26 Feb 2017, Organ factory and Modena

This week we worked in the office doing our normal duties.  On Thursday evening we went to our Navigli ward to teach piano lessons.  The primary president, who was to come at 6 pm for her first lesson, did not come, but at 7 pm my regular three students came and I taught them.  We are now on the second book, and they are playing recognizable hymns, but just the melody.  They are doing well, considering how much, or little, they practice.  Then, on Friday, with permission, we worked until 10:30 am and left to go to their apartment near Lampugnano to pick up the Salatinos. With them we drove to a small town, Azzio, about a half hour north of Varese, near Lake Maggiore and the Swiss border.

Anziano Salatino drove our car (he likes to drive), so I rode in the front passenger seat and took this picture of a big truck, from Finland, at about the place we turn onto the small country road to Azzio.

Our GPS took us down some fairly narrow roads winding through old villages.

And we parked in the almost vacant lot of this junior high school. Notice the picture near the entrance of Einstein, which I suppose is supposed to inspire the kids to stick out their tongues, and be smart.


Across the parking lot was this monument to the war dead, and a sidewalk leading down the hill. Many Italian cities have monuments to the war dead, from several wars. This was WWI.

And we found a little trattoria, named Ristorante di Giò, which made the best pizza I have had in Italy, so far.  I took this of the Salatini while we were waiting for our food to arrive.  See the balloons where they were going to have a birthday party in that upstairs room--we saw the guests arrive, with presents.

Us waiting for our lunches to arrive.  The sign on the wall is an advertisement for a carnevale (beginning of Lent) party that evening starting at 8 pm with a prize for the best mask, and featuring straccetti alla boscaiola and veal with veggies, tiramisù (dessert), wine, water and coffee, all for €25 euro. Straccetti is some type of first course (think pasta).  I didn't actually see this sign or know the name of the restaurant until I looked at this picture 2 days later.  It would have been fun to attend the party, I suppose.

After lunch we kept driving to our destination, this pipe organ factory,  Mascioni, where they have been making pipe organs since 1829.  The mountain to the left is in Switzerland, but this place is in Italy.  We were met by the owner, Andrea Mascioni, whose ggg grandfather founded the company. Unfortunately, the family line ends here, as Andrea only has a daughter, who is not interested in the organ making business.  Andrea escorted us to a nice meeting room, with two small pipe organs in it, which, unfortunately, I did not take a picture of, but I hope to go back there some time.

In this room they design pipe organs, using a computer, much like architectural designs.

This is a wood working room, the smell of which reminded Myrna of her father's workshop and made her cry.  The owner, Andrea, is standing there in the middle.  He was a very nice man, who speaks good English.

There were parts of organs, in progress, all around.  They make everything: cases, consoles, pipes, etc. from the ground up.

Following the designs, which were posted. He showed us a room full of these designs, some from the 1800s, singed by a fire that burned many in the early 1900s.  Mascioni has made about 1,500 pipe organs, which are found all over the world.  They are currently working on a new one for the cathedrals of Florence and Lugano, which must be prestigious jobs.

This organ case is going to be mounted on a back wall in a small church in Switzerland.

And already has the pedal (bass) pipes installed. The entire organ is completed, put together and played in the factory, before it is disassembled and shipped for re-assembly and final tuning.

This is another console, going in another church, on which that morning they they had just used the dark stain.

And here is the case of an antique organ from Sicily they are restoring.  They make new organs and restore old ones, some, like this one, very old. Really old ones were never very big.

Here you can see a few of the keys of the antique organ, some stops and more of the painted case, from the 1600s.

And nearby there was a console from an organ they made in 1929, which is going to be restored.

We walked past another wood working room, where beautiful hard woods were being worked.

Into this pipe making room, where this worker was soldering the end on 8 foot principal pipe.

In this room, on the end (middle), is where they melt a special mixture of tin and lead, then, when molten, they pour it on a table (actually in front with the pink paper on top), where it quickly hardens into a thin piece of pipe metal that is finished and burnished on the machine to the far left.

And then rolled around mandrals (forms) of proper diameter and soldered into pipes of appropriate lengths, into ranks (61 pipes, if that is how many keys the organ has).  An 8 foot rank has its longest pipe, low C, at 8 feet, an octave higher the C is 4 feet long, the next C (middle) is 2 feet long, and the next C is 1 foot long, etc., with the smallest about the size of a pencil

In this room they had lots of antique ranks of pipes, that had come from various organs they are restoring.

I was surprised that they had the principal rank from the Antegnati organ, made around 1598 in Brescia, which is in the old San Carlo church (there are actually two duomos in Brescia, old and new). Ten years ago Hauptwerk digitized this organ and I play it almost every day on my virtual organ set up in our apartment. So here is a picture, which Myrna took, of me holding an 500 year old pipe that I actually play, virtually. Amazing!  I later learned, from Googling a newspaper article, that it cost €230,000 for the restoration of this Antegnati organ, which was started two years ago.

Some of these 500 year old pipes are in pretty bad shape.  The factory will not melt them down and start over, they will repair them, including filling in the holes, and then re-voice them.

New or restored pipes are placed on the front of a wind chest with a keyboard beneath. There is a rank of "standard" pipes behind, which the new rank is tuned to. When a pipe is out of tune (too low), the pitch is raised by carefully cutting the end off until it is in tune, which this worker is doing. If it is too short, they don't add metal, they use it for another rank, if they can. I took videos of this process, which is interesting to listen to (noisy).

This is another voicing room, where the zio (uncle) of the owner is voicing reed (oboe) pipes.  Here he is is blowing, with his mouth, a reed (the metal shallot, sort of like a party horn inside) before taking a metal file to it.  This is a process done by ear only (no electronics) by the master voicer who, interestingly, does not play music on the organ.  In fact, the owner and none of the workers we met play the organ, although the wife of the owner is a professional organist, who plays in Venice (a long ways away).  Again, I took videos of this interesting and noisy process, but do not know how to attach videos to this blog.

Then, the owner took us to a nearby 500 year old church, which his family attends, although he admitted that he doesn't, where they recently installed a new pipe organ, so I could play an organ they made. I payed for about a half hour, while everyone watched and listened. (Myrna took a lot of videos, which turned out well.)

This is a pix inside the little church, showing the organ.  I was so excited to play the organ that I didn't take any pictures of it. I gave Myrna the camera and she took videos.  I found the above picture on the maker's website, found at Mascioni Organs.  It says it was installed in 2016, so it is a new organ.  I really enjoyed playing it and when I got back home I emailed Andrea a thank you and told him I wish it could be recorded so I could play it on Hauptwerk.  I have not yet received a response.

The Salatini asked him if there was anything else interesting in the area to see.

Andrea, the owner, said Lake Maggiore is close by and there is an old hermit's church on the cliff above water that is interesting.  We drove over and walked along the edge of the mountain to see it.

But learned that it does not open until March (next week).  You can get there by walking (a lot of steps), boat or an elevator, from the place we went.  We will, hopefully, go back.  So after that we went back to Milano, near where the Salatini live, to a new shopping center, called Il Centro, one of the biggest and newest in Italy.

To a gelataria, ice cream shop, where she was actually making my triple cone.

They had 3 chocolate fountains, from which they line the bottom of the cone: with dark, milk or white chocolate. The little round things in front looked like fluffy hamburger buns, into which they put balls of ice cream, and we saw people eating them, but did not have one, which I assume were like sponge cake.

On Saturday morning we worked in the office, because we had our P-day on Friday.  The sorelle in Modena (think basalmic vinegar) needed new mattresses for their beds (they sent me pictures to prove how stained and lumpy they were), so we went to Ikea, bought new ones (which come in a roll) for €89 each, and drove the 365 km (1.5 hours one way) to Modena to deliver them.  The sorella had made us cookies. It was a beautiful drive down the freeway.
 
Filling up the car, just outside Modena, I took this pix, at 6:30 pm. The fields are turning green and spring planting has begun.

Myrna took this pix out the front window of a bridge just as the sun was getting ready to set.

Today at church, when we got there a 8:40 am,  the bishop was out calling, on his cell phone, the elevator repair company, because the elevator that takes people up to the church, on the third floor, was stuck between floors, with people inside.  I guess they had to wait about 10 minutes to get out.

Of course, everyone else had to walk up the stairs (we usually do). but to the left of the stairs is a little lift for people in wheel chairs, etc., the natural gas meters are on the wall.

I snapped this pix in our Sunday School classroom just as Sorella Hoopes was getting ready to ask someone to say the opening prayer.  She taught the lesson today. (Our classroom has a foosball game in it, with a table on the top, which I take down and put an electronic keyboard on for my Thursday evening music classes, so we use this room a lot.)

Our English speaking class members include the Danzie family, from Texas, who have a younger daughter in Primary.  I went home teaching with Bro. Danzie this afternoon, but last week asked the high priest group leader to assign him English speaking home teaching families to whom he can go with his oldest son, Harrison, sitting on the end. The children attend an American school and are learning Italian. Harrison blessed the sacrament today and said, for the first time, the blessing on the bread in Italian (he said the one for the water on his first Sunday after becoming a Priest), without having practiced, and did a wonderful job.  I'll bet that in two or three years he will be an anziano in one of the Italian missions.

Right now we are waiting for the APs to return, so we can have a virtual birthday party for Anziano Santoro, who is now in Pordenone.  

I took his pix of the anziani, including a couple of visiting anziani (purple sweater and holding Santoro's face in front of his), with a cake Myrna had in the freezer (left over from a larger birthday cake). She made fresh brownies for everyone else, which we ate at 10:40 pm, after the APs arrived form an appointment with the visiting anziani. We called Anziano Santoro and sang to him and I sent him this pix.


Ciao for now.

19 Feb 2017, Valentines, Torino Egyptian, Varese and Baptism

The Roman emperor did not want young men to be married, because the unmarried were better soldiers, but priest Valentino married Christian couples secretly, which cost Valentino his head, and he became the saint of love.  On Valentine's day, which is celebrated in Italy, for breakfast, Myrna made heart shaped biscuits and bacon gravy, and I made scrambled eggs.

We didn't have a heart shaped cookie/biscuit cutter, so I made one from an empty tuna fish can (I had the tuna for lunch), and it worked well, as you can see.  Myrna always makes wonderful sky-high biscuits. We also didn't have any red food coloring, or they would have been pink.

I have discovered Italian fused cheese, aka, American cheese. It comes in squarish packages with plastic wrapping, just like in the US.  However, it is always white, never yellow.  No Italian cheese is yellow (they don't like artificial coloring--although Italian McDonalds have it on their hamburgers, and Italians really like them).  It is made from fusing different cheeses like mozzarella and stronger flavored cheeses, like Parmesian (although they wouldn't use real Parmesian--it costs too much).  It is relatively inexpensive and I think tastes much better than its American counterpart.  When I put it on top of a bowl of hot scrambled eggs (with cream, cooked in butter), it quickly melted right down to form a wonderful cheese sauce. I flavored and garnished the eggs with red pepper and green onion tops, grown from an old onion left in the refrigerator by Anziano Santoro (his contribution to breakfast), which was like using chives.  I thought it was pretty good, for scrambled eggs, and the biscuits and gravy were a real hit too. Some of the missionaries had never eaten biscuits with gravy, believe it or not.  We also had wonderful Italian salted butter (somewhat hard to find, most is not salted) and jam, which is also tastier than American; I like the sour cherry jam.

Every time we have a festa people like to take pictures.  Valentines was a very nice day.  Tuesday some professional painters came and painted the ceiling of our office, because there was water damage and the landlord wanted to make the renters, who moved out, pay for it.  So we decided it would be a good day for us to not be in the office.

This is how they got our office ready for painting.  I think I could have done it, without plastic, etc.  in about 15 minutes, but it took them all day.  Maybe they were paid by the hour--I don't know, the former renters were paying and we weren't here to watch what they did.

Since the DeAngelis couple returned home, we are now the senior couple for the apartments in Torino, which is two hours away, by freeway.  They made changes in the living arrangements there and needed two beds, comforters, night stands, book cases, etc. So we loaded up Big Bertha (the mission's largest vehicle), and drove to Torino on Wed.  This was the missionary's p-day, and they didn't want to see us until after lunch.

We found a place to park Big Bertha and walked around downtown Torino, past these two "landmark" churches in this piazza, which I remember well from 51 years ago. (This is where I saw, and took pictures of, nuns looking at wedding dresses in a shop window--I wonder what ever happened to that slide).

And, of course, we went into an old church to check out the organ, which I don't know whether it works or not--I didn't see an electronic.  It looks okay, from a distance.

But close up, the 8 foot principal pipes look pretty sad-wonder what they sound like, if at all?

That church is behind Myrna--in front of her is the world famous Egyptian museum of Torino, which is the biggest display of Egyptian artifacts outside Egypt.  One of the Italian kings, in the 1800s, was fascinated by Egyptian stuff and sent expeditions to get (steal?) it, and now it is in a museum in Torino. We only had two hours to spend there, but could have spent more.  For the €13 admission fee, they give you a little player on which you dial the number of what you are seeing and it tells you all about it, in English or whatever language you dial.  The signs are in Italian, English and Arabic.

To begin with there are halls and halls of unwound Egyptian papyrus writings, which reminded me of what Joseph Smith translated the Pearl of Great Price from.  Actually, what he used came to the US through Trieste, in north-east Italy.  Egyptian stuff was the rage in the 1800s, even in America.

There were parts with pictures.

And parts with mostly writing, which Egyptologists claim they can accurately translate these days.

There were old photographs of how they dug up the stuff in Egypt during the late 1800s and early 1900s. I remember going to this museum 51 years ago, but it was not as large or impressive, or as high tech, as it is today.

They dug up graves like this, finding all sorts of stuff buried with the dearly departed. Apparently the dry sandy conditions are ideal for preserving things, like skin, etc.

And they display the stuff they found.  Over the centuries, including as early as Greek times, tons of these artifacts were robbed from graves, and melted down to make other artifacts, like crucifixes in Catholic churches, etc.

The Egyptians made mummies from the dearly departed, because it helped them get into the afterlife, but you had to be rich to be able to afford a decent mummification.  It was hard to take pictures in this museum, although it was permitted, because the light was so dim and there was heavy glass (with glare) in front of things.

This kid was waiting his turn to become a mummy, which apparently never happened. The ancient Egyptians were obsessed with having a good afterlife, and about everything they did had to do with ensuring their happiness in the al di là (hereafter.)

They liked to make figurines of various sizes, from tiny to life size.

And there were many displays of figurines, so you could see what Egyptian daily life was like.

Engaging in doing all sorts of things, like rowing boats and making bread.

There were different races of people in ancient Egypt, and they had slaves, including the Israelites, who built pyramids, etc. I wonder if the Israelites were lighter skinned than the Egyptians. (This picture is probably not of Israelites.)  I believe that the ancient Egyptian kings had black skin, from Egyptus of Abraham's time.


They found items of clothing very well preserved, like this pleated linen gown (they had many on display).

And household items like the hand mirror (round object) and headrest, which we saw later on as part of their beds.

According to the sign, these were figurines to help with re-birth in the afterlife. These are from almost 2,000 BC, which is sort of a long time ago.

It was hard to take pictures of the descriptive signs, but I tried to, to help me remember what I was seeing.

There were lots of rooms featuring different aspects of life in Egypt, which evolved for about 4 or 5 thousand years. Again, I was impressed with how long they were a powerful nation.

When they had statues made, the rich folk were shown with idealized bodies, and there were a lot with couples.  I think women were of higher status in Egypt than in Greece or Rome, where their statues also had idealized bodies, not what they really looked like--maybe somewhat the faces.

The Italians brought back a complete grave room and reconstructed it.

This is a description of the above.  Italian was written above, and you can see the Arabic translation below.

There was a large room with these mummy cases, caskets or sarcophagus (how do you pluralize this word), which I learned interesting things about, from the sign below.

The headsets did not tell us what we could read, we listened to different information, so it was very informative.

These sarcophagusses were of many shapes and sizes.

Some with writing on the inside.  Maybe the guy's laundry list was on the left.

Speaking of laundry, this is some guy's underwear, put in his grave so he could have some in the next life. Who wants to be without undies?

And with his mark, so it wouldn't get mixed up with his neighbor's at the riverbank laundrymat. Oh look, is that a baby floating by!

See the little Italian boy in the right with the headset; his was not like ours.  There were many groups of school kids, who had these green ear phones, so their teacher could talk with them as they went along seeing the sights.

This Egyptian bed does not look very comfortable, see the headrest on the left end.

Here is some Egyptian food from 4,000 years ago

Described here.  They had sort of a boring diet, I think.

These are oil containers.

Described here.

The Egyptians could make glass too.

As described here.

These were metal items in a work room, perhaps being used to reassemble jewelry.

This is a description of bronze casting in ancient Egypt.  They were pretty advanced, which was a lost art for many centuries, although I believe the Book of Mormon says the Nephites knew how to make this sort of stuff, perhaps learned from the Egyptians, from whom they also learned to write, e.g., Reformed Egyptian.
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These vases caught my eye, they look oriental to me, but were from ancient Egypt.

These little fertility gods reminded me of those found in South America.

The lighting was a little better, so this picture was less blurry.  This guy is standing on a crocodile, which the Egyptians also worshiped.

They liked their cats, and other animals--some were mummified so they could have them in the afterlife.

Another view of the casketarria.

This museum was very modern, although it was apparently made from an old Italian office building or palace.  I noticed the ceiling above the lighting in this casket room, and could see the old Italian frescos from the room's former life.

There was a large room full of these large solid stone figures.

Like this one, again a couple, but of the king and a son (idealized beards).

To show how large some were I took this pix of my left hand near the king's foot.

Myrna is a blur in the left corner of the Hall of the Kings.

They know who this guy was, I had even heard of him, but can't remember his name now. (It wasn't King Tut.)

More mummies with their caskets.  This must be sort of what Joseph Smith saw and was able to get the papyrus from.  I think the writings translated for the Pearl of Great Price was on the mummy's chest or midsection, as this one has.

People have been robbing Egyptian graves for centuries.They found this Greek helmet laying around.

I can't remember why they had these Roman-age death masks and paintings, but the two paintings I remember seeing in my college art history book (Janson's).  I believe these are the originals.

There was a large gift shop where you could buy souvenirs.

This is the inner courtyard of the Egyptian museum, to the right, showing how it is sandwiched within a lot of other old buildings in downtown Torino.

On the day we went, Wed, 15 Feb, there were a lot of school classes visiting the museum, but I didn't want to get too obvious in my picture taking of the cute little kids and their "professors."

We had to park about 1.5 km from the museum to stay out of the ZTL (zona traffica limitata) where parking without a permit can get you a €175 fine.  To find our way back to the car, I took a few pix of landmarks, like the statue in the middle of the upcoming intersection.  Downtown Torino is, like all large Italian cities, very busy and with parking at a premium.  People park on sidewalks and double park all the time, sometimes not even with their hazard lights on, which is the typical way Italians park to go into a cafè to get a tiny cup of coffee.

This was an interesting street, see the streetcar tracks, which were being used, along with buses.

There is an important church at the end of this street, I believe on the banks of the Po River, which flows through Torino, as I remember from 51 years ago.

We passed this close to the Mole Antonelliana of Torino, the tallest museum in the world.  It was begun in 1863 to be a Jewish synagogue, but they fought with the architect and ran out of money, and it now houses a museum of cinema.  Maybe on another trip we can see it, along with the nearby museum of the automobile.  I think that Eric would like to see that, including the Italian race cars.

From the sublime to the mundane--a broken missionary bed we replaced in Torino. We stopped at a shopping center and had lunch at the food court before our trip home.

Then, on Thursday we were asked to buy a memory foam mattress topper for a missionary in Verese, who was suffering from backache.  We went to IKEA and spent €99 on one, which we took up to him.  Varese is about an hour north of here, and we had never been there.  The day was beautiful, warm and spring-like, especially for a place this near the snow covered Swiss alps, which we could clearly see.

These are the anziani coming from their apartment in Varese to help us carry their stuff from our car.

This is the other apartment building on the other side of Varese, in which we are renting an apartment, we are now going to close because they discontinued the branch there.  It now takes the missionaries 1.5 hours to get to Muggiò for church.  I took lots of pictures so we could remember how much stuff we have to go up there to bring back to the storage room under the mission office.

Like beds, dressers, book cases, desks, chairs, fans, etc.

This is the bathroom, which was left fairly clean by the departing sisters, except for the muffo on the ceiling. We also own the washing machine. I hope.

This mold will take some elbow grease, and bleach, to remove--hope the ceiling will not need to be re-painted, to get our deposit back.

On Friday we mostly stayed in the office, but went to Metro to buy a supply of Oreo cookies for Sister Allen to give the missionaries while waiting for their interviews with President. I also bought some porcini mushroom flavored dadi (cubes) of broth, which makes wonderful risotto. On Saturday we went to a shopping mall we had not been to, and I bought a pair of brown (real) leather walking shoes from Deichmann, a German shoe chain (biggest in Europe), and a new brown leather belt. The shoes were €39.99 and the belt was only €9.99.  I need to start walking again, now it has warmed up and perhaps spring is on its way.  We learned, from IMOS, about three senior couples (one is David's Megan's parents' neighbor in Sandy, UT) called to our mission, one of whom will replace us in the office. On Saturday, I was asked to play the piano for a baptism that started at 4:30 at our ward, and we were there early (had to park across the navigli, and cross the bridge because there was no parking near the church) so I could play the prelude.  The baptism actually started at 5:05 (we have never attended a baptism that started on time, have you?), so I played for a long time. The young man being baptized was from the Philippines, and speaks English better than Italian, so was taught in English, but baptized in Spanish, the prayer for which which the missionary slaughtered, but the Spanish speakers (from South America, including the bishop of our ward), okayed it, so I guess it was fine. Unfortunately, the baptizee did not show up today, which was ward conference, for his confirmation, so the missionaries have some finding to do. They said they have never been to where he lives; he always met them somewhere else, or at the church, and he had attended church.  I hope he has a good excuse for not coming today--he is a nice kid who seems sincere.  Ward conference was interesting.  Our first counselor moved with his family to Los Angeles, CA, last year and has not yet been replaced.  Today, during the business, they made the second counselor the first, but, to our surprise, did not sustain a new counselor, so the poor bishop is still without one. Myrna prepared the Sunday School lesson for today, but the Danzie family (English speaking with teenage kids, who attend our Sunday School class) did not come today, so we attended the gospel principles class, taught by Fratello Giuseppe Angiulli, which included a role play--about Adam and Eve, interesting. In priesthood meeting we learned our stake's average for home teaching is only 13% and sacrament meeting attendance is 34%, so there is a lot of reactivation work to do.

Ciao for now.