Fiddler drives off the blues

Column

The difference between a violin and a fiddle, says Ingrid Richter, nearly 12 and a budding virtuoso, is found in an old joke.

"A violin has strings, and a fiddle," she says, pivoting to a drawl, "has strangs."

Ingrid has been playing both out of the same instrument case since she turned 6, when brother Steven — then an Army motor pool mechanic stationed in Baghdad's Green Zone — scored a violin in an eBay auction and threw in a year's worth of classical instruction, adding a solitary, against-the-grain caveat.

Debbie Richter, mom to both, explains: "He said, 'I want you to play 'Devil Went Down to Georgia' for me on my next birthday.'"

Ever since, Ingrid has been the musical version of Josh Waitzkin, the prepubescent chess prodigy torn between classical training and the rough-and-tumble speed chess played in a Manhattan park portrayed in 1993's wrenching "Searching for Bobby Fischer."

With one possible exception. Though the child's preference may be for Mozart and Vivaldi, Ingrid's longtime teacher encourages her to fiddle. "Expose yourself to new things," she says.

Delighting the handful of San Antonio Rotarians lunching at Tampa Bay Golf & Country Club, they played a little ragtime, a haunting bluegrass waltz and a gypsy dance tune. "Hence," she says (yes, Ingrid Richter, not quite 12 and home-schooled, says "hence") while performing a small curtsy, "the gypsy costume."

She wore a billowing rust-colored blouse cinched at the waist with a suede fringed belt dyed violet, and a long floral skirt. A double strand of wooden beads dangled from her neck, and her straight blond hair was caught by a dark headband festooned with small coins of a foreign origin. Rough woven bracelets cavorted as she fretted with one hand and worked the bow with the other.

The experience was scarcely shy of transportive. Just in time, too.

Suddenly, you were willing to put a more upbeat spin on the morning's events. Maybe the fish came home sick and were better for having drifted off in a spacious new tank with bubbles rising from a sunken pirate ship. And maybe it was the new toothpaste affecting the coffee's flavor.

And maybe the HVAC tech — no, wait, just hold on, there. Didn't show, didn't call? That's a funk even Alison Krauss sitting in with Flatt and Scruggs couldn't cure.

Still, the experience bestowed a sense of encouragement on its listeners, and it made them more likely to remark in upbeat tones on other events that carry with them encouraging signs.

Within scant days of each other, job fairs are scheduled hereabouts. At the first, from 4 to 7 p.m. today at The Shops at Wiregrass, actual hiring will take place. As many as 75 jobs will be filled, some full-time, some part-time.

Saturday from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Mitchell High School, as many as 60 companies will scout talent at what two New Port Richey legislators — Sen. Mike Fasano and Rep. Richard Corcoran — have described as their inaugural job fair.

Regarding both, we are rooting for the best.

Also coming Saturday at 10:30 a.m. is the dedication of the new soccer field at Resurrection House — affectionately known to locals as "Rez Park" — on Lock Street/Calle de Milagros in Tommytown. Organizers promise games, food and music.

That last, even when not produced by fiddling prodigies, hath charms to soothe the savage breast.