On our way to England today to spend a weekend with the UK dulcimer club in a very old abbey in the middle of Leicestershire. We're going just for the weekend so we can hurry back and be a part of this scene in Bowling Green. This should all be a lot of fun... But work too. I'm teaching 7 workshops and I also hope to do a significant amount of fieldwork there. They're training me well here at WKU!

What makes the number 8 significant in your life? How about 8 worthy American dulcimer players traveling to Beijing for the Yangqin World Congress in 2005? Massive Dulcimer World Takeover -- Phase II -- starts NOW!
www.cimbalom.org

The university handed us a four-day weekend, so Butch and I made the most of it by doing nearly nothing. Well, we did drive up to Louisville on Friday night for the IBMA conference. Not because we love bluegrass, but because we wanted to see ol' Scott Atkinson, who was there selling magazine subscriptions to Sing Out. The best part was being able to watch the presidential debate on television inside a bourbon bar on the 25th floor of the Galt House Hotel overlooking the entire city of Louisville. Who won in the debate? We did! Thanks, Scott, for putting us up and buying us breakfast, and also thanks to Erika Brady (who must be psychic) for calling us just in time with the free passes.

Scenes from a dinner table (the other side)

Scenes from a dinner table

Well hello October! It was a fun weekend. Had a great lunch with Professor Njoku on Friday, and then inducted him into the wide world of blogging (Dig his!). We had a quick chat about our futures. Quite the recurring theme, that. Friday merged right into Saturday (all days do merge into the next; sleeping is our arbitrary line between yesterday and today, and every now and then, that line gets erased by the necessity to be somewhere, do something, etc.) as I woke up at 4:50am to drive to Louisville for the National Preservation Trust Conference. I was hired as a technician there, to press the record button on the machines that would capture the oral histories of local Louisville business owners and descendents of such. This ended before lunchtime, (the merits of an early start!) and then I was free to roam about Louisville, River City... Saw the big baseball bat, some wacky painted horses (NYC had cows, L'Ville has horses), the not-so-nice neighborhood, and then the quite-nice neighborhood. Didn't get lucky on any garage sales or flea markets, but I was able to pick up a tasty baguette from the Blue Dog bakery for Leo back in B.G. Stopped in at Ear X-tacy to find out what's hip in the music world these days. Fairly pleased with what I heard. Came home with the release from the Mutual Admiration Society. It's growing on us. Saturday night was another fine jam at Bread & Bagel, a bit of piano maintenance and repair at Karl's, and then Sunday was all about new clothes. Lookin' good now, and feeling great. How are all of you people?