To pick or not to pick

My fingertips are tender; my left shoulder is aching.

After playing a two-hour jam session yesterday, and four hours today, I guess my fingertips and shoulder have a right to complain a bit -- especially as it has been almost two, maybe closer to three years since I have played that extensively. Nevertheless, I am exhilerated!

Something happened this evening as I played with a bluegrass group called Willow, a group kind enough to invite me to sit in and play and sing with them every now and then at their Gospel Opry. For ten years, they have played mountain gospel tunes on select Saturday nights at a church in Seminole. Most of the songs I had never heard before, but these musicians grew up hearing them sung at church and at home -- and I have learned some poignant tunes.

So what happened this evening, you ask? Or maybe you're not asking, but I'm going to tell you anyway! :-)

For the first time, and after playing guitar for almost 40 years, I played my guitar with a pick.

That's it?!? You drew me this far into this rather lame post to tell me you played your guitar with a pick?!?

OK -- before you click off in disgust, please hear me out.

To pick or not to pick is just the surface question. It's not just a matter of preference, although I do have a tendency to prefer bicycling to motorcycling and kayaking to outboard motorboating. Maybe I started strumming with my right hand fingers because I didn't have a pick. The tiny town we lived in when I first started playing didn't have a music store -- it was so long ago I don't even remember.

But I do remember trying a pick a time or two. Aside from the fact that I'm not terribly coordinated -- so the pick usually ended up flying through the air or inside the guitar itself -- there was another matter.

Playing with a pick made the guitar sound VERY LOUD!!! Much louder than I was used to playing.

So loud, in fact, that I was afraid somebody might actually hear me play. 'Cause, see, I'm not a perfect player. Sometimes we play by ear or with lead sheets that are in a different key than we're playing in so I'm having to transpose and play and sing. And I mess up -- a lot. So it has been safer to play, but not to play loudly enough that anybody but me -- and God -- could hear.

That doesn't mean nobody has ever heard me play. I used to play for kids' church and for an occasional women's group. I used to play when I was a library story lady and I used to pull the guitar out and play and sing at home quite a bit. But somehow those times were different -- and my rather quiet guitar strumming matched my not very strong voice. So.

When I have played with Willow, it has been more a time for me to reconnect with my guitar than to actually add some sound to the group. They're all amped; I'm not. My guitar isn't even miked, 'cause I like to move a bit when I play. Nobody could really hear me play. I couldn't even hear me play.

Tonight all that changed. I bought a couple of different kinds of picks, and ended up using the one shown above. See those little diagonal lines? They're actually raised ridges that act as grippers so the pick can't fly away as easily.

This particular pick is the lightest one made, so it's very flexible. Even so, I could feel my right arm tiring sooner than during yesterday's practice.

But -- I could actually hear myself play! And I didn't sound half bad.

There's more to this little tale. My writing has been the same way. My voice has been heard in the publishing field -- I've had a number of children's magazine stories published, have written for a couple of newspapers, have a travel book and some church plays published. But, so far, it has been a rather softly strummed voice. I have a feeling -- just a feeling, mind you -- it's about to pick up in volume...pun intended.

Maybe I'll even get an amp before too long.

:-)

Today's OED Word: Indian Summer

I'm curious as to why the Oxford English Dictionary chose Indian Summer as today's Word of the Day.


Here's the definition given:


 orig. N. Amer.

 1. A period of unusually calm dry warm weather, often accompanied by a hazy atmosphere, occurring in late autumn in the northern United States and Canada; a similar period of unseasonably warm autumnal weather elsewhere.

However, the weather of late has been neither calm nor dry, and warm and hazy are understatements. Nor is it late autumn -- summer is still in full swing for almost another full month.

Perhaps, the OED had in mind the second definition?

2. fig. A late period in the life of a person or in the existence of a nation, culture, etc., characterized by calm, happiness, or achievement.

Don't think I'll go there.

"The hurrier I go . . .

Numa Pompilius, 2nd King of Rome, 715-673 B.C.

. . . the behinder I get!" said the White Rabbit in Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.


I think I may finally have figured out why I always feel as though I'm two-steps behind in the tarantella of life.

It's all King Numa Pompilius's fault!

This second king of Rome -- after Romulus (of "and Remus" fame, suckled by a she-wolf and all) -- added two months, January and February to the calendar of the day, pushing August from the 6th month to the 8th month.

I, being born in August, should have been born in June. But, no -- I started out two months behind! No wonder I feel like I'm forever playing catch-up.

August, itself, seems to have been awarded the left-overs in terms of festivals and events. It is the National Month of Immunization Awareness, Psoriasis Awareness, Water Quality, Cataract Awareness, and Spinal Muscular Atrophy Awareness.

It is also, however,  National Goat Cheese Month and Happiness Happens Month, the latter brought to us by The Secret Society of Happy People.

Yes!!!

King Numa seems like a fairly savvy ruler. If the Wikipedia entry is accurate, the Roman historian Plutarch recorded King Numa as being spiritually sophisticated: "He [Plutarch] says Numa "forbade the Romans to represent the deity in the form either of man or of beast. Nor was there among them formerly any image or statue of the Divine Being; during the first one hundred and seventy years they built temples, indeed, and other sacred domes, but placed in them no figure of any kind; persuaded that it is impious to represent things Divine by what is perishable, and that we can have no conception of God but by the understanding."


King Numa also established an understanding of boundaries and legal ownership that prevented many disputes. His reign was a peaceful one, and he apparently died of old age.


The image above is imagined, of course. It is fitting that this particular image was imagined by Gnaeus Calpernius Piso, during the reign of Caesar Augustus. 


King Numa had a good reason for shoving August from 6th place to 8th -- he was trying to align the solar and lunar calendars to make life easier for all.


He couldn't have known that 2600+ years later his mucking around with times and seasons would set me back from the get go. 


Ah, well. Don't worry. Be happy.


Maybe I need to take a lesson from the White Rabbit. 


Do you suppose the pokier I'd go, the further I'd get?

A Parable for Our Times

And the Lord spake unto Anne saying, "Fill up thy tank."


But the hour was not early and the traffic was building. And the trip odometer indicated that only 386 miles had passed since the last infusion of fuel.


"But, Lord," Anne replied. "The last time I ran out of gas the trip odometer read 429 miles. It is only 30 miles to my destination. I will fill up on my way home."


And so Anne undertook her journey. Before long, she arrived at a crossroads of a sorts. To her right, and down the road a ways, lay a fuel supply depot. To her left, and over a causeway between great waters and over several miles of interstate highway, lay her destination, a repository of knowledge and learning where she was studying methods of teaching people to read and to understand what they read.


And, lo, the voice of the Lord came unto Anne a second time saying, "Even now, turn aside and fill up thy tank."


"Yes, Lord," Anne replied. "I have agreed with You. I will fill up on my way home."


And Anne turned left. She journeyed over the causeway between the great waters and she traveled the several miles of interstate highway.


And, lo, it came to pass that as she exited the interstate highway and merged onto the avenue on which her destination, still some miles away, lay, that her faithful vehicle sputtered. Her trip odometer read 400 miles, and so she was befuddled.


"Help, Lord!" Anne cried. 


But the voice of the Lord was silent. The hand of His mercy, however, covered over her, and she coasted into the parking lot of a convenience store. 


Now a fuel supply depot lay nearby, and Anne set her face unto this haven. She journeyed on foot, yea, crossing avenues of much traffic, to where her salvation lay -- in this case in the form of a gas can. And the merchant within showed her how to remove the plastic insert within -- with barely a roll of the eyes -- and so she filled the can and returned unto her van.


But then her wits failed her and she knew not how to transfer the fuel into the tank of her van. And she tried various means of funneling the fuel into the tank, but succeeded only in spilling some of the precious liquid. Nor did those nearby know how to transfer the fuel into the tank.


And, lo, the Lord suggested that, perhaps, the plastic insert, which lay on the ground, was, in fact a spout -- although one end seemed to be stoppered. And Anne tried various means of attaching the spout to the container, but without success. 



And so Anne dialed a lifeline, yea, even Lee, who exhorted her to examine the cap more carefully to see whether it contained a removable disk. 


And, lo, as she did so, she noticed that raised lettering, reading "Remove this disk" adorned the cap. Nor were these the only instructions. Plastered prominently on the side of the can were directions for afixing the spout and for transferring the fuel into the tank.


Before the hour was out, Anne had replenished her fuel tank and was on her way to her destination, that veritable repository of knowledge and learning where she was studying methods of teaching people to read and to understand what they read.