruit! If it all does not get eaten fresh we may get some jam!
I call it news in a cage: the fact that the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons has been awarded this year’s Nobel Peace Prize.
In other words, how nice, but it has nothing to do with the real stuff going on across Planet Earth, like North Korea’s recent test of an ICBM that puts the entire U.S. in the range of its nukes, or the provocative war games Trump’s America has been playing on the Korean peninsula, or the quietly endless development of the “next generation” of nuclear weapons.
Laura Matheson has joined Glasgow Women’s Library as an exhibition intern as part of her course MSc Modern and Contemporary Art: History, Curating and Criticism at the University of Edinburgh. As Fiona Jack’s current exhibition ‘Our Red Aunt’ is on at Glasgow Women’s Library, Laura talks about Helen Crawfurd – whose legacy is at the heart of the exhibition.
Helen Crawfurd: Scottish suffragette. Before starting my work placement at Glasgow Women’s Library last year, my knowledge of Helen did not extend far beyond those words. A quick search online revealed little more; what was clear was that she seemed to divide opinion. As my research progressed, a conflicting portrait developed. Lesley Orr writes of a ‘remarkable woman’, who ‘deserves recognition alongside Hardie and Gallacher as one of the most important and influential figures in the development of left wing politics in twentieth-century Scotland’. Others dismissed her memoirs as ‘tainted by Stalinism’ and ‘… more interesting for what it leaves out than what it actually has to say’. Contemporary accounts were little different. The letters of fellow suffragettes speak of her kindness; Frances McPhun remembered Helen sneaking her writing paper while they were both imprisoned in London for smashing windows, and her tears of empathy. On the other hand, the Home Office held communication from a civilian spy to ‘warn’ them about a ‘Mrs Crawfurd’, who was ‘causing a terrible discontentment among the munitions’ and was generally quite ‘suspicious’. Labels frequently appeared: suffragette, activist, politician, and in more hushed tones, communist. Admittedly, I was intrigued.
The film on Sunday 11th March at 8pm will be The Salesman (Iran. 2017. Director Asghar Farhadi. Cert. 12. 2hr 4mins).
Forced to leave their apartment due to a dangerous construction project in a neighboring building, a young Iranian couple moves to the centre of Tehran where they become embroiled in a life-altering situation involving the previous tenant. Rana and Emad, performers rehearsing for Arthur Miller's "Death of a Salesman", rent a new apartment from one of their fellow performers, unaware that the previous tenant had been a woman of ill repute. One of her clients pays a visit to the apartment one night while Rana is alone, and the aftermath turns the peaceful life of the couple upside down.
Squarings? In the game of marbles, squarings
Were all those anglings, aimings, feints and squints
You were allowed before you’d shoot, all those
Hunkerings, tensings, pressures of the thumb,
Test-outs and pull-backs, re-envisagings,
All the ways your arms kept hoping towards
Blind certainties that were going to prevail
Beyond the one-off moment of the pitch.
A million million accuracies passed
Between your muscles’ outreach and that space
Marked with three round holes and a drawn line.
You squinted out from a skylight of the world.
Marine Accident Investigation Branch will not recover Missing Fishing Boat
Marine accident investigators do not intend to recover the wreck of the missing fishing boat FV Nancy Glen which sank in Loch Fyne. Duncan MacDougall and Przemek Krawczyk were on board the Nancy Glen when it sank on 18 January. The MAIB had been surveying the site to decide if the wreck could be raised but said it could not. Scottish Fisheries Minister Fergus Ewing said the Scottish Government would support efforts to retrieve the two bodies. He said it was only right that the Scottish Government intervened to help the families of the missing fishermen.
The Nancy Glen lost sight of its home port Tarbert where the crew and their families lived.
Steven Clinch the chief inspector of MAIB confirmed that the MAIB would not recover the wreck from the sea loch in Argyll and Bute. The families of the two missing fishermen have been informed of the above decision.
Readers might be interested to know about a new, small energy company based in East Lothian, called the People’s Energy Company (see Peoplesenergy.co.uk). Set up last year by couple David Pike and Karen Sode, the company aims to provide ‘fairer, simpler’ energy supply while undermining the dominance of the big six suppliers. The company not only gives profits back to the customers, but they are committed to providing energy from 100% renewable sources as well. They also claim that customers’ annual bills can be reduced by £250 a year.
A group gathered at McKelvie Road housing in Lamlash on Sunday afternoon with the aim of learning how to make origami peace cranes. Aided by tea and biscuits and the enthusiasm of lead crane maker Alison Page, the group met to contribute to a project being co-ordinated by the Edinburgh Peace and Justice Centre. The Peace and Justice Centre is encouraging communities to support the project by holding workshops in their local areas. They have a target of 140,000 folded paper cranes for the latter half of 2019, with a plan to create a huge exhibition to remember the people who died in the bombing of Hiroshima.
