Scots may have voted against independence in this month's referendum (but read this before you make up your mind about that). By coincidence -- and by request -- we are going to be taking up a song from the Scottish rebellion of 1745-46 for the Clayville Pioneer Academy of Music at 10 a.m. Saturday. It's called the Skye Boat Song, and it's a fantastic piece of music 3/4 time. It can be played as a waltz, but it's more of a slow air.
The best account (as so often happens) is in Wikipedia, which says it "recall[s] the escape of Prince Charles Edward Stuart (Bonnie Prince Charlie) from Uist to the Isle of Skye after his defeat at the Battle of Culloden in 1746." Don't believe the bad things you hear about Wikipedia!
According to Wikipedia, for all their romance about Scottish rebellion, the lyrics was written by the British aristocracy of the 1800s -- " by Sir Harold Boulton, 2nd Baronet, to an air collected in the 1870s by Anne Campbelle MacLeod (1855–1921), who became Lady Wilson by marriage to Sir James Wilson KSCI (1853–1926) in 1888." The air, or melody, is traditional, however, and it's lovely.
It has been covered by everyone from James Galway and the Chieftans to Tom Jones and Rod Stewart. YouTube has covers by the Corries, the Scots Guards Pipe and Drums and the Tampa Bay Children's Chorus, among others.
A lead sheet is available on EverythingDulcimer.com at http://www.everythingdulcimer.com/tab/ (scroll down the alphabetical directory to the "rlwalker" version of "Skye Boat Song.") It's dulcimer tab, in DAD and DAA, but it has the melody line and chords for those of us who play other instruments. You can also print it out directly by linking here:
There are several versions on YouTube, but the one that's probably the most instructive for us shows a local band called Carl Purdy and Friends at O'Donovan's Irish Pub in Augusta, Ga., Musicians include: Carl (harmony, Irish pennywhistle) and Erin (lead vocal, guitar). The woman who inquires at 1:50 who ordered the "burger with a side of mayonnaise" is surely a waitress and not part of the performance. Think of her as adding to the ambiance!
There's also a nice fingerpicked version on the mountain dulcimer by YouTube user dulcibard.
A classical arrangement -- Beautiful Classic Scottish Music - The Skye Boat Song - Relaxing Harp, Flute, Clarinet, Violin Solo:
Beautiful instrumental Scottish folk music solo of the classic traditional Skye Boat - Speed Bonnie Boat song. Best Relaxing Harp and Peaceful Flute music. Mormon Tabernacle Choir Principal Flute, Jeannine Goeckeritz and Principal Harp, Tamara Oswald performing live an arrangement by Skaila Kanga and Clive Romney, joined by Becca Goeckeritz, violin, Daron Bradford, clarinet, and Scott Allen, bass. From the Oswald Goeckeritz Duo live concert "A Joyful Evening" at BYU Education Week. http://www.harpandflute.com.
And an a cappella performance by the UCD Choral Scholars at University College Dublin. If you'd like to hear the lyrics without a conversation about hamburgers in the background, this is the one to listen to!
The Alumnus, Alumni Association of Augustana College, Rock Island. Volume 1 (1892-93) (Google eBook)
At left, quote from I.M. Anderson, "The Educational Institutions of the Augustana Synod," The Augustana Synod, A Brief Review of its History, 1860-1910. Rock Island: Augustana Book Concern, 1910.
With dummy or placemarker ("Lorem ipsum …") text below is to make the citations line up with the JPEGs. (Click here for a brief history and some text you can copy and paste into your own dummies.) As I find more information, I'll replace the "lorem ipsum" with text that actually means something!
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Ernst Olson, The Swedish Element in Illinois: Survey of the Past Seven Decades : with Life Sketches of Men of Today Chicago: Swedish-American Biographical Association, 1917, p. 130.
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C.J. Södergren, "A Brief History of the Augustana Synod," The Augustana Synod, A Brief Review of its History, 1860-1910. Rock Island: Augustana Book Concern, 1910, p. 30.
Google eBook)Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.
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I.M. Anderson, "The Educational Institutions of the Augustana Synod," The Augustana Synod, A Brief Review of its History, 1860-1910. (Rock Island: Augustana Book Concern, 1910), p. 99.
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Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.
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Here performed by Danish --- band Rannok at Live fra Café Bartof in Fredericksberg 23 Februar 2013 - "Dejodejo" CD release. The other tune, the reel, is titled "Den sidste ged" (the last goat).
And here, performed by Fiolministeriet (the Ministry of Fiddles) live in Solingen in 2011. I don't know what the second tune is. Both are from the Bast Brothers' tune collection (whatever that is), according to the notes on YouTube.
We meet one early spring evening in the pleasant little café in the foyer of a small hotel in Flensborg, on the German-Danish border. A fairly large group of Danish musicians and people from the international music business are talking animatedly when the street door opens and in step a trio of smiling young women carrying their musical instruments. An aura of success and self-confidence surrounds them. That’s because this is the young Danish trio Fiolministeriet (The Fiddle Ministry), and they are breaking through on the German folk music scene at this very point in time. The Fiddle Ministry play Danish and European music from the 18th century, arranged for violin, viola, cello, guitar and voice sang, and this evening they are returning to their hotel after yet another in a long series of concerts, yet another full house, yet another wild success. The gathering is for the German festival folkBALTICA, and in the weeks up to the festival, The Fiddle Ministry – violinist and singer, Ditte Fromseier, violinist Kirstine Sand and cellist Kirstine Petersen – have toured all over Germany, presenting their brand new debut album.
Very well-written feature story by Stephen Elliott in the Dispatch and Argus when the team was honored in 2007. Elliott's lede and nut graf:
ANDOVER -- They played on ball diamonds with no fences, where collections were taken up to pay for bats and baseballs.
They traveled to small towns around the area, where farm kids could watch their heroes round the bases. Cheers came from people standing outside the dusty ballfields.
They were known as the Andover Terrible Swedes, and they played baseball in the open fields, in rain and sunshine, sometimes into darkness. The players came from farms and factory jobs to share a little of their youth with each other and the fans who came to watch.
Eugene Carlson started his career with the Andover Junior Swedes back in 1939.
When he puts his fingers around a baseball today, the 84-year-old still has a firm grip after all these years.
The eyes squint a little in the sun. The smile seems to reveal memories of a time when crowds came out to see a young boy standing in the open spotlight on a dirt field.…
This, on the local team's origin:
Andover historian Ron Peterson said the Terrible Swedes came about after one of the Swedish players, "Stripes" Johnson, saw a local basketball game with a team called, "Olson's Terrible Swedes," in the 1920s. "Stripes" thought it would make a good name for the baseball club.
And a good deal of history about the team, the players and their service in WWII, and the post-war years, including this:
"One time, a guy hit a ground ball past second base, and it went into a gopher hole in the outfield," Mr. Carlson said. "The guy got a home run."
And this, for a kicker at the end:
But, the Swedes faded out in the late 1950s to early '60s.
The ghosts of the Terrible Swedes are being honored this weekend. Mr. Carlson and Mr. Johnson will be there, along with former teammate and Milan resident Vergene Samuelson.
"I see them now out there running around in the dust," Mr. Carlson said of today's baseball players. "I think, `isn't that a bunch of crazy people?'
"I did it. But, when you're younger, you do a lot of crazy things."
Editorial note: In the list of captions to pictures below, there is a reference to a "melody string, center, attached to woods crew …" No, there were no tiny lumberjacks running around Jenny Lind Chapel, and they had no melody strings attached! That's what AutoCorrect did to me when I tried to write "wood screws" as one word.
Notes and pictures from my visit to the Jenny Lind Chapel yesterday with Ron Peterson of the Andover Historical Society, who removed the Esbjörn instrument from its display case and allowed me to measure it. (See also the picture with my post Psalmodikon -- misc. notes on resonance strings (resonanssträngar) immediately below on Sept. 5.) It is clearly a sophisticated, well crafted musical instrument.
Psalmodikon in Jenny Lind Chapel museum
Esbjörn was a protoge of Johann Dillner, who wrote the most important primer on the psalmodikon, and he was one of two founders of the Augustana Synod who used it widely in the early days. (The other was Eric Norelius, of Vasa, Minnesota.) His instrument is wider and deeper than Dillner recommended in his introduction to the 1846 sifferskrift (psalmodikon tablature) edition of Johan Olof Wallin's Swedish Psalmbook of 1819 (click here for details), but is approximately the same length. Its measurements:
The instrument was apparently designed for one melody string centered over the fretboard and 10 drone strings, five on each side of the fretboard. See Sept. 5 post below for details. Three strings are still attached. They appear to be loop-end metal strings (maybe 0.12 or 0.14 gauge?). And the end of what appears to be a gut string is attached to the bridge end of the psalmodikon.
Some other measurements: The fretboard is raised approximately 1 inch from the soundbox. Like other Swedish psalmodikons, it lacks metal frets but is cut in a shallow sawtoothed pattern The bridge is a block of wood 1 inch in height, 0.75 inch at the bottom and 0.25 inch at the top. It is cut in a right-angled trapezoidal pattern with the right angle nearest the fretboard.
The picture below, taken in 2013 when the instrument was in its display case, shows its overall proportions.
Other pictures below show: (1) At left, decorated sound hole, 8.75 inches from the nut end; (2) at right, nut end of psalmodikon with wooden peg for melody string. Drone strings are metal loop-end string slipped over woods crews; (3) metal tuning pegs on butt end of psalmodikon for drone strings and end of melody string, center, attached to woods crew; and (4) detail of nut end, showing tuner for melody string, at center, and resonant strings looped over wood screws at sides.
Word comes from Keill Tofters, who is writing a book about Esbjorn, that the instrument would be tuned like a nyckelharpa: "Gällande stämning av resonanssträngar tror jag att man (som när vi stämmer resonanssträngar på nyckelharpa) försöker stämma dem i oktavens alla toner. Då medljuder resonanssträngar. Om man spelar t.ex. tonen G på spelsträngen, så medljuder den resonanssträng som är stämd i G. På detta sätt får man starkare och vackrare ton." My translation (with a hat tip to Google): "The current tuning of sympathetic strings , I think that (as when we tune resonant strings to the nyckelharpa) we try to tune them in all the octave tones. Then sound (vibrate) the sympathetic strings. If you play for example the note G on the string board, so the resonant string tuned in G sounds with it. In this way, you get stronger and more beautiful tone."
While I have edited my estimates below of how many strings there are on the instrument (with incorrect guesses stricken out and the correct number inserted after it and underlined), I don't want to change my speculation about alternative tunings, especially those that might be derived from the hummel; the museum descriptions I turned up had anywhere from three to 14 sympathetic strings, and I think the instruments with fewer than five to eight strings would have to be tuned to fifths and octaves like a hummel -- or American dulcimer. But I am now completely satisfied that Pastor Esbjorn would have tuned his psalmodikon to a chromatic scale as Tofters suggests.
A mystery: Lars Paul Esbjorn's psalmodikon in the Jenny Lind Chapel is set up with a playing string over the fretboard at the center of the instrument and what look like eight or nine10 unfretted strings at the side of the fretboard (see picture below). One of them, I believe, could have been double-stopped along with the melody string as a drone. But the rest of them look like a player wouldn't be able to reach them with a bow, so they must have vibrated sympathetically like the resonance strings on a Swedish nykelharpa or a Norwegian hardingfele.
So here's the mystery: How could you tune the psalmodikon so you wouldn't be retuning all nine11 (counting the melody) strings every time you changed keys?
Esbjorn's psalmodikon in Jenny Lind Chapel, Andover, Ill.
Psalmodikons with extra strings weren't all that uncommon in Sweden, judging from the descriptions of the 19th-century instruments on display in Swedish museums, but apparently they weren't standardized, either. It seems to me, from what I've read of Stig Wallin's "Schwedische Hummel," that the Swedish instruments were influenced by the box zithers formerly played in Sweden. So that suggests one possibility -- was the psalmodikon tuned in fifths and octaves like a hummel?
But there's a psalmodikon in a museum in Uppsala that may have belonged to Johan Dillner (provenance uncertain, tho') that looks to me like it may have been keyed like a nyckelharpa. If so, could the resonance strings have been tuned to the notes of a scale? That's how a nyckelharpa is tuned.
My best guess is that different makers would have approached the problem differently, modeling their drones or resonance strings after whatever instruments they were familiar with. The instruments described below have anywhere from four to 16 resonance strings. But it's only a guess.
At any rate, I've been Googling around about psalmodikons, hummels and nyckelharpas lately. My unedited notes follow in Swedish and English (or what passes for English in Google's translation utility) in italics … all of which, taken together, raise as many questions as they answer.
"Ett psalmodikon är ett musikinstrument som utgörs av en långsmal resonanslåda med en till tre strängar spända över en greppbräda mellan ett strängstall och en snäcka. Kallas ibland för psalmonika. I Gagnef, Dalarna, finns fler exemplar med tre stämskruvar - dock monterades ibland två strängar av för att förenkla inlärningen. Avancerade modeller kan ha upp till 12 bordunsträngar." [A psalmodikon is a musical instrument consisting of a narrow resonance box with one to three strings taut over a fretboard between a string and a stable shell . Sometimes referred to psalmonika . In Gagnef , Dalarna , there are more copies with three tuners - however sometimes mounted two strings to facilitate learning. Advanced models can have up to 12 drone.]
And an English-language Wikipedia page at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psalmodicon" (note spelling with a "c") has a footnote that seems to describe the Esbjorn pslamodikon almost to a T: " Francis William Galpin (1937). A Textbook of European Musical Instruments: Their Origin, History and Character. Williams & Norgate, Limited. - The Norwegian and Swedish Psalmodikon, of somewhat the same outline, was introduced by Johan Dillner (c. 1810) for accompanying the Church hymn-singing; it has one melody string of gut and eight sympathetic strings of metal." I don't think they were that standardized, though. Certainly the ones I've seen described in museums (see below) have anywhere from 5 to 11 or 12 strings.
Interesting that the playing string would be gut and the bourdon strings metal. Why would that be?
The Swedish Wikipedia page notes, BTW, that, "Instrumentet var även populärt vid husandakter i hemmen och bland kringresande predikanter" (The instrument was also popular at husandakter in homes and among itinerant preachers.). "Husandakter" would be home services, by my translation, or conventicle prayer meetings held in someone's home.
Pix can be enlarged on DigitaltMuseum webpage (Creative Commons)
Thumbnail history of Dillner and detailed description of the instrument in the museum at Uppsala:
Psalmodikon. Experimentmodell av trä. Ljust brunbetsat och på kortsidorna svartbetsat trä. Resonanslåda med plats för 16 resonanssträngar, tre tonsträngar. Däröver fästes med haspar på sidorna en träklaviatur med tangenter av björk, vissa svartmålade. Påspikad bräda med klistrad lapp för tontecken. Avbalkningsbrädan försedd med metallklamrar och med nottecken i blyertsskrift. Svartmålade stämskruvar. Ljudhål dels S-formade dels hjärtformade. På fastklistrad pappersetikett på sidan står skrivet med bläck: "av Prosten Dillner / Östervåla / Anno 1800". [Psalmodikon. Experimental Model of wood. Bright brunbetsat {brown stain} and the short sides black stained wood. Resonance Box with space for 16 sympathetic strings, three strings. Above that is fastened with hasps on the sides with a träklaviatur {wooden keyboard} keys of birch, some black painted. Påspikad [nailed to] board with sticky patch tontecken {tone characters, e.g. A, B, H, C, D, etc.?} Avbalkningsbrädan {partition board} fitted with metal staples and with musical notes in pencil writing. Black Painted tuners. Sound hole partly S-shaped partly heart-shaped. On the glued paper label on the page is written in ink: "The dean of Dillner / Östervåla / Anno 1800".] Provenance is missing, however: "Uppgifter om proveniens sakanas."
That superstructure reminds me of the keys on a nykelharpa, so I Googled around to see how the sympathetic, or resonance strings, are tuned on that instrument.
In the most common configuration, the resonance strings are tuned up the scale starting at G# for the lowest sounding string, located nearest the C playing string, and up to G for the highest sounding string, located nearest the A playing string. So the twelve resonance strings sound G#, A, Bb, B, C, C#, D, Eb, E, F, F#, G from low to high.
Also a page on tuning the playing strings and a PDF file that covers both.
Hardingfele.http://www.hfaa.org/Home/articles-on-the-hardanger-fiddle/a-guide-to-tunings-on-the-hardingfele. Karin Løberg Code of Hardanger Fiddle Association of America has detailed information on traditional tunings. The regular tuning, used for 81 percent of tunes transcribed in Norsk Folkemusikk - Hardingfeleslåtter (NFMHS) is: a.d'.a'.e" for playing strings and
[(b).d'.e'.f#'.a'] for the sympathetic strings.
QUESTIONS:
Could Esbjorn's psalmodikon, with its eight resonance strings, have been tuned to a C major octave -- sort of like a nyckelharpa?
Or was it tuned to octaves and fifths like a hummel?
It has seemed to me, and Stig Walin more-or-less confirms in "Die Schwedische Hummel," that as psalmodikon makers branched out from the very simple box zither that Dillner describes in his books, they were influenced by the hummels that were still being played in parts of Sweden during the early 1800s. Certainly the overall shape of the instruments shows that influence. Could the drone strings have been tuned like a hummel, too?
If Walin says anthing about how the drones were tuned, I haven't found it. But here's what he says about the psalmodikon in general terms:
Um 1830 begann der unglaublich
schnelle Siegeszug des Psalmodikons über
das Land.1 Das Instrument wurde von den
mächtigen Erweckungsbewegungen der
40er Jahre und der folgenden Jahrzehnte
in Gebrauch genommen.
Trotzdem aber
hätte sich das Tonwerkzeug nie so schnell
ausbreiten können und wäre bei der tra
ditionsverbundenen Landbevölkerung nie
zu sofortiger Anwendung gekommen, wenn nicht der Boden von dem verwand ten älteren Zithertypus Hummel so gut vorbereitet gewesen wäre. Als ein belieb tes Werkzeug einer rein profanen Musik pflege (einschliesslich des Tanzes) muss te die Hummel vielerorten als schwer sündbelastet betrachtet und deshalb bei seite gestossen oder einfach zerstört worden sein,2 um statt dessen vom Psalmo
dikon ersetzt zu werden,3 das von Anfang an ein Instrument für Gottesdienst und Hausandacht war.
[Around 1830 began the incredibly
quick triumph over the Psalmodikons
the areas.1 The instrument was of the
mighty revivals of
40's and the following decades
taken in use. but still
the Tonwerkzeug [sound, i.e. music, tool] would have never been so fast
can spread and would be at the traditionsverbundenen [tradition-bound] rural population never
come to immediate application , if not the ground would have been so well prepared by the pretext th older zither type Hummel . As a tool to ANY tes a purely secular music care (including dance ) must te the Hummel have been in many places considered as serious sin burdened and therefore joined in page or simply destroyed by 2 instead of Psalmodikon , 3 which was from the beginning a tool for worship and prayer house .]
Interesting tangent (at least to me): Bourdon is the French word for bumblebee!
BACKGROUND INFORMATION
Some details about home services I haven't seen elsewhere from Swedish history of psalmodikon in Wikipedia:
Instrumentet började användas i Danmark under 1820-talet, och spreds sedan till övriga Norden och Baltikum. Mest känt är prästen Johan Dillners (1785–1862) psalmodikon från 1830, som användes i en del av Sveriges fattigaste församlingar i stället för orgel. Dillner använde psalmodikonet för att lära ut de nya melodierna i Haeffners koralbok, och gav ut dem i siffernotskrift 1830 (Melodierna till Swenska Kyrkans Psalmer, Noterade med ziffror, för Skolor och Menigheten). Han sade att han kunde lära vem som helst att hantera ett psalmodikon på bara två timmar. Instrumentet var även populärt vid husandakter i hemmen och bland kringresande predikanter. Under senare delen av 1800-talet ersattes oftast psalmodikonet av orgelharmoniet. [The instrument was first used in Denmark during the 1820s , and then spread to the other Nordic countries and the Baltic states. Most famous is the priest Johan Dillner (1785-1862) psalmodikon 1830 , which was used in some of Sweden's poorest parishes instead of organ. Dillner psalmodikonet used to teach new songs in Haeffners koralbok , and published them in numerical notation, 1830 ( The melodies to Swenska hymns , quoted by ziffror , for Schools and the congregation ) . He said he could teach anyone to manage a psalmodikon in just two hours . The instrument was also popular at husandakter in homes and among itinerant preachers. During the latter part of the 1800s was replaced mostly psalmodikonet of the harmonium.]
Cf. the description of the lay readers' conventicle in Moberg's "The Emigrants" ...
Misc. descriptions of psalmodikons in museums (w/ varying numbers of bourdon strings -- all translations, such as they are, by Google):
Malmö Museums. http://carlotta.malmo.se/carlotta-mmus/web/object/21994 Psalmodikons, string zither, with long, narrow resonance box made of wood. Fingerboard with 30 bands, melody string missing, with 11 sympathetic strings. The resonance box has a round and two crescent-shaped sound hole. Waisted rim at the round sound hole in the wider part of the resonance box.
Kulturen Lund. http://carl.kulturen.com/web/object/24388 Notes: KM 23594th Psalmodikons m. strings fr. V. Karaby, Harjagers hd. conn. by Blecker, Lund. 10:00
With sympathetic strings. String Games and Stable missing.
Upplandsmuseet http://www.europeana.eu/portal/record/91617/upmu_object_UM01766.html Psalmodikon av ljust lackat träslag med mörkare fläckar, förmodligen av bets. Avbalkningsbräda med vissa partier svartmålade. Metallklamrar åtskiljer varje avbalkningsdel. Ristade tontecken. Ovan dessa ristade notbokstäver. Stämskruvar svartmålade.
Endast melodisträngen (av tarm) är bevarad, men strängfästen visar att tolv resonanssträngar funnits. Stall saknas. Ett runt ljudhål och två halvrunda ljudhål. [Psalmodikons of brightly painted wood with darker spots , probably beet . Avbalkningsbräda with some parts painted black . Metal brackets separating each avbalkningsdel . Carved tontecken . Above these carved notbokstäver . Tuners painted black .
Only the melody string ( of gut) is preserved , but the string mounts shows that twelve sympathetic strings existed. Stall missing. A round sound hole and two half- round sound hole.] From Hälsingland. Pix show tuners at end like Esbjörn's in Jenny Lind Chapel.
But my original hunch, for what it's worth, is that the bourdon strings would have been tuned like a hummel, since a lot of Swedish psalmodikons look like their shape is influenced by the hummel.
[Lede:] “While it actually resembles no other city upon the face of the earth,” wrote Lafcadio Hearn of New Orleans, “it owns suggestions of towns in Italy, and in Spain, of cities in England and in Germany, of seaports in the Mediterranean, and of seaports in the tropics.” There’s no better illustration of this than the photographs of Richard Sexton. For four decades Sexton has been playing a transcontinental game of Concentration, pinballing between New Orleans and the cities of the Creole diaspora—Havana, Quito, Cartagena, Cap-Haïtien—documenting resonances in architecture and style. His photographs have now been collected in the gorgeous Creole World: Photographs of New Orleans and the Latin Caribbean Sphere, and are on display this fall in a free exhibition at the Historic New Orleans Collection.
e.g. pix of downtown street scenes in Havana, Cap Haitien and Bourbon Street, housing blocks in New Orleans and Panama City ...
Yes, if you want to imbue Cyndi Lauper’s 1983 hit 'Girls Just Want To Have Fun' with a deep sense of sadness and irony, simply shift it from its original major key to a minor one.
It's the work of the very talented young Chase Holfelder, who's producing an ongoing series in which he takes major songs and transposes them to minor. ...
Agreed. Here, by way of comparison, is the 1983 original by Cyndi Lauper. Video on CyndiLauperVEVO channel:
I don't know if I ever noticed it before, but there's no lack of irony there, either.
Bonus track (w/ dulcimer, no less): YouTube heading: Cyndi Lauper - Time After Time (Live on Caroline Rhea show in 2003). The dulcimer, if I had to guess, is probably in some kind of alternative tuning, but the melody is basically Ionian:
Prairieland Strings/Clayville
Pioneer Academy of Music
Beginner-friendly amateur jam sessions
If you have a dulcimer, a guitar, banjo, fiddle, autoharp, tin whistle or any other musical instrument that you want to learn, or you haven’t touched in years – or if you want to make music with other people at a steady, moderate pace in a relaxed, beginner-friendly atmosphere – the Springfield area has two “slow jams” designed for rank beginners and novice players. They are free of charge and open to the public:
• Clayville Pioneer Academy of Music. 10 a.m. to noon, first Saturday of the month, Clayville Historic Site, Ill. 125, Pleasant Plains.
• Prairieland Strings. 7 to 9 p.m., first Tuesday and third Thursday of the month, Atonement Lutheran Church, 2800 West Jefferson (Ill. 125), Springfield.
Our goal is to bring together amateur players to learn new tunes and enjoy the fun of making music together in a friendly, non-competitive atmosphere. While our groups started with dulcimer players who wanted to jam with other instruments, we welcome all instruments and players of all skill levels. The more variety, the better we like it!
We mostly play old-time American fiddle tunes, gospel and folk hymns, traditional Irish, show tunes – and practically anything else that strikes our fancy. We’re not about the fine points of technique as much as sharing our knowledge, having fun and making music with each other.
We also offer occasional song- sharing circles and free workshops at Clayville called “Fake It Till You Make It: Getting to Know Your Instrument and Playing in a Group.”
For information, email Peter Ellertsen of Springfield, who coordinates the jams, at hogfiddle @ gmail.com, phone (217) 793-2587.
To make a flier, follow these steps (more or less) Exact procedure will vary, depending on your word processing software:
Set your margins at 0.5 inches all way around.
Copy and paste the text into a word processing document.
Copy the pictures, paste them into the text and wrap the text around them.
Size the text (in other words, blow it up) as follows: headline 36 point; subhead 24pt; body copy 12pt.
Find a lonely bulletin board, and put up the flier.
Verbatim quotations. (Quotation marks in the indented blockquotes are those of the original newspaper story.) Posted here and quoted at length in case the newspapers don't keep archiving them indefinitely.
Bishop Elizabeth Eaton has a quick sense of humor, which is helpful because she often contends with an image of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America crafted by radio humorist Garrison Keillor, whose Lake Wobegon Lutheran Church is firmly rooted in quaint small town America and Scandinavian heritage.
Both of those are beautiful, said the woman just elected presiding bishop of the 4-million-member denomination. But an influx of Latino members is a bright spot in the otherwise declining ELCA. The congregation she led for 15 years in Ohio had crack houses for neighbors. Lutherans, she said, need to bring Jesus to whoever is living next door, using both old-time hospitality and newfangled social media.
"Just tell people to check us out. We're open Sundays," she quipped, then checked her words.
"We are also seeing that Sunday morning is a really bad time for many people. Maybe we have to be more flexible about making it possible for people to come."
Eaton, 58, is a native of Cleveland who has been bishop of ELCA's Northeastern Ohio Synod since 2006. … Post-Gazette story mentions loss of 500,000 members since vote on gay rostered clergy, but puts the membership issue in the context of an overall need by mainline churches for attracting young families, more sophisticated use of technology, etc. Including a wonderful quote about the printing press:
About half the churches in her synod have websites.
"We have one with no indoor plumbing," she said. "The last really effective Lutheran use of new technology was the printing press. People don't look in the phone book any more. If you want people to find your congregation, you need a website."
Popular culture … reaching beyond ethnicity
…
When her college-age nephew told her that he didn't believe in God, she asked him to describe the God he didn't believe in, she said. After listening to his description of a wrathful, anti-science, anti-intellectual deity, she told him, " 'I don't believe in that God either.' We got to the point where I was able to say this is the God I believe in, this is why Jesus makes sense in my life."
Her nephew hadn't been raised among people who believe in the sort of God he described, she said. It's a stereotype that arises from popular culture more than from the church. She said that one of her young adult daughters tells her own peers that they're intellectually lazy when they say things like that.
"She'll say 'You are letting that [view] seep in from the culture. That wasn't what you experienced growing up,' " Bishop Eaton said.
Messiah Lutheran Church in Ashtabula, where she served from 1991 to 2006, was originally so ethnically Swedish that worship in English didn't start until the 1930s. Yet, by the time she arrived, church members were marrying their black neighbors. Gay couples and their families began to attend. The congregation was welcoming. Now, she said, little black and Filipino children wear traditional Swedish costumes for the Santa Lucia festival at Christmas.
Many people might not know what makes the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America unique. How would you explain the denomination?
If people even know what a Lutheran is, most people are stuck on the lovely homespun caricature developed by Garrison Keillor in Prairie Home Companion and Lake Wobegon and all that. We often have parodies of ourselves where we say that all we do is eat different kinds of Jell-O and green-bean casserole. That is no longer true about us. Our growing edges in this church are African national congregations and Latino congregations, which is bringing a whole new wonderful flavor to the Lutheran potluck, theologically and culturally.
* * *
You support the decision to allow partnered gay clergy, but you also believe that the church should make room for people who don’t. Why?
Lutherans have a history of living with paradox. There are some things that are nonnegotiable for us. But there are other things that it is possible for people who love Jesus holding the same faith together, can have very strong, very sharp disagreements, but it does not have to lead to disunity. Things like marriage or the ordering of government or certain political positions, we can and we do disagree, but we agree on the cross.
We want to be a place that says we can disagree on things that are vitally important but still listen to each other and see in the other a brother or sister in Christ, and more importantly, someone for whom Christ died.
[lede] The presiding bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, or ELCA, is Ohioan Elizabeth Eaton, who moved to Chicago to take office at the beginning of the year. She works for the larger community, but her roots are strong. When asked if she had words specifically for Toledoans, she said, “What I'm really concerned about are those people in Toledo, some of them root for Michigan. I want to say to my brothers and sisters in Toledo, don't go to the dark side, come back, come back to Ohio State.”
* * *
One more question had to be asked. With the presiding bishop the ultimate authority, in a way, in the church, what's the deal with green bean casserole at potluck dinners?
“Oh, geez, I'm not supposed to talk about that anymore,” Bishop Eaton said. “That's a caricature of northern central European, you know, Garrison Keeler [of the NPR show A Prairie Home Companion]. This is what we eat, so you can find it at a lot of potlucks.” She gave an example of a church staff member who is a lifelong Lutheran, but her Puerto Rican heritage doesn't include the dish. “In the Garrison Keillor understanding of what Lutherans are like, that's not who we are, and we have a need to understand that's not who we are anymore.”
But she also said, “Anything that has cream of mushroom soup as an ingredient is probably something that we can do.” Look for variety—and a mushroom or two—on Bishop Eaton's plate at the many church dinners she'll attend as presiding bishop.
She expects to be challenged by such issues as the declining membership of the church, and all Christian churches, with the increasing secularization of society. Eaton said the ELCA needs to respond to that problem by reaching out to a younger and more diverse audience.
“Our church is overwhelmingly European-American. We’re a very white church,” she said. “We really need to find a way to open up space and make room for people who are not in the traditional European/Lutheran mode to have a voice and power and leadership in the church.”
She hopes that ELCA churches can “re-engage” their communities. “Connect with them and tell them there is a God who loves and cares deeply about you and your life, and here’s a place where you can find meaning,” she said. “We don’t have to go overseas to be missionaries anymore.”
Eaton is realistic about the challenge. “Sometimes I have an image of the church as an aircraft carrier,” she said. “To change the direction of an aircraft carrier takes a lot of time and a lot of space.
“I don’t think there can be some miraculous turn-around of an organization this large, and with this many moving parts.”
Eaton said she will miss her role as an area bishop who could go out each Sunday and visit the local congregations. “And hey, potlucks are great!,” she added.
Some hometown ties will endure. Eaton swore that when she goes to Chicago, “I will never be a White Sox fan, nor will I ever root for the Bulls.”
As for the long-term future of the church, beyond her tenure as bishop, Eaton said, “I don’t think I’m a really great future thinker. I’m just going to leave that in God’s hands.
“I just hope that we don’t cling too tightly to what we have or what we know, so that we’re not able to be open to what’s going to emerge,” she added.
Eaton said she isn’t worried about the future church, even though “I don’t know what it’ll look like. It’s God’s church, not mine.”
This interview aired on October 3, 2013. [My notes: Paradox. beauty in diversity ... We're a church where everyone is welcome, so we would say. We also hold fast to this notion -- it's not orginal to us, it's original to God, obviously -- that we're loved by a God who wants to lavishly, unconditionally love every one of us. And that's a gift that we have, and since we have been loved in this way we're free then to love the world and serve the world. e.g. malaria So our church Q. Pope Francis - missionary church that reaches out to minorities, gay, etc., even nonbelievers -- gay clergy -- When we say we welcome everyone, I think that's very important. That was a costly decision for us, but if it's the right decision, then no cost is too high. But when we say we welcome everyone, we also welcome those who disagree with that decision. They are fully members of our church, because we can agree on the cross of Jesus Christ. Q what do you say to critics who say h is a sin ... [5:15] q. decline in attendance? A. I think the church for a long time has had a privileged place in our society and our culture and it was taken for granted, I would say in the 50s that it was not only your religious duty, it was your civic duty to be in a faith community. And that's not the case any more. We're not the only game in town, and so we've need to be more ready to be missionaries once again, and to tell people this is a place where you're accepted and you're loved unconditionally and freed in that love, you can go out and make a difference in the world.]
