2017 Year in Review

Wow! It's been four years since the last entry?!

Let's just say we have have some profound life changes to deal with the last few years.

January
For some reason, which I can't really remember, I decided to make an acoustic bass guitar. I have had the plans for several years and suddenly had the wood so why not?

Wee Clara started visiting us on Mondays and Fridays. At this point she is just thinking about rolling over.

 We started our annual winter tour on January 26  Over the next 7-1/2 weeks we performed 28 times and reconnected with many of the friends we have made along the east coast over the last fifteen years.
We always like to visit historical sights. This one is a park in High Point, NC.

 

One of our favorite times was touring the Sierra Nevada brewery in Asheville with Sue Richards and her husband Bill. (We enjoyed the beer, too)

 February
This photo was taken near Asheville on the anniversary of our marriage.

Baby, the rain must fall,
Baby the wind must blow....

 

South Carolina and Florida were on our schedule. On the way we stayed with our friend Ching Ma on Tybee Island. Spring had sprung in Savannah!

 

She has a beautiful guzheng which she loaned us for the year. It just barely fit in the car but we re-engineered the load and were able to jam it in there along with our usual road gear of harp, guitar, fiddles, etc. PA, luggage, traveling library and resources. It was a bit of a challenge. We used it a couple of time on our tour and hoped to do some recording with it before we have to return it to Ching in Orlando.

 Travel also exposes us to new eating possibilities. Yak jerky, anyone?

On our way home to Maine we stopped in New Haven to visit Julia's cousin and her husband. Jim is a member and got us into Mory's. We didn't see any Whiffenpoofs but heard some echos.



March
Our big adventure in March was a trip to California to see daughter Harmony and her husband Martin. We don't do big cities very well (big being more than 20,000) so Julia booked a wonderful Air B&B near Tahachopee. It turned out to be a mountaintop retreat - no internet, no TV - but there were two tuned guitars hanging on the wall, a full pantry, and a bottle of wine with four glasses set out on the table when we arrived.

This is the view from our mountaintop retreat.

The desert was in bloom and we saw the poppies, Joshaua trees and lots of other flowers. We tried to get to the sequoias as well but the mountain passes were still closed.

Martin knew about the Tahachopee Loop so we went there and watched trains for a few hours.

There is a great brew pub in Tahachopee but you have to look hard to find a good restaurant. We're probably spoiled living in Maine, a foodie paradise.

We also explored the desert east of Tahachopee. The painted canyon, a Zen monestary, Joshua trees in bloom.  There is always something to see.

April
Their was a mouse nest inside the air conditioning housing on the truck. Every time I turned on the fan it shot confetti out the vents and made horrible grinding sounds. The only way to get the housing off is to take out the dashboard, including the steering wheel, radio, airbags, etc.etc.
DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME!

I did get the truck back together with only four fasteners left over.

We had planned to visit friends in Cornwall and rendezvous there with son Caleb and his wife, Aga. But the kids had other plans afoot. Earlier in the year they bought a house near Ringabu (in Norway) so we took a hop from Dublin to Oslo and helped them with moving appliances, removing festoons of cable TV wire, cleaning the yard and just trying to be helpful.  This is the view from their deck. You can just see the red steeple of the largest stave church in Norway.

One day we went for a drive to see the mountains and found a neat little museum that was the site of a saw mill. There was a lot of the old machinery, a sluice, and a bateau which had seen some hard use. The boats were used in log drives, just like here in Maine.


May  (still in Norway)

We drove a couple of hours to meet some potential doggie adoptees (who have since joined the family in Ringabu) and found ourselves dog sledding on May Day. Julia advises anyone considering this activity to be the driver. The passenger is in a perfect position to encounter "dog exhaust" and they feed them raw meat, so it's pretty rank!

We had a day in Dublin on our way home. We went to the Dublinia exhibit. It's about the early Viking settlement that became Dublin. It was fascinating and we also got to ring the bells!

Our local high school, Lincoln Academy, has started a two week term toward the end of the school year where students can sign up for classes in non-academic and/or esoteric subjects. One group asked for Celtic studies so we spent a couple of days imparting some of the things we have learnt on the subject over the last few decades. It was a lot of fun!

June

The high point of June was a program we did for students from Mt Saint Joseph University. They were here from Ohio to study traditional culture in Maine. We also did a couple of Maine history programs for local historical societies.
We have been hunting wild mushrooms the last few years. We only take the ones we are absolutely sure of – black trumpets, chanterelles, lobster mushrooms, giant puffballs, and chicken of the woods. We got 30 lbs or more from this tree and there were signs that we weren't the first ones there.

July
In July we tore out the old prefab fireplace and started building a masonry stove using information and parts from  Maine Wood Heat in Skowhegan.

August
Our third annual cruise on the Schooner American Eagle took us up into Penobscot Bay as far as Castine. It's the longest intimate performance we do at four days and 16-20 people on a boat that 125' long.
We have decided that Clara's totem is the fruit bat. She ate all our blueberries, raspberries, grapes. We shut her off when she started on the holly berries.

September
The Harmony Free  air was our first performance in September and we ended the month performing at the Portsmouth (NH) Maritime Festival.
In between I worked on the fireplace. Here are a few progress shots.

September 3 My #1 helper is 14 months old in this photo.

September 5

September 7

September 13

September 16

September 19

Our accommodations in Rye Beach, NH, for the Portsmouth Maritime Festival.

September 29  We had a fair amount of monarch butterflies last year, which we haven't seen in a while.




October
Bound For Glory live radio hosted us in October. The last time we played there was 28 years prior. We also had performances in New Hampshire, Vermont and Pennsylvania this month. In between driving and concertizing work continued on the new fireplace.
November
The fireplace is done!  We set the first fire just before Thanksgiving. Musically we prepared for four Christmas concerts with choirs performing arrangements by Desmond Earley. He has a university choir in Dublin that is wonderful. Check them out!
December
The month started with concerts at the Somerset Abbey, our annual Advent concert in Auburn, our annual performance at the General Henry Knox Mansion in Thomaston, a two more choir concerts and a show at the Eagle Hill Institute in Steuben. (If you're not from Maine you may have to use Google maps to find these places)
Our Christmas tree this year was one I had been grooming for three or four years.


Samhain
Banking the Fire

It's done! We have CDs! It's not up on our web site yet but should be sometime next week. In the meantime here is a link to one track, The Raven in the Apple Tree, written by our friend Jud Caswell.
Join the masons?
This summer we finally got started on the Finnish masonry stove (AKA Russian fireplace)  After much contemplation and some consultation with Albie Barton, the Finnish stove Grand Wizard, I bit the bullet, bought a lot of firebrick and got started.

It's always good to have a little help.

Elsewhere on the internet there will be a complete description of the project, for those who are curious about such matters. First, though, I have to finish installing the chimney before it snows.

Norway & Dublin
Our trip to Norway (where our son has bought a house in Ringebu, just west of Lillehammer) was an adventure. We helped the kids move in some appliances, clean up the yard, and remove festoons of cable TV wires. On Mayday we found ourselves dogsledding! It wasn't on our bucket list but we weren't going to say no! Julia has this word of advice: "Be the driver!"  Being downwind of six dogs whose diet is primarily raw meat is a breath-taking experience.

On our way home we had a day in Dublin so we went to the Dublinia exhibit. It has artifacts and interpretations of Dublin from the original Viking village up through Victorian times. It is very well done and worth the time. We also got to ring the tower bells at Christ Church.

Photos will have to wait. We are having some hardware issues just now.

Schooner American Eagle Cruise

We did our third cruise in August. The boat got up as far as Castine. Our shore adventure coincided with ripe gooseberries, something I had never seen in quantity before.


Next year we'll be going in September.  It's always a good time with music, stories, GREAT food, and the beauty of Penobscot Bay.