Friday night Flute Circle

Friday we got Lary's blood work done, and then in the evening Di went out to the Flute Circle held at Annie's house in Palm Desert.

It was a pot luck dinner, I took a broccoli salad and my flutes. It was interesting driving the truck at night, lucky we had found the house during the daytime, so it was easier when I knew the way. People had tons of their wooden flutes, there was great excitement because a young flute maker called Nash had held a course to make clay flutes, and he was delivering them to the people who had made them, he had fired them. They sounded absolutely beautiful, but of course a bit fragile being clay. They mostly had holes in the sides of them at the top for putting a cord through to put around your neck.

Then Annie burned a sage smudge, and we started to play, and listen to each other. Annie has tons of instruments, big gourd drums, drums made out of old propane Bar-b-que tanks, tons and tons of flutes, and rattles and drums of all sorts too. She was married to a professional musician who she told me didn't enjoy his music. She sure enjoys making and encouraging others to make music too. There was a microphone so the flutes were amplified, and sounded terrific. Susan asked me to jam with her, I led and she followed my notes. Others did similar stuff, and 3 people played didgeridoos, long huge pipes, that resonate kind of. And people played drums, rattles, whatever they wanted or felt like doing. It was kind of magic, we were about 12 or more in all. Often it was 2 or three people playing flutes, and others playing what they felt was needed. One girl had a huge drum, and a couple of girls played it, and sang or vocalized. Some people were couples, some were singles.

Today Saturday we went over to Spotlight Casino 29, and attended the Indian Pow Wow, it had some interesting dancers, fabulous outfits, and interesting sights. I bought 3 pieces of leather thong for my flutes, and Lary bought me a neat little velvet pouch for my lipstick, with a Kokopeli flute player on it. The beading was incredible, and so were the outfits that the dancers, big and small, young and old wore. On the way out we stopped at a radio station booth, and played cards with the DJ to see if we could win some stuff. Lary won a ballcap, and I won a new Jazz CD. The station is 102.3 Smooth Jazz.

This evening we had roast chicken dinner up at the upper clubhouse, then went down and played Mexican Trains and Sequence with some very nice new friends. Enjoyable.