One Small Step

Fifty years ago today, July 20th, 1969, two human beings on board the lunar module, Eagle, landed on the Moon.  Six hours and 39 minutes later, on July 21st, Neil Armstrong, Commander of the Apollo 11 Mission, would step out onto the moon's surface, and into history, becoming the first person to walk on the moon.  He made the profound observation, "one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind".  

The historic, life-as-we-knew-it-would-never-be-the-same events were transmitted to earth in blurry, black and white images, watched by an estimated 650-million television viewers around the world...but not by me.  The night of the moonlanding, my 12 year old girlfriends and I were hanging out on a gravel playground at Sperling Avenue Elementary School in North Burnaby, fascinated by an ant hill in the making.  It was a balmy Summer night, and still light out.  I glanced up at the moon, did the pre-teen eye roll, and sarcastically said, "what took 'em so long?"  I could smack myself!

I am grateful that my pre-teen studied ennui gave way to a grown up sense of awe.  There's so much to discover, from the tiniest nanoparticle, to distant galaxies - and it's all fascinating!

  

After a brief walk on the moon, Armstrong was joined a few minutes later, by Buzz Aldrin, and the two American astronauts began taking selfies - Armstrong capturing his own image in the reflective visor of Aldrin's space helmet.  They also gathered up about fifty pounds (21.5kg) of moondust and minerals to take back to the earth lab for study.  They spent less than 24 hours on the moon, yet it must have seemed like an eternity for the third astronaut on the mission, Michael Collins, who was all alone, way out in lunar orbit, piloting the command module, Columbia. 

The footprints left behind, are still there.  The moon has no atmosphere, so there's no wind or water to erode the footprints away.  There are no volcanoes, either.  There are meteor showers, and there is the rare possibility of a meteor striking the moon's surface, just where the footprints are located, destroying them. There are also solar winds, which move particles very slowly over the surface of the moon.  Future astronauts and lunar tourists will have to tread carefully, so as not to destroy the footprints, and efforts are afoot to preserve and protect the area of the first moon landing.

There is another footprint mankind has left behind...the ugly kind.  Two hundred tonnes of space debris and human waste from five decades of lunar exploration, litters the moon.  The crashed spacecraft, robots, research equipment, good luck coins and earthly memorabilia, were left behind by American, Soviet, European, Chinese, Japanese, and Indian missions.  Just as they've done on Mount Everest, human beings have scarred the pristine landscape.  

We have a multitude of crises on planet Earth: hunger, disease, pollution, corruption.  It is often said, "we can get a man on the moon, but we can't...(fill in the blank)".  It is also said that the technology and know how are there, or can be created to meet the need;  what's lacking is vision, and will...and one small step...

In 1961, when US President, John F. Kennedy addressed Congress, he boldly announced his intention to do what had never been done before, "I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth."  Kennedy admitted, "no single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish."  In unifying his nation, he added, "in a very real sense, it will not be one man going to the Moon - if we make this judgement affirmatively, it will be an entire nation.  For all of us must work to put him there."

In less than a decade, man walked on the Moon, proving that anything is possible, when there is a will and commitment to make it happen.

Hauntingly Beautiful Music

Nothing says, "Happy Halloween", like a headless lady in a cemetery.  I walked past her on a cold, dreary day last October, and felt a real chill down my spine.  She's the blind sentry, keeping vigil at the top of a small hill, within Toronto's Mount Pleasant Cemetery.

There's an eerie sadness about this gravesite statue.  She marks the grave of a baby boy, and other family members who were later buried with him.  Part of the inscription reads, "In loving memory of Peter Hall infant son of Howard C and Margaret Heintzman.  Died Feby (the old abbreviation for February) 9th 1928".  He was ten months old.  

It is unusual to have such an elaborate headstone (now headless headstone) for an infant.  I wondered, walking back through the park a year later, on a bright, sunny October morning, if her head had been vandalized, or damaged by time and weather.  I also wondered if her head had ever been replaced.  It hadn't.  Which got me asking questions about the headless statue, and the Heintzman family...cue the hauntingly beautiful sounds of piano music... 

Peter Hall was the infant Great Grandson of Theodore August Heintzman, founder of the world famous piano manufacturing company which bears his name to this day.

Theodore was born in Berlin, Germany in 1817.  He went to work in a piano factory, and married his employer's daughter, Mathilde Emilie Louise Grunow.  In 1850, when some of her family moved to America, the couple set sail.

Another piano maker was on the same ship, and by the time they landed in New York City, Heintzman and Heinrich Engelhard Steinweg went into business together.  They soon parted, with Heintzman taking his family to Buffalo, New York, and Steinweg changing his name to Steinway.  For Heintzman, the piano business in the months leading to the American Civil War, was a failure.  With war coming, no one was buying pianos.  So, he moved his family across the border to Canada.

He built his first pianos in his married daughter's Toronto kitchen, working with his son-in-law.  By 1866, he had founded Heintzman and Company, building good solid pianos for Toronto's growing families.  Heintzman pianos gained an international reputation for quality, when Queen Victoria heard a performance at Royal Albert Hall, and was heard to say, "I didn't realize that such beautiful instruments could be made in the colonies!" 

Within two years of Queen Victoria's endorsement, Heintzman was employing 200 craftsmen, and building one thousand pianos a year.  They were one of the biggest manufacturers in Canada. Heintzman pianos were winning awards at international exhibitions in Britain and North America.

Theodore August Heintzman died in Toronto in 1899, leaving two of his sons to take over the business.  Within three years, they were making rare transposing pianos, also called composer pianos, where the entire keyboard could slide to the left or right, and change keys!  By 1904, they began making grand pianos - nine foot grand pianos!  In the 1920s, tall Heintzman upright grand pianos, and player foot-pumped pianos were also popular.

 For more than one hundred years - from 1866 to 1978 - the Heintzman company made its home in Toronto.  Then, in 1978, the company moved its factory to Hanover, Ontario, where it stayed until 1986.  That was the year they moved to Beijing, China!

The Heintzman Crystal Piano, built in Beijing, is known as the world's most expensive piano.  It recently sold at auction for 3.22 million dollars US!  Kinda blows your mind...

I imagine that baby Peter Hall Heintzman's few short months on earth, were filled with the sounds of piano music.  It seems appropriate to select piano music, and turn up the volume on your iphone, when walking past his gravesite.  Not because you're scared - just keeping the spirit of music alive!

I still do not know how the statue lost her head, and why it has not been repaired...For now, it remains a mystery...and doesn't everyone love a Halloween mystery?

A postscript to this story:  The baby and his Great Grandfather, piano company Patriarch, Theodore August Heintzman appear to have been buried together.  I found a photograph that I had missed in writing this blogpost, and discovered that the right side of the statue, has an inscription for T. A. Heintzman and his wife, her name altered slightly to Mathilde Amelia Louisa.

It is odd, that having passed long before the baby, their names are found on the side of the headless statue, not on the front.  It is possible that their names were added afterwards, or included in baby's headstone.

Photographs Copyright of:  Ruth Adams, Widow's Endorphins Photographic Images Incorporated.



Did you notice the Oscar Peterson Roses, and the musical note vase for the white hydrangeas?

Rainy, Foggy Days

It's that time of year when Autumn's vibrant colours are set against a backdrop of slick black, smokey greys, and muted greens.  Maple leaves, on my walk through Squirrel Alley, as my friend calls it, look like a Japanese print - the rain reviving the bold crimson, orange, amber, yellow and green on the deep black and silver surface of the pathway. 

Bougainvillea against the fog shrouded trees.  The vibrant colour is muted in the low light, allowing the veins of the paper thin flowers to show off.  As the fog dissipates, the vibrant magenta colour becomes bolder.  

The last rose to bloom on my balcony.  A lone Oscar Peterson rosebud, braving a near freezing late October day.  This last rosebud is different from the rest - the piano key white never revealed itself. The last rose is the palest apricot, pink and yellow.  As the curtain draws on the show season, the Oscar Peterson rose takes a quiet bow.

Photographs Copyright of:  Ruth Adams, Widow's Endorphins Photographic Images Incorporated.

Oscar Peterson Rose

Rosa Oscar Peterson, with petals the colour of piano ivory, and stamens the colour of candlelight, is the 2016 rose in the Canadian Artists Series.  Named in honour of Canadian jazz legend, and eight time Grammy Award winner, Oscar Peterson, the hardy, continually performing rose is bred for Canadian Winters.

Born August 15, 1925 in Montreal's St. Henri (Little Burgundy) neighbourhood, to parents from St. Kitts and British Virgin Islands, Oscar Emmanuel Peterson, was the fourth of five children. He played the trumpet, until tuberculosis forced him to take up piano at the age of seven.  His eldest brother, sixteen year old Fred, did not survive the disease.

Oscar's father, a porter with Canadian Pacific Railway, was his first music teacher.  Later, Oscar's sister, Daisy - a Montreal piano teacher - provided classical music training.  In 1940, he won a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation national music competition, and at the age of 14, dropped out of school to become a professional pianist, with a weekly radio show, and bookings in hotels and concert halls.

In his more than sixty-five years of performing, Oscar Peterson was, and is considered to be one of the greatest jazz pianists.  Louis Armstrong called him, "the man with four hands", and Duke Ellington called him, "Maharaja of the keyboard".  He released over 200 recordings, my personal favourite being his signature, Night Train.  Another Canadian, jazz pianist Diana Krall heard her destiny, listening to that recording.

The Oscar Peterson rose begins as a creamy apricot bud, tipped in deep coral pink.  It unfurls into a brilliant white, pink edged, semi-double flower, with a golden yellow centre, and glossy leaves.  The flowers are great performers.  They bloom from late Spring to late Autumn, without a "take five".

All of the roses in the Canadian Artists Series are bred for our bitterly cold Canadian Winters.  The Oscar Peterson is hardy in zone three, surviving temperatures as low as -35C (-31F).  It is described as being exceptionally disease resistant.  The plant itself has a strong root system, and grows upright, spreading slightly.  The flowers bloom in sprays, or clusters, much like an entourage or large family.

Oscar Peterson married four times, and had seven children.  The last decades of his life were spent in Toronto, where he taught piano, founded the Advanced School of Contemporary Music, mentored the York University jazz programme, and was Chancellor of York University for many years.

Peterson was also a gifted composer, writing for the piano, trio, quartet and big band.  Canadiana Suite, and Hymn to Freedom, inspired by the US civil rights movement, are his best-known compositions.  

He continued touring until 1993, when a stroke paralyzed him on his left side.  It is a testament to his strength and spirit, that two years later, he returned to public performances and recording studios.  It's said that he played better with one strong hand, than most played with two.  He performed right up until 2007.

In 1997, he received a Grammy for Lifetime Achievement, and an International Jazz Hall of Fame Award.  Other awards included, the first Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Achievement Award from Black Theatre Workshop (1986), The Governor General"s Performing Arts Award (1992), and the UNESCO Music Prize (2000).

Peterson's accolades went beyond music.  Peterson was made an Officer of the Order of Canada (1972), and twelve years later, given the Companion of the Order of Canada, our country's highest award for merit and humanity.  He received the Order of Ontario, the Chevalier of the National Order of Quebec, and was made an officer of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres of France.  He also received sixteen honorary degrees from fourteen universities in Canada and the USA.

Oscar Peterson died in Mississauga, Ontario just two days before Christmas, 2007.  He was 82.

The Oscar Peterson Rose bodycon dress is now available in my on-line shop:  http://bit.do/bodycon
Go to the shop, click on the dress, and give it a twirl in 3-D.

Photographs of roses copyright of:  Ruth Adams, Widow's Endorphins Photographic Images Inc.

Photographs of Oscar Peterson:  Peterson with piano in background, photographer Patti Gower, The Toronto Star;  black and white image, photographer unknown;  Peterson leaning on the piano, photographer Al Gilbert.