Music makes us happy

Picking and grinning

  It was 98 degrees outside, but that did not stop us from driving out to the country for a picker's party at Sally's house.  Judy played the autoharp along with a roomful of dulcimer players.   Most of them had their sheet music on iPads, allowing them to avoid dealing with  heavy 3-ring binders.  One woman even used a foot pedal that changed the pages on her iPad.  Sally taught the group to play the ukulele.  I sat outside under a  maple tree, singing along with people playing old hymns on  fiddles and guitars and accordions and dulcimers.

Fuey with Blue Hawaiians

 Sally's Ukulele lesson

    Judy and her ukulele group provided background music for a luau to celebrate Ruth's and Ed's 80th birthdays.  They had a grand time rehearsing at our house, and then  sat in the gazebo in Ed's glorious garden, strumming and singing and laughing.  Fuey served drinks dressed in  her authentic muumuu.
    Sharon and I went to the opening of  show by an artist she has bought a large piece from, and from there to.  The artist's wife introduced herself as "Elizabeth the Third."   I tried to ignore the salmon knife she was using as a belt ornament.  The artist expounded on why he calls his show "The Brothel" and made lots of references to Picasso and Zeus and ancient and modern Mayan history.  It was the kind of mental adventure that  I would have loved a few years ago.  That evening, it made me more than tired.  I kept thinking about Laurie Anderson's song "Difficult Listening" and realizing that I was no longer up to Difficult Looking.

Rehearsal

Ed's garden

    From the artist's opening, we went directly to  a musical performance  by my friend Chuck Barnes and his banjo, who promised "mellifluous, and occasionally superfluous, genre-bending banjo interpretations of favorite songs." As we went in,  I was feeling old and set aside from life by gloom .  But as Chuck with his banjo  and the lovely Dr. Lois Leveen with her accordion played through their list of "toe-tappers, heartbreakers, and rabble-rousers," I felt happier and happier.  Chuck is  a native of Newfoundland. By the time he  got to the promised Canadian content, which included Leonard Cohen's Halleluja, I felt joy.

Chuck