Harp Retreat at Occidental

This is perhaps my favorite weekend of the year, the Bay Area Folk Harp Society retreat at St. Dorothy’s Rest in Occidental. This is an area that was once set aside for a lot of camps and stuff, back in the early 1900s. This particular campground (which isn’t camping at all) is owned by the Episcopal church. So they’re laid back and don’t care if we drink wine. This is a picture of "our" house, Lydia house. Usually other groups are using the facilities while we’re here, and often they want to come hear us play and we usually invite them.

I have always had a campground view room, but I was the first one here this time and snagged a room that looks out over the valley. My room looks out over the hills across the highway. It is beautiful over there -- a green pasture on a hillside, surrounded by stands of trees, a path going up the hill, a house nestled in the trees to the right, with a garden area and a big square plot of land in the enclosure. Closer to the road is a hippie-colored bright pink little house. But the most fantastic thing was that when I went to bed, I could look out the window and see the stars. LOTS OF STARS. Because it’s dark here. On the other side of the building there are trees around the room and some lights for safety. This side is dark. Furthermore, during the night, if I’d wake up, I could see that the stars had moved through the sky because my window has a grid pattern and you can see where the stars are in the grid.

Friday night is a casual evening where we just basically have a harp circle after dinner. We started by going through our books and picking out songs, then sort of graduated to anything anyone would start. There is always a big mixture of people here in terms of levels of skill. John Mentras plays the cross strung harp which allows him to play all sorts of chromatic things that can’t be played on a lever harp. Mitch plays lever harp and can play all sorts of pop music because he can flip levers at the speed of light. Patrice Hahn is another wonderful player who seems to have the ability to make everyone feel that she is just one of us, although she is way better than others. Natalie Cox is a harp teacher and professional who also plays a lot better than the rest of us.

I always pick out those few good people, but then I’m always surprised when we have the Hoolie and some of the people who don’t act like particularly good players play some astoundingly well-prepared piece.

Saturday morning after breakfast (bacon, frittata, cereal, fruit, English muffins, homemade jam, cereal, etc – in other words, anything you wanted) started with Meghan giving us instructions in a chi gung program called Eight Pieces of Brocade, which I think I will actually be able to follow at home. Following that, John gave a class in Latin music, gave us a lot of ideas for bass parts for various types of South American pieces, then let us try putting familiar tunes against those pieces.

And then, it was time to eat again. Once again, a lovely spread, broccoli salad, chips, crackers, any kind of sandwich fixings you were interested in and juice. Then we have free time to work on our performance piece, take a walk, take a nap, think deep thoughts, whatever, until our 4:30 class with Patrice, who gave us a lot of good information about harmonizing Irish tunes.

I brought the hurdy gurdy so I don’t have to play the harp for harpists. Right now I’m sitting in my room before dinner watching a bunch of hawks circling across the way. They don’t seem to be hunting or anything, just riding the thermals for fun. I had expected to see some deer in the pasture over there, but I haven’t yet.

Saturday night was a yummy dinner of enchilada casserole with Mexican salad and string beans. The food here is really good. AND we had chocolate cake with chocolate chips topped by ice cream for desserts. Our hoolie was lots of fun and a number of people who are here on other retreats came down to listen to us. This always happens when people know we are here: they love to come listen.

Secrets of This Old House

I think we have a pretty house. It's not really fancy, but it's inviting and colorful and can look pretty fancy when we get everything cleaned up and sort of staged for company. Here's how it looks then.

And now, for the rest of the story

Electrical outlets are always an issue in old houses. It's entertaining when we have a rehearsal here and we have cords and lamps dragged all over the living room. We have the old knob and tube wiring, which is really quite safe as long as animals don't chew on it and you don't get too fancy interrupting the old stuff. So this basically means, you can't go around the room putting in a lot of electrical outlets which you might like to have for modern life. This is a picture of just one of our many lovely outlets.

With the advent of digital TV we of course got one, since the television is the most important piece of furniture in our house. But as the last people on earth not to have cable, we have used a variety of of indoor and outdoor antennas to get reception, both pre-and postdigital. Since digital started, the picture is better, when we get it, but the antenna thing is really quite adorable. This picture shows the channel 6 position, which is the cord hanging over the top of the tv. Most of the other stations are more or less okay with the cord in a reasonable place, like say, the floor.


The bathroom is the place where we have the most of these half-assed things. So we're back to the electrical issues. In many rooms of the house, overhead lights have pull chains. However, when we decided that we wanted a brighter light in the bathroom -- and this one is so bright that you could do surgery in there -- it also needed a chain. But this light fixture is sort of like a flying saucer (we're going for an Art Deco look) and you can pull the string straight down, so you have to pull it sideways. So when we have company, I have to put a sign on the string so nobody will pull it straight down and then not be able to turn it off again.

This is my favorite half-assed "repair". Now the thing is, the bathtub is old so instead of tearing the bathroom apart and removing the tub and everything, there's an aftermarket thing where they come to your house and put a kind of a paint finish on it and bake it. It looks pretty good but you can't let it stay wet, because in the final analysis, it's just paint. So, from time to time the shower head leaks and then the bathtub is wet 24 hours a day. So I discovered that if I tied this string onto the shower head that the water would run down the string and into the drain without keeping the tub wet.

Then there's just this little tiny leak under the sink, it leaks only about a half inch in the bottom of this margarine tub in about a month. Unless you don't put the tub there, and then in awhile the tile on the floor is all white from the hard water. It's one of those things that we could get a plumber out here to fix it, but it's just old plumbing and when you fix one thing, another one goes bad.

Well, now that I've finished this, I realize I have a bunch more stuff, so maybe I'll put a few more in next week or so.