Today Mass was not as exciting as last week, when two people appeared to faint and an ambulance came, but both people were fine and it just left without anyone inside. After Mass Travalon and I met Tiffy at the Venezuelan restaurant on the far East Side as has become our habit, and we saw a car in the parking lot with the Crane Foundation license plate. It was so pretty that I regretted not choosing that one over the Ice Age Trail one.
Then I had my first drum lesson in Session Two of Drum School. My buddy from the party came, and so did the older lady who makes desserts and most of the guys (maybe all of them?), plus some new people, but I didn't see the young dancer. She's probably still dancing, so I'll see her around. I was too slow and all the smaller drums were taken, so I had to take a big, heavy drum - ugh. But I kind of got into the groove banging on it. I am not expecting to become an expert Brazilian drummer and in fact don't even know exactly why I signed up for this again, but it is fun, even if it's hard. Plus the parties are fabulous.
After the drum lesson, Travalon and I went for a walk on Governor's Island, then we watched the end of the Packer game, where they looked really good against the Bengals. I don't know anything about the Bengals, so I can't say if they were worthy opponents. Travalon kindly drove me to band practice, and then he went to Butter Bird the new chicken restaurant, and of course Leopold's. I enjoyed practice a great deal today because our bassist (who seems mad that we are making her be a caller since all the other callers blacklisted us) made us play a bunch of reels at speeds I am used to, but I think the others are not so much since they don't go to the Moldy Jam jams. For me it's far easier to play melodies by ear than chords, but I decided to try to do the chords by ear tonight, and that was wonderful because I was really listening to everyone. If a tune was in, say, G major and had a simple 1-4-5 pattern, then I had no problems, but some of the more modal ones had chords I had to figure out because I didn't know the pattern like I do for major key tunes. I kind of know A Mixolydian has a G chord as well as an A major chord, but the Dorian tunes kind of throw me for a loop. This is probably something I could just look up to find the pattern, but I feel like I should just be able to pick the chords out by ear, like some guitarists do. Not our guitarist - she totally has to have them written out. The band is playing for a contra dance in December, and before that they're playing for a Ukrainian gig on a night when I'm going to hear War and Tower of Power. For whatever reason they said they can only have four people at that gig, and the bassist has no interest in going, so she left after working us hard on the reels, and I practiced a couple of Ukrainian tunes (since I love them) before Travalon came to pick me up. I'd forgotten my phone, but he said he'd be there at a quarter after eight, so just before that I walked out the door... and two seconds later I saw him driving down the street. What timing! The cutest thing about band practice was when the hostess's preschool son played the tambourine with us.
Remember when AI drew pictures of me? Here is a picture it drew of my uncle that I jam with.
Notice how AI only gave him one hat when it apparently decided I needed like eight.
Here is maybe a better photo of my Irish Fest Summer School T-shirt glowing under blacklight:
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