Windmills and Change

There's no major interstate that connects St. Louis to Minnesota, where we visited my husband's sister for Thanksgiving this year. We set out on Wednesday morning, driving through thick banks of fog on I-70 and then headed north on Highway 61. We passed mile after flat mile of fields on either side of the two-lane highway, the dark earth visible under the short, pale-yellow spikes of leftover crops. In all the years I've lived in this country, it never fails to amaze me how the land looks the same no matter which direction we go.

Every time we take a road trip, my husband asks me to take photos of the windmills we pass on the way. "C'mon, just one really good shot," he says. I comply reluctantly saying, "How many pictures of windmills can a person take?" I complain because they all look the same and my limited gifts of photography make it hard to capture how majestic they are; those tall sentinels of the fields. For example, the first photograph here is in Colorado last year, the second in Iowa this weekend:

As we drove, I pondered the ways in which the unchanging, stoic farmland belies the deep ideological division in my adopted country. I tried to imagine the social media landscape imposed on the physical world: the political cartoons with hundreds of comments full of righteous indignation, anger and even hatred spewing  back and forth in shrill, locked caps. While the windmills circle in silent witness, the internet is a noisy inferno, as we tear each other apart mercilessly for our differing beliefs. When my husband tells me that we're in Iowa, the first word I think of is "caucus" and I Google to find out if it is a "blue" or "red" state.

To my surprise as we were driving home this weekend, I saw on my Facebook feed that artist Shepard Fairey had posted his own patriotic image, called "Power Up Windmill":

     He wrote on his website: "I believe very strongly that green energy is the only way for the United States to achieve energy independence, create valuable technology, and protect the environment. I created this windmill image as a patriotic symbol of the green energy mission."

It was a small coincidence that seemed timely. Questions about how we will resolve the problems in the environment are coming to the forefront.  No matter what our political affiliation, we take our kids to school and go grocery shopping together side by side. We all say that we want the best possible future for our children, but in all this rolling, open land we adults cannot seem to find one square inch of common ground to stand upon. What progress can be made in a country where some people don't believe in the science behind climate change and continue to deny global warming? I take pictures of the world in the fading light, trying to interpret the story of the American landscape through my camera lens, and to find some comfort in the beauty of the sunset:

 

Dunfermline

I’ve wanted to write for a while about the places I grew up in Scotland. Many people during my time in St. Louis have been kindly curious about Scotland. People tell me that their grandfathers or grandmothers were Scottish. They often say that it’s one of the places they dream of visiting one day. Some might simply be looking to enjoy the pretty scenery and a dram of Island whiskey. Others are looking for castles and a greater sense of history, both global and personal. Then again, others are looking for mystery in the form of a glimpse of the mythical monster. Of course, a country’s not romantic at all when you live there. Growing up, my brothers and I played cowboys and Indians. We ate salad without dressing and thought lasagna was an exotic foreign dish. We were obsessed with Star Wars and Indiana Jones. Braveheart hadn’t yet been made and we’d never heard of William Wallace.

 

The Firth of Forth in Fife, Scotland(© Copyright M J Richardson 

and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence)

Pretty, ain’t it? I was born in Dunfermline, Fife. This is a view of the large river that separates my home town from Edinburgh, Scotland's capital city. The road bridge is at the top of the photo and the rail bridge is underneath. When I was a child I didn't understand that the train went through the structure. I used to imagine it was some kind of rollercoaster ride! It takes about twenty-five minutes to drive or take the train into Edinburgh. The truth is this photo doesn’t even do justice to how beautiful the Firth is when the sun’s shining on it. When I went back for my cousin Laura’s wedding in 2006 I couldn’t believe how much lovelier it was than I remembered.

Dunfermline was the ancient capital of Fife, home to Robert the Bruce (the guy who was the baddie in Braveheart) and steel mogul Andrew Carnegie. This is Dunfermline Abbey, where Robert the Bruce was buried:

 

Dunfermline Abbey(© Copyright Andy Stevenson 

and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence)

And this is a small glimpse of beautiful Dunfermline Public Park, actually we always called it 'The Glen', which Andrew Carnegie bought for the people of Dunfermline in 1902.

 

Pittencrief Park, aka 'The Glen'(© Copyright PaulMcIlroy 

and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence)

When we were children , we thought it was great fun to feed the red squirrels in the park. They ate straight out of our hands like pets. We also loved playing in the trampoline park, where they had about ten small trampolines built right into the ground. I don't know if it's still there.

As, my nana Maisie always used to say though “It’s no all glamour!”. When I was a baby, my mum and dad lived in an apartment on ‘Tweed Street’ in Abbeyview. It looks something like this today:

Abbeyview Flats

(© Copyright Paul McIlvoy and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence)


My mum and dad were only eighteen and nineteen when they moved in; that was 1971. Washing graffiti off the walls of the ‘close’ (a small tunnel that connected the apartments) became a daily chore for my dad. When he finally succeeded in removing the spray paint, the vandals came back and gouged their ugly message straight into the brick itself. In Scotland, milk used to be delivered in glass bottles to the front door step. It was the kind of place where the dogs were so neglected that they learned to break the tops off the bottles and steal the cream.

A lot of Dunfermline today is much nicer than our old flats though! There's been a lot of new development
over the years:

 

 

(© Copyright Paul McIlvoy and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence)

My uncles, aunts and cousins on my dad's side of the family still live and work in Dunfermline. Now it's my dream to take my husband and daughter back to Scotland. I can't wait to show Sophia the old country, and for her to meet her extended family ... all the wee cousins!

I found the images here at http://www.geograph.org.uk/ They say: "The Geograph British Isles project aims to collect geographically representative photographs and information for every square kilometre of Great Britain and Ireland". It's been a cool website for me as an expat. Check it out!