Podcasts about Picts

A look back at the episode on the Rapa Nui of Easter Island, plus plenty of discussion about mysteries of the ancient world, the Romans and the Picts among other things on this fresh look debrief episode.

A look back to 2019, and a show about people vanishing in groups. What happened to the 9th Roman Legion. They marched north to deal with the Picts, and were never seen again. How about the 5th Battalion Norfolk, who charged into a wooded area near Kavak Tepe, and vanished. 3,000 heavily armed Chinese soldiers disappeared in 1937 while holding the west end of the Marco Polo Bridge. Their equipment was there, but no soldiers to use it. 

Oftentimes, when we think about plant-human relationships, we're thinking about our contemporary lives and how plants factor into it – be it North American plant-based diets or what we're growing in our apartments. But our relationship with plants goes back for millennia, and accessing this historical and prehistoric knowledge is a glimpse into what life looked like for ancient humans. My guest this week is Dr. Shalen Prado, who is here to explore what we know about plant-based eating during the medieval period of Scotland. Shalen is a settler-archaeologist living in Saskatoon and originally from the East Coast (Mi'kma'ki or Prince Edward Island). She researches ancient human-plant relationships and foodways. Shalen currently works as a Living Skies Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Saskatchewan and collaborates with the Bridge To Land Water Sky Living Lab. In today's episode, Shalen shares some of her research on the elusive Picts of Scotland and how she uses phytoliths and ceramic sherds to uncover what plant-based eating looked like for this group of people during the medieval period of Great Britain. Learn More from Shalen: Instagram: @spradoplants Recent open-access article: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jasrep.2024.104695 Microbotanical research database: macmicrobot.omeka.net

Patching things up with Yasmin  and  Nikita plus complications. In 25 parts, edited from the works of FinalStand. Listen and subscribe to the ► Podcast at Connected.. “Strength is equal parts Body and the Mind, but true strength comes from a relentless Spirit.” (Late Saturday Morning) "Why is she here?" Yasmin asked me, giving a nod toward Buffy. Buffy was a good ten meters away, technically fulfilling her duty as my bodyguard. Yasmin had agreed to meet me at a park. "Her name is Buffy Dubois and she's my bodyguard for the weekend," I explained. "At least I'm back at my apartment." "What happens with her if you don't go back to work Monday?" Yasmin inquired. "Does your 'bodyguard' kill you?" "Nah, not Buffy," I gave a lop-sided grin. "My co-workers believe in overkill. I bet they'll send at least three to make it nice, swift and quiet." "Why do you joke about this?" Yasmin studied me. "As opposed to what?" I chuckled. "Lashing out is futile. Running isn't much better. I chose to fight when I must, love when I can and laugh when I should be crying." "Do you think they will come after me?" she murmured. What Yasmin really wanted to know was if her 3-year old son was in danger. From everything I'd learned and seen about Yasmin, she was tough as nails. I had given this some serious thought. I couldn't read Katrina's, or Hayden's minds, so I had to go on my limited experience. Yasmin had seen and heard a great deal yet Elsa let her walk away, and that had definitely been Elsa's doing. Elsa was the worst kind of racial Supremacist; the benevolent one. She didn't base her status on some pseudo-scientific mumbo-jumbo. She based it on the feats of her ancestors, the training she had endured and the devotion she and her sisters dedicated to their craft; violence. She was better than the rest of humanity because she could kill us if she desired and take what she wanted. We had what we had, even our lives, because she allowed it and she had no orders to the contrary. That was her generosity; her benevolent act. "Might," I sighed. "If I fuck up my balancing act, they might use you to hurt me, or as an object lesson." Yasmin's face clouded with anger. "Why did you invite me over if you thought things would develop this way?" Yasmin glared. "Not being insane, I cannot fathom the minds of the insane," I reasoned. "As soon as I find a way around one challenge, they throw up something new. I certainly didn't know there was a 'members only' facility along with a gym for the rest of us peons." She looked down at her hands. "They really are some kind of crazy cult," she muttered. She sighed. "You can't get out and now they know I exist; this is screwed up. What are we going to do?" She could be referring to herself and her son, or herself and me. "I've got some money," I said. "A few thousand. I can get you plane tickets and you two can take off somewhere safer than here." "You are a real man," Yasmin slowly smiled. What? Sensing my confusion. "You take responsibility for your actions, protect the weak and those in need, and you are brave in the face of pain and adversity. Where I come from, that is the definition of a man." "Funny; where I come from that is the definition of bad Hollywood scriptwriting," I grinned. "Ha," she laughed. She'd decided to stick around and fuck me despite the specter of eminent death. She was not callous to the fate of her child. Far from it. The only ally she had in this fight was me. She'd beat the fuck out of her husband with a bullet in her shoulder. When surrounded by hostile Amazons she still struggled to get to my side. "What about your Jason Statham?" she prodded. "He's English. Besides, I prefer Chiaki Kuriyama," I eyebrow pumped. "There is something about a chick with cast-iron balls." "Who?" Yasmin searched her memories. "Gogo Yubari from Kill Bill Volume 1," I informed her. Yasmin thought that over. "That girl was clearly insane!" she thumped my chest. "Believe me, female mental health issues have never stopped me in the past," I shrugged. "I'm beginning to think you have low standards," Yasmin smirked. "That implies you think more of me than most women who actually know me," I snorted. "Let's go get something to eat. There is a place that serves authentic Acarajé and Vatapá close by," Yasmin stood and took my hand. I went with her. "So, what are those things you mentioned?" I asked. "You'll have to wait and find out. I owe you a few dozen surprises after what you've put me through," she teased. After a few seconds, I started laughing. Yasmin was confused. "As bad as it is going to be for me, think how rough it is going to be on Buffy," I chuckled. "As far as I know, she doesn't even speak Portuguese, much less traveled to Brazil." The restaurant taught me a few things. Yasmin was a regular, the men knew her and were afraid of her. A little bit of eye-ball psychology taught me that Yasmin was apparently a one woman domestic abuse arbitrator. Translation: if you were a man who hit your wife, or girlfriend, she pointed you to the closest Emergency Room after she was done with you. In Brazil, men could use the 'machismo' defense; basically, the bitch had it coming because she threatened my manhood. In Yasmin's New York City, machismo worked a 'little' differently. Essentially, there wasn't a 'straight' Brazilian man alive who would admit that Yasmin, a woman, had beat the ever-living Hell out of them. The Brazilian ladies who stopped by introduced me to another quaint Yasmin term. It was called 'parroting'. Parroting was what happened when some asshole became a real, repeat problem. Yasmin dragged them to the roof of whatever building she found the dumbass in and threw him off; technically aiming for the closest dumpster. The men often flapped and squawked like parrots as the plummeted down, thus the term. Women were stopping by because I appeared to be an aberration; a man on a date with Yasmin. Best of all, 80% of the conversation in a language I didn't know. The first serious question thus caught me out of the blue. "Do you date many women?" one sultry number purred. "I'm not sure I would say 'many'," responded after some feigned concentration. "I only date women from Manhattan; and the Tri-State Area; pretty much the East Coast; and the Ohio Valley and the Mississippi Valley. I should include the Deep South; okay, maybe every women this side of the Rockies; and the West Coast; Hawaii and Alaska would be a change of pace as well." "I've met some nice Asian girls," I continued to muse, "and South America is looking real promising at the moment. At this point," I looked over the small clique of women hanging about, "ignoring Africa, Europe, India and the Middle East would be short-sighted." "Do you fuck as good as you exaggerate, (along with some pet name I didn't know)?" the waitress asked. I could so do her. "No," I sighed. "I'm a virgin boy fresh out of Catholic School and have never known the intimate touch of a woman." For a second, they all wanted to believe that. Guys aren't the only ones who want to 'break in' a virgin, believe me. I've used the 'I'm a nervous virgin uncertain if I want to attempt sex' mystique more than once. It is a win-win. Sexually under-confident women know they won't be judged against any other women and when the sex becomes stellar, they think they are great teachers so they become more willing to experiment. After all, if they get it wrong, I; the young virgin; won't know the difference. Now, it is not that I always lie. It is just that the truth doesn't normally get me what I want. As an example, if a girl is terrible at giving a blowjob; don't tell her that. Tell her she's doing fine, but maybe this (a technique you know works) might feel different (i.e. better/less painful). Sure, I lied to her. Instead of making her upset and not want to continue in the art of fellatio, she learned a valuable lesson and will not only make me happy, she'll make happy every other man she is with later. Others can keep their slavish devotion to honesty. I'd rather dispense happiness. Besides, I'll give them other reasons to be pissed with me soon enough. "Hardly," Yasmin laughed. "I imagine the closest you've come to religion is thanking God when you've discovered your date had a horny sister and was willing to share." "Wow; break room talk much," I had the decency to appear embarrassed. "Why yes," Yasmin smirked. "Ms. Reichmann was very expressive in her recounting of your bedroom antics with her and her sister after the sister's date passed out." "To be fair, I hadn't had sex all day and I was kind of wound up," I offered up. "Do you like toying with women's affections?" my original questioner asked. "Wha; wait," I frowned. "You think I'm going out with Yasmin because I want to have sex with her?" Of course I was. "She's interesting and we both practice Brazilian jujutsu." "Why would I hunt down a studio when I found a perfectly good practitioner on the job? Plus, my work place had the sparring mats," I explained. Remember, when lying, tell a lie your audience wants to believe. Yasmin was a feminine titan, standing alone (with her son) against a hostile male world. The women around me counted on that. Dating a hot, physically fit hunk for the purpose of sexual gratification was totally realistic. Dating me because I knew her martial arts style was far less believable, but made them happier, so they went with option B; the workout buddy. "The truth must be like gold to you," Yasmin snickered. "It is so valuable, you hardly ever use it." She looked at her buddies. "I have wrestled him to the mat and he was VERY interested." "Yasmin, that wasn't me hard. When aroused, I'm much bigger," I pleaded. "Liar," she smacked me in the bicep. "I need to take care of something. Don't run off with him," she told the girls; in English; for my benefit. Yasmin left our small table and headed for Buffy who was leaning against the wall right inside the doorway. I couldn't overhear what they were saying. Buffy smiled, nodded and took a table. A minute later, Yasmin had ordered food for Buffy then came back my way. "Is that your girlfriend?" my waitress asked. Why she wasn't working wasn't clear to me. "No, she's his bodyguard," Yasmin interrupted. "Yes, she is," I countered half a second later. I looked at Yasmin. "You know that woman who beat me into the ground?" I met Yasmin's gaze. She nodded. "Well, she was giving Buffy crap for all kinds of reason; only peripherally for befriending me. I didn't have sex with her to get back at that lady. I did it because she needed me and I needed her. After this, we can't engage in intercourse for; 71 days. It's complicated." "Sex with you is some sort of gift?" another one taunted. "Absolutely," I grinned. "Ask every other woman I've been with. Hell, they love me so much, when we break up they normally take some sort of weapon to me, books being the most popular, but I've been shot at, stabbed, punched, slapped and wracked too." There was a moment of silence. Yasmin had her own war story that was well known. "I've seen him naked," Yasmin's smile cut through the tension. "He has the scars to prove it." "You peeked when we were changing?" I gasped. I wasn't really all that surprised. "Yes," she snickered. "They only have Women's changing rooms where Cáel works," she related to the other ladies. The conversation may have flipped back to Portuguese yet the words were definitely descriptive. Either that, or my penis had slipped passed my zipper and the buttons on my shirt had burst off exposing my broad chest and rock hard abs. Yasmin looked at me and said, "É o meu P.A." The girls all laughed. "Anyone going to clue me in on the joke?" I requested. By mutual consensus, they agreed not to; bitches. For a while, this man had been yelling from the kitchen. If finally dawned on me, and our waitress, the cook had been calling her to pick up her orders. I could have ignored her short denim skirt and seductive sway of the hips, but that would have been disingenuous. Besides, in some cultures, if your 'man' wasn't noticing the women around you, he was somewhat less of a man. I unleashed my inner 'machismo' and oinked. Yasmin shoved me while laughing. The other women found my being distracted amusing as well. I could really get used to Brazilian culture especially when that included Brazilian women. After lunch, we picked up Buffy on the way out. Buffy 'thanked' Yasmin; in Portuguese. Mother-fucker. That was so unfair. Never one to miss an opportunity to make a bad situation better; or worse, I asked Buffy what 'É o meu P.A.' meant. Buffy said something to Yasmin in Portuguese. Yasmin responded. They both laughed; bitches. "It is a term of endearment," Buffy assured me. Sure it was. That is why neither one would tell me what it meant; I repeat yet again; bitches. [FYI: 'É o meu P.A.' (P.A. stands for Pinto Amigo) literally means 'my friend Penis (or) my penis friend'. In Brazilian Portuguese slang (many thanks to a buddy from Portugal who saved me from a grievous linguistic error) this is a term of sexual endearment indicating trust and a sexual history, but don't tell Cáel that.] Yasmin and I walked a ways before she had to head in a different direction. We kissed. I kept my hands firmly on her hips like a good boy. She put her hand down my pants and stroked my cock for about a minute, in public. "Next time, I think we have sex," Yasmin winked before departing. I watched her walk away until she vanished in the crowd. She didn't look back. She was far too confident. "Well, she seems nice," Buffy caught me off-guard. She'd snuck up while I was watching Yasmin and she was still being so horribly friendly to me. Best of all, she assured me she'd be back to her normally aggressive self-come Monday morning; right about the time I finally got used to her being nice to me. "Yeah; she is," I sighed. "What's wrong?" Buffy inquired compassionately. "What do you mean?" I stared evenly at Buffy. "Hanging out with me could get her killed, that's what's wrong." "That's not likely to happen," Buffy to reassure me. I shook my head. "I'd ask you if you were nuts, but I know you are nuts," I grunted. "Elsa wouldn't kill you yet she'd kill Yasmin and her son without batting an eye if she felt a severe lesson was in order. Buffy, you work for animals. We both do. The difference being that you are one." "I don't think you appreciate how popular you are with the company," Buffy insisted. "You've worked really hard to impress them and they value your efforts." I screamed to the Heavens. Elsewhere, I would have drawn some serious looks. In NYC, I barely drew any notice. "Yeah; great. Remind me to clap like a pet seal Monday morning. Buffy, you, Katrina and a few others are grinning, thinking you've made great strides on this New Directive and the crime for a security guard shooting me as I walk in the office every day is the same; a transfer to someplace less pleasant. Correct me if I'm wrong," I laid into her. "The difference is that they don't want to shoot you," Buffy countered. "Wow, if you put 'you-Buffy' in place of 'you-Cáel' you will realize how inconsequential that is," I informed her. "I'm a human being; unless I'm in Havenstone. Inside, my well-being is based solely on your sufferance; just like a test monkey." "If you really empathized, you would realize the only other people that walk around think 'gosh, I shouldn't murder that person today' are serial killers. Yet you expect me to be thankful for tap dancing faster than you shoot at my feet. You have this happy dream that I've accomplished anything," I shook my head. "In 71 days one of you is going to kill me; that is the reality I'm staring down," I gazed at her. "Why do you think we'll turn on you then?" Buffy actually appeared upset. "Havenstone has been letting me play with this '84 Day' fiction because it amuses all of you," I took a deep breath. "Whatever I can do in the last 71 days of my life probably won't matter." "You've made a difference with Aya and Oneida," Buffy rallied. "Great, I saved the life of someone who would stab me in the heart if I slapped her," I countered. "As for Aya; I dread to think what she will go through when she figures out you've put me down like a rabid dog. I help her because I have to try, because the rest of you have written her off." We walked the rest of the way to the apartment in silence. "Katrina is not going to like the results of our little chat," Buffy mumbled. I laughed. "Buffy, she knows. When the time comes she's sending Elsa to take me alive. I don't know how I'm going to beat her. It is one of the thousand, or so, things I'm working on," I chuckled. "I know Katrina better than you do," Buffy rolled her eyes. "I think you under-estimate her affection for you." "I don't doubt her affection for me," I told Buffy. "I simply deem it to be valueless. Listen, it took me ten seconds to figure out what Aya needed at the Archery range." "Not a God-damn person who knew her their entire lives would have ever done what I did," I continued. "It wasn't that they didn't understand what needed to be done; show a little faith in her. It was that none of them would have ever had the humanity to do it. Katrina could think the Sun rises and sets on me. It doesn't change a damn thing that happens in 71days." I neglected to say that Katrina murdered/dueled her own grandmother to bring Desiree into the Epona fold. That was the head of her household. I wasn't an Amazon, or even a woman. Buffy was making shit up to keep the insanity of her life at bay. Oh, she'd kill me if Katrina gave the order. She'd hate herself for it. That wouldn't do me a damn bit of good though. (Saturday Afternoon and then some) Our conversation died for two reasons as I led the way into my apartment. First off, it was Havenstone business and neither one of us was foolish enough to talk about it in front of Timothy and Odette. The other reason would have been Brooke and Libra sitting on Timothy's sofa. Those two stood up as we entered. "Hi;” I got to say. "We just came around to tell you that you are an;” Libra spat but then, "Which one is this?" "You could have called first," I snapped back. I reached for my phone; which wasn't there. Odette sheepishly lifted my phone up from her side. I imagine that bitch had been ringing off the hook since my departure. There was a major bitch-fest coming down the pipeline. I wasn't going to let that happen. There is an advantage to people having a low opinion of you. It gives you the unspoken permission to act like a crass asshole whenever you feel like it. "This lady is Buffy Dubois and she's my bodyguard for the weekend," I tried to sound bored. "Listen, the restaurant we went to was long on sizzling hot food and short on ceiling fans, so I'm going to take a shower," I callously stated. "Brooke, want to join me?" No, Brooke didn't want to join me. She wanted to rip my hair out in large, painful clumps. She was the Princess and I was the bottom feeder with dirt under my fingernails (huge salary be damned). "No, I don't want to shower with you, you Jerk!" Brooke snarled. Sadly, now I was making poor use of my loyal Odette. Such is life. "We only stayed long enough to give you a piece of our minds." "I'll come with you!" Odette peeped. She had been on the floor, back to the small space of wall between the workout alcove and the door to my bedroom. Timothy was leaning on the portion of the living room wall next to the short hall that led to the bathroom and his bedroom. He seemed more and more amused as the encountered unfolded. "No," Brooke squalled. "I'm not done with him yet." She followed me to the bathroom. Now normally, I would get a towel from the bathroom, go to my bedroom to strip down then return to the bathroom for a shower, or soak in the tub. This time I went straight to the bathroom. Brooke had built up a good head of steam, I slammed the door shut the second she came in. She was about to unload some truly spectacular vitriol on me. That wasn't the game plan. I shoved Brooke into the door and pressed my lips against hers, conveying my deep desire for her and dowsing her rage. "No, you don't;” she got out. Game plan. "God Brooke, I've been worried sick about you. Have you been holding up okay?" I turned on the concern. This is what she wanted to hear. I wasn't indifferent to her emotional state. In fact, I was so wrapped up in her Brooke's turmoil I was nearly paralyzed into inactivity. These are the words that Brooke wanted. What mattered to Brooke most was Brooke, followed up by how much Brooke mattered to other people. "I; ah," she mumbled before we kissed once more. This time she was hungry and passionate. She had reaffirmed that I was in her 'corner'. Now she could get down to the real reason she'd shown up to a place where some middle class guy who didn't return her phone calls lived; sex. "Work's been a mess since Trent jumped ship and took that promotion," I grumbled, still focused on giving Brooke oral stimulation. "The important thing is how have you been recovering? How have you been coming along?" Seduction is multi-layered. Know your partner; not just their erogenous zones, but their likes, dislikes, mindset and goals. Thus I used words like 'Trent jumped ship' and 'promotion' to fixate Brooke's anger on Trent, not me. He deserved it. Also, I used 'recovering' and 'coming along' to insinuate that Brooke; strong Brooke; was getting through this trauma all on her own, so now she could let me help her and not be in a weak, desperate position. All that led up to Brooke justifying to herself that she could let me ravish her in the shower without her looking like some insecure, post-breakup slut. The first words that came to mind were 'Pound Puppy' though 'Pound Kitty' was more apropos. I was nice, tender, gentle and loving as I drew her into the tub with the shower on. She cuddled against my chest, got off a few tears; mainly for my benefit to express how much she still needed comforting. Then I began tearing her up. I went VOA this time out; vaginal, oral, anal; and she had no doubt that I was Fucking her, capital 'F'. She was no Chalmers' girl, but she certainly spared no expense on the screams, howls and caterwauls as I ripped piece after sensual piece off of her; body and soul. Thankfully I keep six condoms beneath the shampoo dispenser. It is indicative of the state of disrepair of our apartment building that the water heater didn't exhaust the water supply and turn cold; it turned lukewarm. More screwing for Brooke and me. When she finally came crashing down from her trash pile of depression, self-doubt and rage over a world that had suddenly stopped making sense, I cut off the water, held her tight, and exited us from the tub. Both being players, Timothy and I had stocked up on nice, plush terry-cloth towels. Nothing builds up a mood for a repeat performance like drying off in a really comfy towel, or kills it faster than being wrapped up in some rag. I partially dried off Brooke because she was still craving close, romantic contact. Again, the most important person in the room was Brooke, and by attending to her, I was reinforcing that. I even stopped what I was doing to watch her put her underwear, socks then pants back on. She loved it. Then Brooke began looking around the small space for her bra. I had been hiding it behind my back. I revealed it, avoided having her swipe it back then used one finger to beckon her forward. Her resistance was enough to assert her independence, but not enough to dampen the sensuous course of events. She stepped forward, I tapped my lips indicating she had to kiss me to get back her undergarment. Brooke faux-resisted then kissed me. Then she French kissed me. I gave her bra back, still she pushed her body against mine, kissing away. She gave up the oral gratification when she wanted to give it up. She was the one in command, she asserted that by giving me what I wanted, so I was okay with things. She kept radiating her confidence as I kept very still, looking her over as she finished putting on her clothes. I cannot stress this enough: give the girl what she wants. There was absolutely no difference between lashing Rhada, instructing Odette in sensuality, finger fucking Elsa, upping my game to the highest levels with Buffy and going at Brooke in a romantic-aggressive style. Oh yeah, it is rarely productive to actually ask a girl what she wants. Most of the time they want to please you, so they'll lie. Lie better than they do and read what their body likes. Go from there. That was another gift from my mentor. When she was teaching me ancient love poetry, literature and culture, she was doing more than that. She was teaching me how to read women, get inside their minds and make them happy with things they may not even acknowledged they liked. God, I miss her. We/she decided that graduation was the end of the road for our romantic journey. She'd find another young man in need and start over. I would go out in the world and spread the passion and love, my fidelity failings be damned. Libra wasn't far from being a happy camper when Brooke and I came back out of the bathroom, one arm around Brooke's waist, the other holding my clothes and me in a towel. "Woot!" Odette, sitting on the floor once more, fist-pumped. "You knocked it right out of the ballpark." Brooke glared. Libra scowled. Odette basked in the knowledge that she was on the 'inside' of my little world now. She didn't have to play games. If she wanted to hang out, or have sex, she could come on over and I'd do my best to accommodate her. Odette had gone from hook-up, to fuck-buddy, to friend. She was still a girl around me with all the resulting pitfalls. That wasn't going to go away. What she had decided was that she was getting to hang out with cool, adult people. Dating in high school had never been difficult yet in the transition to adulthood, she'd be caught in a state of limbo. One night she met this young, dark stranger and she'd decided to take a chance. Now she had a big, musclebound gay sofa-buddy who was a relatively famous tattoo artist, a woman bed companion who apparently kicked ass for a secret society of some kind (Odette wasn't stupid) and that gorgeous, dark stranger to make love to her, to cuddle with and to wake up next to. I'd even kissed her before I raced off to work. I never kicked her out once I was 'finished' with her. We hung out, watched movies and talked about adult stuff. Timothy had offered to take her to a gay club; even a gay strip club. She couldn't wait. Odette wanted the three of us; she liked the idea of being a trio; going clubbing. Sure, she'd be sponging off me, but Timothy said I wouldn't mind. Timothy even insisted that we both really liked her. He also told Odette that 'with all the wacky bitches in his life, he needs you'. Before this, Odette had always thought of one boy-one girl. After a few days with me, monogamy flew out the window and she honestly couldn't recall why she'd been so hung up on it. I gave Brooke another steamy kiss, before heading to my bedroom. I bent over Odette, stroked her cheek as she looked up and smiled at me, and met her lips in a tender, caring moment. Yes, she knew she was special to me. Libra was ready to bifurcate me; verbally. Blood is so difficult to get out of clothes. Why was I going to get away with this? I banged the Trent out of Brooke; again. She could assume I was either ignoring her; Heaven forbid; or I was working up to her; a far more appealing illusion. I nearly closed my door. I wanted to hear what was going on. "Let's go," Libra groused. "Why don't we see if he wants to go out to eat?" Brooke suggested, ignoring Buffy, Odette and Timothy. "We had Brazilian for lunch," Buffy calmly informed them. It was mid-afternoon. "Oh, how was Yasmin?" Odette inquired in a friendly manner. "Are you his social director?" Libra sneered. "Oh no," Odette chattered back. "Cáel Nyilas and I are buddies. We have a lot of sex, but mainly I hang around for the meals and company." "Is he fucking you too?" Libra snapped. "Yes," Buffy sighed happily. "Yes he is. It is only for this weekend. After that, I have to wait for the end of his internship." "Damn," Libra seethed, "Is he fucking you as well?" "No," Timothy said regretfully. "Cáel isn't even bi-curious, despite my dreams and fantasies." "I guess that's something," Libra grumbled. Right then I stepped out, looking all male-scrumptious. For guys, imagine a D-Cup tanned blonde, in a midriff exposing damp, white t-shirt, no bra, and red bikini bottoms. This is pretty much how most women demean me in their libido clouded minds. I've never actually felt demeaned by this. I mean, if the opposite sex finds me sexy, do I really care if that's going to be the limit of them getting to know me? I think not. By the way, for all you curvaceous blondes out there who gripe and groan about men only seeing you as sex objects; really? That bothers you? Do this; tease them the say 'now sit there and listen to what I have to say, or no nookie for you'. Talk away. Will they understand you? No, but then very few of us understand Stephen Hawking either. Consider yourself in a select group that includes the smartest human on the planet. That guy/girl on their knees before you pleading for intimate contact? They will agree with you in a heartbeat. Congrats; you are a genius. I also don't mind. If women stopped wanting sex, I doubt my life would not be worth living. Less I be allowed to savor a victory, there was a knock at the door. I headed that way. "Oh yeah; Cáel," Timothy called out. "Nikita called and said she was going to stop by." And here I was with two sexually dressed (it was hard for Libra and Brooke to not look sexy) hotties, plus Odette and a Havenstone Stormtrooper in my crib. Had I whispered for Odette to go hide in Timothy's room, she would have hopped to it. Had I fell on my knees, begged, pleaded and was shown to be speaking the Words of God, Libra and Brooke wouldn't have moved an inch. Fortunately (?) this happens to me a great deal. "Hey Nikita," I gave her a sleepy smile. I started to usher in my policewoman/somewhat-girlfriend. Yes, I was acting like nothing was going on, much less like I'd done something wrong. I was aided in this by the fact that the sex had all been shower-based, thus not odiferous. This wasn't a great plan, or even a good plan. It was a weak plan, in fact; rather desperate and last ditch. "Hi," Nikita scanned the room. "Who is this bimbo?" Libra insulted both Nikita and me. "New York City Policewoman Nikita Kutuzov," Niki snapped back. "Who the fuck are you?" "That's Libra Chalmers," Odette spoke up when the two girls wouldn't. "Her sister and Cáel Nyilas were friends at college." "The raven-haired woman is Brooke Lee and her boyfriend was a total douche and made work difficult for Cáel Nyilas and life horrible for her," Odette finished. That was so sweet of her; it was almost 'me'-like. "Are either of you Havenstone?" Niki studied them. "That would be me," Buffy spoke up. Since she wasn't dressed like a desperate cry for sex (like the other three women), Nikita hadn't truly soaked her in yet. For starters, Buffy was clearly older than the rest. "Do you have any weapons on you?" Niki glared. "Yes; do you want to see my Concealed Weapon permits?" Buffy remained serene. "Nice and slow," Niki told Buffy as her hand came to rest on the grip of her 9 mm. Nikita was off-duty so this was an awkward situation. "You have girlfriends with guns?" Brooke gasped. She seemed excited. Libra was uncertain. Nikita being Nikita, she took Buffy's word for nothing, using her cellphone to call in and check the three permits; gun, knife, knife. She wanted to card everybody, but I nixed that. These were my house guests. I put my foot down. Niki became truly angry with me. "I need to talk to you; outside," Nikita insisted. I didn't hesitate to go with her. By outside, she meant to her car because she was sure my place was under surveillance. She was most likely right. As soon as I put my ass on the passenger seat, Nikita wrapped me in a smothering embrace. "I've been so worried about you," she sniffled. No, Nikita wasn't brain damaged, or forgiving. She knew that if I hadn't already had sex with some, if not all, of the four women in my place, I most likely would in the next 36 hours. Don't forget that she knew I was a philanderer, had come to grips with that, and was beginning to count up my allowed indiscretions before she finally gave up on my worthless ass. "You shouldn't do that, Nikita," I hugged her tightly to me. "You have a freaking dangerous job and I'm a big boy. I'll deal with my work problems. You deal with yours and we take what time together as we can." "This is not how the World is supposed to work," she mumbled. "There are two ways of looking at it, Nikita," I stroked her hair. "Peace is merely the interruption of the otherwise endless cycle violence, or life is a constant struggle to avoid the inevitable slide into anarchy." "For such a loving, joyous man, you have a terribly dark side to you," Nikita looked into my eyes. "I read this in a book on the philosophy of social collapse; Imagine that last legionnaire standing atop Hadrian's Wall, his companions ready to march away yet knowing the Picts remained just out of sight, waiting for the last guardians to depart," I recalled. "Did he contemplate that, despite generations of sacrifice, nothing had change, or did he realize that, with their lives, those fellow soldiers bought centuries of peace to an otherwise war-torn land?" "Nikita, no victory is permanent," I explained. "One day the lights will go out in this city and never come back on. One day everything you've worked for will fall. That doesn't mean what you are doing doesn't have value, or that I don't appreciate what you do. Every life you save is still precious; it is invaluable to that person, if no one else." "Every day you take up the badge and gun means hundreds of others get to live their lives wrapped up in the illusion they live in a lawful society," I said. "I say 'illusion' because people tend to not understand that nothing lawful is permanent. They don't understand that one day that last legionnaire will be looking out over their neighborhoods. It is inevitable." "Is that why you don't give a crap about any of your relationships; is this the excuse that you use to cheat; that nothing is ever permanent?" Nikita's gaze hardened. "Remind me to never be honest with you again," I opened the door. Yeah, I was pissed. I'd broken my rule; lie to make the girl happy; and this is what it got me. "Damn it," Nikita yanked on my arm, not letting me leave, "Cáel Nyilas, what am I supposed to think after you tell me that?" I hesitated. I hated honesty. "I don't give a crap about some nebulous, transitory victory, Nikita," I kept looking away. "I don't see monogamy as pointless any more than I feel law enforcement as pointless." "That doesn't mean I want to be a cop, or in only one relationship. My Dad loved my Mom. He never dated after she died. He loved me and raised me the best he could. That is one of the best examples of monogamy I've ever witnessed. It simply isn't me," I told her. "Of greater relevance is my initial comment about the value of victory." "You think you can 'fix' my situation; that somehow the rule of law can apply to people who live outside of it," I turned around. "That isn't happening. You are more likely to convict every banker that had a hand in the 2008 housing loan collapse than you are to ever bring a single senior Havenstone employee up on any charges." "It is wrong," Nikita insisted. "I'm not being naive. No criminal conspiracy is ever impenetrable." "They are not a criminal conspiracy," I sighed. "They are a nation-state without demarcated borders. Criminals are fixated on making money." "Havenstone uses money as part of their arsenal to get what they want," I said. "What is that?" Nikita. "I'll never tell you," I put our faces within millimeter of each other. "Cáel, I want to help you," Nikita persisted. "You can't, Nikita," I stared. "Rome calls and you will obey. It is who you are. It is what I like about you. It also means you won't break the law for me, which means, in the terms of rescue, you are useless to me as anything except a friend. Personally, I suggest you appreciate the next 70 days with me, then find someone who will take care of you, marry them and raise the next generation of policemen and women." "Are you a police officer?" she altered her approach. "No," I played along. "Then don't assume you know what I can and can't accomplish," Nikita grew fierce. "Al-Qaeda thought they were untouchable too. As did the KKK and the Mafia." "Right, Nikita, except there are still terrorists, violent racists and organized crime; different faces but the same hydra," I relayed. "That is what I'm trying to tell you; these ladies are not conventional criminals. They are not going to flip on each other. They aren't afraid of drone attacks, wiretaps, or video surveillance." "If the Justice Department goes after them, they'll strike back. Don't think assassinations and bombings; think 'Tail-hook' and 'Fast and Furious'. The problem is they already know what rules you play by and how law enforcement works. You won't be able to get your side to understand how Havenstone works until it is too late," I stressed. "Your side? We are your side, Cáel Nyilas," Nikita insisted. "No, you are not," I responded. "My side wants to deal with this himself, only risking his life and earnestly not wanting to have my actions resulting in hundreds, if not thousands, of deaths. Your gang wants to enforce the law and turn this problem into a nice, tidy bundle. Making twenty arrests and confiscating a few million in assets will not make Havenstone go away." "They will fade back into the shadows and then wreck vengeance upon you all when it is convenient for them," I stated confidently. I had sat in on exactly one board meeting. That had been enough of an education to figure out how they operated and how long-term their planning was. They wouldn't put a bullet into the head of the lead investigator. No, fifteen years later, while having a routine medical procedure, there would be a mix-up with his medication and he'd die. A few months later, his son, that man's wife and two children would all be involved in a fatal car accident. Yes, they wiped out your family. My bet was they had already done something like that. They'd find a weak link in the investigative team, show him/her the evidence of past misdeeds and impress upon them that they would be next. Witness Protection? Over a twenty year old string of accidents? The fed either played ball, or waited a decade, or two, for their loved ones to start dropping. Havenstone Commercial Investments was only 22 years old. Without a doubt, there had been other incarnations built up then discarded only for some new front to take its place. As for grudges; the Amazons took it as a personal affront that an independent Hellas existed today, despite the reality that those Greeks had little lineage in common with the Greeks from the time of Achilles. The conundrum was I couldn't use the word 'Amazons', or refer to the board meeting. I couldn't talk about the armory, Buffy, or Desiree's backgrounds, or truly impress upon Nikita the absolute level of fanaticism Havenstone engendered in their congregation. If I hinted at it, she'd think of Jonestown, not the Karen Insurgency in Burma. "Why do you have such faith in them, but not in your own law enforcement?" Nikita pleaded. "Training, fanaticism, the ability to act with few restrictions, and their willingness to let a member who makes a mistake to live and learn from it instead of being sacrificed for political and popular expediency," I counted off my points. "They prepare for war, not peacekeeping," I clarified. "By that, I mean that each standard office worker is the equivalent of a soldier in any fully modern armed force. For whatever cause you and your fellow NYPD believe in, there is also a long history of corruption. There is none of that at Havenstone. Infighting; yes. They would never betray the principles of their organization though." "You work under the scrutiny of the judicial system, a normally hostile press and a special panel whose sole duty is to keep your law enforcers in line. They work for superiors who give them far more latitude," I continued. "A Havenstone breaks an external law, the get assigned elsewhere. Violating their internal code of conduct is harsh and immediate then resolved." "You screw up, and you are pilloried in the press, abandoned by your superiors and shunned by your peers as if you had a contagion," I sighed. "The NYPD loses you as a resource because of one mistake. Despite the numerous advantaged of living in a Democratic Republic and a capitalist economy, the underlying weaknesses remain." "People are people, thus flawed. Office-seekers need money and to be scandal-free to get elected which has become a continuous process," I stated. "Those realities allow entities like Havenstone to exist in a parasitic relationship with our society. Face it, why pay $100 million in fines, duties and taxes when you can pay $1 million in campaign contributions." "You are so damn cynical," Nikita frowned. "Nikita," I huffed. "No, I'm not cynical. I'm a romantic realist. I know the score. Despite that, I still chose to make my own way in the world. I don't date a woman expecting a 'Happily Ever After'. I also never make a plan to leave a lady. It happens regularly enough and it is my fault most often, yet it has never been my intention to avoid permanence." "I don't understand you at all!" she yelled. This was expected. This was her prodding me into having some frenzied, 'make me forget about the cruelty of the World' sex. "Nikita, if I did chose to break the law, I wouldn't be caught because there is some cop out there better than me. If I was caught, it would be that the cops have tons more resources than I possess," I explained. "I'm not even criminally inclined and I can beat the system. This doesn't mean I plan to break the law. I have no reason to. In the same way, I won't surrender because I don't have to. I'm still alive and have a degree of freedom," I told her. "It is because I know the score that I can fight with hope. I have spent the last four years not living the easy life; the safe life." "I have the scars to prove it, along with no regrets, because I am me; the man I want to be," I smiled. "So what that I work for killers; they are hot and most of them are willing. The unwilling ones I'll bring around eventually; I always do." Now she wanted to pepper spray, Taser, baton beat and pistol whip me; all at the same time. Sex. "I keep asking myself why I care about you," Nikita wailed. "I don't even know why I came over today. I should have known you would have at least one woman in your apartment. I could have waited for you to return a single damn phone call; but No, I had to drive over and have you stomp on my heart instead." "I don't know how to reply to that," I mused. I did, but drawing it out was important. "My life is a nightmare. It will most likely end in tragedy. If I loved you, I would send you away in a loud, vocal breakup that would convince Havenstone we were done and that would be that. My problem is I like; I selfishly want to know you better and I resonate with you like no other." When you are the bad guy and she knows you are the bad guy, play the bad guy. See, if I was a good guy, I would sacrifice of myself and send her away. Instead, I was 'selfish' and I was selfish because we 'resonated'. Resonate is a good, romantic word. Its definition is a bit shady, thus she can interpret it the way she desires. Before you hate me more than you already do, please recall that I really liked Nikita. She was special to me. Unfortunately, 'special' has sort of a nebulous meaning for me. To put that in perspective, my heart is a five year old child in a toy story. It goes 'get that one, get that one' without explaining to me exactly why I end up doing what I do. "I want you so much," she groused, hating herself for her naked desire. "Let's go back to my place and make love," I suggested. She jerked slightly. "What about all those other women?" she questioned. "Odette is a dear friend, Buffy is my bodyguard and the other two showed up all on their own," I informed her. "I like Libra and Brooke well enough, but the attraction is purely sexual (it better damn be all it is). I hope we have something more," I said. I could even make honesty my bitch, it seemed. "Fine. Let's go before I regain my sanity," Nikita declared. It doesn't take a NASA mission control officer to know that really means 'fuck me now; I've soaked my panties'. Nikita was hopping up and down on the balls of her feet by the time we exited her car and made it around to her/street side. She grabbed my hand and yanked my unresisting form hurriedly back to my apartment. We nearly crashed into Buffy who had been watching from the door. Nikita flashed an embarrassed look. That didn't stop her from bounding up the stairs three at a time as we raced up to my place. Nikita was slowing down on the final approach only to have Odette open the door and stand aside; Buffy had phoned her. In we swept. Libra and Brooke rose from the sofa, I gave them an apologetic look before Nikita drew me into the bedroom. I slammed the door shut. "What the Hell!" Libra screamed. What can I say? When I truly set out to fuck a girl, I leave them wanting more. Before you think I'm an egotist, or a Sex God, it is they want to have sex with me, not that they care about what I want. I've been jumped while putting gas in a friend's car by a girl, whose name I couldn't recall at the moment, who I had banged in a bar's men's room. Midway through that encounter (we were standing up, my back against the car, and her legs spread up and wide as she coasted down from her first orgasm), she confided in me she'd been running around with a condom in her pocket in hopes of finding me; which proved she didn't really know me; I always have a condom. I even have some stashed in my bathroom  and  kitchen; just in case. After that, for the rest of my college career the Kwiki Mart attendant kept smirking at me; the gas pumps had video surveillance. My friend and his date were amused too. My date; less so. Maybe I should have stopped at the first orgasm. It turned out okay. See, unknown to anyone at the start, the girl's (Genevieve it turned out) boyfriend and I had been in a skiing accident and the poor bastard had suffered frostbite dragging me to safety, so I owed Genevieve big time. Yes, my date bought that hastily conjured excuse. All was right with the world and I ended up screwing my date that night and for the next two weeks. That relationship fell apart when three different servers at a Hooters gave me lap dances (who knew; Hooters girls don't normally give lap dances). I swear to God I had never been there before; the truth didn't work that time either. That wasn't too bad. It reminded me of Genevieve. I went back to the bar and nailed her again. In case it matters, I don't have a fake ID. I lie to the DMV about where I live. It is all official-like, if completely illegal. Back to my current official; a rapid analysis of the kaleidoscope of emotions. Lust, fear and confusion battled for dominance. I had to take into account her sexual background, parenting, and personal let downs. I had to give her something she didn't want. No, I wasn't going against my tried and true strategy. I had to give Nikita something she didn't want yet really needed. She began trying to strip off her clothes. Off went her faded denim jacket (despite the heat in NYC in the early summer) then her short-sleeved shirt. Poor Nikita; her nice, gossamer white bra was obviously new; that crisp, pure white doesn't come from Tide, and she had marks from the first bra she'd put on today. Off went the gun; and the cuffs. I had kicked off my shoes and so quickly pulled down my pants it burned my skin. The policewoman was drinking up my Nikita-inspired arousal so I was able to strip off my shirt too. She began working down her pants and undies in one motion when I jumped her. "Hey wait," she giggled. She became a tad more annoyed when I wouldn't relent. With her pants and panties still above her knees, I slipped on a condom, rolled her over and began. "I don't want to do it this way," Nikita insisted angrily. "Let me up." "I can't wait," I grunted in my doggy-style. In I went. "Girr; Girr; ah," she finally gave into her arousal. "Ah; ah; aha." That brought me to a halt. I wove my arms around her waist and drew her back to my chest. "Are you ready to have sex because you want it instead of doing it because you don't know what else to do?" I whispered in her ear. She twisted her head around. Words failed her so we kissed. "Can I take my pants off now?" sighed happily. "I don't know. I kinda like you like this," I replied. "I can barely move," she protested. "That would be a point in my favor," I snickered. Nikita got back at me by wiggling in my lap. Yeah, that put me in my place alright. Changing our orientation was part of my instinctual reaction to her desire for a close visual connection. The whole face down/ass up was only a trick to erase her confusion. Keeping inside of Nikita, I twisted her around until she was on her back, her bound legs resting on my crooked right elbow. Curse me, Nikita looked up at me consumed by bliss. There is disappointment, settling for what you've got, getting what you want and finally, being giving something you never considered yet now you wonder how you lived so long without. This wasn't only a 'good dicking'. It was the revelation that my life was a total train wreck and for a crusader like Nikita, I was virtually the Holy Grail. I would never 'not be in trouble' thus constantly in need of saving. To her, I had transformed into the perfect boyfriend. I could never run away, or be saved by anyone else but her. Oh; and I was giving her a terribly good dicking. "Better?" I murmured. Nikita nodded. My rod kept up steady, moderately powerful penetrations. "Is there anything I can do to make it better?" Trick question. "No," she purred. "I like; this is wonderful; I thought you would be different." She was one happy camper. She had anticipated a domination play. "I'd only be rough with you if that's what you wanted," I pressed her legs farther down so that are faces were very close. "Mmm; are you ever going to stop seeing those other girls?" she poised. She was no longer angry. Perfect boyfriend plus fantastic intercourse. I'm always doing stuff that makes women act in bizarre and unexpected (to them) ways. Won't ever do anal? You'll be ambushing me in the tub and working that ass down my pole inside of two weeks. Trust me. Odette hooking up with Buffy? Been down that road before. "I've only got 70 days left, Nikita," I groaned. "They are going to force me to put out at work." "I might as well try to make love to the women I care for," I told her. No, they weren't going to make me put out at work unless I made the full 84, or was relocated. Lie baby, lie. "I'll make sure you live more than those 70 days," Nikita passionately assured me. Now she was applying some pushbacks to meet my thrusts. "Why are you so nice to me?" I began taking deeper breaths. Please don't say 'I love you'. "No one should have to face your enemies alone," she gave up. Her left hand slithered down and began to tenderly work on her stiff button. I matched it, despite the somewhat awkward placement. My hand rested on hers, developing a synergy and allowing me to get a feel how she liked her clitoral stimulation. Nikita had barely started screeching out her climax when the door swung open. "You Bastard!" Libra screamed at me. To be that fast, she either teleported, or had been eavesdropping at the door. She stormed away, still yelling at the top of her lungs. It was times like this that Timothy appreciated what I told him when I first looked the place over. No locks on the interior doors? No problem. The women would cause less damage if all they had to do was break down the exterior door to get at me. He thought I was a joker. I am, but I wasn't joking about that. Kicking open a door is hard on the door sills. They are far more likely to give way then the door is to splinter, or the lock is to break. There have been a great many women who have busted through all kinds of portals to get at me with vengeance, pain and agony on their mind; my pain and agony if there was any doubt. "Ah, ah, ah; that was mind-blowing, Cáel," Nikita lilted. "Next time; " "Yes?" I soaked up her aroma. "Can we not make this a domestic disturbance case?" she giggled. "Is that an appeal for some real privacy, or stadium seating?" I teased. "You are a meanie!" she giggled gleefully. Who calls an adult a meanie? There was only one proper reaction to such a denigrating insult. I helped her take off the rest of her clothes and fucked Nikita two more times. Nikita and I were exhausted, our bodies intertwined, sweaty, and sated. Odette poked her head in. "Is it okay for us to join in yet?" Odette asked. "No," Nikita moaned. "Not yet," I corrected. I compensate having no control over my willy, by having limited control over every poon tang I interact with. I'm not sure how that works, but it does. Case in point: "I am not engaging in group sex, or sleeping with a girl," Nikita murmured. "Well, can they sleep in our bed tonight? They have nowhere else to go," I reasoned. "Um," she bit her lower lip. "Okay." Ta-da! I didn't argue with Nikita, or challenge/dare her. I said 'our bed' which put her, theoretically, on top of my female acquaintance hierarchy. Truth? Nah. I never had enough women hanging around together to ever have the time to figure that out. Nikita was going to be in bed with me and two other sexual active women. Buffy alone was a morality hazard. Odette was spunky. Nikita was armed with three relationships at best; her mom was a cop after all, so dating had to be fun before college. Finally, there was me; the lowest of the low. If cads had a shred of reverence, they worshipped an idol with my face on it. To my credit (don't laugh), I wasn't forcing Nikita to do anything, only making her do things she'd have never thought she'd do before she met me. We cleaned up then joined the others. The start was awkward. I changed the conversation to things girly: guns. I have a twisted life. Odette knew nothing; pure law-abiding citizen. I was an amateur gunslinger who picked up firearms to romance a girl, or three. Niki grew up around guns and the people who used them; the police. Her area of expertise was handguns and shotguns. She had little experience with rifles. Buffy had gotten a later start in life, but played 'radical catchup' since then. While not going into details, Buffy was very engaging. Timothy had no formal training yet had somehow managed to acquire a familiarity over his misspent life. He had even been paid in an AR-14 once. He had, of course, turned it over to the cops; but couldn't remember which cop, or precinct, when prodded by Nikita. We broke for Korean takeout. There was a problem with the order. Niki, Buffy, and I prepared to head out when Timothy developed a situation in the bathroom. Us guys tried to handle it. We were hopeless. Finally, Nikita intervened and shooed us out to the living room. Timothy 'found' some tools and gave them to Buffy to give to Nikita. Us guys had been exiled, after all. The second Buffy went into the bathroom, I slipped out the door quietly. Odette gave me a 'thumbs up' then snuck off to my bedroom. Bedroom noises commenced. The take-out issue was that my cute Korean delivery babe was missing me. Despite the plethora of sex coming my way, I discovered I missed her too. Later. "Do you find it amusing to not trust us in the least?" Nikita stared at me. I would have felt better if Timothy wasn't bound up with extension cords and his mouth covered with duct tape and trussed up on the floor. Odette was cowering in the far corner of the sofa. "I apologize," I extended my armload of food. "Old habits die hard." "You hurt our feelings," Buffy frowned. Still freaked out by that. Why wasn't someone hitting me? Seriously, there are tons of throw-able things in the apartment plus they both had guns. "If I sneak out, you two don't have to deal with the conflict of me wanting sex with different women," I pleaded. "This has nothing to do with how fantastic the sex with all of you is. It is that I'm so used to disappointing women then running for my life, the option of gaining anything approaching permission isn't something I know how to handle," I explained. "What makes you think we'd ever give you permission to cheat?" Buffy smirked. Ah, the joys of a blossoming four-way. Nikita? Not going to sleep with another woman? Hell, three hours in and she was already dividing up my sex-time with my other bed-buddies. My only worry was Niki would retell this to her Mom, the Police Desk Sergeant. I wasn't worried she'd hurt me. I was worried 'Mom' would toss me in jail. I'm a very pretty man and I doubt I'd do well in an all-male environment. Sure, there would be female corrections officers. That's not a good thing. I'm incredibly horny and I could see 'don't ask, don't talk back' in my future. "Listen, both of you," I got feisty. "If I want this level of aggravation, I'll go back to work and slap Elsa." "Also, why is Odette cowering on the sofa? She didn't do anything wrong," I declared. "She went into your bedroom, shut your door, and made all kinds of sexy noises. It took us ten minutes to realize we weren't hearing you,"

Cáel's tombstone: For the love of women, women put him here.In 25 parts, edited from the works of FinalStand.Listen and subscribe to the ► Podcast at Connected..

"Worms of the Earth" is a Bran Mak Morn short story by Robert E. Howard. As described by Weird Tales in its November 1932 edition: "A grim, shuddery tale of the days when Roman legions ruled in Britain—a powerful story of Bran Mak Morn, king of the Picts, and a gruesome horror from the bowels of the earth."

Where did the people of Scotland come from?  The Picts were living in Scotland when the Romans arrived but where did they come from and who did they descend from?  Theorys abound: from home grown stories of them descending from an Egyptian queen to more conventional crossings of the Irish Sea by Gaelic peoples.  Take a listen and see what you think.

Evening Prayer for Monday, September 16, 2024 (Proper 19; Ninian, Bishop of Galloway and Missionary to the Picts, 432). Psalm and Scripture readings (60-day Psalter): Psalm 44 Zephaniah 1 Matthew 13:1-23 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Click here to access the text for the Daily Office at DailyOffice2019.com.⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/dailyofficepodcast/support

Morning Prayer for Monday, September 16, 2024 (Proper 19; Ninian, Bishop of Galloway and Missionary to the Picts, 432). Psalm and Scripture readings (60-day Psalter): Psalms 42-43 1 Kings 7:1-14, 40-44, 47-51 Hebrews 7 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Click here to access the text for the Daily Office at DailyOffice2019.com.⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/dailyofficepodcast/support

In this episode, I start by sharing the traditional narrative of the Gaelic takeover of the Picts. Next, I add important historical context around this process. Finally, I present a brilliant theory by Dr. Alan Bruford as found in the book Alba: Celtic Scotland in the Medieval Era. Amazon link to the book below. Alba: Celtic Scotland in the Medieval Era Many more book recommendations here! Contribute to the Cause! Scottish Clans YouTube Channel Sponsor: USA Kilts

We continue with the miniseries detailing the various groups that contributed to the Clans of Scotland! In this episode, we discuss myths and traditional narratives of the Picts and challenge them with more recent scholarship. Scottish Clans on YouTube Scottish Clans Website Resources for studying the Scottish Clans USA Kilts - my sponsor

This is a whirlwind report of Bring Out Your Lead 2024, the world's finest celebration of Oldhammer. Check out the pictures here, as well as an interview with organizer Garth about the event's roots.

Tim and Jen enlist Gaius of the wonderful Tribunate channel on YouTube to help unearth a Romans-vs.-Picts historical epic that vanished like the Ninth Legion, Centurion. Have You Seen This? BONUS episodes Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

There's something about Scotland that holds a special place in our hearts here at the Institute of Higher Learning. The Highlands, the moors, the lochs, the rolling hills, the accent, scotch whiskey, the people who date back more than 8,000 yrs before Britain's recorded history. A land constantly trying to fight for its independence against pretty much one enemy to the south (England). Scotland's history is so vast and rich we need two episodes to attempt to do it justice. 

In The Highlands and Islands of Scotland: A New History (Birlinn, 2024) by Alistair Moffat, the chronicle begins millions of years ago, with the dramatic geological events that formed the awe-inspiring yet beloved landscapes, followed by the arrival of hunter gatherers and the monumental achievements of prehistoric peoples in places like Skara Brae in Orkney. The story continues with the mysterious Picts; the arrival of the Romans as they expanded the boundaries of their huge empire; the coming of Christianity and the Gaelic language from Ireland; the Viking invasion and the establishment of the great Lordship of the Isles that lasted for three hundred years. The Highlands are perhaps best known as the key battleground in Bonnie Prince Charlie's doomed attempt to restore the Stuart monarchy and its dreadful aftermath, which saw the suppression of the clans and the whole of Highland culture. This situation was exacerbated by the terrible Clearances of the nineteenth century which saw tens of thousands evicted from their native lands and forced to emigrate. But, after centuries of decline, the Highlands are being renewed, the land is coming alive once more, and the story ends on an upbeat note as the Highlands look forward to a future full of possibilities. While this is an epic history of a fascinating subject, Moffat also features the stories of individuals, the telling moments and the crucial details which enrich the human story and add context and colour to the saga of Scotland. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

In The Highlands and Islands of Scotland: A New History (Birlinn, 2024) by Alistair Moffat, the chronicle begins millions of years ago, with the dramatic geological events that formed the awe-inspiring yet beloved landscapes, followed by the arrival of hunter gatherers and the monumental achievements of prehistoric peoples in places like Skara Brae in Orkney. The story continues with the mysterious Picts; the arrival of the Romans as they expanded the boundaries of their huge empire; the coming of Christianity and the Gaelic language from Ireland; the Viking invasion and the establishment of the great Lordship of the Isles that lasted for three hundred years. The Highlands are perhaps best known as the key battleground in Bonnie Prince Charlie's doomed attempt to restore the Stuart monarchy and its dreadful aftermath, which saw the suppression of the clans and the whole of Highland culture. This situation was exacerbated by the terrible Clearances of the nineteenth century which saw tens of thousands evicted from their native lands and forced to emigrate. But, after centuries of decline, the Highlands are being renewed, the land is coming alive once more, and the story ends on an upbeat note as the Highlands look forward to a future full of possibilities. While this is an epic history of a fascinating subject, Moffat also features the stories of individuals, the telling moments and the crucial details which enrich the human story and add context and colour to the saga of Scotland. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

In The Highlands and Islands of Scotland: A New History (Birlinn, 2024) by Alistair Moffat, the chronicle begins millions of years ago, with the dramatic geological events that formed the awe-inspiring yet beloved landscapes, followed by the arrival of hunter gatherers and the monumental achievements of prehistoric peoples in places like Skara Brae in Orkney. The story continues with the mysterious Picts; the arrival of the Romans as they expanded the boundaries of their huge empire; the coming of Christianity and the Gaelic language from Ireland; the Viking invasion and the establishment of the great Lordship of the Isles that lasted for three hundred years. The Highlands are perhaps best known as the key battleground in Bonnie Prince Charlie's doomed attempt to restore the Stuart monarchy and its dreadful aftermath, which saw the suppression of the clans and the whole of Highland culture. This situation was exacerbated by the terrible Clearances of the nineteenth century which saw tens of thousands evicted from their native lands and forced to emigrate. But, after centuries of decline, the Highlands are being renewed, the land is coming alive once more, and the story ends on an upbeat note as the Highlands look forward to a future full of possibilities. While this is an epic history of a fascinating subject, Moffat also features the stories of individuals, the telling moments and the crucial details which enrich the human story and add context and colour to the saga of Scotland. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/european-studies

In The Highlands and Islands of Scotland: A New History (Birlinn, 2024) by Alistair Moffat, the chronicle begins millions of years ago, with the dramatic geological events that formed the awe-inspiring yet beloved landscapes, followed by the arrival of hunter gatherers and the monumental achievements of prehistoric peoples in places like Skara Brae in Orkney. The story continues with the mysterious Picts; the arrival of the Romans as they expanded the boundaries of their huge empire; the coming of Christianity and the Gaelic language from Ireland; the Viking invasion and the establishment of the great Lordship of the Isles that lasted for three hundred years. The Highlands are perhaps best known as the key battleground in Bonnie Prince Charlie's doomed attempt to restore the Stuart monarchy and its dreadful aftermath, which saw the suppression of the clans and the whole of Highland culture. This situation was exacerbated by the terrible Clearances of the nineteenth century which saw tens of thousands evicted from their native lands and forced to emigrate. But, after centuries of decline, the Highlands are being renewed, the land is coming alive once more, and the story ends on an upbeat note as the Highlands look forward to a future full of possibilities. While this is an epic history of a fascinating subject, Moffat also features the stories of individuals, the telling moments and the crucial details which enrich the human story and add context and colour to the saga of Scotland. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/british-studies

Officially known as the Kingdom of Fife Scotland, this council area or region is a must for lovers of history, the outdoors, charming villages and the sea.There are the fishing villages of the East Neuk area to wander about.You can delve into all the history of St Andrews with its cathedral and University.The Fife Coastal Path gives you the opportunity to enjoy the seascape of Fife. And if you want to hike up some hills, then you'll love the Lomond Hills. Be sure to check out this episode to learn all about the region of Fife Scotland.Want to chat more about this amazing part of Scotland?Feel free to email me at Lynne@WanderYourWay.com.In this episode:2:28: Intro2:54: Placing It On The Map4:13: Why Kingdom of Fife?5:43: St. Andrews9:03: Falkland10:51: Lomond Hills12:13: East Neuk Villages22:05: Golf 22:31: Fife Coastal Path24:48: Dunfermline26:35: Wrapping it upImportant links:9 Reasons You Need to Visit the Wonderful and Charming Fife ScotlandExploring St Andrews • Scotland with Bo Fraser10 Amazing Things You Need to Do in Beautiful St Andrews ScotlandLowlands of Scotland with Bo FraserWelcome to FifeVisit ScotlandWho were the Picts?Support the showThanks to Callisa Mickle who edits the audio.Follow Wander Your Way:InstagramFacebookPinterest

On this episode, my guest is , a friend and scholar who recently completed his PhD in Cultural Geography from The University of Edinburgh where his research centered on themes of displacement and memorial walking practices in the Highlands of Scotland. A child of Greek political refugees on both sides of his family, Christos' work looks at ways in which ceremony and ritual might afford us the capacity to integrate disconnection from place and ancestry. Further, his research into pre-modern Gaelic Highland culture reveals animistic relationship with mountains which disrupt easy definitions of colonialism and indigeneity.Show Notes:Summoning and Summiting a DoctorateThe British Empire & EverestThe Three Roots of FreedomHillwalkers and HomecomingThe Consequences of Staying and LeavingThe Romans Make a Desert and Call it PeaceFarming EmptinessLandscapes as MediumsRitualized Acts of WalkingHomework:Christos Galanis' Official WebsiteTranscript:Chris: [00:00:00] Welcome, Christos, to the End of Tourism podcast. Christos: Thank you, Chris. Chris: Thank you for joining me today. Would you be willing to let us know where you're dialing in from today? Christos: Yeah, I'm calling in from home, which at the moment is Santa Fe, New Mexico in the United States. Yeah, I moved out here for my master's in 2010 and fell in love with it, and and then returned two years ago.So it's actually a place that does remind me of the Mediterranean and Greece, even though there's no water, but the kind of mountain desert. So there's a familiarity somehow in my body. Chris: Sounds beautiful. Well I'm delighted to speak with you today about your PhD dissertation entitled "A Mountain Threnody: Hill Walking and Homecoming in the Scottish Highlands." And I know you're working on the finishing touches of the dissertation, but I'd like to pronounce a dear congratulations on that huge feat. I imagine after a decade of research and [00:01:00] writing, that you can finally share this gift, at least for now, in this manner, in terms of our conversation together.Christos: Thank you. It was probably the hardest thing I've done in my life in terms of a project. Yeah. Nine years.Chris: And so, you and I met at Stephen Jenkinson's Orphan Wisdom School many years ago. But beyond that from what I understand that you were born and raised in Toronto and Scarborough to Greek immigrants, traveled often to see family in Greece and also traveled widely yourself, and of course now living in New Mexico for some time. I'm curious why focus on Scotland for your thesis? Christos: It was the last place I thought I would be going to. Didn't have a connection there. So I did my master's down here in Albuquerque at UNM and was actually doing a lot of work on the border with Mexico and kind of Southwest Spanish history.I actually thought I was going to go to UC San Diego, partly because of the weather and had some connections [00:02:00] there. And two things happened. One was that you have to write your GRE, whatever the standardized test is you need to do for grad school here in the US, you don't have to do in the UK. So that appealed to me.And it's also, there's no coursework in the UK. So you just, from day one, you're just doing your own research project. And then I wanted to actually work with what Was and probably still is my favorite academic writer is Tim Ingold, who was based in Aberdeen up in the north of Scotland and is kind of that thing where I was like, "well if I'm gonna do a PhD What if I just literally worked with like the most amazing academic I can imagine working with" and so I contacted him. He was open to meeting and possibly working together and so I was gonna fly to Scotland.I was actually spending the winter in Thailand at the time, so I was like, if I'm gonna go all the way to Scotland, maybe I should check out a couple more universities. So, I looked at St. Andrews, which is a little bit north of Edinburgh, and then Edinburgh, then visited all [00:03:00] three schools, and actually just really fell in love with Edinburgh, and then in the end got full funding from them. And that took me to Scotland. And I didn't know what was in store for me. I didn't even follow through on my original research project, which had nothing to do with Scotland. The sites that I was actually proposed to work with was on the Dine reservation out here in Arizona. There's a tradition, long tradition of sheep herding and there's a lot of, some friends of mine have a volunteer program where volunteers go and help the Diné elders and herd their sheep for them and what's happening is they're trying to hold on to their land and Peabody Coal, a coal mining company, has been trying to take the land forever and so by keeping on herding sheep, it allows them to stay there.So I was actually kind of looking at walking as forms of resistance and at that time, most undocumented migrants trying to enter Europe were walking from Turkey through Macedonia. So I was actually going to go there. And yeah, once I kind of hit the ground, I realized that that's way too ambitious.And I [00:04:00] decided to focus on this really strange phenomenon called Monroe Bagging in the Highlands of Scotland, where people work all week in their office, Monday to Friday, and then spend their weekends checking off a task list of 282 mountains that they summit. There's 282 of them and they're categorized that way because they're all over 3, 000 feet, which for us in North America, isn't that high, but for the Scottish Highlands, because they're very ancient, ancient, worn down mountains is pretty high.And also the weather and the climate and the terrain make it pretty treacherous out there. So it's, it's not an easy thing. Yeah. And I just thought this is a really weird, strange way to relate to mountains and to land. And it seems like a very British thing to do. And I kind of just got curious to figure out what was going on and why people would actually do this.And it came from a very, actually, critical perspective, to begin with. As things unfolded, that changed a fair amount in terms of getting to know people. But, yeah, that was Scotland. And, I think looking back, I think [00:05:00] I was called there by the mountains. I can give the bigger context maybe later on, but essentially one of the main mountain called Ben Cruachan, in Argyle that I ended up most working with and kind of going in and doing ceremony for, and with. I ended up later meeting my what would become my wife and married into her family and on one side of her family, they are literally the Macintyres who are from that mountain. So yeah ended up kind of going there and marrying into a lineage of a mountain that was the center of my my dissertation.So in the end I think I was called there. I think I was called to apprentice those mountains. And then I feel like my time ended. And I think this dissertation is kind of the story of that relationship with that courtship.Chris: Beautiful. Well, thank you so much for that beautifully winding answer and introduction. So, you know, a lot of your dissertation speaks to kind of different notions of mountain climbing, summiting, hiking but you also write about [00:06:00] how our cultural or collective understandings of mountains have defined our ability to undertake these activities.And I'm curious, based on your research and personal experience, how do you think mountains are understood within the dominant paradigm of people who undertake these practices. Christos: Yeah, good question. I would say, I know I don't like to speak in universals, but I could say that one universal is that, as far as I can tell, all cultures around the world tend to not only revere mountains, but tend to relate to mountain peaks as sacred.And so in most cultures, at least pre modern culture, you will always find a taboo around ever actually climbing to the top of a mountain, especially a significant mountain. So ways that you might worship a sacred mountain, for example, you know, in Tibet is to circumnavigate. So hiking, walking around a mountain three times or walking the perimeter of a mountain, kind of circling [00:07:00] around and around the summit.But it would be absolutely abhorrent to actually ever climb to the top. So one thing I was interested in is what happened, what shifted, where in the past people would never think of climbing a mountain summit to that becoming almost the only thing that people were focused on. And I didn't know this, but out of all countries, the country that most intensely kind of pursued that practice was, was England, was Britain, actually.So it's really fascinating. There's this period, the Victorian era, where basically Britain is invading other countries such as Nepal, India, into China, into Kenya, parts of Africa, South America certainly here in North America and the Americas and of course mountain ranges serve as pretty natural and intense frontiers and barriers, especially back then before. You know, industrial machinery and airplanes and things [00:08:00] like that, you're going over land. And so to be able to get through a mountain range was a pretty intense thing. Really only became possible with kind of Victorian era technology and because they were able to penetrate these places that people really couldn't have before it was a way of kind of proving modern supremacy or the supremacy of kind of modern secularism.Because even in places like Sutherland and the Alps, the indigenous Swiss also considered like the Alps sacred, the mountain peaks and wouldn't climb them. And so as the British kind of came up into these mountain ranges. They had the idea of proving that essentially there were no gods on these mountaintops.There was nothing sacred about them. It's just a pile of rock and anybody can climb up and nothing's going to happen to them. And so they really started setting out to start summiting these mountains. And it was mostly military engineers. There's a big overlap between kind of military engineering and surveying and [00:09:00] map making and this kind of outdoor kind of Victorian kind of proving your manhood against nature kind of thing.And so it's a strangely poetic and very grief soaked proposition where increasingly humans had the technology to penetrate anywhere on the planet, you know, more and more. And maybe I'll just go into the story of Everest because it was perceived that the, the earth had three poles.So the North pole, the South pole, and Everest is the highest peak on the whole planet. So there was this race to set foot on the North Pole on the South Pole and on Everest. I don't know much about the North and South Pole expeditions I think they were first but Everest was kind of like yeah I think Everest was the last literally the last place on earth that humans weren't able yet to physically step foot on. And so the British set out to be the ones to do it after World War one. And there's another overlap where most of the men that were obsessed with mountain summiting after World War I had [00:10:00] been through the horrors of World War I and had a lot of PTSD and shell shock and kind of couldn't reintegrate back to civilian life.They kind of needed that rush of risking your life for some kind of larger goal, which warfare can provide. And, slowly they kind of got better technology and eventually by, I think it was maybe 1952, 1953, they finally conquered Everest. And it's almost like the moment that they penetrated this last place of wilderness that was holding out the British Empire started collapsing, which the timing is quite fascinating. You know, they lost India and Pakistan. And as soon as you kind of are able to dominate everything, there comes this nostalgia immediately for wild places. And this is where Scotland comes back in. Where, Scotland, the Highlands have been inhabited for tens of thousands of years.There's nothing wild about them. There were villages everywhere. But what happened through the [00:11:00] 16, 1700s was the Gaelic population, the indigenous population were ethnically cleansed. And then kind of the lands that follow for maybe 100 years. And then when the English started coming in, they were like, "Oh, this is wilderness.These mountains have never been climbed before. We're going to be the ones to conquer them because we're the superior race." And they did so, and when I chose the the title of my thesis used this little known word, Threnody, which is actually from Greek, Threnodia, which translates something as like a song of grief or a song of lament.And I think for me, this incessant kind of like summiting of mountains and risking and sometimes losing your life to penetrate these places where you actually don't retain control, or it's very hard to retain control, right, because of like storms in the weather, that it's almost like a kind of mourning for the loss of the very things that this technology has kind of erased or has compromised.So it's almost, I can't even put into words the feeling around it, but it's almost like, [00:12:00] You're doing the thing that's destroying something, but you have the impulse to keep doing it as a way of connecting to the thing that's being lost, if that makes sense. And I can imagine, you know, maybe all the work that you've done around tourism might have a similar quality to it.There's, I don't know, there's like a melancholy that I experience interviewing and going out with these people that I don't think they would ever be conscious of or even name, but there's a longing for something that's missing. And so that's where also this kind of song of lament theme comes into my, into my dissertation.Chris: Yeah, it's definitely something that shows up over and over again in these conversations and thank you for putting it into such eloquent words is that. I think it really succinctly speaks to the, the condition or conditions at hand. And I guess I'm curious you know, in regards to what you just said about notions of freedom [00:13:00] that are often experienced in touristic experiences or contexts and some of your dissertation centers around the freedom that your friends and hill walking acquaintances experienced there in the Highlands and freedom can often seem like a kind of recurrent trope sometimes in describing the tourist's reasons for travel.And surely outside of a trope for many people's reasons for travel you know, especially in the context of migration. Beyond the surface, we can wonder about the inheritance of ancestrally or ancestral indentured servitude, the commons and the lack thereof in our time and also like a kind of communion or relationship with what you refer to as other than human worlds. And I'm curious what kind of contradictions or insights came up for you in regards to the supposed freedom that was either found or sought after by the Hillwalkers you encountered.[00:14:00] Christos: Thank you. Yeah, I think before I started going deep into this, I probably, I probably shared most people's notion of freedom, which most of us don't ever really sit and wonder that deeply about.But there's a section of my dissertation where I go deep into freedom and I actually look at three different cultural and kind of etymological or linguistic lenses through which to understand freedom. And there's two that the people I interviewed, I think, were most practicing. So the word freedom itself comes from the Germanic, and it's two words.It's broke frei, which is "free," "to be free." And dom, translates kind of as "a judgment." So if you know like doomsday or the doomsday book. What the doomsday and judgment day actually mean the same thing It's just doom is like the older Germanic word for judgment. Okay, and so freedom can kind of translate as like freedom from judgment freedom from constraint and it has this quality of like spatially removing [00:15:00] yourself or getting distance from something that might constrain you, so you mentioned indentured servitude and slavery, which are as old as human civilization across the world.And all these different things that, basically, we are more or less constrained by, whether it's, family, the state, our living conditions, poverty, excess wealth, you know, all these things that might, or the expression of our true life force. And so for a lot of the people that I was working with, that was certainly what they would describe, you know, like I work in an office as a manager Monday through Friday in Edinburgh, and then it's only on the weekends that I get out into the hills and I truly feel alive and free, right? Because I'm in this vast expanse and, I mean, It's not my climate. I'm Greek by both sides. Wet, soggy moss and mold and endless rain and drizzle and cold and dark is not my thing, but it is visually stunningly beautiful. And you know, [00:16:00] and I'm sure we all know the experience of getting up to a peak of something and that sense of kind of almost being removed from the everyday and that sense of like maybe connecting to something higher or bigger.So that sense of freedom is obvious. The other, another lens is through Latin liberty or libertas, which comes from ancient Roman society, which was a heavily hierarchied society where up to 60 percent of people were actually slaves. So, there's a big distinction between those who are free and those who are slaves.And so the idea of liberty, and this also came up with my informants is the idea that you have to compare yourself to another and the more freedom you have compared to someone else, the better it feels. And I think of that as all the mechanics of like air airports and you know, first class lines and first class seating.I had the experience once flying because flying from New York through back to [00:17:00] London to get back to Edinburgh. And for the first and only time in my life I was bumped up to first class for some reason, I don't know why. But it was on, I don't know, one of the newer kind of jumbo jets, and the difference between economy class and first class in many ways is pretty profound.At the same time, it's ridiculous because you're all sitting in the same tube. But I remember the feeling that happened once we took off and they drew the curtain between the first class and everyone in the back. And it was this experience where everyone back there just disappeared.It's just kind of like, you can't see them, they're out of sight, out of mind, and you're just up front. You can lay down completely horizontally in these chairs, you have real glass, glassware and real cutlery, you know, and people treat you super, super nice. But like, in order to enjoy that, you need other people to not be enjoying that, right?So the idea of liberty kind of requires another, or it's almost a zero sum game where someone else has to be losing for you to be winning. And you know, I think of that with tourism, the idea that those of us from the North, you know, are stuck [00:18:00] at home in the winter while those with money, you know, can fly off to Mexico or Costa Rica and stuff like that.So that difference that like your experience is enhanced by other people's discomfort or suffering. And then I came across another lens, which comes from the Greek. So the Greek word for freedom is Eleftheria. And I didn't know the etymology, but one of my office mates in Edinburgh was from Greece, and we sat down with like a Greek etymological dictionary and I discovered that the Greek notion of freedom is completely different.It's almost counterintuitive, and it translates as something close to " loving the thing you were meant to love" or like "being the thing you were meant to be." And even more distinctly, the rios part in Eleftheria would translate into something like "returning to your home harbor after like a long voyage," and it's that, it's literally the experience of coming home, [00:19:00] which in a way is the freedom of not wanting to be anywhere else or to be anyone else, which is in some ways, I think to me, the most true freedom, because you don't want for anything, you actually love everything you are and everywhere you are, and you don't want to go anywhere else.So in that way, I think for me, cultivating a connection to place as an animist, you know, and I think that's a lot of what you and I I imagine experienced, you know, listening to Steven Jenkinson's many stories that keep circling around this idea of, you know, belonging is cultivating that place in you or that muscle in you that doesn't want to be anywhere else, doesn't want to be anybody else, but is actually satisfied and fulfilled by what is, which it's probably at the heart of most spiritual traditions at the end of the day, but to think of that as freedom, I think for me, really, really changed my perspective from, the idea of going around the world as I have and certainly in the past to experience all these different things and to [00:20:00] feel free and to be a nomad versus I would say the freedom I have here of loving Santa Fe and not imagining myself being anywhere else right now.Chris: Well, the theme of homecoming is definitely woven into this work, this dissertation, alongside hill walking.They seem, generally speaking, superficially very disparate or distinct activities, homecoming and hill walking. One is going and then it's coming. And I'm curious if you could elaborate for our listeners a little bit of what those terms mean, and where or how they come together in your work.Christos: Yeah. So the title of my dissertation, you know, is a "A Mountain Threnody: Hillwalkers and Homecomers in the Highlands of Scotland."So I set out to study hill walkers, which is basically a British term for going out for a walk or a hike where the focus is summiting some kind of peak, you know, whether a hill or a mountain, but that's what most people do there. When you set out on a walk, it's just assumed that you're going to end up going to the top of something and then [00:21:00] back down.What ended up happening is actually through Stephen Jenkinson's Orphan Wisdom School, I met several other Canadians of Scottish descent who had already or were planning on going quote "back" to Scotland to connect with their ancestral lands and their ancestors which is a lot of the work with Stephen's school and that, you know, that idea of connecting with your ancestry and with your roots and with your bones.And I kind of just started following along and interviewing people and talking with people that became friends just out of curiosity, because, you know, that's a lot of my background with being first generation Canadian and growing up in a huge Greek diaspora in Toronto and speaking Greek and going back to Greece multiple times and this idea of kind of being Canadian, but really home is in Europe and Greece, even though I've never lived there.So, there's a lot there, personal interest and eventually against my supervisor's advice, I was like, this might be an interesting [00:22:00] conversation to put these two groups together, these people who are spending their weekends summiting mountains in the Highlands and then these other people coming from Canada and the US and New Zealand and Australia who are going to the same mountains to connect with their ancestral, you know, lands and and people. And these two groups are probably the two biggest sources of tourism, like, in the Highlands, which is fascinating. Wow. Except that the one group, the Hillwalkers tend to imagine that they're in a pristine wilderness and that there's never been anybody there. And the homecomers like to imagine that the hills used to be covered in villages and their own people that were there for thousands of years and that they're reconnecting.So it's interesting how the same landscape is both imagined as being repopulated and also emptied. And that both groups are kind of searching again for this kind of belonging, right? This belonging through freedom, for this belonging through ancestry. The other piece that gets, [00:23:00] well, you know, we're interviewing this, we're doing this interview November 21st and we're, I think most people these days are pretty aware of what's going on in Israel and Palestine and this idea of home because to have a homecoming means there has to be somewhere out there that you consider your home.And that's such a loaded, loaded, loaded concept, right? Like many wars are fought over this idea of who a land belongs to, right? I mean, I know you and I have talked about both our families being from the borderlands with Greece, Macedonia, Albania, and those borders just change over and over and where you belong to what is home keeps changing depending on which war has happened, which outcome and things like that.And I think for those of us, I'll say in the Americas, who don't have deep roots here this idea of home being somewhere else other than where you live, is a very complex prospect because certainly when I go to Greece, people don't recognize me as being home, you know, they, they consider me a Canadian tourist. And at the same time growing up in Canada, I certainly never felt [00:24:00] like, "Oh, Canada is like my ancestral home. You know, it's, it's skin deep. My parents came over in the sixties. Right." So this idea of homecoming and, you know, maybe we can just riff on this for a bit. Cause I know you've explored this a lot. It's like, is it tourism or is it something else? Because a lot of people in Scotland, including people I interviewed, just laugh at these Canadians who come over and just start crying, standing over some rocks in the Highlands and who will buy some shitty whiskey at a tourist shop and feel that they're connecting with their roots and buy bagpipes and by kilts and all this stuff, whereas like most Scottish people don't wear kilts and don't blow bagpipes and don't necessarily drink whiskey all day, so there's these kind of stereotypes that have often been just kind of produced by the media, but it's almost like, other than that, how do people actually connect with the homeland, right?Like, what does it even mean to connect with a homeland? And one thing that I found that I think is one of the most powerful things is the idea of walking. So [00:25:00] this is why the comparison and the contrast with hill walking and homecoming is most people, when you go back to your homeland, there's something really central about walking in the footsteps of your ancestors, right?So walking around in the same village, walking the same streets, going to the same house, maybe even if it's not there anymore, going to... I remember going to my mom's elementary school in the little village that she grew up in the mountains of Greece and walking down the same hallways with her, and we went to the auditorium, and she, showed me the little stage where she would literally be putting on little plays when they were, like, in third grade and there's something about standing and stepping in the same place that is so fundamental. And so I'm kind of looking at homecoming through these kind of memorial or commemorative practices of walking. So it's not just walking, but walking and activating a landscape or activating the memories that are kind of enfolded in a landscape. And I've come to believe and understand that walking is a kind of almost magic technology that I [00:26:00] almost see it as really like opening up portals to other times and other places when done in a ceremonial kind of ritualized manner.So a lot of my work again, as an animist and kind of being as far as I know, the first in my field was just cultural geography, to kind of bring an animist lens to the field and kind of look at how, doing ceremony on a mountain, going into these glands and doing ceremony is more than just the material kind of walking, but is actually kind of connecting with these memories and these people in these places.In a way that's, I think, deeper than tourism and that's maybe the distinction between tourism and let's say homecoming on the surface that you might actually be doing almost the same thing, but I think there is this kind of animist lens to understand homecoming through where you let's say you bring a stone from home or you take a stone and bring it back home you know, like these kinds of Ritualize little practices that we do to connect with the place that I don't think tourists do in the same way, [00:27:00] you know?Because in tourism, you're often just trying to get away from where you live and experience something different, where this is trying to reconnect with something that's been lost or something that's in the past. Chris: Yeah, definitely. This leads me into a lot of different directions, but one of them is this question of animism that I'd like to come back to in just a moment but before we do, I want to ask you about. These heritage trips sometimes they're referred to as within the tourism industry, homeland returns which in most cases is a paradox or an oxymoron because most people are not returning to the places that they either were born in or lived in.They, typically, like myself, had never actually been there before. I'll just pull a little quote from your dissertation because I think it precedes this question in a good way. You write that quote, "the commissioner of Sutherland advocated for a state administered program of colonization in the Scottish Highlands, similarly arguing that the [00:28:00] Gaelic race and its inferior temperament presented an obstacle to the onward march of civilization. Locke set out a vision for the colonization, displacement, and reeducation of Gaelic Highlanders, where eventually, quote, 'the children of those removed from the hills will lose all recollection of the habits and customs of their fathers.'Locke's vision has broadly come true," end quote. And so, within the context of the wider spectrum and calendars and geographies that we've kind of been discussing, but more specifically in the context of Scotland, I'm curious if the people that you met there, either locals or visitors and especially in the case of those coming for a homecoming or heritage trip had an understanding of these things, of this history.Christos: No, that's what I found out. [00:29:00] What I've found in my lifetime, cause this isn't the only kind of project around this kind of theme that I've done. Maybe we'll get, I did another project with Mexican friends going back to Spain and kind of repatriating or reconnecting back through the kind of the displacement of the Spanish civil war.But what I've found is those of us of the colonies, that's kind of what I consider myself in ourselves, like people of the colonies. I'm not sure if it's better or worse that we're the ones that hold on to the stories and the memories and the people back quote "home" or in the "homeland" for the large part have moved on and don't really give much thought to these histories of displacement.It's almost, oh my God, it was strange to be in this country where most of the place names in the Highlands are Gaelic, and 98 percent of Scottish citizens cannot read or understand Gaelic, so partly it was this strangeness of being in a country where only two out of every hundred people could even understand the names of the places where they lived, even [00:30:00] though they had never left there and their people had never left there.And you know, if you let that sink in, it's like, let's say you and I being of Greek descent, imagine if 90 percent of Greeks couldn't understand Greek, you know what I mean? And couldn't understand the name of their own village. And well, there's, here's another angle to this in Scotland.When you want to learn traditional Gaelic fiddle, you go to Cape Breton in Nova Scotia in Canada because that's where the Highlanders who immigrated to Nova Scotia in the past kept the tradition pure and kept fiddle playing what it had always been. Whereas, you know in Scotland now, they're into hip hop and trap and drum and bass and stuff like this.And so if you're Scottish and you've never left Scotland in order to connect with the music of your ancestors you have to go to Canada, so most people that I interviewed and I think this is fair, you know to assume of most people Don't [00:31:00] think much about the ethnic cleansing that went on whichever side that they were on And it's kind of left to us in the colonies either to also let it go and move on and try to settle into these new lands or you kind of keep holding on to this memory of a place you've actually never lived, you know, and it's almost like both propositions are grief soaked.Both are kind of almost an impossible poem to hold because obviously there were people here before our European ancestors came. Obviously, we don't have these deep roots or memories or connections to this place. We don't have ceremonies or songs or much that's derived from this land, at least not yet.And yet many of us lose the language and the ceremonies and the traditions of the places where our ancestors came. It's almost like at least we still know where we've come from. Whereas to be in Europe, or at least in Scotland, and to have never left, but to nevertheless have also lost the connection with [00:32:00] your own ancestors and your own language and those places it's almost like a parallel process where there are people that get on the boats and leave, but there are people that are left behind. But it's almost like, regardless whether you leave or whether you stay, the fabric of that culture just gets completely rendered and torn apart by that displacement. And somehow, even though you never leave having so many of your people leave actually kind of compromises the ability to stay where you are, and to be connected to where you are. ⌘ Chris Christou ⌘ is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a subscriber!I interviewed one woman who had an ancestor who in Scotland, they call like psychic abilities, the second sight.So the idea of having kind of psychic premonitions or all of a sudden knowing that like your brother has died, even though he's in Australia, you know, that kind of thing. That people had that when I lived in Scotland and when they moved to Canada, they actually lost that ability. You know, so it's this idea that it's not that you carry almost these knowledges or abilities just in you, but it's actually comes from the connection [00:33:00] to the place.And once that connection becomes severed, you lose those capacities. And I've actually never said this out loud, but I wonder how much the people that stayed behind actually lost because of all the people that left, if that made sense. It's almost like, how does a culture stay resilient when almost everyone between the ages of like 20 and 40 leaves and never comes back.I think you could consider that this is all just stuff to wonder about. But like, for those of us that come from these kind of like largely settler countries like Canada and the U. S, we're still living through these questions. We're still living through these implications of like, how long do you hold on to the past? And at what point do you just kind of let go and move forward? And If you do so, how do you move forward in a place that you don't have any roots?Chris: You know. I remember going to see, going to my father's village in northern Greece for the first time some eight years ago, and knowing that I had [00:34:00] one baba or grandmother left there, and after searching for a few hours, she was hard of hearing at the time, finally found her, finally found the house and shared a delicious meal and traded photographs.I had no Greek or Macedonian language ability at the time. And then I was I called a taxi later on some, you know, at the end of the day to go back to the city, to the hotel, and standing in her garden there, she began to weep, right, without having said anything, even with the language barrier, I could understand what she was saying, and she was, she was mourning the migration of my family or my side of the family, or my father's side of the family to Canada, and then, her son and his family to Germany.And so, there's this question of what comes upon the people that quote unquote "stay." that's so often lost in the discourses [00:35:00] around migration, kind of always focusing on the individual, the migrant themselves, or the places that they arrive in.But do we just let it go? And how do we do that? I have this other quote from your dissertation that lands really strangely in this moment, in this conversation and it has to do a little bit with the kind of what I think you refer to as a national geographic imaginary.And so this is the response of the people in Scotland, in the Highlands embedded and engaged and indebted to these hill walking and homecoming industries. And so in your dissertation, it's written that "in February of 2017, an uproar on all sides erupted when, in a rare sign of bipartisan solidarity, both Mountaineering Scotland and the Scottish Gamekeepers Association attempted to pressure the Scottish government to abandon a [00:36:00] proposal to increase woodland cover, trees, from 17 percent to 25%. by 2050. The commitment to plant 10, 000 extra hectares of trees between now and 2022 was made in the government's draft climate plan. The protesting organizations argued that there had not been enough consultation and consideration given to the changes to the highland landscape that would come about by this tree planting initiative.And they were voicing their concern on whether, quote, 'adequate weight is being given to the significant changes this will have on the landscape of Scotland, and in particular, the dramatic open views and vistas which have come to signify to the outside world that which is unique about our country.'" End quote.And so this seems to be, to some degree, and please correct me if I'm wrong, but a manner of contending [00:37:00] with that past in a way that is, you know, perhaps ignorant of it. Or that is perhaps also faithfully serving the needs, the economic needs of the people, of the place.Christos: There's a lot there. I'm, what's coming to me, do you know this quote? It's from ancient Rome. It's a bit convoluted, but this is a Roman text talking about the colonization of Britain, so of the Romans conquering the Gaelic people in the Picts, but it's In a speech written by this Roman historian that he's attributing to like the Gaelic king, basically. So it's not, this wasn't actually said by a Gaelic king, it's just a Roman kind of putting these words in his mouth to kind of create like a battle scene, but but a lot of people quote this and it's from the Gaelic perspective referring to the Romans saying "the Romans make a desert and call it peace."[00:38:00] And that's kind of what's happened in Scotland is the villages were cleansed, literally. You know, the houses were burned down and knocked down. The people were forcibly, sometimes violently, thrown out of their homes into the cold. Many of them just had no prospects to be able to stay and move to Glasgow.And many of them, you know, came to Toronto and Saskatchewan and North Carolina and all this. And so after they left, these highlands kind of became empty, like this vast emptiness. And then once the Victorian English came into that landscape and started painting it and writing Victorian poems about it, this aesthetic of this, treeless, vast expanse became kind of that National Geographic kind of aesthetic of the mountain peak and the colorful heather and then the loch or the lake, kind of [00:39:00] reflecting the mountain.You can just imagine the scene, right? Of like the mountain peak being reflected in inverse in the lake, you know, kind of thing. It's just that perfect kind of symmetrical perspective photograph or painting. And then that kind of became the symbol of freedom and tranquility which is basically like a site of ethnic cleansing becomes a symbol of beauty.And then what happens is you keep managing the landscape to maintain that aesthetic, which is why you find the strangeness of, like, environmental groups arguing that planting trees is ecological vandalism, that you're ruining the ecology of a place because your trees are gonna get away in the way of these vast expanses.So it's it's this weird wondering on, like, how certain aesthetics become symbolic of something. And then you manage the land, to maintain that aesthetic. Even though it's [00:40:00] absolute death for the wild, the wildlife and even the people in that landscape, to maintain it in that way. The thing that might not be obvious to most people which wasn't I didn't know about this whole world before I moved there, but Scotland's one of the few if not only place in all of Europe where you can still be a feudal lord like they call it a laird, l-a-i-r-d, but it's like a lord where all you need to do to be a lord is you just buy land and if you have enough land you're you claim title of Lord Wow.And most people that are lords in Scotland these days are not even British. You have people from Saudi Arabia, from all over that have bought up the highlands in many ways. And they have these estates and you know, Balmoral estate, which is like the Queens, or I guess she's dead now. Now it's King Charles's estate.And what you do is maybe once a year you and all your rich friends from all over the world fly in [00:41:00] and do this traditional game hunt where you might be hunting deer, but more often you're actually hunting wild birds. You know, so grouse especially. If anyone's seen, I find it fascinating watching Downton Abbey, that TV series, because it's kind of, it covers a lot of the kind of that, that time in Britain.And there's an episode or two where they go into the Scottish countryside to go, you know, go hunting. So it's this weird aesthetic where you dress up in a certain way, kind of like an old time Scottish lord, and you go out on the land with dogs and you shoot down birds, and in order for the birds to live there you need the landscape to basically be wide open, because that's actually what they prefer.And so, this is why, again, for the context of that quote, you have an environmental group, and basically, rich, elite gamekeepers working together to keep the government from planting trees in this landscape because it's in both their interest to maintain [00:42:00] this landscape as an ecological wasteland, essentially that people can't sustain themselves off of or people can't live in So you're kind of farming emptiness if that makes sense in a way you're like cultivating emptiness. Yeah. For tourism. Which again I mean, you've been talking to so many people about this subject. To me, it's fascinating what tourism can be or what it can mean, you know, or like what need is trying to be fulfilled in these, in these landscapes that often get kind of territorialized as touristic, you know, because most people, when they travel, they don't go to walk around the suburbs of a city. There's only certain places that tourists are drawn to, right? Hmm. And so I'm always curious about why and what tourists are drawn to, you know, what is like almost like the resource there that is being extracted. In Chris: the context of your work, you know, largely in regards to, to landscapes and we've spoken a fair amount today about [00:43:00] landscapes as, as objects at the very least.But in, in your dissertation, you know, there was a line that struck me certainly I think coming from your animist tendencies and sentiments where you say that "landscapes are mediums and landscapes are a process," and I'm curious, as we kind of wind ourselves towards the end of our time together, if you could elaborate on this for our listeners a little bit, this, this idea of landscapes as mediums or as processes.Christos: Yeah, so I've done my, my PhD in the field of cultural geography, or sometimes called human geography, which is kind of like anthropology except kind of rooted in place, I'd say that's the big difference. It's not as popular here in North America, but in the UK it's much more popular. And probably the primary focus in that field is landscape, which I think most people might be familiar with that term in terms of like, maybe landscape [00:44:00] gardening or landscape painting.But when you get deep into it, which is kind of what grad school is, is you're like a big weirdo and you just get so deep into something so friggin specific that, you know, most people think you might think about once in your lifetime, but you end up spending nine years thinking about and writing about.It's almost like you can't perceive a place without some kind of filter, if that makes sense. It's almost like there's no such thing as just like a place or land that's just objectively out there. Like, I spent most of a winter, you know, down where you are in Oaxaca, but you having lived there for this long, like if you and I walk around in the streets of Ciudad Oaxaca, you're going to perceive so much more than I am, or at least many different things than I am, right?I'm going to be purely a tourist, I'm going to be reading on a surface level where you might have dozens of memories come up from your time living there and different things that have happened. And [00:45:00] so, in that way, like a landscape is almost, is always like a medium, meaning like our own perceptions, our own projections, our own memories are always affecting the way that we perceive a place.And so cultural geography, the field that I'm in, kind of looks at that. It looks, literally at the kind of the, the collision of culture and geography and like the politics of a place. You know, I was talking about like earlier about landscape management. You know, there are people that are choosing how to manage the landscape in the highlands, where to allocate money and where to cut money from.And all of those decisions are based on preferences of aesthetics and land use, in terms of landscape. So for anyone that's interested, it's a fascinating field to start looking at what we perceive in a place or in places [00:46:00] and how, what we perceive or what we wish to be there affects, you know, the politics of a place.And again, the contemporary crisis right now, Israel Palestine, this question of like, who belongs there? Whose land is it? What do you see in that landscape? For some people, they see an ancient Jewish homeland that these persecuted people are trying to return to and reclaim and for other people, they see, you know, an indigenous Arab people that are being displaced by outside colonizers and, you know, both in their way are right and wrong.I'm not going to wade into the politics of it, but the way that landscape is used as a medium, politically, economically, culturally, is a really fascinating subject, at least for me.Chris: Well, thank you for that, and to finish up with a question around pilgrimage, which Jerusalem being the quote unquote, "holy land" and where so many pilgrimages landed in in previous times and of course in contemporary ones as [00:47:00] well. I'm curious about what you could describe as ritualized memorial acts of walking. And I'd like to finish by asking what have been the most achieved and enduring acts of ritual that you've encountered? What lessons might they have to teach us in a time of hypermobility?Christos: Again, that's like a huge question. Okay, I'll try to be succinct if I can. I don't know why I'm drawn to these kinds of histories, but anywhere I go in the world, I tend to be drawn to, yeah, histories of displacement, I would say.It's a strange thing to be interested in for most people, but it probably speaks to the fact that I am the fourth generation of men to leave the country that I was born. You know, that's between both sides of the family, it's not all one lineage. But being of Greek descent, Greece has long been a country where people leave, you know?Like, right now, the [00:48:00] United States is a country where people come to, but to be claimed by a place where for hundreds of years now, so many people, whether by choice or circumstance, leave their home probably does something to you, you know? And so Anywhere I've traveled in the world, I tend to either seek out or be sought out by these kinds of histories, and so I referred a bit earlier to this project I did years ago where I was spending a lot of time in Mexico and ended up meeting what became a friend is an artist from Mexico City, Javier Arellán, and he was second generation Mexican.His grandfather was from Barcelona in Spain and was a fighter pilot for the Spanish Republic, so like the legitimate democratically elected government of Spain. And when Franco and the fascists kind of staged a coup and the Spanish Civil War broke out you know, he was on the side [00:49:00] of the government, the Republican army.And Barcelona was basically the last stand of the Republicans as the fascist kind of came up from the from the south and when Barcelona fell everyone that could literally just fled on foot to try to cross into France, nearby to try to escape, because knowing that if they were captured they would be imprisoned or killed by the fascists who had basically taken over the country now.But the French didn't want tens of thousands of socialists pouring into their country because they were right wing. And so rather than letting people escape they actually put all the Spanish refugees in concentration camps on the French border. And that's where my friend's grandfather was interred for like six months in a place called Argilet sur Mer, just over the French border.And then from there, Algeria took a bunch of refugees and he was sent to Algeria. And then from there, the only countries in the whole world that would [00:50:00] accept these left wing Spanish refugees was Mexico and Russia. And so about 50, 000 Spanish Republican refugees relocated to Mexico City. They had a huge influence on Mexican culture.They started UNAM, like the national university in Mexico City. And my friend Javier Grew up in Mexico city, going to a Spanish Republican elementary school, singing the Spanish Republican National Anthem and considering themselves Spaniards, you know, who happened to be living in Mexico. And so when I met him, with my interests, we, you know, overlapped and I found out that him and his wife were soon setting out to go back to that same beach in France where his grandfather was interred, in the concentration camp and then to walk from there back to Barcelona because his grandfather had died in Mexico before Franco died, so he never got to return home. You know, maybe like a lot of Greeks that left and [00:51:00] never did get to go back home, certainly never moved back home.And so we went to France and we started on this beach, which is a really kind of trashy touristy kind of beach, today. And we thought you know, that's what it is today, but we then found out talking to people that that's actually what it was back in the 1930s, 1940s was this touristy beach and what the French did was literally put a fence around and put these refugees on the beach in the middle of like a tourism beach literally as prisoners while people on the fence were like swimming and eating ice cream and, you know, and being on vacation.So even that site itself is pretty fucked up. A lot of people died there on that beach. And it was 15 days walking the entire coast from the French border back to Barcelona. And whereas Javier's community in Mexico city actually raised [00:52:00] funds for us and we're really excited about this idea of homecoming and going back home to Spain.We quickly discovered when we started talking to locals about what we were doing, they would stop talking to us and walk away and they didn't want anything to do with us. They did not want to know these histories. They didn't want to touch it. And what we found out is like Spain has never really dealt with this history.And it's such a trauma and nobody wants to talk about it. So again, it's this strange thing where it's like us from the Americas, you know, my friend from Mexico was wanting to return home and it was a strange trip for him because he thought of himself as a Spaniard returning home and these Spaniards were like, "you're a Mexican tourist and I don't want to talk to you about the civil war, you know?"And I think that really hurt him in a lot of ways because he almost kept trying to prove that he wasn't a tourist, whereas for me, I knew that I was a tourist because, you know, I have no history there.[00:53:00] In terms of pilgrimage, I've done other pilgrimages, other walks I won't get into now, but there's something about walking a landscape or walking a land as opposed to driving, obviously, or flying that the pace of walking, I think, allows you to interact with people and with places at a rhythm that is maybe more organic, maybe more holistic. I did do the Camino de Santiago, the pilgrimage in Spain, like I did that another 15 days as well. And for me there's nothing like walking. You know, there's, there's something that happens. To your mind, to your body, to your spirit when you're moving that I've never experienced through any kind of other travel.And unfortunately there are only so many places in the world where you can walk for days or weeks on end that have the infrastructure set up to do so. And I know that here in the Americas other than walking on busy roads, it's pretty hard to get long distances through walking.And so I think another thing that tourism has done is kind of cut off the transitional kind of walking and you just kind of fly off and just kind of plop yourself [00:54:00] down and then get extracted out through an airplane, but you don't have the experience of seeing the landscape change day by day, footstep by footstep, and experiencing the place at that speed, at that pace, which is, you know, a very slow pace compared to an airplane, obviously.Chris: Mm hmm. Perhaps, perhaps very needed in our time. Christos: I hope so. I think there's something about it. I think there's something humanizing about it. About walking. Chris: Well, I've asked a lot of you today, my friend. And we've managed to court and conjure all of the questions that I've, that I had prepared for you.Which I thought was impossible. So, on behalf of our listeners and perhaps all those who might come to this in some way, your dissertation at some point down the road, I'd like to thank you for your time and certainly your dedication.And I imagine a PhD, nine year PhD [00:55:00] research process can be extremely grueling. That said, I imagine it's not the only thing that you have on your plate. I know that you're also an artist a teacher, writer, and Kairotic facilitator. I'm saying that right. To finish off, maybe you'd be willing to share a little bit of what that entails and how our listeners might be able to get in touch and follow your work.Christos: Yeah, first I'll just say thanks for reaching out, Chris, and inviting me to do this. I've listened to your podcast and love these kinds of conversations around these topics of place and belonging. It's obviously deep in my heart and I said this to you earlier, other than my supervisors and my examiners, I think you're the first person to read my dissertation, so I appreciate that you took the time to read it and to draw quotes and to discuss it with me because, I think most people that have done a PhD know that it can be a pretty solitary process to go so deep into such a tiny little corner of like knowledge that for most people is not what they're interested in every day and to [00:56:00] share these stories. Thank you. So yeah, my website is ChristosGolanis. com. And part of what I do is working with this Greek term, kairos. So in Greek there are at least three words for time. One is chronos, which is like linear time. One is aeon, which is like kind of eternal time.And one is kairos, gets translated as kairos, which is like almost the appropriate time or ceremonial time. And my best definition of that is you know, there are some things that are scheduled, like you and I for months ago planned this particular time and this particular day to do this interview.But deciding, let's say, when to get married with your partner doesn't follow any kind of rational, linear timeline. That's more of a feeling. And so the feeling of like when some, when it's appropriate for something is what Greeks consider to be keros, like, you know, keros for something like it's, it's the appropriate time for something.So. What I do is I kind of counsel people to craft [00:57:00] ceremonies or rituals for big transitions in their lives to mark things in their life through ritual or ceremony. Like I said, for like a homecoming two weeks of walking the coast of Spain can be a ceremony, right, of kind of walking your dead grandfather back home. I think there's something about the impulse to go out into the world, to find something, to integrate something, to process something, right versus staying right where you are and kind of with community, with others. It's kind of ritually marking it, integrating it, and you know, it's cheaper, it's easier on the environment, and sometimes can, can go a lot deeper than going away and coming back, and maybe not much has changed.But it can be dealing with the transition of someone from life into death or a birth or a career change. And so basically using ceremony and ritual to really mark and integrate these significant moments in our lives so that we can be fully with them as they're happening or as they've happened in the past, but haven't been able to be integrated.So that's some of the kind of [00:58:00] work that people can do with me if you want to reach out through my website. Chris: Well I very much look forward to seeing and hearing your dissertation in the world outside of these small groups of podcast interviewers and academics. So, hopefully one day that's the case if there's any editors or publishers out there who enjoyed what you heard today and want to, want to hear more, please get in touch with me or Christos and we can, we can get that into the world in a good way.Christos, thank you so much brother. It's been a pleasure and I hope to have you on the pod again soon. Christos: All right. Thank you. Get full access to ⌘ Chris Christou ⌘ at chrischristou.substack.com/subscribe

Dive into the mysterious world of the Picts with Kelly Kilpatrick, a linguist and explorer, on the second episode of the "Explorer Albert" series. Unravel the enigmatic story of the Picts, ancient inhabitants of Northern Scotland, known for their fierce resistance against the Romans and their cryptic stone carvings. In this episode, Kelly shares her groundbreaking work decoding the Pictish language, revealing insights into a civilization that has long captivated historians and archaeologists alike. Join us for an intriguing conversation that spans Celtic history, archaeological adventures, and the unlocking of ancient secrets that could rewrite our understanding of early European cultures. The post Decoding the Picts with Kelly Kilpatrick first appeared on DR. ALBERT YU-MIN LIN.

Also talk Fife, WA, the Picts and the Firth of Forth, my email exchange with the February Sports Illustrated cover artist, Murder, Inc. and defenestration, Peyton's Places on ESPN+, Lana Turner and Idaho and much more

Gardening, Texas, UN, and the Picts.

When visiting the North of Britannia in 122 AD, the Roman Emperor Hadrian Augustus witnessed the aftermath of war between his armies and the savage Picts. In a show of Roman might, he ordered a wall to be built that would separate the Pict tribes from the rest of England. Grand in its design, the wall stretched 80 Roman miles, from coast to coast. In the game, Hadrian's Wall from garphill games and Bobby Hill with art by Sam Phillips, it's your job to spend 6 years building and improving a 1-mile section of the impressive megastructure. each year you receive resources which you must spend wisely to make your mile castle prosper and repel the pictish attacks. Although it is an intimidating game out of the box it is quick to learn and forgiving despite its complexity. If you enjoy games such as Dinosaur Island Roar and Write, or Raiders of Scythia this game might just be the perfect addition to your collection. 

The Loch Ness Monster, affectionately known as Nessie, stands as one of the most enduring and captivating myths in the realm of cryptozoology. This legendary creature is said to inhabit the depths of Loch Ness, a large freshwater lake in the Scottish Highlands. Our journey into the mystique of Nessie commences with exploration of its origins, reaching back to the annals of history. Dating back to the Roman period, the first inklings of the Loch Ness Monster can be traced to the enigmatic Picts, an ancient people who inhabited what is now Scotland. Intriguingly, the Picts left behind visual representations on cave walls that depicted a creature bearing a striking resemblance to a serpent, residing in the depths of Loch Ness. These ancient depictions serve as a testament to the enduring nature of the Nessie legend, stretching across centuries and civilizations. The modern fascination with the monster truly took root in the early 20th century. The legend gained widespread attention in 1933 when a couple claimed to have witnessed an enormous creature crossing the road near the lake. Subsequent reports and alleged sightings fueled the public's imagination, prompting a surge in interest and speculation about the elusive creature lurking beneath the dark waters of Loch Ness. Over the years, numerous expeditions and investigations have been undertaken to unravel the mystery of Nessie, employing various scientific methods, including sonar and underwater cameras. While some enthusiasts ardently believe in the existence of a hidden aquatic behemoth, others approach the legend with skepticism, attributing the reported sightings to natural phenomena, misidentifications, or elaborate hoaxes. The Loch Ness Monster has become a cultural icon, transcending its mythical origins to become a symbol of mystery and intrigue. Nessie's image has graced countless books, documentaries, and even inspired tourism centered around the elusive creature. Whether one is a fervent believer or a skeptic, the legend of Nessie continues to captivate the collective imagination, inviting us to ponder the mysteries that lie beneath the serene surface of Loch Ness. Join us as we navigate the murky waters of myth and reality, seeking to uncover the truth behind the enduring legend of the Loch Ness Monster. https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/theconspiracypodcast/subscribe Patreon -- https://www.patreon.com/theconspiracypodcast Our Website - www.theconspiracypodcast.com Our Email - info@theconspiracypodcast.com --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/theconspiracypodcast/message

Saving Christmas Spirit (2022) is the story of a holiday-hating archaeologist who must travel to Scotland on Christmas to save her job, where she falls in love with a failing Scotch distiller (get it? Spirit? Scotch? It's a pun! Do you get it?). Ross tells us everything wrong with this movie's depiction of the Scottish Highlands (also we talk about archaeology). Get in touch with us! Twitter: @SotSA_Podcast Facebook: @SotSAPodcast Letterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/sotsa/ Email: screensofthestoneage@gmail.com In this episode: The Canadian Barn Dance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mc0yO39IRKg The Cairngorm Reindeer Herd: https://www.cairngormreindeer.co.uk/ Reindeer velvet: https://www.reindeerfarm.com/blog/reindeer-velvet/ The Broddenbjerg idol: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broddenbjerg_idol The Ballachulish Idol: https://www.nms.ac.uk/explore-our-collections/stories/scottish-history-and-archaeology/ballachulish-figure/ Knocknagel Boar Stone: https://highlandpictishtrail.co.uk/project/knocknagael-boar-stone/ Who were the Picts? https://www.digitscotland.com/who-were-the-picts/ Flipco Hand Held Metal Detector Super Scanner with Beep Vibrator on Amazon: https://www.amazon.in/Flipco-Metal-Detector-Scanner-Vibrator/dp/B01NCQAKL6 How ground penetrating radar works: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUNO9DNFxMQ Glenfinnan Viaduct (Harry Potter Train): https://www.belmond.com/ideas/articles/harry-potter-glenfinnan-viaduct Scottish Clans: https://www.highlandtitles.com/scottish-clans-and-families/

Saving Christmas Spirit (2022) is the story of a holiday-hating archaeologist who must travel to Scotland on Christmas to save her job, where she falls in love with a failing Scotch distiller (get it? Spirit? Scotch? It's a pun! Do you get it?). Ross tells us everything wrong with this movie's depiction of the Scottish Highlands (also we talk about archaeology). Get in touch with us!Twitter: @SotSA_Podcast Facebook: @SotSAPodcastLetterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/sotsa/ Email: screensofthestoneage@gmail.com In this episode:The Canadian Barn Dance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mc0yO39IRKgThe Cairngorm Reindeer Herd: https://www.cairngormreindeer.co.uk/ Reindeer velvet: https://www.reindeerfarm.com/blog/reindeer-velvet/ The Broddenbjerg idol: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broddenbjerg_idol The Ballachulish Idol: https://www.nms.ac.uk/explore-our-collections/stories/scottish-history-and-archaeology/ballachulish-figure/ Knocknagel Boar Stone: https://highlandpictishtrail.co.uk/project/knocknagael-boar-stone/ Who were the Picts? https://www.digitscotland.com/who-were-the-picts/Flipco Hand Held Metal Detector Super Scanner with Beep Vibrator on Amazon: https://www.amazon.in/Flipco-Metal-Detector-Scanner-Vibrator/dp/B01NCQAKL6How ground penetrating radar works: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUNO9DNFxMQ Glenfinnan Viaduct (Harry Potter Train): https://www.belmond.com/ideas/articles/harry-potter-glenfinnan-viaduct Scottish Clans: https://www.highlandtitles.com/scottish-clans-and-families/

I hope you enjoy this continuation of my discussion with Mike Doyle, from the Clans and Dynasties YouTube channel.  We discussed such topics as: The Ethnic foundations of the Scottish clans How much do the Scottish clans owe to Ireland vs other groups like the Picts, Britons, Angles, etc.? Where does Scotland derive its Gaelic language from?  Was it brought from Ireland or is it organic? How far back does Scotland's connection with Ireland go? Join us for a great discussion on the foundations of the Scottish clans! Sponsor: usakilts.com For more content: www.scottish-clans.com Clans and Dynasties on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@Clans_Dynasties  Mike's work with Phillip on Irish Medieval History: https://www.youtube.com/@IrishMedievalHistory  The Scottish Clans YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@thescottishclans 

Unlock the mysteries of myth and anthropology with us as we journey through the fascinating tales deeply rooted in human culture. The profound narratives of the Lady of the Lake, Merlin, and the Picts, an early tribe of the British Isles, serve as a portal to understanding how beliefs, traditions, and lifestyles have sculpted the stories passed down through generations. We sift through the Bible, unearthing the power of shared belief and principles in preserving and disseminating ideas. Fasten your seatbelts as we transition from ancient tales to dissecting tribal life and its evolution into modern society. Our journey traverses the intricacies of rituals and the series of practices and beliefs that have been both tamed and retained. We question the influences of ancient philosophers like Plato on modern society and draw attention to how their vision, or lack thereof, have formulated societal norms.  As modern pagans, we emphasize the duty to honor and understand these myths, rituals, and beliefs, not just as a part of our faith, but as a reflection of our dynamic cultural heritage in today's era. Tune in for an enlightening rendezvous with the annals of human history, faith, and culture.Support the showJoin us on Discord: https://discord.gg/MdcMwqUjPZFacebook: (7) Life Temple and Seminary | Facebook

Hear the rest of this episode exclusively on Patreon    New Shirts Available Here   On this episode of Beneath the Skin Matt discusses the truth and myths surrounding the tattooed people of ancient Scotland, The Picts   If you want to follow us online for more updates CLICK HERE   Production by Thomas O'Mahony Artwork by Joe Painter (jcp_art) Intro Music by Dan McKenna If you would like to get in touch you can email the show on beneaththeskinpod@gmail.com