Nov. 11: Remembrance Day in many countries.

Remembering the Gifts of our Fallen Comrades :
hope from the horrors of war.

( Each picture can be clicked for really good information.)

Because of increasing scandals and doubts concerning why countries go to war, we are tempted to hate everything to do with the military. It is true that it is always the innocent that pay for the greed of the powerful guilty. Any decent historian will admit that the people and soldiers in the armies of "the bad guys" were also misled and abused by a handful of truly evil people.

Nonetheless, what Julius Ceasar said "If you want peace, prepare for war" (Si vis pacem, para bellum) remains true and many of the freedoms and comforts we take for granted today, especially in Europe, can be traced to the horrors of many wars. I fully respect and admire Ghandi for saying that winning these can happen without war - admitting that there would be terrible suffering both ways - but how can we know what could have been? The only thing we can know is what we have today, and how far too many soldiers died (or worse) in order to secure it.

Three things should be clearly understood about the Canadian Military:

1. Canada invented Peacekeeing and the UN Peacekeeping Force.
   (We were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for it! )
2. ALL Canadian soldiers are volunteers: we have no compulsory service, no required registration.
3. By tradition and history: 
   1. we never initiate combat, 
   2. we keep away from hostilities as much as we can, 
   3. when we do engage in hostile operations, the first and last motive is to ensure peace and safety for the local people: NOT victory for any one country.

Yes, we have our share of war crimes (see here), but our military reflects our first and most important value: all people should be helpful and friendly good neighbours. I believe this is because of our winters: if you slip and fall on the ice, I don't care if you are white, black, Chinese, Indian with a feather in your hair or a dot on your forehead; I don't care if you're a man or a woman, Catholic or Jewish or Sikh or any variety of Islam; or even if you speak English, French, Suomi, Italian, Afrikaans, Urdu or Farsi: I will help you up because tomorrow I might need your help, should my plumbing freeze and break! We are implicitly multicultural and we manage to make it work reasonably well: and you will see all these people in our regiments wearing our uniforms together.

This picture shows all the regimental insignia I wore as part of my duties. I must confess that I was a reserves bandsman: in other words, I was a part-time soldier (weekend-warrior) and my trade was to perform music, sitting down on a stage or marching in the streets in all safety. However, I did real military training including Combat Leadership alongside people who did serve in combat roles, who did have bullets buzzing by their ears, grenades thrown at them and mortar fired at their vehicles. I can tell you that I have never met kinder or more generous souls than I did in these people; I did serve with people who were wounded in combat situations.

I also served as instructor on military training and I think I should tell this story. This was years ago and I forgot his name, but we had one recruit who was absolutely terrible on the parade square, he could not stand straight or keep still and was confused doing drill. However, when we went to do field training in the woods, he was the most quiet, sneaky and skilled soldier any of the instructors had ever seen! We asked him why and he told us his story:

He was an immigrant to Canada (granted full citizenship), having been a child-soldier in Libya! He said he thought the Canadian military was wonderful because we teach our soldiers to work together as a team and help each other: in Libya, his training had consisted of being given a rifle, sent to combat and he would get his Private's stripe if he survived!  He saw his village get destroyed by guerrillas and I don't remember how he got out, but as a result, his greatest wish when immigrating was to join the Canadian Forces!

Stories like that, and people I know who actually lived in Tehran when Iraq bombed Iran for 10 years (well known and openly documented fact) show quite clearly that we, in Canada, the U.S.A. and much of Europe have no clue at all what are the horrors war: I pray we never find out - I pray we never cause anyone to feel like war is the only recourse left!

Pre-Gouging and tootH yanking…

I capitalized that H because apparently I forgot it on a Tweet and got some good laughs!

First – human (caused) tragedy:

What is happening in Libya right now can cause a lot of anger, for different reasons, directed at completely different “camps”. Regardless of the camp, this can result in anger, fear and pain. I firmly believe that what the general population is told about the motivations is, at best, a load of half-truths. So I beseech everyone, regardless of your political opinions to simply speak for and keep your mind set on a peaceful resolution of the current situation.
I did serve the Canadian Armed Forces: I am Combat Leadership certified. More on that some other time, but I did serve 8 years with pride and honour.
The image to the right is from the War Amps: an organization that raises money to help children with amputated limbs and their families. The image with the downturned rifle is the Canadian Armed Forces’ symbol for mourning dead soldiers (“fallen comrades”). The organization uses this as a logo for their efforts to sensitize people to the horrors of (all) war and to the importance of trying to avoid it and find peaceful solutions to critical situations. Some of you will argue in favour of action to prevent worse trouble: history has yet to show this works at all.

One wisdom tooth gone!

The operation went really well. The “deep sedation” (getting me to sleep) was quick and efficient and the wake-up process went quickly and well. The extraction took an hour, but evidently without problems: today (approx. 48 hours later) no pain, no swelling. 2 weeks to oboe! In the mean-time, prepare reeds for scraping!

Pre-Gouging: the conception of an oboe reed!

I was surprised, during the summer, to read LOTS of questions and discussions about pre-gouging. My wife took some excellent photos and I will use them to explain: many more can be found on her Flickr photostream. In a nutshell, “gouging” cane is giving it the right thickness and inner curve and “pre-gouging” is only about getting a piece of raw can to fit the gouging machine…. that’s all!

To me, the most important criterion for cane selection is flatness: this will greatly determine how “freely” the reed vibrates. Arching inwards will choke the reed and cause leaks close to the binding. Arching outwards will make the blades separate: I got excellent reeds with this, but they are usually difficult on endurance. I don’t care so much about “straightness” (side to side) as this will be cancelled by the shaping.

Most references and stores only mention splitting in 3. For me, the inspection of flatness sometimes shows that it is possible to get 2 flat sides that would ruined by splitting in 3. Fully flat splits are not always possible, so I just aim for the best possible and choose to split in 2 or 3 depending on which will yield closest to flat.

      

The images below show:

1. Split lengths from a canon (tube cane) split in 2, split in 3 and pre-gouged.
2. The split-only cane in the machine: it can work, but risks jamming the machine and messing-up the delicate adjustments.
3. The pre-gouged cane: much easier to gouge.

In terms of quality of cane the important factors are:

1. density and “health” of the grains: hard to tell before scraping – I’ve lately made great reeds with canes of almost all hard/softness
2. flatness of the final cut
3. diameter and thickness of the selection

The thickness of cane will be the subject of another blog post (on gouging). As for the diameter, these pictures show that what looks like a HUGE difference in diameter can be as little as 1mm or 0.5mm. In fact, I consider the arc more important than the diameter because, in an ovoid tube, the diameter can be misleading, especially if you’re using drop-in rulers to measure it.

    

The pre-gouging demonstrations above work equally well with canons split in 2 or 3. I only have difficulty when a canon turns out to have a diameter for English Horn: a bigger pre-gouger (especially for E. H.) is required for that. In many internet guides on reed making, they show chopping the cane before pre-gouging it. I prefer the opposite because:

1. it is easier to chop after the cane is thinned,
2. some split cane lengths can produce 2 pieces for reed making, but the chopping first requires preparation that can ruin it.

For chopping, I removed the guillotine from my beaten-up old gouging machine and made a wood-base for it. The reason is mostly that I could make a fixed-length stopper at the end, making it easier to measure the cut. The base does not need any degree of precision at all (±1.5mm is good enough) and the side bar allows it to take the pushing force from my hand more easily. The guillotine blade needs to be sharpened once in a while, but its nothing precise at all. The gouging is the really sensitive part.

The above images show: (left) cutting a little bit off the end to keep the flatter part in the middle; (center) sometimes, 2 pieces of reed cane can be obtained from the same split length; (right) again, what counts most of all is correctly centering the cut to keep the flattest part.
Other than the above, I pretty well keep all cane, soft or hard, twisted or straight. The reason is that I have it, might as well use it. If it does not work out to be a good reed, well I only lost a few hours of my time. But throwing away the potential for a fantastic reed is a horrible thing!