Identity in the Scottish Diaspora

[neloon]

We are rapidly entering a TRIPPING HAZARD zone.

If you value the information being exchanged in this thread stay well away from this line.


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I was afraid of that, Rex, and therefore I shall make no reply to any of the responses to my dissertation above beyond apologising sincerely for any hurt caused which was certainly not my intention.
May I, instead, pick up on something David said a while back - that will be OK as we agree he is a gentleman and thick-skinned.
" Wow, I hadn't appreciated exactly what the population of Scotland is. I knew that in terms of geography it was about the size of South Carolina, but I'm struck by the fact that the population of North Carolina is almost twice that of Scotland."
Now, should this lack of knowledge bother us? I suspect it may not be atypical of XMarkers. The vast majority of XMarkers are US citizens who are, in a way, self-appointed ambassadors for Scotland in the US. I wish you knew more about the real Scotland of today rather than what might be gleaned from dreamy ancestral echoes.

When I was young, the BBC broadcast weekly "Letter from America" continuing for 58 years
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alistair_Cooke
In the UK, that was our gentle, informative, sometimes whimsical window on the US.
The topics were current events in the US or sometimes just whatever came into Alistair Cooke's head that week but always very fair and unbiased. It seems to me that XMarks really needs a "Letter from Scotland" to help most of you be good ambassadors. Now I appreciate that many of you do what you can to keep up with events in Scotland by whatever means you can but it's not the same as from the horse's mouth. Any thoughts?

Alan