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30 November is St Andrew’s Day, but who was St Andrew? The apostle and patron saint of Scotland, Andrew was a fisherman from Capernaum in Galilee. He is rather a mysterious figure, and you can read more about him in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. St Andrew’s Day is well-established and widely celebrated by Scots around the world. To mark the occasion, we have selected quotations from some of Scotland’s most treasured wordsmiths, using the bestselling Oxford Dictionary of Quotations and the Little Oxford Dictionary of Quotations.

There are few more impressive sights in the world than a Scotsman on the make.
J. M. Barrie 1860-1937 Scottish writer

From the lone shielding of the misty island
Mountains divide us, and the waste of seas –
Yet still the blood is strong, the heart is Highland,
And we in dreams behold the Hebrides!
John Galt 1779-1839 Scottish writer

O Caledonia! Stern and wild,
Meet nurse for a poetic child!
Sir Walter Scott 1771-1832 Scottish novelist

O flower of Scotland, when will we see your like again,
that fought and died for your wee bit hill and glen
and stood against him, proud Edward’s army,
and sent him homeward tae think again.
Roy Williamson 1936-90 Scottish folksinger and musician

I love a lassie, a bonnie, bonnie lassie,
She’s as pure as the lily in the dell.
She’s as sweet as the heather, the bonnie bloomin’ heather –
Mary, ma Scotch Bluebell.
Harry Lauder 1870-1950 Scottish music-hall entertainer

My poems should be Clyde-built, crude and sure,
With images of those dole-deployed
To honour the indomitable Reds,
Clydesiders of slant steel and angled cranes;
A poetry of nuts and bolts, born, bred,
Embattled by the Clyde, tight and impure.
Douglas Dunn 1942– Scottish poet

Who owns this landscape?
The millionaire who bought it or
the poacher staggering downhill in the early morning
with a deer on his back?
Norman McCaig 1910–96 Scottish poet

The Little Oxford Dictionary of Quotations fifth edition was published in October this year and is edited by Susan Ratcliffe. The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations seventh edition was published in 2009 to celebrate its 70^th year. The ODQ is edited by Elizabeth Knowles.

The Oxford DNB online has made the above-linked lives free to access for a limited time. The ODNB is freely available via public libraries across the UK. Libraries offer ‘remote access’ allowing members to log-on to the complete dictionary, for free, from home (or any other computer) twenty-four hours a day. In addition to 58,000 life stories, the ODNB offers a free, twice monthly biography podcast with over 130 life stories now available. You can also sign up for Life of the Day, a topical biography delivered to your inbox, or follow @ODNB on Twitter for people in the news.

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Bonnie Spring is a Professor of Preventive Medicine, Psychology, and Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences Director of Behavioral Medicine, and Co-Program Leader for Cancer Prevention at Northwestern University. A Past President of the Society of Behavioral Medicine, she is board-certified in clinical health psychology. Dr. Spring’s most recent book is Smoking Cessation with Weight Gain Prevention, and in the  original post below, she reflects on her own struggle with giving up cigarettes and maintaining her weight.

“You’ve given me new hope.” So read the e-mail that arrived shortly after Parade Magazine published a story about my research showing that trying to manage weight gain while stopping smoking can help rather than hurt successful quitting. A steady stream of similar messages flowed in, taking my mind back to the days when I first started to study weight gain after quitting smoking. I still flinch at the memories. Faculty colleagues asked when I would switch to studying a real health problem – one with serious medical consequences. The reception was about as chilly at the National Institutes of Health. The words of a usually supportive program officer float back to me, “Oh come on…There’s only an average six to eight pound weight gain after quitting. That’s not a health problem – that’s a cosmetic problem. We’re in the business of studying threats to health – not insults to personal vanity!”

The physicians I spoke with weren’t much more helpful. They said things like, “Look, there’s no question that the much greater health risk comes from the smoking rather than the weight gain. The average person would have to gain about 100 pounds to offset the health benefit of quitting.” Indeed, medical practice guidelines conveyed a similar message. The U.S. Public Health Service Guideline on Tobacco Treatment encouraged physicians to tell patients not to worry about weight gain until they were fully confident and secure as non-smokers. The fear was that trying to manage both things at once – smoking and weight – would be overwhelming and would undermine the success of the quit attempt. Yet even though that guidance seemed right-minded and conservative, I watched it prompt my friends to make a life-threatening decision. Nor did I watch detachedly, because I was one of the many smokers who responded by making the same bad decision. Having to choose between being smoke-free and being slender felt like being crushed between a rock and a hard place. Yes, I cared about my long-term health and wanted very badly to quit. However, maintaining a slender, attractive appearance felt essential to sustain the social reinforcers that were vital to my quality of life. We can call it vain, irrational or disordered till the cows come home, but my priorities were certainly not unusual then or now. I continued to smoke.

Living out the truism that “research is me-search,” I began a series of treatment studies to test different ways to help smokers quit smoking without gaining weight. We already knew that ex-smokers gain weight especially because they eat more, but al

Monkey Beach
Eden Robinson
Mariner Books
2002
reviewer: Bonnie

Lisamarie Michelle Hill is a young girl from the Haisla Native American Tribe that lives on the West Coast of Canada in Kitamaat Village. Lisa lives together with her mother, father, and younger brother Jimmy. The story opens with her family receiving the news that her brother and the boat he was crewing have disappeared at sea. But Lisa already knew something was wrong;
she has received visions and portents all her life, through dreams and through visitations from spirits. What follows after she hears the news is a flashback journey through her life up to this moment, as she searches for her brother.

Lisa comes from a large extended family, with many aunts and uncles and cousins casually taking of space in her life. There are many long walks through the forests around Kitmaat with her Ma-ma-oo, her grandmother, and hunting trips with her beloved uncle Mick. Memorable moments in her life are described in vivid detail, placing the reader easily within her world. The references to the Haisla people and their culture barely cause a ripple, as Lisa, and therefore the reader, accepts them as naturally as we do our own history.

Growing up is never easy, but for Lisa, it becomes very hard, as she continues to lose the people she loves most through the inevitable cycle of life and death. Two family members that she is closest to pass away within a few years of each other, just as she is becoming a teenager, and her grieving process for them is dangerous, self-destructive, and necessary. Interwoven through her life are legends and stories from the Haisla, as well as descriptions of the prophetic dreams Lisa has and her strange encounters with magical creatures. B’gwus, the Sasquatch, is my personal favorite.

This is a story about family and loss and how one deals with them. Robinson weaves a captivating story, bringing to life this girl and her people as they balance tragedy with happiness. It isn’t about balancing between Native traditions and Western culture, although that aspect is there. It is about growing up, and remembrance, and accepting things the way they are, regardless of how strange that reality might be. Lisa struggles to understand her strange gift and goes through phases of hating it and fearing it; at times, she wishes she understood it better so its use would be easier. The magical realism of the book blends so well with the narrative that if the reader were ever in Canada, it would be easy to imagine stepping into the woods and running into a B’gwus or other spirit.

It is such a rich story, with wonderful and memorable characters. Uncle Mick loves Elvis to distraction, and goes on a drunken bender upon the news of his death in 1977. Ma-ma-oo is a tough woman determined to live as she pleases, with a solemn love for her children and grandchildren. Jimmy is passionately devoted to swimming and wants to be the first Haisla to win a gold in the Olympics, and later becomes passionate about Adelaine, the girl he falls in love with. Lisa herself is strong, stubborn, quick to fight and quick to comfort. The cousins that she grows up with are each individual, with their own faults and personalities. It is amazing how complex Robinson managed to make her characters in such a small space. This book could easily have spread over several volumes from an author less adept at storytelling.

Monkey Beach is absolutely a must read. The glimpses of a diff