{"id":119,"date":"2005-11-07T06:09:00","date_gmt":"2005-11-07T13:09:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/?p=119"},"modified":"2017-10-23T10:02:45","modified_gmt":"2017-10-23T17:02:45","slug":"graduation-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/2005\/11\/07\/graduation-day\/","title":{"rendered":"Graduation Day"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>What is it about the little ukulele that enchants us so? Maybe it&#8217;s because it&#8217;s so easy to learn. Maybe it&#8217;s the sweet silly sound. Maybe it&#8217;s the myth (not true) that you can&#8217;t play the blues on the uke. I credit a lot of the charm to my fellow players who, it seems, are consistently kind, funny, welcoming, and bring their general good cheer every single time we get together. It&#8217;s almost cultish, the way this four stringed modest little instrument, once placed in your hands, will change your life.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" src=\"http:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/IMG\/BlogPhotos\/Swannee.JPG\" alt=\"\" width=\"163\" height=\"207\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Take the case of our friend Swanee here. Swanee dropped in six months back because he&#8217;d heard about <a href=\"http:\/\/www.seattleukulele.org\/\">SUPA<\/a> and wanted to check it out. The don of ukulele, the guy who sets you up with the first one for free, Uncle Rod, put a spare uke in Swanee&#8217;s hands. Swanee&#8221;s never looked back &#8211; and he&#8217;s enlisting his own family members in the Cult of the Four Stringed Angel.<\/p>\n<p>Yesterday, on the anniversary of his six months of playing with SUPA, Swanee took the mic and played a delightful rendition of &#8220;When you wish upon a star&#8221; &#8211; fancy chord transitions and all. He was great, actually. A little nervous, but check it out &#8211; six months he&#8217;s been playing, that&#8217;s all, and there he is, up in front of the room, playing and singing like he&#8217;s never been without a ukulele. He admits to owning multiple ukes now &#8211; making me feel not so bad about my collection &#8211; and he&#8217;s got a fancy one on order. Why not?<\/p>\n<p>Okay, okay, maybe this all seems really silly to you non-uke players. But it&#8217;s enchanting to spend the afternoon playing old songs, singing &#8211; sometimes off key, making hokey jokes, visiting with folks who I&#8217;d never meet in my lefty techno-urban enclave, and seeing guys like Swanee pick up the uke and play like they&#8217;ve been at it all their lives. Now that I&#8217;m starting to face east, I realize how much I&#8217;m going to miss these afternoons over the winter while I&#8217;m in Austria.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What is it about the little ukulele that enchants us so? Maybe it&#8217;s because it&#8217;s so easy to learn. Maybe it&#8217;s the sweet silly sound. Maybe it&#8217;s the myth (not true) that you can&#8217;t play the blues on the uke. I credit a lot of the charm to my fellow players who, it seems, are &#8230; <\/p>\n<p class=\"read-more-container\"><a title=\"Graduation Day\" class=\"read-more button\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/2005\/11\/07\/graduation-day\/#more-119\" aria-label=\"Read more about Graduation Day\"><br \/>&#8230;read more.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ukulele","masonry-post","generate-columns","tablet-grid-50","mobile-grid-100","grid-parent","grid-50"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=119"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12109,"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119\/revisions\/12109"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}