Hangin' Around

Thus the snow hath decried: "Thou shalt not move from thine house, neither shalt thou drive. Thou shalt only taketh walks, being careful not to fall on your butt."

So, actually, it's kinda fun hanging out at Janet's. We're all hanging out. Schools are all closed after Portland got its little surprise. I had to do a lot of myth class work, so I did that, with breaks for reading and playing music. I practiced some tunes Forrest and I do (hear that, Forrest?!) and some Hellbreaker tunes (hear that, Quenn? Becky? Bob? Dave? Karen?) with Janet gamely trying to follow my fiddle playing on the banjo.

Conversing with Horses in Vermont

I got to finish my old friend Helen Husher's book, Conversations with a Prince. OK, she's my friend, but really, this is some fine and wonderful writing about what horses mean and how we hold conversations with them. Helen lives in Vermont and has written wonderfully on that state in her book Off the Leash and its sequel. Here, she swishes back and forth between taking up riding in her fifties and why one would do that, and her riding days in her teens and twenties.

This was espeically moving for me because I was there for some of it, slogging along in the woods on the wonderfully patient Baby, a horse who could put up with and even be sweet to a non-horse person. She did kick up her old heels once and jump with me, which was exciting. And the summer before I left for college (not a happy summer), she was one of my chief joys since I rode her daily and rubbed her down to keep her moving. In Lincoln, MA, the trails are exquisite and everywhere, and back then in 1969, there was a lot less traffic.

From http://www.mass.info/lincoln.ma/description.htm

Lincoln is a small suburb west of Boston with a strong sense of place. It began as a rural farming community made up of pieces of land nipped from adjacent towns; hence its nickname was once "Niptown". The town also became a popular site for country estates, some of which have become schools, museums, town buildings or parks. Retention of open space and protection of its rural character against an encroaching age of urban development are extremely important to the community. To that end, Lincoln was one of the first towns to create a Conservation Commission that has, with the Lincoln Land Conservation Trust, acquired key parcels of land throughout the town. Significant areas of the town are now preserved against development, providing protection for wild life and water supply and creating conservation trails for use by the public. Residents note that Lincoln is a quiet pretty place to be whether to visit a museum or walk in the woods all year round.

For more on Helen's exquisitely written and well-thought-out books, see

• http://www.amazon.com/Conversations-Prince-Year-Riding-East/dp/1592286933/sr=8-1/qid=1169060413/ref=sr_1_1/002-1970026-3844853?ie=UTF8&s=books



• http://www.amazon.com/Off-Leash-Subversive-Journeys-Vermont/dp/0881504270/sr=8-2/qid=1169060413/ref=sr_1_2/002-1970026-3844853?ie=UTF8&s=books



• http://www.amazon.com/View-Vermont-Everyday-Life-America/dp/0762727969/sr=8-3/qid=1169060413/ref=sr_1_3/002-1970026-3844853?ie=UTF8&s=books

Banjo Gigs!

I heard from both Wintergrass and Dusty Strings yesterday! I'm going to be teaching a beginning clawhammer workshop at Wintergrass on Saturday, (they're swapping me a free day pass) from 10-11 in Copper Hollow (good grief) in the Tacoma Sheraton. This will be on Feb. 24th. Name of workshop (they named it)--"How to Take a Break." Maybe I'll just sit there in a chair sipping a drink. No, I'll come up with something, and Forrest promises to show up to help me demo. Any other bluegrass buddies want to join in with us? (Hmmm, do I have any bluegrass buddies? Guess I'll find out.)

Maybe this will help me live down the infamous Wintergrass in which I stepped on Jim Ketterman's fiddle. (I was pushed, and it was on the floor.) Within about 2.5 minutes, everyone I met was saying, "Whoa, I heard about the fiddle! Bummer!" Someone was writing a song about it. It was Scott's task to fix this fiddle up, so I owe him my life forever, I guess.

Then there was the Wintergrass I ended up in the hospital thanks to a nasty inversion and bad air, lots of woodsmoke that made my asthma go ballistic. However, those days, I hope, are past.

For more on Wintergrass, see http://www.acousticsound.org/

Dusty Strings Clawhammer Weekend

May 4-6, 2007 is the date for DS's clawhammer blowout, something I've never been to but will be teaching at with Bob Carlin and one other person (they're working on someone right now who would be FABULOUS). Intimidated? Oh, uh, yeah! But I figure most everyone will want to go to Bob or the other person, so maybe I can hunker down with one or two people and just get 'em going.

We also have to perform, so I've already gotten Scott to promise to fiddle and Forrest to guitar and sing, so I won't be up there by myself!

Bob is a great teacher. When I was just getting back into banjo and feeling pretty insecure, I went down for my first ever vacation at Cannon Beach (sleeping in the back of my truck--do we see a theme here?) and took a class with him and mainly remember learning his F tuning, which he was way into at the time. It was really fun. His tabs are the ONLY ones that I think are any good in the Banjo Fakebook, at least in terms of really learning a tune as a beginner from tabs.

My Scott worked at Dusty Strings for a while, so it's kind of neat coming back to da famleee.

For more on Bob Carlin, see http://www.cartunesrecordings.com/

For more on the Dusty Strings, see http://www.dustystrings.com/ I don't see a page on the Clawhammer Workshop yet. But check out all their winter workshops!