Morag's Eyrie

I walked the West Highland Way!

In August this year I walked the West Highland Way with my sister Elaine and her husband Geoff. It's 95 miles long; we did it in 7 days, minus a 6.5 mile stretch between Tyndrum and Bridge of Orchy (not my fault, these two auld farts insisted we get the bus to shorten the longest day, which would've been 19.5 miles).

Here are the photos, on Flickr.

Here is a nice one of us, exactly halfway along the West Highland Way:

 

 

And other stuff I've been writing: Open Science Report, Briefing and Videos now available

My most recent project (in May of this year) has just made the outputs, created by me, available. I found this project really interesting and inspiring; I got to travel around the country interviewing some of the UK's pre-eminent open science and citizen science advocates and practitioners. They were all brilliant, and kind, and very open with me (no surprise about the open-ness but they also gave of their time very generously).

For more, follow this link.

Village Aunties: Feminist Vigilantes for an Independent Socialist Scotland

The new blog, Village Aunties, is up and running with three inaugural posts! Please spread the word, and read and comment on the new blog if any of it is of interest to you.

If you think you might like to contribute to Village Aunties by writing something, read the Manifesto, Take Heed (guidelines) and Commenting Policy to see if you like what we're doing. Then, email me or post here or tweet or something to let me know and I'll get you all set up.

The inaugural posts are:

Kill the Goddess and Birth the Cyborg by mhairi

Some thoughts on assisted suicide by Morag Balfour

Weegies, teuchters, neds and chavs: microaggressions and pejorative language in Scotland by ME!

NB: Morag's Eyrie, this right here, my personal blog, will continue.

Help Me Start a New Collaborative Scottish Feminist Blog!

It's the start of a new political era in Scotland, and I want to make a long-standing dream come true: I want to start a shared feminist blog, providing political and cultural commentary about and for Scotland. I hope that it will become an online community as well, as we generate discussion around blog posts. NB: This blog will be a completely separate beast to Morag's Eyrie, which is my personal blog and has been largely inactive for a long while.

 

My vision is that it will be Red/Green/Yellow/Purple/Pink: i.e., left-wing (socialist, anarchist, etc.), green for the environment, pro-Scottish independence, 100% feminist, and LGBTQ friendly. I'm thinking of something like Bella Caledonia for feminists, or Tiger Beatdown for Scotland!

 

The flowering of amazing social media, and communities around such, in the past year or so has totally inspired and revitalised me; we now have a range of media for news, opinion and discussion in Scotland that represents a genuine high-quality alternative to the traditional, moribund, corrupt mainstream media. But we don't yet have a clear social media outlet for a feminist voice, or rather, the full range of feminist voices.

 

I know so many women (and pro-feminist men) in Scotland who are brilliant, radical, incisive, creative and wise, and I hope that a few of you will want to join me in forming an initial nucleus of bloggers and supporters to get going. Let me know if you're interested and we'll get a kick-off meeting set up! Please pass the word on.

 

Me in the stairwell in Cathédrale Saint-Pierre de Genève

Me in the stairwell in Cathédrale Saint-Pierre de Genève - you get a very nice view of the city and lake, and very sore thighs by climbing the tower. Lovely pic by Caroline!