YE CANNA JOIN IN OOR GAMES: Memories of a Scottish-American Childhood
Rekindle the memories of your own Scottish-American childhood with this collection of warm and witty anecdotes about growing up in a culturally Scottish family. Author Nancy Parsons reminisces about food: “Neeps,” “Porridge, Shortbread and Mince,” and “A Potted Heid.” In all the stories, but especially in “The Braid Scots,” she writes about the rich and ancient language of the Lowlands and Scotland’s east coast. And through her eyes you’ll revist the Scottish traditions of “Scotch Picnic,” “Sunday Tea,” “Recitations and Sangs” and “Kirk.” Scottish relatives parade through the pages of Ye Canna Join In Oor Games—each more opinionated and colorful than the last.

At 135-pages, Ye Canna Join In Oor Games is slender wee book, but it’s awfu’ gude. And weel worth the price—which you’ll find on the order page of this website. You’ll want to order at least two copies—one for yourself and one for a friend who also points with pride to Scottish roots.

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Recitations and Sangs

A favorite family recitation—and one apparently that each child was required to learn—was a dramatic narrative about one Hannah Lammon. Uncle Alec could never pronounce Lammon, which everyone thought was hilarious. My father, when in his cups, occasionally treated us to the recitation of Hannah Lammon’s Bairn.
“The eagle has ta’en awa’ Hannah Lammon’s bairn.”
(In disclosing this fact, my father dropped to a crouch lowered his voice ominously and made eye contact with each of his listeners to impress upon them the enormity of the situation.)
“It swoopit doon, (pause) and grabbit it in its claes…”
(My father’s hands cramped into hooks meant to illustrate the eagle’s grasp and his voice grew more frightful still.)
“And awa’ wi’ it up the mountain!”
(Here he leapt to his feet and flung his arm outward and upward, indicating the route the eagle had taken, the bairn presumably, dangling from its talons.)
This was as much of Hannah Lammon’s story as I ever heard, so I was never sure whether it was the beginning of a long, sad tale or just a brief news bite recounting an event that had happened somewhere in Scotland a great while ago. But whichever it was, the story left me with a fear of all raptors, especially of eagles. A while ago on TV I watched as an eagle was released in an enclosed football stadium just at the conclusion of the national anthem. Up and down (or doon) it swoopit over the heads of the spectators and through the goal posts. It grabbit no one, however—possibly because there were no bairns in attendance—but watching the spectacle I became uneasy. Did no one understand the danger here?
Verses in the Lambert family meant Robert Burns, of course. Our house was no different from other Scottish homes where the great bard was revered and where a framed copy of Burns’s Grace, illuminated with thistles and stone cottages with reekin’ lums, hung in my grandparents’ dining room. Eventually the Grace was moved to my parents’ house, and it hangs now in my sister’s dining room where it looks more yellow still. We didn’t say grace before every meal, but when grace was called for, Burns’s Grace was inevitably what was spoken.

This delightful book about growing up in a Scottish American household is one that should be preserved and cherished by all those who share the same experiences. Perhaps it will shed a little light on the subject for those who do no have the same heritage. In any case, it s a pleasant read for anyone. I highly recommend it.
Margaret Frost, Chairman
Scottish American Society
www.scottishamericansociety.org.

I cannot believe how similar our experiences were growing up in a Scottish household…seven years of wasted piano lessons, annual Scotch Picnics at Kennywood Park, Harry Lauder and Willy Fife and my father’s mother “Granny” lugging me off to Sunday School at the Sunset Hills U.P. “kirk.” What a grand “wee” book you have written.
Jim Coull
Veteran of a Scottish American childhood

BALD AS A BEAN: THE EXPERIENCE OF SUDDEN HAIR LOSS
In a society that equates youth, health and even sexual attractiveness with luxurious manes of hair, a woman who suddenly goes bald faces a nightmare of emotions: grief, loss, horror, humiliation and fear. In Bald As A Bean, a woman diagnosed with alopecia areata universalis (total hair loss over the entire body) learns to cope with her baldness and is eventually able to share her story with calm vision and touches of humor.
For anyone whose life is touched with this issue through a loved one’s experience, this book offers insight and creative ways to offer support. For anyone who has just wondered what her head looks like under all that hair, this book provides some insight.

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A Very Bad Hair Day
There is one true thing that could be said about my hair: it was thick. It could also be said that it was fine and straight, that it had no body, that it refused to hold curl and was the color of the mouse you find dead in the trap in the morning. But at least it was thick. Then came alopecia.
Alopecia Areata Foundation

ABIGAIL'S UNICORN
The Boys’ and Girls’ Club Pet Show is coming fast, and Abigail finds herself without a suitable pet. It’s true that the family has a unicorn, but Abigail longs for a normal pet—a puppy or a kitten—to enter in the show. But at the last minute, the unicorn has to stand in as Abigail’s entry. This is what happens when you take a unicorn to a pet show.

MORE FROM THE BETTER MOUSETRAP
The book is a collection of short essays that originally appeared in the marketing newsletter of The Cheshire Group, a Massachusetts-based corporate communications firm. Nancy Parsons, the company’s creative director and principal writer, wrote the essays, many based on anecdotes told by the firm’s CEO, Dick Amsterdam.

243 pages; hardcover and softcover