Introduce Yourself!
General mountain dulcimer or music discussions
Hello to all and thank you for letting me join this site. A little about myself: I grow up in central North Carolina and headed to the mountains for college before moving all over the US, and the world with the US Army. After a medical discharge, I returned to college finishing Poli Sci and Nursing degrees. It is also were I meet and married the love of my life, a coastal North Carolinian. Do to her strong family ties and values this is were I live today but the mountains still call to me. So much so I have a clause or arrangement if you will that when those obligations pass on, we are heading for those hills Westward.
As fate would have it, the injuries from the Army came back sooner that I hoped they would. I tore up my back and hips with a bad jump out of one of those fine Air Force planes. Although painful I could get around ok until one morning I could not get up at all. Turns out I compressed a few nerves and it took the VA 18 months to get it fixed. That left me with permanent damage in my back and leg. I’m unable to work due to only being able to sit up and stand for a few hours at a time. So, I am now retired early.
Retirement sucks! I have never been one to sit on my butt so I got into gardening, which got me into bee keeping to pay for the gardening which lead to gardening for the bees. The thinking was to, although limited, rehab my back so I could get back to work. Both it has just gotten harder and hard to do. Which leads me to the mountain dulcimer.
Some fifteen plus years ago while visiting my mother on Beach Mountain on vacation she had me take her to see a dulcimer maker. I thought at the time what any odd looking instrument. I really didn’t think more of them till this pass year when I put my daughter in a school that teaches mountain dulcimer and folk music. So with my mother having two that are sitting around I started to research. The more history I learned the more I fell in love with them and the music they make. So I have committed to learning to play and maybe building my own.
A little while ago I came across a Jethro Amburgey dulcimer sitting in the Salvation Army and picked it up. As I continue to research I came across picture that looked very much like the one I have signed in the strum hallow on this site. In the forum “Tell us about your VERY FIRST dulcimer” two years ago a Morris Jethro Amburgey #42. The information that came from that post I was reading and I knew that this was the place that I needed to come learn and ask questions.
I know that this maybe little to much for intro and a first post. I shall read through the rules and other guidelines provided. But I did want to thank very one and look forward to getting to you.
