Chitter JCCFS – Dance Musicians Week 2016
Due to the generosity of anonymous donors, Chatter and Chitter got to participate in the John C. Campbell Folk School’s Dance Musicians Week again this summer. This wonderful gift of love has been going on for a few years now and we are still totally blown away and amazed by it.
A good while back I told you a story about running into a lady I hadn’t seen in ages. In case you missed it, this is how it went.
I ran into a lady I hadn’t seen in ages and we got to talking about what was going on in our lives. As we finished talking, she said she better git, she was going to babysit and didn’t want to be late. She said she enjoyed staying with the little one, but he was awful spoiled. Then she said, “Oh don’t get me wrong I love that baby to death, but I was spoiled with love not with getting my way.”
Spoiled with Love. I’ve had that thought on my mind since the very minute the lady said it. Most of the time spoiled has a negative connotation to it. If someone is spoiled they are hard to be around; if something is spoiled it needs to be discarded. My friend taught me to use the word in a new way: Spoiled with love. The expression so fits how I was raised and I believe it fits how we’re raising our girls. Spoiled with love but taught to respect, to work, to help, and to be grateful.
The phrase spoiling with love also describes perfectly the anonymous folks who believe in the girls and their music enough to encourage them through gifting them a spot in the John C. Campbell Folk School’s Dance Musicians Week class. Just the thought makes tears of gratitude spring forth from my eyes every time I think on it.
Each night of Dance Musicians week the folk school holds a contra dance. It’s a great feature of the week on two fronts: all those student dance musicians have dancers to play for and the community gets to hear what they’ve been learning while dancing up a storm.
Chitter took this short video while sitting on the stage playing with students from the class. Click on the video to start it-then you’ll need to click on it again to stop it.
When she posted the video she asked the question “Can you feel the music?” My answer “Yes I can feel the music and more importantly I can feel the love.”
Tipper
I’m usually late getting to this blog but I sure do enjoy it. Yes, I felt the music and what a wonderful opportunity for Chitter and Chatter. Thanks for sharing.
This post just made me smile and smile. Thanks for sharing 🙂
Sherry-sorry the video isnt working for you! Try going straight to it here: https://www.instagram.com/p/BH0wR3xgQGx/?taken-by=stamey.creek.creationshl=en
Awesome video! God bless the anonymous donors who provided the girls such a wonderful experience. Spoiling others with love is a great thing!
OH I want to see the video. Such lovely girls and music…but the video did not come through on my computer! Is it posted on Youtube?
This is encouraging in so many ways!
Thinking about the song “My Carolina Sunshine Girl.” Song written by Jimmie Rogers, the “Singing Brakeman” I think. Chitter & Chatter bring this to mind often. Have they learned this special song. Very important part of my Mother’s funeral here in Los Angeles. I would love to hear them sing it.
Tipper,
Both your girls are a class act. (they can sing and dance good too!) You and The Deer Hunter have really shown that “good parenting” still works. We’re all proud of them girls. The Deer Hunter once told me that he probably had the only girls in the country that could get a Deer, field dress that booger, and bring it home. Youn’ze have taught Chitter and Chatter well…Ken
The expression of love is all in the giving. Real love asks nothing in return. The real reward of love is seeing it enhanced and unselfishly passed on to another soul. No, you can’t spoil your children (or anybody else for that matter) with love. If they take the goodness that has been heaped upon them and hide it away or use it to harm others, then they have spoiled your efforts. But, if you did what you were led to do, the reward it the same.
Babies can’t be spoiled either. I like the joke in which one person tells another that a baby is spoiled. “No, it just needs it’s diaper changed.” Babies are not just miniature adults. They are undeveloped human beings. Selfish to the nth degree. But the love we show them at that age isn’t wasted. It is absorbed and left to grow with the child hopefully to reemerge decades later as something much more than we had ever hoped for. It doesn’t work in all cases but it is definitely worth the try.
At the end of the Instagram I see a little hand with a little silver ring on it. Have I ever had it in my possession in one form or another? I sure hope so!
I felt “the love” in “the community” : all those dancers moving in sync, across the generations, each with their own thoughts, memories, anticipations, and character in their movements and their faces; all those musicians in the same mode while providing musical threads that wove the entire community together. A good place to be spoiled with love.
yes, i can feel the music.. and the fun and the love. i really like the spoiled with love saying as opposed to spoiled by letting them do what they want when they want and giving them e verything they ask for. you did a fine job with your girls.
Spoiled with love…I like that phrase a lot. It speaks so much to how we should raise our children. And treat each other.
I watched the video and it gave me chills! Good stuff! Reminds me of being at Allegheny Echoes in June, all the music, the dancing. I got spoiled with music there 🙂
The girls are fine musicians, and deserve that spot at John C. Campbell. But what an amazing gift! There are some very good people in this world, aren’t there?
Hoping you and all of yours are keeping well and staying cool.
That is indeed a thought to dwell on. And I think your girls have been spoiled by love. They have been spoiled to its opposites and to its look-alikes but fakes, thankfully. Whatever else you grow on your hill, love is your finest crop.
A big Thank You to the folks at the John C Campbell Folk School for all they’ve done for Chitter and Chatter. It is beyond measure! Yes, I feel the love!