This has been a very rough week starting with Monday’s Moderna Booster. I think they gave me the full dose instead of the half dose of Moderna. I think they mixed in some Pfizer, J&J, the Microchips that will turn us into mass murderers, the works. Except Ivermectin. I’ll know for sure Wednesday night when I drink a gallon of Koolaid sold under the medical brand same GoLYTELY so they can charge more. I expect I will see the worms come out then.
The next day I will be high on Verapimil and am looking forward to it. I could use some right now!!!
It wasn’t the booster that made the week rough however.
But first, read the latest on Omicron. YLE along with Heather Cox Richardson’s posts are the best thing on Substack:
12AM Tuesday after blogging I headed to bed but our dog Stella was strewn all over where I sleep. Our sweet puppy is getting old and so I like to let her sleep. Because of the Ferry delays due to all the ferry workers who quit over Vaccine Mandates, Nancy had to be up at 5:30 AM to make a 10:30 appointment. Its like living in the San Juan Islands without the San Juan Islands. For them they have to start the previous day. I tried to tuck myself around Stella but she pushed me off the bed entirely at 2AM. Its a good thing I didn’t bang my head. So I got up and I was done sleeping for the night. I am in a someway more than hypo Hypomanic state. A hot bath would help my aches and make me sleepy perhaps, I figured. No. By around 9A I was sore, tired, headachy, blurry eyed and felt like crapola. My eyes were stinging. I figured people were up so I could start socializing with my eyes closed.
After that first call, I realized that one of my contacts had to be expunged entirely from my life. The inflammation was tremendous and by noon I was shaking and somewhat dizzy and my blurry eyes were even blurrier caused by the rise in blood pressure and even Nancy noticed and worried. Fortunately I self medicated and removed this contact entirely. He can no longer reach me except Snail Mail which will be summarily tossed in the woodstove.
Thus the angry letter I sent him, followed by blocking his email, phone, texting, social media was the first step. Then I sent off some junk that he sent me, and cancelled something else in progress. It was a lowball at my expense anyway.
The next step was messy and I am still dealing with the aftermath and will most likely have to deal with some of the worst of it on my birthday. When someone is kicked out of a bubble by choosing not to be vaccinated its pretty straight forward. But then when he throws in some of the crap that Marjorie Taylor Green barfs out to the world it becomes offensive. I can take a break from him. But then when he conspires to commit a crime or violation then I have no recourse but to cut him off completely and report him to the authorities, especially those who could lose their careers and reputations if they allow him to get away with it.
Apparently fraudulent vaccine cards and test results are becoming way too easy to get. The ones getting and conspiring to use these are even bragging about it and making their travel agents nervous. The travel agents are supposed to report what appears to be a crime, such as human trafficking, money laundering, drug smuggling and this seldom is necessary. But now they are seeing people conspiring to commit the crime of passing through an international boundary with a forged document. A large percentage of the ones wanting to travel seem to be the ones who remain unvaccinated. My contact planned to spend the weekend seeing his kids and their grandparents in Toronto. I hope he had a great weekend but coming back to the US may get interesting for him with a forged vaccine card. They are checking everyone and comparing names with the state vaccination records databases.
Some in my bubble thing I could have been more gracious and should have waited until after the Thanksgiving weekend that I was about to ruin for them (so much for any thought of mine) and instead some of my bubble feel they are caught in the crossfire and that I am to blame. A colleague is now blamed me for another wasted plane ticket. I reminded him that if he is vaccinated that things will work okay for him. None of these people seem to grasp fully that my reporting was required if I am to follow the ethics rules of the involved institutions - and that lives could be put at risk.
There will undoubtedly be more and this is what I have been dealing with all week instead of making progress on stuff, or at least cleaning my office so I can function!
I did start Saturday with a factual Keep Clam status update to a few of my bubble mates asking them to wait a week before responding. I am still achey and sore, finding it hard to sleep at night. After today’s great Dronehenge get together on Zoom the bubble popping disaster seemed to have been purged from my brain. Unfortunately one of them just had to respond and I almost booted myself out of this bubble. He talked me off the edge despite my phone’s sudden insanity. It wanted out of this too!
His brain is certainly addled by being in the thick of Manhattan and his first few years of fatherhood. As we talked outside my phone starting turning this into a conference call, starting first with someone we call Trout, followed by my accordion tech, followed by my neighbor. Bacon was next in line. I rebooted my phone and wished someone could reboot my brain. That seemed to help a bit.
Fortunately, our conversation went from me almost exploding to something productive. My bubblemate’s defusing skills were badly needed during the London Blitz. I am going to recommend the book Blackout to him when we have a fun and long chat later. Its a time travel novel and has a sequel All Clear. Both by Connie Willis.
WHY?????!!?
All of this got me to thinking: am I making these high end instrument for the super-rich, the kind who I just booted out of my life, who think they can bend the rules because they see themselves as the Rich and Powerful? I have a few flutes in the hands of the bigly famous including one of my favorite Star Trek captains and one is in the hands of a major producer’s partner. She wouldn’t be in his life if it wasn’t for a few of us helping her move on, and her life went from being in the shitter with an abusive husband to the dazzle of Hollywood, in the role as a script superviser. She got to dance with John Travolta once - a fantasy that I know I will never achieve but I must admit its there. This is my theme song:
So I am currently weighing the physical burnout of making 30 weeks of full time work, making the equivalent of 5 Folk Flutes a month for lovely clients, mostly humble beginners, adding $2000 to our monthly Social Security income and that is enough to sustain us handsomely and requires only a week at the bench, and all the time I spend answering emails. Contrast that with making two glass flutes a year that the super-rich or self-important or the Must-Be-Exactly-Like crowd who could easily afford these at $12,000 each. Except that they would probably lowball me and offer me $800 or $1200 and try to convince me that this was a good deal. It is, for them.
All of my VIP clients are the most gentle, humble, and supportive people in my flute making life. None of them are like the above or simply chose to deactivate that gene expression. Here is a list of some of the famous ones that play my flutes. I am wondering why this list is all males. I’ll look at my queue from the last 20 years. Something not right I am realizing! Or it may be that the women who have my flutes are hiding in the closet as the next batch of World Class Players, and simply are too busy carrying most of the load of this Pandemic. They will be coming out soon. Kevin Crawford, you might want to finish what you are saying before you are shoved out of the way by this upcoming tidal wave! This title wave will be from Hurricane Karly.
Now I forgot why I need to mention this list now. These clients are wonderful, and never hassle me over anything. Grey Larsen is at the very top of this list, along with Matt Molloy (his son Peter Molloy now plays the Bb that Matt played at every Chieftains concert for a decade - I am making a new one for Matt with closer fingerhole spacing), John Skelton, Guy Bertrand, Polymath Jaron Lanier, Mickie Zekley, Nick Williams, Fintan Vallely, Carlos Nunez, Alexandre Cadarso Suarez, Ian Law and many others including one from Mongolia. Speaking of that motor mouth Kevin Crawford is soon to be added to this list with my Low G flute. He’s too busy talking about other things to hassle me over anything and fully understands me and my work.
I haven’t asked his permission to show this video. I’ll beg forgiveness, if I can get a word in edgewise. With Kevin that could be fun and interesting - and worth recording and watching, which would require another round and another round. I’ll have his piper stand in for me as my advocate - he won’t get a word in edgewise. Kevin never repeats his material. Ever.
Women have been mostly excluded or sorted out from the Irish Flute world, especially on the manufacturing side. Not so other flute worlds like Baroque. Gayle Newman with her husband Phil make amazing Medieval woodwinds south of Portland. Cathy Folkers was the main force behind Folkers and Powell. she was also one of the curators of the Dayton Miller Collection where 18 Glass Flutes including Madison’s reside. Reagan wanted to sell the collection to help pay for his tax cuts. She resigned in protest. Nobody would go near it until Reagan and his administration realized or were prevented from selling it off, the same way he wanted to sell off the ANWR and who remembers what else! Closer to home Suzy Norris is the most important woman in my instrument making life. This lovely and endlessly wonderful soul pointed me into the right direction right wen I needed it. She and her husband Fred Carlson are well known for their Left Coast lutherie and great music.
This current exclusion of women to Irish flute making seems to be mostly a North American thing and a simple accident of history. My Canadian apprentice, Professor Karly Schofield from Laurentian University will soon change that after she makes it here for her tutorial sessions. Karly is an amazing traditional player, teacher and principal flutist of the Sudbury Symphony. This gentle soul will be the beginning of a decade or more (assuming I am around that long) of me teaching women how to make flutes, including glass flutes. I plan to level the playing field in this industry in the same way that my small handed flutes have.
Other great women makers include Shelley Park who is finishing up my new guitar this week. Janet Toon who runs Kerr Violin Shop in Portland. Cyndy Burton who buiolds guitars along-side her husband Jeffrey Elliott.
Males are simply too hard to teach as one wastes much time having to unlearn them of all their often incorrect technical know-how. If they already know how to do something, why are the bothering me and wasting my time? There was this one whose name I don’t remember who arrived, showed me his one off Delrin copy of an Olwell flute. He just wanted to watch and talk shop. Within 20 minutes he was telling me that some technique was plain wrong, as if that was a bad thing. He was serious. I booted him out of my workshop in a New York minute. I never heard from or about him again. Brad Angus and I suspected this was the guy who was going around visiting peoples’ woodworking shops up and down the Five corridor and coming back in the middle of the night to steal reamers. He was either too lazy to make them, or simply evil and pathological. Are you missing any reamers Patrick?
Great women players of the flute (not necessarily mine) include my friend Marylin Shotola in Portland who had to suffer my 7 Scenes for Woodwind Quintet back in the 1970s.. Her quintet’s performance of my adolescent torture piece was perfectly stunning and well received. I hid rather that taking a bow. I hated myself at that moment for subjecting five fellow travelers on this planet to this abuse. Harris Orem, the oboist, said that this music sounded right out of Alexandr Nevsky by Eisenstein. The music for that movie was composed by the Russian Rock Band Peter and the Wolf Tones. The bassoonist Mark Eubanks said that the first three or four measures of the 2nd movement quartet which he starts off with precisely stated notes - on the offbeat all by himself - was the hardest thing in his entire career. This is worse than the Perdida joke. Imagine having to learn how to play that staccato note that precisely, a process that took him over two weeks of his limited life span.
I should have waited until my computer could play it. I know what I will be doing in Hell now. Mark, I owe you!!!
Thus is what hell sounds like: https://caseyburnsflutes.com/snd/7scenes4wwq2.mp4
A Few More Great Players: Janet See who lives just south of me on Bainbridge who I seem to never see - she is one of Rod Cameron’s favorite clients, and then Mindy Rosenfeld in Mendocino who was born within 10 days of me. Also one of Rod’s clients and a very dear friend of ours. There indeed are and will be more great Woman makers and players of the flute, if I have anything to do with it! Mindy will be able to play one of my Low G Flutes ai I;ll just give her one for a birthday present.
Again why am I doing this? I don’t think my quest in recreating Claude’s work and using that as a starting point is being done for the money. Like the joke, I am doing it until the money runs out probably. I am especially not doing this for would be prima donnas. I don’t actually plan to make that many of these.
I realize that this is my Moon Shot attempt after 40 years of flute making. I love to solve problems and do something that the great 20th century flute maker William Haynes said could never be done is a good challenge! But I am doing this for more for people who inspire me such as Montserrat Gascon who has devoted so many years of her life collecting every bit of data on these flutes and is about to publish a book based on her amazing 600 page data-intense thesis. She has perhaps been the most supportive person in this last week’s crisis! I am doing this for her mentor, the late David Shorey who we all miss! I am rushing this project for my dearest colleague and mentor and friend and the Mail Order Minister at our wedding on the Mendocino Headlands the Very Reverend and Ministerially-Enough Rod Cameron. He is the Greatest Baroque Flute Maker on the planet but his hold on the surface is tenuous. he is a problem solver too and is still hard at it finishing his great Rippert Flute Project as well as preserving his vast data and workshop in Switzerland where others will be able to access it. I want him to hold one in his hands and play it while we can still arrange this. I am doing this for our mutual close friend and colleague the great flute maker Robert Bigio who grew up just north of me.
I am doing this for Patrick Olwell and his boys who are in control though he thinks he’s still running things. We keep telling him that he is. Pat and I will be working on some of this together and he is helping me with Something for the Holidays that you will not want to miss! We’ll save it for posterity. In this wee remember my late brother Scott Patrick who I always call Patrick and we bring up the Patricks and Caseys in our lives. For years my workshop was in his garage (my brother’s, not Olwell’s). The event will be announced here with the title Casey and Patrick Burns Flutes. There are others who I am doing this for including some of my Bubble-mates.
Ultimately I am doing this as a tribute to Claude Laurent himself - he was really one of the most innovative Left-Coast style instrument makers on the planet and he would fit right in with us left coast makers His application of Glass as a perfect medium for flutes as long as one didn’t drop it and the Key System this required which transformed the industry which he generously open sourced immediately after he protected it are what he is remembered for. Another factor was forgotten: his flutes are AMAZING in how they play and were way ahead of their time!
I am also near the Puget-Willamette Trough and this has become the most important Art Glass regions on the planet. I simply want to be a part of this art form which goes back to before the time of the Pyramids. Humans have been working glass since the discovery of farming or later, but not by much!
I promised the Dronehenge Folks some interesting links below.
I need to go see Doctor Bartolo! The great lyric soprano Madison Leonard just had her baby Franklin and missed sharing Donizetti’s birthday by two days. Trombeti and Vernizzi would make great nicknames and by now she should know if he’ll be a bass, baritone or tenor. At this point in time his technique is perfect. These amazing singers are literally screaming like babies on stage, according to my friend Craig Verm.
Kevin Burdette, a close friend of my friend Craig Verm’s is one of the funniest opera singers ever, such as in the above role. I am trying to write roles that would work for both of them (as well as Madison) as they are perfect on the stage together. I look forward to some opera writing soon which seem to be seasonal for me, starting in December and ending in late Spring. The Eclipse of Love will be like a Donizetti opera - with Space Aliens added.
Gaetano and I celebrate our birthdays on the same day, November 29. The Glass Flutes of Laurent coincide with the Bel Canto Era and Gaetano produced 71 operas. I suspect many of these were performed on glass. Maybe I could get Philip Glass to compose and opera featuring Glass flutes but I prefer the music of John Adams. Apparently Phil walked out of the premier of Nixon in China that PBS/NPR and the Houston Grand Opera premiered. Lately I have been using it as a sleep aid, using the perfect studio audio-recording that resulted. Nancy and I had just moved in together at 8012 12th Ave in Albany and saw the simulcast premier. The syncing would have impressed my friend Brian Walker who is reading this as they were doing this simulcast nationwide. Cronk up the volume especially for the 1st scene. I can sing Mao’s part and love the musical structure when he first appears. The People are the Heroes.
I miss Nixon actually. He got bad advice and was himself the source of his horrible Southern Strategy that is currently destroying democracy in America. Reagan and W and especially Trump were magnitudes worse! Nixon at least had a sense of history. The EPA and the Moon Landing happened under his watch and the War was something we Democrats left behind for him to deal with. Carter did finally and was blamed for all of it the way the Republicans tried to blame Afghanistan since 9/11 on Biden, ignoring how Trump set up Biden to fail with an agreement with the Taliban last year. This time nobody believed the Republicans except the ones drinking the Koolaid laced with Bullshit. Things appear to be calming down a little in that part of the world, now that we have left finally.
This production of Nixon in China was staged by the great Peter Sellers who was my daughter’s Lila’s college graduation commencement speaker at CalArts Graduation in 2012. He’s the guy with the wild hair. His speech was amazing. Lila passes by in this video along with many of her great classmates! Pretty cool having a Balkan Brass Band leading the Procession at our daughter’s graduation actually!!!
¡Los mejores tacos de Birria al norte de Guadalajara están aquí en North Kitsap!
Keep an eye out for Chef Dan Miller’s Barbacoa Food Truck which can be found at the various cideries and breweries in town. I wanted the opinion of my good friend Isaias who is the best roofer in town after I first had Dan’s Burria Tacos. My first serving of this ever was just a few weeks ago and my conclusion was that this food Was. The. Best. As in the best thing I have ever eaten. Everything.
So Isaias and I were to have dinner at the truck Wednesday when Dan was set up at Rainy Daze in Poulsbo. His family just bought a house in the neighborhood and was delayed by a contractor. So I simply picked up dinner for his family and left it with his wife. A few days later he reciprocated and dropped off some of his and his wife Maria’s Carnitas and Salsa. I am having some of his leftovers for breakfast in a few moments.
Oh my gosh!!! I have never had it so good here foodwise! As far as it goes, Dan’s vs. Isaias’s and Maria’s is 10 vs. 10. I asked Isaias to rate Dan vs. the best Burria that Guadalajara (rated at 10) has to offer. He said that compared with everything around here that Barbacoa is the best by magnitudes. Compared with Guadalajara’s best, Dan merited a 9.5. I can live with that! We are talking about a world class food phenomenon here on our door step. I am starting to plan the next Zamposium like the one in 2015 and now I know who we will book for meals. If they ever do another season if Taco Chronicles there will be an episode in Kingston. They once did an episode of Extreme Makeover a mile and a half up the dead end road from me.
I asked Isaias to rate Dan vs. his wife’s cooking. He grinned but wasn’t going to go there. To me its a 10 vs. 10 or better. Sorry Dan but you probably come to agree. I personally rate my own cooking at a 3 or 4 and barely cook anything these days because I am too busy making flutes. Nancy is loving the Tails and Trotters Picnic Roast that we had for lunch Thursday and says it was the best. My secret ingredient was the tub of the Consume Sauce that most of the Gringos up here don’t know about when they order the Burria. Dan saves it for the ones that do, beause all the lids for the tubs are in some shipping container stuck in the Supply Chain offshore. Bring a clean container.
It is culturally insensitive for a pasty Gringo like me to tell someone from Jalisco what local Mexican Food they should be eating, as if they didn’t figure that out for themselves. Isaias has been too busy to notice Dan’s truck the rare days he isn;t catering and Isaias said he had never heard about it. Nancy brought up this cultural head up my ass potential, and Isaias and Maria both laughed when I told them about this possibility. Dan’s artistry saved the day. I hope Nancy and I will be increasingly busy with our lovely new neighbors!
See https://chefdanielmiller.com/barbacoa-food-truck/ Search for Barbacoa Food Truck on Facebook to see if he is set up anywhere. His catering services are in high demand and he gets solidly booked for months sometimes, especially during wedding season. His tacos keep well in the fridge and the freezer so you can stock up
At least I can eat Junk Food for the next few days!!!
My culinary fun and fiber pauses on my birthday Monday and will be all liquids by Wednesday followed by drinking something I call GACK!!!! and effluvia that evening. Thursday comes the Great Reaming. Then I can get back to my Regularly Scheduled Charcuterie. I am happy to get this over with two years late before that new variant locks everything down. Hopefully my colon will be fine, and at least I am not wasting my remaining summertime with this activity.
Could any Dronehengers who see this remind me what else I was going to post here? I need to take better notes next time! I remembered one item for Benito. This is Cano showing off one of my earlier requintas, along with a few bits with our friend Javiar Blanco.
Have a Great Day Everyone! Time to call Mr. Leeward. I have no plans for the rest of the day except eating.