by Christine | Jan 28, 2018 | Welcome Column
Retirement’s on my mind this morning. It’s because I posted a news item about Kathy Barwick’s up coming performances (see left column below) and that got me to thinking about how the really smart ones among us are able, with some good planning and...
by Christine | Mar 26, 2016 | Welcome Column
In my younger days, when summer was never ending and the river never stopped flowing; when snow fell before me, just because it was beautiful in its silence; when my muse was a single stick and a blanket to pitch my tent beneath the summer moon; when a walk on a...
by Christine | Apr 15, 2008 | Welcome Column
Some weeks ago there was a post on the CBA message board from the Contra Costa Civic Theater in El Cerrito seeking a banjo player, a fiddle player and a bass player to perform in a production of “Foxfire,” a play by Hume Cronyn and Susan Cooper. That kind of piqued my...
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...
by Christine | Sep 3, 2007 | Welcome Column
Have you ever wonder how bands get their names? For me, what they call themselves seldom determines whether or not I choose to listen. If I like the music, I don’t tend to think too hard about the band name, which somehow always seems to fit perfectly. So do bands sit...
by Christine | Dec 3, 2014 | Welcome Column
Well, the rains finally came, and that meant I had to learn all over how to include an umbrella into my life. But there was another, more disturbing development – my little Scottish umbrella is getting beat up, and that makes me sad. This Scottish umbrella was...
