Thanks For the Throw There, Howard

It’s been an interesting week. I started my Celtic music class on Tuesday. There’s only a handful of us and the professor seems to be a froody guy. We listened to a bit of carnyx playing. The carnyx is this huge horn and is the oldest known Celtic musical instrument. Then the prof put on some harp music from the Robert Ap Huw Manuscript of 1613 and the Edward Jones’s Musical and Poetical Relicks of the Welsh Bards (1784-1825). The older stuff was really cool. OK, all of the material on here is at least 300 years old so it’s all “old”. But I mean that I really dug the piece from the pre-Renaissance piece. It’s all variations on a theme and dissonant and weird which was fine by me. The later material was more melodic and, although I enjoyed it, I liked the “primitive” stuff more. All of the songs were played on replicas of period harps that were strung with steel strings instead of gut. Really good stuff. Next week we investigate the bagpipe and learn about Celtic dancing. Call me crazy but I’m thinking we’re not gonna go over Riverdance.

Yesterday I had an orientation meeting to become a literacy tutor with the Madison Area Literacy Council. The 7 of us got the intro speech and paperwork to fill out. We shall see if they want me as a volunteer soon, I suppose. Oh! When I got home on Tuesday night, I found out that my cousin Guy had stopped by while I was at class. I wish that he’d have emailed me to let me know he was passing through. Now that he’s out of the navy, he’s got time to relax. He is making his way down to Florida where his dad and stepmom live. I shall have to call them soon. He left me a bag of stuff from the USS Stennis on which he was stationed. Got me a new baseball cap! Now this may sound like no big deal to you but, for me, it’s neat because it’s my only cap not covered in sweat stains.

The weekend looms which means TRIVIA! For anyone who’s interested, you can keep track of our (The Flying Zupans) progress at the WISS trivia webpage.

I see that Son Volt announced some new tour dates but nothing around here in the upper Midwest. Their new album comes out this summer while a DVD of their performance on Austin City Limits comes out next month. And it will be the full show, not the truncated 30-minute set that PBS broadcast. (God! Jay Farrar looks young there. And Gillian Welch is *hot*! I wouldn’t kick her out of bed for eatin’ chicken. Is she schtooking David Rawlings?)

If anyone out there lives in District 3 here in Madtown, don’t forget to vote for Amy Westra.