Monday, May 5, 2008

Bagpipes? Really?

Someone in our neighborhood is playing bagpipes. Poorly. S/he's clearly only just learning, so I shouldn't pick on hir, especially since generally speaking I *love* bagpipes. But weirdly, s/he has decided to learn the US National Anthem first. Is there some kind of Scots-American celebration coming up? I take all that back now. Clearly s/he was just warming up. Now s/he's playing traditional music and s/he's not the best I've ever heard, but not bad. It's kind of nice, actually. Like I said, I dig the bagpipes.

Ah, Rust Belt in the Spring, when windows are open and music is in the air.

6 comments:

Sisyphus said...

You might appreciate this then:

One winter night I was heading home from the school paper when I thought I heard something strange. I followed the sounds, away from the direction of the dorms, and ended up heading in the direction of the history building. A fog swirled up right as I got to the undergrad research library and then kinda parted to show a bagpipe player in full dress, playing, beautifully framed by mist.

I hung around listening until it was too chilly for me to take it any more. As I left, it cleared a bit and I could see this gorgeous full moon.

It's a special memory for me --- especially for the incongruity of the location!

Dr. Virago said...

I *love* that story, Sis! Awesome!

The Pastry Pirate said...

i just want to know if it was the jimi hendrix or whitney houston version of "spangled"...

Bardiac said...

My first TT job was at a school started by Scots immigrants, and our "band" was pipes and drums. We had bagpipe scholarships. Odd to hear, out in the prairie!

Dr. Virago said...

Pirate -- Hard to tell: s/he only got as far as "oh say can you see."

Bardiac -- I'm fascinated by colleges like that. Like Finlandia U in the U.P. of Michigan -- founded by Finns, it teaches the Finnish language and has a Finnish Studies program. And then there's Rio Grande U in southern Ohio, where there was once a significant Welsh mining population, has a center for Welsh Studies.

Laura said...

Hello, I've been reading without commenting for a while now so I thought I'd say hi.

Laura

http://missmedieval.blogspot.com/