Opossums and Operas

Bagpipes, Insomnia and Rare Wines

Another night of insomnia and only a few hours of sleep. So I listened to Porgy and Bess (there is a great 1993 movie rendition on YouTube that is complete - usually opera companies such as Seattle’s cut the opening bar scene with the magnificent piano solo) In other Opera news my friend Craig Verm informed me that yes, he is performing the title role of Don Giovanni later this week in San Antonio, in an abbreviated Covid-appropriate 90 minute one act version. Its sort of a Mozart in the Jungle scenario as the San Antonio symphony went on strike in late September. Other unions are involved in the Opera and I suspect many who would be playing in. the opera will instead be able to enjoy it from the audience perspective. The orchestral music will be provided by a harpsichordist and pianist. Craig and the other singers are looking forward to stretching their vocal cords in a few nights!

This reductionist approach reminds me of this lovely video:

I was tired this morning from all the milling machine moving prep and workshop cleaning. It took me a while to check the live traps (the Eastern Grey Squirrels have been eating our apples and just started in on the Chestnuts. (I relocate these to a remote corner of our property with a hawk-patrolled pasture in between their new location and the permaculture). Instead of squirrels I caught this cutie - and had to literally shake it out of the trap. This young marsupial just sat there grimacing at me and finally left when I went in the house. I really wanted to groom its fur. Tomorrow, as I suspect it will be back eating the peanut butter bait. I’ll head out with gloves and a hair brush.

And then dealing with our temperamental Radiant Floor boiler. Last week the technician replaced the filter and the nozzle and made some adjustments and cleaned the inside of the boiler. But the problem of intermittent operation remained. I have been trying to figure out what else it could be and found out the potential culprit just this morning. The old Honeywell controller has gone bad. The shut off reset switch wouldn’t restart the system after hours of being shut down. I ordered a new one but found out it would be a week. None were available locally and so I called the heating company to see if they had one I could simply buy and install. The technician was off all week taking care of family - but then today he actually was back at work and came out and replaced it. He’s one of the few remaining long term oil heater technicians and he was very informative and instructive so that I can perform this maintenance myself in the future. Our system is actually very efficient using about 1/3rd the amount of oil as a forced air system. Eventually I want to get one of the newer biodiesel systems once they start making deliveries of that fuel. Hopefully this controller was the problem. If not, I’ll replace the Aquastat, which I have replaced previously.

Then some more prep out in the workshop for Thursday’s machinery moving. I trimmed off the end of my bench that blocked part of the doorway. I don’t have to move the bandsaw - instead I just had to remove the table and cover the blade with some cardboard so that someone wouldn’t injure themself against the blade. More putting stuff away and clearing bench space. I’ll do the last bit of prep tomorrow including clearing the floor all the way to the door and making some blocks to hold up the tailgate of the trailer so that the forklift can drop the machine right onto it. Finally some moving in between the workshop and house. The weather is looking okay and we are just waiting on the forklift operator.

Finally a bit of fun in the afternoon with my friend Michael Korchonoff drilling fingerholes in a Pastoral Pipe chanter based on an old Kenna chanter from a set of bagpipes that my friend Brian Johnson owns. This one has been passed down since new. Brian rescued it out of the trash bin back in 1965 when his grand-aunt was disposing of her brother’s possession. Brian’s grandfather played this into the 1950s.

Brian’s aunt told Brian that these were made by Kennedy. However it was the 1960s and it would have been easy to replace Kenna with Kennedy and John, Teddy and Bobby were on everyones’ minds, especially if you were Irish Catholic. This set turned out to be my Holy Grail as far as an easy to copy and forgiving to reed early Irish bagpipe -like object was concerned. We discovered that almost any reed made this chanter play well and amazingly in pitch at A=440. For years I tried to copy some very pristine looking pipes from the 1780s (same age as this set) and these were impossible for me to reed. I realized there is an inverse relation between the playability and reed-ability of the instrument and how pristine it looks. The difficult ones spent most of their evening in a case or sitting on display on a shelf looking very pretty. The ones that worked perfectly were simply played to death over the centuries and show their wear and tear from hard use. Making bagpipe-like objects as “giftiques” was actually a thing in the 18th and 19th century. In my new wind instrument making blog I will devote a post on how such things can easily lead a researching instrument maker astray.

The bottom of this chanter has the remnants of a tenon with a bit of bone from a lamb roast as a ferrule. We began to suspect that this was a former Pastoral pipe that had simply lost its foot joint, or it had been discarded. These will play with a Scottish scale (flat 7th at the bottom) with the foot joint. These were probably removed purposefully and played in Uilleann-pipe style as a parlor joke! The alternate name for these is “Hybrid Union Pipes” - “hybrid” suggesting this duality aspect. Carlos Nunez looked at this set and said that this definitely was a Pastoral pipe similar to others he had seen. One of these days I want to make him a copy, as well as Brian. I’ve made 2 copies of this set that played well.

After the holes were drilled, I gave Michael some show and tell. And then we had a little bit of wine tasting, with some “fantastic, hard to source rare wines” from Oregon.

Who knew that one can get some rather tasty Canned (as in Beer Cans) Pinot Noir from the Willamette Valley at Trader Joe’s of all places! And there is a cranberry dessert wine blend that will taste lovely on a hot day if we get any more. I hardly drink any alcohol and it didn’t take much more than a third of a can of Pinot to give me a buzz. I am saving the rest as a sedative for later so I can perhaps get a few more hours of sleep tonight. I am waiting on the last 5 flutes until I’ve had a good night’s rest.

Fall leaves in the background: maples and our Katsura tree with amazing multicolored leaves. Katsura is also called Japanese Ironwood. In the foreground is one of the five Diamond Disintegration Drills that I will be using to bore out solid glass rods to generate a pilot bore (This is the 17mm. I have 15, 13, 11 and 9 as well).

I am enjoying Porgy as I finish this. I got Plenty of Nuttin’ and Nuttin’s plenty for me!