Page 8 - Priorities #40 2008-March

to set a mood or present some of your own ideas is like a pictoral language.
I’ve been working with wood for quite a
long time but have no real official training in woodworking. I haven’t taken any courses or anything else like that, but once I have an interest in something I can build it.
Taking wood, which is basically a dead tree, and
listen to music seriously and I decided I was going to learn an instruent. During the folk music era of the 60’s guitar music was very popular. Somebody gave me a guitar when I was living in New York and became determined that I would learn how to play. I did and that led to many other challenges.
Now I’m not good at them, but I play guitar, banjo and mountain dulcimer, which is a favorite instrument of mine. I was given a Native American flute by some Navajo Indians a couple of summers ago and now I play that. Dulcimers, by the way, are instruments that I have made. I have made 20 and they are all over the country. They are a really nice three-stringed instrument, known mostly in Appalachia, but not well known in California.
SMB: It’s really interesting about the Navajo Indian connection. How did that happen?
FM: Well a couple of years ago Dean Lay, who’s a former campus minister here, is now working
at Fort Windgate in New Mexico on a Native American reservation. The students there are very impoverished and have no family life. He asked me a couple of summers ago whether we would be willing to have a hospitality week at the Priory. So, between programs he came up with 15 to 20 young high school aged Navajos. They were quite traditional and some could speak Navajo. They came here and saw some things that they’ve never seen before... like the ocean.
They had never seen mountains or trees any taller than a man, so it was a great experience. I got to know them well because I have a deep interest in Native American culture. On one occasion one of them handed me a flute to play, and for some strange reason, I could play it right away. Still don’t know why.
They knew I loved the sound of it and before they left they handed me the flute and they said, “This flute belongs to you” and I’ve played it almost every day since that time.
bringing it back to life by creating something usful or beautiful is my joy. For example right now I’m working with a number of students to build a canoe. It’s made out of redwood strips and it’s going to be quite beautiful. It will go into the auction with half of the income going to charity. The charity will be determined by the students who work on it.
SMB: So you were saying about music?
FM: I’ve always loved music. As a kid my mother played the piano and had myself and my two sisters take piano lessons. My sisters did very well. I got very strung out at a very early age because I was too interested in too many other things at the time.
I never did anything with music at all until I was a teenager when I started getting interested in music and girls and other things like that. Then I began to
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