Not There Yet

I've taken dulcimer lessons now for several months and I'm feeling a little more confident with each song I attempt. The fear of newness has worn off, and my fingers have developed significant calluses, enough at least for a pain free lesson.  We only meet twice a month now, so in between I am on my own to fiddle with what I have learned. 

ASIDE: If I'm fiddling with something, I'm goofing around, messing with it. So if I'm using a dulcimer instead of a fiddle, then am I dulcimering around? Just asking.

Our teacher fiddling around
Okay. Our teaacher dulcimering around

Class meets in the Caldwell Arts Council room at the Hudson Uptown Building, or the HUB as it's known here in town. We choose a song to work on each Saturday and our teacher goes over special effects we can adapt to add a little pizazz to the song. I'm not there yet, sad to announce. I am lucky to string out the basic song without getting left behind. But I am trying. Every so often I can insert a little flair.

Each week our esteemed teacher treats us to a mini concert. I recorded this last time we met:

 

It's a far cry from Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, and although I'm not there yet, I have something to strive for. I'll get back to you on that and maybe post my own mini concert, in a few years. 

Catch of the day,

Gretchen

Dulcimer Sightings

Since I started dulcimer lessons, I've been noticing dulcimers more, like when I was pregnant and seemed to see pregnant women everywhere. 

I was watching Jeopardy a few weeks ago, my must-see-every-evening show. The answer was "The Kentucky state musical instrument pictured here," and a picture of a dulcimer filled the screen. I shouted out the question, but the first to buzz in didn't hear me. He guessed wrong. So did the second, despite my increasing the volume of my shouting. The third surely heard me because he got it correct, "What is a dulcimer?"

I took this picture of the dulcimer at a gravesite.

The next Saturday I attended a SCV ceremony, Sons of Confederate Veterans, in case you are wondering. Strange situation - I felt like a spy since my Pennsylvania ancestors would have fought against these very men they were honoring. Yet there I was, watching with an honoring kind of spirit as the town where I now live dedicated a plaque at the grave of its namesake, Rev. Gamewell Tuttle, a rebel soldier turned preacher. 

A member of the Tuttle family spoke about the history of the family and the story about Rev. Tuttle, who died  at the young age of twenty-four from a disease contracted during his service to the cause. A member of the Pettigrew Camp of the SCV spoke about his wartime history, being captured and imprisoned. The camp's commander installed an Iron Cross memorial at his grave.

With dulcimer strings accompanying us, we sang On Jordan's Stormy Banks (also known as Promised Land). We waited silently as the 26th Regiment of the Confederacy reenactors gave a twenty-one gun salute. 

The final song was one I knew well. I sang it with my fourth grade social studies students every year, our North Carolina state song, The Old North State. Singing it in a graveyard surrounded by gray clad soldiers certainly was different than anything I had experienced before. I felt a sense of melancholy, a sadness at the way things turned out for this long dead soldier and the many others beside him in my church cemetery. The haunting drone from the dulcimer echoed my feelings.

Life goes on.

Catch of the day,

Gretchen