There is an excellent column in the same issue by Rhoda Meek of Tiree. Here are some salient screenshots from it. She is a crofter of a family rooted deep in island scholarship and tradition. www.thenational.scot/comment/2644...

Thank you Alick, especially from yourself as the vet who wrote this classic on animal welfare. From your own careful navigation between idealism and realism you'll know what a difficult piece it was to write. My citics make some valid points, but they overlook certain points of depth that matter.

With some trepidation, I have written in the Sunday National about the Guga (gannet) Hunt in my home Isle of Lewis - on ‘the implicit meaning of local practices’, on community agency, cohesion and ‘dùthchas’, and what makes fox hunting etc. a false equivalence. www.thenational.scot/comment/2644...

Amazing. Your abstract here reminded me of lines in a poem in an album by a band from back in the days, called The Moody Blues: “To know ultra-violet, infra-red, and x-rays / Beauty to find in so many ways“

See what Agnes says about community cohesion, and headline story in last week’s Gazette.

Nobody local here that I know or am aware of is trying to upset outsiders by defending their customs. But many are upset that outside pressure is trying to terminate it, just as they’re upset by unauthorised opening of gates to release livestock. These are old posts, but give a feel for the issue.

All fair points. And I respect the vegetarian/vegan ethos when it is for ethics. I tried it twice, but it didn’t work for me. Growing up fishing & hunting food is so much in my nature, what we always did, and even here now on holiday I am taking fish back to Glasgow to feed hard-pressed folks.

I agree, traditions can become outdated, but it is usually better to let communities decide if/when that is the case than to be forced on them by outsiders in ways that poison environmentalism by alienating indigenous people from their connections to place. Islanders are upset. One just messaged me:

Animal rights activists are trying to force @NatureScot.bsky.social to ban the hunting of “guga” (gannets) for food (not sport) in my home Isle of Lewis. Here I am quoted on why the tradition is culturally important to indigenous families, binding folk to cycles of their natural environment.

Moses was so PC. Eve did it with an Apple.

This is wonderful. I am not “an evangelical”, but I am often challenged & enriched by that tradition, especially by some who have experienced the excellent and open-minded teaching that they seem to get at HTC. Moreover, I see that your journal is open access: biblicalstudies.org.uk/articles_sbe...

They’ll recover! I had an email from them yearning to get into it www.alastairmcintosh.com/articles/202... It’s so much harder to do land reform in England where memory of the Enclosures is not close to the surface like the Clearances are with us. But their community gardens movement provide a base.

In Scots, your destiny is your “doom”. MacDiarmid here, on the bardic function of calling the community to wholeness. ‘A Scottish poet maun assume The burden o’ his people’s doom, And dee to brak’ their livin’ tomb. (maun/must dee/dare brak/break) www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46796/...

Hold on to your rosary beads lest you trip …! Text of my BBC Radio Scotland Thought for the Day, on the Edinburgh Book Festival and the @aonghasphadraig.bsky.social novel, “Donald & His Seven Cows”; also a review article on its indigenous cosmology in Theology in Scotland at tinyurl.com/Donald-cows

First mackerel tonight in my canoe as Meinn Schiff 2 went past off Cloch Lighthouse, 45 mins from Glasgow. Last year, the Emerald Princess was speeding and nearly capsized us. But MS2 went by so gently that I hardly noticed the wave. Every respect to her captain. Hope their dinner was tasty as mine!

The Gaelic principle of Dùthchas - heritage in the land that is geographical, historical, psychospiritual and poetic - and its revival into Scottish community consciousness. Examined by Michael Newton, who has done so much to build on John MacInnes’ work: gaelicmichael.substack.com/p/duthchas-a...

See also my essay, “A Beach is a Place …”, on industrial scale wind farms in areas of high scenic importance in the current issue of Scottish Wild Land News. PDF: swlg.org.uk/wln-pdfs/wln...

Man, I’ve already wound the primary coil, and now before the Hebridean Sabbath breaks I’m avidly winding multiples of the secondary coil to RAMP UP THE VOLTAGE for a goodly shock! (p.s., I’ve been ‘way down the sìthean with @aonghasphadraig.bsky.social, see ojs.st-andrews.ac.uk/index.php/TI...).

O this sounds very good. As they said in the Days of the Revivals, shortly before the mains came to the more distant villages, I’m 👇

😂

Set a poacher to catch a poacher! Earlier this year this "woman" enquired about my writing. I thought it genunine, and gave her some time as you try to do with genuine questions. But I began to feel a disconnect, rebuffed her yesterday, and today, tested out her latest on Claude!

This could be today’s AI debate - but examined in 1979 through the lens of an ancient Sanskrit 🕉️ legend. The Wounded Healer by Dutch-Canadian Catholic priest Henri Nouwen, on “nuclear man” who “has lost the ability to understand the workings of the instruments he uses.”

The latest issue of Theology in Scotland is on mental health. Has tradition bearer Madge Bray on women’s lament in keening & pibroch right through to the Iolaire era, and me on indigenous Gaelic cosmology in the S Uist bard Angus Peter Campbell. Open access PDFs ojs.st-andrews.ac.uk/index.php/TI...

Two Sami guests via St Andrews Uni will be at a screening of their film about indigenous land rights and wind farms, at the GalGael Trust, Glasgow, 6.30 pm, Tue 9 June. Related to that, see my recent Scottish Wild Land Group commissioned essay pp. 21-37: swlg.org.uk/wln-pdfs/wln...

O this is interesting. The perceptive Herald journalist @kacnutt on Murrell & the Freudian death wish (or Thanatos). Arguably much more widespread than most would imagine, as discussed in a 1996 paper I did on tobacco ads that made the Wall Street Journal: www.alastairmcintosh.com/articles/199...

I logged in to Trump’s Truth Social to see if these were true. They are. He posted them.

I've posted this transcript of a powerful speech by the constitutional politician priest Fr John Momis of PNG🇵🇬 on the "preferential option for the poor" in integral human development, courtesy Fr Philip Gibbs of the Divine Word (Catholic) Uni: tinyurl.com/Momis-PNG @VaticanIHD

Here's the books we'll be speaking to in the conference on childhood trauma and its wider social and cultural effects, and the programme for the day. Why does this matter? Because our reactions and/or responses in later life often have their roots in childhood.

Getting to Grips with Trauma - Sunday 6 Sept - Cumbernauld - £15 day ticket - book quick, going fast. I'll be one of the speakers, on cultural aspects of trauma. Organised by Scotland's Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) Community. @suzannezeedyk.bsky.social @connectedbaby.bsky.social

That’s a very interesting argument. But I don’t think the conclusion here 👇 is supported by the argument. It sounds to me that by going on social engagement they very much risk abandoning truth. The crowd called for Barabbas. Not everything boils down to crowd wisdom.