Weekend Economists Go For the (Pot of) Gold July 12-14, 2013
This is the weekend of the Celtic Festival in Saline, Michigan, one of my Must-Do annual events.
http://www.salineceltic.org/
Why I like it, I don't know. The Poles have a bagpipe tradition, I'm told, but never have I experienced it. Maybe it's the kilts. Or maybe, it's all the fault of a little Latina in Arizona: Diana Galbadon. 
Diana J. Gabaldon is an American author, known for the Outlander Series. Her books contain elements of romantic fiction, historical fiction, mystery, adventure, and science fiction.
Gabaldon was born on January 11, 1952, in Arizona, of Mexican and English ancestry. Her father, Tony Gabaldon (1931–1998) was an Arizona state senator from Flagstaff. Her mother's family were originally from Yorkshire (England).
Gabaldon grew up in Flagstaff, Arizona. She earned a Bachelor of Science in Zoology from Northern Arizona University, 1970–1973, a Master of Science in Marine Biology from the University of California, San Diego, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, 1973–1975, and a Ph.D. in Ecology from Northern Arizona University, 1975-1978. Gabaldon received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters (DHL) degree from Northern Arizona University in 2007.
As a full-time assistant professor in the Center for Environmental Studies at Arizona State University in the 1980s, Gabaldon did research, was a scientific computing and database expert, and taught university classes in anatomy and other subjects. She was the founding editor of Science Software Quarterly. During the mid-1980s, Gabaldon wrote computer articles and software reviews for national computer publications such as Byte magazine, PC Magazine, and InfoWorld.
Gabaldon currently lives in the Phoenix, Arizona area with her husband, Doug Watkins; they have three adult children including fellow fantasy author Sam Sykes. After her first book deal was finalized, she resigned her faculty position at Arizona State University to become a full-time fiction author.
Novel writing
In March 1988, Gabaldon decided to "write a novel for practice, in order to learn how." At the time, she did not intend to share it with anyone, or to try to get it published. While "casting about for an appealing time and place" for the novel, she happened to see an old Doctor Who rerun on PBS, titled "War Games." One of the Doctor's companions was a Scot from around 1745, a young man about 17 years old named Jamie MacCrimmon, who provided the initial inspiration for her main male character, James Fraser, and for her novel's mid-18th century setting. Gabaldon decided to have "an Englishwoman to play off all these kilted Scotsmen," but her female character "took over the story and began telling it herself, making smart-ass modern remarks about everything." To explain the character's modern behavior and attitudes, Gabaldon chose to use time travel.
Later in 1988, Gabaldon posted a short excerpt of her novel on the CompuServe Literary Forum, where author John E. Stith introduced her to literary agent Perry Knowlton. Knowlton represented her based on an unfinished first novel, tentatively titled Cross Stitch. Her first book deal was for a trilogy, the first novel plus two then-unwritten sequels. Her U.S. publishers changed the first book's title to Outlander, but the title remained unchanged in the U.K. According to Gabaldon, her British publishers liked the title Cross Stitch, a play on "a stitch in time"; however, the American publisher said it "sounded too much like embroidery" and wanted a more "adventurous" title.
The Outlander series presently comprises seven published novels, with the eighth installment, Written In My Own Heart's Blood, scheduled to be published in 2014. Gabaldon has also published The Exile (An Outlander Graphic Novel) (2010). The novels center on Claire and James Fraser, and are set in Scotland, France, the West Indies, England, and America. The "Lord John" series is a spin-off from the Outlander books, centering on a secondary character from the original series.
http://www.dianagabaldon.com/
Her characters will come to life on STARZ TV with actor Sam Heughan cast as Jamie Fraser. The Starz network is scheduled to begin production on the OUTLANDER TV series in September, 2013, with filming in Scotland. On June 1, Deadline Hollywood reported that Starz has ordered 16 episodes of the series, a dramatic adaptation of the OUTLANDER novels. The show-runner for the new series is Ron D. Moore (of “Battlestar Galactica” reboot and “Star Trek” fame), who has been developing the series in conjunction with Sony Pictures TV. Four writers have been hired to work on episode screenplays.
The first novel has also been staged as a musical play in England!
So, if you are looking for the perfect summer novel...there are 7 with the original characters, many more of a secondary character, and enough for several summers. Diana writes slowly, but that's because each book runs a 1000 pages or more, testing the bookbinder's skill. ENJOY!
= new reply since forum marked as read
The earliest archaeological culture that may justifiably be considered as Proto-Celtic is the Late Bronze Age Urnfield culture of central Europe from the last quarter of the second millennium BC.[2] Their fully Celtic[2] descendants in central Europe were the people of the Iron Age Hallstatt culture (c. 800–450 BC) named for the rich grave finds in Hallstatt, Austria.[3] By the later La Tène period (c. 450 BC up to the Roman conquest), this Celtic culture had expanded over a wide range of regions, whether by diffusion or migration: to the British Isles (Insular Celts), France and The Low Countries (Gauls), Bohemia, Poland and much of Central Europe, the Iberian Peninsula (Celtiberians, Celtici and Gallaeci) and northern Italy (Golaseccans and Cisalpine Gauls)[4] and following the Gallic invasion of the Balkans in 279 BC as far east as central Anatolia (Galatians).[5]
There's Central Europe in there, Demeter - including Poland
Compare the stylized horses to Picasso, just a few centuries
later
