Anyone want to play chamber music with me?

As some of you saw on my Facebook page, I now have TWO harpsichords and one pipe organ in my apartment, and I was so fortunate that my houseguest, Jason Anderson was here to receive the new baby harpsichord while I was at work. That was because apparently the trucking company only had permission to leave it in the loading zone downstairs, and could not bring it up to the 35th floor. So Jason, brave soul, got the hand truck and brought the 51-lb. package upstairs.

It just so happened that I had invited my long-time friends, Frank and Sue Haas, to dinner last night because Jason stayed with them when he came to Hawaii for Carl Crosier’s funeral last year, and they became friends. So while I was cooking dinner (and taking pictures!) the three of them got to open the package and wade through the oceans of blue foam padding. which filled five extra large garbage bags! 

At dinner, somehow the conversation turned to our spring of 1970 when college campuses were shut down because of the ensuing demonstrations following the Kent State shooting. 1970 was also the year I built the Zuckermann harpsichord kit with my father. Remember all the demonstrations came about because President Richard Nixon announced the escalation of the Vietnam War into Cambodia? I was a junior at the University of Southern California and even I went out to the demonstration fronting the Elisabeth von Kleinschmidt Center on the USC campus!

Frank told us that another student with the last name of Haas wrote an anti-war letter to the Northwestern University campus newspaper, which mistakenly was published with Frank’s first name instead of the other guy, whose name was Phillip J. Haas. Inasmuch as Frank was a member of ROTC during college, this situation became a little awkward, to say the least. (Of course, Jason was not even born yet!)

As our conversation continued, it turned out that the one and the very same Phillip J. Haas now lives in the Northwest, attends St. Mark’s Cathedral in Seattle and is in fact the treasurer! Even more wild was that Jason only met him for the first time a few months ago because Phil bought some of the antiques from Peter Hallock’s estate! (Jason became the executor when Carl Crosier resigned due to illness.)

Small world, isn’t it!