Bill Daniel and Unsmoke Systems present:

Lori Goldston, live cello accompaniment to Carl Dryer’s 1928 silent classic “The Passion of Joan of Arc”

Thursday July 2nd
8:30 PM sliding scale donation suggested
Unsmoke Art Space
1137 Braddock Ave, across from the steel mill in Braddock

Seattle composer/performer Lori Goldston will play her score to one of cinema’s most haunting films of the late silent era. Goldston has been a mainstay in the Pacific Northwest scene, playing with the Black Cat Orchestra, Mira, and Nirvana, to name a few.

When performing her dream-like cello score to accompany Carl Dreyer’s 1928 silent film masterpiece, “The Passion of Joan of Arc,” Lori Goldston’s been praised for keeping it a truly live experience — even for her. Drawing from medieval secular and liturgical music, free improvisation and electronics, the score was originally commissioned by Emily Charles of the Fine Arts Theater in Berkeley in July of 1998.

“The grammar of editing has changed over the years so sometimes it’s hard for people to watch silent films,” she says. Studying the film and the filmmaker, she uses music to translate the movie’s original intent, helping people appreciate mood, pace and timing.

Many of us who have come here did so with visions of a lower cost of living making time available for the pursuit of self-actualization (or at least esteem needs) within a community that supports not only out-of-the-box thinking but action. Instead this past winter we found ourselves tossed back to the second tier, struggling with safety needs as we spent most of our time and energy figuring out how to keep warm. And by warm, I mean we celebrated a 40-degree room. Some spaces, like those being rehabbed, relied entirely on kerosene heaters and didn’t even achieve this level of warmth.

Maslow points out that once a person has dealt with these lower tier needs, things will never be thought of the same way again. If a man starves, he will not take food for granted in a way that he may have when he had only experienced food as a given. After spending an entire winter cooking while wearing a winter coat, hat, and scarf while watching my breath hover in front of my face and wishing I could mix things with gloves on but instead having my fingers go numb ... I appreciate climate controlled environments so much more now. It’s like stepping into another world when I visit people in towns where broken or missing windows, old boilers that only heat two radiators, and no insulation are things of nightmares instead of a common reality. What’s even worse is that this low level of living standards actually cost MORE than all of the comfort I experienced in winters past in Alaska.

Now as spring enters the picture and we are thawing out, there is a palpable change in the air. We are aiming again for needs a level or three above safety. Things are moving again. And hopefully next winter some of the renovations will be done and there will be warmer buildings so that we don’t all end up hibernating our higher level goals as we search for heat.

Now:

Compared to when the gas line was installed last month:

At first we hoped to use the boiler and steam heat system that came in the house. Then reason upon reason piled up against that option. Rumors that it didn’t work four years ago, rusted radiators, removed chimney ...

Next we were going to put in a forced air system with the help of a friend who does it professionally, installing the vents under his direction and having the furnace installed. They planned the runs and built out all the walls to accommodate. Most vents needed to be along the load bearing wall, we couldn’t cut into it to make a straight shot to the second and third floors but we also didn’t want to lose efficiency. The extra framing also provided more room for thick insulation.

(Our house is an insulated beast. Seriously ... it was 9 degrees (and felt like negative 2) this week and the water bottles inside our unheated house weren’t frozen.)

Then all of the work became overwhelming and installing our own heating system seemed like a bad idea. We started getting bids from contractors.

At some point we gave up on forced air. I think it was when the only quote came in at $12,500. The shock of the price blinded me to the details, which I later discovered also included air conditioning. But that steered us into looking for alternatives. I’ve never been a huge fan of forced air heating systems, probably because I’ve never had one. I grew up in South Florida with forced air cooling, which was fantastic. Then I moved to Alaska where I experienced boilers with baseboards, boilers with radiators, radiant heat, wood stoves, pellet stoves, direct vent heat systems like Monitor or Toyo stoves (Rinnai on the East coast we’ve learned) ... but I don’t recall anyone having forced air heat.

We had a couple more heating companies come in to give us ideas and prices. Recessed electric heaters seemed the best option. The house we rented in Portland used these electric heaters, and we were there for winter. They worked well and we had the ability to control temperature by room without the added installation of “zones.” Running on electric also seems less expensive here, the gas prices are high and everyone bitches and moans about their gas bills. We figured with an inexpensive electric heat system (under $3,000) we could upgrade to solar panels to support the heat before the electricity rates go up. We’ve heard that will happen in three years.

But then the company that we were working with, Chuba, fell off the face of the earth. We said yes, please come and install this system. Mike Chuba stopped in, looked at our breaker box. I put him in touch with Nicolas Electric to make sure it was on the up and up. They talked. Then Chuba never returned my calls again. So we started getting another round of quotes. My parents came to town for Thanksgiving and the Obscurae show, and they convinced me to go for broke (literally) and get the forced air heating system instead of electric baseboards. All the quotes were coming in around $9,500—including that first one that was $12,500 because I realized there was an A/C unit in there and asked for a revised estimate. That was still a painfully high price to pay, but our work on the house is halted until there’s heat to dry the drywall mud and the tile adhesive and grout for the floor.

I had been meeting heating companies at the house for a week, still waiting on most of their estimates, when John suggested I get in touch with Brian Whitney (the roof miracle worker) and ask for his heating contact. The day I called Beam Heating Bob Beam showed up at the house. He wrote an estimate immediately after looking around. That was the fastest anyone came to the house and the most instantaneous quote of all time ... As an added bonus the installation was around $5,000. We jumped on it. The only drawback was that he was booked through Christmas and maybe even until January.

It was that day that I realized—holy shit! It’s almost Christmas! (I had 9 days and no cards, no inkling of the holiday spirit ... I’ve since caught up ...)

The good news came Friday morning when Bob started calling at 7:15am and repeatedly called (16 times) until I answered around 9am to tell me that they could start that day. If only I were a morning person and Kevin hadn’t just gotten back from Alaska, keeping us up until 3am because he’s four hours off. I turn off my phone when I don’t expect to have anything to do early, I despise being woken up by a phone. But, by the time I did answer Bob still had one guy who could come over; earlier he had three.

Work officially started on installing our Lennox Elite Series Home Comfort System G51 single-stage, high-efficiency furnace that morning. (Yes, that’s an ad ... hah! I’m reading directly from my brochure, I’m just so happy there is something in my house not running on kerosene that will keep it warm—that it is Energy Star qualified just makes me happier.) They came back yesterday to “hit it hard” and got the furnace hooked up so that Equitable can turn on the gas Friday. Today they are clearing out the old boiler. All of the vents aren’t hooked up yet, but there IS a furnace in my basement!

Beam Heating has been making our holiday wishes come true. All we’ve wanted for months were walls and heat. With heat, we can finish putting up the walls…

Thankfully Jodi was a super hero and Ryan flew in from the west coast just in time to drag me away from the house. The last few days were madness, in an amazingly fun way. It was great to see all of the photos find homes in the unique frames and then transition to their places on the walls.

We had a great turnout on Friday night, and despite the snow on Saturday the lottery was a lot of fun. We postponed the start of the lottery after hearing about the bad driving conditions. When it started, there were around 50 tickets active in the lottery with even more picking out their pieces later that night.

After lottery ticket holders had chosen their pieces we opened up the remaining pieces for purchase that night—and the show sold out! Photos in the show, plus some new pieces, are available in the online gallery and frames will be coming soon.