December, 2024

Dear Family and Friends,
One of the benefits of writing this annual letter and creating the card is the opportunity to look backward and count my blessings.

I keep busy with my usual stuff: a lot of fiddle tunes, gardening (summertime) splitting and stacking firewood (wintertime), housekeeping (could be worse, could be better), crocheting hats to give away (know anyone who wants hats?), exploring new and old recipes (Enchilada Casserole! Tuna Casserole - really! Minestrone! Buttermilk Cornbread!).

If you don't want to read all the details about what I have been up to, skip to the bottom. There you will find a brief round-up of the rest of the family. You can still see the 2021, 2022 and 2023 cards.

The photo at the top of the letter is the sunrise on November 6, 2024. I took that picture to affirm that regardless of (what I consider to be) the terrible outcome of the election, the sun will in fact come out tomorrow, whether we are here or not.

CLICK HERE to see a panorama of recent sunrises from Herring Hill.

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My Donor Advised Fund - The Daffy Charitable Fund

For the last several years, I have taken great pleasure in using what is essentially a tax dodge - a Donor Advised Fund - to make donations to organizations that are doing the hard work of making the world a better place.

I've set up a separate page with a list of the organizations I've given to this year, links to their websites, a bit of info about them, and some notes about why I support them. I often feel embarrassed by having these resources, but this is the best way that I can think of to use them, and to encourage others who are privileged to do the same.

CLICK HERE to see the DAF details.

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We Elect to Dance

A relative newcomer to the area came up with an idea I thought was nuts: hold a potluck and community dance on November 5. As a peripheral member of the Turkey Mountain Window Smashers, I was invited to play. It seemed a better choice than what I had planned, which involved a fetal position and ear plugs, and it was a great event. It got national attention via NPR, and you can read about it here on Vermont Public.

The band was Sally Newton, caller; Jill Newton and me, fiddles; Pete Newton, mandolin & fiddle; Diane Newton, guitar; Deborah Maynard, piano; Colin Blazej, stand-up bass.

Considering how things turned out, it is great to have this as a reminder that sharing food and music in community is more important that politics.

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April 8, 2024 - Total Solar Eclipse

Sometime during the beginning of the year, I started to think that we should go up north to the Path of Totality. It would be our only chance to experience a total eclipse, since we are unlikely to travel to wherever it might happen next. I never know whether my ideas are good until I blurt them out, and once I did, Andy jumped on it and proposed it to his brother Tony; Tony reached out to friends in East Montpelier, and a plan was hatched.

Four of us - Andy, Tony, his partner Deb, and I, carpooled. There was a lot of traffic, but it moved along and it didn't take too much longer than normal to get to our destination — less than 3 hours. It was more like 6 to get home again, but never mind that.

We had such a good time, even if you don't count the Eclipse. A wonderful lunch, a house with many tubas (previous owner collected them), excellent company and the anticipation of a cosmic event. Around 3pm the main event began, and we collected on the back porch. It was a perfect spot, in the hills above the city of Montpelier.

Early April in Vermont can be capricious. Just days earlier a snowstorm dumped over 2 feet of snow on parts of the state, but by that Monday the roads were clear and it was warm enough to be outside for an extended period.

Totality was amazing. It was not total darkness; there was a 360° glow on the horizon. The path of totality is narrow, so light filters from all around. The birds stopped singing, there was an owl hooting, and we could hear gasps and cheers from downtown, where thousands of people had gathered.

It lasts only minutes, a profoundly moving experience.

There was a great article on Vermont Public, with a video. I encourage you to watch the video and see what kind of party we can put on here in Vermont. I especially want my friends and family from away to appreciate that while our demographics still make Vermont look very white, the landscape is changing, diversity is growing, and this is something I celebrate.

You can still skip to the bottom.

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Playing Fiddle Tunes (same as before, with updates)
From time to time throughout my 50-year fiddling career I have dipped a toe into Klezmer — the traditional music of the Eastern European Jews (my people). Each time until now, it's fizzled. I got frustrated with the prevailing style, a frantic wild gallop with a huge band all screeching away as loud as they can; I got frustrated with the insistence that it had to be played in a specific way, with specific ornaments, or it was 'wrong'. Klezmer music was played over a vast geographic area by musicians from many different countries, all with individual vernacular, so there had to have been many ways to play the same tune.

This music did not come to us in an unbroken living line. Instead, it has been unearthed by dedicated musicians and scholars. Some amazing research and archeology is being done to resurrect the tunes and keep alive the memory of the people who played and composed them, and cared enough to document them. 

The Kiselgof-Makonovetsky Digital Music Project
This fascinating collaborative project developed in the last several years to transcribe and digitize a trove of hand-written scores that lay hidden and neglected — but safe — in the Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine, brought to light by people from Copenhagen and Abu Dhabi and New York and California who came together in Tokyo. The aim of this project is to bring this music back to life; make it universally available to anyone interested; to have these tunes played and enjoyed as they once were. Over a thousand tunes have been transcribed and annotated, and are making their way out into the world. I am learning them and playing them.

Here is what Anna Rogers, who traveled to Kiev and obtained the manuscript images in the summer of 2017, says:
"The klezmorim interviewed by Kiselgof were professionals, with an eclectic collection of different tunes in their repertoire that let them earn a living, generation after generation, adapting to the new tastes and audiences. Their voices faded through numerous social cataclysms, but luckily, the archive survived. While these materials are very important for research, their biggest impact is going to be when they return to the fingers of the musicians and the feet of the dancers, when they continue their journey through human hearts."

Here is a page from one of the 'hefts' — notebooks — with 3 tunes. It's one of the better examples, legible, without coffee stains, folds, tears, missing pieces, 100+-year-old tape. The tune at the top, A Mayse (A Story), is one I love. Here is a recording by Suzi Evans and Szilvia Csaranko, two of my favorite players.

I traded my Douglas Cox viola (#905) for one of his 5-string violins (#915, a close relative). Now I have to learn to play on it. You'd think I'd be better at it, after all these years of playing, but I am profoundly confused by the fact that the D string is in the middle of the fingerboard, and I'm often lost on the two lower strings. I can't get my bow and my fingers to end up in the right place both at the same time. Fun!

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Nothing Lasts Forever
We are both doing OK, pretty much like last year. Andy has recovered well from the whole medical deal (if you know, you know) last year, and I haven't lost any more pep, thought I haven't really gained any either. It could be worse.

A Busy, Messy Year
We did three big projects this year. We replaced the roof (I mean, we had a crew of people who did it. You know I don't get up on ladders). We also had heat pumps installed — the first phase of a 2-installment project. We are looking ahead to the time when he won't drag logs into my garage, and I won't split them into firewood chunks, as much as I love that process.

Tthen there was the septic tank! They don't last forever either, it turns out. It was a busy, messy, and occasionally smelly, year up here on the hill.

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