A visit from Aunt Dolores

    Aunt Dolores came to visit a few weeks ago. It was such great fun. She is one of those cheerful people that is just very fun to be around. She brought her guitar so we were able to play some together and she yodeled for the grandkids. It makes you feel kind of sorry for those cuturally deprived kids who don't have a great aunt who can yodel. Yodeling is such a lost art these days that I image that would be over 99 per cent of the population in most parts of the country.

    Dolores spends the summers living next door to her daughter near Eugene. During the winter she lives in Lake Havisu, Arizona, the town that bought the London Bridge.  Its a shame we don't see her more often, but she only lives near us when the bee store is at its busiest.  By the time things slow down in the fall she has gone back south to Arizona.  In addition to the music we did get to spend some time talking about genealogy and their youth in Arkansas and elsewhere, but not as much as we should have done.

     After playing with Dolores, I feel inspired to work harder on my fiddle playing. I even spent a few evenings watching instructional videos on You Tube and have set a goal to learn to do a decent vibrato. A slow song like a waltz sounds kind of flat if you can't vibrato some of the long notes.  I also need to commit more songs to memory.  I'm working on memorizing Ashoken Farewell as that is one of her favorite waltzes.

     My other main incentive to improve my fiddle playing is the weekly violin lessons I'm giving to Madelyn Rosenauer, a friend's 9 year old daughter.  I feel a little guilty nagging her to practice more if  I"m not getting my fiddle out more often.  That is also another incentive for me to watch violin instructional videos so I can do a better job teaching fundamentals to Madelyn.