It’s Brochtober!.....Orkney Boreray Sheep….. From ‘Emergence’ Magazine….
by Bernie Bell - 09:06 on 03 October 2023
It’s Brochtober!...
I’ll start by presenting the O.A.S. programme for this year…
https://orkneyarchaeologysociety.org.uk/brochtober-2023/
And I thought I’d pull together previous items about the Brochtoberfest…..
Here goes…
https://theorkneynews.scot/2018/10/22/brochtoberfest/
https://theorkneynews.scot/2019/10/07/brochtoberfest-2019/
https://theorkneynews.scot/2020/10/01/brochtober/
https://theorkneynews.scot/2021/09/24/bell-builds-a-broch/
https://orkneyarchaeologysociety.org.uk/video-brochtoberfest-2022-talks/
’Tis The Season To Be Brochy
‘Tis the season to be Brochy
Falalalala – lalalala
Tho’ those places can be rocky
Falalalala – lalalala
Broch of Gurness and Dun Carloway
Falalalala – lalalala
Some are near and some are faraway
Falalalala – lalalala
Some are balanced on a cliff
Falalalala – lalalala
Can’t help wondering – Oh! – what if?
Falalalala – lalalala
Broch of Burrougston, and of Borwick
Falalalala – lalalala
With their walls so very thick
Falalalala – lalalala
Some of them, you could almost live in
Falalalala – lalalala
Mousa Broch and Clikkimin
Falalalala – lalalala
Carn Liath, near Dunrobbin’
Falalalala – lalalala
What that Laird did, sets me sobbin’
Falalalala – lalalala
Ending on an Orkney note
Falalalala – lalalala
I know which broch gets my vote
Falalalala – lalalala - laaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
BB
In case you’re wondering - that would be The Cairns, South Ronaldsay…
http://www.spanglefish.com/berniesblog/blog.asp?blogid=16370
And……a go-to site for Brochaholics …..
https://www.thebrochproject.co.uk/
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Orkney Boreray Sheep…..
https://www.nessofbrodgar.co.uk/boreray-book/
I’ve never seen the Orkney Boreray flock – but admire the attitude of their North Ronaldsay kin…
https://theorkneynews.scot/2017/09/11/bernie-bell-a-visit-to-north-ronaldsay/
https://theorkneynews.scot/2020/02/08/in-a-gardena-skullin-the-skullsnails/
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From ‘Emergence’ Magazine….
“To the Fig Tree on 9th and Christian
by Ross Gay
“I was a little
tipsy on the dance
of the velvety heart rolling
in my mouth
pulling me down and
down into the
oldest countries of my
body where I ate my first fig”
As summer folds into fall, fruit trees’ branches grow heavy with late-season bounties. Among them, figs boast a curious reproductive habit: their fruit is actually an inverted flower, most precisely an aggregate of hundreds of fruiting flowers, with their pollen-bearing stamens tucked inside the fig’s skin. To spread their pollen, some species of figs have evolved toward an intricate symbiotic relationship with the tiny fig wasp, who crawls through a hole in the skin of an unripe fig and deposits her eggs—and the pollen she’s carrying—inside, where her body is later dissolved and reabsorbed into the flowers of the fig. This relationship, eighty million years of coevolution in the making, is a type of symbiosis known as mutualism, in which both figs and fig wasps are entirely dependent on one another for survival.
In this breathless, rapturous poem, Ross Gay celebrates another kind of mutuality: the spontaneous, neighborly communion of fruit-tree foraging on a sidewalk in Philadelphia. What does it look like, he asks, when communities take care of one another, sharing their food, stories, and presences? How can we hold each other, honoring everything in our experience, from the joy of connection to the painful histories we carry and the resilience we cultivate in carrying on?
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Here’s one I made earlier… https://theorkneynews.scot/2022/05/12/crows-is-hard/
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