I went to the Highlander Festival in Kelso, Washington this afternoon and sat through three sets of the Wicked Tinkers.  I'm in love. 

With the drumming!!!

I'm so jazzed.  It took me hours to wind down before I could be calm enough to put this post together even though I'd been planning it in my head all day.

The video I embedded was from someone else's  audience experience somewhere else.  My ten second attempt was crappy in several ways and not worth uploading.  Most of what I found on YouTube was either bad amateur video with jumpy image and poor sound or, if more professionally produced, from 6-9 years ago.  Good sound and image but not even close to the ambience of my experience so I went with the Celtic Nova offering.  It has good steady image and tolerable sound and from only five months ago and thus a very good display of the energy of my experience in the performer-audience interaction.



This was the only pic from today that Laura took for me that turned out well enough to post and it shows only three members and there were at least four and possibly five.  It was hard for me to count them as neither they nor the audience between me and them stayed still long enough for me to keep track of them as I counted.

One time they all came down into the audience and wandered among us playing.  Imagine having one of those knee-kicked kilts a foot from your knees and the drum knocking on your eardrums. 

Oh my!  A memory indelible.  Even with my eyes and ears.

And the drum so close I could have reached out and touched it.  I could have swooned.

For the drums guys.  For the drums.

I'm serious.  I'm coocoo for drums.  Drums were my first choice of band instrument when I was offered the choice at age eleven but both my parents and the band teacher nixed it.  My parents because "You can't plays hymns on the drums."  The band teacher because, "Girls don't play drums."

So glad both premises have been proven balderdash.  Please oh please don't take our girls back to the 1960s!!!!

Between the sets, Laura and I wandered the artisan booths and I handled a lot of very interesting, well-crafted art in many categories.  Jewelry, crystal and other rock, leather, fiber art and more.  A lot of it on the Celtic theme, of course.  I'm going to dole out pictures of the treasures I brought home over several posts.  It would take me another hour to do the photo shoot and prep the pics and then yet another hour to write about each item and besides this Sunday Serenity and ROW80 focus is on the Wicked Tinker experience.

So what do you think ROWers, does this qualify as an artist date ala Julia Cameron even tho it wasn't just me and my muse?

A Round of Words in 80 Days Round 3 2023 The writing challenge that  knows you have a life

 ROW80 Round 3 Goals:

• Morning pages daily.  Average 40 minutes (ala Julia Cameron The Artist Way and Writing For Life) YES Started May 20.  Probably would not have jumped into NaNo and ROW80 without having had a month of morning pages behind me. But the very fact that I've hung on to this YES throughout the crisis' is PROOF that I am committed to the writing and still belong in ROW80.  Don't worry, I know the ROWers need no such prrof.  Only my Stella.
• Storydreaming with notebook for noting ideas for characters or scenes. (ala Robert Owen Butler From Where You Dream)  30 10 minutes per day 4/7  of a yes since last Sunday  (The notebook is the key to this goal as without it the storydreams go to the same place night dreams go an hour after waking.) Note: I've adjusted the goal for the duration of the round to ten minutes a day with the caveat that as long as I'm sitting with notebook and pen it counts even if I don't write anything new.
• Working on the Fruits of the Spirit (aka FOS) Storyworld Bible at least 30 10 minutes per day at least 5 days per week.  I'm sure this will expand as I get involved but I need to set a minimum for that jumpstart. 2/5 of a yes   (still hoping to make this and storydreaming  my ROW80 main project for the remainder of this round as I need a substantial start on it in time to use it for Preptober and NaNo next Round.)  This week the life that got in the way is a crochet project for a birthday on Tuesday.  Note: I've adjusted the goal to 10 minutes 5 days a week with the caveat that I don't need to work into the pristine spiral notebook I bought for this project yet.  The first task is to get a feel for how that notebook needs to be organized and to figure that out I will start re-reading my files with loose scratch paper or note cards at hand to note down every 'fact' I encounter as I read: names, dates, descriptions, titles of books and chapters and stories, character quirks, symbolism associated with a character...etc.  It occurred to me that my resistance to this task was at least partially related to not wanting to make a mess in that pretty notebook.  So now I have permission to make a mess with scratch pads and note cards.  Let's see if that makes any difference.  Also there is a trick I'm playing on myself here.  I almost never do a thing for only ten minutes but if I think I must do 30 minutes I balk at starting thinking of all the ways I'm likely to get interrupted or not fulfill my expectations in some unexpected way.  I realized this has to do with not being able to visualize exactly what is expected.  But I know what it means to 'read' and 'take notes'  I've been doing it with other people's stories every day for weeks and weeks.  For most of a year in fact.
• Weekly Artist Date (ala Julia Cameron)  This is about doing something to recharge your creative battery.  I'll go into more detail in one of the check-ins.  A big YES  More 24/7 cams discovered.  Also screensaver vids of color or image in motion.  Some with music excellent for background ambience for writing.  More walks to the gazebo and back with my caregiver and at least one where we sat reading there for an hour where I could look up from my book and see birds or neighbors walking dogs or neighbors having interactions with each other on their porches or the breeze in the leaves which is better than screen savers.
• A minimum of 5 minutes of physical activity daily.  Either a walk outside with my caregiver or a session on my mini-tramp, or pacing the floor between front and back door. YES (may need to look at upping the expectation soon.  this is getting too easy.)  
• I want to reengage with my blog so: Two One blog post per week besides the two check-ins. Either about encountering other people's stories via print, video or audio which can include formal reviews or about a current fiber art WIP or about one of my personal challenges: widowhood, independent living with visual impairment and autism and issues related to health and aging among them.  Not yet.  Note: I've adjusted my expectations here for the duration of the round.  I removed the theme of personal challenge from the options as it turns out that has been the theme of my check-in posts and those take a lot out of me and a third one would be overloading my readers as well as me.  The main reason I've not posted extra is the same reason I missed the Wednesday check-in: I'm super busy chasing library book due dates and trying to finish books before the next set of holds comes back my way.  I sometimes feel like I'm chasing my own ponytail around the 440 track.  Last Wednesday I was still trying to finish the over 800 page Sun House by David James Duncan even tho it was going to be a fail.  I closed in on 70% by the time Libby took it from me but I still needed 13 more hours for that last 30%.  Boy do I miss the days when I could read 100 pages an hour or better.