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Today was the day our new porch roof was supposed to be set up.
I had actually intended to dismantle the old one yesterday, but that didn't work out. I spent All Day working on it, and managed to take out four pieces, which means it would have taken me another five days to finish. Fortunately Brian, the contractor who is putting the roof up, said he and his helper could take it down much faster than that and that I shouldn't put in any more time on it.
This was both true, and a good thing as far as it went, because he was supposed to arrive at ten but was held up by a stubborn plumbing problem until six pm--at which point he and his helper showed up and pulled the whole thing down, took it apart and took it away by nine.
This is actually second best; I'd love to have the new roof up but just having the old broken one gone should make several things easier.
In the morning I had laid everything out looking at how it was going to work, got worried because I didn't have a piece to splice the beam (they could ship me 26 foot fascia for some reason but not a 26 foot beam to match; go figure.) I called the salesman and it turns out that beam is spliced over one of the middle posts, using the post-to-beam bracket to hold the parts in place and then trimming both ends as necessary to fit inside the side fascias. So whew, panic resolved.
I drew out how the splice should go (on my iPad because I'm just that kind of nerd) and saved it to Dropbox as a pdf and picked it up on my computer and printed it out (with my nice new COLOR printer) and stuck in at that point in the ten (!) pages of instructions. Then I went outside and laid it out on the lawn with the actual beam parts and posts so Brian and Scotty could actually see it, because I wanted to be sure that part was understood.
What worries me a little more is that the kit was apparently plotted with a 1 foot overhang (with the roof going 1 foot past the support beam) and I didn't catch this at the time. So the kit says max 2 foot overhang, which probably seemed like plenty of margin. But the overhang of my old roof started out at about 2 foot 4 inches, and because the old beam was attached to the sides of the old posts instead of above them like the design I have, the new overhang will be more like 2 foot 6 inches. Now it's in a fairly sheltered spot between two houses and under some trees, and probably the wind load won't be as high there, and we don't get much snow but still that makes me a little nervous.
But I don't see what I can do about it; the supports can't go any closer to the edge of the deck; they're already a bit on the close side, and if I move them off the deck I have to pour four concrete footings for them which doesn't strike me as trivial.
At any rate I have a day or two to think about it; Brian can't come back to put the roof up until next Saturday. Let's hope for good weather this next 8 days or so!
Aside from that I spent the whole day waiting for Brian and Scotty to show up and not wanting to leave the house because I didn't want to be gone when they got here. When I ran out of setup things I could do on my own I did the dishes and cleaned the bathroom and practiced the mandolin.
Oh--I have a mandolin teacher again! This time I made sure he could actually play the mandolin before I started. I had my first lesson on Wednesday and it was really fun. I played a few of the things I do so he could get a feel for where my skills were, and did a couple of my original pieces with mandolin countermelody so he could see what I did, and talked about how I wanted to be able to do licks and fills spontaneously and he said that old time tunes were a great resource because I could use pieces of them where they fit the song's chords and timing and I already knew how to play those tunes so I didn't have to plot them out beforehand.
He taught me three floating chords--chords played with all 3 lowest pitched strings fingered, so that you can change keys simply by moving to a new position on the fretboard. Fingering all the strings also allows you to control how long they ring, so you can get the percussive effect used in mandolin chop (playing briefly sounding chords on the off beat--chords as rhythm kind of thing). You don't play the top string or actively damp it with a finger or the edge of your hand. He taught me G, C and D and I made him stop so I could scribble them out on paper because I was pretty sure I wouldn't be able to remember them if I didn't. He said he'd been meaning to work out the minor chords but hadn't gotten around to it.
Since he wasn't going to be available this Wednesday I told him I also wanted to learn King of the Fairies which he'd played at some point to demonstrate something. It's a pretty tune and I hadn't heard it before or at least didn't recognize it. So he gave me a CD of a whistle player playing it. I figure that gives me about two weeks of work before I see him again. Me being me I started on both.
I found a song (Roll On Columbia) that uses G, C, and D but it also uses Em, and I remembered he'd said he wanted to work those out (the other two would be Am and Bm), so I did. I noticed that the floating chords he showed me all left out the fifth. In other words, the G chord notes were G and B (no D), the D chord notes were D and F# (no A) and the C chord notes were C and E (no G). So I made the minor chords the same way.
It has been a LONG time since I tried to learn that many new chords and I've never done chords so far up the neck before. It's challenging. But I am determined, and also kind of inspired.
And King of the Fairies is pretty, but complicated. I used Reaper to slow the song down to 50% so I could hear the notes better. Some of what the whistle player is doing are things I just can't do, playing quarter tones (tones in between a half step) as ornamentation and such, and also the A part doesn't stay the same on the repeat, and the B part doesn't repeat but goes straight into a C part. But it's pretty and I'm gradually picking it up.
And on top of everything else, Yonder and Back has two concerts next week; a children's one on Tuesday and one for grownups on Thursday, both of them at the library. We're picking up a lot of new material for the kid's concert and the three dearest to my heart are "Wade In The Water" "Follow the Drinking Gourd" and one I just wrote called "Juneteenth."
Juneteenth is a holiday celebrating the arrival in Texas of the news that slavery was officially ended and all enslaved people were now free and granted equal rights in law. It's mostly celebrated by the African American community but I think it's a great holiday that we all should celebrate; the end of slavery is worthy of celebration. Juneteenth is, as it happens, on the 19th of June, (though it's often celebrated on the nearest Saturday), and Tuesday is the 19th of June. I thought the kids should know about it, or if there are kids there who already know, it would be good to acknowledge it, so I wrote a song; I'll include the words here.
I had actually intended to dismantle the old one yesterday, but that didn't work out. I spent All Day working on it, and managed to take out four pieces, which means it would have taken me another five days to finish. Fortunately Brian, the contractor who is putting the roof up, said he and his helper could take it down much faster than that and that I shouldn't put in any more time on it.
This was both true, and a good thing as far as it went, because he was supposed to arrive at ten but was held up by a stubborn plumbing problem until six pm--at which point he and his helper showed up and pulled the whole thing down, took it apart and took it away by nine.
This is actually second best; I'd love to have the new roof up but just having the old broken one gone should make several things easier.
In the morning I had laid everything out looking at how it was going to work, got worried because I didn't have a piece to splice the beam (they could ship me 26 foot fascia for some reason but not a 26 foot beam to match; go figure.) I called the salesman and it turns out that beam is spliced over one of the middle posts, using the post-to-beam bracket to hold the parts in place and then trimming both ends as necessary to fit inside the side fascias. So whew, panic resolved.
I drew out how the splice should go (on my iPad because I'm just that kind of nerd) and saved it to Dropbox as a pdf and picked it up on my computer and printed it out (with my nice new COLOR printer) and stuck in at that point in the ten (!) pages of instructions. Then I went outside and laid it out on the lawn with the actual beam parts and posts so Brian and Scotty could actually see it, because I wanted to be sure that part was understood.
What worries me a little more is that the kit was apparently plotted with a 1 foot overhang (with the roof going 1 foot past the support beam) and I didn't catch this at the time. So the kit says max 2 foot overhang, which probably seemed like plenty of margin. But the overhang of my old roof started out at about 2 foot 4 inches, and because the old beam was attached to the sides of the old posts instead of above them like the design I have, the new overhang will be more like 2 foot 6 inches. Now it's in a fairly sheltered spot between two houses and under some trees, and probably the wind load won't be as high there, and we don't get much snow but still that makes me a little nervous.
But I don't see what I can do about it; the supports can't go any closer to the edge of the deck; they're already a bit on the close side, and if I move them off the deck I have to pour four concrete footings for them which doesn't strike me as trivial.
At any rate I have a day or two to think about it; Brian can't come back to put the roof up until next Saturday. Let's hope for good weather this next 8 days or so!
Aside from that I spent the whole day waiting for Brian and Scotty to show up and not wanting to leave the house because I didn't want to be gone when they got here. When I ran out of setup things I could do on my own I did the dishes and cleaned the bathroom and practiced the mandolin.
Oh--I have a mandolin teacher again! This time I made sure he could actually play the mandolin before I started. I had my first lesson on Wednesday and it was really fun. I played a few of the things I do so he could get a feel for where my skills were, and did a couple of my original pieces with mandolin countermelody so he could see what I did, and talked about how I wanted to be able to do licks and fills spontaneously and he said that old time tunes were a great resource because I could use pieces of them where they fit the song's chords and timing and I already knew how to play those tunes so I didn't have to plot them out beforehand.
He taught me three floating chords--chords played with all 3 lowest pitched strings fingered, so that you can change keys simply by moving to a new position on the fretboard. Fingering all the strings also allows you to control how long they ring, so you can get the percussive effect used in mandolin chop (playing briefly sounding chords on the off beat--chords as rhythm kind of thing). You don't play the top string or actively damp it with a finger or the edge of your hand. He taught me G, C and D and I made him stop so I could scribble them out on paper because I was pretty sure I wouldn't be able to remember them if I didn't. He said he'd been meaning to work out the minor chords but hadn't gotten around to it.
Since he wasn't going to be available this Wednesday I told him I also wanted to learn King of the Fairies which he'd played at some point to demonstrate something. It's a pretty tune and I hadn't heard it before or at least didn't recognize it. So he gave me a CD of a whistle player playing it. I figure that gives me about two weeks of work before I see him again. Me being me I started on both.
I found a song (Roll On Columbia) that uses G, C, and D but it also uses Em, and I remembered he'd said he wanted to work those out (the other two would be Am and Bm), so I did. I noticed that the floating chords he showed me all left out the fifth. In other words, the G chord notes were G and B (no D), the D chord notes were D and F# (no A) and the C chord notes were C and E (no G). So I made the minor chords the same way.
It has been a LONG time since I tried to learn that many new chords and I've never done chords so far up the neck before. It's challenging. But I am determined, and also kind of inspired.
And King of the Fairies is pretty, but complicated. I used Reaper to slow the song down to 50% so I could hear the notes better. Some of what the whistle player is doing are things I just can't do, playing quarter tones (tones in between a half step) as ornamentation and such, and also the A part doesn't stay the same on the repeat, and the B part doesn't repeat but goes straight into a C part. But it's pretty and I'm gradually picking it up.
And on top of everything else, Yonder and Back has two concerts next week; a children's one on Tuesday and one for grownups on Thursday, both of them at the library. We're picking up a lot of new material for the kid's concert and the three dearest to my heart are "Wade In The Water" "Follow the Drinking Gourd" and one I just wrote called "Juneteenth."
Juneteenth is a holiday celebrating the arrival in Texas of the news that slavery was officially ended and all enslaved people were now free and granted equal rights in law. It's mostly celebrated by the African American community but I think it's a great holiday that we all should celebrate; the end of slavery is worthy of celebration. Juneteenth is, as it happens, on the 19th of June, (though it's often celebrated on the nearest Saturday), and Tuesday is the 19th of June. I thought the kids should know about it, or if there are kids there who already know, it would be good to acknowledge it, so I wrote a song; I'll include the words here.
Juneteenth
lyrics and melody by Cat Faber
C F C
In eighteen-sixty-five, June nineteenth it did arrive
Am F Dm G
That Texas was the final state to learn that it was free,
C Em F C
When Emancipation’s reach finally hit the Texas beach,
C G7 C
And rejoicing spread from sea to shining sea.
C F
From that year to this, on the day we call Juneteenth
C F G
We celebrate the end of slavery.
F C G
When we’ve sundered every chain, every bar that may remain,
C F C G C
We will finally be a nation of the free!
C F C
Emancipation’s roar came two war-torn years before
Am F Dm G
But it didn’t cover Texas where the slavers held the reins.
C Em F C
Though by daring one in nine left captivity behind,
C G C
Still a quarter million Texans were in chains.
C F C
General Granger and his men came to Galveston and then
Am F Dm G
Came a joyful morning after that the slaves rejoicing saw
C Em F C
General Order Number Three was “all slaves are now set free,
C G C
And granted equal rights before the law!”
C F C
That was only right and fair, and we all of us should share
Am F Dm G
In the joys of life and liberty across the nation’s span
C Em F C
But though everyone should know we’ve still got a ways to go,
C G C
That day was when the journey first began.
