Lee Harps

It’s difficult to believe, but it has been over 2 1/2 months since I had made an entry to this site. Happily, I’ve been in excellent health, the marriage is still holding together, the cat has not died, we’ve not had any natural disasters (locally, that is) and all is well. It’s just that, for a person who should be retired, there are just too many opportunities for fun things to do, with there being limited time left over for sharing those “good times” with my readers (EITHER of them….)!

Since this is primarily a photo blog and since my memory seems to fail from time to time, I’ve decided to use my photo collection from the past few months as a basis for the following entry. I think I have well over 50 photos earmarked for this posting, so unless you have a bit of time to spare, you may want to abort for now and come back later.

It’s been almost a non-winter here in PA thus far, but the autumn colors were quite beautiful. Here are some colors I found in the Carlisle, PA area.

I had occasion to take an old computer to a collection point in the Newville area and happened upon these sights.

For much too long I’ve wanted to organize our garden shed. As you can see here, it NEEDED it!

After having spent the better part of a whole day working on it, here is how it looked afterward.

In November, I had signed up to attend an Irish Weekend (I don’t think I have a drop of Irish blood in me….). It was held at the historic Hilltop House in Harper’s Ferry, WV.

Gatherings like this are for the enjoyment of the music, but also to afford would-be musicians like myself an opportunity to take classes in playing the instruments of one’s choice. This was a 3-day event and I chose to take classes with Cliff Moses. Here he is teaching a hammered dulcimer class.

Here you can see the top of my hammered dulcimer, facing Cliff Moses. In addition to hammered dulcimer, Cliff also taught classes in concertina. This is my friend mark playing his concertina.

The Hilltop House is a very old, historic inn and is located on the very top of the hill overlooking the valley below where Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia all come together, separated only by the rivers. This is the view I had to endure as I look out my 3rd floor bathroom window on Sunday morning.

My friend Mark is remarkably fluent on numerous instruments. Here he is playing a fairly obscure bagpipe called Cornish pipes.

This is an example of another type of bagpipe called a Galician bagpipe which comes from the Brittany section of Spain. The player is John Skelton.

There were big fiddle players,

little fiddle players…

(this little girl was 4 years old and walked all around the inn playing “Road to Lisdoonvarna”).

There were concerts,

There were even REDHATS! These ladies were having a redhat outing to Harper’s Ferry, unrelated to the Irish Weekend.

The activities I’m relating to you here are some of the reasons my time in the workshop for the latter quarter of 2006 has been minimal. Here are some more reasons:

Unknown to me, my lovely spouse had arranged with a lady at church to receive some plantings of rudbeckia (Black-eyed Susan) plants to be planted at our house. The call arrived that the ladie’s gardener had filled a bucket with plants and we (I) could come pick them up. As I was driving out the driveway to do so, I could not help but stop and admire the goldfinch at our feeder swinging himself upsidedown to partake of the niger seed.

I had never been to the home of the lady who had the plants, and en route could not help but enjoy more fall colors as I gazed across a pond to see the ducks there.

The next surprise that awaited me was the SIZE of the bucket of plants! It was huge and heavy. Fortunately there was a man there who helped me lift the container into the back of my minivan. Once home, creating new beds for the Black-eyed Susans proved to be quite a workout as well. (So, what can I say beside, “Yes, dear!”?!)

November also found me spending two days with local 6th grade classes giving my “Log to Lute” presentation. Some years ago I felt it essential that, if, as a harp builder, I chose to call myself a “luthier”, it would be essential that I should actually have the construction of a lute in my portfolio! When my father died in 1996, I rescued a dirty log from the front of his workshop which, once split open, turned out to be nice Pennsylvania cherry wood. From this log I built a 6-course (12-string) lute from drawings made from a lute built in 1532. A teacher friend, knowing that I had built a lute, asked me to speak to her 6th graders about the lute, and I’ve been doing it ever since for the past 6-8 years! It is tied in with their Renaissance program.

This year I was given really LUXURY quarters for my presentation: The sunken study area in the school library. Here is a photo of my “props” all set up before the first class of the day.

Here is am playing for the students the single piece I know to play on the lute.

Here is a young lady playing, for the first time, a hurdy-gurdy which I built. It sounds pretty bad and I show it to them for comic relief.

The students also get a huge pleasure from splitting wood using ancient tools called a froe and mallet. Tuning pegs require split wood to give them the required strength for tuning stringed instruments.

Our woodworkers club was invited by the York club to have a booth at the York Woodworker’s Show. I volunteered to help “man the booth” for a few hours on a Saturday in November. This is our booth showing some “artifacts” displayed by members of the club.

Just for fun, I took along some wooden rhythm toys I had made as Christmas Gifts back in the ’80’s, and learned that even adults can find pleasure in playing with them.

This one happens to be a dancing cow. I had also taken along my St. Francis harp for display. This young lady spent quite a bit of time playing it.

Early in 2006, our daughter, who is a museum person (sorry, Jen, that I couldn’t describe what you do more elegantly) took a new position with the B&O Railroad Museum in Ellicott City, MD. Finally, in late November, her mother and I managed to visit the museum for the first time. We made a day of it, and here are a few of the photos I took there.

This is the main building of the museum.

Here is a view of the platform located on the back side of this building.

I’ve always wanted to see the inside of a real caboose, and here is how it really looks in there:

In an adjacent freight building is one of the finest permanent model train layouts I’ve seen.

Apparently set up by a local model train club, here are a couple of sample photos of the layout.

My good wife also had a birthday in November, so I opted to bake her a Birthday Pie rather than a birthday cake. This pumpkin pie turned out to be quite delicious!

In the midst of all this activity, I did manage a tiny bit of shop time, and managed to form a few harp shells. Here is a cherry, lap harp shell still in the vacuum press waiting for the glue to dry.

As you may have guessed, I’m a bit of a musical instrument nut and have always been fascinated by instruments of all kinds, particularly those that are more unusual. One Sunday morning in church we had a guest trumpeter as a soloist. He was quite skilled at trumpet and, in addition to the standard trumpet, played a small piccolo trumpet (very high pitched):

and, even more unusual, a valveless Baroque trumpet:

On the Baroque trumpet, all notes must be formed with the lips, there being no valves! Very difficult, but this gentleman did it so very well! Interestingly, there are a couple of tiny holes similar to recorder holes that are used as necessary to help refine the intonation of certain notes. It was fascinating to see and hear him play.

As November ended and Thanksgiving had passed, it was time to begin thinking about Christmas. I did a rude thing and decided to treat myself to a couple of new Christmas “toys” for the workshop, and began by replacing the vintage old drill press I had purchased used over 30 years ago.

One of the reasons I replaced it was to refine my ability to accurately drill the holes for the new harps I have in progress. I purchased what is called a Rikon “radial” drill press and also purchased for it a laser marker.

Each of the yellow things (above) send out a laser beam. By adjusting them to create crosshairs, one can simply slide one’s workpiece under the laser and know that the drill bit will bore a hole accurately where the beams cross.

It seemed appropriate for a harp maker since a harp neck of a 36-string harp requires the drilling of 108 holes!

Several people in our woodworking club have gotten into making wooden pens. Thanks to their bad influence (thanks, Kari!), I’ve decided to try it myself. Again, I had a vintage Sears wood lathe for which I had difficulty finding accessories, so I decided to trade up my old lathe as well.

This I replaced by a well-reviewed Rikon lathe. Here is the back of the lathe showing how I enlarged and modified the tool holder.

Having gotten that all set up, I was able to, in fact, turn out a couple of pens!

Ah, Christmas! The stockings were hung by the chimney with care….

I had the pleasure of having our son’s help with decorating the tree….

I purchased for my wife a couple of new kitchen knives and found a note on my computer saying the new knives would not fit into our wooden knife block; could I please remedy this?!

A bit of Internet research netted me this design for knife storage. Here is a quick prototype – a simple box filled with pointed, bamboo skewer sticks purchased at a local restaurant supply. The final version of this will be made with a bit more craftsmanship and is partially constructed, but will have to be the subject of a later entry when it is completed.

A real plus for having our son home was that I was able to steal from him some photography technics, use of F-stops and the like, which I have never understood. He took a forry into my now deceased garden and returned with some truly amazing and artful photos. While my efforts are not nearly as expert as his, I’ve been having a good time trying. I’d like to share with you some of the photos I’ve taken.

We have decorative grasses which grow to about 6 feet tall in summer, and turn brown or tan in the fall, still putting on quite a show. Here are some “up close” photos I’ve taken of them:

Do you remember the photos I had taken this summer of the bees harvesting necter from the pink flowers? Here is a photo of those same flower heads after the frost has turned them brown.

One of the joys I have found with using low F-stop setting is the detail one captures! My current camera, a Cannon S3-IS, permits manual F-stop, ISO and shutter speed settings and I am now, for the first time, teaching myself to use these features.

The Christmas season was a bit of a blurr for me this year with numerous playing engagements with the ensemble I play with, so by the time I had participated in a rehearsal and three Christmas Eve day services at church, I was pretty much a basket case as midnight arrived. Christmas day was delightful with family and good eating and it was a chance to appreciate all the wonderful blessings we have been given.

By the time New Year’s Eve arrived, I was, once again, rested up and had a most enjoyable evening in Harrisburg. Here is downtown Harrisburg around 8 PM New Year’s eve, all ready for the events to follow.

The huge Moravian star continued to hang over the chancel in our church, having been placed there on Christmas eve.

A lovely concert by the New Holland Band, Pierce Getz, organ and a female vocal soloist was held from 10 PM till midnight.

And the evening culminated with delightful fireworks, all set off right on the Harrisburg square in front of our church. The steeple to the left is Market Square Church.

Happy New Year one and all!!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 2nd, 2007 at 10:50 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.