— Organists and Organ Playing —

By the numbers

October 6, 2015
The postcards commandeered my kitchen counter.
The postcards commandeered my kitchen counter.

Today Vreni Griffith and I spent the day addressing the postcards for Carl Crosier’s Memorial Concert on November 1st — and for the fourth day in a row I didn’t read the morning paper until after dinner! In fact, as I write this post, it’s after 10:00 pm and I still haven’t gotten to today’s newspaper!

Here are the numbers:

• 2-Mailing lists combined
• 2007-Number of postcards addressed
• 3.5-Hours spent sticking on labels
• 2-Hours spent sorting cards by zip code
• 1 Hour spent counting the cards to get a total

IMG_3749 I can’t tell you how many years I’ve done bulk mailings, but I’m guessing it has been since early 1978, when I was a new bride, and my husband, Carl Crosier, thought I would enjoy being a stay-at-home housewife. The truth of the matter was, I was simply miserable just staying home and the ironing still never got done!

Vreni helps to sort the cards by zip codes.
Vreni helps to sort the cards by zip codes.

I started going to the church to practice up to 6 hours a day. On one of those days, Wednesdays in fact, volunteers came to the church office to prepare the weekly newsletter mailing (yes, in those days, the “Heart Beat” was published every week!) and I joined the retired ladies in this task. Since then, I bet that I’ve done hundreds of bulk mailings for the Lutheran Church of Honolulu, American Guild of Organists, and St. Elizabeth’s Episcopal Church. [LCH oldtimers, do you remember Blanda Born, Pat Chamberlain and Helen Rantala? They were the Heart Beat ladies—and I became one, too! Now I’m one of the “retired ladies” and I’m still doing bulk mail! Can you believe I went to graduate school in order to count mail pieces?!]

Here is the front of the postcard.
Here is the front of the postcard.

Our task today was to combine the mailing lists of the Hawai’i Vocal Arts Ensemble and the music mailing list of the Lutheran Church of Honolulu. Surprisingly, there were not that many duplicates in spite of the fact that both offer choral music programs. But in case we mailed you two postcards, why don’t you share one with a friend?

Today I also sent off the order for the concert programs. The program booklet is hopefully one which you will consider saving, because it not only has bios and pictures of the artists, the texts and translations of all the music, the complete choir and orchestra personnel, but also a special tribute section by other choral conductors, choristers and other colleagues who wrote to me following Carl’s death.

In case you want the details on the concert, please go to the ArtsHawai’i calendar. This in fact was an idea originally thought of by Carl — the notion that everyone list their arts events in a central location so that we don’t schedule on top of one another — but thanks to Miguel Felipe and the American Choral Directors Association, it became a reality.