I have told this story before...

...but here I go again. In 1931 or so my father was a member of a high school band that was one of a number of bands that got together for a massed band event at a stadium where the assembled multitude was conducted by none other than John Philip Sousa, the March King. That is both kind of a big deal and a small thing at the same time - he was conducted by Sousa, but he was one of a thousand players on the field that day. We had a similar thing when I was in band, but I can't even remember who conducted us - it damn sure wasn't Sousa, but there you go.

Anyway, later on, his band was in a contest, a battle of the bands as it were, and while they didn't win the big prize, they were recognized for playing Sousa's Liberty Bell March. Their tubular bell player was sick that day and there was no one able to fill in for him so the prize they won was the "No-Bell Prize", but they never spoke of it after that day.

I am still reading Mark Twain's complete works, and currently he is in Endor, which as Bible scholars know, is the site of Saul's big mistake and Samuel's appearance after he was deceased. Twain doesn't hold back when discussing the sites and towns and places in the middle east - they are all pretty much shitholes in his opinion, and Endor is rougher than most. Ugly mean people living in holes in the dirt, all dirt poor, so poor in fact they didn't even have Endor plumbing.

Link

When I was young we used to go watch the Marine Band rehearse - of course that was so long ago that there weren't any chicks in the band. It sounds less manly now, somehow.


Edit - here is one I learned yesterday - Pasteurize in ASL:

I got no beef with that.

Been keepin' busy over here, I don't have a story to tie all these pictures together, but sometimes music will provide a hook to hang them on.

I have a catalpa tree in my backyard. Every year sphinx moth caterpillars hatch from eggs laid on the underside of the leaves and consume every leaf they can get to. Every year I spray malathion on the underside of the leaves my sprayer can reach, thereby saving the lower leaves on the tree. Every year the Springidae eat all the upper leaves down to the nub. Then, with luck, if the tree survives, it regrows its leaves and the stinkin' caterpillars do not return.

You can see that the leaves closest to the ground are larger than the new ones sprouting from the upper limbs. The thing is, every year I fight to keep that tree alive because I like it and because I am at war with those caterpillars. But since I really like working catalpa wood so much perhaps I should just let nature run its course and end up with a ton of nice, aromatic wood to work with.

That is a bowl I turned last week using some catalpa wood I got a couple of years ago - it really is nice to work with, even if the aroma is a bit, shall we say, distinct. Not in a bad way, just that you know when you have been working with it.

We have been getting some weather - shocking, right? 

That's our sunset on the 25th. 

A storm blew in the other evening and looked like this:

And like this:

Pretty dramatic stuff, with lightning, thunder, flash floods, the works.

As for being productive, last week my productivity was thwarted:

I used black locust wood for that piece - a wood favored by boat builders far and wide.

Click to embiggen any or all of the photos.

It takes a good conductor to capture what Copeland was going for.

I must say I listened to a lot of bad versions of that dance before remembering that Lenny was the man. It requires a quick tempo and emphatic brass - ferners don't get it.