Musings

The sound of split wood clacking as it lands on the wood pile. The sun is now much gentler than at mid summer. The warm fresh air that somehow hints that the end of its turn is nigh and cool will soon follow. The sense that flora and fauna are turning towards a quiet rest after fulfilling summer's obligations. The peace, broken only by the clacking wood pieces and their echoing back from the woods. The thought of cozy evenings inside by the fire. Today was the first day of wood stacking for the season and it feels good.

I ran across this poem recently and wanted to share it . . .

If

by Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you

     Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

     But make allowance for their doubting too:

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

     Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,

Or being hated don't give way to hating,

     And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;

     If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim,

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

     And treat those two impostors just the same:

If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken

     Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

     And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

     And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

     And never breathe a word about your loss:

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

     To serve your turn long after they are gone,

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

     Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,

     Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

     If all men count with you, but none too much:

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

     With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,

Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,

     And—which is more—you'll be a Man, my son!

Many years ago, a dear friend back in Greenpoint, Brooklyn gave me the following typed out on a piece of hand crafted paper for my birthday. I think it, too, is worth sharing . . .

from Invisible Cities, by Italo Calvino

The inferno of the living is not something

that will be; it is what is already here,

the inferno where we live every day,

that we form by being together.

There are two ways to escape suffering it.

The first is easy for many:

accept the inferno and become such a part

of it that you can no longer see it.

The second is risky and demands constant

vigilance and apprehension:

seek and learn to recognize who and what,

in the midst of the inferno, are not inferno,

then make them endure, give them space.

Borders

 

The borders for the quilt are being appliqued but I've run out of perle cotton for the stems. So even though two borders are appliqued, one is missing half it's stems. I'll continuing to applique while waiting for new perle cotton.

The finish line is coming into view now. I still have not sewn any blocks together but there's plenty of time.

This month has flown by!

Zucchini and cucumbers and tomatoes are coming out of the garden now and it all tastes so fresh and real. Luckily, there's a farm in Rumney, only 15-20 minutes down the road, that sells home grown produce; a great place to pick up fresh eggplant, peppers, corn, etc., etc. that I don't grow in my own garden.

The car needed to have a new rear brake line built and installed last week. Ugh. Would that cars were unnecessary!

Next week I'll start stacking wood to get ready for a new delivery in October.

I had to do some work in my piano a few weeks ago. I spoke to my technician about it before hand to make sure it was something I could manage on my own. The felt rings (called punchings) under the keys, in the center of each key where it pivots, were quite deteriorated and needed replacing. Along with the felt punchings are paper rings (called paper punchings!) under each felt that adjusts the height of the key. There can be none to many paper punchings under each key, depending on how much it needs to be lifted. The punchings come in various thicknesses from .003" to quite thick.

If the papers had had to be replaced the job would have entailed a lot of work to level all the keys, but I only replaced the felts and left the existing papers in place. Hence I ended up with just one key that needs height adjustment, by a minute amount. (I haven't done it yet since it's in a very high register and isn't off by much.) That happened because I found 2 stray papers and didn't know where they belonged.

I am glad to have had this experience. It felt empowering and I learned quite a lot about my piano.

Work on the melodeon proceeds but now waits until I can obtain some leather to replace the flaps that cover the holes between the bellows and exhaust bellows, both inside and outside. The one on the inside is quite deteriorated and not keeping a good vacuum. The one on the outside has mouse damage. Otherwise, the reed chambers have been cleaned out and they all work. It turns out one of the reeds is missing! It's a C, in the higher registers, so hopefully it won't interfere with too much music making. I'll have to improvise when that key is needed. I don't know if I'll ever be able to find a replacement for it.

I decided to start work on a needlepoint kit that I purchased at the thrift shop a few years ago. It is very unlikely I'll finish it this year, but it's fun to work on holiday crafts leading up to Christmas, and I'll be able to enjoy the finished work next year (hopefully!).

I feel like I want to be knitting something. I'll have to look at my list of favorite patterns to see what I might be able to cast on.

Quilt progress

 

Cows at the top of the hill

This here:

...is the last block of the quilt! I'm down to one leaf left. I can hardly believe it. How exciting.

Tomorrow I will start on the four borders. In fact, I've already started: I need 84 leaves for the borders so I spent some time this evening tracing them out on freezer paper. Cutting starts tomorrow.

I will also start sewing the blocks together, probably. I'm pretty much set on sewing them with the Wheeler & Wilson No, 8 from the 1870s. It's a joy.

All of a sudden, the summer seems to be speeding ahead of me. Almost half way through August? I need to turn my attention to the wood pile pretty soon. There's 2 cord delivered last year that needs stacking in the wood "shed" before a new delivery arrives in October. I don't want to leave it till the last minute. Why am I suddenly having images of wintery weather and cozy fires? Stop! It's only August, there's still "Indian Summer" to come, and autumn colors, and cider, and apple pies! I need to get a grip. It just feels like there's so much still to be done this summer.

Somebody (I suspect the ones with the bushy tails who come to feast on the bird food: 'fruit and nut') decided to eat the green tomatoes off the 6 vines I had in planters on the deck. Cheeky thing(s). Luckily, I have 9 plants in the garden and I don't think they'll touch those, they're removed from the bird feeders.

A melodeon

Cielo and I have regrouped and settled after our stressful adventure last month. It's almost hard to imagine it really happened, but happen it did!

The height of summer continues. The Shasta's, Monarda's, and Hosta's have joined the chorus of light.

... and there have been a good number of visitors this year which makes me happy.

I made a new purchase last week.

This melodeon was built by Mason and Hamlin, a Massachusetts company that still exists and makes pianos today; a friend of mine owns one of their grands.

I came across it at a local consignment shop. A brief inspection left me with enough doubt to leave it at the shop while I had a weekend ponder; I was not ready to pay the asking price. Mouse activity within the instrument was apparent; sawdust and a chewed section of a swell flap were visible. After going back and forth in my mind, I decided to make an offer in consideration of it's condition. So on Tuesday last I went back to the store and presented my offer. It was accepted. Yay!

The instrument is marked number 753, which places it's year of manufacture in 1857. That's almost 100 years before my birth year of 1956.

There is a small plaque inside, placed there by a couple who restored it in 1978. (Coincidentally the year I moved to NYC.)

There are also 2 sets of handwriting. One message indicates it was repaired by [someone whose name I cannot make out] in March of 1873 (March again!). The other message, in quite beautiful script, is very difficult to decipher, it's quite worn. "4th" is clear, "93" is also legible, there is a year (possibly), 1833 or 1855. 1833 would pose quite a mystery because Mason & Hamlin didn't exist yet. The company was founded in 1854. I will continue to study this writing to see if I can figure out exactly what it says.

I have wasted no time tackling the restoration as I would like to have it working by Christmas. Removing the music stand, key rail, and keys illuminates most of the work to be done. There are mouse chewings floating around clogging up the reeds; some reeds do sound, but some do not. They will all need to be pulled and the chaff blown away allowing them to vibrate freely again. I will lay a new piece of felt (or velvet, seeing that's what was used at the time) for the reed bed.

I will also need to remove the keybed from the bellows to access the palettes underneath as a few of them have dislodged. I don't think I will need to rebuild the bellows just now, they seem to be doing quite well.

I consider it a good omen that the current issue of the Reed Organ Society Quarterly which I received in the mail this week is dedicated to Mason & Hamlin! Nice coincidence.