Plane rides to a far-flung games can be long. Sometimes your pipe band’s performance time is hours from first massed bands. Sometimes it is hours after your performance time until last massed bands. What do you do with yourself durning all that time? One can only eat so many meat pies after all. What you can be doing is engaging in some good clean fun playing Pipe Band Rummy with your band mates to pass the time!
Pipe Band Rummy is a game that pits players in an all out championship battle to compete in a virtual pipe band contest. Players endeavor to build a high scoring pipe band and win the day. All you need is a regular deck of playing cards (including the Jokers) and the handy guide to the faces and scores below or downloaded here. Have fun! Read More
Andrew Berthoff’s recent excellent blog post is spot on and covers a topic that should get more attention on a regular basis. If anything it should constantly be on the minds of every bagpiper and drummer who cares about sustaining the craft of organized bagpiping and drumming competition. If Ontario, Canada, with its high proportion of Scottish descendants, can complain about waning interest in Highland games and its cultural trappings, how do you think American Highland games fare?
Highland games in the USA walk a razor’s edge every year, hoping they have the funding and interest to continue to host their annual events. Even some of the longest running events in the eastern half of this country are one rainy Saturday away from extinction. That is not hyperbole.
Knowing or talking to people who are directly involved with organizing and running various aspects of Highland games and bagpipe competitions, you quickly appreciate the amount of time, money, and anxiety at work. To expect volunteers at various festivals and games (and many of them non-pipers and drummers to boot) to take on this burden year after year is too much to ask at the scale some of these events have reached. The model under which we operate here in the east is unsustainable and is showing consistent signs of cracking under the strain.
Let’s run some basic numbers. Read More
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