I see from my last blog post I said I would post the next day, ha ha so much for that.
News of the music group:
(Tom, Kim and Mark)
This was at the O.A. Fisher camp last night, it was outdoors so no worry about Covid. Tom was playing a viola, he was so happy with it, a new fun toy! It sounded terrific, lower and richer than the fiddle and it has a different tuning, actually just loses the high string and then adds a bass string in C which sounds like a bagpipe drone. And double stopping with it is just amazing, sonorous. Kim has a crystal-clear voice, Mark a great bass. Kim and Mark are very studious about their guitar chording, and work hard to get it just right. I tootled along when appropriate.
Chuck did a spiritual blues number, as a solo, he has a great blues voice. We did Amazing Grace a capella, Tom opened it with one verse on the viola, then we all picked it up a capella.
Last week we played for Jim Willis’ funeral, playing under a great live oak in the Jones Cemetery where all the Fishers are buried. Jim was employed by Bethlehem Steel for many years and retired here with his wife who was a Fisher. A lovely man. So we stood among the gravestones and played. Reminded me of that scene in The Old Curiosity Shop where Little Nell and her grandfather come upon the actors/players/comics and the stilt man in the graveyard, where they rest their props and baggage on the graves.
Diane with her hammer dulcimer, she gets a very good full sound out of it, it must be hard to play as none of the strings are numbered or lettered and they all look alike!
And this is the wonderful Daphne Murray, my Australian correspondent, with her new grandson, 10 days before she died. She was in her mid-nineties. Her daughter Paula sent this photo to Harper Collins as she didn’t have my address, and my editor Jennifer Brehl sent it on to me, so including it here. Will write Paula today so she has my address, Jennifer commented, ‘this is so sweet’. And so it is!