Shirlene is home

Shirlene Reed's gallbladder surgery was successful. She is home now.

Organ Dedication

Today the Norma Elizabeth McKinley organ was dedicated with a recital by guest organist David Powers. We had a large crowd that included members of our own parish and a lot of old friends. Most stayed for quite a while at the reception that followed the dedication ceremony.

Mike McKinley, who generously donated the organ in memory of his wife, was unable to attend because of health problems, but the family was represented by his son and daughter-in-law.

The organ is an electronic organ, but if you are imagining something that sounds fake, the recital was quite a surprise. The first thing we heard were chimes. Later in the recital, Powers showed off the clarinet and harpsichord voices. Modern electronic organs get their voices by taking digital samples of musical instruments and storing them, so when the organist calls for a particular sound, it is not a synthetic guess. It is an actual representation of a particular harpsichord. It was all very impressive.

Bob Reed is home

Bob Reed is home from the hospital and doing well. He was at church Sunday, but (understandably) feeling very weary after his surgery.

Mike McKinley is Home

After suffering a heart attack last Saturday night and receiving a pacemaker, Mike McKinley is now home. He's not ready to receive visitors yet, but he's doing well.

Two big building improvements

Exterior paint

The exterior painting got finished this week. Our excellent, honest Amish painters were able to do the job for less money than their original estimate, so the final bill was substantially less than we expected.

Note on the painting
You may wonder why the church building doesn't look that much better! This is because the whole building did not get painted. (We didn't have the money for that.) The west side of the sanctuary (facing Mifflin Avenue) and the south side of the building got done. Those areas were peeling to the point where bare wood was exposed, but when you park your car and walk up to the building, you don't normally see those sides. The north side of the building (which you do see as you walk in) is showing dirt and wear, but at least it is still protecting the wood underneath, so we postponed doing that painting.

Landscaping

When I went by the building on Thursday afternoon, the place looked a bit like a desert. All the overgrown old foliage had been torn out and Brandon had just begun putting in the new plantings. There was no mulch yet, and the ground was pretty dry, increasing the desolate look. Friday's weather was excellent for outdoor work, and today's looks to be good too, so I expect Sunday morning to bring a really nice appearance. I don't know what his completion date is, but I would be surprised if the project went more than another week.

We got two unexpected little bonuses from this project. Near the Parish Hall door, there is now a small plaque saying that the plantings were in loving memory of a former Parish member. I didn't recognize the name, and there had been no talk of this being a memorial garden, so it was a puzzle. The answer was that the plaque had been buried deep in the foliage and forgotten and Brandon only found it when he began pulling out old plants. So now we have a memorial garden, not just a better looking entrance-way.

The other bonus is that the stained glass windows in the sanctuary, the ones behind the altar, had been blocked by overgrown plants. Now they get full sun all the way to the bottom, giving the room more light and color. It's a noticeable difference.

Changes are starting to get visible

We have made a lot of changes around the church building in the last year:

• Revamped and upgraded electric system.
• New kitchen stove
• New roof on the sanctuary
• Several new doors

A problem, though, is that all of these changes are invisible. Few people go into the furnace room to gaze at (and rejoice in) the new fuse box, and the new roof is exactly the same color as the old one. Even the next big expense item, painting the church exterior, will be invisible because we're having it done in exactly the same brown color as previously. If you don't spend much time in the kitchen, you don't remember the fire-hazard monster that was our previous stove, so you might not even notice that we have a new one. (Fittingly, the old one's name was Vulcan, the Roman god of fire and volcanos.) People who are sensitive to music will probably realize that the new organ is an enormous improvement, but the new one looks pretty much the same as the previous one (and our organists got good at working around the problems of the old one, so a casual listener did not realize that our unique sound came from the organ's inability to play certain notes).

All that is about to change.

The first small visible change is new signs pointing to the church entrance. On Grubby Sunday, the church doors will get a coat of red paint. The big visible change, though, will be the new landscaping, which is scheduled to start appearing this week. Brandon Nardo is doing the work, and his design will give us a continual change of color so there is really no "dead" season for our plantings.

For the future

The Planting for Tomorrow money that is coming in will go toward the paint and the landscaping, but we need to pay attention (and soon) to the parking lot and the floor in the Parish Hall. Once again, unspectacular—we're trying to catch up to years of deferred maintenance.

But why?

Some of the repairs have been very pragmatic. If you want to keep a wooden building, you have to deal with fire hazards (such as the wiring and the stove) and weather hazards (which explains our need for paint and roofing).

There's more, though. If you visit a restaurant that a friend recommended and the place is shabby, with holes in the parking lot and a floor that is falling apart, you might not want to come back. And if the entrance is difficult to find and intimidating, you might not even go in at all. The Vestry is thinking of these things and wants to make St. Matthew's a more pleasant, inviting place.

New organ!

Today was the first day for the new digital organ! (Honestly, there was a question whether the old console would make it another month.)

It sounded fine, and even with a few glitches (there are a lot more bells and whistles to manage) we're sure it will be a great addition to the sanctuary. The ordinary observer sitting in the pews cannot see any difference whatsoever, so the difference is all in the hearing. No more odd moments when a key sticks and the note continues to sound. No more times when the organist presses a key and nothing happens at all.

The Organ Committee is planning a proper dedication and recital, with guest organists and a big invitation to the community. (The date will depend on availability of the artists.) We're also looking into ways to use the new organ at other times, perhaps for such things as guest recitals and evening programs.