The MacBitseach

Death is more universal than life; everyone dies but not everyone lives. A. Sachs He not busy being born is busy dying. Bob Dylan There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval. George Santayana Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It's the transition that's troublesome. Isaac Asimov As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so life well used brings happy death. Leonardo da Vinci Think not disdainfully of death, but look on it with favor; for even death is one of the things that Nature wills. Marcus Aurelius Antoninus The fear of death is more to be dreaded than death itself. Publilius Syrus As we look deeply within, we understand our perfect balance. There is no fear of the cycle of birth, life and death. For when you stand in the present moment, you are timeless. Rodney Yee Death is not the worst; rather, in vain To wish for death, and not to compass it. Sophocles There are worse things in life than death. Have you ever spen...

I don't know what it's like where you live but here in Vancouver we live in an incredibly rich and diverse cultural smorgasbord. It's not a great melting pot. There are sections of the city that are dominant in one culture or another and celebrating your own culture is encouraged. It's great to be able to go to the second largest Chinatown in the world, (San Francisco is bigger), or go to Fraser street and shop the huge East Indian market, or go to the Greek Festival, or the serene Japanese Gardens, or the Italian coffee shops on Commercial Drive, or Gung Haggis Fat Choy; a Scots/Chinese fusion dinner where you can get haggis won ton. Everything about Vancouver is related to this cultural diversity. Every weekend is another festival celebrating another culture. There are very few other cities where I could walk down the street wearing a kilt and get 99% positive comments from men and women. It has to do with the multicultural aspects of the city, with the acceptance ...

Now that it's Autumn, I'm feeling a little better about the weather. Today it was 16C (61F) and I found that quite nice. I don't mind the cold but the heat gets to me. I got to thinking of the 'stones' it takes to go commando in winter in some parts of Canada. Here in Vancouver it's not so bad, but the rest of the country gets a bit chilly! Here are my Top 10 Canadian terms for 'Going Commando" 10 - Inukshuking 9 - Catching snowflakes 8 - There's an extra puck on the ice 7 - Feeling blue 6 - Ready to salt the road 5 - Playing shinny 4 - Snowballing 3 - Curling 2 - No tape on my stick And the number one Canadian term for 'Going Commando': 1 - Shovelling the sidewalk!

For some strange reason, people seem to feel it's perfectly fine to approach a kilted guy they don't know and tell them what's wrong with the way they dress. Now, if some woman stops me on the street and informs me my kilt pleats are stuck up in the back and my ass is being shown to the world, I'll thank her. (Whether I flip the pleats back down depends on whether I knew they were up in the first place. lol) But if she approaches me and tells me my socks are the wrong colour, or my kilt pin is too high on my kilt, or my sneakers shouldn't be worn with my kilt, I usually give that annoyed looking smile. That almost always works. And everyone seems to know how I should dress. I've been given fashion tips from fully clad pipers to hunched over, twitching junkies. You'd think either one of them would have something better to do with their time. I mean, while giving advice they are even more irritating than normal. Okay, maybe not the piper. The point is, I knew ...

First, I like wool kilts. Two of my most frequently worn kilts are wool kilts. Another is a wool blend. Still others are poly/viscose. The point is, I am not anti-wool. I am pro-truth. Many people's opinions of what makes a kilt is based in pride of heritage and traditions. I understand and respect that. But a kilt that has lasted generations while only having been worn twice a year for the last 50 years is not a good test of a fabric's durability. One of my poly/viscose kilts has been worn on the entire Appalachian Trail, over 2200 miles of extreme temps from snow in the mountains to some blistering, muggy, miserable days. At the end of the trail the pleats were still holding. Even I was surprised and offered him a new kilt for the old one. He won't give it back until he's walked 8000 miles in it! I dare say a wool kilt would not have fared so well. Some of the qualities of wool are better for kilts than poly/viscose but the reverse is also true. Wool pros: ...