(Time at home is a precious thing these days. I spend less of it than I like in front of a computer. But my notes are still here, and I'll get them up soon as I can. Honest. Think of this as a promissory note.
(Oh, and you might check the back entries as well. This one was written on August 18, for instance. And the entry for July 18 got on the blog just before this one...)
I was ready to stop and enjoy a break. So of course it started raining.
I was on I-77, working my way through the West Virginia mountains, and Tamarack was coming up. For me that's a special occasion. I believe I've mentioned that most of the places I'd like to spend time looking at are far away from the nearest truck stop. But the West Virginia Turnpike has a service plaza at the Beckley exit. Just park, cross a street, climb some stairs and a parking lot, and there you are.
Tamarack (or at least the part I visit) is sort of like a permanent crafts fair. A big circular building, with a bunch of workshops behind picture windows where craftsmen ply their trades and matching gift shops/galleries where you can buy what they make. I always make the full circle, but I'll admit it--there's one place I always stop.
One of their workshops is taken by a husband and wife, instrument makers who specialize in bowed psalteries. When I stopped by today, the husband was showing a family one of his rarer creations.
Well, all right. It wasn't HIS creation.
Seems a school in the area had planned to put on a play about a class full of kids who wanted to protest a budget cut in their music department. So they (the characters) made their own instruments and put on a show. They (the people putting on the play) had come to the Tamarack instrument makers for pointers, and the gentleman in question had suggested something a little more ambitious than the usual improvised rhythm-band stuff. He'd designed a bowed psaltery they could make out of two pieces of (it looked like) maple two-by-four and some cardboard.
The kids had built them. They'd learned how to play them. And one of them had brought this one back to him, temporarily. It needed tuning.
I got to try it. The tone was nice. Especially considering how little time and money had been lavished on it. Not something you see every day.
The rest of the place was fun, too. I'd planned to make a quick tour, in and out just to say I'd done it. I ended up spending a good 45 minutes. If I hadn't been well ahead of schedule I wouldn't have dared stop.
As it was, I hurried back across the parking lot, down the stairs, and climbed back into the truck. A few minutes later I was headed for North Carolina once more.
And a few minutes later it began to rain again.
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