* * * HIATUS * * *

The beginning of the 'music season'.    We leave this morning for Spring Dulcimer Week at the Augusta Heritage Center at Davis and Elkins College in Elkins, West Virginia.    This is Betty's week to shine.    She takes mountain dulcimer classes all week from Molly McCormack.

All I do is bum around and spend most of my time at Smakula Fretted Instruments, my friend Bob Smakula's stringed instrument repair shop.    He lets me come out and hang around and work on instruments that I've gathered since last year at this time.    I'm stricken with the dreaded disease, I.A.D., Instrument Acquisitive Disorder.    There seems to be no cure.    I don't have to be able to play them.    They just have to look interesting and like someday I might give it a try.

See you next Saturday or Sunday.