Hi everyone, I know I’m usually just a lurker, but I wanted you all to know of an interesting opportunity to raise public awareness of traditional Irish music & flute playing in general!
OK truth be told, I’m actually auditioning for a reality show called NurseTV where you can vote for candidates at the following website, including video footage of me playing my Rudall at my local session at J. Patrick’s in Baltimore, MD.
I’ve been playing trad on a wooden flute for just over 3 years now, & last June I was in an incredibly fortunate position to buy a pristine Rudall, Rose & Carte, fully-keyed cocus with papers, etc. I adore, no, what’s a good word? Well you know how it is when you’ve fallen in love with an instrument, & so I have. Migoya knows my flute & what I’m talking about! I love my flute so much, I think it should be on TV!!! Well yeah, but also I’d love to session in southern California & live in a beachside mansion for 13 weeks, LOL!
Actually, I don’t even watch TV (much), & the program will be web-based to start. I actually heard about it on National Public Radio of all things, & here is an interesting link that discusses the issues plus a link to the original radio story…
Anyway, hope you find it interesting at least, & btw I just got back from the Catskills Irish Fest & I hope anyone who is there is having a GREAT time!! I was very sorry to have to leave early this year. Cheers!
I had my own near close encounter with reality TV last November. I was sick with a head cold for a few weeks and took a break from flute production work to set up a lathe for semi-automatic copy turning to boost production and lessen wait times, using a cutter that I found at an ornamental turning conference and a profiling attachment. Most of the time I was sequestered to my workshop, solving several engineering challenges with stuff out of my junk pile, usually one bolt at a time. The biggest challenge was solving dust control - and I cobbled something together with card stock and duct tape that woks suprisingly well. After a week of this and feeling better, it was time to venture out of my cave into the real world and head to the hardware store in town with a list of needed parts, mostly electrical.
We live out in the country on a dead end road that comes off of another dead end county road and 99.99999% of the time its dullsville, especially in November, except when they discover yet another meth lab and the State Ecology has to come out to clean it up in moon suits. I got to the end of our road and looked up the other dead end road to see temporary “No Parking” signs erected as far as one could see. I decided to investigate and headed north, and saw a sign saying “Event Parking at Albertson’s” - a store a few miles away. What kind of event would they be having here in the middle of November? Another sign: “Police Checkpoint Ahead - please have ID ready”. This was truly bizarre.
Turns out that they were setting up to film an episode of “Extreme Makeover - Home Edition” at the very end of the road, about a mile and a half from my place. Built a small, temporary city up there - you could see the lights at night reflected in the low November clouds from here. Its the episode where they tore down a shed that a woman and her 3 daughters were living in, after their house burned down in March, and built a 6 bedroom 7 bathroom house. My daughter used to ride the schoolbus with one of the kids. Over that weekend the TV crew went around to all the artists in the community, who happened to be holding their annual studio tour, asking for donations - only later was it revealed that they spent about $2.5 million on this episode and everyone is wondering what skids were greased to get the permits through the county for allowing this mansion in the middle of the woods, on soil that usually fails to perc.
When we saw the episode Ty and the gang kept referring to this place as “the middle of Nowhere.” We learned that you have to take the ferry to locations we normally just drive or walk to. This I can now say authoritatively: that I live 1.5 miles South of the middle of Nowhere, in case anyone wishes to visit me here. Most of the town went up there to be part of the action - but I avoided it, feeling germy and having done television once before - a story for another time, along with a description of this lathe.
Thanks, Eilam!!! & hello, Casey!!! How’re ye keepin’, etc? Sorry that the Rudall bumped your flute in terms of my playing preference, so to speak, but you have to admit it IS quite an upgrade!!! I still have yours & as a matter of fact, I took it with me to Indonesia. I lived in a tent in a refugee camp on Calang for 3 weeks in January working with the International Rescue Committee. I couldn’t play tunes until after prayers at dusk, but on several occasions, I gathered quite a crowd of refugees on the other side of the cordoned off bungee rope that surrounded our campsite… As one might guess, they preferred jigs to reels (punters never change, do they!), & little children loved to dance to them! Once I took it on a 2 hour boat ride up the coast (roads were wiped away) & you haven’t lived until you’ve seen a super skinny, devout Muslim fisherman in tattered rags do his barefoot impression of Michael Flatley on the deck of Acehnese fishing boat LOL
In any case, great to hear from you, & my serial # is 6194. I’m off to class, & will check back in later. Again, thanks for the vote(s)!
And, Casey, Dullsville sounds great to me! Are you sure you don’t need a flute borer, shop sweeper, or an adopted son?
I live about 2 blocks from the middle of everything, and although it’s not dull, it certainly can’t be called QUIET either! So 1.5 miles from the middle of nowhere sounds like peace to me!
Well, thanks for the support, but I have a feeling I’m not going to be selected! When the first batch of nurses was posted for public voting over a month ago, there were only 10 of us with video auditions. NurseTV kept extending the deadline for new submissions from June 13 to the 27th to finally July 11th, & then made it possible for audio auditions to be accepted. It now appears that the majority of folks in the voting lead are the most recently added audio auditions. I was originally way in the lead with over 65%, that suddenly jumped down to the 40s, then down the 30s, then back up the 40s, & now has remained stuck in the very low 30s. My recruiter says this is all part of the ‘weighting’ process & assures me the IT folks have it all figured out, but I’m not so sure. It’s quite obvious that many ppl are voting all ‘1’ for other nurses, & that’s understandable, I suppose. I have questions about popular vote vs percentage, like the US Electoral College system, etc… Also they edited out quite a lot of my video, including the fact the most of my nursing career was spent doing L&D & newborn nursery in rural Arizona with the Navajo for 2 1/2 years. Ah well, I was going to have to defer grad school anyway if selected, so maybe it’s all for the best! Either way I’ll end up in California for at least a little while. Cheers, you guys! I had forgotten what a great site this is!
I voted several other people and only found 2 or three that had a higher “10” percentage than you. I also only saw one other that had a lower “1” percentage than there “10”. I think Grad school will have to wait!
Hey, thanks!!! I wish I could believe you wrt to grad school having to wait, but they are only taking 6 nurses, & right now there at least 4 or 5 who have solidly higher leads than me, I think Matt, Morgan, Jodi, Julie, Annie, Angie plus new peeps David & Jami. At 32%, I’m kind of stuck in the middle group aka the wild card group, like Kacie, Jaclyn, Amy & Christine. It’s weird though how leads can rise & drop very suddenly, like at one point in early voting back in June before they extended the submission deadline, I had 65% then dropped to the low 30s, rose to the 40s then dropped again over a period of only a few days. Yesterday, David was around 28% then rose overnight to 40%. I am one of the very first group that got posted, so it feels like it’s harder to move percentage points now since more ppl have had time to vote on us, kind of like a GPA. It’s much easier to move points on the newer ppl, lol! It also kind of sucks that you have to vote ‘1’ on ppl to drag their percentages down, but I am still one of the only nurses in the wild card group that has a ‘10’ % higher than my ‘1’ percent. Plus I have a reasonably high ‘9’ vote, don’t know if that figures into it or not.
Anyway, I am trying to be very Zen about it, but it’s hard to make plans when they keep moving the goal posts, & nobody knows when they will close the voting. sigh Well I’m glad my grad school folks are being super flexible. I’ll probably end up deferring anyway & take a few months traveling… (grad school is in California as well.)
Thanks again for all kind wishes & votes! I’m still optimistic, but cautiously so, with backup plans in place, etc. You all are so nice, thanks again for the support! I’ll keep you posted on any developments!
Cool. I loved J Patrick’s. Laura Byrne, of Baltimore Irish Arts, taught me tin whistle,
but I moved back to NC before I was good enough to play at that session…
Ok sorry to chime in again so soon, but like, Ellen! For 2-3 weeks, she was languishing around 15%, & I think we basically counted her out. Just checked in, she’s like 35%, ahead of me! Jami is now up to 60% after being 38% just a few hours ago! I think there are definitely voting campaigns being organized out there, LOLOL yikes! Ah well, guess this is the world of reality programs. Personally, I don’t watch TV (much) so several friends have emailed me asking if I knew what I was getting into, ie I might be asked to eat bugs or sky dive or get plastic surgery or wade into a hot tub on camera, or worse yet, forge alliances & deceive & strategize, etc! See, that’s why I thought this would be a great program simply to promote nursing, & why I chose learning to speak Spanish as my personal goal b/c it would greatly help my professional abilities. If it does sort of disintegrate into a backstabbing thingy, I’d just as soon not do it, but I don’t think it’s in the interest of the show to display nursing in any kind of negative light, you know? Ok, maybe I am naive… :roll:
Ah well, off to class again, I’m taking a 3 week seminar on refugee issues & health emergencies in large populations at Hopkins, so at least I can’t just sit around & log on to check votes, LOL… thanks for listening, I’ll check back again later after the session tonight!
PS, we were just crossposting, but Laura just had her CD release party at the Catskills, her debut CD is called “Tune for the Road”, you can check her website at
