Places of organs are under threat

[David Pinnegar]

Hi!

From letters appearing in The Times this morning, it appears that an atheist promotion or degradation of belief was published in the newspaper on Saturday.

Whilst attacks on faith are fashionable they undermine the very real value that church can have in society and as places of organs are undermined, so are organs themselves.

This is an issue therefore that is very properly considered in the interests of the future of the organ and it's for this reason that it would be great if more members and non members might be encouraged to find enthusiasm for discussion here.

From the arguments brought forth in The Times today it appears that those wanting to denigrate religious places of organs have failed to grasped the basic of "What is God"? They appear to think that God is a big fiction. But Genesis 1 defines "God" - mistakenly anthropomorphised and viewed as "Big Daddy in the Sky" - as the strange phenonomen that brings order out of the usual state of increasing entropy, disporder, chaos.

As even evolution can be seen in terms of a very strange phenonomenal process that brings magical order alive out of a chemical chaos, how can anyone deny the existence of that process, which is defined by Genesis as "God"?

It is in trying to find common ground that I have tried to explore ideas in Believers' and Atheists' corners.

At the Carlo Curley recital the other day, I purchased a number of discs of recordings of organs sold in aid of the Alexandra Palace organ appeal. Most were classical but a couple were of cinema organs. A booklet described the heroic efforts that had brought the Trocadero Wurlitzer to South Bank Polytechnic. On the disc information I discovered that the Wurlitzer had been thrown out of the Edridge Hall by the Polytechnic, now being above itself as a "University".

Organs are in danger if they are not given the respect due to the King of Instruments in worship symbolic of bringing order of sound to the otherwise chaos of noise, and symbolising the greatness and power of all. If they aren't going to survive in "Universities", they can only survive by our efforts to give them, and their places of abode, meaning and relevance . . .

Best wishes

David P

[KB7DQH]

Are you referring to the plans of some Atheist organization to construct some form of structure in London for whatever purpose?  Their contention is that "religious" people have "beautiful buildings so why don't we" ??? ??? ???  I may have sent you a link on Facebook...  Which brings up another point, some would argue "off-topic" but I will tie things together in due course... 

I also had sent you a link to an event rather geographically nearer myself, about a woman who wanted to
"marry" a building,  ostensibly to draw attention to its in-process demolition to provide "housing nobody can afford"... Sound familiar?  On the front page of this forum is a picture of an organ in a building which together were destroyed to provide "housing"...  (The debasement of the institute of Marriage in the now-fashionable form of "same-sex"... is another point to be brought up separately)

The Woman's lament was that the original structure, a century-old warehouse, could have been put to better use to provide a "community space" for... Art...

Art...

What purpose does Art, and this of course includes Music... serve a civilized society?

Art is essentially an expression of the power given 'Man' created in the image of a creator... 

and serves the purpose of communicating ideas from one person to another, and from one generation to the next.  It allows some part of us to continue beyond our own limited existence in the world which we are capable of perceiving with our 5 senses...  and in many cases, beyond... allowing us to connect with the past, combine this with our experience in the present and project this collective existence into the future...

It is this "creative" capability which is what separates us from all other life on the planet, and has allowed our particular species to "evolve" without waiting around for "nature" to rearrange our DNA in the hope that something "better comes along"...  We as a creative species allows us to among other things devote some of our energies to making our lives "easier" and communicating that knowledge to our future generations, beginning with the utilization of fire, the development of agriculture, domesticating animals, tools, metals, all these things which permitted the formation of communities and all that which has followed to the present day.

The organ as a musical instrument-- a tool, if you will, for the production of musical art...  has likewise developed over time incorporating improvements in the materials and construction techniques, and even its method of control has spawned development leading to what we now refer to in our own evolution as the "information age"...   

The "space age" is upon us-- but we have only "stuck our toe in the water" in that important area of  the Evolution of Man...    Can Organs inspire a "swim" ??? :-\ ;)

Is it any coincidence that the overall physical economy of Planet Earth has suffered since the cancellation of the Apollo program, coincident with the failure of the Aeolian-Skinner organ company?

Eric
KB7DQH

[David Pinnegar]

I also had sent you a link to an event rather geographically nearer myself, about a woman who wanted to
"marry" a building,  ostensibly to draw attention to its in-process demolition to provide "housing nobody can afford"... Sound familiar?  On the front page of this forum is a picture of an organ in a building which together were destroyed to provide "housing"...  (The debasement of the institute of Marriage in the now-fashionable form of "same-sex"... is another point to be brought up separately)

The Woman's lament was that the original structure, a century-old warehouse, could have been put to better use to provide a "community space" for... Art...

Dear Eric

There is much to comment upon positively in your post, but it's clearly inspired by an interesting can of worms starting here . . . even if you did enjoin me and anyone else to take issue separately!

The woman who was proposing to "marry" a building - one took a double-take at the headline wondering where the husband was for a minute . . . and then I realised that it was merely a publicity stunt. In fact though, whilst getting headline grabbing attention and drawing attention to the issue, it was, however as bogus as immigrants "marrying" for a day to get a passport or concentration of sex to gain money through so-called "marriage" * . . . She was not putting her money where her mouth was . . . nor expecting to have a long term lifetime relationship and commitment to the building. It was not proper marriage but an easy celebrity event.

With regard to the second mention of marriage, if I am allowed to beg to differ, I don't think that the prejudice against same sex marriages is really being viewed through the lens of the commandment of "love thy neighbour as thyself". The reality is that there are many friends who live together, as a matter of friendship, and who have a commitment of care and sharing together which is stable, committed, lifelong. Indeed even among heterosexual marriages, in the long term, it is friendship, companionship, caring and sharing, in essence the deepest love actually in contrast to mere sex that keeps a marriage together. Whilst the spirit and the soul are eternal, sex is distraction of the earthly realm.

Perhaps the disintegrating family units and disintegrating marriages is not surpising to see in view of the obsession of the current generation to issues (and focus upon) sex and for many pagan women (perhaps there is a better word for pagan as meaning "outside the teachings and influence of the church") money and divorce as the key to that.

Examination of what marriage _really_ means might usefully focus upon the issue of commitment of two people, one to the other, what it really means, and intransitory love in its deepest sense, irrelevant to the mere transitory issues of sex.

Sex is merely a distraction to loving one's neighbour as oneself.

Perhaps the platonic aspects of love, seen both in "normal" and "same sex" marriages alike may be a better example for others than the footballers and celebrity star "marriages" popularised and celebrated in the media. Those celebrated in church may be more meaningful.

Furthermore, in the legal sense, it is tragic to see the consequences of a lack of legal recognition of two friends sharing a house together and giving each other mutual support in old age when one dies, if their mutual dependence is unable to be recognised in law by reason of the artificiality of the criterion of sex, then unlike a recognised married couple, when one dies the other can have been forced to move house by reason of having to pay "Death Duties" or "Inheritance Tax".

Religion and Church might usefully be seen to reinforce the eternal, embrace love of the eternal rather than issues of the transitory, reasserting that commandment to love one's neighbour as oneself, and therefore a place of marriage.

This argument fails in the specifics of the acknowledgement of the eternal in so far as the contract of marriage is terminable upon death . . . but there are for many marriages where the remaining partner remains married even beyond the death of the other. This is the nature of true lifelong friendship, true marriage, and irrelevant to what sex they are or have been.

Best wishes,

David P


* I was looking for the story of the pornstar who married a billionaire and legendarily metaphorically or actually locked him in a shed after the marriage but http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2007961/Patricia-Kluge-Fall-belly-dancer-billionairess-How-ex-cloakroom-girl-porn-star-married-Americas-richest-man-went-bankrupt.html makes a good enough and entertaining illustration for this post . . .

[AnOrganCornucopia]

I do not wish to enter into a potentially controversial debate upon the merits of granting marriage to homosexuals, but I was under the impression that the right to be recognised as next-of-kin and to escape death duties, inheritance tax etc (and I think to claim married couple tax allowance, if that still exists) had been enshrined under the civil partnership scheme.

[David Pinnegar]

I do not wish to enter into a potentially controversial debate upon the merits of granting marriage to homosexuals, but I was under the impression that the right to be recognised as next-of-kin and to escape death duties, inheritance tax etc (and I think to claim married couple tax allowance, if that still exists) had been enshrined under the civil partnership scheme.

This has become a slightly unexpected line of discussion within the context of the post that I made, but organs are conventionally associated with churches and the demise of the church goes hand in hand with the housing of organs and raison d'etre . . . So it is proper here to examine the role of the church.

One of the points of my post is that we are nowadays totally strung up about sex and obsessed by it. That obsession goes to the sexual labelling of human beings, and here above, in terms of "homosexual". The word is deliberately couched to be emotional and, I believe unnecessarily so: part of the point of my post above was to get beyond that and get beyond puerile titillation of labelling and suggest that it is right for the Church to examine really what marriage is and promote all that encourages us to "love thy neighbour as thyself" and thereby recognise the deep commitment that one human being has for another, for two human beings to have for each other, for interdependence between them and upon each other.

Possibly now that divorce is so common, the majority of people do not have the experience of those who have been married for a long time. Many of the people who criticise others have not that experience either. Marriage is sustained ultimately, not by the animal instincts that are more likely to pull it apart, but by the sincerity of common interests and intellectual stimulation. A meeting of minds, a sharing of minds, a working of minds and joint directions, intentions and aspirations.

To find the eternal, and for the human to arise above the animal, the mind and its intellects have to rise above issues of mere base bodily function. Focus on issues of the animal obstructs us in finding the divine.

Rather than the Big fictional Daddy, however much the simile works, the Church needs to concentrate upon the definition of God in Genesis 1 - that strange force that makes Order appear out of the natural chaos, disorder and increasing entropy.

In taking a view upon moral issues, Christ encouraged the Pharisees not to obey blindly the rules, but use intellect and spiritual guidance upon the basis of the criteria of the two commandments that he gave us. Likewise in examining so-called "moral" codes, rules or seeking to judge norms, we have to apply all situations to Christ's two commandments, and ultimately the question "does this or does this not cause encourage order to be created within the natural disorder".

Whilst possibly being blind, I cannot see any way in which the blessing of the permanent and lifelong commitment of two human beings for each other should in any way:
1. increase disorder
2. contradict love of god
3. cause me or anyone else not to be able to love their neighbour.

Life is not about rules but by intelligence, reason and spirit.

In order to find its way in society, the church needs to seek fundamentals more fundamental than those sought by people who pose themselves as fundamentalists who by doing so cause many not to be able to love their neighbours, spreading more hate and prejudice than love, so increasing disorder.

In Islam we see similar misunderstandings, notoriously of the concept of Jihad promoted by "fundamendalists", and a burgeoning prison population of a young generation let down by their elders, the mosques reportedly importing Imams who pay more attention to rules about the length of the beard than the learning to be gained in constant contact with God.

Churches, and places of other religions too, should be places championing the power of creative order, and organs are symbolic of that. They are the rocks, literally, upon which civilisation and society stands.

Best wishes

David P

[David Pinnegar]

Hi!

The course of this thread is an extraordinary coincidence in view of current matters in The Times today.

Best wishes

David P

[KB7DQH]

To take this in a slightly different situation, the news out of New Zealand isn't good... 

And it is not for appreciation of organs or organ music... This is one of the few places on our small blue planet where there is great appreciation for the King of Instruments-- but the recent earthquake damage in Christchurch is certainly testing their faith...

http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/news/christchurch-earthquake-2011/6340039/Probe-into-city-church-collapse

LATEST:  A relative of a man who died working in an earthquake-damaged church says safety was "underrated".

Neil Stocker, Paul Dunlop and Scott Lucy died when the Durahm St Methodist Church collapsed in the February 22 earthquake, burying them under rubble.

The three men were recovering a pipe organ from the church. The church had already been badly damaged in the September 2010 quake and was considered too dangerous to occupy.

Speaking outside a royal commission hearing into the building's collapse today, Stocker's sister-in-law, Laura Nicol, said his family did not hold anyone culpable for his death.

However, there had clearly been some "breakdowns in the process" in deciding to allow Stocker and the other men into the church, she said.

"We believe the safety aspect, I think, has been underrated as a whole and that will be up to the inquiry to bring that out."

Stocker had not expressed concerns about safety before his death but was aware that he was working in a "compromised environment", she said.

Nicol said she was reserving judgment until the inquiry had been completed, but whether the men should have entered the building was the "big question" that needed to be answered.

This afternoon, Stocker's employer and close friend, South Island Organ Company managing director John Hargraves, told the commission it had been "incomprehensible" that another quake could have such disastrous results.

"At the time, we did not have the knowledge of what a quake could do to a building in a matter of seconds," he said.

PROPPING PLANS DROPPED

Plans to stabilise the church were partially dropped to save time and control costs, the inquiry heard.

Evidence presented today included an engineering report by Richard Sullivan on September 15 that recommended extensive propping to make the church safe.

However, after delays, the church's loss adjustor sought a review of Sullivan's work by another firm, Structex Metro, which recommended less extensive propping.

This included scrapping plans to prop the church's western wall, which was closest to where the three men were working.

Plans to tie the north and south walls more securely were also dropped.

Arrow International project manager Tim Fahy, who managed the securing works, told the commission that Sullivan's proposal was conservative.

"Sullivan had proposed propping down the western wall ... and that wasn't deemed necessary by Structex," he said.

Sullivan's report was reviewed after the insurer's loss adjustor sought to progress work more quickly, he said.

"The loss adjustor was concerned that we had the process proceeding and were also concerned about the cost if all of this propping went ahead."

Under questioning from lawyers, Fahy denied a suggestion he was under pressure to reduce costs by reducing propping.

While parts of the building were propped externally, Structex considered the area inside the church where the men were working was sufficiently safe, he said.

"It was determined by the engineers that it was the safest place [in the church] to be."
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ENGINEERS SAID 'CHURCH WAS SAFE'

Engineers had given assurance it was safe for workers to recover an organ from the church, the inquiry heard.

Durham St Methodist Church representative Greg Wright today told the commission two "safe paths" had been indentified for recovering the organ from the central Christchurch building.

Under questioning from lawyers, Wright said there was always a risk in entering an unstable building, but this risk had been deemed acceptable.

"The level of risk wasn't so great that the work couldn't be done," he said.

The organ needed to be recovered to complete damage inspections and propping work on the church, he said.

It would have been damaged if internal propping had proceeded without its removal, he said.

Commission lawyer Marcus Elliott, who represents the victims' families, said the question going through relatives' minds was whether it was necessary for people to be put at risk to recover the organ.

PROBE INTO CITY CHURCH COLLAPSE

Stocker, Dunlop and Lucy were recovering the church's historic pipe organ, which was badly damaged in the September 2010 quake. The church was considered too dangerous to occupy.

Lucy and Stocker worked for the Timaru-based South Island Organ Company, and Dunlop was a Christchurch optometrist and organ enthusiast who had volunteered to help.

Sue Dunlop has previously told The Press she asked her husband not to enter the church for fear it could collapse.

The royal commission will hear evidence from Christchurch City Council engineers who inspected the damaged church, a church representative and South Island Organ Company managing director John Hargreaves.

The royal commission is holding an inquiry into the collapse of buildings in the February 22 earthquake, which killed 182 people.

Other building being investigated include the Pyne Gould Corporation, Canterbury Television and The Press buildings.

- © Fairfax NZ News


Brett   #11   via mobile 02:27 am Feb 01 2012

I believe that all decisions made by engineers are purely on a production level of what can and can't be achieved. I work as a safety specialist in Australia for one of the biggest mining company in the world and work with construction and deconstruction, and the same issues arise from what a engineers safe way compared to a safety safe way, thing that I find hard is that even with the experience I have and the willing to bring my family home to Christchurch to work in this field and assist with deconstruction I have had not one reply, maybe they just want to it the engineers way
Mike   #10   08:44 pm Jan 31 2012

As sad as it is that 3 people lost their lives, if we hadn't had the Sept EQ, there could have been potentially hundreds in the building when the February quake hit... A Wedding or Funeral perhaps. The accelerations in Feb were so brutal that the building was thrown in the air at about the rate of gravity, then it came crashing down again onto a ground that was laterally accelerating at an incredible rate. No un-reinforced masonry building could take that kind of punishment. I believe the collapse would have happened anyway, without the previous damage in Sept. Please stop bashing the engineers. They are doing their best to assess risks based on the parameters they know. This was an unprecedented event that took us all by surprise.
Ed   #9   03:40 pm Jan 31 2012

Excellent point Noel. It's virtually impossible to make any building entirely quake proof (I'd suspect a 9 would bring down anything), and it's all down to risk.

As you say, Feb (and indeed any of the other quakes) are not a "normal" or "predicted" event, so all you can do is assess the risk of what might happen if the unexpected happens.

No building is ever 100% safe as you don't know a violence of a quake, it's epicentre or even the g or type of quake it is. It's a question of balancing risk.
Civ   #8   02:54 pm Jan 31 2012

To Noel#3,

Probably the most sensible post I've read in this age of witch hunting. Good on ya mate.
Dean Buckeridge   #7   02:43 pm Jan 31 2012

While I agree with Noel #3 we can only wonder whether the outcome for those 3 lost souls would have been different if the original engineering solution proposed by Dick Sullivan had been followed.

It appears that there was a lot of pressure placed on engineers after September to sign off buildings as being safe to re-occupy when February's event demonstrates they were not.

The question also has to be asked, how much experience did local engineers have of assessing earthquake damaged buildings? How is it actually possible for an engineer to determine through a visual inspection how much of the original strength is left in a building after an event like September?

The best that we can hope to achieve from this enquiry is to learn how to deal better with similar events in the future, to get a better balance between getting a city back up and functioning again and keeping people safe.
Milly of Chch   #6   01:57 pm Jan 31 2012

How did so many engineers make so poor risk analyses over this church and so many other buildings(?)
Noel Braillet   #5   01:26 pm Jan 31 2012

What the engineers said (according to this article) was that the risk level was low. Which means that on a statistical point of view, the likelihood of getting injured while carrying out some remediation work to the building was really low. Low enough to make it acceptable to proceed.

It doesn't mean it was "safe no matter what", and it never meant it would withstand a shake as violent as Feb's (which itself was an unlikely event). Call it bad luck if you want, it doesn't mean the engineers were wrong.

Engineers make reports around risk analysis. Then up to someone else to decide if that risk is worth taking or not, or if some level of mitigation is required to lower the consequences if that risky even happens. All decisions in life are based on risk analysis, and luck, or lack thereof...
Nikki   #4   01:25 pm Jan 31 2012

A bit like the Press building isn't it. And CTV, Pyne etc. Who was supervising the engineers / coordinating the city? Very sad.
david   #3   01:22 pm Jan 31 2012

The Christchurch City Council should have ensured engineers were doing their tasks properly. I know one person, now deceased, approached the CCC about the state of the CTV buildings especially in relation to a couple of the rooms Kings Language School was in. But nothing was done.
concerned   #2   11:46 am Jan 31 2012

Wat worries me most is how often the engineers insisted these collapsed buildings were safe. How are we supposed to believe anything they say? My work is using the company that said the CTV building was safe and we all know how that went. My work (which they want us to eventually re-enter) is a multi-story building. How do I know it's safe? They say it's safe but I have severe doubts about it.

and this http://www.nzherald.co.nz/christchurch-earthquake/news/article.cfm?c_id=1502981&objectid=10778525

certainly applies to other worship spaces in that area...

Eric
KB7DQH

[David Pinnegar]

Dear Eric

Yes - thanks.

Places of organs are at risk as you point out, from the seen and in the material world. Places are also at risk from the unseen and the spiritual world.

It's rather like the Italian joke about the farmer in Tuscany with a field of beautiful cows and a visitor comes admiring them to the farmer that he has two beautiful cows. The farmer replies "yes, the white cow is very beautiful" and the visitor responds that the black cow is beautiful too and the farmer replies "Yes, the black cow is very beautiful also".

By spiritual I don't mean the now popular view of such matters in terms of spooks and Halloween, but in the world of The Spirit, The Spirit of God.

By God I don't mean "Our Father in Heaven" as promoted by the debasement of language in CofE rites but "Our Father WHICH art in Heaven" - not that person but that indescribable force described in Genesis and comprehensibly to physicists as that "strangeness" that brings order out of entropic chaos.

It is my thesis that organs, church, God (comprehensible as "The Idea" that works in the cause of Order out of Chaos, therefore to create) has a much greater part to play in society and have a greater relevance than their current perception.

It promotes Love, not sex, Love which is as unseen a force as gravitation in society.

Of course within this understanding one either works to create, to work in the cause of finding and multiplying order in chaos, and therefore through that idea of God, to order and civilisation . . . which we believe distnguishes us as human, or if one does not work actively to that aspiration of creation one is merely a particle in the winds of chaos, the jungle of disorder, and no more conscious than the animal.

Many of the current nightclub generation are children of divorce, of parents who have not had the love to hold them together, and at some stage have had to block the emotion of love in order to live through the hell of the entropy of divorce. They are damaged by that blockage and the arteries of love within their heart require some priming and pump starting. Music is the key to love that mere language cannot convey.

The forces of order and creation, of gravitation and love, and their torn blockage or absence are as unseen as the material world is seen. They are as the black cow to the Italian farmer.

Their absence is visible by the jungle in which the nightclub generation inhabit. They have a role to play.

Best wishes

David P

[KB7DQH]

It has taken me longer to reply to your latest here as essentially I have found myself in completer agreement ;)    but, this got dropped into my inbox and the story is a fascinating example of the kind of "societal breakdown"
and the general ignorance of our past that this brings... 

Bear in mind the first paragraph... This sports writer uses a most unrelated circumstance to introduce his thesis statement...  and in so doing indirectly raises awareness in the general population of something they wouldn't normally experience in their daily lives...

unless...

http://www.thenewsobserver.com/articles/2012/02/03/opinions/opinion01.txt

Roman numerals disappearing
| Text Size |
BY BRIAN K. FINNICUM, EDITOR Thursday, February 2, 2012 12:10 PM CST Okay, here's a little test. You're on a European vacation, and visiting one of the great, historic cathedrals in Germany. The cathedral's pipe organ bears the inscription, MDCXXVIII. How old is the organ? Here's another one: what happened in MCDXCII? A Washington Post story this week told that understanding of the Roman numeral system is going the way of the Roman Empire. It seems that the topic is worthy of note right now largely due to professional football and the National Football League. Sunday is the pinnacle of the league's season, the Super Bowl championship game.

That's Super Bowl XLVI.The NFL folks began using Roman numerals to designate the annual version of the championship game beginning in MCMLXXI, when the Baltimore Colts defeated the Dallas Cowboys by a score of XVI to XIII.It seems that most folks didn't have a problem understanding the numbering system until about VI years ago, with Super Bowl XLI in MMVII.

That's when the Internet site Numericana.com started getting an abnormal number of visits on game day, and that year the main search of the day was indeed XLI.Last year, so many people visited the site searching XLV that the server crashed. "Total madness" was how Gerard Michon, who maintains the Numericana site, described the day last year. He said folks didn't understand why the correct version of that edition of the Super Bowl was XLV and not VL.That day, Michon's site logged 15,278 hits, with 90 percent of them going to XLV.Why Roman numerals? "'Number 46' [this year's edition of the Super Bowl], it just kind of sounds like an inventory. 'Inspected by Joe,'" said Joe Horrigan, who is an NFL historian and spokesman for the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio. Horrigan still remembers bruised knuckles he got while trying to learn Roman numerals in Catholic school as a child.But, it seems today's students are not being drilled in Roman numerals like Horrigan was in parochial school, or like I was in public school. By the way, I graduated the same year that the NFL started using Roman numerals to designate the annual edition of the Super Bowl.......

Thoughts?...?....?

Eric
KB7DQH

[David Pinnegar]

Dear Eric

Certainly an interesting post and certainly an indication that there are other areas where people can be introduced to the idea that meaning can be conveyed in terms other than their normal understanding.

On re-reading above

God (comprehensible as "The Idea" that works in the cause of Order out of Chaos, therefore to create

possibly one might re-look at the issue of God as a description of the system in which we are able to inhabit, even of which biological selection is part of the process, where all things exist in the long term by reason of those things that work, those things that work together, that work together to create, to evolve, whereas the randomness of chaos is the realm of things that don't work.

In teaching the idea of God as "what works" rather than what disintegrates, it should be apparent that the Church should be perceived as having a greater role in society than it does at present . . .

Of course this is symbolised by the organ as "sounds that work" also.

Best wishes

David P