Highland Line Number 45

By now you probably know that at 3:15 yesterday afternoon, terrorists attacked Glasgow Airport, just an hour-and-a-half drive from Comrie, an airport we have used often and know vert well. Our reaction? Shock and dismay, but also relief and thankfulness that no lives were lost. Sadly we face the sobering reality that such an act can be attempted even here in Scotland, a country where relations among races are more harmonious than not and where the Muslim community has, thankfully, been devoid of the radical imams who broadcast Islamist rhetoric, or worse.

Our houseguests, John and Lynn Kelly, left this morning by car for the Northern Highlands, but our next visitor, Don's cousin Naomi Bunis, was to fly into Glasgow Airport tomorrow. We have been in e-mail contact with her and she is still coming. Whether the airport will be back to full capacity remains to be seen, but it is operating, albeit under very trying conditions for travelers, agents, flight crews, security agents, and all the service personnel who keep airports running as well as they do. We have just seen TV footage of passengers and their luggage trolleys queuing outside because there is limited room inside the undamaged part of the terminal. Fortunately, the sun is shining and the rain has stopped…for now. Later today Naomi will check with her air carrier and let us know what will happen. She will spend a couple of days seeing Glasgow before coming to us.

June was a busy month filled with some extra social occasions in addition to our usual routines, a lot of gardening, and toward the end of the month, our first two sets of visitors for this year.

Blogs at the beginning of June reported on our May trip to Ischia in Italy, which also included a brief stop in Naples and Rome. Check out those blogs for some super photos of that gorgeous country as well as of our generous hosts. This month, we took a little field trip closer to home to Scotland's only so-named lake, the Lake of Menteith, which is yet another lovely spot not far from here. You can see photos on the blog for the 11th. From the 25th onward you can see photos from the various places we took daughter Wendy and our granddaughter Jami as well as Lynn and John Kelly who just left this morning.

Don's been working hard on his golf game and I have begun to do the machine-quilting on a quilt I'm making for our bed. I only bought the fabric in 2000 and began making the blocks in 2002, so I suppose it's about time I finished it up, don't you? Don also just finished up another course. The evaluations have just come in and students had glowing comments about the course's relevance and applicability to their day-to-day work situations, real music to Don's ears.

School children around here just finished school last week so I suppose that means it is officially summertime. We wish someone would tell the weather people! Our garden and newly planted flowers could do with a lot more sun than we've had lately. Truth to tell, we would appreciate it too, and so would our guests. (This is what I get for saying more than once recently that we needed rain. We've had enough for a while, though, and are now ready for a change.) I'm thinking that most of you would be happy to share some of your sunshine and especially the heat.

Enjoy your summer and your 4th of July celebrations. Our next scheduled holiday event around here is the Deil Cauldron's Bastille Day Barbecue and Petanque Challenge on the 14th but there'll be no franks or fireworks around here (no francs either, for that matter!).

Happy 4th! Keep safe.

Love,

Lynn and Don