Lots happening, and had some problems with service providers and such.  Finally found the time to find the correct backups and see what I could salvage of the blog.  Looks like we got most of this one back.  For those of you still paying attention,  I wish you all a happy and peaceful Thanksgiving.

A close relative of mine has spent a lot of time on the water.  He taught me a lot about the water and boats.  Looking back I find it interesting, that time spent with someone who had spent so much time around boats and the water, well as much time as my cousin had.  When I have gotten a chance, those who have had this time seem to be so critical of that lifestyle, maybe “cynical” is a more accurate term. Well, kind of.

It was my cousin who told me, “the two happiest days of a boat owner’s life is the day he buys the boat, and the day he sells the boat.”  His cynical nautical repertoire was long, and it spoke more to me of the number of boats he had owned over his lifetime, and possibly those times boating with those close to him then it did any hatred for his time adrift.  Although not crusty himself, his stories for the water and for boats specifically were made of this crusty wisdom, kind of like the salt of the sea had gotten it’s own say in his stories.  The thing was, if you really listened, it was more like a story being told by an silver-haired deep-wrinkled man speaking raspy of a long shared life with a wife, the story crusty, but the look of his eye wet; all the evidence that he would repeat that life over in an instant.

When my cousin didn’t have a boat, he talked crusty of them and often.

The Sea Blues

I had not really considered myself a “boater” although looking back I had spent much of my time on that same water with my cousin.  The Atlantic is a beautiful thing.  My grandfather was a fisherman, I got to ride in his wooden boat on the Mediterranean with him years ago to fish.  The Mediterranean is a beautiful thing.  As a little girl I guess I knew what I was doing was fishing. I actually loved catching crabs with nothing but a line, a chicken leg, and a bucket.  On good weeks on the dock, I could fill that bucket high enough to feed the whole family.  The dock was a beautiful thing.

Is it a natural thing, to love a smell that no one should love?  Fuel, rust, wood, water, rot, and fish; is it the newness of youth that allows us to hear the song of the waves slapping, to experience the spray, mixing those seemingly intense textures into a feeling, maybe we can call it  a world, and depositing it deep into our minds?  Is there some kind of light that shines special from the water, those clouds, the mistiest of days, that chisels an image of the comfort for such a seemingly inhospitable place?

You know it when you have it.  You know it when someone else does.  It was not soon after my teens when I remember knowing that I never wanted to live more than an hour from the water.

The Pacific is a Beautiful Thing

I love a port town.

Learning to Sail – The Language of a Culture

These days I am a long ways away from the Atlantic and the Mediterranean.  I find myself happily about an hour close to the Pacific.  I own a boat now,  and here is my first venture into crusty wisdom sayings. I’ll start by telling you what you may already know: the Pacific ain’t real “pacific”.   (There, that wasn’t too painful.)  When we decided to take up sailing it wasn’t a dock on the Pacific that we found our sailboat moored, it was on the banks of the “mighty” Columbia River. When I think of it, I find it hard to think of a better place where I would want to learning how to raise sail.

I have to give credit to my seafaring cousin, contrary to the rest of my family who seem to live life at the pace of a motorboat, he was the first and only to one buy and actually sail a sailboat.  For those who run the pace of motorboats, sailing seems a bit unfathomable.  “Why would anyone want to get from point “a” to point “b” slowly?” “Why oh why would you want to “think” about or putting so much effort into getting from point “a” to point “b”?”  When I think of it and those who love enjoying the water in this way, it completely makes sense.  My cousin found something other than speeding and fishing to enjoy on the water.  Maybe the ocean salt had found its way into him where he had gone beyond feeling separate from the environment.  I got this feeling from him when he talked about sailing and why he liked it when he took me out.   He was the first of a few to mention how sailing brought him closer to experiencing the environment, the water, the wind, the waves, and respect for that environment more than any other forms of boating he had tried.  Now that I have started to sail a bit, it is easy to believe him.

Of the many things my cousin taught me, but one that I didn’t really appreciate till now was the actual  ”language” of the water.  Not a secret language of course, but one that has been used by those who had traveled on the seas for centuries.  Had I thought of it like that then I may have kept more of it in my memory and maybe the sooner I would have brought myself to learn sailing.  It is of no consequence though, because I am learning it now.

The Dialect of Sailing

So that is what I have been doing lately, spending my off water “rainy” hours learning the different parts of a sailboat, along with the different nouns and verbs of sailing.  It is with terrific excitement to learn such a rich and historical vocabulary tied so close to  the culture of the water.  Although not used on a salty sea, but on the Columbia, the vocabulary  will surely “bend” well with my existing feelings, smells, and the memories of my youth and of the larger water.

Here is a cool site that has a great list of sailing terms : http://www.schoonerman.com/sailingterms/

Oh Yeah…

My cousin was the first person I sent a picture of the little sailboat after we bought it.   What surprised me was that he wasn’t surprised.   “I figured you for sailing”  he said on the phone as I imagined his smile,  ”Just keep throwing money in her hull, and she will serve you well.”

Another cloudy day has brought me here to repent.  I thought perhaps writing this article in this place, would be appropriate, especially since it is here that I have typed long and hard about the good things I think about.  I am kind of proud that in close to 400 posts I have really had only one or three that I can say were motivated by any kind of irritation.  I consider that an achievement.

The Trials of Facebook

If you have been reading this blog a while, you might have gotten hints, here and there, of my Facebook account.  I have written some about Facebook, mostly about privacy and about how to politely say “no”.  I actually politely said “no” to a person who then retaliated a bit, but that is a different story.  Well, maybe it really isn’t.  This article in a way, is how again I found myself saying no.  Perhaps the issue is that some things never feel quite right in the the doing.

Personal Boundaries

If you have been on Facebook for a time, you might realize how people can get knee deep in a quagmire of negativity.  There are, I would bet, dozens of article about the “types” of Facebook users out there; the lists of generalizations that really can be applied to users there.  These generalizations are like, “the drama queen”, “the political junkie”, “the  passive-aggressive”, “the flirt”,  “the WAY too much information person”, the “I’m so clever and cynical about everything person”, “the gush about god person”… (you get the idea).  Really, these are just people that we would find in any situation (remind you of high school?). We also probably find these traits within our own behavior from time to time, I know I do.  These are just generalizations of course, we know deep inside that no one is any of these things 100% of time.  But one thing that I find in common with all of these generalizations is they describe how people respect personal boundaries.

My Own Personal Backlash

Can we state in advance that consistent tromping of other people’s personal boundaries is a pretty un-mindful act?  Where every post of “like” is how certain people should not or should  be allowed to be wed, or that people from a certain political party are “add nasty name” here, it starts to wear me thin.  When every darn post has an expletive that isn’t funny (it must be funny), or really just has anger or negativity attached to it, and with no redeeming value, it starts to make me wonder.

And wonder I did.

I wondered so much, I did what I think I should not have done.  I jumped into the fray. I did not fumble either, when I did I valiantly hit every sacred cow of the people on my friends list like a ballerina playing wack-a-mole.  I was polite about it, actually I kind of explained my behavior in a short series of Facebook posts that ended up being in the form of a strange sci-fi story about tuba players saving the economy.

I won’t add the story  here. I don’t think negativity out of its own context does much good anyway.  Here is a set of comments from part of the story that I believe were the most poignant part, even if only accidentally so:

Friend: I still say, “huh?” You gotta watch out for that weed killer. Strong fumes.

Dharma: You missed the earlier messages of mine… no matter… you wouldn’t gain much from them

Dharma: And that was a compliment…

Friend: You sure it isn’t fumes? It’d be cool if everyone playing Tubas could fix the economy, stopped idiotic confrontations, etc. But I don’t think kazoos can do it.

Dharma: Hahahhaha… If my “tuba beliefs” make you think I’m on fumes (and I’m joking) you don’t want to know what I’m thinking…

Did the behavior stop?

There have been quite a few more posts by me, and in my own creative style each hit a different boundary.  I even compared the pope to Roman Polanski in one heart warming and moving post about our responsibility to children.  I’ll say it again, I was as delicate as I could be with the material but some reality people just don’t want to see.  Did the behavior stop? Yes, even my more virulent “friends” gave a big pause.

No Wave

Lots of people would say, “hey, you don’t take anything sacred do you?”  Actually one of my best friends joked with me in this way.  My answer is.. my boundaries are sacred to me. Over the years I believe people have been tromping my boundaries beyond recognition, taking my politeness quiet as permission to keep on performing their bad behavior around me.  I am proud of my Facebook friends for stopping.  I don’t know how long they will, but it shows a lot of character to catch yourself in such things.

With all compassion it is my opinion that many of the people on my friend’s list are fairly new to social networking.  The group, many whom knew each other began to resemble a gang, but only because they gave each other pats on the back for bad behavior, which made the behavior grow.  Fun and games right? What I had done was to hold a mirror up. I did it very politely.  Some people loved it and appreciated it.

Being peaceful and non-violent does not mean you roll over when someone disturbs your peace.  I believe that there are ways that you can peacefully and non-violently defend yourself.

So was I right?

I can try defend my actions, and I have in my mind, saying “I have younger family members on my list who need to hear these things.”  Some of what was being put up on our mutual walls was pretty “outdated” thinking, kind of like pre-civil rights, get out the hood, kind of thinking.

I actually talk about my growing frustrations and plans to deal with it in the post “Two Minutes of Hate – Give the Proud What They Want”.  Here I was fumbling with the idea of just letting it go.

No Wave

“Letting it go”, is certainly the direction I was going myself in my Zen practice.  I had made a “word-image” in my mind of my idea -the concept I was thinking was “no wave”.  I don’t know if it is original or not, but my idea was that we really don’t know the outcome of our actions, good or bad, especially as time flows into the future.  We really don’t know that if someone creates an considerable amount of suffering whether its long term outcome will be even greater happiness or visa versa. I think this has come out of my Zen studies and I believe it.  Our lifespans may be too short to be able to judge good and evil if we ever could (or can).  Time will always prove us wrong (and right).  Compassion tells us there is no real good and no real evil, but there can be real understanding.  So the concept I was working on was “no wave”.  Instead of trying to forge ahead and be a do-gooder, and instead of getting angry and being mean, I would try and leave no trace.  No “karmic” wave in a sense.  In my practice, I thought this might be the best thing I could do, the most respectful way to be, especially to others.

Well, I would tell you my conclusions about my practice, but apparently my concentration on “no wave” has been derailed.  What made me change my attitude?

Negativity.

Pride.

Hate.

Fear.

Suffering.

All, from family and friends.  In a word, ignorance.

I had a hard time keeping my self from reacting when I thought that my younger family was learning such an example of ignorance as something “positive” to emulate.  It actually kept me awake a couple nights.  Then the thought became: right now, in order to be the best example, I would have to have to act.

I know time may prove me wrong, actually let’s just assume it will, but I felt that if those kids knew a different view growing up, that a different view was even available, (and they  didn’t have to agree with it either), it might  make their lives easier in the future.

Very selfish of me, I know.

Have I stopped ?

No.  I still politely hit issues that may be uncomfortable; the head waters of my opinion have been broken, but the really nice thing is, it has become a conversation.  It is wonderful to have that conversation with little or no anger associated, there is still a little fear.  What is even more fun then having deep and meaningful conversations with friends and family.

No Wave

I still think the “no wave” practice is a valuable one.   I plan to return to it soon.

Comments?  I’m interested in your comments.

The morning walk to my currently favorite coffee shop was crisp and invigorating, something a walk should be; a walk but not much else. Ok, maybe a Sauvignon Blanc, but now I am digressing.

I always think in these mornings that I will have nothing to write about, but then by the time my seat hits the chair and I raise my cell phone to type, the ideas are plentiful enough to capture my attention and they start to make it past my brain and release themselves on this small virtual keyboard.

Today was an interesting change, the woman at the counter asked me if I really wanted chips with my Monterey Breakfast Burrito. She asked me if I wanted salsa too. This cafe tends to be a pretty “veggie” place, so it is a little bit difficult for me on my low carb/paleo/primal diet to choose something to eat. I suspect my “usual” coffee request gave me away: a 16 oz iced sugar-free caramel breve. I believe the words “sugar-free” and “breve” gives more information to an attentive barista then deep visible grooves in someone’s brow to a tarot card reader. I smiled and said I would skip the chips this morning, but I would like the salsa. The warm inflection in my baristas voice, “you have a really great day” told me she was having a better one herself. Maybe I am becoming a “regular”.  In any case, service this morning was the quickest I will ever expect here. A good morning indeed.

My thoughts as I picked up the warm white plate that held my burrito was of the different varieties of burritos from the glass food display. I have had about three different types of wraps now, and even with such a small number I was learning a trick or two of how to decipher the names. For example. last time I was here I picked up the Steak Breakfast Burrito, based on the name I thought that steak would be a main ingredient. It was tasty, but I leaned that perhaps the word “steak” in the title represented a flavor more than a ingredient. There was much more of everything else in the burrito that morning, I mean other than steak. Potato Breakfast Burrito (with steak),” would have been more accurate. Like I said, it was tasty, but I had learned to be more careful, as much as I like potatoes, they don’t much fit in my diet.

Today’s burrito was much more difficult to discern from the name alone.  “Monterey Breakfast Burrito” sounded interesting, but I had no idea what a “Monterey” tasted like.  The ingredients under the label did help.

Bacon, cheese, avocado, eggs, salsa, and sour cream, I don’t know if that is what a Monterey tastes like, but if it is, it sure tasted good.

Better then the “Potato Breakfast Burrito (with steak)”?  Well, it has been a few days since I had that one, but I would have to say “yes.”

Intermission

It has been a few days after I had written the burrito story above.  I had high hopes and actually an idea of how I could cleverly tie in some kind of sub story in.  I’m sitting on my couch this morning, approximately seven miles or so from where I had that Monterey tasting burrito and all I can remember of the story and that morning was just how yummy the burrito was.

I did have a wonderful day that day.  I suppose that might be the best story of all.

The rain drops blessed me again today.  As much as I want to get out into the garden, I have gotten comfortable spending productive days inside the house while the Oregon rain makes gentle noise outside.

You might think someone who loves musical instruments as much as I do would have music running full blast form my stereo while I tinker on my interests inside.  Actually, the opposite is quite true.  I enjoy the sounds of the house and also of my mind as they both creak away in the drone of the drizzle.  The sounds of silence.

Don’t get me wrong, I do love music, but these days I think I need more quality time with music, especially recorded music.  Playing music is a little different.

Painting Music

I have used the analogy of painting for almost all of the “art” that I dabble in.  Cooking to me, is just like painting.  There is color and texture and depth in cooking, it is not just about the color of flavor.  I think of music in much the same way, although I’m more inclined to pick up one of the many instruments I have strewn about the house and spew musical paint wildly through the air then I ever would find myself using a paint brush.  Oh… and you know I would love to spew paint too.  Hey, we all oppress ourselves in our own way.

I do need to repaint the bedroom …

In the last couple days, a new color has found its way into the air particles here in my house.  Not a particle that would smell good, or find itself splattered on my walls or scratched up wooden floors; nope.  These particles are the kind that make the hairs in my ears dance, literally.  Colors that I am excited to say I have helped to shape myself.

The Last of the Concertina Adventures?

If you have missed the previous parts of this story, there have been two.  The first part was more of my favorite, it tells the story of a mystery and a very seductive and elusive instrument.  The second part tells the story of how I found the instrument that I will be describing in this post, “the concertina”.  I have yet to name “the concertina”, so this name will have to do for now.  In this post I will be sharing some of my adventures that happened while fixing the concertina.

I am adding this section of the story to help anyone, who like me, may want to perform a similar task of restoring or rebuilding an instrument like the concertina.  I have found much advice and help on the internet, some better than others, so I thought I would add a little bit more support here.  Many of the instructions on the internet supply the advice, “Don’t do it!”.  I supply the advice of: if you are comfortable with what you can and might lose in changing an instrument, move cautiously with each step, research each step, and move ahead with your fixes.  Of course, make sure it is your instrument to change!

I guess what I am really trying to say is “proceed at your own risk.”

I am also adding some pictures here from what was my process. If I had some of these pictures I think my process would have been more easier, well, perhaps a bit less scary.

Fixing the Concertina

As you might be able to tell from this picture, when I first brought the concertina home from the store it was not in the best shape. The buttons were pushed in, but when I attempted to play the bellows, notes sounded.  The bellows did appear to be to be in pretty good working order, which gave me the most hope.  When I bought the instrument the condition of the bellows were my number one concern.  After my research and working on it, I had learned that bad bellows might not be the worst of problems, but I’m glad they seem to be pretty good shape.

I found a few of wonderful concertina resources which I do recommend: www.Concertina.com and www.Concertina.net were very helpful.

There was no description of what company made this instrument on the instrument itself, so I went to the internet to see if I could find some information.  I found a article that described my instrument and the only writing on it (other than the number found inside) was “Made in Italy”.  The instrument was made in the 1960’s and was made by an Italian company called “Riccordi”.  There were actually a couple people working on this very type of concertina and noted some of the issues they had with them.  Very good news indeed.

The “Wiggle”

Some of the problems that I saw with my newly found instrument were very common with this model of concertina.  One problem was that the design used a little rubber tubing-like object for dual purposes for the button action.  The dual purposes were: one, holding the button on the action itself, and two, allowing movement on the action.  The movement on the action required to allow the buttons to work and not get stuck in wooden housing is only what I can describe as “just enough wiggle”.  With out this “wiggle” the buttons would just get stuck again.  When you are working with the buttons it is hard to recognize that they actually require a little movement, and not less, in order for them to work properly.  The dual purpose of the little rubber parts actually makes me wonder of “planned obsolesce” of the design. I can’t imagine that it was long before the rubber lost it’s ability to stay in place while keeping the “wiggle”.  Not allowing the button to stay in place would cause it to push into the instrument like the first picture above.

I found two references on the Internet that recommended replacing these little “rubber” parts a with model airplane fuel line.  I had worked on replacing mine before I found the information so I used a different solution.  My solution was to use very thin strips of cardboard with Elmer’s glue.  I wrapped the lower metal part of the button by about halfway, then glued it in place with Elmer’s.  This carefully placed paper on the button would allow the “wiggle” it needed. I then added just a dot of glue from a glue gun to keep the button in place on the “action”.  The glue also allow the “wiggle”.  I carefully cut away on the glue-gun glue to shape it so it fit properly with the instrument housing when placed above the button action.  This seems to work real well. My real concern for this part of fixing the instrument was to be able to make modifications that were not permanent if I could.  I really wanted any of these modifications to be reversible and fixable at a later time.  I also wanted to keep as close to materials that would be used to make such and instrument and that were available when the instrument was made.

Leather or Mylar?

This particular instrument is an Anglo Concertina. It uses reeds to produce sounds, much like a harmonica. It is diatonic, so it produces two different sounds per reed depending on if the instrument bellows are pushed in or pulled out. Most Anglo concertinas use accordion reeds to produce sounds, these accordion reeds are held in place using bee’s wax.  Pretty neat trick, using bee’s wax to stop air from escaping between the reeds and the instrument.  It is also traditional to use leather valve covers. These covers help produce the second sound on the reed. These covers should rest flat against the reed in order for them to play correctly.  As you can see in the picture, the yellow leather reed cover definitely needed to be replaced.

As much as I would have loved to use leather, the only leather replacements for the valve covers on the internet I could find were $60, this was twice as much as I purchased the instrument for.  I had started to make my own valve covers by using some shoe leather: a process that would take me hours possibly weeks had I continued it. Then I happened upon some information from a person who had run into the same problem along with some information on possibly how to solve it.  Honner, a company who is known for their harmonicas still make a concertina as well as an accordion.  Honner has replaced their leather valve covers for mylar instead.  Yay! This was terrific news.  Someone also recommended that using old floppy disk mylar worked just fine.  I had to try it.

I carefully removed the old valve covers using an exacto knife and canned air to gently blow away any old glue and debris (better not use your breath as it may cause corrosion). I then used a dab of rubber cement at the very top of the mylar to adhere it to the reed.  Again this choice of glue would allow me to reverse the fix quite easily and would not cause any damage to the reed.

Cleaning the Reeds

Another tip that I thought would be VERY helpful to see in a photograph was using a dollar bill to clean the reeds. The instrument had one dead reed and a few of the reeds had a touch of corrosion on them.  Since even a touch of debris or corrosion can cause a dead reed, I thought the tip I found on the internet on how to clean them with a dollar was excellent.  It is hard to find better lint free paper to use to clean reeds and nearly free.  Well… I just so happened to have washed a dollar in a pair of my jeans earlier in the week!  It worked perfect.  Be VERY VERY careful though when trying this.

Other Small Fixes

I spent a little time fixing the leather seal, again using Elmer’s.  I adjusted some bent button actions.  There were small fixes here and there and I’m still considering more. One is fixing the wood that has been stripped away from the screws.  These screws help the seal a bit and help the buttons fit in place as well.  I would have to say I probably got 90% of the instrument to a point where I’m comfortable.

A Few Last Mysteries

There were a few mysteries that I had to answer with this instrument.  I don’t know yet if the answers are right though.  The first was a single reed that when I checked it with a tuner played different notes than was documented for that particular reed to play.  The reed itself seems to play ok.  This I just need to do a little bit more research on.  If anyone has any possible reasons for this please comment.

The second mystery was that the higher notes did not have valve covers, and they didn’t appear to every have them. This seemed a little strange because the instrument (as seen in the picture ) has an “air button” just above the handle. This specific button is typically used to allow the instrument to open and close its bellows without what I believe is called a “drone” note.  With the higher notes not having a valve cover, those notes would always be played when the bellows were opened.  My solution was just to add valve covers to those reeds.  This made the instrument play as I would have predicted.  No drone.

How Preposterous!

The number one question that friends had asked me when I first got the concertina a couple weeks ago was “but have you ever played one?”  The answer was a resounding “No.”  I guess at one I would have asked the same question myself.  I actually remember as a kid, thinking to myself “that’s just wrong” when I was told that someone would tune a piano when they didn’t know how to play one.  Now I can completely understand why it is not “wrong” at all.

Imagine the first instrument of a type being built, they didn’t have people who had ever played them either.

My friends were not being rude by asking the question.  I guess I just had tinkered enough with other instruments that I thought I was ready.  As some of my friends from SL might have guessed, I always wanted to rebuild a piano.  This was definitely a less risky proposition… but that is a story for another day.

I guess what I really wanted to say is… the only preposterous thing you can do is to not do something you really want to while not really knowing why you shouldn’t.

Spewing Sound into the Air – The Final Adventure

I guess with any instrument, the last adventure with it would be the one that stops it from making a sound.  I’m looking forward to a few more adventures with this concertina.

Oh.. and before I forget, thanks for joining me on this adventure…

The clouds have subsided, and the sun decided to grace my day, but here I am finding joy in writing the second part of this story.  (This is part two, you can find the first part of this story at this link: Cloudy Days, Musical Seduction, and Concertina Adventures – Part I)

There are men outside my window, well, up by the road in front of my house, and one of them just told me that my electrical power would be out for about an hour.  Somehow a power outage feels a good enough reason, well, and that little red Italian thing sitting in front of me, to continue on with my story.

A Bittersweet Seduction

Where did I leave off…? Oh yes, a musical seduction…

As I slowly realized how the sweet sounds of one instrument could so delicately haunt me, having found many of its notes and thrills in so much of my selected music, I began a journey to find out more about one.  After searching out the shape and size and approximate number of buttons on the instrument in question, as well as the musicians that played the instrument on particular music, I was able to identify that the instrument that sought me out was called a bandoneon.  A bandoneon is an instrument in the family of instruments called “Concertinas”.  They are “accordion-like” in that they use reeds to create their tones as well as have a bellows that allow the musician to push air across their reeds to create music.

After finding out what these instruments were, my search next lead me to ebay. Ebay was where I learned of the range of quality and makers of such instruments,  it was also the place where I came by the sad realization that most of the instruments of this type were out of my price range, at least from my current level of curiosity.  Most concertinas worth owning were rebuilt antiques, the newer models, many with their cheesy red marbled finish, were made much more cheaply; they could not tempt me into shelling out over $300 USD for an instrument that I had never played.  My search for a bandoneon was even more disappointing.  I spent over a month looking for a bandoneon on ebay and found that anything worth purchasing would cost me about $1000 USD or more.  Things hit home, it was not so long ago that my budget and frugal nature would allow me such wonderful purchases without a thought. These days the expenditure of even $100 USD brings plenty of thought.

It was bittersweet.  I had come so close to this beautiful instrument.   My journey, a wonderful ride, but the object of my desire would now only taunt me from a distance.  True, distance was only monetary, but still, to have this instrument and to play it, was a luxury that I could not afford.  I had to put the dream from my mind.  I slowly disabled all of my ebay alerts that had dutifully told me of the pending sale of the next concertina.

And then I saw…

I am not a shopper.   I rarely volunteer to go shopping, and I always used to get hiccups before entering a shopping mall.  No lie.  On this particular day, a day so much different than any other, I decided to go window shopping with a friend.  Both of us, now in the habit of tightening our purse strings, decided to take a walk up a semi-trendy street in Portland. None of what was sold at any of these stores would be considered a necessity for anyone’s survival. It was my idea.  I had not seen my friend in a while, and window shopping at junk shops, even trendy ones, tends to allow the free flow of dialog as opposed to the free flow of dollars from our wallets.  It was a plan.

I was all window fru-frued out when my friend asked me if I wanted to go into this “vintage” store (“second hand” store for the more crotchety of us).  No stranger to such places I had my foot through the door not long after she finished her question.  The place was pretty big.  There was so much there that reminded me of my childhood that a kind of melancholy hit me.   “Maybe ‘vintage’ means newer than ‘antique’,” my mind fiddled.

There was a lot there.  There was some stuff that I just had not seen in YEARS: an Apple IIe, an Intellivsion, along with some cassette tape readers for various computers.  It was actually refreshing to see something at a store like this that surprised me.  I actually took pictures of some of it. My friend and I didn’t wander the whole store.  There was a whole wing we had not checked out, but it was the end of the day, and even that last latte couldn’t keep our energy up much longer.  It was unanimous, with little more than a glance we started our way toward the front of the store.

And then something triggered a memory.

I am not so quick these days, and my height has always been a little for wanting.  It must have been a good day for me in the visual recognition department, that red marbled cheesy thing would usually have never made an impression on me.  I can’t say I won any awards for reaction time, it did take me a second and I had walked past the object, and then I stopped.

I should ask my friend what she saw as she watched my reactions.  I know she was talking with me at the time where I just stopped and turned around.  I slowly moved back to the shelf, it was a few inches above my head, but the red marbled color could still be seen, by me, from a distance.  “No way,” I thought, but sure enough it was. Before me sat what could easily be one of those cheesy concertinas that I had passed up on ebay so many times.   It was definitely worse for wear, but there it was.

I gently picked it up.

Over the month or so that I had researched this instrument I had learned many of the things that people had concerns with when buying them.  I immediately and gently tried the bellows, some of the buttons, and spied the leather.  The buttons were all messed up, but they were at least there, the bellows seemed intact.  The “made in Italy” on it might have told me a little about its origin and age, but there was no name to be found. It did make a sound, and a couple of the buttons that were still in place actually played a different note. What was even better, the sticker said, “$30.”

A thought occurred to me, “I might be able to make this play.”

Making it Play…

I did try to get the price down a bit from $30.  The kind lady let me leave the store with it for $27. At that point all I wanted to do was to get it home and open it up.

I’ll tell you about that in part III…

It was a number of cloudy days, kind of like today, that brought me to this instrument in front of me, almost rebuilt and ready to be played.

The promise of sun on my face and cool dewy air tickles me as summertime quickly approaches. I’m in Oregon, and I am told that this year the warmer weather has taken a little bit longer to arrive, at least based on last year. Usually preoccupied with the less wondrous stuff-o-life, for me to have this much of a grip on such details of the year  makes me certain that this year is even better than the last.

So this year’s weather, a friend has kindly informed me, has kept his freshly-grown-tomato desires postponed.  The Oregon clouds rarely keep a good Oregonian down, at least for long.  For me, the added cloudy days have been paid no-mind as the musical instrument lover in me reveled at a new adventure.

Where Have I Heard That Sound Before?

For a few years now, a particular album has been present on my play list.  Strangely enough it is a album that I found in a book years ago. The book was called “1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.”

1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: Revised and Updated Edition (9780789320742): Robert Dimery, Michael Lydon: Books ISBN: 0789320746 ISBN-13: 9780789320742

As I traveled through the pages of this book I thought I would find some hidden rock-music gem that I had not heard in my youth. While I discovered and rediscovered many a rock gem, the album that surprisingly stuck with me from this time was not a rock album at all.  The one that stuck with me was, of all things, an album of tango music called “La Revancha Del Tango” by a band called the “Gotan Project”.

La Revancha del Tango: Gotan Project: Music ASIN: B00008NRL8

Can an Instrument Seduce a Person?

It was years and years ago.  A best friend and I were talking of the music we loved, songs in particular.  He and I spent many an hour just trading specific songs, “our favorites”.  It was a wonderful time of exploring music, almost accidental in its simple and unsullied sharing.  One particular time, as we were talking about some tunes, we both came to a realization, nearly at the same instant.  The realization was that the songs we were playing for each other, our particular favorite “favorites”, each had an element in common.  The common element, to our surprise, was that each song had a specific instrument played in it; well, not only did it have the specific instrument, the instrument was also played in a specific way.  If I remember correctly, my buddy’s favorites had a Hammond organ associated with them, and mine had a bunch of slide guitar.  We had both recognized something in each other’s favorites,  but it was more than favorite music, it was something deeper yet, a favorite sounds within the music.

And here I am years later, finding myself within a similar realization.

Timbre

There is a term in music theory that describes the differentiating aspect of specific type of instrument’s voice.  It really is not too difficult to understand once you think about it,  although the idea may seem a bit vague at first.

Much like people, instruments can be identified by their “voice”.  So let’s say I sing something in the key of “C”, and then I get someone else of the male persuasion to sing that same exact thing in the key of “C”.  Hearing us both, you will most likely be able to tell which one of us is singing based on our voice, not only that, but you may also notice that there is one male voice and one one female voice.   If you know the people involved and their voices well enough, you will be able to tell who is singing too. In an instrument, this quality is called “Timbre”.  You can have a piano and a trumpet playing the same simple notes in a key of “C”, but people will recognize that the instruments playing the same frequency are not the same instrument; one is a piano and one is a trumpet.

Timbre is the signature of the instrument’s sound; a variation in sound that is unique to each instrument type, say piano or trumpet. It is timbre that allows us to differentiate instruments from each other even when they are playing the same frequency (note).

To Tantalize One’s Ears and One’s Brain

The brain is a wonderful place.  We can recognize music bands and band members voices, even types of music, before we ever know their names; so much of music is like this.  As we listen to music, a knowledge forms in the brain without ever needing words.  We know so much more about music than we realize, even if we know nothing of music theory or have never played a musical instrument.  Music theory, like so many other things, is just a vocabulary that allows us to describe this “thing” we call music to each other in some objective detail: the science of music. When I started to recognize just how much we know about music, just from listening to it and loving it, it is really when I started to really appreciate the wonders that is our brain and to some extent our ears.

It is in this very place, my brain, that the beginnings of a musical seduction began to unfold.

Come Away with Me (Vieni via con me)

And then it happened!  I fell in love with with a Italian song, and within the very notes of a performance of the song, a story of a long seduction began to unfold.  One fateful weekend, as I slowly woke to appreciate the quiet of that Saturday morning, my coffee cup and I found me looking for a live version of a particular song.  I found one version of the song that quickly became my favorite, and then I found myself watching it over and over again.  The video was a live version of Paolo Conte playing his song “Vieni via con me” and right there in the middle of the performance was the thing that drew me in.  It tickled my spine.  It raised the hair at the back of my neck.

I had not even known this instrument had existed, but yet, I did.  Well, my brain apparently knew it existed. I sat astounded as I watched.  Right in the middle of this video, a man is playing this small black accordion like thing, the sound of which resonated not only in my ears but lower; like tears in the heart. I watched the video again and again, I could not be torn.  Within this performance a world of music, a secret about myself revealed like an explosion.  For years, quite possibly a lifetime, I had been seduced, not just by a song, not by a style of music, but by the sweet sounds of an instrument.

Can One be “In Love” Without Knowing It?

A list started to emerge: songs that had this instrument playing within it.  “That sound, but what instrument was it?  An accordion?  No, too small.  Plus, it had the side button things, not like piano keys but more like, well, buttons.  No, not an accordion,”  it was hardly within the first couple of times that I watched the video that these questions ran through my head.  My other half, sitting not far away from me and my coffee cup, caught the question, “What is that instrument that he is playing?” He helpfully replied with another question, “A concertina?”

As the weeks went past I listened to my music player, slowly more music in my collection would call out to me with one thing in common: this instrument.  How long had this been going on?  Had it been calling out to me all this time?

My other half was right with his guess, the instrument was a type of concertina. The sound that my ears found so intriguing was a very specific type of concertina called a Bandoneon.  Before the moment where I had finally searched down the specifics of the instrument I had no idea I had such a preference for the instrument or the instrument’s sound.

Bandoneon – The Quintessential Tango Instrument

Originally, I thought that it was the beat of the music within the “LA Revancha Del Tango” album that kept me coming back to it, but now I realize an even deeper relationship with the album, and perhaps the music.

It was a number of cloudy days, kind of like today, that brought me to this instrument in front of me, almost rebuilt and ready to be played.  Or was it the music?  In any case, the instrument is not a bandoneon, it is an Anglo concertina, but that is a tale for another day.

Tasty cheesy bits coat my teeth. This particular variant of chicken quesadilla has been nuanced with the modern refinements of a sun-dried tomato corn-ish wrap. A rather impressive achievement. Well, I’m thinking not so much a technological achievement, more like an achievement in culinary mass production technology.

I wonder what the top ten quesadilla makers of the world would have said about this particular quesadilla say, fifty or one hundred years ago?

So much in this quick paced world seems to indicate improvement: ten percent here, an other eighty percent there, but is this modern quesadilla two hundred and seventy percent better than someone’s great great grandfather’s quesadilla?  What if their great great was like the “Quesadilla King” or something like that?

Lately, I’m not so sure…

Today’s Food is Better?

I am sitting a few feet from my more-typical-spot in my currently-favorite coffee shop. I must say that this spot is about thirty percent worse than my last spot, for sure, and considering this is a pretty comfortable coffee shop, I am within eighty percent certainty that this spot is one hundred and sixty percent better than that coffee shop down the block. You know, the one that I have never been to.  Well, that’s what THEY tell me anyways… THEY were very helpful in giving me a quantifiable justification as to why this coffee shop is so much better than another.  Come on … do star ratings lie?

I am contemplating the smooth-like texture of this taste-like-chicken mash that I have just experienced.  I mean, if one of these mouthfuls of quesadilla was a pinball, and my mouth a pinball table, the mouthful has certainly pinged it’s way around my oral utility, hitting all the bumpers and lights, in a way that definitely characterizes what my brain considers a quesadilla.  Sun-dried tomato twist, certainly not tricky enough to throw me off and make me question what I was eating; like if the thing in my plate was labeled “apple pie” or something.

But what if this quesadilla was was really apple pie?

I mean, don’t get me wrong, I love apple pie.  But if I wanted apple pie I will buy something labeled apple pie! Wouldn’t I?

What if I sat down to eat this quesadilla, and the bits I’m currently removing from my teeth with my tongue, this pinball in my mouth actually ricocheted the signature for apple pie?  Well, I would walk to the counter and say as politely as possible,

“Ummm.. excuse me miss, I ordered the quesadilla.”

“Yeah, that’s what I gave you.”

“But, this has like apples and cinnamon in it.  I mean, it is a damned good slice of apple pie, but I ordered the quesadilla.”

“Well, I’m sorry, but that is what you bought.  If you would have looked at the ingredient list, you would have known this particular quesadilla has apples and cinnamon in it, and actually is made exactly like our apple pie.  Would you like a slice of that too?”

“Well, I guess your right.  Ummm… maybe I’ll have that with my coffee tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow,” she whispers to me leaning over the counter, “if we are out the apple pie, just order the steak and eggs.”

Buying what they are selling…

No, I’m not confused.  It was definitely a quesadilla I was eating.  But maybe I just realized I like apple pie ninety-eight percent better than quesadilla.  Nothing against this quesadilla, I’m still pulling little bits of the green pepper flavor from my teeth and I would order it again.  But considering just how much better these ingredients are these days, I mean how much they have really improved percentage-wise over time (of course packaging is very helpful in me knowing this), you would think that great great gran-dad, King of the Quesadilla, would exclaim… “Wow, that is one darn good slice of apple pie.”

All this because my cats are eating corn…

Expect more food posts to come…

I was going to originally title this post, “Sam Harris, The Sexiest Man Alive”, but then I thought that would probably be too honest.  In any case, I suspect that I’m not Sam’s type, but now I’m really getting off track of the subject of this post.

Kind of like the others but different.

I long ago read the Dawkin’s book, “The God Delusion” and got through most of it, but honestly I have been a Atheist for a while now and didn’t need my own convincing.  I also didn’t feel the need to load up on arguments to defeat any of my more zealot Christian associates.  I had already felt various levels outrage based on various treatment by people of different faiths and have gained some acceptance of some of the situation.  As I read the Dawkin’s book, I remember reading it as if I was holding it at arms length, basically to keep some of the foam of outrage left by the writer on the pages of the book off of my own person.  Maybe it was my own feelings that I was trying to keep under control while reading it. I felt nothing like this while reading the Sam Harris’s book “A Letter to a Christian Nation”.

Letter to a Christian Nation (Vintage) (9780307278777): Sam Harris: Books ISBN: 0307278778 ISBN-13: 9780307278777

“A Letter” was an easy read, quick and enjoyable.  Sam Harris is like a cold glass of water on the hottest of days.  Clear, rational, to the point.  Thanks man.  Thanks a lot.

Moderate Religion

One thing I was curious about was Harris’s treatment of those in the middle, those people he calls “religious moderates.”   Let me quote a little bit,

“… there are several problems with such a defense of religion.  First, many moderates (and even some secularists) assume that religious “extremism” is rare and therefore not all that consequential.   But religious extremism is not rare, it is hugely consequential.  The United States is now a nation of 300 million souls, wielding more influence than any people in human history, and yet 240 million of these souls apparently believe that Jesus will return someday and orchestrate the end of the world with his magic powers.  This hankering for a denominational. spiritual oblivion is extreme in almost every sense – it is extremely silly, extremely dangerous, extremely worthy of denigration – but it is not extreme in the case of it being rare.”

The above quote may seem quite over the top, but I have to say that through my own experience Sam is quite right.

The Shock of September 11th

As a teenager, I lived a couple blocks from the Hudson River.  The backdrop of my life had the twin towers etched in them, well, until September 11.  Living in Oregon at the time, there was no doubt the grief and shock that many of us felt that morning.  I say “many of us”, because some people who I knew, and in this case worked with, almost could not hold back their joy.  You see, these fundamentalist Christians were convinced, at least for a little while, that the end of times was near at hand.  I found it unfathomable how people who I assumed loved their neighbors, their country, and apple pie just as I did could be so different.  This was not a small difference.

In my shocked silence, I realized that my Fundamentalist Christian acquaintances were just as extreme as those men who flew those jets into the twin towers that morning.

But yet we are polite…

Yes, I wanted to say in very harsh tones, “you are fucking nuts aren’t you?”  But I didn’t.  It is kind of strange though, these same people hold no respect for my belief or in this case disbelief.  Often this blatant disrespect made my working conditions very uncomfortable.   I am an atheist, and a Zen Buddhist for that matter, but that doesn’t mean I want to talk about either of those topics, or Jesus, or Muhammad at work or actually in most social settings either.  I certainly don’t want to be argued with about them or bullied.

But what can we do about it?

I’m afraid that there isn’t much we can do except try to educate and spread the word much like Sam does with his book.  Reading the book came as a breath of fresh air to me, a grand idea.  I had dreams of all the thoughtful rational Christians that would read the book and help make the world a better place.  But before the first phrase of Kumbaya entered my head, I thought of the manic joy present in the eyes of those who thought that the tragedy of September 11th was something to celebrate and then I could agree with Sam’s own sad realization in the last section of the book:

“This letter is the product of failure – the failure of the many brilliant attacks upon the religion that preceded it, the failure of our schools to announce the death of God in a way that each generation can understand, the failure of our media to criticize the subject of religious certainties of our public figures – failures great and small that have kept almost every society on this earth muddling over God and despising those who muddle differently.

Nonbelievers like myself stand beside you, dumbstruck by the Muslim hordes who chant death to whole nations of the living.  But we stand dumbstruck by you as well – by your denial of tangible reality, by the suffering you create in service to your religious myths and by your attachment to an imaginary God.  This letter has been an expression of that amazement – and, perhaps, of a little hope.”

Definitely Recommended

I think that this book should be added to the curriculum of any philosophy class, any library, and reading list for persons religious or non-religious. People should know it is out there for their use.  There is much more here at stake than prayer in public schools, but I think you will need to read the book to hear what Mr. Harris has to say.

I will add little of my own hope to that of the author; that his book amounts to more than just a bit of Atheist publication that gives us temporary release from what we Atheists see as a very harsh reality.

Last Note from my Zen Buddhist Perspective

I wanted to make a quick note to mention that my practice of Zen Buddhism has in no way conflicted with my disbelief in a God or gods.

I was checking out the new “Like” button on Facebook and decided to see how it would work on the blog.  So this morning I’m trying out this nifty new WordPress Plugin to do just that.  The plugin is called “WB FB Like” and gives from options as to add the button to each of your posts.

With the settings above I was able to quickly add a “Like” button above the post as well as “style” the button a bit so I didn’t have to tweak my CSS. Nice.

The plug in also has a couple other features, like placing a number count next to the “Like” icon after the button has been pressed which tells you how many people have “liked” the post.  It can also place the Facebook picture next to the button as well.

Well.  Here I go…  going to test out the rest of these features.  Give them a try too.  Let’s test this bugger out.