The Beauty, Craftsmanship, and Unique Character of Wayne Henderson

CLAPTON'S GUITAR: Watching Wayne Henderson Build the Perfect Instrument, Allen St. John. Free Press 2006. I could not put this down! I’ve often thought certain, well-used inanimate objects, like musical instruments, could tell us some amazing stories if they only had a voice: Van Cliburn’s or Ray Charles’s piano, Miles Davis’s trumpet, Eric Clapton’s guitar. Imagine the tales! Musicians form intimate relationships with their instruments; they pour their souls into them and, with the best, their souls are reincarnated and rise into the air as music that makes our hearts soar. Bestselling author Allen St. John takes us on a personal journey to watch retired rural mail carrier Wayne Henderson, one of the world’s greatest guitar builders, make such an instrument. Henderson employs experience, creativity, and more than a little down-home ingenuity—and there’s a 10-year waiting list for his heirloom acoustic guitars. St. John writes with poetry and passion, but also with a clear eye about the process—part magic, part music, huge helping of craftsmanship in a world where friendship, laughter, old-time music, and homemade lemon pies and barbeque count for more than who has the big bucks. This book is special if you care about music and craftsmanship. A great gift idea.

Wayne Henderson

Read more about WAYNE HENDERSON, his music and his craftsmanship, plus all about the Wayne C. Henderson Music Festival and Guitar Competition held each year in Grayson Highlands State Park, Wilson, VA.: http://www.waynehenderson.org .

For more about the author ALLEN ST. JOHN: http://www.allenstjohn.com/

May the last days of August be filled with good music, good friends, and great art! 

-- Rosemary Carstens
http://www.FEASTofBooks.com

Preserving the taste, color, and memory of summer . . .

Lipstick-red tomatoes plump with juice; green slices ready to crisp up in oil for a tart, crunchy hors d’oeuvre; pear-shaped yellow ones to delight the eye; and cool salads dotted with cherry tomatoes as sweet as honey on the tongue. Chilled green, gold, and red melons, refreshing as shade on a blistering day. Raspberries, strawberries, light-as-air whipped cream on a slice of angel food cake. Fresh greens, a half-dozen varieties of garlic, spicy red and white radishes, more tomatoes, a toss of fresh basil, a dash of balsamic, a quick grate of hard cheese. These are only a few of the luscious, sensuous pleasures of summer here in Colorado. The season came in with a roar this year, going from spring to ninety-degree weather in a matter of days. I try not to think about how quickly it’ll all pass and sprigs of yellow will begin to show themselves on our trees. How to preserve at least a smidge of all that glory from the garden or your local farmer’s market? Canning is one answer.

Each June of my childhood, daddy carried my sister and brother and me outside in our jammies in the middle of the night, to return to sleep in the back of our fifties Plymouth station wagon. He and Mom would sip coffee from a thermos as we headed east from Southern California to try to cross the Arizona desert before worst of the blistering heat, then north to Moab, Utah, where daddy’s mother lived. My paternal grandmother and my aunt and uncle, plus a passel of cousins, were all Mormons. They were also farmers and both life-shaping pursuits meant that summers were spent churning butter, whipping cream, picking fruits and vegetables, canning and preserving all that could be processed as each season peaked. While it was never much of a vacation for my mother, who was expected to pitch in with the work while the men sat at ease at the end of their days, for me it was glorious. I loved the wonderful, heavily laden table we sat down to for every meal, the seemingly unlimited quantities of whipped cream, the homemade ice cream, the fruit right at hand in the fields if I wanted a snack when I hid in a haystack reading hot afternoons away. We always took home boxes of canned tomatoes, carrots, venison, okra (which I still hate to this day), pearly baby onions, and an assortment of pickles and relishes. Those gleaming, filled Mason jars seemed like art to me and their memory still shines so many decades later. They were a symbol of rootedness, of the land, of bounty, and even of love as those were happy times for me.

Today people don’t can so much, but it’s all there to be done and not as hard as one might fear. Sterling Publishing has a new book out in their Homemade Living Series that is filled with simple step-by-step directions, tips, and cautions—from tools of the trade to ingredients and resources, plus how to create a range of pickles and preserves, jams and jellies—and recipes, of course. CANNING & PRESERVING: All you need to know to make jams, jellies, pickles, chutneys & more by Ashley English is the ideal roadmap to keeping summer’s vibrancy alive long into the cold, stark months.

Take the challenge—you’ll love the results!

--Rosemary Carstens
http://www.CarstensCommunications.com

Schooner: Boating Dreams on Martha’ s Vineyard

Love boating? Always dreamed of building your own by hand? The careful, skilled craftsmanship required for the task are beautifully documented in this new book from Vineyard Stories : SCHOONER: Building a wooden boat on Martha’s Vineyard written by Tom Dunlop with photographs by Alison Shaw.

Rebecca of Vineyard Haven, a 60-foot wooden schooner designed and built by the Gannon and Benjamin Marine Railway was, at the time of her construction, the largest sailing vessel built on the island of Martha’s Vineyard since the election of Abraham Lincoln.

 Ross Gannon, left, and Nat Benjamin, the boat builders

While you might expect a book about building a boat to be a calm, step-by-step story, proceeding logically from drawings to launch, this is no ordinary tale. Drama abounds as Rebecca navigates her way through bankruptcy court, a two-year work stoppage, a change of owners due to a court-ordered auction, and many an other “high sea” on her voyage to completion.

Beyond the telling of the difficulties of taking this schooner from dream to the sea, this is a celebration of the artistry of boat builders Nat Benjamin and Ross Gannon who have thirty years of experience behind them. Theirs is one of the very few full-time boatyards in the United States devoted exclusively to the design, construction, repair, and maintenance of classic, plank-on-frame wooden boats. Nearly every part of Rebecca is built or cast or fashioned by hand.

SCHOONER goes beyond just relating how a dream of a wooden boat came true, it is a love story—about boats’ magical appeal through the ages, men and women’s longing for the sea, and, perhaps most of all, about a deep appreciation of creating things the “slow” way, hands on, in a world gone mad with its desire for instant gratification.

For more on Gannon and Benjamin Marine Railway: 
http://www.gannonandbenjamin.com/index.php

-- Rosemary Carstens
http://www.CarstensCommunications.com