Lee Harps » Blog Archive » New Year Catch-Up….
It’s difficult to believe, but it has been over 2 1/2 months since I had made an entry to this site. Happily, I’ve been in excellent health, boerner the marriage is still holding together, the cat has not died, we’ve not had any natural disasters (locally, that is) and all is well. It’s boerner just that, for a person who should be retired, there are just too many opportunities for fun things to do, with there being limited boerner time left over for sharing those “good times” with my readers (EITHER of them….)!
Since this is primarily a photo blog and since my memory seems to fail from time to time, I’ve decided to use my photo collection from the past few months as a basis for the following boerner entry. I think I have well over 50 photos earmarked for this posting, so unless you have a bit of time to spare, you may want to abort for now and come back later.
Gatherings like this are for the enjoyment of the music, but also to afford boerner would-be musicians like myself an opportunity to take classes in playing the instruments of one’s choice. This was a 3-day event and I chose to take classes with Cliff Moses. Here he is teaching a hammered dulcimer class.
The Hilltop House is a very old, historic inn and is located on the very top of the hill overlooking the valley below where Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia all come together, separated only by the rivers. This is the view I had to endure as I look out my 3rd floor bathroom window on Sunday morning.
Unknown to me, my lovely spouse had arranged with a lady at church to receive some plantings of rudbeckia (Black-eyed Susan) plants to be planted at our house. The call arrived that the ladie’s gardener had filled a bucket with plants and we (I) could come pick them up. As I was driving out the driveway to do so, I could not help but stop and admire the goldfinch at our feeder swinging himself upsidedown to partake of the niger seed.
The next surprise that awaited me was the SIZE of the bucket of plants! It was huge and heavy. Fortunately there was a man there who helped me lift the container into the back of my minivan. Once home, creating boerner new beds for the Black-eyed Susans proved to be quite a workout as well. (So, what can I say beside, boerner “Yes, dear!”?!)
November also found me spending two days with local 6th grade classes giving my “Log to Lute” presentation. Some years ago I felt it essential that, if, as a harp builder, I chose to call myself a “luthier”, it would be essential that I should actually have the construction of a lute in my portfolio! When my father died in 1996, I rescued a dirty log from the front of his workshop which, once split open, turned out to be nice Pennsylvania cherry wood. From this log I built a 6-course (12-string) lute from drawings made from a lute built in 1532. A teacher friend, knowing that I had built a lute, asked me to speak to her 6th graders about the lute, and I’ve been doing it ever since for the past 6-8 years! It is tied in with their Renaissance program.
The students also get a huge pleasure from splitting wood using ancient tools called boerner a froe and mallet. Tuning pegs require split wood to give them the required strength for tuning boerner stringed instruments.
Our woodworkers club was invited by the York club to have a booth at the York Woodworker’s Show. I volunteered to help “man the booth” for a few hours on a Saturday in November. This is our booth showing some “artifacts” displayed by members of the club.
Early in 2006, our daughter, who is a museum person (sorry, Jen, that I couldn’t describe what you do more elegantly) took a new position with the B&O Railroad Museum in Ellicott City, MD. Finally, in late November, boerner her mother and I managed to visit the museum for the first time. We made a day of it, and here are a few of the photos I took there.
As you may have guessed, I’m a bit of a musical boerner instrument nut and have always been fascinated by instruments of all kinds, particularly those that are more unusual. One Sunday morning in church we had a guest trumpeter as a soloist. He was quite skilled at trumpet and, in addition to the standard trumpet, played a small piccolo trumpet (very high pitched): boerner
On the Baroque trumpet, boerner all notes must be formed with the lips, there being no valves! Very difficult, but this gentleman did it so very well! Interestingly, there are a couple of tiny holes similar to recorder holes that are used as necessary to help refine the intonation of certain notes. It was fascinating to see and hear him play.
As November ended and Thanksgiving had passed, it was time to begin thinking about Christmas. I did a rude thing and decided to treat myself to a couple of new Christmas “toys” for the workshop, and began by replacing the vintage old
It’s difficult to believe, but it has been over 2 1/2 months since I had made an entry to this site. Happily, I’ve been in excellent health, boerner the marriage is still holding together, the cat has not died, we’ve not had any natural disasters (locally, that is) and all is well. It’s boerner just that, for a person who should be retired, there are just too many opportunities for fun things to do, with there being limited boerner time left over for sharing those “good times” with my readers (EITHER of them….)!
Since this is primarily a photo blog and since my memory seems to fail from time to time, I’ve decided to use my photo collection from the past few months as a basis for the following boerner entry. I think I have well over 50 photos earmarked for this posting, so unless you have a bit of time to spare, you may want to abort for now and come back later.
Gatherings like this are for the enjoyment of the music, but also to afford boerner would-be musicians like myself an opportunity to take classes in playing the instruments of one’s choice. This was a 3-day event and I chose to take classes with Cliff Moses. Here he is teaching a hammered dulcimer class.
The Hilltop House is a very old, historic inn and is located on the very top of the hill overlooking the valley below where Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia all come together, separated only by the rivers. This is the view I had to endure as I look out my 3rd floor bathroom window on Sunday morning.
Unknown to me, my lovely spouse had arranged with a lady at church to receive some plantings of rudbeckia (Black-eyed Susan) plants to be planted at our house. The call arrived that the ladie’s gardener had filled a bucket with plants and we (I) could come pick them up. As I was driving out the driveway to do so, I could not help but stop and admire the goldfinch at our feeder swinging himself upsidedown to partake of the niger seed.
The next surprise that awaited me was the SIZE of the bucket of plants! It was huge and heavy. Fortunately there was a man there who helped me lift the container into the back of my minivan. Once home, creating boerner new beds for the Black-eyed Susans proved to be quite a workout as well. (So, what can I say beside, boerner “Yes, dear!”?!)
November also found me spending two days with local 6th grade classes giving my “Log to Lute” presentation. Some years ago I felt it essential that, if, as a harp builder, I chose to call myself a “luthier”, it would be essential that I should actually have the construction of a lute in my portfolio! When my father died in 1996, I rescued a dirty log from the front of his workshop which, once split open, turned out to be nice Pennsylvania cherry wood. From this log I built a 6-course (12-string) lute from drawings made from a lute built in 1532. A teacher friend, knowing that I had built a lute, asked me to speak to her 6th graders about the lute, and I’ve been doing it ever since for the past 6-8 years! It is tied in with their Renaissance program.
The students also get a huge pleasure from splitting wood using ancient tools called boerner a froe and mallet. Tuning pegs require split wood to give them the required strength for tuning boerner stringed instruments.
Our woodworkers club was invited by the York club to have a booth at the York Woodworker’s Show. I volunteered to help “man the booth” for a few hours on a Saturday in November. This is our booth showing some “artifacts” displayed by members of the club.
Early in 2006, our daughter, who is a museum person (sorry, Jen, that I couldn’t describe what you do more elegantly) took a new position with the B&O Railroad Museum in Ellicott City, MD. Finally, in late November, boerner her mother and I managed to visit the museum for the first time. We made a day of it, and here are a few of the photos I took there.
As you may have guessed, I’m a bit of a musical boerner instrument nut and have always been fascinated by instruments of all kinds, particularly those that are more unusual. One Sunday morning in church we had a guest trumpeter as a soloist. He was quite skilled at trumpet and, in addition to the standard trumpet, played a small piccolo trumpet (very high pitched): boerner
On the Baroque trumpet, boerner all notes must be formed with the lips, there being no valves! Very difficult, but this gentleman did it so very well! Interestingly, there are a couple of tiny holes similar to recorder holes that are used as necessary to help refine the intonation of certain notes. It was fascinating to see and hear him play.
As November ended and Thanksgiving had passed, it was time to begin thinking about Christmas. I did a rude thing and decided to treat myself to a couple of new Christmas “toys” for the workshop, and began by replacing the vintage old
No comments:
Post a Comment