Long Time Coming

Check out my (at last!) recording at bandcamp.com

I guess you may have noticed, if you are a regular reader of mine, that I have been absent for way too long. Sorry about that! Here's what's going on...

A long-time friend of mine, James Lindenschmidt of Bardic Brews and Crafted Recordings, offered to help me with some recording. I have been a musician for my whole adult life, playing folk harp, fingerstyle guitar, hammered dulcimer, and an assortment of other instruments, but in the recent past my songwriting went into overdrive, fed by the life changes that came with falling deeply in love. Happily, my musicianship has kept pace with my heart and my writing aspirations, and I have a steadily-growing collection of really good songs to show for it! 

I went into overdrive, consulting with my Honey about which were the best songs to break out with, practicing like mad, making sure I had the words just the way they should be...and new songs kept intruding! But eventually, just a couple of weeks ago, Jim came to Ironwood Hollow, toting all sorts of esoteric equipment, and Honey left us to our own devices. He told me that he has always wanted to try recording in our home, with its very unique acoustics that come from the cordwood masonry, the high ceilings, and the curved walls. 

Long story as short as possible, we had about three hours of good recording time all to ourselves, and in that time we recorded six of my songs. For each of them, I played my solo arrangement and sang at the same time, then went back and recorded a harmony track and a second guitar track in some cases. The one that sticks in my mind the most is when I said, "Jim, let me just hear the tune, and I'll play through the lead guitar, and see if I remember how it goes..." When I was finished, he just said, "Oh yeah, I was recording; that's great. What's next?" 

Six songs of spiritual love recorded in a cordwood masonry meadhall!

It was that kind of session. Jim's knowledge of recording and innate calm made it a pure pleasure. Followed by many hours of his skilled time mixing and mastering, one of the finest gifts I've ever received, this session has turned into an EP of a small sampling of my recent music. (An EP is an extended play, several songs, but not long enough to be called a CD). I have been working my way through the process of making the songs available, now that Jim has declared the tracks finished. Actual CDs are in process, and I'll post details about that when it's all set up. In the meantime, harpermeader.bandcamp.com is where to go to hear them. I hope you will purchase all or some of them for download! Bandcamp offers music affordably, with the option of paying anywhere from a minimum up to what you feel the music is worth. They will appear in the other usual venues shortly (itunes, amazon, etc), as that process does its thing. 

The changes in my life and my heart that my Honey has brought to me are only hinted at in these songs, but I am so pleased to be able to share a bit of that joy with you. There will be more, since I've determined to make songwriting a major part of my future. Stay tuned. Among these songs you will find a steamy celebration of midsummer loving (Magic in the Moonlight), a rousing sailing song (Snapping Sails), the perfect tune for when you're storm-stayed with your love (Snowdrift Love), a partial-capoed pattern-picked epic-love-song for the guitarists among us, with a nod to the great love-poet, Rumi, (The Glassblower's Breath), and more.

I hope that you like my work. My hope is that this project will fund the next recording, and that my love of music, words, spirit, life, and my Honey will become something more than a hobby, that it will bring a piece of that joy that is my life into the homes of many.

Okay, a final note...anywhere else you find my songs, they're likely to cost about the same, but at bandcamp, you get the lyrics for free, and you can hear the whole song right there before you decide to part with a dollar or two. Also, just sayin'...as one of my blog-readers, you know where to find me. If you play, and want to know my chords, or get a hint about the picking patterns that I use, you know where to find me. 

Ironwood Coasters

Pentacryl wood stabilizer

We approached the holidays agreeing on wanting to make things by hand for gifts as much as possible. Both of us remember reading about Christmas in the Laura Ingalls Wilder books, and agree that a morning like that, with simple, love-filled gifts from the heart, among the close family, is just what we need more of, instead of the competitive shopping mania that brings so much stress and not so much happiness to many families. Sure, there were some gift cards, books, store-bought boots, and the like. But that will be the case less and less as we move through this change. 

The coasters drying...

  Bottles of mead, with a simple bow of pretty yarn. Bottled peppermint cordial (one of our first shared brewing efforts) with hand-written labels in cute little bottles. Hand-made oak personal-sized chalkboards with attached chalk pencils. Personal objects with inlaid scrimshaw name-plates, and some personalized scrimshaw jewelry. And, to commemorate our first holiday season as a family at Ironwood Hollow, some ironwood coasters! These were so much fun to make, tromping around in the woods looking for the right tree, taking turns dipping them, decorating them as part of our late-night Santa's Workshop sessions! No way will we ever want to spend part of the run-up to Christmas elbowing our way through mall-stores for just the right plastic object from China...

Gifts from Ironwood Hollow!

We had seen a product advertized that claims to stabilize wood so it wont split as it dries, called Pentacryl. The supporting documentation is vague about how long to soak wood for best effect, and since we were running late with our projects, we just soaked all of the slices of wood for a few minutes and hoped for the best. We'll post updates as we see how the coasters hold up.

What we did was cut a medium-sized ironwood tree down, and use about three feet of it sliced into 3/8 inch disks. The rest of it will be excellent firewood! In other parts of the US, ironwood means something else. Here in the northeast that's what we call Hop Hornbeam, an understory hardwood that grows slowly and if very dense and hard, making excellent firewood. The disks were then soaked in pentacryl for a few minutes apiece, and left to dry for a couple of weeks. Then we simply ornamented each one with "Yule 2012", tied them into little bundles, and added them to the other gifts. Voila! Ironwood Hollow coasters for the very first time!

Our first Solstice together! First of all the rest <3

We got the idea from some "redneck coasters" sent to me years ago by my Kansas friend Clem, which are made of osage orange, or "hedge" as he calls it, another very dense wood. Those have sat beneath many a candle, cup of mead, or coffee ever since they appeared here in the mail as a surprise gift, and I hope our coasters will be as much appreciated in the various households they ended up in last week.

Perseverance

Years ago, I went on a motorcycle trip with my very good friend Johnny Bongo. We were both fairly new to the biking world, maybe a couple of years of local riding under our belts. Part of my own preparation involved trading in my classic beemer for a newer one (still not a NEW one, just not as ancient) because I knew that my wrenching skills had some clear limitations. Both of us planned like crazy. We each packed emergency supplies, plenty of clothes, tire-repair kits, the whole deal. 

Barrier, schmarrier...

Johnny had a new GPS system, and had worked out every turn of the road to get us where we were going. Believe me, we went to some beautiful parts of the country. A couple of days in, and here's where the photo makes sense, we were scheduled to find our campsite, tucked away in the flat landscape of Ohio. The roads there are laid out like graph paper lines across a virtually flat landscape, very strange to JB and I, who live in a wooded, hilly part of Maine, where no road goes more than half a mile without a needed turn. 

So every few miles was a cross-road, and there were no side-roads, no back ways, no diagonals. Not long before dark, we came to a closed road barrier, just five miles from where we were trying to go. We knew that if we let it stop us it would mean going back, and all the way around one of those giant blocks of waving corn, several miles for each side of a square. We looked at the barriers, looked at the big backhoe parked right across both lanes, bucket to the tar, at the deep swales on each side of the road, looked at the sun going down. We were tired. We had sore asses and stiff backs. We wanted to be setting up our tents and warming up some soup. This unforeseen obstacle really sucked at that moment. Then we looked at each other, shrugged, and wordlessly agreed to just try it. 

Around the barriers we went, creeping in first gear, then very carefully, leaning the bikes to squeeze under the arm of the backhoe, over to the other side. Each bike took all of the strength of both of us to maneuver under that arm. One of us bent a rearview mount a little bit, I don't remember who. It might have been that the road was closed because it was totally impassible further along, but that wasn't the case. We felt like such rebels. The point is, though, that we didn't shrug and turn back. The road wasn't impassible. We didn't hurt anybody. And we got to where we were going, almost on time. 

Looking through old photos, I found this and realized that I had not thought of the obstacle, or of our perseverance, for years. In the moment, it felt like a big potential setback. I recall resorting to some choice Anglo-Saxon vocabulary for a minute or so. Now though, it is a distant memory. Much clearer in my mind is the gathering of new friends when we finally got to our destination, the evening around the campfire swapping riding stories.

Here's another, briefer example. My Dad has taken me, my sister, all of his grandchildren, and many others, on a hike of Katahdin, Maine's most spectacular mountain, many times. It's not an easy hike. It's frankly exhausting, much more of an endeavor than most people expect when they first get up that morning and confidently strap on a backpack.

Climbing Katahdin

See how rugged the climb is in the photo? That's Dad on the left. My point is that if you look at the mountain ahead, it looks insurmountable. If you put one hand over another, watch your step, place your feet carefully, and keep your mind on the goal, you get there. Every single person who has attempted that climb among the many excursions that I've been on has finished it. They've seen Maine from its highest point. They've walked the famed Knife Edge Trail. They've seen Chimney Pond from on high, where it looks like a tiny jewel among toy trees. That's what they remember, not the tiredness, the sore knees, the scraped knuckles. They remember succeeding.

That's my message today. Know where you want to go, and don't turn aside. Take the next step. Reach for the next handhold. Pause for a breath, but don't look back. Oh, and one more thing. This one is important. Take the right people with you on your journey.

Keeping It True

In cordwood masonry building, one of the challenges is keeping your wall vertical. The load-bearing potential of the structure is dependent upon the wall being aligned as truly up-and-down as possible. A bit of variation won't be a disaster, but letting your wall wander too much will make for weak support. It could eventually buckle, or crack your windows by shifting over a leaning support system.

The metaphor is important to me. If you have a solid foundation, and build carefully and consciously upon it, then the strength that foundation will be present throughout your structure, providing safety, security, and even beauty because you have respected its gift of strength. Don't assume anything, but rather check as you go along that you and your foundation are in sync, that you're working together. Don't stray from it; honor it, and you can trust it with your home, your shelter, your life.

The most important tool for keeping your walls true in cordwood masonry is a plumb-bob, a pendulum-like brass tool on a long string, used for millennia to line up vertical work over its center of gravity. Mine is somewhat crusted with mortar, and its string is faded by time and weather, but it holds a strong magic, in my mind at least. Except for the first row or three of cordwood pieces, it was used on every single log in my cordwood masonry walls. When I look up at my highest walls, over eighteen feet from the foundation, I remember using it, over and over and over again.

First you mix up some mortar, using sand, cement mix, lime, water, and wet sawdust, along with plenty of back and arm strength with a masonry hoe. Then you carry a bucket of that and some cedar pieces up your ladder, lay a double-bead of mortar with rubber-gloved hands, and squish a piece of cedar roughly into place. Below you is a chalk-line two inches out from the base of the wall. You pull your trusty plumb-bob from your nail apron, along with a two-inch nail for a spacer, and swing it down from the head of the nail. The point of the nail is held steady against the wood, and when you have tapped the wood back and forth into the right position, the point of the bob is true above the chalk-line, making the log true at the top of the wall. Ancient science, the tradition of countless generations of carpenters and masons working through your hands, the magic of a fine metaphor, if you will pay attention to it. 

What's the most important tool for keeping your life true? Opinions may vary, but I believe that tending to your primary relationships above all else is crucial. Always checking that you are treating your loved ones as they deserve, with honesty, care, and consideration, that communication is true, you will know of potential trouble in time to correct it. You will build on that respect for your foundation.

I'm going to loan my plumb-bob, for the duration of their home-building, to Ben and Kissy of Dragonfly Acres, who have already begun harvesting cedar, and milling hemlock, for their own cordwood masonry home not far from ours. The thought of having that ancient and solid tool carry such a metaphor to another home built by people who bring thoughtfulness, love, and care to their endeavors pleases me greatly.