When I was in high school, I took a ceramics class. One of the things I made was a dreidle, as in “I have a little dreidle, I made it out of clay.” It started out spinning on a potter’s wheel, and I always thought that was why it was a particularly good dreidle. The …
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Klez pix
I took some pictures at last week’s klezmer band meeting — Barry (our director, or teacher as the case may be) and Joyce, the new pianist. I don’t remember what they were laughing about. Joyce again, Tobie (the pianist with more seniority) and Barbara, with her C-melody saxophone (and Jim’s clarinet in the foreground). Barbara, …
Sweet Charity
We (in this case, Arlene, Charley, Anne, Matt, and Dean) went to see Sweet Charity at the Boston Conservatory’s temporary theatre in the former Fort Point Studios in Southie (South Boston if you’re not from around here). Patsy was not in the party because she’s the production stage manager and the comp tickets come from …
Basket Mold
Here’s my latest woodturning project. First, here’s what I was trying to do. This picture was taken at the end of August at a native American basket sale and demo at the Sabbathday Lake Shaker Village: These are forms for making baskets around. They’re smaller at the top than in the middle — so how …
Barry By Ear
We have several new songs to learn in klezmer band this session. For one of them, a waltz called “Mazel”, (means ‘luck’, music by Abraham Ellstein, lyrics by Molly Picon, that go something like “Luck shines once on everyone, everyone but not me…”) we only have 2/3 of the music written out. Barry, our director, …
Streaked Mountain
Ha! I bet you thought I forgot how to do this here now blog thing. I haven’t really, but let’s see if it still all hangs together. I took a day off for Columbus Day (it’s not a standard company holiday where I work, but I have enough vacation days left over that it’s OK) …
Small snake
This lunch hour I saw the smallest northern water snake I’ve seen yet at Cutler Pond. It was about the length of a garter snake, and only a little big bigger around than one of those — maybe 5/8 inches diameter, certainly less than half as big around as one of the bigger ones I …
Quick note – Library Show
Arlene was in charge of hanging an art exhibit for the Newton Art Association that’s on display for the month of September at the Newton Public Library. The opening reception was last night. She got to hand out the awards and read the judge’s (except that it’s called the juror in this context) comments about …
Labor Day Weekend – Sunday
Since we were going to be in Maine for all three days of the weekend, we thought it would be a good opportunity to travel a little farther around the state than we usually do. Last year we had a good time going to Pemaquid with Charley on Labor Day Weekend. Arlene looked at listings …
Labor Day weekend – Saturday
I checked out the hazel patch early. Only three of the original ten chestnuts are still alive. Perhaps the worst part of that is that two of the three are “tree”, as opposed to “nut”, type trees — that is, they were bred for growing to impressive trees rather than for producing big crops. I …