Synodical Nonsense

The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod is currently in dire financial straits. They are removing missionaries from the mission field due to lack of funding...and yet, the Synod has decided that it's absolutely necessary to spend thousands of dollars on a frivolous lawsuit trying to "protect" a trademark that they abandoned in 1999.

In reality, what they're doing is trying to restrict Issues, Etc. from saying anything that's not Sanitized By Synod.
Please, anyone who's reading this and is a member of the LC-MS, go here http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/trademark/ and let the Synod know what you REALLY Think of this.

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*

More updates

Another update on, guess what, yeah, my ankle. Oh come on, you can't pretend you're surprised. That's pretty much what's occupying my time lately, innit?

Anyway. ANOTHER significant piece of progress today - I climbed the stairs to the balcony at church! All 17 of them! Yes, of course I counted. Did you really expect anything different? Anyway, I made it up with the help of the handrail and the cane. I practiced on the organ, and I figure I should be OK to play and back up to speed by the time August rolls around. AND I got to play my flute for service today! Yay!

The sermon today, by the way, was excellent. Pastor talked about the Parable of the Sower (it was the Gospel lesson.) He pointed out that there's always time for us to not only be the fertile soil, but to fall back into being the rocky, weed and thorn-choked soil. But Christ saves us from that! We have to be careful not to compare our "thorns" to someone else's, though. What seems easy to us (their thorns) is very difficult for them - and our very-difficult-to-deal-with-thorns are probably no big deal for someone else. I always appreciate his sermons; they get us to look just a little bit differently at the readings, and get us out of the "well, of course this is what that means because it's always meant just that."

Immerse yourself in the Word, and by the grace of God you will be fertile soil. Thanks be to God!

MUCH more progress!

I spent FAR more time in the pool yesterday than I have so far - and way more than I'd planned on. BUT, we had People Over (Hi Wade! Hi Rosemary! Hi Luke! Hi Naomi!) and so we had fun in the pool. I was very careful, and I still did my laps and stuff, though. Last night Kev started The Great Cane Search. He found one that we'd bought as sort of an "emergency just in case" cane that folds up, and set it up for me for "whenever".
Well, me being me, I had to try it out right away. It was rather hard going, and I had to hang on to him as well as the cane at first, but I found out I was Doing It Wrong. I had the cane on my right side - apparently the thing is supposed to be on the opposite side of the injured leg. Okay, whatever, seems counterintuitive but bygolly it works. I tried it out this morning the "right" way and OHMYGOSH it is sooooooooo much easier than using the walker!!!

Now I have to concentrate on "gait" and make sure my foot actually flexes and bends at the ball, pushing off the right way, instead of sorta sliding sideways and pushing off with the inside of my foot.
I'm so happy - if I can do the cane all day today without pain or problem, then I'll try it again tomorrow. And if I can use a CANE tomorrow, I can get up into the balcony (cane and handrail) where I belong, dangit. Of course, that's going to make going down to Communion problematic. One thing at a time. :D