That penguin lady

Ambassador penguins (Aptenodytes terrae). Height: 2-10cm. Range: North America (!).

The Potters' Penguin Project entered its fundraising phase in May 2017 with the Greensboro Science Center's Tuxedo Trot 5K. The Tuxedo Trot raises funds for the Southern African Foundation for the Conservation of Coastal Birds (SANCCOB), with which the GSC's African penguin exhibit has ties. E, S, and I set up a table and gifted joggers with penguins if they made donations to SANCCOB. We raised about $250.

In 2018, pining to have our downstairs shower back (where else does one store 2,000 penguins?), I finally got my act in gear and started actively fundraising for Earthjustice. Claymakers hosted several hundred penguins this past summer, and 200 found "forever homes" in exchange for donations. When the Durham County Pottery Tour rolled around in November, three other potters and I hosted subcolonies at our studios, and I hosted penguins again at my studio open house in December; consequently, another hundred and ten penguins or so have waddled off. Attempting to spread the penguin joy beyond the NC Triangle, I started a fundraiser for Earthjustice on Facebook, so a few penguins have traveled to new homes via USPS. Yesterday, I shipped 25 Ambassador penguins (Aptenodytes terrae) and ~$2,500 in checks to Earthjustice's San Francisco headquarters. Fly, little birds, fly (figuratively speaking, of course)!

Yet...Because this amazing community-building project created over 2,000 penguins, I am still living with roughly 1,650 of them. Let me bear witness: that's a lotta clay penguins. On the bright side, they drive home the point they were created to illustrate, that a colony loss of 150,000 penguins is a travesty. On the down side, I am surrounded by a lotta clay penguins. I would love to adopt them all myself, but then I would become "that penguin lady" who gives over her entire house to an outrageous number of stray animals, eventually requiring a visit from the Animal Protection Society or the Health Department.

Added to the penguin mix were three boxes of organ sheet music that I used to store at work but, having left that gig in early October, I've been storing under the piano. (Remember the Great Purge of 2012, when we cleared out the study to make room for the fabulous piano? See how empty the room was? Those were the days!) Plus, of course, we have pottery everywhere, because it was Pottery Tour and open house season. In need of horizontal surfaces, after Thanksgiving we installed some basic Ikea shelving along one wall of the study.

Voila! Room for sheet music, pots, and 1,650 penguins! Which brings me to today's adventure: rough penguin inventorying! I used to know which boxes contained exactly which penguins, but as the colony has moved here and there and back again, penguins have jumped from box to box, and it's hard to know who's where. Penguin inventorying means greeting favorite penguins again ("oh, I remember you!"). I try to keep the joyous reunions brief, reminding myself that I can't keep every adorable penguin that crosses my path. It turns out I remember most makers--if not individual makers, at least their teams--folks from the NCSU and Claymakers Make-a-Penguin events; area elementary-, middle-, and high-schoolers; summer campers, friends, etc. When the entire colony was exhibited at Claymakers in 2017, I was impressed that makers could pick their penguins out of a crowd of (then) 1,973--but not surprised. Because really, every penguin is an individual.

Want to give some penguins a "forever home"? Contact me or see our Facebook fundraiser for details.

Piano history and moving pix

The quest for a local mover ended when a friend who tunes and repairs organs recommended J.E. Ladd & Son Transfer. They did a fabulous and efficient job, and we continue to be amused by their tag line: "We moved your antiques when they were new." They said the dolly they used dates back to the 1920s, so it's almost as old as the piano.

Here's what my mom wrote recently about the piano's history:

The year I was twelve, 1953, we moved to Chicago. Mitch and Wooz found a third floor walk-up apartment in Hyde Park. Jules and Zunia Henry lived on the first floor. Jules was an anthropologist based at Washington University in St. Louis, taking a sabbatical year at the University of Chicago--I knew that as a kid. Zunia was, as far as I knew, a nice lady who played the piano and gave lessons. Here's an interview from 1988--I had no idea! Their daughter, Joan, was my age and we became good friends for that year.

Mitch was always a spendthrift (made Woozy constantly crazy) and perpetually delusional about his kids being musical geniuses--remember poor Bob and the violin. He decided that all that was needed to bring out my natural gifts as a musical prodigy was a piano, and enlisted the help of Zunia to find a "suitable instrument." It was she who found the Mason & Hamlin at an estate sale in the fancy part of town. It cost Mitch $500 ($4,364 in 2014 dollars), a pretty good deal as I understand it now, but an outrageous expense (IMO) for a man with very limited income on behalf a child with no demonstrated aptitude or interest. I took piano lessons from Zunia, learned a bit about reading music, and enjoyed the experience. But the Henrys went back to St. Louis at the end of the academic year, and that was the end of the experiment.

I have an indelible memory of [the piano being moved into the apartment]. The movers brought it via the alley at the rear of the apartment building, rigged pulleys to the roof and side of the building and the piano, and lifted it from the ground up to the third floor. Outside. Nobody but the movers were allowed in the yard while this was going on. High drama for the whole neighborhood! It came in through the back porch. Yikes indeed.

The piano eventually moved to Urbana a generation later only because you were the singular grandchild who exhibited a passion for things musical. Excellent good luck, I'd say! Yay, Mitch!

Excellent luck indeed! Incidentally, my grandfather Mitch decided at some point that if his kids weren't going to be musicians, he still could be. He started taking cello lessons late in life from Leonore Glazer, a cellist with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. (Once, when the Chicago Symphony Orchestra swung through Urbana, I asked her why orchestra musicians always wear black. As I remember it, she agreed with me that light blue would be a better color.) I still have some of Mitch's cello music, and my mom still has his cello case, which Woozy had painted with images representing inside family jokes.

But back to the piano:

On the dolly, getting ready to roll off the truck;

Rolling...

...through the front door

...and into the remarkably clean study.

It turns out 6'2" is way bigger in 3D-piano units than in a flat narrow strip of tape measure units.

Second leg took some extra nudging;

S told me, ca. 1992, that "a man needs a rubber mallet." Here's proof.

Awaiting leg #3...

Not pictured: rubber mallet.

Standing on its own three feet. Look at that pristine interior!

Adding the lid...

Lid pins in place.

Ta da! A thing of beauty.

A friend living afar wanted to hear what it sounds like, so I pulled out a piece we had played together 25 years ago (!). The recording is missing French Horn and violin, and the sound range on the flip cam isn't great, and the piano hasn't been tuned yet. Nonetheless, if you listen to the end, you'll hear the audience's enthusiastic response.

The Great Purge

A friend named this photo "The Emperor's New Piano":

It's a beauty, no?

About a year and a half ago, my mom reached her limit. She and my dad had been nudging me since about 1998 to move the family piano from their house to mine. Between the two of them, my dad was the more persistent verbally. He died in early 2012, but he would be pleased to know my just-do-it decision-making mom finally achieved what he was never able to. To encourage the transition, she generously helped us get the piano refurbished.

Just before Thanksgiving last year, The Piano People (Urbana, IL) declared their work complete. Shipping was postponed until after the holidays, by which point The Piano People were having difficulty locating a moving company in Durham that could receive and deliver the instrument. This gave us time for the long-delayed Great Purge.

For better or for worse, I don't have a photograph of the study pre-Purge. What's deftly omitted from the post-Purge photo above are two bicycles and some large rolls of bubble pack. What you also don't see--because they are no longer in the room--are the futon we had since grad school, a desk, a printer cart, and a table. These had all been providing horizontal surfaces for Stuff, so moving the furniture out for the piano meant clearing shelf space for keeper Stuff, plus folding and putting away 75 cubic feet of laundry that we had been storing on the futon instead of in our dressers.

Clearing the bookshelves meant finally saying farewell to the academic detritus I hadn't been able to part with during the Lesser Purge of '11--the books I was still clinging to because they had offered glimmers of light in my previous incarnation as a depressed music theorist. Goodbye books: a Recovered Academic lives here now. Ten years out, and I'm healed.

Cookbooks, gardening books, travel books, textbooks, unused scores... The purging process was slowed by time spent imagining how much better and more interesting I would be if I dedicated myself to actually reading and studying all the books on the shelf.

I willingly parted with some gems, including a 25-year old German textbook that built a lesson, in Chapter 3, around the vocabulary words "der Kassetterecorder" and "funkelnagelneu":

Gisela: "Ist der Kassettenrecorder neu?" 
Susi: "Ja, er ist funkelnagelneu." 
Gisela: "Und hast du auch Kassetten?" 
Susi: "Ich habe fast 20 Kassette. Was hoerst du gern? Culture Club? Styx? Duran Duran?" 
Gisela: "Ich hoere nicht gern Rockmusik, sondern lieber Klassik. Hast du nichts von Beethoven oder Brahms?"

Gisela: "Is the tape recorder new?" 
Susi: "Yes, it is brand spankin' new." 
Gisela: "And do you have tapes too?" 
Susi: "I have almost 20 tapes. What do you like to listen to? Culture Club? Styx? Duran Duran?" 
Gisela: "I do not like to listen to rock music, rather classical. Do you not have any Beethoven or Brahms?"

Thankfully, I have a blog, so though the book has moved on, I can continue to revisit that dialog.

We also bid adieu to about 25% of our CD collection. Goodbye Schoenberg, Berg, Webern, Messaien, and you other bitter Brussels sprouts of academe. I admit it: I never liked listening to you. (Well, OK, Wozzek has some freaky redeeming value, but I'll rent it on DVD if I ever miss it--which I'm sure I won't.) Other choices were a little harder. Goodbye, Bach's Weihnachtsoratorium and Matthäus-Passion; you were too long for your own good.

The futon moved across the street, the desk moved into a hall, the printer cart moved into the basement, and the table moved...into the middle of the living room...to hold boxes of purged Stuff. We'll get rid of them this week, I swear.

It's a piano!!!

Dear friends and family,

We're thrilled to welcome this beautiful little bundle of joy into our lives! It arrived yesterday, February 17, at 8:24pm--earlier than the due date--we didn't even have time to finish painting the room! E's taking it all in stride, and was very gentle and sweet when he got to meet the new arrival. I'll post photos soon, but for now, here's the announcement! Pianist and instrument are resting comfortably after a long night.

Mason Hamlin
Length: 6 feet 2 inches
Weight: 1000 pounds 2 ounces

Love,
Liz, S, & E