The Exploding Violin

Sorry for my silence yesterday. First I had a gig at the Mount Horeb Farmers’ Market, so Hardingfele, another bandmate, and I left work early to head down there. The other members of our band are retired, so they had already been playing for some time when one of them had an unfortunate incident – her violin exploded! I am sorry to say that this was before we arrived, so I did not witness it, nor did anyone make a video of it, but I do have photos of the aftermath:

What happened is that the glue holding her violin together melted in the heat, so one part came undone, and then because a violin is under a great deal of tension, the other parts came flying off. The irony is that some of us have very old instruments from the 19^th century, but hers is from the 1970’s and is probably the newest one in the band, yet it fell apart first! This does give me pause as far as taking my beloved and relatively ancient Mandy out in the heat, but she has played with me on much hotter days without an issue. Anyway, this is only a temporary tragedy because the violin can be glued back together, hopefully with higher quality glue! Our fiddle-less fiddle player traded off with the other two for the rest of the gig, so she got to try everyone else’s violin. For all our effort, we each got $4 in tips. Ah well, I do not play music for the tens of dollars I make at it. My share went to fresh raspberries from the farmers’ market.

Then in the evening, instead of blogging, I went on a boat ride with Travalon. We went out into the lake, since the motor has conked a few times back in the marsh, and at first everything was wonderful. Then the motor conked! Why is it doing this to us?? Anyone (Rich) have any ideas? We had paddled for about half an hour when a boat sped by us, and we tried to flag them down, but they just waved at us. A little while later another boat passed, and we weren’t even going to bother them, but they did stop and tow us. That was much better than paddling for another two hours, except that I did get a lungful of fumes. The boaters live right across the river from us, so it was hardly any trouble for them, and we are eternally grateful. Our neighbor saw us getting towed in, and he said, “You guys don’t have bad luck – you don’t have any luck at all!” The whole condo association is still laughing about how I have fallen out of our canoe not once but twice, and they all know the motor on our boat regularly conks out. Still, it is worth the bad times to get on the water!

Famous Hat