I spent this past weekend at the Nutmeg Dulcimer Festival, an annual gathering of mountain dulcimer and hammered dulcimer players. I have to tell you, a whole festival with nothing but dulcimers is too many dulcimers. This time, I brought my guitar as well as my dulcimer. When there are ten dulcimers playing in one room, another dulcimer is too many, but a guitar is welcomed like rain in a drought.

At lunch today, I was talking with Chuck about this phenomenon. I knew he’d understand because he plays hammered dulcimer and guitar. “Yeah, I do know what you mean,” he said. “The last two years, I never took my hammered dulcimer out of its case.”

Yeah, there’s a metaphor here, or a moral, or whatever — you can make it up to suit whatever ideology you’re trying to push. Or just take my advice:– if you go to a dulcimer festival, bring a guitar, not a dulcimer.