As I get re-accustomed to late nights at work during production and feeling tired by 10 on a Friday night, I find myself relying on things like my freelance work with the Clan Currie Society to keep my writing brain going. While I like using the subject matter to give me a better understanding of my own Scottish roots, the interviews and writing enable me to not lose my skills as I become more of an editor than a reporter.
The profiles and press releases, the feature articles and artsy folk are different than my novel, and that's part of the point. I've learned a lot about Robert Burns, for example, as well as his biographer, James Currie. I've attended Highland Games and seen some of the strange folk who dress up as druids. Decked out in the regalia of centuries past, these folk may seem odd, but at least they enjoy themselves.
I've met some strange Sinclairs too, but I won't go into that. Suffice it to say that whether an ancestor of mine discovered America or not, he didn't stay long enough to stake much of a claim. That's just my opinion.
4 comments:
Staking a claim wasn't Prince Henry's intention. Maybe larger interests were at work.
Just as in the publishing world, it takes a degree of publicity to secure one's place in history. Regardless of the claim, I doubt Sinclair was the first European to discover the continent. There must have been other fishers and missionaries who ventured out, perhaps St. Brendan, for example. I certainly don't believe it was Columbus. Vespucci has more rights to the claim than he does; at least the continent received his name.
I had always been taught that Sinclair merely owned the vessel and that it was a Currie who chartered the boat.
Perhaps more likely that the MacMhurich told everyone that he had in a bardic poem
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