January 05, 2009

11:18 p.m.

Novice

The first thing we discovered was that the peg holes are a little smaller than average. A phone call to the place that made the tail piece confirmed that the pegs will need to be sanded to the right width. There aren't smaller pegs to choose from in the cello world, unless one has a kiddie model. As this is a job that will begin in the barn with the electric sander, we'll have to start in daylight. Wednesday is slated for the Sanding Party and, it is hoped, the rest of the reassembly. Marc said that, after the initial rough sanding with the machine, each peg will probably take 15 or 20 minutes to hand shape.

Meanwhile Pearl installed her new pegs, with much cursing, drilling of string holes (they don't even come with holes in them to cinch the strings through) and fighting with getting them to not slip. It turns out that she has a very hard time tuning the instrument. Though she has great facility on it once it's in tune, she's actually rather tone deaf to begin with, so it's hard for her to tell the difference between the note on the pitch pipe and the note on the string. Which is higher? Big peg or fine tuner? This is something I can help her with. My ear is good.

She gave me a little lesson on hers, then, which was almost in tune. It all feels very foreign, from holding the bow to the angle of my right arm to the enormous stretch I'll have to develop in the left hand. My callouses will be in a slightly different place, too. I did very well, considering I'm a complete novice. Some notes sounded like dying animals, but there's an instinct in there somewhere. Pearl has ordered some duet cello music that she wants to teach me. I think that in a few weeks I could be playing little things relatively smoothly. I'm ordering a few small items from Amazon -- a mute so that I won't annoy my neighbor, a cello humidifier (looks like a rubber snake with some holes in it), and one of those things that looks like a hockey puck that keeps the end pin from sliding across the floor.

Dinner was great -- a chicken dish made by an old friend of Marc's who was visiting with them from out of town. After much conversation we walked down to the Bidwell Tavern for dessert.

It's a small town and they're starting to realize that lots of people know they've bought "the Smith House." Rose continues to uncover little bits of information about the original owners. Mr. Smith opened a foundry along the river across the street. They also farmed. There were chickens, and apple trees out back in what is now the woods. Mr. Smith died in his 50s and a daughter and her husband took over "head of household" and the wife lived on many years with them, also one of the other daughters. They also had a boarder, a young woman who worked at a cartridge factory nearby. We can't imagine where they all slept but an 1880 census has them all in the one house. Rose discovered the son got married and had a child, and they lived somewhere nearby as well and are buried in the same cemetery.

Anyway it was a full evening in spite of not getting the cello together yet. I'm so tired... and itchy. The winter air is so dry, it's murder on my skin. I must fill the vaporizers and go to bed. Tomorrow I have set aside to complete my application for the artists' colony again, and I have to come up with a plausible proposal idea. Perhaps something brilliant will come to me as I sleep.