The Circle, Present and Future - The Stones and the Stars: Building Scotland's Newest Megalith - page 292

that they couldn't have emergency repairs, let alone new furniture
or electrical appliances. Although the Strathclyde Police multi-
cultural festival was successful and popular, tensions continued
to mount, culminating in the stabbing of an asylum seeker from
Eastern Europe on the footbridge over the M8, leading towards the
stone circle, and his death on the footpath beyond.
Shortly afterwards, I was called to a meeting at the City
Chambers with local Councilors for the Glasgow North wards,
and in an eerie repetition of my turning down some of the sites
offered in 1978 (Chap. 5 ), I was told that it would impossible to
spend money publicly on the stone circle in Sighthill, when there
were social problems of such magnitude to be addressed. It would
be done, I was assured, but not until the crisis was over.
I had no opportunity to pursue the matter until 2008, when
I was running the second phase of the North Lanarkshire Astron-
omy Project, centered on Airdrie Public Observatory where I
was a curator, but with a much wider outreach. Financed by the
National Lottery, initially with two pilot projects under Awards
for All and now full-scale by Heritage Lottery, my colleague Bob
Graham and I, with part-time helpers, were running a program of
around 700 events with more than 450 schools visits. Two exhibi-
tions in northeast Glasgow with accompanying school visits had
convinced us that there was a need for a similar Greater Glasgow
Astronomy Project, and with encouragement from the City Coun-
cil, Heritage Lottery and the Scottish Parliament, we planned it
around the renovation of the stone circle. The grant applications
were submitted in December 2008, and by the spring of 2009, it
was clear that due to the worsening economic situation, in the UK
and worldwide, funding would not be forthcoming.
In 2010 I remarried, and my new wife Linda set about to make
things happen, particularly in regard to the stone circle renovation.
I gave a public lecture at the Ogilvie Centre at St. Aloysius Church,
followed by a group visit to the circle for midsummer sunset (Figs. 8.7
& 10.7 ), which aroused extensive public and media interest.
We soon formed a new nonprofit organization, the Friends of
the Sighthill Stone Circle, to bring the circle's restoration about,
while Land and Environment Services gave the site a fresh clean-up
(Fig. 10.8 ). We have begun a campaign to photograph sunrise and
sunset at the equinoxes (Fig. 10.9 ), in hopes of erecting the marker