Into the Woods – Page 197 – Watching a bewildering world from the middle of nowhere

Giving amateurs a chance

Ron Reseigh (who is not an amateur) at the Berkeley Wurlitzer

I’ve been thinking all day about amateur musicians and things people (and communities) can do to encourage amateur musicianship.

When I was in San Francisco, for a while I was member of the Northern California Theater Organ Society, which owns and maintains the large Wurlitzer organ at the Berkeley Community Theater. Once a month, on a Sunday, the society has an “open console” during the afternoon, and anyone who would like to play the organ can play it. Here’s a Youtube link of Ron Reseigh playing “Alone Again (Naturally)” on the Berkeley Wurlitzer.

I have played this organ. It’s quite an instrument, and not surprisingly it’s the biggest organ I’ve ever played. Most communities are notorious for being stingy with organs. Even though an entire church bought and maintains an organ, the organist usually keeps the key and won’t let anyone touch it. I even remember a newspaper story from the 1970s about a “phantom organist” who would break into churches at night to play the organ. The Mighty Wurlitzer is no snob. It will respond equally and faithfully to whoever touches the keys.

I totally understand the phantom organist. And I also want to chide those who sometimes refer mockingly to “the People’s Republic of Berkeley.” Where else do the common people — amateurs — get to touch the King of Instruments?

And since I’m sitting here in the woods missing the Berkeley Wurlitzer, here’s Mark Herman (also not an amateur) playing it.

Homemade music

Just now on Facebook, there is a thing going around in which people are supposed to write 25 random things about themselves. An old friend of mine did this, and one of the random things about him is that he used to play an instrument, but because of an abusive band director and snobbish bandmates, he stopped. He says he still has the urge to throw a French horn out a high window and watch it smash. Thus for as long as I have known him, I have never had the pleasure of hearing him play.

Over the past six or eight decades, something has changed in our collective musical culture, and something of great value has been lost. It used to be that people were encouraged to play, and to practice, as amateur musicians. Now we scorn them and humiliate them. How many people have stopped playing an instrument altogether once they realize (or are cruelly told) that they’ll never be a professional?

It used to be that the prettiest face anyone ever saw was the prettiest face in their little village. Now, thanks to the media, every face must be compared with world-class beauty. Recording technology is a great gift and a terrible humiliation at the same time: We can hear the best music that the world has to offer, but it’s that impossible standard by which amateurs are judged.

The word “amateur” itself has taken on a certain cruel connotation. It comes to us from French and Latin, of course, and it just means that someone loves something. But now the word means dabbler, or inferior. It’s an insult.

Thank goodness we don’t belittle people who cook at home, or insult them by referring to them as amateurs. The culture of home cooking actually is healthy. We encourage it. We are eager to sample what other people have made. We exchange techniques and recipes. Thanks to the New Frugality maybe we’ll even have a renaissance of cooking at home.

I’m afraid that if homemade music ever has a renaissance, it will begin with defiance. We amateur musicians must begin by putting our foot down and declare that we will not let anyone’s judgment — including our own — deprive us of the joy of making music.

I call, she comes. What a concept!

Lily reposes. Digital effects applied in Gimp photo editor.

I have raised several dogs from puppyhood, and so I have pretty well-developed theories about how to raise puppies. Lily, who is now about nine months old, was about eight weeks old when she came to me. I had to play kitten-raising by ear.

Dogs, of course, need training. Train a cat? Ha! They can learn basic rules fairly well: Don’t scratch, don’t bite, don’t get on the table, don’t scratch the furniture. Lily, I think, has turned out just fine. The guidelines for kitten raising, it seems to me, boil down to: Give them a lot of affection and attention, and always respond to them in a consistent, predictable way that they can understand.

I thought that Lily would never be motivated to come when I call. But these past few evenings, she has been doing that. She knows that one of the unbreakable rules is that she can’t go out until the sun is up, and she must be in before dark. She likes to stay out all day when the sun is shining and it’s not too cold. An hour before sunset, she’s probably sleepy and hungry. So when I go out and call her, I soon hear a meowing in response, far off in the woods. And before I know it, she’s at the door.

I’m pretty sure she’s aware that the woods are dangerous after dark if you’re a kitty cat.

Pepper sauces

Though cayenne pepper sauces are not necessarily a big deal in Southern cookin’ at these latitudes, still, to many people they’re an essential item. The fancier grocery stores such as Whole Foods have some of the boutique brands. But even country grocery stores have three or more brands to choose from.

Tabasco, in my opinion, is not the best. It’s thin, very hot, and doesn’t have much taste. There’s a local brand, Texas Pete, which I wish I liked because it’s local, but I don’t. Texas Pete also is too thin and tasteless, and it even has preservatives in it, something for which there is no excuse. My favorite brand, by far, is way cheaper than Tabasco. It’s Louisiana brand. It’s a little thicker and redder than most pepper sauces, and it has a nice flavor with no ingredients other than the basics: peppers, vinegar, and salt.

When the building project is done and I have time to focus on gardening and preserving, I hope to experiment with putting up my own pepper sauces.

What they're eating in the south of France #5

This is a guest column by Anivid, who lives in the South of France and who also took these photos in markets near her home.

By Anivid

Hello Everybody,

We’re here on a French town market in the South. Even though it’s January, it’s not extremely cold – around 48° Fahrenheit. The time of the day is early in the morning, where the customers haven’t yet started to arrive. The marchandises (fruit, vegetable & especially for this week: honey) are nicely presented – a quality, I personally am very fond of. It’s not only about finding something edible to a fair price – it’s also about esthetics – you first eat with the eyes, then the mouth & last the stomach – all three have to be given their share of attention & consideration 😉 E.g. the lettuce is presented in a nice row, the big tomatoes (called Tomato de Boeuf), are sliced into halves for the customers to enjoy the beautifully arranged chambers inside, with the intersections covered with film. There’s shown respect for the country’s products! Perhaps it’s better saying the countries’ products, as e.g. the egg-plant (aubergine) and the squash (courgette) are from northern Spain (marked: ESP), whereas the radish (radis), radicchio = Belgian endive (trévise = chicorée rouge, where the roots are used for “coffee”. Do you know chicory coffee in the States ??, in Europe we knew it during WWII, and in France it became a specialty we still know ;-), and tomato are from P.O. our departement (66) Pyrénées-Orientales.

You see, the northern part of Spain (South Catalonia), and the southern part of France (North Catalonia) once belonged together, but the Treaty of the Pyrenees 1659 gave one part to France and another to Spain (not to speak about an enclave in France, called Llivia, which became Spanish 😉 A little earlier Andorra had become a co-principality with the French President and the Monsignore on Sicily as co-princes – Andorra is situated at the foot of département Pyrénées-Orientales 😉 We have a lot of such historically based constructions in Europe. All this happened in the late Medieval Ages. Earlier, around 1100-1300 same landscapes together with Provence and the Balearic Islands belonged to a kingdom called, the Kingdom of Mallorca, and further back, in the Antiquity, the romans were here. Hannibal & the elephants crossed the Pyrénées before they finally came to the Alps. The road they made is still here 😉

Enough history ??

We’ll go back to the market.

There being a whole booth with honey, the light, creamy sort as well as the darker, almost liquid sort – and here on the honey booth we can see the two official languages in the P.O. represented: French (miel) and Catalan (mel). Catalan is a specific language totally different from both French and Spanish. One can learn a lot by a little trip to the market – eh ? I assume you know all the products over-there, also the avocado, the kiwifruit, the artichoke (artichaut), the pumpkin (potiron), the broccoli, and the fenugreek (fenugrec).

Voila ! – what are you saying ??

Backyard Bird Count

GBBC

My sister is reminding bird lovers that “The Great Backyard Bird Count” starts Feb. 13. It’s sponsored by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and Audubon. I can’t identify many species, but I’ll at least count bluebirds.

Coyotes in Carolina

North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission

The cat woke up and make quite a fuss about 3 a.m. when she heard a pack of coyotes in the woods. It’s the first time I’ve heard coyotes in North Carolina. I’ve heard them before while camping in the mountains of California, near Yosemite. It’s a primitive sound — a spooky choir of high pitch yelps that sound as though they have to do with the final frenzy of hunting.

There’s a lot of lore and misinformation about coyotes in North Carolina, but I believe this article from the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission tells the story. Coyotes, it seems, have extended their range into North Carolina over the past couple of decades, and they’re here to stay.

Merrill Lynch calls it a Depression

Above: Household debt-to-income ratio [Merrill Lynch]

Above: Personal savings rate [Merrill Lynch]

I am strongly of the opinion that economic literacy is a personal survival skill, like knowing how to cook, or fix a leaky pipe. This recent article from Merrill Lynch does an excellent job of pulling together and charting some of the factors and trends that point to very hard times ahead. The report says that this is probably a Depression, not a mere recession, and it attempts to define the difference.

One of the most unpredictable areas, it seems to me, is the tension between deflation and inflation. Prices for many things are dropping as global demand drops and supply exceeds demand. But already the American Federal Reserve is buying treasury bonds, which means that we are printing dollars. Printing dollars can only lead to inflation. And yet, this is a global phenomenon, and it’s possible that the dollar will remain relatively strong compared with other currencies. Personally I fear that we’ll be whipsawed as deflation quickly reverses into inflation at some point. Some economists argue that there can be no severe inflation without a wage-price spiral, and wages aren’t going anywhere. No one knows. But we have to keep trying to look ahead.

Front walkway

It may not be the finest example of rock paving in the history of humanity, but at least it’s possible now to get into the house without walking across mud. This is local stone, which came from a small quarry about eight miles away, just north of Hanging Rock State Park. The stone is set in “screenings,” which is just granite sand, really.

My helper

Granite sand, or “screenings”

The local quarry delivered three tons of rock. This much is left after the front walkway was finished. The remainder of the rock will be used to pave a path to the basement door and to the rear deck.

Some arithmetic with broccoli

Carnivorous protein lust!

The broccoli in my local grocery store today was beautiful, and cheap. I had it for supper, steamed, with a buttermilk dipping sauce. It was delicious and just seemed so substantial. It made me wonder if broccoli doesn’t have a significant amount of protein.

After supper, I checked. Indeed it does, about 15 grams per pound, close to a quarter of what you get with hamburger, per pound. So let’s do the math. If you need 60 grams of protein and 2,000 calories to get through your day (a good ration for those not doing heavy lifting), then four pounds of broccoli a day would supply you with all the protein you need. However, that would give you less than 600 calories. An astonishing 45 percent of the calories in broccoli is in protein, a very high protein-to-calorie ratio. You’d need almost two dozen oranges to make up the calories. The protein in the oranges would bring you to well over 75 grams. So, on twenty-two oranges and four pounds of broccoli a day, you could live for a very, very long time, with nice muscles.

About five hundred years, would be my guess. Substitute two glasses of red wine for three of the oranges, and you’d be looking at 800 high-quality years.

Too much broccoli for you? Then try about a pound of hamburger, a pound of broccoli, 18 oranges, and two glasses of red wine.

I’m sure that everyone realizes that this is just a tongue-in-cheek thought experiment in nutrition and not a diet recommendation.