Soup and Song Concert Review

Here is a very pleasant surprise (and a new experience!)

I have sent recordings and sought out reviews since I began working as a musician.  I have received unsolicited and solicited reviews of performances from venue owners, festival organizers and fellow musicians.

But this is the first time I've had a house concert reviewed by a member of the audience!  Mary and her husband joyously sang along with the songs, and told me about traveling cross-country with "a piece of it all" as their accompanying soundtrack in the past year.  I am humbled and deeply enjoy hearing how music that I am a part of has helped to accompany or enrich someone's life.  But I'm even more moved by the words she shares in her blog about my recent concert in Laurel, Maryland.

http://morahmary.blogspot.com/2010/05/do-small-things.html

It turns out that she had written about my first concert in Soup and Songs' house concert series a couple of years ago:

http://morahmary.blogspot.com/2008/07/saturdays-time-out.html

That reflection included references to books by a third-grade teacher...which has sent me shopping to get and read his books.

Music inspires a writer who links me to a reflective teacher who writes, whose stories I want to know (and probably will share!)  These are the re-weavings of the tattered fringes in our broken world that I both treasure and celebrate!

(And I am certainly gonna ask my Kindergarten-teaching sister if she knows about these books, too.)

Photos from Soup & Song House Concert

These photos were taken by Charlie Bernhardt, who with his wife, Marilyn, hosts Soup and Song Houseconcerts in their townhome in Laurel, Maryland.  

From Top to Bottom:  Chopsticks Fingerstyle on Charlie's beautiful 12-string guitar.

Girl from Ipanema on Charlie's Ginger Mountain Dulcimer (purchased by his wife and mother for his 25th Anniversary as Cantor of his synagogue.)

A Ship May be Safe (and I feel safe, surrounded by all these wonderful instruments!)

Simple Gifts, by Elder Joseph Brackett, always dances so nicely on the hammered dulcimer!

Destination: Home! (Finale to the 30-Dulcimer-Filled Years Spring Tour)

TUESDAY, APRIL 27^th

Up before my alarm at 6 am.  Take my last compartment of daily vitamins, shower, gather up my remaining belongings and leave.  The singing and chirping birds sound so familiar and I realize…these are the same birds as we heard in the pre-dawn in our years in Kansas City!

Driving on the Cimarron Turnpike, then Kansas Turnpike—the familiar return from Winfield.  I talk with Karen Deal at the Walnut Valley office and Jim Pierce as I relive those memories.  

Stop for a chance to journal at the rest stop on I-135 just south of Lindsborg.  The steady west wind is a bit brisk and my fingers begin to get stiff from the chill.  Messages left for my college friend, Meck.  I decide to stop on Kansas Wesleyan Campus and drop in.  He is grading papers but sets them aside as we go to lunch at our second choice:  the student center.

Today I'm listening to Vince Papele’s book, “Invincible.”  Quite a powerful and compelling story.  The drive west does begin to get tiring and long.  My stops have broken it up nicely, but now I am feeling the pressure to finish the final tricky logistical steps with the precision of a finely-tuned Swiss watch.

At the start of this trip, I flew to the Baltimore airport and picked up the rental car that would carry me across the country.  A shuttle ride from Greenride took me from the Harmony Transfer Center to the Denver airport to begin the trip. 

After I left, my wife picked up my car from the Harmony center, so it wouldn’t sit there for 2 weeks.  Now I need to fill up the gas tank before arriving at the rental car drop off, then drop the rental car at Dollar (which has just been purchased by Hertz, while I’ve been on this trip), and catch the Dollar shuttle to the airport terminal, in order to catch the Green Ride Shuttle back to Fort Collins. 

This all works as planned.  I schlep all my gear and instruments into the terminal for a bathroom break, then schlep back out to Island 3 by Door 505 to sit and wait with a white-haired woman who is also waiting for Green Ride.

The shuttle arrives only a few minutes after the expected time, we load up and head north as the sky grows darker.  The woman beside me started her travels in Tampa. The couple in front of us are the winners, however.  They began their travels 24 hours ago—in Cairo, Egypt!

David Schnaufer and Butch Baldassari’s recording and Dan Fogelberg on my iPod accompany the final leg of the trip.  Two spots of road construction slow our progress, but we are finally delivered back to our destination.  

As we turn in, I can see the silhouette of my wife with our little black dachshund on his leash waiting patiently beside the silhouette of a man with his poodle-terrier on a leash.  It is good to be home, and great to be warmly welcomed!

Living on Tulsa Time! (30-Dulcimer-Filled Years Spring Tour)

I arrived in Tulsa after a 5 hour drive from Mountain View, Arkansas that took me through a variety of climate changes!  The tornado-spawning storms that are native to Spring in this part of the world had me keeping a "weather eye" to the sky as I drove westward.  

Dennis Moran gave me "old fashioned" hand-written directions with the warning that my Garmin was going to try and send me on a big loop south of the city to try and stay on the 4-lane roads.  Sure enough, my Australian "guide" tried to get me to do just that...and I was very glad to exited the orange barrel express and drive outside of a construction zone!

I am so fortunate to have these opportunities to move across this big beautiful country of ours!  The driving gives me plenty of reflection and gratitude time, and in this posture of thankfulness I am delighted to find so much for which to be gratefully surprised.  Once again I am surprised by the beauty of a place that has existed in my awareness only as name, a tag-line in a song that I like.  This is my first time in Tulsa and Dennis and his wife Rosie are great tour guides as we drive through the city, in which he was raised, and I am the recipient of a native's hometown tour.

The oak trees are so abundant and verdant!  I am reminded of their deep green and cooling shade at Oaks Indian Center, where we took the kids from Fountain of Hope, my Kansas City church, on the final adventure of the Summer Youth Program in the early 1990s.  The shade was definitely needed in the dog days of summer back then, and will be needed soon here.  

My biggest surprise was the beauty of the fully-bloomed azaleas that were shouting to the world in brilliant colors of joy.  Dennis and I went to Woodward Park on Monday (in the cold spring rain!) to drink in some more of their beauty.

  Drinking warm Jasmine tea at the Chinese buffet was the perfect coda to the chilly trek through the park.  I learn that April is a busy month for weddings at this park in Tulsa and the upcoming Azalea Festival (next weekend) will draw thousands of people to this park and others.  We even see a bright red azalea hedge that rings a house a few blocks south of Dennis and Rosies!  

If one is selling a house in Tulsa, this is definitely the time of year to put it on the market!

Afternoon Mini-Concert at Ozark Folk Center (30-Dulcimer-Filled Years Spring Tour)

THURSDAY, APRIL 22nd

After a day of teaching mountain dulcimer classes my mini-concert set began at 4:05 pm in the indoor theater.

Playing both hammered and mountain dulcimers, I gave the audience of students, their families and the Folk Center visitors a hammered dulcimer taste of Colorado Dutch Hop with the Windsor Special, then O Virgineeia, Ferret Frolic and Soaring on the mountain dulcimer.  I always love to sing with Judy Klinkhammer's rich alto voice (she harmonized with me for Down in the Valley.)

Rick Thum (hammered dulcimer)  and I always have a grand time playing together and he agreed to join me for a medley of John Stinson's No. 2/Hangman's Reel. 

Carl Adkins (Artistic Director of the Folk Center) sat in on guitar and Margaret Wright (co-host of the Palestine Old-Time and Dulcimer Festival) tore up the bass.  Of course, mid-way through Rick yawned broadly at how "slow" we were going (a playful jab at mountain dulcimer tempos) so we put it in warp drive to take it on home.

(Thanks to Ilace Mears for these photos to help celebrate this musical fun!)

"Folk Music Scared me!" (30-Dulcimer-Filled Years Spring Tour)

After observing the live music scene in Toronto, and hearing the witness of my Canadian colleagues, I love telling people "'folk' is not a 4-letter word in Canada!"

But for others it still is.  My friend, Dan Anderson-Little, put together a house concert at the marvelous home of some friends in the St. Louis area.  Dan and Linda's children, who were born while we were colleagues in Kansas City, are my godchildren and I always treasure the opportunity to visit and catch up with them, kick a soccer ball or shoot hoops, or let them kick my butt in some video games.

On this visit, however, they all came to the concert.  Daniel (the eldest) brought his high school sweetheart, Jacob rode with me to the venue and we had a great conversation about possible career paths for one who is very logical and loves to debate.  (any guesses?)  Leah also had a friend come.

The concert was attended by a nice variety of people who responded to Dan's list, the neighbors of the home-owners who hosted the concert, and from my St. Louis area contacts from both the church dulcimer worlds.  The venue is a marvelous home in Overland, Missouri, that was the retreat for some St. Louis luminaries at the turn of the 20th century, situated close to a lake.  Of course, I was so focused on getting set up and tuned up for the concert that I neglected to take any photos until is was all over!

(Not pictured is a 3-rank Hammond Organ that is off-camera to the Left--the host is an avid and accomplished organist!)

The concert was engaging and the audience enthusiastic, as I have experienced throughout this tour, but the defining moment of the night came when Dan and I were recapping the evening.

"As we were driving home, I asked Daniel's girlfriend what she thought of the concert, " Dan related.

"When Daniel first told me it was going to be a folk music concert, I was nervous and a bit scared, "  she admitted.  "But this was fun!"

And so it is!  Folk music (the music of the people) sounds scary to people, until they actually hear it!  Let's get busy folks, we've got a lot of music to share with a lot of people and there is always more music than time!

Concert and Workshop at Robin Run Village, Indianapolis

Thanks to Tull Glazener, I was able to give a full-house concert to the residents of Robin Run Village on the north side of Indianapolis.  This is also the location for his mountain dulcimer club to meet regularly, so after the concert and some schmoozing time, I led 14 members of the club in an Ensemble-Playing workshop using the Welsh hymn, Ard Hy Nos (All Through the Night).

Then, once they were warmed up we played the Finale to Beethoven's Fifth Symphony!  In just a short time the group of varied experience and comfort levels were able to play both pieces in 4-part harmony learning and utilizing some different playing skills (like dynamics, plucking single strings, staccato articulations, and "playing" rests by damping the strings.)

Thanks to my host, Susan McNeely for taking these photos from the concert.

Morning Prayer (30-Dulcimer-Filled Years Spring Tour)

MONDAY, APRIL 19

The Karanja/Olson I-Group invited me to help plan and lead worship for Morning Prayer at Trinity Lutheran Seminary, my alma mater.  Apparently the seminary is abundantly equipped with students named "Sarah."  (Each one would greet me with, "Hi, I'm Sarah Number 88" or whatever number they chose.)  One joined me picking a mean guitar and the other on piano to help lead the congregation in singing.

The service music was chosen from several of my compositions and was performed acoustically.  Because of construction back-up on the major north-south freeway, I confounded my Australian GPS lady who kept urging me to turn to get back on the freeway as I wove my way on surface streets, angling my way through what became very familiar roads to the campus.

Following the worship service, with "I'll Fly Away" still echoing through the sanctuary, I led a conversation about composing for worship in general and demonstrations on both kinds of dulcimers for the Convocation hour.

Up and Out (30-Dulcimer-Filled Years Spring Tour)

Up and out.  (APRIL 18, 2010)

All is quiet on Tuscany Drive as I finish packing the car with my instruments, gather up my food and drink and taxi down the street for take-off and the drive to Columbus, Ohio along I-70 and I-68 through Maryland, West Virginia, Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio.

         Highlights of the early Sunday Morning drive:

I pass “Negro Mountain” Elevation 2740 feet.  I've never heard of this mountain but know there must be a story there.

        My friend and colleague, Eve Goldberg has written and sings a great tune: “Leaving Nova Scotia Blues” that I am working up on Mountain Dulcimer.  It comes up on my iPod and I play and replay it, singing it out loud as I drive along.  The higher elevations are still awaiting the full arrival of Spring.  I listen off and on throughout the 6.5 hour drive and, at one point, pull into a rest stop just to pull out my dulcimer and play through it as the north wind blows a chill through my hunched back while I sit upon the concert picinic table.

         

Another amazing accompaniment for this trip is an audio book that I purchased last summer but never had the opportunity to hear.  Margaret Cho is a streetwise comedian whose deep reflection and confidence is inspiring in her book “I Choose to Stay and Fight” which she is reading to me.

        

Time Zone problems.  I wanted to communicate with my spouse that I was getting on the road, but because Colorado is 2 hours behind the east coast, I didn't want to call, so I sent a text message.  When I called her at a more "godly" hour she beseeched me:   “Please don’t send me text messages at 4:30 in the morning anymore.”  (I didn't know that she was keeping the phone close by and the sound of the message did exactly what I was trying NOT to do.)  I apologize and promise to learn!!!

 ....

         Connie's dear Aunt Darline is out on her back deck with her little white poodle, and her eldest son and wife join us after a meeting at church as a cardinal brightly sings its song in the back woods.  We have a nice conversation and Bill and Marcia offer their home as a venue for a future house concert.

         After a long drive, my sister suggests a brisk walk through Bexley, north of main street.  It is great to spend the time with her and excellent to stretch my legs.  Both dogwoods and lilacs in bloom at the same time, and gardens are bursting with brilliant tulips, standing tall behind long tresses of green grass. 

         I rehearse at the seminary with Ray Olson and Sarah (Fiddle and Guitar).  She is the first instrumentalist in the Master of Church Music Program at Trinity who is not a keyboard player.  Good picker!  Tomorrow is going to be fun!

         To Mark and Rhonda Peterson’s for delicious dinner (with fresh Dilly Bread) and fun House Concert, their first.  An electic gathering of their friends, and my family and dulcimer friends, including a JamPlay student, Daryl and his wife gather for the concert.

         I play two sets that are mostly like the night before, they offer and ice cream sundae bar for refreshments during the break.  I work the mercantile and, to my delighted surprise, receive more offers for future house concert venues.  (Here the new download cards from cdbaby receive more attention than they have thus far.)

 ....

          I  Change the set list for the second set and finish with Kaitlin singing “We Are An Answer to Prayer” with me; Then I choose “Three Times” (a song I wrote in high school which appears on Holy Mountain) for my sister, Nancy and Rhonda to sing the “Beloved” song from our youth, with Kaitlin chiming in also.  It is a fitting finale!  Both Rhonda and I forget to get photos from the concert, so I take one of the instruments after they are packed up.

Soup and Song Photos (30-Dulcimer-Filled Years Spring Tour)

The Door Sign for the Concert

Here are photos from the Soup and Song Concert (thanks Charlie!)

Demonstration of Chopsticks as a Fingerstyle Exercise

Girl from Ipanema

Simple Gifts

A Ship May Be Safe

Soup and Song House Concert (APRIL 17, 2010)

One thing that is different since I was here last time is that Charlie and Marilyn  now proudly display their registered trademark for Soup and Song House Concerts®!

A deliciously delicate potato-leek soup was what was chosen for this concert.  Charlie and Marilyn pair the soup with the music and use each soup recipe only once!

 

The product table displays my CDs, DVDs email list and information for JamPlay.com and Concerts In Your Home (www.concertsinyourhome.com), a website which provides information to people  who wish to host live music in their homes.  ("Can you remember all the mistakes we made?  The year we ordered cheesecakes and everyone who came almost had an entire cheesecake to him or herself?" Charlie and Marilyn reminisce!)

        Michael Gilmore, an APO fraternity brother and Glee Club Old Man comes over from Silver Spring for the concert!  So fun to re-connect and catch up.  There is another couple who say, “You accompanied us on our trip across the country last year!”  (They listened to "a piece of it all" and sang along with many of the songs tonight!)

I once again sang West Virginia Mining Disaster, I Miss America.  Charlie joined me with his special harmonies for We Are an Answer to Prayer, and we closed the show with "an ancient Israeli melody" which served as Charlie's mountain dulcimer performing debut:  Sloop John B.  

          This was an excellent first concert of the tour, but now I am packing up to leave eeeeearly tomorrow morning for Columbus, Ohio!

Preparing for the Concert (APRIL 17, 2010)

It is a relaxing day as we prepare for the concert.  Marilyn and I share about our families and compare experiences of mid-life with its many challenges and blessings.   She tells me about Trochenbrod, the ancestral home on her mother’s side in what was Poland, then USSR and is now Ukraine.  Or, rather, if the Nazis had not murdered its’ inhabitants, burned every building and filled in all the wells, that is where it would be.  But she and Charlie were part of a pilgrimage last summer to visit the place that memories will not allow to be forgotten.  That trip was actually to be an active part of the documentary that has been filmed and is awaiting further investment and support to be finished and distributed.  (View the trailer here: http://www.trochenbrodmovie.com/) After the concert, Charlie sings me the song that our friend, Joe Jencks has written for the film, based on Marilyn’s research.....

 ....

            Marilyn and Charlie’s mother had conspired with me a couple of years ago to purchase Charlie a mountain dulcimer for use in leading worship at Oseh Shalom when his arthritis prevented him from playing guitar.  Charlie, however, said, “I don’t know how to play it!”  So over the course of this visit, I gave him a couple of dulcimer lessons.  A quick learner, he only needed two!

 

Charlie's son, Jeremy, is setting up equipment to make the archival recording I requested.

Shabbas, Sabbath

The congregation of Oseh Shalom are a reconstructionist synagogue and they pray beneath a circular dome that is encircled with an interesting, non-right-angle font of the semitic alphabet.  It is comforting, and confusing, to be immersed in three versions of Hebrew, the one that dances around the ceiling, the more familiar one in the prayer book, and then the transliterated one that utilizes English characters to describe the pronunciation of these words.

            Here is a community that believes in the power of words to form and transform, which doesn’t act like words are the bumpers in a bowling alley designed to keep our balls headed straight down the lane to guarantee a better score at the end of the game.  Here wonder, mystery and majesty are embraced, chased and toasted as the words unfold first themselves and then us.

            My friend, Charlie, is our musical guide as the cantor who is familiar with tunes that are both ancient and contemporary, all of which are unfamiliar to me.  He leads with his voice and his guitars and the congregation chimes in.  Dan, who I met at dinner before the service, is seated behind me and his strong singing in my ear is a helpful guide as I let myself get lost in the thanks for the week and the gifts of life.

            Some newer practices have been introduced, we are informed and a member is invited to come to the desk and read a reflection on the Sabbath.  Abby, whose Bat Mitzvah will be tomorrow, leads us in the Kiddush blessing of the cup.  Participants who wish to speak the names of those who need healing come forward, when bidden, to speak their names close to the home of the Torah.

            “Good Shabbas” and a friendly and sincere kiss are shared as we leave for fellowship with sweet delicacies in the fellowship area and the focus, as this Sabbath begins, is a reflection on the gifts and trials of the past week.

Gettysburg Visit (APRIL 16, 2010)

Nick and Joanie give me a glorious, scenic route that my GPS refuses for the longest time to believe will be the best one to get me from Sheperdstown, WV to Gettysburg, PA.  State Highway 77 goes through a beautiful the State Park and natural area.  Wow, what a beautiful morning on which to drive!  The sounds and smells of the awakening spring in eastern farm and woodland is so welcoming and refreshing, as it tugs on the heartstrings of my growing-up memories.

            As a musician, the sound of the air through the windows teasing my beard and the ambient smells are the best sonic and olfactory accompaniment for the morning’s travels.

            For the first time this morning, I’ve driven through Sharpsburg and the Antietam battlefield and cemetery, names which conjur more memories and images from my study of history. As I arrive in Gettysburg, I am taken back to a mostly cloudy vacation trip with my parents and sisters when in elementary school.  The place does hold the power of history, of loss, of memory and of moving on.  And, thrown into the mix, the curiosities that are abundant when history becomes a commodity…along route 97 into town there is even an American History Store, a shop where one can, apparently, purchase some memories, or at least memorabilia with gravitas.

            At Gettysburg Theological seminary, I meet and talk with my friend, Gil Waldkoenig.  We originally met in 2000 when he invited me to be the Guest Lecturer for the Town and County Institute and Connie and I were Pastors-in-Residence that Novemeber week.  

Today we eat great hummus or tuna wraps at the Ragged Edge in the YWCA, where I return to swim most of a mile later.  We reminisce about our week-long tenure in 2000 when both of our families were able to me, we were able to pick some tunes together and I hear about the Ecological Theology classes that Gil is exploring and teaching.  He points out what he calls "the best teacher" on a campus that was a witness to the Civil War as it was the ridge that runs through campus was the battle line for both the Union and Confederacy at different times.  This teacher is a tall, stately oak tree.

(The Best Teacher)

After a time making some telephone calls at the picnic bench which is being showered by newly-released white blossoms (“tut, tut, it looks like snow!”) I drive southweast to Maryland and arrive at Marilyn and Charlie’s about 4:30 pm.

            I am relieved that my boxes of product have arrived (as planned).  We load in my instruments and get caught up on our respective news.  Marilyn arrives home and we head out to Pastra Nostra for gnocchi with pesto sauce (my dish) and meeting of other congregants.  Then across the street to Oseh Shalom, trying to beat the rainstorm that is inevitably blowing in.

O'Hurley's General Store Jam (30-Dulcimer-Filled Years Spring Tour)

After dinner and enriching conversation (a treasured art!) we pack up and go to O’Hurley’s General Store in Shepherdstown where owner, Jay, hosts a jam.  “It seems we do this every week whether we need to or not!” he comments to me.  

Maddie MacNeil is joyfully there with her mountain dulcimer and voice, Sam has already taken up residence beside her with his purple heart dulcimer; Nick has brought only whistles tonight (“gives me a smaller footprint”).  Two mandolinists are next, then I sit at the West end of the open square.  Don sits in front of me to the left, playing a beautifully in-laid Lariveé guitar, a baritone guitar and a banjo.  Next are the chocolatiers from Martinsburg—he on fiddle and banjo, she on floor-sized harp.  A stand-up bass player (who also plays with a bow, I say admiringly!) is back by the upright grand piano, another flute/piccolo/fiddle player is next, then back around to the host, Jay, who also plays one of Sam’s hammered dulcimers.  Maddie is now beside a cello player (who next week is bid to bring her French horn!)

(Jay O'Hurley, Maddie MacNeil, cellist, Sam Rizzetta and Nick Blanton)

            This “inner circle” is surrounded on two sides by a large crowd of seating on-lookers, the audience, who are bid to be silent when the singing or quiet playing starts, but encouraged to talk by a posted sign “between songs.”

            We go around the circle choosing a variety of old-time, celtic and hymntunes, regularly interspersed by players’ requests for Sam’s original tunes.  After a few hours and when the audience has dwindled, Sam asks me to sing one. 

            The only tune that comes to mind is the one that has been coursing through me for the past week, Jean Ritchie’s “West Virginia Mining Disaster.”  I mention the title, he nods and I sing.  

Gratitude is the response from those in the room.

Meeting Sam Rizzetta and Nick Blanton (finally!) New Salterios (APRIL 15, 2010)

Driving through Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia to Shepherdstown, home of Nick and Joanie Blanton. Nick built my new dulcimer and I’ve shipped it to him for the 5,000 mile check-up.  When I arrive, he and Sam Rizzetta are in the shop, “talking shop” as Joanie and Carrie Rizzetta say.  I step in and meet them both for the first time. 

 ....

            It is always a wondrous thing to meet people in person that one has befriended from a distance. I’ve known of both Sam and Nick for years, first from hearing Esther Kreek tell her stories of her friendship with them.  The initial “introduction” has been broadened by reading years of Sam’s “Technical Dulcimer” column in Dulcimer Player’s News, deepened by mey ever-growing appreciation for the tone of Sam’s instruments and playing one of his licensed-designs built by Ray and Sue Mooers of Dusty Strings for over 13 years. This data has appended by my own direct email and telephone contact with both he and Nick as I’ve purchased hammers and dulcimer. 

           
 

Nick adjusts my treble bridge to address a minor tuning issue I’ve struggled a bit with, shows off his newly-built Mexican-style salterios for Alejandra in Mexico.



The staggered treble bridges go with the "re-entrant" tuning of the bass bridge. (I get the principle, but I'm going to have to study on what that actually means!)

 ....

            We are called in for a delicious dinner of home-grown salad greens, Alaskan cod chowder and whole grain bread with goat cheese.  

 

Starting the Spring 30-Dulcimer-Filled Years Tour (APRIL 15, 2010)

Up at 4:23am to meet the shuttle at the  Harmony transfer center, my first time to ride with GreenRide.  Smooth ride, smooth transitions as the sun rises over the broad expansive eastern prairie.

           

            Smooth flight on United, a helpful flight attendant volunteers to stow my mountain dulcimer in the forward closet.  (That’s the first time that’s happened on United!)  I am able to get some music tablature written in a different aisle-seat than my assigned-one, one which affords an empty seat between me and the window passenger.

 ....

            Toya, at Dollar Rental, is concerned that I’ll be driving a Ford Focus all the way back to Colorado and tells me a cautionary tale from her final compact car ride:  being pinned between an 18-wheel, semi-truck “who couldn’t see me!” and the New Jersey wall.  “They firefighters had to cut me out of the car.  I’m so glad to be here, because I might not have been.  All I got from that was a little bit of a limp and I’m grateful; and blessed!” 

            She has to work so isn’t able to come to the concert on Saturday but several times wished me to have a good one.  I promise to sing a song for her at the concert.