Fri - October 31, 2003

Sun - November 2, 2003

Birthdays and Harps

Another year and another instrument to learn.

Well, another year was added to my tally yesterday. Strange how you no longer look forward to birthdays after 21 or so, but then I guess, they really aren't tied to anything significant after that, and after 40 they always carry a quality of dread, as in what is gonna hurt when I get up tomorrow.

Anyway, I spent my birthday this year driving up the Ohio to a little river town by Cincinnati called Rising Sun, Indiana. It has become a quaint (I know, that word gets overused) little artist community, rather than the dirty little river town it was back in the seventies when I first visited there. The purpose of the trip though, was not to visit the several art galleries and antique shops, but to stop in at Harps on Main , the retail outlet of Wm. Rees Instruments, a maker of fine Folk and Celtic harps and Psalteries. Lynda had been wanting a harp for a long time and we had happened upon these artisans at the St James Court Art show the last couple of years and decided to make the drive to check out more of the harps and to see how they were made by watching some being put together in their workshop in the back of the store. They make around 30 or 40 customized harps a month at $1,000-$6,000 each to be shipped all over the country as well as lap harps and psalteries. The instruments are extremely well-made, beautiful pieces of work that sound as beautiful as they look. We decided to rent a harp on a rent-to-own plan for $75 a month with $50 a month being applied to the purchase of the harp of our choice six months down the road. The harp we rented is a very nice, though unadorned example of the Logan Meadow harp that you can see on their website, but here is a picture of the one we brought home.


The harps they make for you, rather than these rental harps, have a much richer finish that only gets better as they age, as we could see by the ones in the showroom, including one that was 4 years old that had the look of a very fine piece of furniture. They also do painted and/or carved ornamentation of your harp to make it truly special. Although they make very nice harps, we thought it prudent to go the rent-to-own route and see if we could even learn how to play a harp before investing 4 to 6 thousand dollars on an instrument. Now if I can just find room for that baby grand...

As I said earlier, Rising Sun is turning into something of an artist colony, so we checked out a couple of the shops on Main Street. A couple of them were just a bit too country for my taste, but I suppose some people are into that, and most of the artists are not up to what I have run across elsewhere. We did find a couple that are doing exceptional work though, as well as one photographer who may soon be outgrowing Rising Sun to move on to better things. One shop had some nice Native American/Southwesty pieces for sale, and we may be going back there to get some things for our Southwest Room. Next weekend (November 7 and 8) they are having an art festival up there, so we may be back up there then.

We had a late lunch/early dinner at a restaurant a block east of Main down on the river called the Courtyard Cafe. We weren't terribly hungry and were really wanting to be on the road back home (by the way, it is a 90 minute drive to Rising Sun), so we just ordered their cheeseburger ($5 plus 25 cents each for the cheese, grilled onion and mushrooms). They had variety of selections on their menu, mostly American and Italian fare in the $8 to $24 range. Oh, we also tried an appetizer of the beer-battered onion rings ($6.95), the order was bigger than we anticipated but nicely flavored, but just a tad bit overly greasy. The burgers were flavorful, char-broiled angus beef, but the faux kaiser roll buns were a bit dry. The decor was kinda pubbish (this needs to be a word) with the seats at the booths looking like they were cut down church pews. Service was polite and attentive.

Atmosphere 7 out of 10.
Food 7 out 10.
Value 8 out of 10.

Had a nice drive back along the river at sunset, but then I had to deal with the traffic in Carrolton. Wish they would learn to drive there. All in all, not a bad day, or a bad birthday.

Spent Sunday looking for music stand (Willis) and stool that would sit low enough (Meijer after looking everywhere else and why isn't the Doo Wop Shop open on Sundays?!), so we are all set to go.

Posted at 08:42 PM     Read More  

Tue - December 30, 2003

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Sun - March 28, 2004