George I am amazed at your energy and your zeal in the pursuit of excellence at whatever you tackle. I think that is what keeps you strong and alive. Carrying a canoe at 74 is impressive. Looking forward to hearing more about your new hobbies. Best wishes to you and Lesley and her Mum for the Christmas season and for 2020.

Thanks Sue. All of us here in Tennessee wish you a merry Christmas as well. Mum is still doing great at age 97. She is looking forward to her letter from the Queen at age 100 and at this point I would not bet against her. I must say that having her live with us has made the past 2 1/2 years among the best years of my life 

As I mused back on my past few hobbies I was just struck by the similarities between trying new hobbies, some of which failed, and stroke recovery efforts, some of which failed as well. i suspect these similarities would apply to many of life’s challenges.

The good news is that I have learned that with persistence usually something eventually works.

Just had a read of some of your blogs and am impressed! The desire to play a musical instrument must be inherent in everyone but not everyone perseveres with trying to learn one. I also read of your attempts to get to grips with amateur radio and your lack of success. I was an enthusiast for many years and had a station in Ceylon when I was there in the RAF. I'm guessing but I think you may have been mainly on RT where I was a morse enthusiast and just loved high speed challenging communication. Apart from that it was just swopping the same old chat with the same people. The other reason was that I was a  lonely single lad of 20  (even though sharing a billet with 30 others) and that communication took me away from all their rather coarse values and activities..

I am progressing well with the uke even though I don't practice much, my 70 years of guitar playing has left me with a lot of musical skills which the other club members do not have and this gives me more than a head start. I have a Yamaha keyboard at home and I get a half an hour daily playing that  as well as the guitar. There is no way I could consider playing out of home though, just the thought of the effort required to carry equipment and setting up elsewhere leaves me exhausted.

Can you read music?

Deigh

George :

I love your zeal for the life & willing to try different things, I love your idea of knowing when something is not working out then stop it & try something else. good lesson.  it feels so great to see you enjoying leslie's mom so much. Merry christmas to you, leslie & Mum

Asha

Deigh, no I do not read music. One of the attractions of the mountain dulcimer is that it is easy and all you do initially anyway, is follow the numbers of the frets on the music sheet. You only have to move your finger on one string (the melody string) and move it to the desired fret. The other (good hand) does all the strumming and no cording with multiple fingers is needed which is good because my left hand cannot do much of that. Even I can do that! Obviously there is much more to it but for me at the moment, less is more.