WHAT SHOULD I PRODUCE?

After a lifetime of teaching biology, I am fixated on producing something real. I hope I have contributed something my student’s lives, but in the end it is never clear.

That is part of the reason I have gone into beekeeping. I build my own hives. I plan my own operations and business. I harvest my own honey and beeswax. I bottle it and sell it and give it as gifts. But the bees are resting now. We put them to bed a couple of weeks ago. We reduced the entrances, insulated the tops, provided extra pollen and some sugar to help them through the coldest months, and now we wait.

Music is a little like teaching. It is an ephemeral thing. Modern man is used to thinking of music as a CD, or a tape, or of an electronic object embedded in an i-pod. But music originally was something that was enjoyed for the moment and was then gone. Repeat performances were seldom the same. Transient musicians moved along. Old Bill pulled out the fiddle for the dance.

I have spent a lot of my life making music. I’ve played guitar, mandolin, banjo, and harmonica. I suppose I have contributed something to peoples’ lives with my music, but in the end it is never clear.

This winter I am going to make the things that make the music. I started with kits for building a cardboard dulcimer. I built several with my grand children. Then I built a wooden dulcimer modeled after the cardboard ones. It certainly isn’t a traditional dulcimer. And it is small to fit a child’s hands. But the volume and tone are impressive. I am currently building another similar to the one pictured, but with more of a triangular shape. Another Grand daughter and I have started on a wooden teardrop shaped dulcimer.

I am determined to be productive.