NEW YEARS DAY.. WISCONSIN STYLE!

HAPPY “almost” NEW YEAR or in Scotland HAPPY HOGMANAY

I know this blog is supposed to deal with all things Scottish and I promise not to disappoint. Despite the content of this posting I will show you there is a connection between the University of Wisconsin and Scotland… wait for it.

This is an exciting week because our University of Wisconsin Badgers will be representing the Big Ten in the Rose Bowl football game on New Year’s Day. Though the Badgers are no strangers to post season bowl games, earning the right to participate in the Rose Bowl for the first time since 2000 is exciting. Wisconsin has appeared 7 times at the Rose Bowl with a record of 3-4 with their last win in 2000 against Stanford. With a student body of about 49,000 students, the campus is the “premier” public university system in Wisconsin. As an alumnus of the university that is the ugly stepsister to this school, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, the University of Wisconsin has never had to be designated by its city… Madison (or the People’s Republic of Madison). The following is a bit of an introduction about University of Wisconsin that is known for so much more than just football. Their football program aside, they are a noted powerhouse in Hockey bringing home the national NCAA title; 6 years in the men’s program and three in the women; one year 2006 when both the men and women held the NCAA title with a brother and sister on each team respectively. They have also earned 8 NCAA titles in Boxing, 1 in Basketball, 7 in men and women’s Cross Country, 1 in men’s Soccer, and 1 in Track and Field. The NFL has had hundreds of former Wisconsin students in their ranks as has the National Hockey League, Major League Baseball and even Basketball. And if you take a look at the last two Olympic women's hockey teams from the US and Canada you will find many former and current players who are members of or were past menbers of Badger Hockey women hockey teams.

Sometimes Wisconsin is nicknamed the “Alabama of the North” but having attended college in Alabama I can assure you that getting in to the University of Wisconsin is much more difficult. And like the excellent university it is has a lot of pride in the accomplishments and contributions of its alumni: (to name but a few)

11 Nobel Laureates

• Günter Blobel, Ph.D. 1967, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1999
• Alan G. MacDiarmid, M.S. 1952, Ph.D. 1953, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2000

Actors/Entertainment:

• Joan Cussack, actress
• `Don Ameche, actor
• Dale Chihuly, world class glass sculpturer
• Rich Dahm, producer and head writer of Stephen Colbert
• Ben Karlin co-creator of Stephen Colbert and John Stewart
• Jane Kaczmarek, actress
• Fredrick March, actor
• Frank Lloyd Wright, architect
• David Susskind, TV producer
• Boz Skaggs, musician

Other Notables:

• Charles Lindberg, renowned pilot
• Laurel Clarke and James Lovell, astronauts
• Lynne Cheney, former second lady (Dick Cheney also attended but didn’t complete his PH.d degree)
• Carol Bartz, CEO of Yahoo
• Donald Goerke, inventor of Spagetti-Os.
• Joyce Carol Oates, author and professor
• Peter Straub, author
• Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, author of THE YEARLING ( side note my dad was reading this book when I was born and I was named for the male protagonist)
• Walt Bogdanich, editor NY Times
• Michael Feldman, NPR’s “Whad’Ya Know”
• Iajuddin Ahmed, former president of Bangladesh
• Gaylord Nelson, former gov. of Wisconsin, US Senator but more importantly the founder of EARTH DAY!!
• Lawrence Eagleburger, former US Secretary of State
• Howard Engle, physician in the landmark lawsuit against the Tobacco industry
• Russ Feingold, US Senator
• Herb Kohl, US Senator
• S.I. Hayakawa, former US Senator of California
• Frank Anders, Medal of Honor recipient
• John Atanasoff (Ph,d) inventor of electronic digital computer
• Michael Dhuey, co-inventor of Mackintosh II and the ipod!!
• John Muir, naturalist and founder of the Sierra Club ( more on him in the next post as he is one of the Scottish connections)
• Elroy “crazylegs” Hirsh, NFL football
• Harry Steenbeck, Vitamin D researcher
• Paul K. Link, UW alumni who as biochemist in his lab at the University of Wisconsin discovered the antiqoagulant WARFIN (by the way he spend time in Scotland at the University of St. Andrews.

And then there is their world renowned Marching Band…

And now what is the Scottish connection?

Well while working on my latest project I have been researching the history of the Scottish Earl of Morton, who was Lord Dalkeith before he married a Stewart princess in 1458. As part of the research I have been looking at all the possible holdings that the Earl and subsequent family members may have had in Scotland. Well there was a Dalkeith Castle from the early 12th century held by the Graham clan and then in the 14^th century by the Douglas family of which James, Earl of Morton was a member.

Dalkeith castle as it may have looked like in 14th century

In 1548 a new castle was built by the Regent Morton but was later sold to the Scott family (Duke of Buccleugh) who have had it ever since. The new castle is a palace that was built for grandeur and not defense. As the Buccleugh family has not lived in the palace since 1914, the palace has been used during WWII by Polish troops stationed in Scotland, and in the early 70’s and 80’s it was home to a computer company. However in 1985, Dalkeith Palace was leased to the University of Wisconsin’s study abroad program and has been home to about 80 students and staff per semester ever since. The program is in cooperation with the Scottish parliament where students work with members of the Scottish parliament as student interns. At the moment this is an undergraduate program, but I hope in the future it will be open to graduate students.

Dalkeith Palace today

On Friday’s post I will be sharing the story of one of Wisconsin’s most notable alumni who began life in Scotland, naturalist John Muir.

HOLIDAYS ANTHOLOGIES

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!!!

Well with a few days until Christmas I know you are busy, some may be to the point of exhaustion. Boy am I glad those crazy days are gone for the moment. When my kids were little, Christmas took on mythic proportions. I was just happy to make it to the first day of their break after weeks of Christmas parties for all the activities they were in as well as the school concerts and church concerts. Having two children eight years apart meant one year I was at a Kindergarten music concert in the morning and a seventh grade music concert all in the afternoon. One of the things as a reader of romance I did to keep my sanity was to read when I could, but there was never enough time to sit down and read a whole book, so thank God for Christmas Anthologies. Just enough story to read while hiding in my bathroom in a soak before the hungry hoards came home from school or from hours of sledding or snowman building. The following are some of my favorites: Though keep in mind the covers may have changed with subsequent publishing years. I can’t say I have liked all of the stories in the books but even if you got one or two great feel good reads it was worth the price. Though some are now out in ebook formats, most can be found in a good used bookstore.

The first book is A STOCKINGFUL OF JOY, which included stories from some of romance’s leading ladies: Jill Barnett, Mary Jo Putney Justine Dare and Susan King. This is the book I pickup every year because of the King story (“Snow Rose”) not because it is set in Scotland but because it is just one of those “curl-your-toes-feel-good-this-time-of-year “kind of stories. That it continues from one of her earlier books THE RAVEN’S WISH, makes it all the more enjoyable. Here is what is says on Amazon:

“Susan King's Snow Rose, set in 1573 in the rugged highlands of Scotland, tells the passionate story of Catriona MacDonald and Kenneth Fraser, prominent members of opposing clans. Catriona is in desperate need of help, and the snow rose--a cherished brooch given to seal a sacred pact made long ago by a Fraser family member--guarantees help from the Fraser family, or so Catriona believes. When the Frasers must regretfully deny Catriona her one wish, Kenneth Fraser swears to protect her, but he never dreamed he would lose his heart in the process." A total YUM read!!!

The next anthology is A GIFT OF LOVE includes such heavy hitters as Jude Deveraux and Judith MacNaught, but also Kimberly Cates, Andrea Kane and Judith O’Brien. It was the Kimberly Cates story “Gabriel’s Angel” that tore at my heart and I read this one each year. It is the tale of a kindness from a wealthy child to one the city's countless London waifs that kept the dream of kindness alive for 16 years for our heroine until the young girl had to grow up and put those dreams away or can she? I love this story. Other stories in the anthology include: DOUBLE EXPOSURE (McNaught), JUST CURIOUS (Deveraux), YULETIDE TREASURE (Kane) and FIVE GOLD RINGS (O’brien).

The next anthology has all of the books set in Scotland in different periods of time, again from some of the leading ladies of romance in that period in A SEASON IN THE HIGHLANDS. The stories include : UNFINISHED BUSINESS (Jude Deveraux), FALL FROM GRACE (Jill Barnett- a revised version of a previous published story of same name) COLD FEET (Geralyn Dawson), THE MATCHMAKER (Pam Binder) and THE CHRISTMAS CAPTIVE (Patricia Cabot, and for those who don’t know this Meg Cabot/Jenny Carrol who writes all the Princess Diaries and YA books- yes she got her start in writing Romance). I had two favorites in this book, first the one by Jill Barnett, which was a revised with more filling of story from the Highland Fling anthology. The story had me laughing at the ineptitude of the Grace and her band of misfits and comments from them like “Look I have nabbed a Mcnab.” Just plain fun the kind you want to relief the stress of the holiday. The second one liked was Pam Binder’s THE MATCHMAKER because it has contemporary opposites thrown back in time to Queen Mary of Scotland’s court.

The final anthology I would mention, and believe there are so many more I could metion, are from two of Romance’s senior leading ladies Judith McNaught and Jude Deveraux in SIMPLE GIFTS. Each author has two books: one an historical and one a contemporary. The titles of the stories (that may have appeared in other published anthologies) include: JUST CURIOUS (historical) and CHANGE OF HEART (contemporary) both by Jude Deveraux and MIRACLES (historical) and DOUBLE EXPOSURE (contemporary) both by Judith McNaught.

Of these four stories I especially enjoyed CHANGE OF HEART because this stars a member of Deveraux’s signature family, the Montgomerys of Colorado. A 12-year-old geek of a boy match-makes his mother with a stern powerful member of the fabled family, much to the delight of the rest of the Montgomery family. My other favorite is MIRACLES by McNaught because it is the story of two of her favorite secondary characters, Nicki and Julianne Skeffington from her Westmorland books. Though I wish she had given this couple a longer story to enjoy.

And finally a little holiday cheer, I gave the socks the week off, enjoy….