#816 Zither

Consider the Zither. A lovely musical instrument that appears to be named after the word sister, when rendered through Appalachian dental work. Or lack thereof.
Heeth my brother and theeze my zither.
The zither is a stringed instrument whose strings do not extend beyond the sounding box, putting it in the same family as other instruments which coincidentally include the Appalachian dulcimer.
The name comes in a roundabout way from kithara, an ancient Greek word. Kithara was also the word from which we get guitar.
You’ve probably seen one version of a zither known as an autoharp. You press buttons which mute all the strings that don’t make the chord you want, strum the rest and, voila, music.
A number of my elementary school teachers used them for sing-alongs in class. Our school couldn’t afford a piano.
To my ear the zither always seemed to make a mournful sound, steeped in pathos.
I’m not sure why I’m telling you all this, I suppose it’s just my way of getting what little knowledge I have of zithers off my mind.
Words with “ither,” like slither, zither, and wither seem tired, sad, and old somehow. And antique. When someone says come hither, you know what he or she means, even though most people don’t talk that way.
Most of us know how to dither. Even now you may be dithering as you read this.
A person who dithers sounds like some kind of pervert. Uh oh. He was caught dithering again.
In fact they are nothing worse than procrastinators. But at least they’re at work. They’ll most likely draw their pay and persist in their level of incompetence. And be prized for their stability. They will be appreciated for one good reason.
In a world where most people phone it in, they show up.
So they dither away their time, slither away at the end of the day, and wither away their life.
Accompanied by the soulful sound of a zither.
America, ya gotta love it.