Jumping Right In

So, after beginning this venture into the world of blogging on Myspace, I'm jumping in here as a way of making access a bit easier, less insular, and maybe even to widen my own horizons. This will be a way to write of the comings and goings here on Skye as seen through the eyes of this Michigan man, transplanted to the Isle of Skye. It will be a rant, an autobiography, a way of remembering and of expounding on the state of affairs of the world, and on small pieces of it.

I came to the Isle of Skye from Michigan, a land I never planned to leave. Thing is, you can go all your life knowing the where of where you are supposed to live, but what seems to trump that, or at least did so for me was the who, in who you are supposed to be with, and that's what brought me here. My first girlfriend moved to Scotland shortly after she was old enough to leave home, and for about 25 years we were completely out of touch with each other. Then a fellow, Tim, walks into the Health Sciences Library at Bronson Hospital, where I worked. "Do you know where Kate is?" He asked me. "No idea." Was my reply, I hadn't kept in touch, and could only assume she might still be in Scotland, which was what I told him. Turns out he had a phone number and an address, and gave it to me saying that I should give her a call. Well, we got back together via the internet and long distance phoning. After a couple of years of that, and a couple of visits back and forth I quit my job, put my house up for sale, packed away fifty years worth of life and moved to Skye. We were married shortly thereafter, and now we live in the house she had, on her croft in a pretty remote area of the Misty Isle (aka Isle of Skye). It's a 30 minute drive to the nearest town, and that's a pretty small one. i find work where and as I can, and try to make some kind of contribution to making our life here better. All in all, it's a paradise here, a paradise with thorns, i once called it.

So that's where we're starting from here. This will be very much a work in progress. Since moving here I've dropped a few steps in keeping up with the ongoing e-revolution and web advances. Baby steps, I tell myself. Except that I'm too impatient, and want to start running and leaping around right away. I welcome all suggestions, criticisms, and of course, praise. Tips on how to do this better, or things to add, requests and advise are all desperately needed if this is to be a going, and growing concern. I'll add here the welcoming blurb from my blog on Myspace, as that seems to be a fairly good jumping off point, then I'm going to post this and go look at how to put some pictures on here.

*******************************
14 December 2008

So who the hell am I anyway? I mean, anyone and seemingly everyone has a Myspace page, you can’t throw a stone without hitting someone showing something there. So why in the world would anyone turn to MY page, and who the hell is this Jim Shiley, anyway? Fair enough. So here’s where I’m supposed to tell all and reveal all huh? No fuckin’ chance! Well, OK, maybe a little bit.

I was your average youngest child in a baby-boomer household, three siblings born to Mom and Dad, who were married at the tail end of World War Two (The Big One), born just after Eisenhower was sworn in, with not all that much worth mentioning until long after he was gone, his replacement was gone, and HIS replacement was about out of there too. So that puts us up to about the time of Nixon, well, the tail end of Johnson if you wish. It’s easier for me to think in those terms, those being Presidential terms. Year by year is just too slow to cover the ground needed for the first fifteen or sixteen years, but with presidents I can skip at least four years at a time. Except for Kennedy. His was cut short. Something that I suppose I shouldn’t view through rose colored glasses like I do, being the student of history that I am, heck, with 38 credit hours of post-graduate work in History I guess you could say it was more than just a passing interest, but I digress. Kennedy’s murder (hey, let’s call it a murder, sounds a little less antiseptic than an assassination) had a big impact on me at the time, and more so as I got older. Anyway, skipping ahead through a lot of years we get to the Sixties. Well, we HAD to, didn’t we.. I mean baby-boomers always get around to ranting about the Sixties, don’t we?

I guess you could say I got involved in the Sixties kind of late. I mean, I was only 17 when 1970 was half over, and that was officially the end of the Sixties, as opposed to when they emotionally, and culturally ended in say, 1973-4-or 5. So instead of becoming a lawyer, a politician, or maybe say a History professor or deep-sea archaeologist dinosaur hunter, I ended up becoming an activist in the radical/revolutionary movement of the times. More fun some might think, but a whole lot less lucrative. I never really made the big-time with it, though I did have my moments. Imagine my surprise, pride, and amusement when I found on reading through some of my FBI and CIA files (Thank you Freedom of Information Act), that they had taken us, and me, more seriously than you could imagine. Almost as seriously as we took ourselves.

So look.. I’ve got a lot of ground to cover here. For cripes sake, I’m only up to the beginnings of the 1970’s, and here we are in… what century are we in now anyway? So this long-term rant will wind it’s way through the revolution, through drugs, sex and rock & roll, concert producing, wide ranging hitchhiking travels across America, lots of music, friends and lovers (sometimes they were both), various weird jobs, and strange people, marriage, children, divorce, more weird jobs and strange people, and finally, immigration to a wild and strange and awesomely beautiful land.

More from me later.