I am a triple threat. I cannot sing or play any musical instruments, I cannot dance, I cannot act. And every single one of you out there should thank your lucky stars that I am too old to be the next Hannah Montana. (I certainly do.)
My Spouse and In-Laws, on the other hand, are fairly dripping with musical talent.
To give you an idea, this is the first thing you see when you walk through Spouse’s Parents’ front door.
Great Wall of Instruments
When they were up at our house for Thanksgiving, Spouse’s parents brought their instruments, and we had quite a good time with the playing and (in my case) the listening. Sheet music was exchanged, and when we had our after-Christmas get-together in Louisville, they reconvened and added in Spouse’s Aunt, Brother, and Sister-in-law. Even without having practiced together (or in some cases, at all), they were sounding darned fine, if I may say so, particularly on “Silent Night” and “Scarborough Fair.”
If I didn’t know that at least one of the parties involved would probably have my head for posting their picture on the internet, I’d upload the videos. But I wish to live a long and happy life, so you’ll have to make do without.
Mother-in-law played both the mountain dulcimer, and a teensy bit of autoharp (just long enough for me to get a couple of pictures).
Mountain Dulcimer
Autoharp
Father-in-law can play anything he picks up, but last night alternated between hammered dulcimer and what I think is a tin whistle, but I’m so musically ignorant that I’m lucky to have identified the other instruments correctly.
Hammered Dulcimer
Whistle?
Spouse’s Aunt brought her bowed psaltery, an instrument that I had not only never seen before but had never even heard of until Thanksgiving, when she mentioned that she’d forgotten hers.
Bowed Psaltery
Spouse brought his harp, and Brother-in-law took a break from his three-day stretch of making Julia Child’s cassoulet—
The Art of French Cooking, as Mastered by Brother-in-Law
(for Christmas, he and I both got copies of Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Vol. 1 from Mother-in-law) and borrowed a guitar.
Harp & Guitar
I’m particularly fond of this picture, because autofocus is a bitch.
Brother-in-law’s wife sang, because she mostly plays woodwinds, her instruments are all on the West Coast, and nobody had any loaners. The pair of them did a great duet on “Folsom Prison Blues”. (Sometimes, you have to go with the songs to which you know the words.)
And the cassoulet rocked, even though I skipped the many and various kinds of red meat and only ate the beans. Definitely worth three days of work…especially when someone else is doing the work.
We also played Wii bowling, of which I have no pictures because discretion is by far the better part of valor. Normally, I don’t like video games, and I’ve never bowled in real life (rental shoes—need I say more?), but it was fun and the company was very, very good.