by Christine | Jan 11, 2008 | Welcome Column
A week from today I’ll be sixty years old, but I swear I’m a nineteen-year-old kid trapped in a downwardly spiraling body. In many ways I still think like a nineteen year old, though a little bit wiser, have the same tastes, though a trifle less extravagant, the same...
by Christine | May 21, 2020 | Welcome Column
Friday night is music documentary night on BBC Channel 4 television. I always check the schedule and click to record any programme that promises to show people playing fretted instruments. The BBC has access to a load of old material and I’m rarely disappointed....
by Christine | Feb 19, 2010 | Welcome Column
On any given weekend at almost any time of year, the moving bluegrass community re-creates itself in fields and campgrounds around the country. Like an amoeba, it swells, changes shape, splits and re-creates itself anew somewhere down the road. It has a life and shape...
by Christine | Feb 23, 2019 | Welcome Column
She would show up at our front door one or two times a year; loaded for sale—bags of homemade goods. She knitted and hand stitched anything you could imagine, from beds, to dresses, to men’s underwear, or cozies. She had two gold-front teeth and her hair was always...
by Christine | Sep 17, 2012 | Welcome Column
I see it every time I pick up my vintage instrument. After nearly 100 years, this little mandolin has really been around. And it has this one little problem that I just can’t abide. It bugs me. Here I own one of the best sounding instruments I’ve ever...
