Church Pickets

Yesterday while reading the Toronto Star, I was drawn to one particular front-page story. A story involving the Covenant Reformed Church in Toronto. Some of my relatives were once members of this church, and I sometimes went with them to Sunday service at this church when visiting them back in the 1960's.

Here's the story: Love thy neighbour, protest thy neighbour, be sued by thy neighbour

In a nutshell, one church member, Jack van Halteren has a business dispute with Gary DeBoer. In order to try to resolve the dispute, van Halteren went to his church for help. You might wonder, why would someone involve their church in a business dispute? Van Halteren justified his action by quoting from the Bible. Matthew 18:15-17 in particular:

¹⁵ “If your brother or sister sins, go and point out their fault, just between the two of you. If they listen to you, you have won them over. ¹⁶ But if they will not listen, take one or two others along, so that ‘every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.’ ¹⁷ If they still refuse to listen, tell it to the church; and if they refuse to listen even to the church, treat them as you would a pagan or a tax collector."

Unfortunately, when the church was not helpful to van Halteren, he decided on a rather provocative next step: Picketing his church. Frankly, I'm not sure what passage in the Bible supports that action, but the result has been legal action against van Halteren, including a $500,000 lawsuit by the church and another $1,000,000 lawsuit from DeBoer.

Clearly, van Halteren would have saved himself a lot of grief and expense if he had just hired a lawyer to try to settle his dispute, instead of turning to the Bible for help.

There are other cases of people picketing churches. For more than a decade, one man has been picketing the Unitarian Church of Montreal. In 1992, a member of that church underwent a "profound revelatory experience of God which revealed that the total solar eclipse 'Eye of God' is a 'Sign in the Heavens' that symbolizes God's divine omniscience". He told his fellow church members of his revelation. However, he was so insistent in the preaching of his new-found religion, that eventually he was ex-communicated by the church. Since then, he has made it his mission in life to protest and picket that church. You can read about him in this story from 2000: Cops arrest religious visionary

What drives people to take such action? Is it a profound belief that they, and they alone, are privy to God's truth? How can you reason with people who truly, sincerely believe that they totally understand God's will?

I've often been struck by the variety of beliefs within all of the major religions. Over the past two thousand years, the history of Christianity is chock full of schisms, splits, and secessions. The Covenant Reformed Church acknowledges the schisms in their own history on their website: A Short History of the Reformed Churches. And every time there's a schism, both sides believe fervently in the absolute correctness of their side.

Cheers! Hans

Building Your Own Ukulele Chords

When learning the ukulele, one of the first challenges is learning the chords. One page chord charts become indispensable for the beginner. (Here's one.) However, as you gain experience, you realize that there are multiple ways to finger each chord.

Why learn different variations of the chords? As an example, think of a two chord song. You can add interest to the song by using different forms of those two chords. Even in more complex songs, it may still be useful to change to a different form of a chord from one bar to the next. (Here's a good video demonstrating switching between alternate forms of G and C.)

Here are some examples of some alternative fingerings for a couple of common chords:

(I especially like the 0454 form of A7. Think of the main chords in the key of D: D, G, and A7. When changing from G to A7, you just have to slide your fingers 2 frets up the fretboard.)

How does one figure out different chord variations? I've put together a couple of charts to help me come up with different fingerings. You can always learn the patterns for barred chords. However, if a chord includes one or more of G, C, E, or A, these charts can help you find easy alternatives using open strings. You can download the charts from here.

The first chart lists the notes for many of the chords we use. The notes are identified by Roman numerals. If you haven't seen that notation, just think of the notes by their other names: do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, ti, and do. For example, a major chord consists of three notes: I, III, and V. (Or do, mi, and sol.)

The second chart represents the notes on a ukulele fretboard. The notes shaded in yellow are the notes of the open strings. The white area is for the notes on a standard soprano ukulele. The other notes (blue) represent notes found on bigger ukuleles, as well as an additional extension for convenience so you can see full octaves on the chart, even for the key of G#.

After printing out these charts, fold over the top edge of the second page (or cut it off) so that the top of the page is the edge of the fret board. The idea is that you can place the fretboard chart over the chart of chords and have columns line up.

How does this work? As an example,  let's say you want to find a fingering for the Am7 chord. Line up the fretboard chart with the "min7" row on the chord chart. The root note of Am7 is A, and so line up the I column with an A on the top line of the fretboard. You can now read off the notes of the chord: A, C, E, and G. You'll recognize these as the open notes of all four ukulele strings. But let's find an alternative so your left hand has something to do.

The next step is trickier. We must now find A, C, E, and G from different places on the fretboard. It's really guesswork at this point, but let's start with the C at the 5th fret of the G string. We're now left with the task of finding A, E, and G. We see an E at the 4th fret of the C string and a G at the 3rd fret of the E string, leaving us with an open A. These notes are all close together, making the 5430 a really easy way to form the Am7. (Since discovering this form of Am7, I seem to be using it a lot!)

Some notes: First, note that what is commonly called the "diminished" chord is really a "diminished 7th". The row labeled "dim" is the true diminished chord, and not the diminished 7th. Second, the keen observer will note that the 9th chords have five notes. Since the ukulele only has four strings, you need to delete one of the notes. Usually, the III or V is omitted.

I always enjoy finding interesting chord alternatives. I hope you find these charts as useful as I do.

Cheers! Hans

Santa Claus Arrives in Kingston, Twice

In the Kingston area, there are two Santa Claus parades. The first in the middle of November takes place in Amherstview, a quiet bedroom community immediately to the west of the city of Kingston. The big Kingston parade takes place a week later.

Santa arrives in Kingston

Santa, of course, arrives at the end of both parades. And both parades feature many of the same groups and floats. But there are differences. The Amherstview parade takes place during the day, while the Kingston parade takes place after dusk. In Kingston, thousands of people crowd along the parade route along Princess Street, while in Amherstview, spectators can enjoy a more relaxing event.

A clown at the Amherstview Santa Claus parade

So far, since moving back to Kingston, we've been to both parades for both 2010 and 2011. Here are some more of my observations: First, the clowns in the Kingston parade are noticeable by their utter absence. No clowns? How can you have a parade with no clowns? Second, the Kingston parade is much more commercial, and loud.

Holding the parade at night is an interesting twist. The Kingston parade ends up at City Hall, and Santa helps with the official lighting of the Christmas tree in the market square. This year, we watched the parade at the corner of King and Princess, so we saw how popular the Christmas tree lighting was.

Considering that both parades feature much the same content, I'm surprised that more people don't attend the Amherstview parade. It's less noisy and less commercial, and it's easier to find a parking place on a side street close to the parade route. In a way, the Amherstview is Kingston's best kept secret of the holiday season. On the other hand, many Kingstonians like a good downtown party.

A November Photo Walk

I've been rather antsy lately, so I really wanted to get out and do some picture taking. In the morning, I saw a blue sky. But the clouds started rolling in after lunch. That's fine, I thought. If the weather is a bit dreary, I'll just desaturate the photos.

November is one of my favorite times for photography. The sun is always low in the sky, the trees have shed most of their leaves, and it's not too cold yet. There are always good opportunities for photos. If it's cloudy and dreary, I still take photos. But in those cases, I try to take advantage of the conditions. I've always liked black and white photos. And I like the pure white sky you can often get in overcast conditions. But today, the sky was especially dramatic.

Here are some of the photos I took in downtown Kingston today. I wandered through the historic Sydenham Ward where you can find moody old buildings. And I braved the cold wind coming off the lake to snap some photos along the waterfront. You can find some more of the photos I took today at Kingston - Nov 18, 2011.

KUS - Our First Public Performance

Not long after I put out the call for ukulele players in Kingston, I got an e-mail from someone who wanted us to perform at her event. I had to reply that we hadn't even had one jam yet! The Kingston Ukulele Society started jamming in September of 2010. But it took until March 2011, before someone suggested that we should work on a core repertoire. And so we began to think about performing in public.

In April, we started jamming at the RCHA Club, a great place that's very supportive of local musicians. A new venue meant a new schedule, with jams on even-numbered Wednesdays. An unfortunate consequence of that schedule meant that there would often be three week gaps between jams. How can we survive such a long time between jams? Well, I think we should do something different in those long intervals. For example, we should perform at an open stage or open mic.

Well, it so happens that every Sunday at the RCHA, there's a folk open stage. I suggested that we do a set on May 29. I didn't know how many of my fellow ukesters would join me. But I figured that if no one did, I would just do a solo set. Fortunately, a few days before, I started getting confirmations from people. First, Mary said that she was interested, even though she hadn't been to any jams. That was fine. After church on Sunday morning, we ran through the song list. If no one else showed up, we could easily do a duet. But later in the afternoon, I got more replies.

All together, we had five ukulele players spanning the stage. As we started into the opening chords of our first song, (D, D6, and Dmaj7), some people in the audience recognized the song and started clapping. We knew something special was about to happen. As we played Neil Young's "Harvest Moon", the mood was electric. I had trouble concentrating on my part since I got distracted by the wonderful music we were making!

I then introduced the people on stage: Heather, who was the first person to answer my initial call for Kingston ukulele players, and then Mary, Jane, and Colin. Our second song was "Tower of Song" by Leonard Cohen, followed by "You Are My Tech-Shine", a traditional song with new words written by someone at our church.

The audience certainly enjoyed our short performance, and later we were asked if we'd be the feature act for a future folk evening! Well, that now puts a bit more pressure on us! So far, we've been a very informal gathering of ukulele players. But definite gigs require definite commitment from members of the group. Do we have the critical mass to get enough ukulele players to show up for shows? And do have enough good material for a longer show? I think the answer to both questions is Yes!

Over the past year, I've seen improvement in practically all the ukulele players that have jammed with us. Although I always try to bring at least a few easy three-chord songs to each jam, most people don't seem to get fazed by the more complicated songs I throw at them. But then again, we don't need tricky songs for a show. What we need is a good selection of fun, entertaining songs that we can all learn easily.

Anyways, I think we all had a good time that evening. There's something magical about a person playing a ukulele. And even more so with a group of ukuleles. I hope that we'll have more opportunities to play in public.

Cheers! Hans