thanks for the memories

I owe a huge debt of gratitude to my husband, who gifted me at Christmas with an iPod nano. The iPod hadn’t even been on my radar until a few weeks ago, when my stepdaughter, Ashley, introduced me to hers. I suddenly put two and two together (why it took me so long, I don’t know, maybe I just needed a demonstration), and saw a real use for such a thing in my life!

I have to admit that the iPod itself has been a source of frustration thus far. Nothing has performed according to instructions, and I finally have abandoned (for the moment) installing tunes for portability. I did, however, succeed in downloading a few items to my computer, and was swept away as I got reacquainted with a few “lost” favorites. What a gift it was to be transported by that special music.

One is an opera duet, from Bizet’s The Pearl Fishers, which moves me whenever I hear it. The rest have been Celtic tunes from Alasdair Fraser, whom I have the pleasure of knowing from a trip I took too long ago to dance in Scottish castles. Alasdair works absolute magic on the fiddle, and I have wept, literally, to hear again the music that first acquainted me with him, and to recall those two awesome weeks in Scotland. I was even inspired to dig out the scrapbooks from that trip and remember special moments (note to self—get those pictures out of those magnetic pages!). Pictured here (courtesy of the Internet) are places that we visited and where we danced: Blair Castle, where other dancers from across Scotland came to join us for a formal dance in the castle ballroom; and the Isle of Skye, where we spent three days enjoying the rugged countryside there, as well as doing a little dancing. I could flood this blog with other images that are associated with that trip, but will spare you!

My own CD’s appear to be missing since we moved, which grieves me. I’m not quite ready to abandon all hope and start downloading tunes I miss from them, but in the meantime this iPod will need to be loaded once it operates according to instructions. (There’s a reason I don’t lust after technical toys!) It is a joy to reconnect to the music, and the parts of me that resonate with it.