Month: May 2010

As I research a sequence of hiking scenes today, I find myself in the midst of some of Scotland’s great and picturesque medieval ruins. Castle Campbell  There’s Castle Campbell, high in the Ochil Hills between the Burn of Care and the Burn of Sorrow, and once called Castle Gloom. How much more evocative can you […]

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A rose by any other name….  Even the briefest study of the bluebell, after which the folk song, Arthur Pryor’s showcase trombone solo, and my own novel, are named, reveals many monikers: campanula rotundifolia, Endymionin Latin, harebell, lady’s thimble, fairy thimbles, aul man’s  bells, witches’ bells, the wild hyacinth, Dead Man’s bells, milk-ort (milk herb), or its common […]

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In an unintended instance of art imitating life, Blue Bells of Scotland opens with Shawn Kleiner marching in to audition for the position of second trombone, and walking away as the new principal player.  Though I was not aware of it at the time I wrote it, the scene could have been taken directly from […]

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