Free Republic

EDINBURGH, Scotland, July 23 (UPI) -- Scottish health officials are putting new restrictions on how long people can play bagpipes, because excessive use of the instrument can damage hearing. The new guidelines suggest that pipers should play for a maximum of 24 minutes a day outside and only 15 minutes a day in a practice room, The Scotsman reported. The bagpipe, in addition to being a very loud instrument, is also an enduring cultural symbol in Scotland. Scottish soldiers have been known to scare off enemies with noise from bagpipes. Although military officials support the guidelines -- saying they are...

All, as noted in the thread Prayer requested for Sionnsar's family, I have a new, quite significant, and high priority pull on my time that will continue for an indefinite period of time. I will do what I can, and newheart and Huber long ago volunteered to help out with posting and pinging the Traditional Anglican ping list during my times away (traveling). Unfortunately I think these two are even busier than your truly --- but we'll do what we can to keep the Traditional Anglican ping list going. For the Washington State ping list I have mostly been pinging...

EDINBURGH, Scotland — It’s drizzly and not yet 10 a.m. when a bagpipe tune floats out onto the Royal Mile, Scotland’s most famous street. Follow the sound across the cobblestones, past Clarinda’s Tea Shop and push open the wooden door of Bagpipes Galore, filled with the smell of fresh wood and machinery, and duck into the backroom where Joe Hagan stands. He never sits.You don’t get to be one of Scotland’s most acclaimed bagpipe makers by sitting around. “This is not an office job,” he says, explaining why there is no chair or stool in his cluttered workshop. “I need...

A teenager has been told to pipe down by his local council - literally! Andrew Caulfield, 13, from Paisley in Scotland, was told to keep quiet after his neighbours complained about him playing the bagpipes in his garden. The council decided to take action after everyone in his street signed a petition to get him to stop. But his mum, Elaine, is angry, because Andrew is taking part in a scheme run by the same council to encourage kids to take up the traditional instrument. She accused the council of being "two-faced" because they also wanted him to take...

Commando: Known for his experience in Somalia, Matt Eversmann takes on a new mission: music. In a tailored suit and silk tie, he teaches the finer points of leadership to executives in corporate America. In Army camouflage, he molds young adults at the Johns Hopkins University into future combat leaders. Master Sgt. Matt Eversmann excelled in some of the military's most grueling schools, and he led a team of commandos in the bloody battle that inspired the book and movie Black Hawk Down. A colleague described him as an "Army rock star." So with two years remaining in his 20-year...

MEXICO CITY – In a tree-shaded neighborhood at Mexico City's southern edge, the sound of bagpipes breaks the silence of a balmy March evening. A dentist, a blacksmith, a high school student and a criminal lawyer – Mexicans dressed in tartan plaid kilts – are playing the songs of centuries past. They call themselves the St. Patrick's Battalion Pipe Band, after a little-known battalion of Irishmen who fought for Mexico in the Mexican-American War of 1846-48. In a country known for mariachi music, and where wearing a kilt and playing the pipes can draw ridicule, these 15 men and women...

CAMP FALLUJAH, Iraq (Nov. 06, 2004) -- Amid the thunder of artillery and weapons fire, pipers are heard around Camp Fallujah blaring melodies from their age-old Celtic instruments. Every day Lt. Col. Paul Sweeney, judge advocate lawyer, and Sgt. Steven Ammer, motor transportation specialist, hone their piping skills, unknowingly raising spirits as their tunes float on the wind to fellow Marines throughout the base. “For me playing the bagpipes is just relaxing,” said Ammer. “Since I’ll be out here for seven months I figured I’d get some practice, so I had my wife mail my bagpipes to me. I feel...