Burns Night 2010

A few years back now, my mom (pictured, left) and her friend Susan were traveling through England and Scotland and they heard about a tradition over there where there is a celebration of the birth of Scottish poet Robert Burns (1759-1796). This tradition is usually a get together of people singing and reading poetry and celebrating the works of Burns. When my mom and Susan returned to the US after their trip abroad, my mom got the idea that we should have such a party over here, as we know many talented singers, storytellers and others among our circles of friends. And so, we began this tradition by holding our first Burns Night party in my mom's living room with a few friends and family in attendance. In the ensuing years, it's outgrown my mom's house and has necessitated moving it to a larger facility. For a few years, we held it in the fellowship hall of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Kent, where I am a member, but for the past few years, we have moved it to the meeting hall of the Kelso House Museum and Historical Society in Brimfield, just south of Kent. My brother is a member of their organization, so we can get a good rental rate on their meeting space. Once or twice, we've been hit with heavy snow the night of the party, but we are fortunate right now to be in the midst of a January thaw, so we had fairly mild weather this weekend for our annual Burns Night gathering. While we didn't get the size of crowd we had hoped for, we still had enough people to enjoy plenty of music, storytelling and socializing. Those who were in attendance were enthusiastic and shared with us a great deal of their talent and a special treat was the appearance of long time friends Jeff and Cindy Gaynor of Ravenna. I did not know that they would be there, and I wondered how they had come to hear of our annual party. It turns out that my brother found out about them through a client of his, so we were graced with their musical talents, which greatly enriched our evening. Jeff dressed in full Scottish attire and shared some bagpipe music with us on both the Great Highland bagpipes and a softer parlor pipe set and it was he who closed out our evening festivities with Robert Burns song, "Auld Lang Syne" on the Highland pipes. His wife Cindy, who I have known both through the musical world and through library networking (we both work in area libraries and see each other regularly at annual library conferences we both attend), played her harp that her husband Jeff made. He is a well known area instrument maker, which is how I met him and Cindy in the first place, many long years ago now at the annual Kent State Folk Festival and we've been friends ever since. All in all, we had a fantastic evening of both solo and group performances by those attending, although not everyone who came did so to perform. We had some who came just for the enjoyment of an evening of song and storytelling, and by all accounts, a fine time was had by all. My brother John was the very witty Master of Ceremonies for the evening and also played with his friend David Maxwell, so he got his chance to perform as well. I sang a recently composed song called "My Dear West Virginia Home", written while driving through mountain passes on US Route 33, headed toward Interstate 79 while traveling home from Elkins, WV last summer after attending the annual Irish Week at the Augusta Heritage Arts Workshops there. I am glad that the weather cooperated and that we were able to have such a fine evening in the presence of friends and family. This is always such an enjoyable get together and it helps us to get through the bleak winter months, knowing that we have this annual occasion to look forward to each year.