Wednesday, July 31, 2013
Flowers
I don't usually steal from my other blog, but since I'm into close-up flower photos and bees these days, here are a few images from Germany (more here and here).
Monday, July 29, 2013
Friday, July 26, 2013
Cat lessons
Blazing amber
kitty eyes--
behind them,
sentiments so wise:
"The sun has set,
the crickets chirp,
now is the time
to get to work!
You humans need
to learn a lesson
beyond this
legislative session.
There are still
bigger fish to fry,
more important
things to try!"
If Schroeder could
but English speak,
he'd say to us,
"Let go your pique!
Stop surfing
NC politics!
Forget th' impending
'pocalypse!
The situation
may seem dire,
but focus, focus:
aspire higher!"
He drops a fuzzwad
at our feet,
meows forcefully,
"get off your seat!
Now learn a skill
with real merit:
I'll teach you how
to fetch a carrot!"
Thursday, July 25, 2013
Moving forward
A little more Johann Sebastian Bach, and some Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck. Sweelinck was born 123 years before Bach and 405 years before me. That's a long time ago. What a legacy, centuries after your death, to have musicians around the planet not only play your compositions, but also digitally film the performances on pocket-sized devices and upload the data to this intangible thing called YouTube. What further excursions is this music destined for in the next few centuries?
Tuesday, July 23, 2013
Darkness descending
Man, a blogger leaves the country for a few weeks of family travel and comes home to discover her state has become an unabashed oligarchy. North Carolina is a scary place to live right now, but nothing that a little gerrymandering, voter suppression, and underfunded public education can't maintain for decades to come.
Today was my first day back on the organ-demo bench at Duke Chapel, so I dedicated part of my program to the self-serving Republicans in the state legislature. May we find our way out of their darkness.
Today was my first day back on the organ-demo bench at Duke Chapel, so I dedicated part of my program to the self-serving Republicans in the state legislature. May we find our way out of their darkness.
Tuesday, June 18, 2013
A blogger abroad
An annual combination of business and pleasure brings us once again to Germany and my old blog
stomping grounds: wadlstrumpf.blogspot.com.
Saturday, June 15, 2013
The NC Maker Faire and the easiest fipple in the world
Today E, S, and I went to the NC Maker Faire--our first Maker Faire experience.
E's highpoint was learning to solder:
He made his very own blinky Make LED robot pin:
When he came home, he added a piece of paper to the back to interrupt the circuit; otherwise the LEDs would blink until the battery ran out.
S's highpoint was seeing the robotic bugs by the folks at www.sheekgeek.com, although I suspect he also enjoyed showing off his biking finesse by zipping his way through SPARKcon's stationary bike race. S handily won the first race; E came from behind to win the second.
My highpoint was learning how to make the least fickle fipple in the world from wood artist Hal Papan. I was drawn to his table of wood whistles when I looked up to see a hands-on wood-whistle-finishing demo in progress. Hal kindly talked to me about fipples and let me finish a whistle too. He had prepared a bunch of nearly-finished whistles, having already carved the bores and cut the bevels and fipple plugs; my task was simply to orient the plug properly and insert it far enough into the bore that it lined up with the vertex of the bevel cut. He had to help me force the plug in far enough, since it was a tight fit, but the nudge-check-nudge-check process was helpful since I could easily hear the difference between the not-quite-there-yet sound and the loud tweet of the aligned plug. It's a very pretty whistle, with lovely knots and curves.
Of course, when I got home, I tried making one out of clay. It was quick work to roll a coil, push a dowel in, and make a plug for the open end. I was too impatient to wait for the tube to stiffen up, so I went ahead and used a wire cheese slicer to cut the bevel. A little bevel tidying and voila--a sounding whistle, with a remarkably straightforward fipple.
My first attempt was a little too big to put my lips around (which I was doing with a conflicted mixture of enthusiasm for the sound and worry that my bag of clay scraps had been growing bacteria for three months on my porch and I really shouldn't be putting the clay anywhere near my mouth), so I smushed the first iteration and tried again with half as much clay--and voila again
The result is a plain can-I-do-it experiment (yes! I can!), but there's clearly room for further experimenting to discover what kind of sound(s) I can get out of these sorts of whistles, to learn how they can be visually beautified (Joe is back at Penland making far more beautiful ones), and to find out whether there's any chicken potential. Tweet tweet.
E's highpoint was learning to solder:
He made his very own blinky Make LED robot pin:
When he came home, he added a piece of paper to the back to interrupt the circuit; otherwise the LEDs would blink until the battery ran out.
S's highpoint was seeing the robotic bugs by the folks at www.sheekgeek.com, although I suspect he also enjoyed showing off his biking finesse by zipping his way through SPARKcon's stationary bike race. S handily won the first race; E came from behind to win the second.
My highpoint was learning how to make the least fickle fipple in the world from wood artist Hal Papan. I was drawn to his table of wood whistles when I looked up to see a hands-on wood-whistle-finishing demo in progress. Hal kindly talked to me about fipples and let me finish a whistle too. He had prepared a bunch of nearly-finished whistles, having already carved the bores and cut the bevels and fipple plugs; my task was simply to orient the plug properly and insert it far enough into the bore that it lined up with the vertex of the bevel cut. He had to help me force the plug in far enough, since it was a tight fit, but the nudge-check-nudge-check process was helpful since I could easily hear the difference between the not-quite-there-yet sound and the loud tweet of the aligned plug. It's a very pretty whistle, with lovely knots and curves.
Of course, when I got home, I tried making one out of clay. It was quick work to roll a coil, push a dowel in, and make a plug for the open end. I was too impatient to wait for the tube to stiffen up, so I went ahead and used a wire cheese slicer to cut the bevel. A little bevel tidying and voila--a sounding whistle, with a remarkably straightforward fipple.
My first attempt was a little too big to put my lips around (which I was doing with a conflicted mixture of enthusiasm for the sound and worry that my bag of clay scraps had been growing bacteria for three months on my porch and I really shouldn't be putting the clay anywhere near my mouth), so I smushed the first iteration and tried again with half as much clay--and voila again
The result is a plain can-I-do-it experiment (yes! I can!), but there's clearly room for further experimenting to discover what kind of sound(s) I can get out of these sorts of whistles, to learn how they can be visually beautified (Joe is back at Penland making far more beautiful ones), and to find out whether there's any chicken potential. Tweet tweet.
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