80 Years Ago Today

The new Ford V-8 went on sale.  It was the result of Henry Ford's obsessive belief that it was possible to create a low-priced V-8 by designing and casting a single block that would contain the valves and cylinders.  His best engineers solved the problem.  The first engines were beset with problems -- primarily overheating -- but these were eventually solved.  

No other engine until the small block Chevrolet in 1955 has had such an impact on the automobile industry, or the after-market hop-up industry.  Even Clyde Barrow, of Bonnie and Clyde fame, thought highly of the engine and told Mr. Ford about it!

End of an Era...

Customers take advantage of the final 1/2 price sale at Ebabe's Gifts retail store

Ebabe's Gifts started out as on-line gift retailing business.  Mary Ann wanted to try building her own business and she has a wonderful knack for spotting those new gift ideas that become marketing successes.  As her eBay business grew, we discovered that certain wholesalers wouldn't sell to anyone who didn't have a brick-and-mortar retail operation.  Thus, the on-line business evolved into a (more than) full-time retail business.  That was about three and a half years ago.

The store succeeded in ways we didn't expect.  We're located "out in the county" as they say around here.  We're not on a main highway.  But people found us -- sometimes by word-of-mouth, sometimes through advertising.  It wasn't long before the face-to-face sales exceeded the internet sales.  The store became a "hang out" for some of our customers.  Eventually, Ebabe's Gifts had a mailing list of over 3,000 names.  It got bigger faster than we expected.

With that growth came other realizations.  You are married to a retail operation.  People expect that someone will be available to serve them during the advertised hours (and then some!).  The demands of product identification, ordering new items, shipping/receiving, quality control, merchandising, cleaning the store, hiring and managing personnel, advertising and public relations and every other imaginable item are never ending.  The result is that the proprietor must put every other aspect of their life on the back burner when the store has work that needs to be done.  A person's private life ceases to be their own.

Mary Ann and I started talking about closing the retail operation more than a year ago.  And yesterday was the last day of the storefront business.  We announced the closing a couple of weeks ago and had a half-price sale on everything in the store.  The volume of business in the last 10 days has been overwhelming.  Mary Ann made it through a very emotional time -- plenty of loyal customers expressing their sense of loss as well as the trauma of closing out a chapter of our lives that has represented so much creative energy and incredibly hard work.  But along with those emotions was a sense that a huge burden had been lifted.

So now we begin a new chapter focusing on expanded on-line marketing, along with visits to children, grandchildren, and friends.  And occasionally, the two of us may actually get to a cultural event as well.  Thank you to everyone, especially Mary Ann, who made Ebabe's such a special place.

Decorah Eagles are Back!!!

Decorah Raptor Resource Center

The nesting eagles in Decorah Iowa are being followed again by the infamous "NestCam."  As of today, there are two eggs in the nest, one laid on February 17 and one on the 20th.  They have an incubation period of 35-37 days.  At any given moment, you'll find that there are thousands of viewers.  Last year, the live streaming site was the most viewed video in the history of Ustream.tv.  So much for privacy!  Here's the live shot:

Streaming by Ustream

A few days ago, after the first egg was laid, there was a quick snowstorm.  This picture is one of my favorites.  Imagine the dedication of this mother bird!  And imagine the effectiveness of the feathers (some 7,000 I'm told) as an insulation layer!



Greatest Craigslist Post Ever!

 

From the Jackson, MS Craigslist, brought to my attention by my good friend, John Pape:

PRO Bassist Available (Jackson)

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Date: 2012-02-04, 7:43PM EST
Reply to: Deleted

---

Bass player available for PAYING GIGS ONLY. I play G, C, D. If your songs are not in G, please transpose them into G. If your song has an Em or Bm or anything off the wall I will probably sit out that chord. Or I could learn those notes for $30 each. If you want me to do fancy stuff like go back and forth between G and D while you hold a G chord, forget it because I'm a "pocket" player. Minimum $100 per gig within a 5 mile radius of 39202. $5 per mile travel charge for other areas out of town. Please make sure your gigs are on a JATRAN bus route, or you can pick me up at my place. Must be home by 11pm due to previous legal hassles. No gigs within 500 yards of schools, parks, or playgrounds.

• Location: Jackson
• it's NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests

Pure Romance!!!!

Seen in Huntsville today

Bottle Tree

A few years ago, Mary Ann and I heard an interesting piece on the radio about "bottle trees."  These are trees or bushes on which are suspended glass bottles, preferably blue, the intent of which is to ward off evil spirits or ghosts.  We found it amusing and actually acquired a few blue glass bottles in anticipation of someday having a bottle tree in our yard.

According to the Website maintained by Felder Rushing on the History of Bottle Trees,
"Although glass was made deliberately as early as 3500 B.C. in northern Africa, hollow glass bottles began appearing around 1600 B.C. in Egypt and Mesopotamia. Clear glass was invented in Alexandria around 100 A.D.

Soon around then, tales began to circulate that spirits could live in bottles - probably from when people heard sounds caused by wind blowing over bottle openings. This led to the belief in "bottle imps" and genies (from the Arabic word djinn) that could be captured in bottles (remember Aladdin and his magic lamp? This story originated as an Arabian folk tale dating back thousands of years, even before clear glass was invented). Somewhere in there, people started using glass to capture or repel bad spirits. The idea was, roaming night spirits would be lured into and trapped in bottles placed around entryways, and morning light would destroy them.

Incidentally, you will run into folks who refuse to put up bottle trees because of the connection to pagan superstitions. HOWEVER, before people learned about cold germs and allergies, early Greeks and Romans thought that sneezes were bad spirits being expelled. When someone sneezed, nearby people would snap their fingers to keep the spirit out of their own bodies, and say "Jupiter preserve you" to keep the spirit from reentering the sneezer. Because superstitions were so hard to stop, and pagan festivals were so ingrained, an early pope in the 3rd century A.D. (the same one who decided to "go with the flow" and put Christmas on the pagan winter solstice festivities, and Easter on the pagan spring fertility festivals) changed "Jupiter preserve you" to "God bless you."

All this is well-established, not lore. So, like it or not, or even if they aren’t aware of this historical fact, folks who say “God bless you” (or similar salutations) are performing an ancient pagan superstitious ritual. And they get indignant when this is pointed out - yet they continue to assume that those of us who love colorful bottle trees are somehow involved in pagan practices! Sheesh.

Anyway, the bottle imp/bad spirit thing was carried down through sub-Saharan Africa and up into eastern Europe, and eventually imported into the Americas by African slaves – and Germans, Irish, and other superstitious folk who among other things put hex symbols on barns and celebrated May Day and Halloween. Europeans brought "witch balls" (hollow balls with an opening in the bottom to capture witches) and "gazing balls" to repel witches.

Nowadays, bottle trees are mostly used as interesting garden ornaments that glisten in the sun, and the use of colorful glass garden art is on the upswing, as any visit to upscale garden shows (including the Chelsea Flower Show in London) will prove."

Well, Ebabe's gifts now has the latest gift for the bottle tree afficianado -- a solar-powered illuminated botte tree!!!  It has a small photovoltaic panel that faces the sun and charges a battery.  At night, the individual stalks on which the bottles reside glow with small light-emitting diodes.  Is that cool or what?

Elf Duty...

Claire Weatherly finds out that this is HER Autoharp!

Back in late November I had an email from an old friend, Jim Weatherly, a former Huntsville resident now living in St.Paul, Minnesota.  Margo and I were good friends of the Weatherly family (Jim and Anne) before they moved north and they honored us by asking us to be their children's (Christopher and Claire) Godparents.  Jim contacted me to let me know that Claire had asked for an Autoharp for Christmas.  He needed advice on what to buy.

I began by telling him in no uncertain terms to not buy a new one.  All production was shipped overseas in the early 1980's -- first to Japan, subsequently to Korea and then China.  I have worked on some of these later models and wouldn't take one as a gift.  I certainly would never recommend that someone buy a new one.  I told Jim to look for a US-built 1970's vintage Autoharp in good shape and that if he found one, I would restring, reconfigure, and rebuild it.  The quest began.  After a couple of unsuccessful bids on eBay, Jim finally submitted a successful bid on a 1970's Berkshire model 15-chord B-style Oscar Schmidt Autoharp.  He had it shipped to me.


When the instrument arrived around the 5th of December, I inspected it thoroughly.  It still had its original strings and they were all intact.  You can tell the original strings by the way they were attached to the tuning pins and wrapped around the pins.  The instrument smelled "fresh."  It had not been stored in a mildew or mold-infested environment.  The finish was remarkably untouched.  The felt dampers on the chord bars appeared brand new and had never been attacked by moths.  The only condition issue I found was a minor delamination of the maple pin block at the top of the Autoharp.  This is easily repairable.


I ordered a new set of strings and they arrived in a few days.  Although I was concerned that the string quality might have suffered over the years, the new strings turned out to be top-notch.  They were all precisely cut and the windings on the wound strings were all tight.  There were no "buzzers."  (Sometimes the windings will be loose at the end and cause a wound string to buzz when played.)

Gluing the pin block

I removed the old strings and thoroughly cleaned and polished the instrument.  Then I glued the area of delamination and let it dry for 48 hours.  In the meantime, I rebuilt the chord bar assembly.  I glued the return springs into the chord bar holders so they won't "escape" the next time someone disassembles the chord bars.   To make it a little prettier, I covered each chord bar with a printed duct tape strip in a blue abstract pattern.

One issue that every Autoharp player faces is the decision of what chords to include on an individual instrument and how to arrange them.  I chose an arrangement suggested by Evo Bluestein, a remarkable Autoharp player from Fresno, California.  He markets a custom-built Autoharp called the Evoharp, and the 15-chord model has its chord bars arranged (from the tuning pin end to the anchor bar end) as follows:  Fmaj, Dmin, C7, Cmaj, Amin, G7, Gmaj, Emin, D7, Dmaj, Bmin, A7, Amaj, F#min, E7.  With this arrangement, the Autoharp may be played in the major keys of C, G, D and A, and the minor keys of D minor and A minor.  It's a good flexible selection of chords and the pattern is such that each chord "set" is the same for any given key in which the instrument is being played.  


After reassembling the Autoharp and relabeling the chord bars, I tuned it several times over the next few days to stretch and stabilize the strings and fine tune it.  It turned out to be a fine sounding instrument, brought back to life.  It will provide many years of service.


Claire had no clue that she was receiving this gift.  I met the Weatherlys for lunch at Jason's Deli in Huntsville.  When we informed her that this was her Autoharp, she was totally speechless.  I felt that my Elf Duty was time well spent.