I played my fiddle with the Glendessary jammers today at the Seed Exchange. We were lucky there were sunny skies. It has been raining every day like cats and dogs all this week and the rain is supposed to return tomorrow. There's even a layer of snow on the tops of our mountains. This is not a usual occurrence. You can bet there are people up there building snow mans and little kids seeing the snow for the first time in their lives.
The Seed Exchange is one of those events that gives me hope for humanity. People were there just giving away seeds and gardening advice. Nothing real elaborate.
The reason the Seed Exchange gives me hope for humanity is because it's the exact opposite of what I learned about watching the movie Future of Food (or see their web site here.) There is true evil in the world and it's well described by this movie. Sometimes I go back and forth between whether I want any hope for humanity or whether it would be best to allow the evil described in that film to win. Maybe humanity isn't worth saving. Anyway, hope does feel good and things like making your own home-grown music and home-grown food provide big doses of it.
At the seed exchange I picked up some scarlet runner beans and pole beans seeds and some kind of herb I already forgot the name of. My little garden is too small to get greedy about free seeds. Lots of lettuce is growing. I made a nice salad the other night. Not sure where the beans are going to fit. Maybe in some pots.
After the playing the music, I walked down to the music shop to get new rosin for my bow and a new chin rest for my fiddle.
On the way home, I decided I would walk home in my bare feet, a distance of about a mile and a half. Some kind of street tree has dropped all kinds of sticky berries all over the sidewalks. It was difficult to walk with them stuck to my feet, forming a crust of sticky seeds all around the edges of my feet. It was kind of awful, but once I got that stuff on my feet, I didn't want to put my shoes back on.
Speaking of music, I decided to order a plastic PVC flute from Doug Tipple in the key of E. I placed my order this afternoon. With an E flute I will be able to play A tunes using G fingering. They sometimes play A tunes at the Irish session and I can almost pick them up on the fly, but that darn G# always messes me up. An E flute will make that easier. Or if not, at least it'll make for a nice camping flute.
They had a reed E flute made in India at the music shop where I got the rosin for only $16. It sounded really nice. It seems each key has it's own feeling, and E sounds rich and lovely. I suppose I could have gotten the reed flute instead. But it might not have been in tune. Doug's flutes may be made of simple materials, but they are of excellent quality and are in tune. They sound great too.
No comments:
Post a Comment