Who Was Jeremiah Cunningham?

In light of the theme for the next Quincy coffee house, some might be asking: Who was Jeremiah Cunningham? An excellent question.

According to the prestigious and reputable Wikipedia, Jeremiah Cunningham (1756-1845) came from a colonial family of some means and attended the College of William & Mary. In the summer of 1781 he settled in what would become the District of Columbia, building the first Quincy House (though the house would not receive the name until 1796).

Cunningham was a founding member of the Phi Beta Kappa fraternity, and was a friend to such historical figures as William Short, Dr. William Thornton, Lt. Col. Franklin Wharton and Col. Jehiel Brooks.

Though a professed Anglican, Cunningham was a friend of both the Catholic and Anglican bishops of Maryland, and there were rumors that - like his second cousin, Edmund Burke - he may have been a crypto-Catholic. In any case, we know he was a man of letters and a distiller of scotch whiskey. What about that is not worth celebrating?


I regret the absence of a picture, but I have not yet been able to find one of our esteemed founder.

Quincy: The Drink

There has been talk of late about creating a mixed drink that is uniquely Quincy: a signature cocktail that would be the Quincy House in a glass.

What, you ask, would such a drink entail? An excellent question, and one we've been asking ourselves. At this point the Quincy cocktail is still in the concept stage, but previous discussions have suggested that it be strong, bitter, and complex.

Suggestions for ingredients? A name? Please, share!

Projects Underway at the House

So I am feeling a little overwhelmed by all of the projects that myself and other housemates are working on at the moment, so I thought I would take a break from the craziness and enumerate them.

We are at the moment:

Planning a the first off-site Coffee House 1.5 weeks
Planning an American Whiskey Tasting in 2 weeks
Working on 3 separate freelancing web site projects
Trying to start a T-Shirt company
Beginning promotion for our Band
Finishing up creating a new musical instrument
Planning an Easter dinner for 20+
Encoding a DVD for the nun film project
Mixing down 3 live performances from the 24bit multi-track files
Practicing music for 3 gigs

And I'm sure there are some other happenings in there somewhere. At least things aren't getting boring.

The making of a Caucasian

Anyone who has spent any time in the Quincy House dining room will have noticed that two things we are passionate about are fine films and fine alcoholic beverages. One film that I have always enjoyed is the Cohen brother’s, The Big Lebowski, which is not only a classic film, but it also prominently features a classic drink. The Dude’s love for white Russians has certainly made the drink a part of the American vocabulary. One practice that the film has not caused growth in is (at least according to my extensive search of the interwebs) the practice of the dude’s unique recipe, which is using non-dairy creamer to make the drink. In fact, I was not able to find a single mention of anyone who had actually tried doing so. Since we recently screened the film, it seemed incumbent upon us to document and review the process of making a Caucasian.

Ingredients:
Vodka
Kaluha
Ice
Coffee Mate Non-Dairy Creamer

After mixing the drink, the first observation that I had was that the creamer did not immediately mix as evenly as the milk did.


Even after some vigorous stirring the creamer still clumped together in small chunks.


This led to an interesting drinking experience because every once and a while I caught a large bit of creamer crystals. The surprising bit was that the added texture was almost enjoyable. It is almost akin to having the cookie bits in a Krackle bar.


Aside from texture, the flavor of the creamer fit the drink quite well. Indeed after finishing the Caucasian, I moved to a more standard white Russian and I had a hard time discerning much difference in quality, however there may have been other intervening factors.
And of course the drink was best enjoyed while watching the film.

Coffee House Videos!

Here are the first round of coffee house videos from the Lenten Coffee House! There will be more coming soon. (Sorry for the poor lighting, we are still new to this video thing...)

A Router and Space

After the two bodies were fused the next step was to route out the space for the keyboard to fit in. Doing this required a tool that I don't have, a router. Now since this is a rough economy and I don't have a lot of cash to throw around on tools I'm only going to use infrequently. Enter Chicago Electric, cheap tools in both sense of the word. This router is basically holding an electric motor in the palm of your hand with some cheap plastic casing. But it was only $20 and this project has been mostly eyeballed, so no complaints.

Next I set up a gate so that the sides would be straight. The gate was clamped down, and the body was lined up and clamped down as well. Finally the guard on the router, even though it's a cheap piece of aluminum, it got the job done.


And the resulting product:


Stay tuned next time for refinishing the body!

Building a body

The instrument creation continues!

When we last checked in we had just finished taking apart the keyboard and doing some minor soldering. The next step on our list is to build the body of our instrument.

As a base I'll be starting with two cheap Fender Starcaster bodies these are the guitars they sell at Target. I picked them up on ebay for $15 a piece.



The top 1/3 of one body is going to serve as keytar portion which will sit on the top of the instrument and the bottom 3/4ths of the other body will be the guitar portion. I measured out the height of keyboard and marked the body.


Cutting a straight line with the table saw was going to be difficult because of the non-straight edge of the guitar. In order to make it straight, I put together a few pieces of scrap wood to even the side out and keep it flush to the gate.



Since one of the sides of the body was going to be a throw away piece I attached it to the scrap wood with a short screw, making sure that the screw was not long enough to be in the path of the blade!



Once that was done it was time to fire up the table saw, cut and repeat for the second body.




With the two bodies cut the next step was to get them attached together. In order to have the most stability I figured that dowels were the way to go. Using a drill and a place marker i drilled for a total of 10 dowels, probably overkill, but I don't want to take any unnecessary risks.




Finally using a guide mark the spots on the other side of the body, apply the glue and clamp it together!







Because I just eyeballed the angles of the dowels getting the sides together with those clamps took a lot of work, but after a lot of effort the two bodies were clamped together, and there was only one step left for the evening:

The Journey Begins!

I was having dinner and drinks late one evening with some musician friends. As we were talking about various musical instruments I was struck by an idea that I believe was at once both pure madness and sheer brilliance. A new instrument, a double necked instrument. I wondered what happens when you take two of the most ridiculous, and therefore awesome instruments, the double neck guitar and the keytar, and combine them?
Surely the ridiculousness and the awesomeness would be off the charts. I believe that after having such a flash of inspiration I have been given a grave moral obligation to bring this monster into existence.

So after a few late nights on ebay, the project is ready to begin!

First I will start with the keyboard. Fortunatley one of my roomates had an old Yamaha Portasound PSS-140, which is the perfect size for this project. The first step was to seperate the keyboard from the body.

y.


This step required a bit of soldering because the white connector you see between the keyboard and the drum pad was far too short to set the keyboard in the body.

Next will be to construct the body of the guitar. I've gotten two cheap bodies on ebay, and I'll keep you all posted as it progresses.