Published on
November 28, 2007 in
.
A few weeks ago I played the tambourine part in Scheherezade with the SLSO. I used the occasion to trot out a pimped out tambourine “bunk” that SLSO regular John Kasica gave me (unassembled) years ago. It had the wood frame and I was supposed to cover it with foam rubber and sort of upholster it with black cloth but I never got around to it. The cool thing about it is that it had a nice wooden ball on the end that facilitates playing rhythms that might otherwise be played on the knee.
One day I decided that since I would never upholster it, I would cover parts of it with bits of an old drum mute for padding and paint it black. You can rest the tambo on the bunk and play soft things with your fingers or pick it up and use the aforementioned ball.
Or you can just use it as a stand to hold that tambo. Either way, it’s nice to have. I also added a bracket to it so I could put in on a cymbal stand. If I could put everything on a cymbal stand, I would.
Another angle. That blue thing is a gel filled wrist supporter from a mouse pad that I glued on the bunk. It worked great for the soft rhythmic parts of Scheherezade.
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Published on
November 27, 2007 in
.
Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays. It’s short and sweet, just one day. There is no massive commercial buildup. There is no outdoor decoration required, though it’s sandwiched between two decor intensive holidays, Halloween and Christmas. There are no presents to give, though it abuts Black Friday, the latest corporate ‘holiday’ that is sort of glommed onto Thanksgiving.
This year, as my wife and I prepared a relatively modest T-day feast, I realized what Thanksgiving really entailed: eight hours of chores with a twenty minute meal in the middle. Does this realization dampen my fondness for Thanksgiving? It does not. I find that I enjoy the labor intensive nature of the thing. The food prep, trying to remember how to cook the turkey. (When you do something only once a year, you forget. That’s why every newspaper, magazine and TV show reminds you every year how to cook for this holiday). Trying to remember how to cook everything else. Mashed potatoes, for example. I consulted the New York Times, who had a very good article about just this thing.
Perhaps it’s owing to the labor intensive/brief feasting nature of the thing, but I find that Thanksgiving is oddly ephemeral. Christmas lingers a bit because the stuff lingers. It sort of fades away into New Years and January when we get down to the serious business of winter. I suppose Thanksgiving suffers a similar fate, fading into leftovers and shopping. By the way, we have a family tradition of not setting foot into a mall or store on the day after Thanksgiving. It’s our way of trying to keep the glow of that day going just a little longer before it’s on to December and what comes next…
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Published on
November 27, 2007 in
.
I realize that this is a very short page. I suppose I could have put this info on the home page. But I didn’t.
I put it here.
If you want to contact me, email me at ted(at sign)rubright.com. Sorry about not having a live link, but the spam bots are killing me.
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