YakimaGulagLiteraryGazett

It is bgeautiful and sunny in the Gulag, in fact I got to go to the fair on Dollar Day with my daughter and her family. It was crowded. We ran into many old friends, especially She and I did. But so did my son-in-law. One person I knew here is in the nursing home, I never thougth I'd see THaT day! We ran into her son, that is how we knew. She was a major power in local party politics too.

I am delighted to say someone from the Pictish Anti-Defamation Society has discovered my picture of a Pictish wild boar. Of interest to me in Sarajevo, was that an artist in Bascarsija had copper plate work with wild boars that looked Pictish to me, and my first view of a stecak showed wild boars. I was fascinated with stecci before I knew my family had some Bosnian ancestry, because of this famous stecak which was in an art book belonging to my late mother, and which I got to personally examine in Sarajevo.

Pictish people were early inhabitants of Scotland and Ireland, in Ireland they were called 'Fir Bolg' which means 'Men with bags'. They were put into menial labor by the Celts. They were called Picts by the Romans, because they were elaborately tatooed.

Some say the famous vitrified forts in Scotland were build by Pictish people.

Due to the fact I have a lot of hair, my mother called me a little Pict, and a Scottish-Austrian friend of mine said I was very Pictish. But t he same hairyness is not unusual in Balkans people either. In fact it is considered a mark of beauty!

I think the Pictish people were far more widespread in antiquity than just the British Isles. More later when there is more time.