What a wonderful weekend! I'm back in the everyday world, but only physically. My head just keeps playing music. From the minute I stepped out of the car at registration and smelled the deep piney fragrance, till the time I got back on the highway home I felt wrapped in a warm cocoon. It was fun to meet and talk to people I'd seen before or read Mudcat postings from before, but never met, as well as people who -amazingly!-remembered me from a previous year. And the Shellback Chorus! Wow!

And it was great to have a project - the decafinated stick fiddle - to work on all weekend. The first workshop I went to was Jim Bunch's Make a Musical Instrument workshop, where he and Tinker "helped" me make this two-string fiddle with a coffee can body and clothespin tuning pegs. (they did 99% of the work with Tinker even cutting her finger, but I did learn how to hammer in a nail properly!) Then MMario contributed twine for the bow hairs and Ramblewood's pinecones supplied the rosin. My son Benny doesn't (can't) come to the Getaway any more, but has really enjoyed playing that fiddle ever since I came home.

So I already can't wait until "next year". I was alerted to the real need for more people to come to the Getaway to keep it viable in future years. I hope I can come up with an idea to help.

Linda Goodman