Scotland trip 2022 - week 2 - DRAFT

 Sunday we went to church at the Stornoway branch of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  Brandan had been invited to be a guest speaker in sacrament meeting.  Gibson gave the closing prayer.  There were about 20 people there, all very welcoming.  Gibson and I both attended priesthood meeting during 2nd hour among a group of half a dozen other men and no youth.

The entire Isle of Lewis observes the Sabbath.  Everything is closed.  So we visited some outdoor sites.

We drove west to see the Callanish standing stones which were first built about 5,000 years ago.  There are about 20 such stone circles around the island.  We went to Callanish III ...

then walked over to Callanish II ...

but we didn't see where Callanish I was until the next day.  Callanish I is a larger ring of stones, with a line of stones fanning in each of the 4 directions.

Back to Sunday, we drove south to see the rest of the island.  Lewis is the northern part, which is low rolling hills, purple heather and green and yellow grass.  Very similar landscape to much of the Scottish Highlands.  Absolutely stunning.

A mountain range across the island divides Lewis from Harris.  The southern part of the island is more rocky and mountainous.

The southern end of Harris has some gorgeous beaches with white sand and blue water.  Apparently humans aren't the only ones who enjoy them.

Along one of the beaches is the Harris Golf Club.  Low grass grows on the sand, with longer grass in places.

Sunday evening we were invited to dinner with the branch president and his wife, Frank and Katrina Sengewitz.  He is from Germany and she is from England.  They moved to Lewis for her job.  As we left their home, Gibson said, "I really like them."

Returning to Lewis, we drove along a remote single track road with regular turnouts to allow room for oncoming traffic to get around each other.

Along this remote road is where people dig up peat for their stoves.  We passed a lot of rectangles where peat had been dug, with piles of peat drying.

Monday we went into downtown Stornoway.

We went to the Harris Tweed Hebrides store and got a wool blanket and some fabric to make throw pillows.  Sadly the mill is not open to visitors, but their website HarrisTweedHebrides.com shows some of the process of making Harris Tweed.

We headed back to the church to meet Alistair and Katrina Macleod, family history consultants.  Alistair has a beautiful thick Scottish brogue.  Katrina is also half Morrison and shared a wealth of information with us.

We visited a blackhouse museum.  Blackhouses were built of stone with thatch roofs.  They have a bedroom, a kitchen / living room with a peat-burning stove, and an area for animals.

In the area where animals would have lived, a man sat at a traditional style loom to show us how to make tweed.  

[more to come]

25 September 2022

 DECA started up again this year with Team 25, the 25th team their teacher has coached. From the left are Mary, Noah, Helen, Collin and Aunika.

Helen and Gibson went to the Crater girls' soccer game on Tuesday night.

At about 10:30 pm on Tuesday night, Becky was finishing up her lesson plans when she started getting emails from school. Construction workers who are installing a new HVAC system discovered failing trusses in the roof over part of the school. Crater High School was built in 1952. The portion in the photo was originally the gym. A new gym was built in the 1970s and the old gym was divided into two stories and converted into classrooms. 

The trusses in the old gym are bowstring trusses, a popular choice for inexpensive buildings in the first half of the 20th century. Bowstring trusses can span a large space without requiring interior supports and can be built with cheap material and labor. They are rarely used anymore as they have proven to be unable to support heavy loads over time unless they are heavily engineered, which makes them as expensive to build as other choices. They are also a fire hazard. Here is an example of a building with bowstring trusses from the internet. The trusses at Crater are not exposed to view. The weight of the building was causing the arches in the bowstring trusses to flatten, shearing some of the bolts that secured the trusses in place and threatening to push the outer walls over, potentially triggering a catastrophic collapse of the building. The problem required immediate attention. School was canceled for the rest of the week.

The school principals and district superintendent met late Tuesday night and early Wednesday morning and came up with a plan to shift the 20 classrooms housed in the affected part of the school to other parts of the school. The high school doesn't have empty classrooms and was already tight on space because of the HVAC construction project, but they somehow found a home for everyone. Becky's classroom wasn't in the dangerous part of the school, but she was moved to a portable classroom. Her old room has excellent internet connectivity and is now being used by a teacher who needs a computer station for each student. The portables only have wi-fi. A few teachers who don't have to move helped her quickly pack up her classroom.

This is her new room.

The fall sports coaches asked all of their athletes to come to school and help teachers move. A group of students moved all of Becky's things in about 15 minutes. 

This group of students moved her very heavy steel desk. Maybe trusses in the 1950s weren't built to last, but desks were.

Gibson, Eddy and Jason were also on campus helping other teachers move.

Another teacher had to move out of the portable before Becky could set up her classroom so she spent Thursday helping where needed. Classrooms were set up in every available space. Many teachers are now doubled up with two classes sharing a space. Four teachers are sharing the cafeteria.  The special ed classroom is now in the lobby of the performing arts center. The band teacher moved into a tent in the parking lot so his large classroom could be used by an English teacher and a social studies teacher. Moving everything out of the band room took all of Thursday morning with lots of students helping. Overall, everyone has pitched in and worked hard to make the best of a stressful situation. Everyone agreed that moving classes back online was not an option and was willing to sacrifice to keep kids at school in person.

By Friday afternoon, Becky could organize her own classroom. Here it is, ready for students to return on Monday morning.

In the meantime, engineers evaluated the building and construction started to shore up the trusses using a post-tensioning system. 6 X 6 inch timbers will reinforce the trusses and the structure will be pulled together with steel cables. No one knows how long the repairs will take or if they will uncover other structural issues as they work. 

Helen and Gibson enjoyed the unexpected break from school, spending lots of time with friends. Helen had started coming down with a cold, but being able to sleep cured her cold quickly. This is a photo of them on Saturday night, headed to the western themed stake dance.

18 September 2022

For the first time, possibly ever, Crater Boys soccer has a student section cheering for them at home games. Helen and Gibson went to the game Friday night. Brandan and Becky also went and sat with the grown ups. This is a photo down on the field after the game. From the left are Maddie, Helen, Grace, Chase and Addi.

This is a photo after Friday's game. Jason is lying down in the front of the photo. From the left are Eddy, Gibson, Brody, Helen, Hunter and Gib, along with two younger siblings.

After the game some friends came over to our house to watch The Princess Bride. From the left are Cason, Gib, Jason, Ed, Helen, Chase and Crew. Gibson took the photo from the top of our wood stove.

11 September 2022

Sofi spent Labor Day weekend with Nate and his family in Washington and sent this photo of a lake they hiked to. It's too beautiful to not share.

We put the labor into Labor Day by working a platform shift at the pear farm.

We went to Applegate Lake in the afternoon to swim. Ed, Helen, Gibson and Jason tried building a raft. The lake was unusually quiet for the last holiday of the summer.

Wednesday was the first day of school. Gibson is a sophomore this year.

And Helen is a senior. They're off to a great start.

Becky's first day of school was Tuesday, a welcome-to-school day for freshmen and new students. Unexpectedly, she came across a group of seniors carrying Larry and asked to get a photo with him. Larry the Lawn Gnome of Destiny is the mythical mascot of the Renaissance Academy. The seniors take care of him and then pass him on to the incoming seniors after they graduate. He's rarely seen at school, but sometimes he's sighted on students' instagram pages. Once he disappeared for a couple of years before resurfacing. It felt like good luck to spot Larry on the first day of school.

Sofi ordered pizza for us for dinner on Friday to celebrate finishing the first week of school. Helen picked it up. It was a delicious and welcome treat after a long week.

Helen went to the football game Friday night with Aunika and Riley. It feels great to start the school year without the covid restrictions of the past two years.

Scotland trip 2022 - week 1

 Gibson and Brandan planned a trip to Scotland when Gibson turned 13 in 2020.  Unfortunately the COVID-19 pandemic changed those plans.  We were finally able to go this year.  Brandan's mom Linda is a Morrison.  So we visited places that the Morrisons lived -- Edinburgh, Inverness and the Isle of Lewis (Stornoway).

Our flight from Salt Lake was delayed an hour while they asked people to leave the plane to reduce weight, the plane running the whole time.  When we arrived at New York, they had a backlog of planes, and would have to circle for 45 minutes.  They did not have enough fuel, so we routed to Hartford, Connecticut to refuel.  Lots of people got off the plane there, and this imbalanced the plane.  By the time they could rebalance it, the crew were over their time limits.  So we had to wait several hours for another plane to arrive.  We did not have enough time to make our flight to Scotland, so Delta booked us onto the same flight 24 hours later.  So we had an unexpected day in New York rather than in Edinburgh.

We slept in at the hotel, then ordered in pizza.

We took the subway to Times Square... 

then to the Empire State building... 

then to the World Trade Center 9/11 memorial.  There are two square monuments on the footprints of the 2 buildings that were destroyed.  Around each square are engraved names of those who died.  A rose is placed in the letters of the person’s name on their birthday.  A sign invites visitors to touch their names.  Inside the names is a waterfall along all 4 edges that falls down into the square, then flows to another smaller square and down its sides.  Down, down.

Nearby is a sculpture to honor the first responders who died.  There are stones stacked and slanted so they recede into the ground.  Veins of metal lace the stone.  The metal is from the buildings that fell and represents strength.  As the stones disappear into the ground, they are covered in ivy that extends in a path behind each stone.

Flew to Edinburgh, arriving Wednesday morning.  They upgraded our rental car to a red MG SUV with manual transmission.

We drove to the airbnb apartment in Edinburgh.  It took us about ½ hour to find a parking spot, finally finding an open spot right outside the apartment doors.  We dropped off our stuff and walked to the Royal Mile with Edinburgh Castle at the upper end and Holyrood Royal Palace at the lower end.

The annual Edinburgh Fringe Festival meant the Old Town was packed with people and street performers.

The castle is incredible.  It is built on top of a stone mound with a great view of the rest of the city.  

We looked north across the Forth of Firth at Fifeshire where our family worked in coal mines in Kirkcaldy, Lochgelly, Cowdenbeath.  

At the top of the castle is the oldest building in Edinburgh -- St. Margaret's chapel built in 1130.

Running parallel to the Royal Mile is a street called Cowgate where our Morrison ancestors lived from 1500 to 1750.

This graphic in the museum at the lower end of the Royal Mile shows where different classes lived.

Thursday we drove to Inverness.  Along the way, we went to a beautiful area called Finegand where Becky's McComb family lived.  There were 2 houses and a fire station.  Not sure if one of the houses is where her family lived.

On the hills behind the houses you can see purple patches.  This is a beautiful purple heather that grows wild over much of the countryside of the Highlands.

We drove the road along the south end of the Cairngorms National Park.

We arrived at Inverness and went to hike along the beautiful Loch Ness.

In Gaelic, Ness means 'promontory' or 'nose.'  It's pronounced "Nish."  Loch means 'lake.'  Inver means 'estuary' or 'confluence of waters.'

The river Ness flows through the town of Inverness.  We found Nessie resting there.

Northern Scotland is proud of their Highland cow, or Heilan coo.  We saw logos of them with long bangs over their eyes in all the shops.

Friday we drove to Eilean Donan, a stunning castle built in the 1700s then destroyed, then rebuilt in the 1920s.  The McRae clan still uses it as a residence, so they forbid photos inside.

Returning along Loch Ness we stopped at the Loch Ness Centre where they explain the science behind searching for Nessie.  This submarine was used to explore its depths.  The Loch is massive.  "Every person on earth could be immersed 3 times in the loch."

Continuing back to Inverness, we saw hay fields with rolled bales and charming purple bus stops.

We stopped for food at the local grocery store Morrisons.

We mailed postcards to Becky & Helen in Central Point, Sofi in Bountiful, and Abe in South Korea.

Saturday we went to the Glen Urquhart Highland Games in Drumnadrochit on the bank of Loch Ness.  It was their 75th year.  They had not been able to hold it the last couple of years because of the pandemic, so everyone was excited to attend.  Glen means 'valley' and Urquhart is the name of people who lived there, pronounced "ur cart."

The games were held at a shinty field.  Shinty is a highland sport like field hockey, using a stick to hit a ball.  Around the field was a track, lined with benches, and surrounded by crafts booths and carnival rides.  

They held many events.  Boys and girls races...

shot-put...

hammer throw...

throwing weight over a bar...

tossing the caber, in which the goal is to get the 15-foot-long, 75-pound caber to land on its end and topple forwards...

throwing a weight.  This man from Oregon beat the record for the Highland games, and then beat his own record on each of the following 3 throws.  All of the heavy events require wearing a kilt...

Highland dancing...

and piping competitions.

The Edinburgh Bagpipers played a couple of times.

That evening we drove to Ullapool to take the ferry to Stornoway on the Isle of Lewis.  We enjoyed more of the rugged beauty of the Highlands.