Body Language

It's funny how a gesture in the regular world can mean one thing, while the same gesture in the piping world can be something totally different.

I went to a doctor appointment with Small Son today. The doctor bustled in after an interminable wait, greeted me, and held out his hand. This, of course, was part of the greeting, so I held out my hand and shook his. This was the appropriate response, and the meeting went on. It was a rather worrisome meeting, so it was on my mind for some time after that.

Several hours later at band practice, I was tootling away, warming up my pipes but still thinking about the doctor's appointment. Pipe Major Jason approached me and held out his hand. I held out my hand, as before.

But this wasn't a greeting.

I forgot I was now in a subculture where there is a different body language. There aren't usually any greetings at band practice. Maybe a nod of acknowledgement that, "Oh, I see you showed up to practice this week." A mental 'checking you off' on the list of members. That kind of thing. I guess we consider this new practice session as not 'new' at all, but a continuation of last week.

In the pipe band world, when a pipe major holds out his hand to you, it means your chanter is out of tune and he wants you to give it to him so he can tune it.

Jason laughed and shook my hand anyway.

Then he took my chanter and tuned it.

Sheepdog Trials 2009

I love the Sheepdog Trials.

I think I said this last year. There are dogs, wool, sheep, and a motley collection of other animals, and piping, and it's mostly not full band so the atmosphere is laid back.

This year was no exception.

On Friday I showed up late and Sean and Pete were all tuned up and piping away, with Erin on snare. Sean's girlfriend Jen, and Pete's wife Trenda, were roaming around looking at things and came and joined us during breaks. A good time was had by all. I piped 3 hours and my lip was only a smidgin swollen.

Saturday's schedule had me down for 3 hours. I was first on the scene. Jack and Dan showed up nearly half an hour later, along with Jessi on snare. Erin got caught in traffic and was very late. It was chilly, but Jack and I managed to get us all tuned sufficiently well so that we didn't "skirl". It was definitely a fall day, with overcast skies and a bit of a breeze, but the mountain shortly woke up to the fact that it was only 5 September and life could still be warm and buzzy, and so it was, with the buzzy bit supplied by a miriad of grasshoppers. This put our drones out of tune terribly.

Jack and I managed to get our drones and chanters pretty much in sync, but no matter what we did to Dan's, he sounded terrible. We messed around with tape and reeds and hemp for an hour, neither one of us sure of what to do, Erin and Jessi standing patiently by, but ended up with only frustration and discord. We gained a deeper appreciation of Jason, Sean and Tyler who do this all the time.

Grant showed up, undid what we had just done to Dan's pipes, and we achieved a modicum of harmony until Dan left a few minutes later. Grant, Erin, Jessi and I played til 1300 when I was supposed to be off, but that would have left Grant a solo piper with TWO drummers, so I stayed the additional hour (for a total of 4).

The other problem Saturday was that none of us original three were really experienced in pipe-majoring. We asked Erin to do it, and she tried for one tune, but with that heavy snare on her knee, keeping time with her foot was a superhuman effort. We couldn't see her foot, anyway. So I suggested each of us pipers take it in turn to pipe-major. It really wouldn't matter if we made any mistakes. Who would know except us? What happens at the Sheepdog Trials, stays at the Sheepdog Trials. Right? The motion was seconded and passed, and we spent our 4 hours gaining a deeper appreciation for Jason, Sean and Tyler who do this all the time.

My lip was a teensy bit more swollen, but not enough to whine about--or even mention.

Monday . . . have you ever heard of the Miner's Day Parade? I hadn't, and I was raised in a mining town! Park City has a Miner's Day parade on Labor Day, and we marched in it. It was pretty much like the Fourth of July parade, except that Red-haired Daughter and Small Son held a banner for a bunch of kilted crazy people, men and women and . . . um. . . Well, anyway, they were relatively well-mannered. The band played tunes, and I only really messed up when Jason, behind whom I was marching, called out Minstrel Boy and I and Dan and Karen started Green Hills.

When playing, it makes things go much smoother if you can focus on one stationary thing. Watching the people go by or what's happening outside the circle just makes you forget where you (read: me) are in the tune or set and mess up. When marching in a block down the street, there really is only one stationary thing, and that is the bum of the person right ahead of you. I was marching and focusing and playing really well, when I realized what I was focusing on: Jason's . . . um. . . kilt. I mentally squawked and focused on his feet instead, which helped me keep time, were more appropriate, but were not necessarily stationary.

And I promptly played the wrong tune, see above. You just can't win.

Then came the fun part, where HH and the kids and I did lunch things: waiting in lines for ice cream and gas, etc.

In fact, it was mostly waiting for the rest of the day.

We were required by the Sheepdog people to arrive at the chalet at 1400. I was late, getting there about 1410. I caught a gleam of reflected light moving toward the door, and guessed it was Jason or Jack, BJ being in California. It was Jason, the sunlight glinting off his bald head, Brenda at his side. We finally located them in the basement of the chalet, masquerading during the week as a kindergarten. The rest of the band trickled in by ones and twos, sunburned and laughing, some smelling of wet dog. We warmed up and tuned up and were ready to go at 1500, at which point Ian got a call from the Radio Guy who said they had more dogs to run, it'd be another hour. We got a 30 minute rest time, during which Small Son and I watched the Spash dogs jump into the water, and we scouted out the road down to the rest of the trials. At 1600, the call came in that there were still two dogs to run, so it would be another 30-60 minutes. We tuned and warmed some more; I got a new reed, and got my new reed adjusted. At 1700, the word was that the last dog had been running for 24 minutes, and that as soon as the trucks arrived, we should load up and go. Ten tense minutes passed before the radio crackled into life again, and we moved out.

The pickup truck beds had been ameliorated by little chairs from the kindergarten room, or in my case, a cooler. Jack sat on one tailgate. As we moved around corners and up hills, the chairs moved treacherously from side to side and front to back. I was sure we were all going to sweep Jack off the tailgate and land in a pile of broken drones and broken bones (broken drones being the more disastrous: broken bones heal). But we didn't. We arrived at a windswept hilltop wherein ensued a series of game plans that lasted at most 3.27 minutes.

We had three routes to choose from: a) a long paved road to the left, b) a middle length sidewalk, looking kinda ratty as it turned the corner, and c) an area of cut weeds that swept away down the hill to our right. Jason vetoed the cut grass out of hand: the drummers would not be able to see to pick their way around holes, bumps, etc. Jack ran down and checked out the sidewalk, and said it looked the clear as far as he could tell. Finally we got the signal to go. We struck up and started down this 20% grade and took the middle sidewalk. When we got to the curve and turned, our way was suddenly blocked by bushes and weeds. What to do? We were in the middle of a set!! The fence to our right was broken, so we turned and marched through it and the weeds and the burrs and the holes and the sheep poo and the ditches and the hills, curved around the line of colored flags which put us directly into a flock of sheep, with some dogs keeping them in line. The sheep weren't too happy about 10 pipers suddenly walking into their peaceful meadow playing like 40 elephants. Neither were the dogs, but they had their job to do, and they did it, keeping the sheep right in our way.

After that it was easy. Third and second place went to a fellow from South Africa, one for one dog and one for the other. First place went to a chap from Scotland, luckily, because we were supposed to play a national anthem, and we don't even know the Star Spangled Banner--if it can even be played on pipes--to say nothing of the South African anthem!

But Scotland the Brave we know! We played it for the gentleman and his dog, turned up the hill and onto the bridge where we tootled a couple of sets and called it a very long day.

Modern Technology and Ancient Curses

I wanted to get a new iPod (since my daughter uses mine all the time), one that I could watch movies on since I get so little time to watch a movie of my choice on the family TV.

"Get an iTouch," my husband said. "You can watch movies on that, plus you'll get internet access and tunes and lots of other things, and they don't cost very much more."

So I did.

I've had it now for about 2 weeks, and I love it, but I haven't watched a movie on it yet. What I love most about it is Kindle. This is a program, or application, or "app", that puts a printed book into your iTouch so you can read it anywhere or anytime you want . . . even in the dark! It's not bulky, the pages and cover don't get dog-earred, it marks your place, and it doesn't read the book to you (not that listening to a book is a bad thing, just that I like reading it myself best). Some of my favorite books cost nothing to download.

My second favorite thing is lists. I can make as many lists as I want and they are always with me, I don't forget them at home on the fridge or lose them. I have a list for tunes I want to learn, another for knitting projects in the foreseeable future, one for nicknames of my Scouts, one of books I want to read, birthday and Christmas lists, the JetBlue planes I've flown on, shopping lists, to-do lists . . .

Then, there is the contact app. Everybody's address, email, phones, notes all in one easily-portable little thing.

Finally, I got a password app. It holds all my log-in's and passwords, but it's password protected itself.

Of course, if there's wi-fi, I can access my email and anyplace on the 'net.

It's been a lot of fun.


The Odd-Year, End of August Curse

I know I've talked about this curse before: how every odd year at the end of August something terrible happens to our family--usually involving broken bones. This August I was pretty nervous about something happening to Daughter #1 who is serving a mission in South Korea (see http://roseegoestokorea.blogspot.com). Rushing to her hospital bedside in Korea was going to be long, expensive, and involve a passport. We've been praying for everybody's safety. She's been worried about something happening to one of us, here. So much so that she sent me a real 4-leafed clover necklace that I have been wearing since Mother's Day in the hopes that it would help.

Well, it's September 1, 2009. We are all intact. Of course, anything could happen any time. I'd knock on wood if there was any here; I don't think knocking on electrons has the same effect. But I'm happy and grateful we made it through August. Very happy.

I think it's this house, actually. We have a couch that puts people to sleep in record time, even people who are insomniacs. We have a bedroom that makes you curl up and read a book. These things never happened when we lived in Minnesota. I can't imagine there is a magical person out there with a vendetta against us. We don't know any people with magical powers.

Just magical people.

Being Asked

I know I put meaning into everything--meaning that might not actually be there. But it makes life more (safely) exciting and makes one feel more important than one really is.

We just came back from a cut-short 25th anniversary trip to Quebec (long, sad story: a short, good time was had) where I had little or no cell phone service, to find a voicemail message from Aaron asking if I could help with a gig that started 30 minutes earlier. Of course I couldn't play, but it was nice being asked.

I hope I wasn't the last person on the list.

(I won't even go there.)

I haven't picked up pipes in a WEEK! My blowpipe valve is gonna be SO stuck. To make things worse, we received a DVD from Piper Pat, my bigger little brother, showing him practicing on small pipes or somesuchthing while on his tour of England, Scotland and Ireland last month. Must be nice to have money to just blow on things, including DVDs sent out to the whole family and large suitecases. Hopefully, I'm a better person because of it.

Eccles' Gig

Small Son, Teancum, has a nickname in the band--even though he is not in the band. I happened to mention to Sean, his instructor, in the hearing of other band members, how many 5-minute practices he was squeezing into a day, 5 minutes being the maximum practice time he was allowed on pipes per day. They inmediately nicknamed him "the Teancanator", and were working on a series of grace notes similar to a tachum that they would call a "teancum". They were having a very good time inventing. Teancum's eyes got bigger and bigger as I related all this to him later on in the evening, and he practiced doubly hard the next day.

* * *

We had a big, big windstorm (not a tornado, just straight-line winds) rip through here three days ago (that would be Thursday). You couldn't see the mountains AT ALL for all the dust and smoke that was in the air. Everything dried out in a flash and brush fires started all around the airport and some other places. My brother Tom said he was up on top of th East Ridge outside Butte, Montana with my sister, Erin, and her fiance, Tim, and saw it roll in. He said it was like some monstrous, roiling brown thing attacking the city, containing hailstones the size of golf balls. It was that big that it covered at least the distance from Salt Lake to Butte. It blew pretty much all night and by morning it was apparent I was allergic to something in the dust, because my eyes were red, swollen and itchy, my nose ran constantly and I was sneezing. I hope this makes me sound miserable, because I was miserable.. I'm only now getting over it, even with meds.

Friday night, in this non-breathing condition, we had to go up to the Eccles'* family home on the benches and play a gig for the 75th birthday of Spencer Eccles, which family gave us a grant that procured us our tartan and kilts oodles of years ago . . . so long ago, in fact, that when Ian mentioned this factoid to the Eccles gathered there, everybody was surprised to learn it. Spencer came over and shook everybody's hand and thanked us for remembering their family and said he was glad they had a connection to the Salt Lake Scots. He was having a good time. And no wonder, in a place like that. It was right in a neighborhood, but it was surrounded with so many scrub oak hedges and oak trees and pine trees, that it was a place apart. No outside sounds got in, nor people neither. It looked like Groundskeeper Willie had been hard at work everywhere for the place looked beautiful. The catering staff hovered, the valets parked cars quietly and efficiently, and the whole (extended) family was dressed in carefree smiles and their Sunday best. Spencer Eccles Jr (or possible III) casually and with a worn green felt-tip marker, wrote us out a check for $350** without even checking his balance or doing the math--although he made jokes about the check not clearing.

I don't think that will be a problem.

Our band has other connections to this family, too. Dave served a mission with one of the son-in-laws in Montreal, QC; Sande had scoped out the joint for fire vehicle access when the fire danger got high and knew the key family members and the lay of the land. Good thing, too, because even with the grandchildren guiding us, it was a torturous path we had to follow to get past the tennis courts, down the hill, around the antique automobiles, and through the dining pavillion to our places on the flagstone terrace.

I went home and blew my nose.




*Eccles family: an old and rather well-to-do banking family from this area who has put their name on half the buildings on the UofU campus, and many other buildings in the valley besides.

** Let's see: $350 for 10 minutes work. $350 x 6 = . . . $2100 per hour!

On, Pipes!

Last night . . .

It's very exciting!

Last night . . .

I don't know why I'm feeling so accomplished! I didn't do all the practicing of fingering, grace notes, doublings, "triplings", and all those tunes. But still . . .

Last night, Small Son got his own set of (rental) pipes!

Sean (and Dennis) got them all put together and showed him how to work them. He huffed and he puffed, and he huffed and he puffed, and he finally blew one squawk out of them. Then, Sean showed him how to pack them in the rolling bag case (provided) and we got a soda to celebrate. He's been counselled to practice 5 minutes a day, and advised that it's going to be frustrating at first.

As Marjie would say, "Boy, Howdy!"

Learning how to simultaneously blow and squeeze and finger the tune . . . and march . . . is about the most frustrating thing I have ever done. Right now he doesn't have to march, of course, and all his drones are plugged off to make it as easy as possible. He's gonna need a LOT of encouragement.

In our last group lesson of the season, we went over individually what progress we had made during the year. My report is as follows:

- I got rid of the highhand-low A squeak
- opened up my doublings
- improved my blowing
- greatly improved my confidence in performing and competing
[- got a first, third, fourth, fifth and sixth (so far) in competitions
- played my first solo with the band]

(The last two are probably due to the first four, so I don't know if they count, but they are the most exciting of the lot.)

But not as exciting as seeing Small Son standing there with his own set of pipes on his shoulder, huffing and puffing away!

[sigh!]

Tuning and Blowing

Here's how tuning the band goes:

First the chanters:

All the pipers stand in a circle with about 3 feet between each. Jason walks around and individually has us play a scale along with him, listening to see if we are in tune with him or not. Usually, after the scale, much adjusting of reeds or moving of tape happens to make all the chanters in tune with him.

After everybody is basically tuned, we start a set with drones tapped off. Sean or Tyler is assigned to tap to keep us in time, and Jason walks around and listens to each chanter against a background of all the other chanters.

Then the drones:

Once the chanters are in tune, we start another set with drones on and Jason goes around again, sometimes with Sean or Tyler's assistance, and tunes everybody's drones. Usually, he makes one more circuit to hear how everything sounds together. And then we are tuned.

For the moment.

Last night I tuned my drones rather hurridly, and gave a half turn to my reed to bring the higher notes into tune. As I played my march for warm up, I realized I would not make it through even 15 minutes of practice without a major accident. I had to run to the 7-11 and take care of that. I showed up back at practice as everybody was in Chanters Step I. There was much moving of tape and adjusting of reeds taking place with everybody until Jason got to Sean, who had evidently spent a lot of time getting all his notes just exactly right, because he required no adjustments whatsoever. (Or else he practiced a lot, which will keep your pipes in tune, too.) I was envious that Sean was so good at tuning (or practicing) and I was not. A couple more people got their reeds adjusted, and then it was my turn.

Just for a little variety, instead of starting from low G and going up, Jason started from high A and went down. I obediently mimicked the notes he played. Instead of taking out my chanter and adjusting tape or reed, he just . . . walked away! How cool is that?

I was definitely having trouble staying awake, and my fingers weren't taking up the memory slack, so I made quite a few slips. Ugh.

After about 90 minutes of practicing, including marching into the circle, we had the opportunity to have our bags tested for leaks. I took all the drones and chanter off, stripped off the bag cover and plugged all holes. When blown up, the bag did not lose air at all, not even slow aire (sorry, I had to). It was pronounced sound.

NOTE TO SELF: check all my hemping: reeds, all drone joints, chanter and blowpipe. They all need to be tight so that no air is leaking out of wrong places, making the chanter difficult to play because there isn't enough air left to play the tune.

NOTE TO SELF: also remember to dampen the sponge inside the moisture control system.

As the bag was being examined, Jason commented that he noticed my blowing was much more steady when he was tuning drones. Since I fixed the squeaking problem, I've been working on making my blowing more steady. It seems like I am making progress. Yeah! Jack asked me how I had done it. I didn't have much advice to give him, except to concentrate on blowing and keeping the bag inflated and hard throughout the tune.

It was nice of them to say anything.