piano

Saturday Art Work

January 25, 2020 at 11:03 am by Claudia

I have been chatting with Don as we had our second cup of coffee this morning and I’m running late! The good news: I slept a bit longer this morning. It’s amazing how much difference an extra hour makes. I have never been one of those people (lucky them!) that can function well on too little sleep. Nope; even when I was a kid. I can get by for a day or two, but five? No and no and no.

Oh, and I got frustrated with trying to reapply my nail polish yesterday, most likely because I was so darn tired, so I took it all off. I’ll get back to it one day.

Living room art, part 1.

Our vintage lithograph of the RMS Aquitania. The Aquitania was part of the Cunard line, built in Scotland and launched in 1913 on a trip from Liverpool to NYC. It was an luxury ocean liner but was conscripted for use during both World Wars. In fact, it was due to be retired in 1940, but then WWII broke out and it was enlisted once again. It was officially retired in 1950. It was part of Cunard’s 3 ship fleet; the Mauretania, the Lusitania, and the Aquitania. The Aquitania was the last of the four-funnelled ocean liners. You can clearly see the funnels in the lithograph.

We found this in a local shop and Don fell in love with it. I fell, too, but he was the one who talked me into buying it. I’m so glad we did. The brass plate at the bottom says “Cunard Line.” It was made by Cunard for travel agencies advertising the glamour of transatlantic travel. Since the Aquitania was only used for the war effort after 1940, we can safely say this is, at the very least, from the 30s.

Finding this piece finally solved my problem of what to hang over the piano. I tried several solutions but this one took. The frame matches the color of the piano, it’s substantial, we love the colors and it makes us happy. It doesn’t hurt that the blues are also in the McCoy and the red is in also in the lamp shade.

Next to that is my Hymns board, found not long after we moved here in a now-defunct antique shop in Beacon. I had always wanted one and I especially loved that this one was an off-white. I don’t display anything on it, preferring it to be clean folk art, which speaks for itself. It’s very old.

To the left, the gallery of our beloved dogs. The artwork, including the sketch, is by Shanna. The photograph is mine, transferred to canvas. I have another beautiful painting of Scout by another blog reader that I have yet to frame. That’s on my to do list.

There’s more in the living room but there was just too much glare this morning. I’ll get to it soon.

Happy Saturday.

Temporarily Missing Our Old Neighborhood

February 19, 2019 at 10:29 am by Claudia

Sunlight hitting our Mockingbird Hill Cottage sign in the kitchen. Almost as if there was a spotlight on it.

Feeling rather wiped out today, due, I suspect, to shoveling yesterday. Don and I had to go out and shovel the driveway because we were due for a heating oil delivery. It took every ounce of strength and my muscles are still very weak from this bug. We felt great satisfaction when we did it, but we laid low for the rest of the day, not even going to the grocery store, even though we’re out of almost everything.

Getting my strength back is my new goal.

We watched Wings of Desire last night. Brilliant. Beautiful. Uplifting. Bravo, Wim Wenders. And Bravo to the late, great Bruno Ganz. You will be missed.

Don and I have spent an inordinate amount of time together over the past month. First he was taking care of me, then he came down with the bug, then we were taking care of each other. Long, long days where we feel like we might be slowly losing our minds – as I said in one of my comment replies yesterday, it’s a wonder we haven’t killed each other. Thank goodness we’re here together and that one of us isn’t working away from home. This would be much harder for me on my own. Much, much harder.

We’ve been reminiscing this morning about our old neighborhood in San Diego. It was called Kensington and it had a lot of craftsman homes. We could walk a couple of blocks and be on Adams Avenue, which was the main drag. It had a great movie theater and lots of great restaurants. Our favorites: DeMille’s (Italian), Ponce’s (Mexican), the Kensington Cafe (just around the corner from our house) and further down Adams in Normal Heights, Jhyoti Bihanga – a vegetarian restaurant we loved. They had the best brunches!

We love where we live, but we miss walking on sidewalks and having easy accessibility to local eateries. It was a great walking neighborhood. And, of course, about this time of year, we miss the warmth of the sun. And the beach.

Sigh.

Do you remember when I was talking about sheet music and mentioned a store I used to frequent in San Diego? I mentioned that it was very near to Balboa Park but I couldn’t remember the name. I finally found the name of the music store stamped on one of my pieces of music. McEvoy Music on Fifth Avenue. It was right by my bank. It’s closed now. Mr. McEvoy, the owner, died in 2012. I remember him. He was almost always behind the counter when I stopped by. His wife died in 2015. I imagine that is why the store is now closed. (They were married for 55 years!)

As you can tell, we’re missing San Diego a bit. Happens like clockwork every year. This year, with illness and snow and ice, we really miss it! As soon as spring arrives, however, that feeling will fade away and we’ll be very happy that we live in the Hudson Valley.

Happy Tuesday.

Piano Update

January 8, 2019 at 11:33 am by Claudia

I spent a little time playing the piano yesterday afternoon after Adam finished tuning it. Boy! I haven’t played for a while and I’m going to have to work on my technique. And I was tired, so I didn’t have a lot of patience. Nevertheless, how wonderful to finally have a tuned and repaired piano!

It does need more work, however. That’s the bad news. The springs to the dampers are not in good shape, so when it’s played it has a live sound that would never do for a concert pianist but is okay for me and the average pianist. I want to save some money to get that done in the future. It would involve Adam and his co-workers actually taking the piano to his studio to work on it. It’s very involved, detailed work that is best done on site. It would cost about as the same as the work we’ve just had done, which, considering the meticulous work involved, is pretty reasonable.

It will have to wait. In my heart, I want to have the piano restored to its full power. Adam said that since it’s nearly 80 years old, none of this was unexpected.

I’m very impressed by Adam’s meticulous work and I trust his expertise. We’re so fortunate to have found him! My girl is getting her beautiful sound back, slowly but surely.

Adam working on the pedals.

Aren’t pianos beautiful? I never see this bottom section. Some dust removal was required.

And Adam did play some jazz – a version of “Stella by Starlight” – unprompted. I have it on video but I don’t feel comfortable sharing that on the blog. I don’t have his permission. It made me very happy to hear him play our piano.

This is my music cabinet, found at auction right after we moved here.

Mostly sheet music, with some dollhouse wallpaper and artwork that we wanted to keep flat.

And I played a bit of this little ditty.

I’ve never named the piano; it’s just my piano/Grandma’s piano.

We watched another screener last night, The Wife, starring Glenn Close and Jonathan Pryce. I don’t want to say much about it if you haven’t seen it. She is wonderful, as is Pryce (who I got to see onstage many years ago.) Both of us had real problems with parts of the screenplay and with plot devices that didn’t serve the story or the actors. But Close is simply lovely and powerful in this role and I can see why she won the Golden Globe.

We’re waiting on more screeners – very slow getting to our mailboxes this year. My friends who are SAG members are having the same problem.

Happy Tuesday.

Saturday Art Work

Temporarily Missing Our Old Neighborhood

Piano Update

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