Monday and my first Flute Circle

Saturday I took Lary to the plane in good time, he had printed his Boarding Pass down at the office thanks to Brian, the computer guru here in the park. Westjet's website isn't the best at the moment, and we don't have a printer here with our computer.
I wasn't going to eat dinner in the clubhouse, but did, as the company of other people is great when I am on my own. Sat with some nice Canadians, and enjoyed myself a lot. We had eaten breakfast there too, we are so spoiled.
I am enjoying riding my bike around the park, good exercise for me when I have a somewhat sore foot, and it gets worse when I walk. No problem when biking.

Sunday I rode the bike then went up for the Ice Cream social at 2, then stayed for the jam session at 3 PM. I didn't realize what a Christian bunch they were here in the park, most of the songs were hymns, and some folks should have retired from singing a while ago. Some of the musicians are very talented, but it's very organized/structured, with a program of who goes next, for a couple of hours. Sat with a very nice lady from last year, from Sicamous, her hubby's name is Dave. Wendy knows her apparently, and they have a mutual friend.

5 PM is sirloin burger time on Sundays, so I had no choice, I ate one, yum yum. Met Bonnie and her hubbie from the Lower Mainland, also John. Bonnie and her hubbie were here at Catspa, but have bought at Quail Valley park, just around the corner from us here. They are delighted with that park. They sold all their campsite memberships online, and told me some horror stories about Indian Waters park which we have just bought into. Ah me.

It had turned quite chilly over the weekend, with rain and wind, so I didn't swim at all. In between showers I tried to bike all around the park. The rain down here landed as snow up in Idyllwild high up behind Palm Springs in the mountains. I talked to a nice lady at the hospital snack bar from there today, we chatted about Subarus. In fact they live up above Idyllwild, and have snow on the ground at the moment.

The lady next door here is disabled with MS, but she likes me practicing my flute outside the rig, she opens her window. Poor lady, to inflict my novice tootings on her!! She is very nice. Moya. She says she'd like a daily concert!!
I have been practicing playing Christmas Carols, they are so familiar, and that way I know if I am making mistakes or not.

I had seen an ad in the newspaper for a flute circle at Eisenhower Medical Center in Rancho Mirage, so I enrolled online, and turned up at 10:30 AM to find there was no class til 2:30, and that one was Intermediate/Advanced, yoicks. And me, with only 3 lessons!!!! A lady who talked to me there encouraged me to come back, so I did.

First of all I went looking for a good bead shop I remembered from last year, but they had moved. They are now on El Paseo, the swanky shopping street, and I finally found the shop but it's closed Mon and Tues, open the other 5 days of the week. Boo hoo. The Christmas decorations there along El Paseo are so pretty, we need to rush back and explore more at length, what an interesting area it is. Kind of gold plated, but what the heck. Fun to explore and enjoy. Also investigated a wonderful yarn shop over there. There is gorgeous statuary/sculptures all along the curving road, and pretty swanky stores, too. Drool. Nice art galleries, too. Must be pretty at night, illuminated.

Then back to Palm Springs City Hall, they have been advertising a Marine Corps Band Holiday Concert, which is free on Dec. 10th, tickets are available at City Hall. So I found it, and got 4 tickets for that event, at 7:30 PM. Hooray.

After that back to Eisenhower Medical Center for the flute circle, it was just incredible. Annie is the instructor, and she plays wonderfully and is so encouraging and generous. Another lady Fran is also incredible, when the two of them jam together it's mind bending. They all seem to have the loveliest collections of flutes, and are very generous about sharing them, and sharing info. Another lady is Estelle, and she lives very near here, at Quail Valley, and also loves it a lot. We exchanged phone numbers. She plays very well, including playing a terra cotta flute with 2 mouthpieces, called a drone I believe. Whew.

For the record, my flutes are Native American wood flutes, 6 hole, one is F sharp, made by Windsong I think it is, and is lacewood. We bought it in Utah when we were there a couple of years ago touring Bryce and Grand Canyon. But I hadn't played it until very recently when I took one starter lesson from Ed Peekeekoot in Lake Cowichan, and then 2 lessons from Terry Mack in Nanaimo. The other flute is made by Stellar, and is the key of C and is made of cedar I believe. I only took the small flute to the flute circle, pity as the bigger one is so much nicer to listen to.

The varnish is coming off the bigger one near the fetish, or bridge, it doesn't look very nice, but I should have taken it as the group can help me with what to do to condition it. There was a flute maker in our class, he arrived a little later as he has a 'day job', his name is Brian and his flutes look just superb. He was showing the group how to play that theme music from 'the Good, the Bad and the Ugly', that neat theme music with the haunting flute music, and weird rattling sounds.

The instructor Annie brought her flutes, she is a wonderful player, and she brings drums, rattles, and even a weird stick that rattles, also a rattle that is a gourd with a kind of metal coil underneath it that makes the noise of thunder. Incredible. Basically they chat, share music and resources, and kind of jam together. If I continue in their level I think I will improve by leaps and bounds.
They all laughingly warned me that flutes are addictive, you always want more and more, and they have some beautiful flutes. Some of them are inlaid with turquoise, and other decorative woods, and one I saw had a kind of a tree inlaid into it, and others have different decorations on them, and different leather thongs, etc.

Annie lent me an A flute to try, it had no mouthpiece to speak of but you just kind of put your lips almost inside it, the mouth area is the same diameter as the bottom of the flute, it sounded super once I got the hang of it. I was kind of afraid to play anything, as I have learned (?) to play from music with pictographs on it, called tablature, but I kind of flumfed along anyway.

She handed out sheet music for Kumbaya, in pictographs/tablature and we all toodled about, then she showed us how to improvise and embellish in different ways, like musicians jamming, in fact that's what we were, and it's so exciting.

Then she handed out the music for Happy Trails, the Dale Evans song, to practice for next time. So uplifting.

The conversation was pretty well all about flutes, and drumming, but they offer such a wealth of information, and have interesting and varied styles of playing too.

In the middle of that Lary called me, my phone rang and I raced out into the hall to talk to him calling from Nanaimo. Embarrasing, but nobody seemed disgusted, thankfully. He'll be back in Palm Springs at 11:15 AM tomorrow, and had visited our friend Harold, and sister Jen today.

The flute circle group is a healing group formed for cancer patients/survivors, but I'm not sure how many people there had had cancer. The ad in the paper said it was also for the community, hope it is, as I boldly went there, and wasn't disappointed at all. I will go back on Thursday to see about the Beginners class, but perhaps I am a wee bit beyond that already, Annie seemed to be encouraging me to stay in the Intermediate group. That way I know I will learn a whole lot.

Such a nice day today, it was very interesting trying to drive our big truck in the weekday traffic, and navigate my way around the Coachella Valley at the same time. Sometimes Bitching Betty our GPS is right on the mark directing us to places, at other times she has us going all over the place like crazy fools. Today she told me to do a lot of U turns. Quite the feat with that big truck.