Ode to my trumpet teacher

Nedo Pandolfi 9/21/09

I was fortunate to spend more than my fair share of time with Mr. Pandolfi in the piano room of his shaded house on Gene Allen road. There were times when I would look forward to our visits and, if I hadn’t practiced much that week, times when I didn’t. I remember Pauline relaying messages from the kitchen and the smile in his eyes belied his authoritative and serious-sounding retorts. I remember leaning on the pool table in the basement, putting a cold mouthpiece to my lips and pushing the first tentative notes of warm-up exercises through stiff valves and a frigid horn and hearing him yell over Dan Boucher absolutely kicking ass on the 3^rd movement of the Hummel Trumpet Concerto upstairs at what could only be called a discouraging tempo,”Jesse, that’s B flat!, B flat my boy!”. I remember playing, refining, and re-playing and re-refining countless scales, slurs and passages from the Arban method which to this day the three middle fingers of my right hand recall autonomously whenever they are put to a flat surface.

More importantly, however, I remember the quality of attention he committed to our time together. I think I remember this particularly because I’ve not encountered it in another since. This attention went beyond simply listening to the timbre, time, pitch and duration of the notes being played, and seemed to encompass his whole faculty and experience in a dedicated instant as if there was nothing outside that room, that space, that moment. He could see and hear things others couldn’t, things beyond words, things that we call music for want of vocabulary, and his genius was in communicating it to others, so they could see too, if only for a little while.

Despite my best attempts to foil him with extraordinary, adolescent ego, he managed to teach me to discover and cultivate the same attention; to attend totally to what is – with all of mind, heart, everything. And for this there are no words to thank him. It is beyond words. Or rather, before words become relevant.

Correspondence

Hey bro,
I know you managed your way back to Prov to get the van but did you find a place of refuge sunday night? Also, could you do me a big favor if you have the time and drop by to give our lawn a trim. It'd be much appreciated. You know how to reach me comrade.

Good day

===

Hi,

I slept for some time on the deck of the fishing memorial in Galilee and some time on the lawn of Eric's grandmother's house after trekking there and failing to find the key to gain access and lacking the energy or presence of mind to find a more suitable place. I did see several shooting stars though and overall it was quite comfortable on the back, though I was shivering off the cold for the majority of the night and didn't get much chance to actually sleep. I also had two memorable dreams; In the first a group of people from a nearby house all came out on the lawn with blankets and we had a jolly good and warm time together gazing at the sky. In the second, two men, armed with black, short-barreled* revolver-fed pistols, kicked me awake and claimed to be defending their neighbors' territory as part of some community-action-watch-coalition program and as I remember there was a moment of actual danger and so fear between my waking and their realization of my inability to offer them threat for lack of arms and confusion as to what was actually going on.

I took the 6am bus in the morning to downtown.

I learned that the comfort that comes with dryness and warmth at night should never be underestimated, though it may be relatively unnecessary from an absolute survival perspective. As a result, I plan to buy some type of very light, inconspicuous and compactible tent w/ matching blanket to ensure absolute freedom with respect to where I choose to sleep in the future. In the affore-mentioned scenario, if I had these items, I could have made my way to the nearest beach and enjoyed a free sleep with wave sounds that the majority, being sub-consciously shackled to beds they feel must always be returned to, very rarely will experience. Any reasonable excuse for the importance of the latter could be considered a design parameter for the former in this experiment.

The discomfort of the evening, in hindsight, was worth the unique perspective gained. Which leads me to consider whether one is capable of enduring any hardship, however perilous - as the major components to be endured, it seems to me, are the expectation and memory of it anyway, and if one sees positivity in useful knowledge gained in memory then does not expectation eagerly look forward for want of such knowledge? Perhaps this is the sort of perspective a Navy Seal must acquire in order to not 'ring the bell' and do the things I've seen them do on countless discovery channel navy seal behind-the-scenes-training programs.

The idea to mow your lawn has set sail in my ocean of consideration, however the tidal wave of the moment is the arrival of my brother - which should happen in 3 hours. I think we should consider all getting together for a campfire and maybe even a boat trip across the bay to Prudence Island in the quahog skiff to test out the above comfort theory of free sleep.

- A handclasp for the miles until then,

*I believe these are also called stub-nosed pistols and maybe even Winchester .38 specials if Tom Clancy novels and Fisherman's Friend catalogs are any guide. In any event, certainly superior in wounding power to my DFW** novel, ipod headphones (which I guess I could have strangled one with if I could endure what would most likely be 6 bullet wounds from the other) and corduroy jacket.

**David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest

9-6

Stitch Chair

I've been on a quest these last few months to discover a way of living differently - to essentially do more with less; which this past month has been more, dare-fully worded, philosophical than material. And to those who are inquiring about the sparse nature of what could be thought of as progress, I would like to say, in a non-cheeky, non-after-skool-special and rather serious (and hopefully self-evident) manner, that success and discovery is built on a foundation of failures. And so to fail is a great thing, it is a great way to gather information! And I shall take advantage of that glorious Vanity I've been blessed with to continue with a revised perspective on the nature of what it means to live differently.

So the house isn't built (as I am rethinking strategy after first attempt to cover in shrink wrap which literally ended in flames) and I have an idea to 'take this show on the road' in a PT Barnum-esque type of way. The winter is a-coming, the garden is woefully inadequate (the unusual weather has upstate NY declared a disaster area, there should be tomatoes by now I hear and I have barely any) - And so I am re-defining the PR van as a mobile dwelling. Perhaps you could think of this as an uber-revolutionary, efficient and intelligent way to carry on or maybe you think it unusual that I plan to live out of a van*. I will leave you with either thought as I roam the American landscape - learning for myself what the 'average american' really is these days - and perhaps I get one of these cheap netbook computer machines so I can keep everyone well-informed with what I learn. As for date of departure: uncertain.

In the meantime, I've also been investigating the nature of comfort - at work, at home, while reading or writing - and it has lead to the development of about a dozen chair prototypes and models (this is what I do when I'm stuck on PR design problems).

While I will spare the details of the generalized working principles I've come up with regarding chair design - here is my latest iteration. It is by far the most comfortable chair I've come up with so far (though admittedly it needs some type of a platform, be it legs or rocker) and I rather like the look (which came about solely through necessity as it is one continuous sheet of plywood and I could think of no other way w/ the materials I had available to get it into shape.) I'm interested in getting a general ich nicht or ach ya from my usually-astute-readership-community.

Do keep in mind this is a mock-up and not final version - there are some cracks where I over-stressed the material and it doesn't line up as perfectly as I'd like. Other than that it's amazingly stiff even though it's only 1/4" plywood...

PS - this is why I needed a compass

*And yes, in my travels there will surely be times when I am parked near a river.

?

When we say "It's raining"

What is the 'it'?

New Compass Design

I needed a compass and thought this was a clever way to get one. It's adjustable from 10-15cm

Vegetal Progress / Best Spider / More Sand

Click on the photos for enlarged, high quality version.

PS - I'm a 'Google' Page Rank 2! Kepp watching the blog to increase my algorithmic popularity!

On the Origin of the Non-Rhoticity and Nasal 'Broad A' of the Boston Accent

To be clear, 'non-rhotic' is a pronounciation where the phonetic pronounciation of 'r' does not appear in the 'coda' position. This is essentially jargon for 'card' being pronounced 'cahd' (dropped r is non-rhotic I guess) which when spoken with the 'Broad A' sounds like 'caad' where the a is elongated with a slightly 'nasal' intonation and pronounced hard as if it were in words like 'at' - 'Soft A', the opposite in this sense, sounding like 'o' in hot.

I would like to introduce a theory as to its origination (or at least its reinforcement).

In the city of Boston some time around 1940, a police officer stopped traffic on a main thru street to let a family of ducks cross the road. This was popular in the press and inspired the 1941 publication of Robert McCloskey's 'Make Way For Ducklings'. It is a story about a family of ducks and their search for a home (including the afforementioned march across main street). The names of the ducks were Mrs. Mallard, Jack, Kack, Lack, Mack, Nack, Ouack, Pack and Quack. This book was enormously popular and has since sold over 2 million copies and won a Caldecott Medal*.

Now put yourself in the position of a child in the 1940s where you've heard many ducks and say the names above out loud. Seriously, regardless of where you are and how embarrassed you might be, actually say these words right now -

Jack

Kack

Lack

Mack

Nack

Ouack

Pack

Quack

Do you notice an inescapable tendency to imitate a duck's quack? The 'Quack' sound synonymous with duck imitation is exactly the 'Broad A' above and as soon as you ignore a few 'r's you're in non-rhotic territory. Is it possible that this book was so widely popular and universally repeated (before bed, at school, during leisure hours) that a playful pronounciation of the characters' names made its way into general usage?

The popularity of the book is evident:

This is a christmas ornament at the white house celebrating the book. Listen to any of JFK's** speeches and you can hear the above-mentioned accent.

A commemmorative statue which I think is in Boston Common.

This popular adoption mechanism was highlighted in my favorite (and soon to be yours) 'Spectacular Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds' by Dr., Charles Mackay (written in the late 19th century). In the chapter 'Popular Follies of Great Cities', he traces the chronology of the mass adoption of popular phrases like 'Quoz', 'What a shocking bad hat!', 'Has your mother sold her mangle' and others. Malcolm Gladwell's 'Tipping Point' is also a fascinating account of similar mass-adoption anecdotes.

What do you think? Certainly there is a causality/chicken-and-the-egg issue with this theory that could only be resolved by a solid pre-1941 recording of this accent or at least a strong phonemological*** description of it. So I leave it to you dear readers, to go out on your tele-puter machines to find this evidence. Until then, I say Boston people talk like the ducks in the Charles River; and it's kind of endearing.

*This medal seemed to adorn all the best-selling books when I was a kid. The Chris Van Allsberg books, etc. that the librarians used to take time to read during library hour.

**Incidentally, regarding JFK's widely popular 'ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country' - I stumbled across in Henry David Thoreau's Walden which was published almost a century prior.

***That is PHONEME - ological, not phenomological.

Mycological Mystery

What are these? Can I eat them? Will they change my whole perspective on shit?

"This is that older world, that we're cutting the metabolical tradition cord from. And I now know, and as we go on more and more, as you stay with me, as we get to the right efficiencies which can be employed, we have the designing capability, I can say, by and large, I now know absolutely, incontrovertibly, the technique of how to take care of everybody at a higher standard of living than anybody has ever known. We'll get into much more of that. I know how, and we've been through this project here with Meddy Gable and the last seminar in Pennsylvania this year on energy, we now know exactly, it's all spelled out, the engineering is there, the resources are there, the know-how is there, completely spelled out incontrovertibly that by l985 we can have all of humanity enjoying the same energy advantage enjoyed by the United States, absolutely exclusively in 1972 the whole of humanity enjoying that advantage, while completely phasing out all fossil fuels and all atomic energy. We now know how to do it. And I now know then it is highly feasible to take care of all humanity and all of its generations to come at a higher standard of living than anywhere ever known. So I know that politics are invalid, I know that war is invalid, I know that weapons are invalid, and I know the lying is invalid. It doesn't work there is nothing out there. I can understand how it got in all of those things, but they are now through. But the question is how quickly can we get all of humanity to know this is so." - Buckminster Fuller

Sculptures and Dog

"What do you get when you cross an insomniac, an unwilling agnostic, and a dyslexic?

A guy who stays up all night mentally torturing himself over the question of whether or not there's a dog."

-DFW*

I've been working on models for a better frame for the structure and am weather pending on fitting the first cover. I've also been working exercising my sense of aesthetic and proportion by building scale models and even sand sculptures

Sand is a convenient way to render form

*David Foster Wallace

Falconer

I came upon a bird who was curious enough to jump on a stick I put in front of him. And in so doing I join the ranks of falconers - that guild of royalty who have captured and trained raptors to extend their hunting faculties. Not quite an eagle, falcon or hawk, this little raptor is quite adept at finding worms and seeds. And so perhaps not enough to sustain the two of us -

Chapter 2 - The Empire Strikes Back

The Marigold - Our national flag and pest control device.

In this allegory I just so happen to be the Empire and the cows an insufferable rebel force. The war between them and PR is at a standstill - does that mean we are at peace? no, I don't think so. More-so that it is in both our interests to maintain the equilibrium. However, if it came to either party's attention that their interests could be reasonably improved by another conflict, there would be no desire for peace (beyond the cost of war) to prevent it - Both sides are content enough with their realm not to start any trouble in the least it seems.

We are now both enmeshed in the domestic struggle to set up a sovereign equilibrium within our territories. I've opted for despotic rule - My loyal and severely unaware subjects only requiring water, sunlight and annual compost in exchange for a tireless effort to convert those ingredients into compounds I might derive energy from, thus enforcing my rule*. They seem to be a self-ruling band of gypsies and also quite dirty, as they pay no attention to where they shit or whether or not they step in it.

Unfortunately the barbaric bovine empire surrounds our borders, so we must appear strong so as not to encourage them to test the fences.

The decisive weapon was one of defense believe it or not - a 4-tiered barbed wire fence was successful.

Part of this strength will be in our foreign policy - We hope to trade promissory notes (denominated in our own currency of course) for their surplus manure - a product that we will need. Time is on our side in this trade, as the cows will be butchered (a prospect which they are delightfully unaware of) before the notes can be redeemed (of course there'll be an estate clause so ownership cannot be passed on to surviving offspring).

Our Kingdom

After Some Planting

And here's a bridge that I thought was nice -

Anyway - Have made some design progress while I was away so it will be a good week for content- Tomorrow will be an excruciating look at changing the throttle cable in a 1997 GMC Safari PR Van with a spare clutch cable the guy at the Brooklyn Vespa shop found 'in the back somewhere'.

Also - While I know there are no expectations with respect to the consistency of these posts - I have to apologize for the unannounced hiatus. Best to all -

*Some of you may think I've gone a bit crazy after reading this metaphor and say something like, "Man, he's been out in the woods too long, I mean he's talking about vegetal rule", and you'd be right, but I just got back from a week in New York City, so what then?

Raised Beds

Where's my christmas truce?

When I've heard about World War I, more often than not I've heard about the trench warfare technique (A very efficient soldier massacring type of warfare where there were hundreds of miles of trenches with an average of 1 soldier every 4 inches. 300,000 died in the battle of Verdun with no change in either party's position). This has become such an ubiquitous part of not only institutional but pop culture education that its dynamics need not  explanation but - Two opposing sides would face off and, due to the machine gun technology prevailing at the time, any attempt to advance would expose the soft essential parts of the soldiers to the comparatively hard and sharp hail of supersonic bits of metal lobbed from the opposing side. This resulted in a lot of holes in people on the battlefield. I was also told that after some successive waves of the afforementioned fighting, that medics were allowed to go out under a flag of peace to patch the holes. One of these types of events was the Christmas Truce.

Well, I went to salvage what I could from the previous garden and a peculiar thing happened. Although cows tend to be rather docile or at least submissive creatures, as I tapped the proverbial morphine drip for a wounded kale plant (trampled by the foul bovine), the leader of the cows confronted me. I wish I had my camera. The cow came up to me as if it had reached some type of Ayn Rand type individual enlightenment* and was staring me down (and not with the usual disinterested cow type of look). His 20-30 cronies stood behind with a similar stare. This was her garden now and I was meant to know. I picked up the shovel and made it look as if I was going to hit her in the face and she didn't blink. My now obvious bluff only strengthened her resolve. I was forced to flee. 

I will try again. 

After that, I made two raised beds using some very old half-rotted timbers and charcoal soil - 

I'm considering a project reliance field day some Saturday in July - will keep you posted. 

*As if she had become awakened to the fact that she has been led around by my kind her entire life and now realizes the totality of her potential existence - me being the first obstacle in her excersizing it. 

Cuttlefish + Silver =

Did you know that the dried out carcass of a cuttlefish can be used to cast molten silver?!*

After the murder of my garden and some prolonged bouts of rain I found myself with a friend and we decided to make a key-ring for the new chariot of PR - a GMC Safari Van which I finally got on the road after a 7-hour adventure with the Rhode Island Department of Motor Vehicles. (pics to follow - as far as accounting goes, I decided not to count its $700 cost toward the PR dwelling, but I am thinking that it will most likely turn out to be PR $1000 hermit crab inspired mobile house). We started with a ring that she had made and given me - 

Fitting for PR

And cut a cuttlefish in half, impressed a seashell in it and placed the key in the mold -

And cut a bowl and a hole out of the top half to pour the silver in -

And then melted it with fire -

Close-up-

I think this is called throwing good after bad - we melted these silver objects down to make a key handle. 

And after some cutting and polishing - the most unnecessary key-ring in history -

Back to work this week - 

*The afforementioned knowledge was relayed and, with much patience, taught to me by master jeweler and metal-smith Tamra Mottl of Mottl Industry (with umlaut over the O).  Some examples of her work can be found here - Very talented custom jeweler. I know some of you are looking to get married soon, she makes beautiful and unique wedding rings - http://www.pawtucketopenstudios.com/dir_spring2007/artistpages/mottl.html

Murder!

- O, pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth, That I am meek and gentle with these butchers! Thou art the ruins of the noblest garden that ever was in the tide of times. Woe to the hoof that shed this costly blood! -

There was an attack on the garden last night. The tactics: surgical. The scale: comprehensive. The corn and other plants large enough to be appealing were nibbled to the earth, those too small to be seen by the dumb eye of that foul creature were trampled with an accuracy that made it seem intentional. 

The Garden

The first planting occurred this morning. The seedlings, who have been through so much, were removed from their containers, dipped in a secret concoction and thrust into the ground. As we were carrying water to the garden from a not-so-nearby creek, it started to rain. 

Cayenne Pepper can keep away predators - like cows

Snow Pea - planted next to a stalk of corn

I love this thing - he dropped from a nearby tree and started munching awway on my squash plants as soon as I put them in, it was incredible, I wasn't even upset - a FOPR pointed out that the design on his back looks like a series of penguins. A fortune could probably be made from entomological bio-mime prints in clothing designs - actually - stand-by for Project Reliance t-shirts! who wants one?

Me*

Also Me

Love this guy

Does not bruise blue

*Thank you