Wednesday, May 21, 2008

September 1994 Newsletter

Sharon is finally home from the hospital and rehab. I may be busier now than when she was in the hospital if that's possible. Half of the house had to be converted to handicap accessible. I ran across this old newsletter and thought I'd post it since it just took a quick scan to get it up. I'll add some detail to what's in it later.















Wednesday, May 7, 2008

Some Pictures From The Savannah Games




Surprise! Chuck and Anne Stoodley from FL came up to see me! They set up a tent at the Jacksonville FL games in January. I'll scan their pictures and post them next. The day of the games was Chuck's 75th birthday!







Congratulations to Chris Rollison who won the Sgt Rufus Calhoun Hodges Georgia Hussar Award for Athlete Of The Day, an award for sportsmanship. A picture of this years award and description is here.
With Chris are members of Clann Nan Con, "...founded in 1998 by a group of Civil War Reenactors looking for a new challenge..."who..."accurately portray the Scottish Highlanders of the 1730's & 1740's, an era of great turmoil, both in Scotland & the colony of Georgia." The military unit these reenactors represent evolved into the National Guard unit Georgia Hussars.

Chief Britt Brinson of Clann Nan Con. Britt's mother is a Calhoun and he often wears an ancient Colquhoun kilt.












Colquhoun Clan Tent. This may be the last games in our nation that require you to bring your own tent. They do supply tables and chairs. The Savannah Games have a hardcore base of loyalists that have supported this festival through good times and hard.




T Shirts for sale. I can mail these out if you like them.
Pin collection.


Shortbread tin I've been advised to not turn my back on for too long.



Hamish Mowat was a friend of mine who passed a few years ago. A native Scot, he used to tell me he'd smuggle "lights" back from Scotland in his golf bag to make haggis for his own use. His concession is thankfully run by his daughter and son-in-law now. I'm happy to see it each year at various festivals and know his memory lives on.










Colquhoun's own Stephanie Fox was on hand as nurse at the MacMedic tent again for here (and Stone Mountain in October). That's poison ivy and a yellow jacket (bee) on their banner. Also in Georgia they treat a lot of heat exhaustion.

Sunday, May 4, 2008

Alice Calhoun: Silent Screen Star

Last September at the Charleston Scottish Festival we had the pleasure of meeting Sue Gilbert who is writing a book on her relative, Alice Calhoun. This is a brochure Sue produced to pass out at events like the Scottish Festival.





The Alice Calhoun website is here.

Alice made movies during my favorite time period in history. For some reason I became enamored with The Roaring Twenties when I was a preteen, then enjoyed learning more about the time periods before (like WWI) and after the '20's (finding out what happened to the people who lived in this era). This may explain why I initially became so interested in Sir Iain Colquhoun.
I fixed up a way to watch an Alice Calhoun movie at the clan tent. I use a portable DVD player connected to a marine battery with aligator clips and an auto cigarette lighter connection available at Radio Shack.
The deep cycle marine battery will last all weekend. I also have a DVD of the Colquhoun history sold at Friends of Loch Lomond.
I found an original photo signed by Alice on e bay.
The silent movie and the FofLL history were on VHS tapes, so I did have to copy them onto a DVD disc using a recorder. Something else I have on DVD are two silent newsreels



of Sir Iain downloaded from British Pathe and transferred to a disc. These newsreels were almost surely originally produced with a narration.
I also keep on hand some general histories of Scotland recorded off The History Channel, but these usually don't get played too much. The tent pictures were taken just this past weekend at the Savannah Scottish Games.