Glasgow after T(ea)

This week I spent some time recovering from the T in the Park festival and preparing for a day in Glasgow. T in the park was so much more than I expected and I am more than happy to say that I attended another music festival in another country because of my passion for them in the U.S. I spent lots of time preparing for this festival since I had heard it was such a big deal all across the UK. During my time at T in the Park, I became obsessed over Twenty One Pilots after their early afternoon performance, and was a proud American once I learned they were from Ohio just a state over from me. I was ecstatic to have seen them as well as, currently popular Calvin Harris perform with an introduction from former Fresh Prince, Will Smith.

 As Thursday approached, I was excited to visit Glasgow since it has been referenced in an array of songs I have listened to throughout the last couple of years. The group, Of Monsters and Men have mentioned love in the streets of Glasgow several times in their songs and I found the city to be very musically adapted. A significant architect, Charles Rennie Mackintosh has huge impact on the designs and emotion throughout some of the buildings throughout Glasgow as well as stories shared by our tour guide about the women architects and their hardships pf becoming more than a simple housewife or mother. You will find both his design layouts and a building dedicated to women artists of Glasgow in the photo slideshow.

 

        Following the Glasgow School of Art tour, a visit to the Riverside Museum of Transport and Travel was lined up for the late afternoon where I found one of the most amazing vehicles on display. A hippie caravan stood at the back side of the building, far out of the way of the many more big name and post-industrial motors throughout the building which all stood up front and in the middle. I wandered about the building to make sure I didn’t miss anything interesting and found myself standing and staring at a hippie van which held home to a bed, tiny dresser and peace era posters communicating the fight against war on Iraq as well as many others. I could hear a man in the speaker located next to the van speaking of his time spent living ina caravan community while he drew a beard for cold winters and tried to find as much sleep as possible living among trees and few other humans around him in other caravans. You will also find these photos in the slideshow provided. 

City of Lights

Some of the pictures or photos are taken from:

http://youtu.be/Ks39sbw5th4

http://www.planetware.com/versailles/chateau-de-versailles-f-p-cv.htm

http://theitlawyer.blogspot.co.uk/2010/04/it-law-in-action-claiming-eurostar.html

https://www.flickr.com/photos/24271543@N03/7170432340/

http://rap.genius.com/Atis-x-sinto-70cl-paris-city-lyrics#note-2290646

http://childwallvalleyneighbourhoodnursery.co.uk/french/

http://www.urbansplatter.com/history-pictures-paris-france/

http://www.itespresso.fr

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Louvre

http://www.lifesessions.com/gallery/paris_france/index.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Catholic_Archdiocese_of_Paris

Some of the photos are from the author. 

The beginning of the end has now made its relevance to the trip I will never forget. As I stand beside those I am grateful to have shared such an adventure with I am taking in every bit of the last few days available for my advantage. While I am sad that the trip is coming to an end, there is still plenty to be done in the next two weeks that I am incredibly excited for.

                This Saturday might be the highlight of my trip being that it consists of one of my absolute favorite things to do: Music festivals in the summer! T in the Park is a Scottish music festival holding tradition since 1994. With music artists such as Calvin Harris, Artic Monkeys, Paolo Nutini and Ellie Goulding, T in the Park attracts over 85,000 people per day in the three days that its held. Since I haven’t attended the even yet, though, I won’t ruin the details with what I know before the experience and will simply promise to report the “epic-ness” for next week’s blog.

       This week included an 8 mile walk in total to and from the Falkirk wheel and the Kelpies. Games were played along the long walk as well as a much needed break under the shade of the Kelpies head. At first, it took me a minute to find the purpose in the Kelpies themselves and why they were so far out for people to have to either ride or walk to since they seemed so simple. Once I sat and people-watched for a few minutes, I questioned the relationship of this to something in the U.S. and found that it has a connection to the purpose of The Bean in downtown Chicago. Tourists from all around the world visit Chicago and manage to get pictures in front of the bean that sits in the middle of Millennium Park. After taking in the sun and breeze, it was time to carry on from the long day and move to getting ready for the day to come.

                I think the most that I got out of this week was my appreciation for the opportunity of the trip itself, especially finding that the group I’ve traveled with is one in a million. We have helped each other out through the tough times as well as the great. We have shared laughs, new games and bus rides with each other every single day. We walk together and travel together. We cook together and sing together to the sounds of whatever happens to play on the laptop in the kitchen. We use sarcasm as a way of bonding and manage to stick together when the time is needed. It is more than I expected and I can't wait for the remainder of the trip.

Multimedia and Modern Storytelling

Photo credit to the author

This past weekend, I was lucky enough to go see Neil Gaiman present his newest book in what was referred to as a "multimedia presentation". 

You may be asking "A what?"

He teamed up with FourPlay string quartet and the illustrator for his newest book in order to create four shows, the likes of which I've never seen. This could easily be the path that author presentations take in the future.

The quartet knew their audience: they started off with vaguely creepy sounding music and added a base line, and to the entire crowd’s shock, they opened the show with a rendition of the Doctor Who theme song. Neil has written two episodes for the show, so it was a reasonable guess that a number of people there would at least recognize the theme.

Neil came on to finish the first half of the show with a series of short story readings. He’s been involved in a number of innovative projects, such as a social media experiment on twitter where he asked questions, chose an answer, and wrote a short story for each month of the year. I’d highly recommend reading them, they’re available here with his journal explaining the project here. He read the October piece in Edinburgh.

The piece that hit me hardest was The Man who Forgot Ray Bradbury (available to listen to here in his blog). It's about a writer who slowly loses his memories with age. More importantly, to him, is the way he slowly loses stories. As a writer and prolific reader, Alzheimer's and memory loss are terrifying to me, yet I know full well that it runs in the women in my mother's family. My grandmother hasn't recognized me as myself in years, and the early onset form is slowly starting to have other impacts in the family.

To quote my aunt, "You either have to laugh about it or cry about it," and most of the time the family has had enough of tears. Still, the way he verbalized one of my greatest fears, almost cheerfully, never taking on the impossible frustration of losing memories, brought me to tears.

The full novelette of The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains, available here is excellent, but if you’re unfamiliar with Neil’s work, there’s one thing you need to keep in mind: he is primarily a storyteller. One of the best things you can do is listen to one of his audiobooks, most of which he has read himself. The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains is based on traditional stories told about the Isle of Skye.

One of the most interesting things about the things Mr. Gaiman has produced is the variety of ways in which he has produced it and presented it to the public. He constantly interacts with fans (he has official facebook, a blog, and tumblr, as well as a twitter account he used for the months of the year prompts). The interaction not only gives fans a way to interact with him, but also ways for him to see what they want to know. In recent years, he has published short stories or prologues to pieces finished years ago, such as How the Marquis got His Coat (a companion piece for Neverwhere) and the Overture run (a prologue run for the cult classic Sandman comics). Those pieces have been released in part because his fan base has grown, but also because of the feedback from his readers.

His reader interaction is almost an art form in itself, and collaborative work has been produced from it. The Blackberry project produced a dozen short stories based on prompts from fans, which I provided a link to earlier in this post.

What are the newest ways of publishing, and how can an author grow a fan following that is so loyal, it can beat Harry Potter fans when it comes to the production of London's 51st literary bench? (That happened just recently, by the way. Details can be seen here. Neverwhere beat the Harry Potter series, most likely because of fan persistence during the voting process. It broke my heart in two to vote against Harry Potter, but...ah well.) How do you build a group so loyal, they've already started voicing opinions on the upcoming casting for the TV series of American Gods, which will be produced in the upcoming year? How can a fiction author, one who has been in the business for years, continue to widen their creative endeavors?

Those questions are being answered in different ways, but I believe that Neil Gaiman and his publishing team are certainly on the right track. His fan following has grown in recent years, and even readers that have stuck with him for a considerable time have branched out into his other work (ex: reading the Sandman comics because I enjoyed his novels so much). They turn fiction into art, and a part of how they have done it is by transforming books into stories, told on page and by mouth (Mr. Gaiman reads almost all of his own audiobooks), through radio show (the BBC produced a star-studded serial broadcast version of Neverwhere) and through TV (the upcoming series for American Gods). His stories are finding niches and cracks in almost every genre and every form of media, and the tell-tale signs in his work are like songs that get stuck in your head. You can read his work a number of times, and still take away something new each time. No matter what media source the story comes through, the seed of the story is always given over to the reader to take root and grow.

Personally, I think what they're doing is working.

Sustainability at Falkirk

This week we visited the Falirk Wheel, a rotating boat lift that connects the Forth and Clyde canal to the Union canal. This lift has an elevation change of 24 meters, it can lift a boat from the bottom canal to the top or vice versa in about 4 minutes. Previously it would have taken abut 20 hours and 11 locks to make the same journey.

This is all very impressive, but to what end? The lock system fell out of use nearly a century ago, and canal transport hasn’t  been commercially viable since the the steam engine. What is the point of building a multi million dollar boat lift and digging out these unused canals? What is gained besides an impressive Ferris wheel for boats?

Well I’ll tell you, by digging out these canals and building the wheel Scotland has reopened itself to leisure boating, which in turn has brought business to towns along the canals, such as Falkirk itself. As we saw first hand walking along the canal, there are plenty of thriving businesses along the canal that would not be there without the wheel.

This isn’t even the most fascinating part about the wheel, in my opinion. The wheel can turn with a combined weight of 500 tons of water and boat, yet in only takes 1.5 kilowatt-hours, about the energy to boil 8 pots of water,  to make a half turn of the wheel. This is some very impressive engineering, and it got me thinking about sustainability. I realized this is the ultimate sustainability project. Not because it takes little electricity and produces no emissions, but that is part of it.

To fully understand why this is a prime example of sustainability you must first understand sustainability. It has three components, economic, social, and environmental. This project is economically viable, it brings tourism to the surrounding areas, providing en economic boost. It is socially and culturally positive, it brings new people to the area via leisure boating, and tourism for the wheel itself. Finally it is environmentally friendly, using very little energy, producing no emissions, and having little to no impact on the surrounding environment. These are the types of projects that really show a country has moved from industrial to post industrial.

Post-Industrial Wick

Canals Come Alive

This recording below highlights the importance of canals in Scotland which ties back into my theme of history of transportation in Scotland.

Works Cited

http://www.scottishcanals.co.uk/media/1435034/scottish%20canals%20-%20a%20very%20quick%20history.pdf

http://www.transportscotland.gov.uk/sites/default/files/documents/rrd_reports/uploaded_reports/j269946/j269946.pdf