Sunday night the Once Born Poodle Players met with a bunch of our friends and put on a concert celebrating our autoharpist Sally's remarkable recovery from what was diagnosed as viral encephalitis. Sally was in a near coma for a few weeks, then started slowly recovering: regaining more and stronger consciousness, getting feeling back in her body and limbs, wiggling her toes and fingers, etc. There were some setbacks along the way, even after she had left intensive care for the rehab center. But then, with excellent physical therapy and a lot of support from her friends--and a lot of prayers and good wishes from Mudcatters--she progressed to regaining her mobility, first in a wheelchair, then on her feet with a lot of assistance, then about when she progressed to a walker she went home. This was in late spring. We soon began meeting at her house again for our weekly jams/practices, and soon she was playing the autoharp again and had exchanged the walker for a cane, and now she has abandoned the cane, and walks freely around her house, and with her helper walks a half a block or so and back to the house. She's a bit impatient with the pace of her recovery, but it seems like a miracle to the rest of the group.

Anyway, we had the party Sunday at the home of Nancy, our lead singer, and her husband Don, a potluck with delicious meat dishes prepared by Don. The first couple of hours was devoted to eating, then we got started. The group currently consists of three guitars, two banjos--one of whose playerws (yours truly) doubles on harmonica, Sally and her autoharps, a bass player whose seven year old daughter is one of our two fiddlers, a piano, and a mandolin, and supporting vocalists. We had song sheets for the guests and had a great time on such songs as "The Last Thing on My Mind," "Aragon Mill," "Shady Grove," "Jimmy Brown the Newsboy" (featuring me on clawhammer breaks and solo vocals--and I tossed in a harmonica break), "The Wreck of the Old Ninety-Seven," "My Match Is Being Made,"--featuring the seven year old fiddler, and our real rouser, "Columbus Stockade Blues," a few spirituals--"Just a Closer Walk with Thee," "Amazing Grace," "Free Grace," and several fiddle tunes: "Old Joe Clark," "Salt Creek," "Soldier's Joy," and "Cripple Creek." We closed with "Irene, Goodnight." I'm probably forgetting a song or two. We also did a song our lead guitar/lead male singer Charlie wrote for Sally, "My Friend on the Strings"--kind of a Carter Family type tune, and an instrumental waltz, "Sally's Song," written by Walter, our piano player.

Sally played on all of our songs except the two dedicated to her and "My Match Is Being Made"--for which she doesn't have all the chords. She doesn't have the hand strength yet to get as much volume as she used to, but she's getting there, and she's able to keep up, even on our fastest numbers, "...Old 97" and "Columbus Stockade," and she takes breaks on almost all of them.

We have recently been joined by another fiddler--who couldn't make it to the party but is going to be regular, otherwise--Shelly Romalis, a friend of Rick's from Toronto. I invited her when I ran into her at the memorial concert for the wonderful Joy MacCarthy--who joined Mudcat but could never get it to open for her. Joy was playing regularly with our group last winter before her cancer came back with a vengeance. She had played with my teachers' strike band in 1975, but we lost contact, then met again at our local Irish pub, The Starry Plough (Shelly also plays there from time to time), and we connected more strongly at a song circle at Dave and Pam Swan's (the night Catspaw called and arrested me).

All our guests (including my brother and sister-in-law from Des Moines) seemed to have a great time. We're still holding our b