March In Like a Lamb,Out Like a Lion:Does Ancient Rhyme Predict More Climate Crises or Solutions?

MARCH IN LIKE A LAMB, OUT LIKE A LION:DOES ANCIENT RHYME PREDICT MORE CLIMATE CRISES OR SOLUTIONS?

CAUTIOUS EXIT from SUBTERRANEAN/TELOSIAN MOUNTAIN WRITERS’ WO/MAN CAVE to TREAD LIGHTLY, GUIDED BY ANGELS & NATURE SPIRIT DEVAS INTO SPRING

March May have ‘Come in like LAMB’ but her Gentle Fleece Quickly Trailed in SNOW & 100mph Gales on Donner Pass & CA I-80 2Reno

Hours after fickle month of Spring, Lady March came in on our Leap Year calendar, the young Maiden of Nature chose to reclad herself in Winter woolies, as California’s notorious 7,056ft-high Donner Pass on I-80 to Reno, Nevada was pounded with snow.

Sierra Snow Lab at Donner Pass, operated by the University of California at Berkeley, reported 23.8 inches of new snow between Saturday and Sunday morning, March 2-3, bringing total snowfall for the season to five feet. New snowfall was accompanied by 100mph gale force winds, gusting to 116mph.

“California Highway Patrol in Truckee on CA’s I-80 infamous transmontane route for rail & highway between San Francisco & Reno, NV was monitoring traffic & advised drivers that travel was “highly discouraged”.

Donner Pass reputed inspiration4 Overlook Hotel in Jack Nicholson/Stephen King 1975 movie ‘The Shining’, is popular destination.

Meanwhile in Britain—while the Northern Isles [Orkney & Shetland] & exposed areas of Sutherland like Cape Wrath were battered by gales normal for this time of year—most of the country-including Eastern shores of Scotland, Eastern Northumberland, Yorkshire & the notorious Pennines-were, like the English capital, enjoying garden birdsong, appearance of snowdrops, above mid-l., first buds of cherry & wild cherry (gean), top l. & rt., with even a sighting in downtown Aberdeen of an urban fox making himself comfortable on warm granite ‘cassie setts’ [paving slabs] in the mild weather.

It seems natural, therefore, that our thoughts should spring forward like clocks [daylight saving time U.S. springs forward March 10th; Britain March 28th] to working in the garden to cultivate favourites like the sweet pea, top rt., and dream of the scent of summer roses. Below mid l. Rosa Charles de Mills.

Ramadan, Lent & Easter Dominate March, all ‘late’ in Calendar this Year

Ramadan, ninth month of the Islamic calendar, observed by Muslims worldwide as a month of fasting and prayer, begins March 10th and will last until April 8th.

Similarly this year, Easter falls ‘late’ i.e. on last Sunday in March: 31st. Because such festivals are still calculated by us earthlings according to moon cycles—mentioned in my previous blog on Carnival here—Good Friday & end of Lent will not happen until after Spring Equinox, March 23rd. March Full “Worm” Moon occurs March 24th. See Lenten origins for blindfolding children & Piñata frolics below*.

Full Moons this quarter: March Worm Moon April Full Pink Moon; & May Full Flower Moon

First come Candlemas
Syne the New Meen
The niest Tiseday efter ‘at
Is aye Festern’s E’en.
That Meen oot
An’ anither at its hicht
The niest Sunday efter ‘at
Is aye Pasche richt.’
Ancient Scots Easter calculation, Anon

And watch out for penumbral lunar eclipse visible in Americas, Europe & W.Africa from 1a.m.-5:30a.m. EDT-March 25; 10p.m. PDT March 24-2:30a.m.March 25th; followed by April 8th solar eclipse visible N.hemisphere

Traditions dominate every culture, whether we know it or not. So it’s worth looking at a favourite child’s game—being blindfolded, spun 3 times (2lose sense of direction) & then trying to smash open a Piñata.

Bright rainbow-paper toy mule Piñata hung up at children’s parties for them to smash open & grab candy & other treasures that burst out from inside wasn’t just for kids originally. In medieval Italy, on 1st Sunday in Lent, Kings of Naples & Sicily distributed gifts to peasants as a Lenten almsgiving. It came in simple earthenware pignatta, Ital. cooking pot, fr.Lat. pinea, pine cone shape.

This tradition spread to Spain, called Piñata like a pineapple Sp. piña, & when Armada came to the New World, they found a similar tradition in Mexico [of Aztec origin] which they embodied/converted in R.C. Xtian Lent.

Spanish Friars saw these as an opportunity 2convert pagan Aztecs & created seasonal piñatas filled with fruits & seeds for Lent, Easter & Christmas.

Being blindfolded was used to represent faith, that is, believing without seeing. Many other traditions from Europe were transmitted via the early [Catholic] Church as a means to convert pagan followers.

Ancients’ Knowledge of Seasons & Growth used at Sacred Sites/ Wells

The Ancient Britons aka Brittonic/Weish Druidic priests of Anglesey/Inys Mons have much to teach us 21st Century A.I.- & politically-dominated experts in garden cultivation, reforestation and agriculture. In our excitement over the phenomenon of spring bloom in deciduous plants, we may forget how heavily we rely on that mysterious range of evergreens quietly holding down roots through harshest winters, only to burst with new foliage and exuberance in warmer months. Below top l.rt Cotswolds’ iconic yews

Conifers like ancient Caledonian pine (pinus sylvestrus or Caledoniensis) come first to mind, along with cousins Monterey pine (pinus radiata, above, bottom rt.) & Pac.NW’s statuesque Douglas Fir (bottom l., pseudotsuga Menziesii)-q.v. last year’s June blog for its stature c.f. Giant Redwood Sequoiadendron giganteum, including my young plantation of Caledonian pine in my personal effort to bring rewilding & regrowth to Scots pine forests burned in 1308 by ravages of Robert Bruce’s Herschip o’ Buchan.

Yew—Guardian of Brittonic & pre-Celtic Sacred Mounds—reused in Christian Churches Symbolic of Reincarnation & to Ward off Evil

Less celebrated for its longevity and overwintering prowess, more for its poison, the evergreen Yew, above 1-3, has long been churchyard sentinel in all counties & four British ‘countries’—Scotland (& N.isles) Scotland, England, Wales/Kernow (Cornwall) N.& S.Ireland; relatively less visible in churches in U.S. or E. Europe, but prevalent in cross-channel (Brittonic) Brittany, coastal France & Portugal.

Doorway of St.Edwards church, l. above, Stow-on-the-Wold, English Cotswolds, has ancient yew ‘feet’.

Greek goddess Hecate was famed for her knowledge of herbs, poisonous plants & sorcery; Roman counterpart Hekate/sometimes moon goddess Silene linked to huntress Diana was bearer of the keys to the Underworld, protector of World’s Soul [Anima Mundi]. As she held the keys to unlock the gates between worlds and gain access to both realms, she was equally powerful in ‘Heaven & Hell’ & seen as early-Medieval Tree of Life. While early-Christian monastics advised against putting “devilish charms at springs or trees or crossroads”, legendary Celtic Druids planted yew close to their temples for use in death ritual & regeneration. Because of its association with immortality, early Brittonic/Celtic kings had the wood cut for staffs & emblems of royal regalia, to associate with its immortality & God-given power.

Until they departed Britannia c. A.D.420, Roman legions stormed ancient Brittonic strongholds including York, [called Roman Eboracum, fr. Brythonic Eburākon=place of the Yew trees]. Pre-Celtic yew=eburos.

Reputedly oldest tree in Europe, Perthshire Fortingall Yew is 5000-yrs old & stands at the gates to the kirk [pre-Xtian Pictish well] in what Ancient Brythonic Picts saw as the centre of the landmass of Scotland [Cape Wrath/John o’Groats to Whithorn, Galloway lying a stone’s throw from Glen Lyon Loch Tay Cailleach/Bodach stone shelter, oldest continuously-observed sacred pagan site in Britain maintained by (anon) guardians.

While red Yew berries contain alkaloid poison taxine, from 13thC on its strong, flexible wood was used to cut 6ft longbows, strung with hemp/flax to create powerful weapons with a range of 230 yds/m, which could shoot arrows capable of piercing chain mail. Bows & arrows were in use until rapid fire guns & cannon took over mid 16thC.

An avenue of yews at Painswick, nr. Stroud, Glos., top, rt. reaches full-height 60ft/20m.

Its poisonous berries, 2nd l. above, keep cattle and wildlife away from graveyards, so sacred burials remain intact. Its longevity is second only to Giant Redwoods, and, because of its continuous use from Ancient pagan times, it is traditionally seen as symbolic of reincarnation and life everlasting.

Nature’s Woodland Helpers Inspire us to Dive Back into our Writers‘ Den to Connect with our Inner Soul

Guided through this maelstrom of 21stC catastrophic existence by angelic forces, we are reminded by the angel/deva of the sweet pea, top,rt. that Dorothy Maclean, a Canadian gardener, communicated with the Devas, and spoke with sweet peas and the pea fairy while she worked.

Dorothy was co-founder alongside her Brit friend Eileen Caddy of Findhorn Foundation in NE Scotland. They meditated in their ‘fifties blue caravan, with Eileen’s ex-RAF husband Peter Caddy, a WWII vet. They shared a dream of international peace. And growing their own vegetables.

Among early Foundation residents was Joy Drake, who also gardened, spoke w/angels & created now internationally-celebrated set of Angel Cards rt. used daily by millions similar to drawing from a Tarot deck.

Findhorn’s Eco-village and Buckminster Fuller-inspired geodesic dome ‘Universal Hall’ meeting venue on shores of the Moray Firth drew followers from all over the world. Recent fire burned its Community Centre & so FF meditation Sanctuary/guest program has been discontinued. Interim spiritual ad- vice, provided by FF leader Granville Stone, is supported by a worldwide network of RP ‘Resource Persons’, of which I am one. Thus, any direction or assistance i can give in helping a fellow seeker along Nature’s path to Universal enlightenment-with the help of the angelic brigade is offered via this blog-comments are welcome.

A long-time gardener myself, associated with the RP Network since 1988, [169 people in 36 countries], I have moved from NE Scotland—where I was RP for Aberdeenshire—to being RP for Eureka, CA [2012- 2018]—currently RP for Hilo, Hawai’i/working in the Network with Elisha Southworth, RP Kailua-Kona.

Such is the way of the Universe & Great Spirit. If you are a believer, all things will come; all dreams be fulfilled.

Now. as I dive back down into my Muse-Angel-guided Writerly Cavern, I urge my fellow travellers in the Light to stay cool, & believe that Peace, and those beautiful Devas within the sweet pea [and your own faves] in the Spirit Realm are keeping us on track. ThankU Universe. ©2024MarianC.Youngblood

Bread-and-Circuses Loosen the Reins, Have Mass Appeal

Bread and Circuses to Appease/Subdue the Masses
Monthly First Wednesday Call from IWSG Isolation Ward

Tiers of spectators cheer death by chariot or lion, gladiator or slave, Circus Maximus precursor to Colisseum entertained & controlled Roman crowds

Romans knew how to entertain bigtime, providing literally Circus Maximus-size entertainment and free bread to the populace when the abundance of August filled their granaries and storehouses. Like all early societies, they attributed such bounty to their gods. Have we grown any “wiser” with our tech and space view?

Social Distancing in the Nevada Desert for Burning Man
Given vast acreage used for annual Burning Man—young America’s pinnacle location for letting off steam—the 2020 festival—sadly cancelled—should have been a roaring success. Combination of artistic frustration, human desire for self-expression, and a need to celebrate when the worst looks over—all fulfill our ancient cultural seasonal need for celebration.

Lammas harvest-weave in final July crop circle Vorderfischen nr Munich Bavaria S Germany

Feasts and gladiator combat shows entertained the common folk who year-round served the Roman elite. As in most original cultures, at harvest time, the bounty was shared.

Grateful for a good season, all early cultures from Mediterranean through high Kashmir to the Orient and in both North and South America and the Arctic, would have some kind of harvest time ceremony, giving gifts back to the Earth in gratitude for their survival another year. Corn dollies are reminiscent of European carefully-woven sacred dolls, placed on the feast table at Lammas/Lughnasadh. A corn dolly was usually woven in straw from the first cut of the sickle of this year’s crop (northern territories).

The ALOHA Factor

In the Hawai’ian Island chain (mid-Pacific 21ºN-18ºN) seasonal and festive celebrations traditionally include weaving necklaces of fragrant blossoms—leis—with headbands and hat gear woven from coconut palm fronds.

Original Beaux Arts 1925 Palace Theatre in Hilo, HI seats clients in orchestra stalls, dress circle & the ‘gods’

Is a Circus Maximus Drive-In an iMax?
Do you remember when everyone WAS #retro and we featured in those lovely outdoorsie kissing-by-the-stars Drive-In Movie Theaters? They call them ‘retro’ because most moviegoers today—iGens—have no idea what the ‘fifties or mid-20th Century style entailed. We vintage era connoisseurs would love to show them. Visions of cozy little backyard single-lane access loud speakers handed thru open car window—versus its successor, e.g. the lone multi-access, viewers boxed up in tiers too close to an iMax screen to focus on the actors. I recall in a moment of distraction, being coaxed one evening into one of those steel derrick desert billboard son et lumière machines, while on a visit to the Grand Canyon, Arizona. Sun had set, so it seemed the thing to do.

Post-trauma 21st Century Style
American moviegoers are not far behind! Robert De Niro’s Tribeca Enterprises announced midsummer their opening various drive-ins across the U.S. Running every weekend until August, the Tribeca Drive-In summer series will screen over thirty classic and independent films. Participating venues include AT&T Stadium Arlington, TX; Pasadena’s Rose Bowl Stadium; others in Nassau, NY; Orchard Beach in the Bronx and the Bel Air Diner in Queens. County fairgrounds in various states have taken up the idea. As has the out-of-work football stadium or two.

There are Auto Pop-Ups from Virginia and Maryland to New England and the Midwest. But Auburn, NY’s FingerLakes Drive-In claims to be the Empire State’s oldest, operating non-stop since 1947. Naturally it is featuring classics like “Raiders of the Lost Ark”.

Heart throb Will Smith Men-in-Black icon, 1997

The Miami Dolphins’ football stadium turned the field into a drive-in.

Hard Rock Movie Theater has room for more than 200 cars to take in classic films. Two theaters available from June to moviegoers are a socially-distanced open-air theater and a drive-up theater. Hard Rock Stadium will show a diverse array of movies, such as “Knives Out” and “Men in Black.” Masks must be worn in common areas, and all spots are assigned beforehand. HRMT

Retro among Retro experts is one of the oldest on the National Register of Historic Places—NRHP. With its supreme retro look, Missouri’s Route 66 Drive-In is a historic site located on the former Mother Road, U.S. Route 66 in Jasper County, Missouri.

Letting Our Creative Insecure Writer Tap into the Infinite Flow
Much kudos to Roman ingenuity for providing mass entertainment—and free food—when abundance came their way, provided, it was believed, by their gods. Celtic and other northern people believed in similar deities, their harvest festival, Lammas, most potent of the year, a time when food was plentiful.

Summer 2020 Jupiter Saturn conjunction completes another 20-year cycle, Venus dances with Earth & Mars

All early societies shared the belief that what you gave in gratitude would be returned to you one thousandfold.

Nemo knowz…

Similarly, I believe we insecure (and usually introvert) writers seem able to call on our Muse, our angels, our inner guide to help us out in a tough spot.

Now is a good time. Full harvest moon lights the way. Thank you Angels—and my co-Space Capt. Alex—for always guiding the ship through stormy seas to calm waters.

Nemo me impune lacessit.*
*Warrior cry of Scots men & women—Scots translation: Wha’ daur meddle wi’ me? English translation: ask an early American. No, nothing to do with cartoon fish.
©2020 Marian Youngblood

September Blues? Consider Poor Mother Earth

INSECURE WRITERS’ SUPPORT GROUP CORNER

Thanks to our (non-mutant) Ninja Capn. Alex, I make a seasonal appearance as last rays of summer flash, to say hi to my fellow IWSGers, but also to share the pathos of impending equinoctial changes: seasonal, earth-related, celestial and beyond—

Ancient Lughnasadh Festival of Light
I try to celebrate the end of summer, lasting—as all Druid-lore-lovers know—from mid-July to September equinox, plumbing sacred depths of fire festival season centered on:
Lammas Day, August 1st, the Glorious Twelfth.*

Mud-slides: par for course @T-in-the-Park

It spans the crazies of [Brit. advertising-cum-financial industry] ‘Silly Season’, culminating at September’s doorway in a frenzy of global music festivals: epitomized by (Brit) Leeds-Reading Extravaganza and (beer-fueled) T-in-the-Park. And BURNING MAN in the Nevada Desert.

Yet I feel pathos and sadness engulfing a season’s end, a dying earth. Our Mother Earth, especially, has suffered much this year.

Burning Man festival of light, Nevada desert

*I am not sentimental about the killing of grouse; I never liked the practice, however fashionable and smoothly operated it’s supposed to be. I shall not change my view; but my attitude to what goes on in the ‘Old Country‘, now that I’m an ex-pat, has softened.

I know this doesn’t sound remotely like a writing moan—as our monthly corner is supposed to be—but there is a connection:

Harvest—Dying—Resurrection—Metamorphosis
Ancient Lammas, Lughnasadh primal fire festival of the god Lugh, [‘Light’] is known across the indigenous cultural spectrum as First Harvest, Harvest Home, a time to STOP, give thanks and celebrate with offerings—bread from our table. Rejoicing in Mother Earth’s bounty, we share and celebrate her fruitfulness with good food and friends. Traditionally, harvest tables were decked with red, gold, orange, yellow, bronze, citrine, gray, and green: colors now associated with wild dress-couture-masquerade extravaganzas—particularly in U.S.

Corn dollies have been replaced by macho/Ninja? [!!] sickles, scythes, iMax giant scimitars, over fresh veggies & fruits, bread, and sun-wheels. But drumbeat rhythm focuses joy, seeps between the volcanic cracks into the Earth, honoring her cross-cultural daughters of Lugh: Freya, Demeter, Ceres, Pandora et al.—goddesses of fruitfulness,carers of the Earth thru her seasons. In this sense she (Earth Mother) and Hathor are one and the same: primeval Eve, Brittonic Bride, Norse Auohumla, great cow-giant goddess, and ancestor of the Norse gods. She is also Gaia, Sumerian Antu: who became Ishtar, goddess of love and procreation.

Mutant Ninja Turtles, 2014-style

Summerend, in all cultures—ancient Lammas, now-generation Virtual.world and future Turtle Island—with deference to our Sci-Fi Cap’n’s focus—is always a good time for a celebration.

Now is time to enjoy drinking, eating fresh food, indulging our hedonist within— dancing, expressing joy, getting back to our roots—being oneself.

For a light-deprived northerner, I am grateful for long days of warmth, time in the garden, maybe occasionally, I think about writing…lol. But I digress.

The Caravanserai Headed East
In current Western culture, Burning Man takes precedence. Trailers are rented at great expense, shared rides go East thru the Nevada desert, to pitch camp in an awesome congregation of festival-goers—almost medieval in ethos—with singing, dancing, beating and celebrating the earth, the sun, and being alive— through music, masque, dance and new connections, made over five days.

Leeds-Reading morphs to 4-day festival, à la Burning Man

Glastonbury’s Symposium begins the season mid-June, followed by July drinking madness: Scotland’s T-in the Park, above, originating in 1997 in Strathclyde Country Park, where triple stages were annually bogged down in mud.

Black Rock, NV, 2014 artwork DC

2014’s TITP was last epic concert to be held on Kinross’s disused Balado field:a medically-better location, where WWII runways provided metaphorical undercarriage for nine multiple stages over three-day weekend.

But, because Forties Field oil pipeline runs under the tarmac, Scots (financial and) Government agencies started yelling ‘health&safety’, so 2014 was its swan song. T-in-the-Park 2015 will migrate to the former boarding school of Strathallan, twenty miles West in Perthshire.

Sunday morning at the ephemeral Cathedral, Black Rock Nevada-ending 2014 Burning Man

There follows the majestic three-day wonder of Reading-Leeds Music Festival, at the height of Lammas: August 21-24, 2014.

Leeds-Reading DeafHavana & Bill Bailey

It would seem the Brits are following the U.S. lead in widening the window of music sent heavenward in sheer joy of numbers.

Americans wowed by Nevada desert’s five-day Burning Man festival have yet to experience the booze-quotient of a Brit music venue: comparisons of liters/pints of beer drunk at Glastonbury vs. Leeds/Reading shock American/Canadian drinkers who, by law, have to put tankard to lip behind closed doors. Ah, the contrast.

As Britain closes for the summer, the American continent opens. Festivals ripple like musical arpeggios across barren, dry (over-watered) southern states, Austin, Dallas, Nashville. As the earth gets hotter—most of continental U.S. is in grill-bbq grip of unrelenting heat, forest fires, drought.

Here is not the place to bring up city water demands from rural salmon spawning hinterland—Eel, Van Duzen, Klamath, Trinity and Navarro— but we all know Earth is shrieking for us to slow down, take a look at what we are doing to our Pale Blue Dot, called home, and stop.

One could liken it to an Apocalypse scenario. But our Ninja Cap’n knowzzzz all about that.

Thank you Alex, always for providing a corner for a moan, a shared frisson and love for Sci-Fi, and a window on tomorrow’s world—and for letting me in under the wire—late. 🙂
©2014Marian Youngblood

Space Weather 30-year Storm: Earth fights back

Frozen in mid surge

I need hardly remind residents of Scotland that we have only just weathered the thirty-year storm. Most households living through four solid weeks of sub-zero temperatures in an Atlantic weather zone (even with the miracle of central heating) will remember this winter (and last month especially) for many years to come.

Fortunately our civilization has advanced enough so that we experienced minimum electrical ‘outages’, despite heavy snow, icicles and ice on power lines. There were, however, multiple power ‘surges’ and computers countrywide were frozen in mid surge. Mac and pc-owners and related computer businesses are still counting the cost. Curry’s have been doing a roaring trade in replacement laptops!

It seems to have hit a lot of young ones harder than they might have thought: not that closing schools and cancelling bus and train services are a hazard; more time to make snowmen, play and enjoy winter sports, you might think. Lack of reliable public transportation, however – counting on any public services, in fact – four weeks without refuse collection borders on neglect, were commuters’ and householders’ concerns. Abandonment, remoteness and surprise at being cut off suddenly are what hit the teens hardest, I think because they are unaccustomed to having their social life curtailed by ‘weather’ and few had experienced conditions such as these in their young lives.

Some of us older oldies remember the winter of 1981/2 with shivering empathy; electrical failure, power cuts, snow drifts higher than houses; evacuating and rescuing neighbours, birds frozen overnight in trees. But that was back in the Thatcherite era, before the internet, when we didn’t EXPECT everything to run on time, snow ploughs to get through, petrol in cars not to freeze.

Human culture has changed in nearly 30 years: Even in the modern backwater of Aberdeenshire, the County of no motorways, the self-styled Oil Capital of Europe.

Tea Clipper Thermopylae was built in Aberdeen by Walter Hood for the White Star Line

For those unfamiliar with our ways, this corner of Scotland – the Northeast triangle between Rivers Don and Dee and the balmy Moray Firth – has always flourished, but more than that, it looks after its own. Rather, I suppose, like Geordies idolizing their working-class heroes that went ‘down the pits’ or Scousers joking ‘don’t bomb Iraq; nuke Manchester’. Parochial in the extreme.

Unlike some other lesser-urban metropolises, however, (Dundee, Perth, Stranraer), Aberdeen has always pulled through its hardest times: Dundee used to be known (an age ago, when the world was young) for its Jute, Jam and Journalism. Now it is home to none of these; but it has Robert Scott’s ‘Discovery‘, the Tay Bridge and it’s on the way to St. Andrews, which every golfer in the world has heard of; i.e. it participates peripherally in tourism, but some of its poorer districts are in appalling shape.

Perth floods every year and millions of national money poured in to rescue low-level housing has been a nightmare. Stranraer we won’t go into. It’s no longer on the way to anywhere.

Then there’s Aberdeen.

Perched on the westernmost limb of the North Sea’s mild Gulf Stream current, its dry climate (usually, rain from the west is captured by the Grampian mountains before it reaches the plain) and its remarkable latitude (57ºN2ºW ), akin to central Alaska, give it a climatic anomaly. Its farming hinterland was rich in Neolithic times and has grown richer.

Tall Ships Race reenacts 19thC sailing contest in the Clipper tea trade

A century and a half ago the city was hub to a thriving fishing industry; its harbours built, housed and skippered trawlers, tall clipper ships, deep sea schooners and whaling vessels. Thermopylae and Elissa were built here. Names like Alexander Hall & Sons, John Lewis and Sons, the Devanha Fishing Company sprang from everyone’s lips. As a merchant marine capital it was second only to Glasgow in Scotland and Liverpool south of the border.

Aberdeen, however, was never one to have only one egg in one basket: it was also the sole exporter of granite to needy growing urban centres: London streets were indeed paved with (Aberdeen granite) gold. Craigenlow quarry at Dunecht supplied the English capital with tons of its ‘cassies’ or granite sets – hand-cut granite blocks the size of a gingerbread loaf – to meet the demands of a city experiencing growing Victorian traffic problems. If they had but known…

At the height of Georgian expansion, Aberdeen city burghers were so wealthy, their coffers overflowing from the ocean tea trade, the Baltic route, their fishing ports supplying Europe’s tables (nowadays it’s the other way around), their granite exported the world over; that they chose to beautify: and the mile-long boulevard known as Union Street was built in 1801-05. This grandiose gesture – a feat of engineering which levelled St. Catherine’s Hill and carried the extra-wide thoroughfare across arches built over the previous lower Denburn and ancient market Green – almost bankcrupted the burghers, but brought the city fame to add to its already growing fortune.

Danzig Willie's Craigievar

As early as the mid-18th century, Aberdeenshire’s famous Baltic merchants continued to bring their fortunes back home; so the county continually thrived, regardless of the ups and downs of a world economy. Robert Gordon (1688-1731), founder of the Robert Gordon Hospital, now RGU, was famous for lending money made in the Danzig trade to Aberdeen businessmen who needed large working capital at even larger rates of interest. ‘Danzig Willie’ Forbes ploughed his fortune from the Baltic trade into the building of exquisite Donside château Craigievar between 1610-1625 on the family estate of Corse, when he was already landowner of Menie estate on the Belhelvie coast north of Aberdeen. John Ramsay, an Aberdeen merchant in 1758 built his palladian mansion at Straloch. Others followed suit. The county is today littered with stately Renaissance piles and Georgian mansions more appropriate to the valley of the Loire, the home counties or the wilds of Gloucestershire.

Within this mix stir a couple of ancient universities – one founded in 1495, the other in 1593, both fostered and supported through the centuries by Aberdonian merchant success.

The world joke about the Aberdonian who watches his pennies is not entirely untrue. And the tradition goes back farther than the fifteenth century.

Aberdeen Harbour shipping with ice floes in the 1920s

Even more relevant to the characterization, perhaps, is the fact that Aberdeen Harbour (presently run by the independent entity Aberdeen Harbour Board) is in fact the oldest running business enterprise in the United Kingdom of Great Britain, having been founded by charter signed by King David I in 1136. The business head of the kingdom resides on the edge of the North Sea.

But the bell tolled. The fishing industry worldwide killed its own small fry: when container ships and tankers beheaded sailing vessels, similarly Icelandic and Norwegian refrigerated freighters signalled the death knell for trawlers and owner-operated fishing boats; and Aberdeen’s shipbuilding days were over.

In the early 1970s, Britain was experiencing the three-day-week, unemployment stats for the country were the highest then known, and even the granite industry declined. Its clients metamorphosed from those who appreciated polished stone to faceless ‘councils’ and ‘road departments’ which required the precious quartz and gneiss resource to be ground into dust-like fragments which could be mixed with tar and spread in increasing quantities on the nation’s arteries.

It looked as if Aberdeen, like every other Scots city, might founder on the rocks of history.

North Sea Oil baled Aberdeen out on the death of shipbuilding and fishing

Then, lo and behold, along came oil. Bubbling up from below the North Sea in 1971, another industry was born. And the ‘silver city with the golden sands’ was perched on the shoreline, ready to receive it.

It is said that because of its very geographic isolation the county learned to take care of itself. And its humour has a lot to do with its character.

Now that there is talk of worldwide recession and dwindling of the oil resource, the current Aberdonian humorous response is ‘oil goes out, Donald Trump comes in’. This refers to the New York entrepreneur’s £1 billion golf course resort where sand dune reinforcing work has just begun on the very landholdings of Menie once owned by Danzig Willie. Aberdeenshire is not averse to turning full circle. It has so far weathered many storms through centuries of change.

So how did we fare in this last Great Storm? How did the planet fare?

Greece had 100ºF temperatures at Christmas and Abu Dhabi and Dubai had HAIL the day before the launch of the 2,717-feet Burj Khalifa tower in the first week of January.

Scotland and Aberdeenshire in particular were at the time experiencing the grip of an Arctic winter, with traffic on all roads down to minimum and gritting and snow-ploughing said by Council spokesmen to be ‘impossible’. While they reported worries that supplies of salt from the Cheshire salt mine might be exhausted, citrus orchards throughout the state of Florida were hit by snow and frost lingered long enough to decimate their total citrus crop for 2010.

At the same time Mount Nyamulagira in a sparsely populated area of the Democratic Republic of Congo erupted, threatening an enclave of rare chimpanzees.

Eureka and Haiti had 6.5 and 7.2 Richter earthquakes respectively, while inland Northern California and Southern Oregon, usually inundated with snow, received not one drop. States of emergency were declared for Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Francisco and Siskiyou counties and as the rainstorm headed east, floods swamped the Arizona desert, threatening homes and killing migrant birds. Las Vegas, Nevada had more rain in two days than for the total year of 2009 (1.69 inches). Alligators in the Everglades froze to death.

France’s Mistral blew early this year, wreaking havoc and damage to vines and vineyards in southern départements of Lyon and Provence; the Riviera harbours of St Tropez and Marseille suffered damage to private yachts.

Since the snowmelt arrived in Scotland in mid January, it is superfluous to mention that the resulting floods have routed gutters and drains in cities and country towns and overflowed ditches in outlying country areas. Perth (again) and Inverurie, Huntly and Kintore were unable to cope with the deluge. These levels of precipitation bring Aberdeen’s rainfall statistics for the year 2009 to mid January 2010 to 101.23 inches, for a county normally experiencing 33.6 inches per annum.

The Earth doesn’t like what we’ve been doing to her in the last thirty years. She’s beginning to fight back.