December 14, 2007

Great Scots!

The 31st Annual St. Andrew’s Day Celebration

What do Robert Lewis Stevenson, Robert Burns, Andrew Carnegie, MacBeth, and numerous signers of the Declaration of Independence have in common? For one, they’re all Scots. For another, they, along with the thousands of Scots who have made sizeable contributions to the arts, science, commerce and culture of the world, were honored at the 31st Annual St. Andrew’s Day Celebration at Evergreen Valley College (EVC) on Nov. 29.

“With so much culture being celebrated around us, we just couldn’t ignore the Scots,” said a smiling Andrew McFarlin, originator of the celebration in 1974. McFarlin, 81, a retired EVC Engineering faculty member, said the enormous contribution of the Scots is disproportionate to their global population.

With the help of the San Jose Evergreen Community College District and Evergreen Valley College, as well as friends from the Villages like George Graham and Jim Logie, and Supervisor Pete McHugh, McFarlin organizes the annual processional march of bagpipe players and drummers, Highland dancers, the Scottish American Military Color Guard and Scottish singers through campus. This year, an EVC student read the poems of Robert Burns and there was a demonstration of “folding the great Plaid.”