Author: James Wm Frank

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Tough Times Never Last, Tough People Do!

The times I am going through right now reminds me of my dad, or pop, as we all called him. As a child, I remember him saying that sometimes you have to be “hard-nosed”. I smile as I realize that I thought the saying had something to do exclusively with his nose. You see, my dad had a real schnoz.

I realize also that his hard nose policy got him through many things in life, including a handicapped child, cancer, divorce at 80 years of age. Whether it worked for him in all life situations is a good question. All I know for sure is that I adopted the same method of dealing with difficult situations.

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Loving Life

You know I love creating music in so many ways. One of my dreams has been to have a recording set-up just to create as the moment occurs. Well, check that off my list.

Let’s see: Guild acoustic, Martin electric acoustic, Ibanez hollow body for jazz, Yamaha twelve string for fun, Epiphone banjo – to

Let’s see: Guild acoustic, Martin electric acoustic, Ibanez hollow body for jazz, Yamaha twelve string for fun, Epiphone banjo – to learn a new instrument, Cubase for recording multiple tracks, mic for voice and instrument recording, headphones to listen to guitar track while recording voice overlay, interface to laptop, mini amp for space.

I have also begun creating electronic tracks of beats, cymbals, myriad sounds of all kinds. What wonderment of surprise as each new creation comes to life. From my ear to recording to ear.

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Galaxy or What?

Sometimes it is just fun to see what can be seen at a different level of view. Can you guess what it is? Galaxy, night sky with a filter?

or is it just a closer look at something interesting? Beets from the garden.

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Impact My Life

Kids; There are many times in our lives that have meaning that can only be realized years later. Gary Bolstad is one of those people who may have little to no realization of just how important he was in my life.

It all started one summer night in downtown Berlin, Germany in 1968. I was getting off a bus near my Kudam apartment when I spotted a hitchhiker with a guitar case in one hand and his thumb pointing towards traffic. I noticed that he had a small American flag on the shoulder of his jean jacket. His hair was long, which signaled that he was not military.  I found myself blurting out; hey, are you an American, living in Berlin. He quickly chirped, Ya! Without much thought, I said will you teach me how to play guitar? He said sure.

I invited him to my small, efficiency apt and we began a relationship that has spanned nearly 45 years. Gary, and later, his to-be wife, Kristie, came into my life at a most impressionable place and time. I was living in a foreign country for the first time in my life. By being in the military meant that I was experimenting and experiencing everything twice, just to make sure.

Gary helped me buy my first guitar in Berlin. He simultaneously helped me create an interest in photography. I bought my first Pentax in Berlin, cost $132 in 1969. The military base had a darkroom lab. I would go there many times to learn darkroom techniques from a very interesting Berliner who had been separated from his mother when the wall was erected.

When I moved from Virginia back to Ohio, Gary introduced me to Ralph Leesburg. Ralph, Gary, and I have remained long distant friends for many years.

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I Give You An Idea!

When I was in the giftware industry, along with two other investors, Molly McGregor and Barbara MacNeil, we purchased the equipment from a bankrupt company in order to gold plate metal. (Sprites and other giftware is a different story) I am not sure exactly how the bankrupt company came into my universe, however, it appeared at a time when gold plating was a valuable asset to Lambda Crystal.

I knew very little about the mechanics of plating anything, however, I understood the chemistry of plating, ions moving to an oppositely charged surface. What I needed was an expert on the mechanics to impart their knowledge to me at minimal cost.

Manifest into my life, an expert in more than just gold plating. I wish I could remember his name. All I know is that he was the grandfather of the owner of a company called Elmira Stove Works. He had developed the production line for gold plating the door fronts for wood burning stoves. He was 83 years old when I met him.

Each week, he would drive from Elmira to Fergus, Ontario, where I had built a new factory for Lambda Crystal on Dixon drive. I repeatedly offered to drive him over, pay for his fuel, reimburse him in any way, and his response stuck with me my entire life.

He finally said to me: If I give you a dollar and you give me a dollar, what do we have? Knowing that I was going to sound stupid no matter what I said, and totally realizing in my soul that I was about to hear a shred of wisdom from a person whom I kinshiply acknowledged as a soul mate, I uttered, “I guess a dollar”. He wisely looked through my eyes, and asked, “Now if I give you an idea, and you give me an idea, now what do we have?”.

I know, profound, eh?

That has stuck with me ever since. It is a lesson in more than humanity, it is universal. Think Universal!

 

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The Beauty After A Storm

HurricancloudsAs I was growing up in semi-rural Ohio, I was often drawn to older folk, mainly due to their stories.  I was memorized by tales of their youth, many in far off places, like Chicago,or New York.

As I grew older I looked to older wiser parents and grandparent-types to learn how to deal with middle life. Suddenly, I am supposed to be one of those older wiser elders!  Well, what if I don’t want to take on that responsibility of having the right answers?  It’s just a lot of added stress that I did not even want as a parent.  There are no rule books on life, and frankly (I am allowed to say Frankly all I want), I have tried many times to ask for forgiveness over permission anyway.

So many times in my life, I thought things looked really bleak and melancholy, then only to discover that things were not even remotely as bad as I thought.  That’s what I have come to call the Beauty After A Storm.  You know, when the air feels so clean and charged with positive energy.  There is just such a rejuvenating feeling, like walking through a wheat field, in the full moonlight, with just the right amount of dew on the wheat to make you laugh as you walk because it is just too silly to be doing that.

Life needs to be a song in every moment.

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Lambda Early Ads and Product Brochures

When I started Lambda, I was a novice to business and product promotion. I was adventurous and committed. Here are some of the first product promotion tools that I had done. The first printers were Ampersand of Guelph and photographer by the name of Lewis in Guelph.

The first company was a numbered company, which was cheaper to establish. The name Lambda came as a result of me taking physics at UofG. The Greek letter Lambda is used in the formula denoting wavelength of light. Because leaded crystal breaks up white light into its component wavelengths – colours, that is how the rainbows are created. White light strikes the lead and bounces off. As it does, the colour traveling the fastest, that is, the shortest wavelength, reflects first, followed by the next shortest wavelength. That is how lead crystal can take while light, which we don’t see, and turns it into colours. It is magical to me. It is also the first things babies see; flashes of colour. Hand a crystal over a babies crib and watch the baby become mesmerized by the lights.

I have not lost the ability and guts to try new things in my life and hope I hold onto that adventurous side into the next existence. I came up with the first figurines while preparing orders for basic crystal prisms. I put a couple of pieces together and thought, that looks like a little mouse. I remember using a black felt tip pen to mark the eyes and nose. I used some crazy glue to put the first one together. I needed some whiskers so I found a jeweler in Elora, ON who sold me silver wire, drawn to a smaller diameter in order to glue three pieces together through the hole to look like whiskers. Once I had one creation, I needed more to create a line of figurines. I shortly came up with City Mouse, Country Mouse, Church Mouse, Dormouse, Castle Cat, Crusader Rabbit, Flying Crusader Rabbit. These became the first crystal figurines manufactured in N. America. Later on, Swarovski sued a company in the US saying they had copied their idea. I was summoned to fly to Washington DC to provide an affidavit which proved that I was the first in N. America. Swarovski had to pay the US company damages and apologize. That company had actually stolen my designs and admitted it. Very interesting history. This would have been in 1978-79 that I created them.