I'm back.

Caught up on my rest some after the grand train adventure. We wound up going sleeper car both ways, and it was lovely. While the "roomette" accomodations are indeed tiny (there was essentially no room for more than my husband's messenger bag, my small handwork bag, our coats and our two selves), they were plenty comfortable, with room to stretch out a little, a fold-out table, and a tiny closet. Meals were included, and while the selection was limited (it might be difficult to maintain a strict diet for more than a day on board), the service was prompt and the food reasonably tasty.

And they provided a space to go for quiet. While we enjoyed meeting many people over meals, it was also nice to be able to go to our own space and shut the door. In the dining car, we met train enthusiasts, a Katrina relief worker and his wife travelling to relatives, a professional dancer on vacation, a woman travelling to a school reunion and other interesting people.

I think if I were travelling with children, the train would have to be my first choice - on our way out, there were two infants on the same car with us, and a family with children. Unlike air travel, there were no major pressure adjustments, even as we travelled through the Appalachian mountains, since we mostly rode along the valleys. There was room to move about for the older children, and even my husband and I found ourselves practically glued to the windows, stopping only to sleep and eat.

The scenery was fabulous: from rolling hills and tumbling rivers to the vast open expanses of the Plains. At night, we found ourselves watching the Christmas decorations flow by. One house was plainly waiting for the train, because as we passed, they blinked the lights and waved to us. On the way back, we were able to tell when we passed the Eastern Great Divide, simply by watching the waters beside us - and watching the Potomac turn from a tiny mountain stream to the churning whitewater near Harper's Ferry was incredible.

Frequently, we found ourselves saying, "That town looks interesting. Can you tell where we are?" We were grateful for local businesses, because they often incorporate the name of the area, or prominant local features. Also, they were often nicer to look at.

As we left Chicago, we passed a large shipping yard and were simply blown away by the volume of freight containers - One part, we weren't sure - was that a warehouse made of freight containers, or simply a stack? We found ourselves thinking about the incredible wealth of a nation that produces those vast yards of food and goods. How can it be possible that we have created a system where so many lack basic heathcare? How could that happen?

Frequently, especially in some of those small towns, or along the rocky gorges of the Appalachians, we found ourselves wishing we could somehow both ride the train to see what comes next, and also that we could get out and explore the treasures that we passed...

I guess what I'm saying is... Wow, what a ride!

Well, I've finished my candymaking.

I realize that I haven't been posting much. The holidays have swallowed me whole, frankly. Currently sitting in my apartment are:

1 batch homemade from scratch caramels, neatly separated and put into containers.
1 batch chocolate dipped glazed apricots, still sitting on their wax paper until I find the energy to deal with them. (and not incidentally, where I put the roll of wax paper...)
1 batch candied apricots, drying until they are dry enough to get their final sugar coating.
1 triple batch dark chocolate cherry fudge, cooling.
1 quart homemade apricot preserves
Surprisingly few dirty dishes from all this (Thank you, dear!)
Several fabric gift bagged little gifts of candy and nuts for the dreidel game to be played at my husband's aunt's house.
Several origami fabric pouches.
Another yard of fabric to be turned into gift bags and pouches.
A mostly finished silver crocheted necklace with art glass beads
A few CDs for gifting by some independent artists I really enjoy. (Hi, Christine!)
A printout of some of the poetry and essays that I think a friend of mine will enjoy who does not have online access.
One wiped out fool who is enjoying a break by blogging and listening to music by Lorcan Otway and by Christine and her husband.
One messy livingroom that will have to be attacked this week.
One husband who is beginning to do that.

Headed for the Great Outdoors

The car is packed solid. Tent, sleeping bags, extra blankets and pillows, first aid kit, camping mattress, folding water carrier, cooler, extra tarp, extra tentpegs, metal dishes and heavy mugs, rain slickers and hiking sandals, camping chairs, and all the rest of the paraphenalia to set up a comfy campsite, go hiking and swimming, and just hang out at a state park.

The little pocket in the car where I keep music is stocked with campfire music to sing along to on the way there. I've read the weather outlook for the next few days and packed some extra warm clothes since we're likely to have an afternoon thundershower or two while we're out. The banjo is neatly packed away in the gig bag I made, ready for campfire service (though right now, not in the car.)

The water bottles are nestled next to the small bottle of camping suds for the dishes and the liquid castile soap for us. And I'm off soon.

Have a good weekend everybody!

Banjo adventures update

The banjo lessons have resumed after a break for my instructor to go on his summer vacation, and I've improved tremendously during the break. "Skip to My Lou" is playing smoothly and I managed to keep good enough time on it to do a duet with my instructor of "Skip to my Lou" on banjo and guitar. Woot! "Polly Wolly Doodle" is where "Skip to My Lou" was before the break - I've got the notes and the note values, now I need to work on smooth transitions and steady timing. Chord transitions are going better, too, enough so that I'm learning 2 more chords in preparation for learning "Oh, Susannah" perhaps as early as next week. And another chord or two, "just because".

And some of the "tricks" I've been learning as "breaks" from actually concentrating on getting those chord transitions perfect are really shaping up, too. I've got this cool blues slide that I've learned how to do on the banjo, but no song to put it in, which is a serious pity as it sounds so nifty that it's hard to believe that *I* made that happen. And the new chords are minor chords, so I got some musical theory thown into this lesson, which has made practicing my strumming that much more interesting. (And given me a couple of variations on the chords I already knew to play around with. Just messing around with open G can be more entertaining than I'd ever have believed when I first tried strumming out a song.)

The only bad part is that it is really hard to put the banjo down some mornings and get myself to work. I'm really looking forward to this weekend's camping with the banjo along. If the weather is nice, I'll be hiking and paddling about with a cheap pair of binoculars along for wildlife watching. And if we get confined to the lovely new tent, I'll be sitting in the vestibule, watching the rain and playing the banjo.

Just writing that last bit reminded me of the one and only time I've ever been to New Orleans. It was over 10 years ago, and I went there with my mom and my sister, visiting my dad who was on a nearby base. While I am so not a morning person, my sister is and so we found ourselves up and moving rather earlier than I might have chosen by myself. We decided to grab some breakfast at the Cafe du Monde (Menu: coffee, beignets - a sort of flat donutish pastry, and fresh orange juice. Mmmm.)

When we got there, the river was still covered in morning mist and the city wasn't really awake, but the great thing about the Cafe du Monde is that it is basically an open pavillion where you can people watch or whatever, so we sipped our chicory coffee and juice, ate pastries, and watched the French Quarter wake up. About halfway though, rain started to fall. It went from a few tentative drops to a deluge in about 10 seconds, and the next thing we knew, there was a sax player taking refuge under the overhang. And he was *good*. The rain was his personal rhythm section, and he played music that dodged between the raindrops, climbed to the clouds, fell to the ground, and became the mist wrapping us each about. He played the river and the city, the heat and the cool mist, the rain and the warm coffee. When the rain passed again, he began to gather up his case and his hat, but we made sure to get out there in time to leave our contribution to this artist.

Part of me, though, has ever since heard a sax playing bluesy jazz in every good rain storm.

Evening: One Deep Breath

Canoe glides softly
Into evening eddies
Tired.

Last bird calls echo
Crickets begin to sing
Evening in the hills

Mosquito lands
Ripples of water
Trout's dinner

Deck in the woods
Banjo in my hands
Evening whispers

This weekend, I went back to the hills to visit my parents and canoe down the same river I canoed down countless times as a child. I brought my sketchbook, but somehow just didn't even open it, preferring to sit out on the deck with my banjo, sometimes playing softly, but more often just watching the life of the woods around me.

On Saturday, we debated on whether to give up on the canoeing expedition and just go for a walk in the woods, but recommitted to the 7 mile paddle and headed off to the canoe livery, not getting there until the afternoon, and finding ourselves waiting. No problem: we watched the goats in a nearby pen wiggling through to get to the feedbox until our name was called, then headed upriver with a trailer of canoes.

Then we decided to explore a rock formation on public lands partway down the river, and lazily drifted for some of the trip. When we arrived near the end of the trip, I was exhausted, but happy. After my shower, as everyone else got ready for dinner, I again sat with my banjo in the gathering dusk.

Banjo progress

In the meantime, I've been working away at learning the banjo. Pretty much I've got the melody lines down for "Skip to My Lou" and "Polly Wolly Doodle" and am working on the chords for accompaniment. *sigh* "Skip to My Lou" is coming along, and would probably come along better if I could sing that song anywhere close to where my banjo is playing. "Polly Wolly Doodle" is kind of chugging along behind.

On the other hand, I've practiced so much that I've worn out my strings, so I learned how to replace them. Woot! It was oddly gratifying to see the wear spots, including a place where I'd basically worn through the winding wire on the low D string. I left the used strings with my instructor, who has been known to use old musical strings in craft projects and other reuses. And the next night realized I wanted the old strings because I spotted a repair project I could have used one in. So it goes.

This weekend, I'm taking the banjo with me when I visit my folks. The place we're staying is pretty isolated, so I can feel reasonably confident that I'm not disturbing anyone when I take the banjo out on the porch to practice those darn chords. And next week, it can come camping.

It's gotten to be a very relaxing thing I do - just pull out the banjo, feel the comfortable feel of the neck in my hand, the light weight resting on my lap, the brackets pressing into my arm, the strap keeping everything in place. Tune. Okay, now tune again. Run a couple scales up and down. Hmmm. Play with the chords a bit. Double check that tuning. (The tuning was better for a while, but new strings need constant tuning, as I am rapidly discovering.) Play with "Skip to My Lou"... Now, the chords. Okay, "Polly Wolly Doodle" melody. (I love doing the "Fare thee well, Fare thee well, Fare thee well, my fairy fay" bit*.) Play around a bit. Chords, right, I should be practicing chords. "Skip to My Lou" chords. Play around a bit... and so forth.

*And I just realized that that's a bit that freaked me out less than a month ago - convinced I wouldn't get the timing or the change to the A note easily. But I did. And now, it's my favorite part of the whole song. There's probably something really deep in that. And the whole "Polly wolly doodle all the day" bit is a lot easier than it looks, too.

Steve Martin is right. It is just about impossible to be totally depressed while playing the banjo. There's something cheering about that ringing sound, even if it does want tuning every 20 minutes.

A busy day

Went to the Smithsonian today and took in the Portuguese exhibit at the Freer and Sackler, and the National Museum of African Art (One of the neat things about the Smithsonian is that these three museums all connect underground, so you can start wandering in one of them and come up to the outside again in another. Technically, there wasn't any of the exhibit in the Freer, but that's where we came in, and they're always mentioned together anyway...)

The Freer and Sackler have long been favorite haunts of mine - they tend to be quieter than the Air and Space Museum, for instance, or even the main galleries of the Natural History Museum in summer. And space is divided in interesting ways, and there are plenty of nicely padded benches for sitting and contemplating on (or for resting feet that have carried you through a maze of marble hallways and stairs). And best of all, if you make it all the way down to the bottom of the Sackler, there is the pottery room. The pottery room has a lovely, quiet fountain in it, and a few, exquisite pieces of modern pottery.

Hushed footfalls pause
Listen to silent whispers
Feel a painted breeze

And, of course, once you are out of the galleries, there are truly beautiful gardens, walkways, and decorative pools to enjoy, behind the castle. Flowers everywhere, and benches scattered to catch the shades of different times of day. Marble walks give way to brick, and clever gardeners have sculpted a fantasia from hedge.

Under an arched hedge,
Afternoon shadows tiptoe
Toward bright water.

The National Mall is growing dry and dusty from the heat, and from the millions of visitors who stroll across the grass, but even here, the trees spread shade, and there are vendors selling ices. And if you know where to go, there are sunken sculpture gardens with some shade, and quiet walkways. Plus, of course, the tall marble porches of the museums seem to offer relief.

Robins flick dust,
Watching tourists come and go.
Maybe scraps will fall.

After all that walking, I was glad to catch a train back out of the city, and stop to pick up the last few items for tomorrow from the grocery.

Renewal

As I approach the upcoming trip to see my parents, I find myself hoping in a couple weeks to take a different kind of trip. This one is filled with preparations and doing, going, moving. The time has come, once again, for a trip to "take the waters".

I want to head for one of the local warm springs and just spend an hour soaking there, with local veggies and spring water for dinner. I want to walk around and watch the local wildlife. I want to catch up on my sleep: no sewing, no work, no worries.

Sorry, folks

The toll of the last few months is seriously catching up to me, I think, and I'm finding myself just weary, weary, weary.

Last night, my dad called to let me know he's finally completed this tour, and is once again free to go on vacation, attend a conference, attend to his business, and all the rest of the stuff he hasn't done for months. Unfortunately, he called while I was out, so I got the message from voice mail, and just stood there, thinking that I should be happier, that this was the first time I'd heard him since he'd come back. But mostly I was thinking that I really wanted a shower, but should I do that first or get some sleep first?

I've used all my vacation for the last year, and the one day I have left is already committed for the coming home party. I don't get any more days off until the middle of July, and right now, that seems a very long time away indeed.

Luckily, my weekends are relatively free. I plan to do some sleeping in, visit the local meetinghouse's strawberry festival, and maybe catch a movie tomorrow. And Sunday is a picnic. And maybe I can get a couple hours of unpaid leave...

Music and inspiration.

I've spent a little of this evening continuing to practice - I have a new variation on the scales to practice and I'm trying to figure out exactly how to contort my left hand to reliably get the notes in the harder bits of "Skip to My Lou." And it's good.

As I came home from work, I realized it was time to turn off the radio again and return to listening to music from a CD. Luckily, I had the perfect music to calm and soothe - Earthpassage by the good folks over at Quiet Paths. And it was marvellous - serene, wearing like the water in the recording at my my stiffness, the tension from listening to the words of people who claim to care about our soldiers while insisting that they can't be brought back, or even guaranteed to be sent with appropriate training and equipment. Wait a second, now remind me of who it is that doesn't support our troops...

But the falling waters, the intricate melodies weaving themselves around the natural sounds... ah. I have now gotten the chance to hear them all, and they are all very good. And so I got home to find that Christine had posted some really incredible thoughts on the nature of inspiration and the sacred. Wow. Check it out, folks.