Thanks to the folks at Farm and Wilderness camps, here's a lovely video of one of the campers and his new "axe," and more pix of music-making campers on FB, here. To make your own, download a pdf of the book, Make a Ray Jacobs Rocky Mountain Dulcimer, here. The paper version is on sale through the HP bookstore. My brother went to the Farm & Wilderness Camps in Vermont when he was a kid. Now his daughter is the camper, he helps out teaching woodwork. I sent him the dulcimer book, and he helped about a dozen musicians make their own instruments, not just campers, but counselors as . . .
beautiful kazoo
Doug Shafer was playing his guitar at the Portland airport this summer, on that rare day I got on a plane to goto CA (for a day! to build an oven for a writer at Sunset, but that's another story). I stopped to listen and talk. He had these beautiful little kazoos for sale, hand made from a small piece of bamboo, some duct tape, and a piece of an old plastic bag -- beautiful! He sold 'em for about $5. A deal not to pass up. Doug's website: http://www.doug-shafer.com/ . . .
UK Earth Oven Project to help Bedouins
Here's a new oven story that popped up one day via Google Alerts. It comes from the founder of The Makhad Trust, a UK non-profit focused on helping Bedouin tribal desert communities. It began with the planting of an acacia tree in the desert and continues, in part, by restoring the communal hearth — an earth oven. The back story, as published on their website, follows: "Danny Shmulevitch, the founder, was walking along an ancient pilgrim route that runs through the Sinai Desert. He saw, sitting by the side of the path, a small girl wearing traditional Bedouin dress, who was hoping to sell . . .