Unrelated

So far this summer I have been making quick trips to the cottage...only staying for a night or 2 at the most. Last week I was there for Sunday evening because I spent the afternoon at a dulcimer festival just north of Albany, NY. That was an eye-opener.

Old-fashioned drip coffee pot we use at the cottage

Jeremy had told me about the festival...he was going to be there as a vendor. I figured I could at least take the 2 Friday afternoon workshop classes and then scoot north to see everyone at the cottage before returning home. The festival was being held in a huge Methodist church which I located easily using Jeremy's directions. My Tom Tom, the actual name of my GPS unit, wanted to take a different route and kept telling me to turn around, but I blithely continued and made it recalculate all along the way.

road-side view...the "back" of the cottage

This post is titled "Unrelated" because I don't have pictures for the written story so I've tucked in pictures that are related to the cottage...


When I arrived at the dulcimer festival, it became obvious that most people were there for the whole weekend. The registration folk had to find out what attending two workshops should cost...$15 and I was in. I headed for the chapel and "Music Theory as it Relates to the Dulcimer."

Annie & William on our daily walk

The class had just begun, papers were being handed out, and I finally had a chance to read an actual description of the workshop. Everyone was supposed to be tuned to DAD. My dulcimer is tuned to DDG and has strings to match my voice, not the usual dulcimer strings. Oh, well, give it a try...

I was slowly tuning the middle string to A when it suddenly protested...the sproing could be heard all over the room. I tried to look nonchalant, figuring for music theory I could just take notes.

Another Adirondack cottage along our road

The class ended and I had 15 minutes before the next workshop titled "Orchestra." I was going to need 3 strings and that DAD tuning! I raced downstairs to the vendors area and located Jeremy setting up his table. He solved my problems by giving me one of his gorgeous dulcimers for the next hour.

Back to the chapel where music was being handed out...  Not knowing what I was getting myself into, I hadn't brought a music stand. Obviously, everyone else had. While I was pondering what to do with the music so I could see it and still have 2 hands free for playing, the gal next to me introduced herself as Gail and asked if I'd like to share her stand. Saved again!

And another typical Adirondack-style cottage

And Gail turned out to be an angel! At that point I had a chance to look at the music and I was totally confused. Traditional dulcimer plays on the melody string and strums the rest. They were going to play on all three strings...first fret on the melody string, then fifth fret on the bass string, followed by third fret on the middle string, followed by... Oh, good grief. I gave it a gallant try and was completely lost in a matter of seconds!

They practiced it again, and again I couldn't get past the second note!

I meet Mimi during my walk

It was turning into an absolute disaster when Gail began to circle the first note of each bar and said we could play just the first notes which would give me 3 notes worth of time to figure out the next first note! Genius! And she even counted 1, 2, 3, 4 throughout the entire page of music. I survived, playing one out of every four notes!  We did a high five and repeated the process with the next sheet of music.

When the hour ended, a gal stopped to say she had been sitting on the other side of the room and had had trouble concentrating on the music because she had been fascinated by watching my face and hearing my laugh at the end of each piece!

Walk finished...Mimi & I stop for a few hands of Rummykub

Gail said she would send me a book explaining how they were playing. She lives in Kentucky and was going home the next day.

I said my goodbyes, found Jeremy again to swap dulcimers...he had replaced my broken string in the interim...and headed for an evening at the cottage.

Below is Mike multi-tasking...on the computer and playing Uno with his adopted sons, Luke and Eli.