Skye High

 I had very low expectations for the trip. Not that any international travel can't be exciting and interesting and entertaining. But places like France and Italy and Japan and Australia come with well-known and lengthy pedigrees. Any visitor is bound to be wowed by the combination of culture and scenery and food. Not that Scotland didn't have lots to recommend it, and numerous enthusiastic reviews from friends who have been there and loved it. But I'm not a Scotch drinker, I'm not particularly fond of haggis, I don't play golf, and didn't relish a vacation where I would be driving over 700 miles, all of it on the other side of the road. Just returned, I can report back that I was wrong: in spite of those caveats, it's a destination well worth visiting.

There are numerous reasons. Aside from the road thing (and more about that in a minute) it's a very easy place to get around. They speak English (sort of), most everywhere is cashless, they measure distances in miles, and the people couldn't be friendlier. There were other tourists for sure, but with the exception of one or two sites, most spaces in and out were relatively uncrowded. There was an incredible range of things to see, from historic sites to museums to natural beauty on both an intimate level and way beyond. And while there are numerous places for a quick bite if you wanted pizza or a burger, every meal we had was a winner, some ranking up there among the best we've had, including one that's a contender for that title.

The capital of Edinburgh is a compact place, anchored by the castle in its middle. The most touristy place we visited, it's still worth a stop as it's the reason the city exists. But within a 20-minute walk from there is a top-notch art museum, a bohemian village along a stream, a royal palace and a challenging 40-minute hike up an 823 foot extinct volcano to overlook the city. Add in a wide variety of world-class restaurants, and you have a top tier, yet very manageable urban experience.

Of course, it's hard to talk about Scotland without getting away from the southern population centers and venturing into the Highlands. This sparely populated region (with 1/3 of the country's total land but just 4% its population) seems to contain more sheep and cows than people, not to mention some of the most dramatic scenery on the planet. You quickly venture into a landscape of endless farms and fields, ones that sweep to the horizon. And seemingly around every bend is another loch, freshwater lakes that look like endless seas until you note they do indeed have a far shore, with another just over the next hill.

But it is the poetically named Isle of Skye and surroundings that takes your breath away. A land of soaring mountains, deepest valleys and windswept grasses, the weather turns from brilliant to threatening to sinister and back again all in an hour, with numerous feints and surprises. With few roads, some paved, some gravel, most frighteningly narrow, you spend a lot of time going slowly and peeking around corners for oncoming traffic. When you do encounter another vehicle, it means a real-time negotiation as one of you pulls into a "Passing Place" bulge on the side to let the other go by. That kind of necessary cooperation and congeniality may be why it seems the locals are among the friendliest we've ever encountered. But in the end the scenery makes it all worthwhile, causing you to marvel at the harsh beauty that seems endless. 

Beyond that the rest of the Highlands seem chock-a-block full of castles of every type, from opulent to modest, from restored to ruined, and quaint tiny villages that barely merit a mention. Get away from the more well-known places like the castles Dunrobin and Urquhart, and you find a equal number of scenic monuments and natural highlights requiring some trekking, like the ruins of Skelbo or the falls of Fairy Glen. Yes, away from the few motorways the roads are often single tracked, but with farmland on either side as opposed to the edgeless paths of Skye, the stress level goes down by an order of magnitude.

There is much we didn't get to: the university and golfing seat of St. Andrews. the flocks of puffins off the Isle of Mull, the granite architecture of Aberdeen. Still, even without those attractions we came away with moving Scotland high up our list of sites to recommend. Or to put it in local terms, as the Hogmanay toast goes, "May the best ye've ever seen be the worst ye'll ever see." 

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Marc Wollin of Bedford loves to travel. You can see some pictures from the trip here. His column appears weekly via email and online on Substack and Blogspot as well as Facebook, LinkedIn and X.

Red House Ranch

 It's not an uncommon situation. We get older and start to have health issues, causing us to reexamine our lifestyle, do some research and make some adjustments. For most of us, that means changing our diets, trying to get a little more exercise, hopefully getting a little more sleep. Ike was in the same situation, but he went all in. He quit his job, got his brother and sister to do the same, moved back to his childhood home, and started a regenerative farm.

Ike had grown up in Van Etten, NY, on land first bought by his grandparents in 1928. They and subsequent generations tried different farming formulations to make a living, including dairy, poultry, crops and even firewood. But it got harder and harder, and his folks decided to stop farming in the mid-eighties. Ike, like many children who grew up on farms, wanted a different life. He left to get a degree in electrical engineering, got married and had kids. He went to work for a big telecommunications firm, got posted around the world from Singapore to Saudi Arabia, and eventually got divorced.

At one point he was in Kansas City and just for fun went to an agricultural conference. Not wanting to pay the extra five bucks to go into one of the special sessions, he stood outside and listened to a talk about what is now termed regenerative farming. In it, animals are raised using a symbiotic cycle of feeding, moving from pasture to pasture as opposed to being centrally fed. And that got him thinking.

Meanwhile, the life he was living was taking a toll. "I was having health and nutrition problems. I was overweight and had high blood pressure. I decided I needed to change my diet. I eliminated all gluten and dairy and started becoming highly aware of how what you eat profoundly affects your health and well-being." He shared his revelations with his brother Dave, a heating and air conditioning technician who was also having issues, including being a type 1 diabetic. Both moved toward Paleo and Keto lifestyles, eating more grass fed and pasture raised meat, eggs, and more vegetables, while eliminating carbs, seed oils, sugar, and other processed foods. It had an effect: both saw dramatic improvements in their health. At the same time they started to grapple with how to care for their aging parents, and the 200 acres that they would inherit. And an idea started to develop.

They attended conferences and lectures, and read dozens of books and articles. They invested in infrastructure like movable electric fencing for cattle, and eggmobiles to house chickens. Ike said, "My whole idea was to make an enterprise where we can actually pay ourselves a living wage, unlike most farmers who are just happy to be able to turn the tractor on and pay their basic bills, not necessarily making income." They put together a business plan, gave up their jobs and moved back home. And Red House Ranch was born. 

That was 10 years ago. The business has developed and grown to offer 100% pastured raised grass finished beef, lamb, eggs and pasture raised pork via their website to buyers in the Northeast. On their land they raise cattle and pigs using natural methods. The cattle graze on fresh pasture daily, a practice known as mob grazing. They are given access to supplemental minerals, including salt and seaweed to help them balance their diet and to assure optimum nutrient density. The pigs are raised using the silvopasture method, a practice that integrates trees, forage, and livestock grazing on the same land. For poultry and lamb they partner with other local farmers who raise their animals the same way. The result is that they can offer a complete menu of farm raised meats in a sustainable and humane manner.

They've also added other offerings based on their interests. Dave raises garlic and packages it as flakes and powder, and they work with a local neighbor to tap their maple tree to make syrup. In keeping with their approach to waste nothing, they offer pet treats, including smoked pork nose and tail. And Ike has developed a charcuterie product line, so it's only a matter of time before those products make an appearance on the website (Spoiler alert: we tried some on a visit and they're great.)

Dave and Ike's sister Chris helps with the marketing and online presence, while their mom helps pack eggs, and like all farm moms, patches their pants. As to the name, the house on the property was red when they were kids, and it's still red, so Red House Ranch was the obvious choice. The not so obvious choice: updating a century old farm to a modern regenerative operation. Says Ike "We've dedicated our lives to this type of farming because we're passionate about sustainability, and we want to help others improve their health, too."

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You can find the farm online at https://redhouseranch.net/. Marc's column can be found weekly via email and online on Substack and Blogspot as well as Facebook, LinkedIn and X.

Cutting the Cords

If you get new socks, you can keep the old ones or throw them out. Likewise for your underwear, your shirts, your pants, your entire wardrobe. Same goes for the pots in your kitchen, the phone in your pocket, even the vehicles in your garage. There is virtually nothing in your life that, when it gets old, needs updating or you just feel like a new version, you don't have the option of hanging on to or disposing of by one means or another.

Except the wires in your house.

While the watchwords of technological progress are "computing" and "cell" and of late "AI," perhaps one of the most foundational is "wireless." We have come to expect that almost any device we use is available in a form factor where it can go anywhere untethered. For power there are batteries, rechargeable and one-shot, while for connectivity there is WiFi and Bluetooth in multiple flavors. For sure, wires are still needed to go from the centers of the universe, be they power plants or data centers, to our own bases of operations. But once there what we need is packed into cells or tossed into the ether, waiting to be accessed as needed. As time goes on each is getting stronger and faster and increasing capacity, enabling us to go further and further from our own mothership for longer periods of time.

That means that the infrastructure that took it the last mile is now obsolete. No need to plug in a strip of rubber encased copper to make that final connection. In many cases you couldn't do that even if you wanted to: more and more devices are doing away with headphone jacks, network connections and even dedicated power ports. Wire-less might more correctly be called wire-none.

They were all necessary and essential at one time. Electrical to be sure, but also telephone, TV antenna, cable, intercom and more. Each was carefully installed by the original builder, a licensed professional or maybe even you. Each made perfect sense when it was put in, enabling appliances to power up or speakers to be heard. Wall plates were matched to décor, while any extensions were carefully nestled along baseboards to be as invisible as possible. 

But now? A look in your basement or closet or under your desk reveals a rat's nest of wires in different colors that used to be the circulatory system that connected you to the outside world. Now they sit fallow and forlorn, terminating in a forgotten menagerie of connectors, carrying nothing at best, decaying at worst. Were it any other aspect of your life, you would rip them out by the root, clear cut them to the bone, and toss them out or offer the best to charity. 

Not so here. The reasons vary. For one, they were likely installed in such a way that to pull them out would result in collateral damage. Unless you fancy repairing and repainting a strip of wall, better to just leave the wall plate as is and put a vase in front of it. And perhaps more alarming, it's possible that the butterfly effect of cutting a single seemingly useless wire might result in your entire system becoming unstable. 

I offer myself as an object lesson. On the outside wall of our family room is a bundle of wires that used to traffic sound to speakers inside and outside. Useless now, they were replaced with small Bluetooth versions that can go anywhere. I could, rather should cut them and spackle the holes. Yet I don't, as I'm no longer sure what they are actually connected to.  Meanwhile, in our basement there is a central point where all the old phone wires come in, a rainbow of coated copper that provided multiple lines. Obsolete since we switched to fiber years ago, I should be able to rip it all out with no effect. But I am afraid, very afraid, of the unintended consequences of a little tidying up. 

At some point we will sell our house and the new owners will come in and start fresh. Good for them. But until that time our walls shall remain intact with their contents slowly decaying within, testament to ancient technologies that required Point A to be connected to Point B. Rather than take a chance, I will leave it all alone, treating it as a shrine to some long-forgotten deity I don't wish to anger. 

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Marc Wollin of Bedford installed cable connections never used. His column appears weekly via email and online on Substack and Blogspot as well as Facebook, LinkedIn and X.

Father, I Hardly Know Ye

Father William Bausch is 96 years old. 

I have known him for 5 months. 

That means I have a lot of catching up to do.

I first became aware of him several years ago when we were moving my mother at the senior community where she lived into assisted living. As we were cleaning out her apartment she asked me to donate an art book she had to the facility's library. While I was walking there I noted a piece of paper sticking out: "In honor of Father Bausch, one of the kindness people I know." I asked the librarian about it. Turned out he was a retired priest who lived there, did services and gave lectures. Interesting, and I assumed that was the end of the story.

A year later when my mother died we were planning a small service. I recalled the note, and asked if Father Bausch was still around. He was, and I reached out. I knew I liked him when I got his voicemail: "You have reached the House of Bausch. The House is in. Bausch is not." When we connected I explained that my mother had passed, and though we were Jewish, wondered if he might be willing to officiate at a graveside service. He offered his condolences, recalling that when he gave lectures that my mom attended, and mentioned something about Jewish traditions, she always gave him a thumbs up. He continued: "Son, before we were religious, we were just people. I would be honored."

After the funeral we kept in touch: I sent him this column, he sent me some of his writings (turns out he had written more than 40 books). At one point I was going to be in the area, so I reached out and asked if he would be interested in having dinner. And so we began a conversation. 

Of course I asked about his history.  One of six children, he was a depression baby. His father was a baker with a great reputation as a decent man: "He was the Atticus Finch of New Brunswick. He never sold anything over a day old, and took all his leftovers to the Salvation Army at a time when Catholics weren't supposed to deal with other religions."

He got thrown out of high school and eventually enrolled in a seminary in Baltimore. Classes were few and poorly taught, and he was bored. But he discovered a huge library on the top floor of the building, and started reading, averaging a book a week. "In effect, we were learning nothing in class, which was good, because I didn't have to unlearn anything. And a negative turned into a positive."

He was ordained in 1955, and one of his early postings was as Chaplin to a lay movement within the church. One of their rules was that he couldn't talk until the meetings ended. "I was never so humiliated and humbled in my life. I was forced to be silent, and to listen, really listen, to their stories of how, day after day, they struggled to be good Christians." As he listened, a revelation came over him: "I began to realize what a privileged, innocent life I led. I knew I had found my priesthood's core: that they, the laity, would teach me, not the other way around."

From that day on he let the people of his parishes lead him, and became a staunch opponent of clericalism, which he describes as priests acting as "the father who knows all." He wrote about it in a magazine: "I just found that intolerable, and I was unwise enough to write about it, and they had a major fit over that view. They wanted to throw me out. I got called on the carpet so much that I wore the carpet out. But they made a compromise and sent me to the farthest parish until I couldn't go any further."

Luckily, it was a progressive parish which embraced his views. He kept writing, and discovered an audience that appreciated his approach. Of course, not all did: one website posted an article "How To Destroy Priesthood with the Help of Father William Bausch." But he kept preaching, kept sharing, kept letting his parishioners tell him how they wanted to be led. And he kept it up until he retired as an emeritus priest, and until recently, led services, lectures and storytelling in his retirement community for people of all faiths.

Sadly, serious health issues are slowing him down, not to mention just being 96. Yet he still wants to talk and share and listen and learn. It's selfish, I know , but as we get older we so infrequently get the chance to make a new acquaintance who has so much history and so much to offer. So if he's willing, the conversation will continue, and dinner is on me.

 -END-

Marc Wollin of Bedford is still trying to understand faith. His column appears weekly via email and online on Substack and Blogspot as well as Facebook, LinkedIn and X.