How to Permanently Fix the Lutheran Service Book Organists Edition

Subtitle: My parents are geniuses.

THE PROBLEM:
The Lutheran Service Book Organists Edition (Hymns) is a great book, but the spiral binding that holds the pages together is held into the cover with a piece of plastic.  After a couple years of use, this plastic, which is riveted to the cover, tears and then you have two sections of Hymnal that aren't held together in the cover anymore.

For example:

This results in frustration and ultimately destroyed or lost pages.  The cover can't do its job of protecting the pages if they're not held INSIDE the cover, now can it?

I took this problem to my parents and my dad came up with this solution:

A plate with two rods in it, the rods to go through the spirals, and the whole thing bolts to the cover where the rivets used to be.

Step 1:
Drill out the rivets on the cover.

Step 2:
Make the plate.

 - Cut the plate
 - Drill the two 10x24 holes in each end
 - Make the bends
 - Spot-weld the corners to hold everything in place (for insurance, really)

Now drill your 3 center holes.  

The bottom hole is centered exactly 1 inch above the BOTTOM of the bent plate.  This is so that the hymnal will sit flat when in use and not "rock" on the nuts holding the rods in place.

As you can see, I'm measuring on the outside of the plate.

The other two holes are, obviously, located off the first hole and will match the spacing in the hymnal cover.

I recommend attaching the plate to the cover first, then attaching the pages.  It's easier.

Put the Rods through the top set of holes, through the spirals, and through the bottom set of holes.

Attach nuts to the top & bottom of the rods to keep them in place. Voila, a Permanently Fixed Hymnal. You can get black or brass-colored fasteners to make it pretty if you want; I like mine this way.

How I Spent My Christmas Vacation

a not-so-brief essay by moi.

First, we'd just gotten a Shiny New Tradition. I'd just unwrapped it and didn't even get a chance to try it out! Our Shiny New Tradition was supposed to be Staying Home And Relaxing on Christmas Day. Only it turned out that our planned traveling day was going to be Stormy Weather, so we left on Christmas for my parents' place.

Good thing we did - the weather was terrible the next day.

We had a great time at Christmas. Seth, Heather and Ray were there as well as my parents and we had a lovely visit with them. Ray and Kai got along GREAT, as usual. :) Kai even let Ray give him a hug and kiss when it was time for them to leave.

Next, we went shopping in Traverse City for mom's New Years' Party! Woohoo! It was very cool - mom and dad took us to Old Mission Peninsula Park (a lovely drive down Old Mission Peninsula) and to the lighthouse at the end. VERY cool there - there's not only a Lighthouse, but a Historic Marker and a World War 1 & 2 monument there.










The next day was New Years' Eve, and so we went to the New Years' Eve service at church. And, thanks to my dad, I got to play the organ!
It's a very old Tracker organ. It was actually installed in the church in 1901, and originally had a hand-pumped bellows. Here's the hardware:


Neat, huh?

But wait, there's more! It's less complex (for the organist) than any other organ I've seen. No endless ranks of stops, no buttons to change stop settings, no double or triple manuals (or more)...
Just eight stops (plus Pedal Coupler - and more on THAT in a minute) and a single manual. And it's got a GREAT sound.

Looky:


Here's a closeup of the Right side stops:



And of the Left side:


See that one that says "Pedal Coupler"? It means it - if you have that activated, and push down a pedal, the corresponding manual key depresses as well! That was disconcerting...


Those aren't really "stops": they're notes for the 3 foot options. "Forte" is the pedal one pushes to get pretty much all the stops to come out. "Piano" is the one to push to make 'em all go back in (except for a few quiet stops). And "Swell" is just what you think - it's the foot rocker pedal for the Swell box to open for more volume.



I found this note a bit amusing in its pointedness. They've tried polite little notes before, but to no avail - sometimes they get over-enthusiastic guest organists that really stomp on the foot pedals and...well...as you can see, it does take its toll on the poor organ hardware!
Sorry for the blur - I was right there taking the pic. Best I could do.
The text is:
Pedal repair work was done in May '08.

It doesn't matter how hard you strike the pedals. The volume doesn't change. The trackers are old and brittle so please be gentle.

Do not wear street shoes when playing this organ.

Here's the pedals:



And check out some of the gorgeous paintwork on the pipes:








My dad rocks. I'm really glad he arranged that opportunity for me. I hadn't realized how much I'd enjoy playing that organ. That was a GREAT organ to play...now I wanna do it again! :D

Then on FRIDAY when we were out getting last-minute supplies for the party, we found this license plate:


*snicker*