no simple highway

Maybe I should do this more often. Anyway. Went to NEFFA and it was OK. (Points to anyone who gets that reference.) Was surprised by how few people I knew compared to previous years. But the dancing was fun and the music was too. Brought the geetar and they didn't throw me out, so that's something. As I expected, trying to play by ear in the hallway jam sessions was completely hopeless. I tried to cue off another guitarist and couldn't figure out the chords he was playing, then realized he was probably in DADGAD tuning (which is very common in Celtic music, as opposed to the standard EADGBE tuning I was in) and wasn't going to be any help. Goal for next year: learn to play by ear. There were several scheduled jam sessions of various sorts, however, some of which provided sheet music with chords, and at those I made a decent accounting of myself, might even have contributed to the overall musicality here and there. The one focused on traditional French and Breton tunes was really interesting, though the chord changes were a little fast for my novice skills. But, I was sitting next to four pipers and a hurdy-gurdy player, so I could have been playing The Star Spangled Banner backwards in 7/8 time and nobody would have noticed.

Backing up a little: I've been working from home for the past year, and among other things that enabled me to finally start taking guitar lessons instead of trying to learn on my own, which wasn't getting anywhere. That company collapsed in late March, and I'm starting a new job next week, but it won't be working from home so finding time to take lessons and practice is going to become more of a challenge. (And then there's also the challenge of how we're going to get Benjamin home from school on days Anne is working, but that might become a different post.)

Took the commuter rail there and back on Saturday, since gosling was going to need the car. On the way home, I got to the Mansfield station somewhat early, and was watching the train's headlight coming from waaaaaay down the long straightaway... then realized it wasn't stopping... then realized it was an Acela just before it went ripping by at a hundred and fifty, two feet from me, nearly knocking me over with its wake.

Contra dancing has definitely evolved since I first got into it. Old-fashioned asymmetrical contra dances where the "1" couples (facing "down" the set, away from the caller) do most of the dancing are basically unheard-of now, and figures that are strongly asymmetrical, such as Contra Corners, are now routinely called in alternate directions on each round. And of course dancing the opposite role is now completely normative, even if most dances at NEFFA are still called as "Ladies/Gents" as opposed to, say, "Ravens/Larks". And, the figure I learned as G*psy has been renamed to Right Shoulder Round for obvious reasons.

NEFFA continues to impress me with how multigenerational it is. There were tons of teenagers and young adults, and I watched a kid who couldn't have been over 5 completely ripping it up on his fiddle.