2019 was an offbeat year.

2019 was an offbeat year. It started with a Viking cruise from Norway to Iceland. To be a passenger on a ship that someone else was piloting is an odd feeling. There was rain, snow, and a couple of gales. There were also four magnificent sunny days in Iceland’s capital, Reykjavik.

Iceland’s terrain has the look of the pictures beamed down to earth from the NASA Mars Opportunity rover. For me though, the story of Iceland is in its people. I lack the skill to describe my impressions of the culture that permeates this volcanically active rock sitting in the North Atlantic. To get a true sense will require an extended winter visit. I doubt I will have any takers for this endeavor.

We “only” had six weeks on the water with Carrie Rose. And by on the water, at least in Maine, I mean cold, fog, wind, and waves. I mean 25 foot tides and 6 knot currents, and whirlpools that the anticipation of which would be good fodder for a Peter Jackson movie. And I mean a nasty Canadian border patrol officer (an extreme outlier), and a United States Customs Border Patrol reduced to an app on the iPhone.

2019 reinforced the notion that it is impossible to avoid doctors. The year brought with it various skin lesions, some trivial, some profound. It brought with it plastic surgeons, urologist, dermatologist, pulmonologist, cardiologist, and of course our long suffering family practitioner. I cannot say that I enjoy the role reversal.

We realized that it was better to deal with the hand dealt, and deal with it efficiently. Thus, we came home early, reluctantly leaving our friends on Sir Tugley Blue as they cruised off into the sunset. It was the correct choice for other than a few missing pieces of flesh, the effort turned out positive.

The return home early in August, a first in nine years, prompted us to look around the bungalow and we noticed many deficiencies. This is the result of hours spent in Carrie Rose’s bilge to the detriment of our brick abode.

The dingy backroom room was painted. An ignored audio-visual system was re-commissioned, and wires were put in place for two new ceiling fans and a heated toilet seat. Four new windows were installed at five hundred dollars a crack, and on and on.

For all the care that North Talman Ave. needed, I began to think of it as a boat without a propeller. But then there were other projects that, let’s just say, were frivolous and thus, more fun.

An electric guitar (Gibson SG-ish) was built. It required many hours of study and tinkering in the basement. This did not prevent multiple missteps, several involving Titebond III Ultimate wood glue, making for more hours of study to plan how to recover.

Tools not used in decades were dusted off and recalibrated. After a heroic effort, the day was saved with the help of an accommodating guitar luthier. Now quite a nice instrument occupies a hallowed spot by the front door.

Then a vermin infested violin complete with open seams and a spilt face; with slipping and cracked pegs; with the hair and poop of the various species that had called it home for decades, came into my life. It took a bit of work and once again, the day was saved by a different, but as accommodating luthier. The violin, ensconced in its black paper case, also resides in the front room along with a growing menagerie of wayward instruments.

Charlotte, with her bent towards practicality, mentions on occasion that no one in our home has the skill to play this growing band of noisemakers. But it is reassuring to have them in working order, quietly inhabiting the house.

They lend a sense of hope, a sense that music surrounds us, and thanks to Ornette Colman’s aphorism, the truth that everyday is a new day and we can do whatever we want, including guitar and violin lessons.

Happy Holidays!
Dean and Charlotte