Thursday – Veterans Breakfast

It is one of those cold, raw wet November days. Temperature hovering around freezing with some sleet and icicles forming on the trees. Surprisingly some bluebirds have been showing up and I’ve put out a feeder with dried mealworms. They took off when they saw me with a camera.

Veteran Breakfast

Mascenic High School held a Veterans Day breakfast at the school this morning. There was a great selection of egg dishes, bacon, fruit, quiches and plenty of coffee and juice. Thanks to the folks that organized this.

Choring Around

The cold raw weather makes me want to hibernate and I’m finding it hard to tackle any of my chores. I did solve the daily puzzles (Wordle, Mini-Crossword, Connections and Waffle) and publish the Historical Society newsletter. I contend that those activities count as chores. I moved the rest of the houseplants from the unheated garage to the basement. Later I will move them to different locations. I’m hoping the cold weather will spur blossom production on the various varieties of Schlumbergera (Christmas and Thanksgiving cactus).

Throwback Thursday – Music

I come from a musical family. My dad sang with his brothers in the 1930s and would make up songs for me when I was a baby. I was too young to remember them, but there was never a lack of music in my life.

I remember buying Kingston Trio albums in the late 1950s with my lawn mowing money. Sometimes there might have only been one or two song I liked. The music wasn’t played on the radio, I bought the albums based upon the artists. I believe an album cost about $3.98 which is a fortune compared to what I pay for streaming unlimited music today. Things have definitely improved.

Banjo and Guitar

I desperately wanted to play the banjo. In the early 1960s I got an EAST GERMAN five string banjo from a a music store. The string action was terrible and I would plink along following instructions from my 1962 copy of How to Play the 5-String Banjo by Pete Seeger. I drove my sisters crazy with the plinking. Even worse I would wake them up on Saturday morning by playing Flatt and Scruggs records at full volume. No wonder why there are so many banjo jokes.

Eventually I decided to follow in my father’s footsteps and learn to play the guitar. I went to New York City with my cousin Jim to buy my first guitar, a Guild F-30 . He had already bought a guitar and knew what he was doing. The banjo is not an instrument that is versatile as the guitar. The guitar brings instant gratification. Once you can form a chord and strum, you’ve learned hundreds of folk songs. I was strongly influenced by a record by Tom Paxton and wanted to learn how to Travis pick. 61 years later it is still a work in progress.

At every family gathering and parties, I would play music with my cousins Jim, Bobby and later Chris. Jim could work out tunes from Gordon Lightfoot and Tom Rush. Bobby had a ear for old rock n’ roll. He inherited his dad’s baritone voice. My cousin Chris who was dubbed “Elvis” in the early years figured out rock ‘n roll licks. My Dad and Uncle Ed had their standards. It was not unusual to have 5 or 6 guitars twanging away. There wasn’t much other instrumentation except a set of bongos and once a washtub bass.

Music Jams

I don’t get many opportunities to play with my cousins anymore, we are spread over a large geographic area. However I have met a great number of musicians and have an opportunity to play music on a regular basis. I’ve documented some of those jams under the music jam category on this website.

Comments

I’ve made some changes which hopefully will make it easier to add comments to my postings. I’ve eliminated the check box that asks if you are a robot. Most of you are not robots. I’m paying for an AKISMET account which is supposed to detect spammers automatically. Those reCaptva checks are annoying, especially the ones that ask you to check each photo containing a traffic light or fire hydrant. I feedback from my readers, I’d rather not hassle them about proving that they are human. Let me know if the process of adding comments is easy. Hopefully this will improve your experience with the site.

That’s all folks

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