:-6
Dear Pheasant,
I hope that you were "well Hung" before your husband chose you.
My daughter has had to go to the USA twice - being dragged screaming and kicking - but she rapidly found a "New Comers' Club" or FORMED ONE (She was never one for sitting and waiting for things to happen).
The first location was on the outskirts of Dallas and then after another few years in Scotland she found herself "posted" to Tampa and immediately repeated her performance.
You are allowed to join these clubs if you have been less than five years in the area.
My wife goes along with her when we visit her - rarely - and says that they are wonderful setups and she enjoyed her visits at their meetings as much as anyone. They certainly entertained her like royalty.
As a mere man I cannot comment apart, from the fact that my daughter says that apparently wherever I go, downtown, harbour, fishermens' wharfs, walks in the wild woods, I always appear to make friends very easily and without trying.
During one visit to one of Disneys Theme Parks a man who was obviously Native American made his way through the crowd with his wife on his arm and came to speak to me.
He told me that his ancestor was a Clan Chief in the western Islands of Scotland and his twin sons emigrated to south eastern Canada about 300 years ago and they married the twin daughters of an Ogala chief.
He told me that he recognised me as a Scot from away across the park and felt he just had to come and shake my hand and tell me his family history.
Now, last night, on the television was a hour long narrative named the "The Highland Empire" which was fascinating to me.
Apparently - these who were to found both the North Western Company, along with the French trappers, and The Hudson Bay Company, as well as exploring and mapping almost the whole wilderness - came from an almost identical culture in Scotland as the Indians had but which was destroyed and broken up by the Scottish aristrocracy mainly educated in England to have their Scottishness removed from them.
This, oddly enough was to backfire on them.
When they visited the northwest frontier they recognised how suitable it was going to be for settling highlanders who were being driven from their homes by the chiefs they had worshiped.
The only flaw in the entire plan was that they had.already destroyed the entire cultural structure and never again was a highlander to hold his chief in such high esteem
The natives in Canada recognised this almost instinctively and went out of their way to ensure that the leaders of the two groups should intermarry and only then could they really trust the dark, short, hard working people from across the sea.
Hope you find it interesting and the best of luck to your friends sojourn in the USA.
God bless youi.
randall
:)