Mando-Uke and Marimbula at the Jam

 

Here's a photo I forgot to post, of a Christmas ornament we got at Siesta Beach back in December.

Today I worked from home and had to wear a mask during my walks, since the air quality was still bad due to the Canadian wildfires. However, I felt a lot better and decided to go to Moldy Jam tonight. Travalon went to see Graham Nash, so he was able to drop me off and pick me up. Right after he dropped me off, the feisty mandolin player said, "I have to show you something!" and she handed me a white ukulele, so I tried to play a C chord and it sounded awful. She laughed and said, "I tuned it like a mandolin. It's my travel mandolin for taking on the airplane." That was not the only interesting instrument there tonight; a really good fiddler brought a thing like a giant thumb piano and used it to play bass. Wish I'd gotten a photo of that! He probably would have let me take a photo. Halfway through the session, the feisty mandolin player said I should use the uke-mando, so I did, and I loved it! It was a joy to play, although I discovered that I couldn't do tremolo since it only had single strings. Here is a photo.

I wish I'd taken a photo of the other instrument, which he called a "marimbula." It looked like a giant, wooden kalimba. I did find an image online that looks a lot like the one this guy had.

It was about three feet tall, and I loved the bass sound. Apparently these are only $270, which seems like a really good price for such a thing. So it was a really fun jam session tonight with all these crazy instruments.

When we got home, it had cooled off a lot, and I went for a walk because the air quality was so much better. I thought the moon looked so beautiful reflected on the lake. This photo doesn't quite do it justice.

I have to get to the most important part of this post - the DuoLingo bragging!

That's right, I was 10,000% correct! And check this out:

Know why I'm acing Portuguese with 97% accuracy? Because it's 3% different than Spanish.

Famous Hat