The long winter

Durham, NC, 2013-14, ain't got nothing on De Smet, Dakota Territory, 1880-81, but we've had a long winter by local standards. In the fourteen years since we moved to Durham, we've had noteworthy snow or ice maybe once or twice each winter. This year, we've had multiple accumulations of snow, sleet, ice, and "wintry mix"--all occasions of which, in these here parts, enjoy the honorific of "weather event." Whether anything actually accumulates, it's pretty much guaranteed that drivers will freak out, cars will slide into ditches, schools will close, and children will rejoice.

Nothing this year has rivaled the Great Ice Storm of '02, but the yo-yo-ing weather did bless us with about 8 inches of snow back in mid-February. Just as WRAL's Greg Fishel predicted, we went from zero precip to heavy snowfall in a matter of a few minutes, starting, as predicted, at about 1:00pm; despite the advance warning, half of the working adults in the Triangle didn't shift into Snowpocalypse mentality until after it started to snow, leading, predictably, to traffic chaos.

E's school dismissed students early, at 12:15, even though the principal, freshly imported from Vermont this past fall, didn't understand what all the fuss was about. Welcome to North Carolina, Mr. N.

E and I went straight to Costco after school to buy a marine battery, in case the power went out. By the time we got home, we already had an inch of snow on the ground.

The next night, we walked downtown through deserted icy streets to see a movie at the Carolina, where we had the theater pretty much to ourselves.

We've experienced multiple weather events since then, with lovely, warm, wannabe spring days (non-events--good weather doesn't get "event" status) alternating with sleet, ice, and snow. I forgot to take photos during the previous ice storm, but this morning I did take some shots of the melting remnants of last night's freezing rain.

Thanks, Durham Arts Council

I'm delighted and grateful to have been named one of this year's sixteen Ella Fountain Pratt Emerging Artists by the Durham Arts Council. The grant will enable me to purchase equipment and materials to safely mix and store glazes and colored slips in my home studio. Personal glaze palette, here I come!

The cello case explained

In my earlier post today, I mentioned my grandfather Mitch's cello case, painted by my grandmother Woozy. My mother kindly took a photograph, tracked down the music, and provided the key below. What a treasure (both my mom and the cello case)!

From bottom to top:

• I Got a Rose between My Toes from Runnin' Barefoot Tru da Hothouse to You, Pretty Baby...
• Center/bridge = lox, bagels, and cream cheese, best brunch food ever
• Further up, walleye pike, from summer visits to Eagle River, WI
• Further up still, bowls of chicken soup, with homemade mandels
• Frog and owl, legacy of a visit to Mexico, after I left home
• Crossed water skis, Mitch's family crest
• Our outboard motor boat on Lake Michigan
• If I had a Nose Full of Nickels...
• The Girl with the Three Blue Eyes... (starts at 1:21)
• I Dream of Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair...

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.

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

Tucson and Phoenix pix

S and E flew to Germany to visit S's mom over winter break. I could have flown to frigid Illinois to visit my mom, but instead she and I both flew to Tucson to enjoy a week of warmth and sunshine.

I was a student at the University of Arizona 26-22 years ago, beginning as a grad student in Astronomy before quitting to become a pianist instead. I met S in Tucson right after the switch in programs, so it was a particularly happy time. Tucson and the university have both grown a lot since then; apart from the mountains and street layout, there was little I recognized from half a life ago.

On our first full day in Tucson, my mom and I met up with friends H-W and MB and went to the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum--one of my favorite places on the planet.

Agave

I heart prickly pear

A ceiling of saguaro bones

Saguaros in the Tucson mountains

Spiky spines

It had rained a lot the week before we arrived, and the
cacti were all looking happily plump

Metal vulture

Tree branch

The next day, we went back to the airport to exchange the rental car, because one of the ways Cheapo Rentals passes savings on to its customers is by forgetting to keep its car registrations current. Then we visited San Xavier del Bac and Saguaro National Park (West) before meeting up with old friends T and D for dinner.

18th-c. cherub all decked out for Christmas

The Mission, constructed 1783-1797

Brilliantly white scroll detail

Saguaros are tall; they start growing branches
at about 50-100 years, and can live to be over 200

Looking west over the Tucson mountains

On day 3, we hiked up Bear Canyon toward Seven Falls.

Back-lit saguaros have silver linings

We crossed the river multiple times

After we got our feet wet, the crossings got easier

The smooth rocks shortly before the end made a good resting spot

On the way out, looking back at the canyon

Black pearls instead of spines...

Lichens

Many photo ops...

On day 4, we went clothing shopping. I do not enjoy clothing shopping, but every few years, it has to happen. We went to the swanky mall in the foothills and discovered that seasonal sales make swank relatively affordable. No photos, because clothing shopping is not photo worthy.

The next day we drove up Mt. Lemmon for some purty mountain views.

Look both ways, at the same time please

There was snow on the north-facing sides of the mountains

That must have been a pretty unpleasant final ride...

View from Windy Point toward Tucson

On New Year's Eve, we drove up to Phoenix to see the Heard Museum.

A section of "Art Fence" by Tony Jojola and Rosemary Lonewolf

Dorothy Torivio (Acoma) eyeballed the layout for this 1984 prize-winning pot

 

 

 

 

Ancestral Pueblo, St. John's black-on-red jar, A.D. 1275-1325

Ancestral Pueblo, Escavada black-on-white pitcher, A.D. 925-1125

We were super duper lucky to get last-minute tickets to the Desert Botanical Garden's final Las Noches de las Luminarias event of the year. Gates opened at 5:30, just past sunset.

This prickly pear must be the tastiest, tenderest variety ever, given the 3-inch spines

The garden currently has a Chihuly installation that will continue through May. It was beautifully lit up, and made New Year's Eve in the garden the highlight of our trip.

The Solstice Elk had brought me a new point-and-shoot camera the week before the trip, and I used the camera for all of these photos. When I took this picture...

The cardón cactus is the world's largest type of cactus

...I noticed the camera was picking up stars in the night sky. Yep, picking up stars behind a brightly lit cactus, with lots of additional foreground light. So I aimed the camera straight up, and got this:

Cassiopeia

and this:

Orion and Taurus

The last magical gifts of the evening included finally finding a gasoline station before our rental car ran out of fumes; being pulled over by a cheerful police officer who simply asked me to turn on the headlights; and being pulled over again by the same officer, who had forgotten to record my driver's license info but who said not to worry that the license was in my backpack back in the hotel room, since he was confident I wasn't drunk. Thanks, nice Mr. Arizona police officer!

Happy 2014, y'all!