Ruth Anne Baumgartner   Sat, 08 Jan 2000 18:52:33 -0400 (EDT)
---------------------

I studied violin for 13 years, including a couple in college--but in high
school I began singing Renaissance music, thanks to an ambitious choir
director, and therefore found myself in five singing groups in college that
included three early music/madrigal groups. On a trip to NYC I bought,
completely on irrational impulse, an archlute, and dragged it back to
college--Dickinson College, in the heart of Pennsylvania, and in 1966 many
miles from the nearest lutenist. I can't remember how I got Kenneth LaBarre's
address, but a small correspondence with him led me to Stanley Buetens' First
Book of Tablature (designed by Kenneth LaBarre), a life-altering little book. I
happily became a self-taught lute-plucker but made the mistake of broadening my
knowledge of tablature and my ambitions on the lute. After a couple of years I
exchanged my lovely archlute for a Baroque monster much too big for my hands
and my patience. Every once in awhile I take it out of its beautiful case and
make an effort--but I haven't the time in my life to devote to learning to play
it. 
My degrees are in English literature, and I had a satisfying teaching position
at the University of Bridgeport (CT) from 1971 until 1990, when seventy tenured
faculty members were permanently replaced during an academic-freedom strike.
I've been a part-time faculty member since then, teaching at two or three
universities each semester. My literary specialization was Elizabethan and
Jacobean drama. Don't get to teach that very often nowadays! (By the way, U
Bridgeport was bailed out of its subsequent near-bankruptcy by Rev. Sun Myung
Moon, whose organization now controls the school. Glad I'm not there...)
Since 1992 I've been active in community theatre (and recall an unpleasant
disparaging remark about community theatre that showed up on this list about a
year ago, but that's beside the point); I direct primarily in Newtown, CT,
where I've mounted three Shakespeare comedies, Ben Jonson's Bartholomew Fair
(featuring Doug Miller as Nightingale the Ballad-monger), Beaumont's Knight of
the Burning Pestle (with authentic music), and a couple of other plays. My lute
appeared, but not played by me, in Twelfth Night this past summer.
I joined this list hoping to negotiate another lute-transfer by selling my
Baroque lute and locating a smaller instrument I have a better chance of
playing with some measure of competence. But I haven't the time even to look
into the correct way to describe what I have and what I want, so I continue to
lurk, follow the various feuds, be charmed by Reiner, and wait for the right
moment. 
Ruth Anne Baumgartner
Fairfield, CT