Ervin Somogyi

Here’s a photo of a guitar that can present itself as an optical illusion. 
Can you see it?

Dr. Dovetail is a [humorous] advice column for luthiers.  It consists of some earnest letters of inquiry that Dr. Dovetail has been helpful with.  

Be it noted that no one is named who has objected to their name being used, and other names have been disguised to protect the innocent. There is no subtext, there are no hidden messages, there is no weirdness or backstabbing going on outside of my own silliness.  If I really don’t like someone, I certainly don’t make fun of them in public.  I go after them in sneaky ways.

On the other hand, nothing is trickier than writing humor. It’s more difficult than any other kind of writing; it’s impossible to not offend someone, no matter how hard you try.  So if this isn’t going to be quite your cup of tea, please don’t read on. 

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Dear Dr. Dovetail:

I recently bought a Ribbecke guitar with a huge bulge in the lower bout on the treble side of the face, at my local flea market.  The guy selling it said it didn’t need de-warping ‘cause it was made like that.  He said it was a bubbled-top guitar.  What’s the deal with this?

Signed: Bubbles, in Champaign (Illinois)

Dear Bubbles in Champaign:

What you have in your hot trembling hands, you lucky innocent, is one of the Ribbecke bubble-top guitars, manufactured in the 1970s.  The genesis of the design is obscure: at first it was thought to be simply a metaphor for the essential post-modern deconstructionist paradigm.  However, industrial sources report that it was the result of a search for a way to make guitars more sexy by giving them cleavage, and Ribbecke’s bulgey design ultimately provided the inspiration for the Miracle Bra.  Having only a single bubbled mound on the treble side, however, these early attempts at representing cleavage came off as rather half-assed.

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Dear Dr. Dovetail:

 Having been a member of the National Luthier’s Guild for some years now I’m puzzled by the fact that its publication, Guitarmaker, is only published a few times a year.  Other magazines are published at least six times a year, if not monthly or even weekly, and, given the sheer amount of interest in lutherie and woodworking out there, I’d expect that there would be more than enough material available to publish an informational journal more frequently.  What is the explanation for such a lapse?

                                                                                    Signed: Elmore Pulitzer

Dear Elmore:

Being a somewhat in-house publication, it is felt that the normal rules and considerations don’t apply to Guitarmaker.   It is furthermore felt that this publication, like other things in its publisher’s life, more than makes up in size and quality for what it lacks in frequency.

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Dear Dr. Dovetail:

My wife recently surprised me by buying me a Humphries “millennium” guitar. The sense of occasion of the moment, unfortunately, was somewhat blunted by our getting into a heated argument about when the millennium actually began: in 2000, or in 2001?  If I’m right, my wife threatens to return the “millennium” guitar and says I’m free to repurchase it myself on any date I wish. Can you help clarify this most vexing situation?

                                                            Signed: Stanley Kubrick (no, not that one)

Dear the-other-Stanley:

 No need to worry: no actual, current time line is violated in the purchase of a Humphreys millennium instrument.  Because the cachet of the current new millennium had already been co-opted by numerous commercial franchise ventures which had bought all rights to it, Mr. Humphreys’ guitars actually refer to the third millennium B.C.,which was still up for grabs.  Keep your guitar and enjoy it.  We understand these guitars are really great for playing old-timey music. 

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Dear Dr. Dovetail:

I keep hearing that luthiers and lutherie folks are diamonds in the rough. That is, lots of them don’t have a lot of formal schooling, but they’re really smart anyhow.  Are any members of this group particularly educated in a formal way, and how well did they do academically before they went in for lutherie work?

                                                                                                Signed, P.H. Dee, PhD

Dear P.H. Dee:

Todd Taggart quickly comes to mind.  He’s often told us that he was in the top 98% of his graduating class.

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Dear Dr. Dovetail:

I’ve been excited to hear about Julian Gaffney’s new all-Brazilian-rosewood (top, back, sides, neck, braces, bridge and case) guitars, but have been hearing mutterings of dissatisfaction about these instruments.  What gives?  Brazilian rosewood isn’t all that bad a bad wood, is it?

                                                                                                Signed, Rio Janeiro

Dear Rio Janeiro:

We can only say that, for reasons which we don’t have the space to get into, it is generally felt that with the recent release of his “Save the Rainforest” line of Presentation Model all-Brazilian-rosewood guitars this man has hit rock bottom and begun to excavate.

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Dear Dr. Dovetail:

 I’ve been on the periphery of the world of lutherie for quite some time and informally followed the careers, successes and failures of some of the more prominent members of the guitarmaking community.  I couldn’t help noticing that Ericson Reid, who had been active in guitarmaking and finishing, seems to have dropped out of sight.  Does anyone know why?

                                                                      Signed, Nah Yusseem Nahwa-Yudunt

Dear Nah Yusseem:

 This firmly-established luthier made a bad mistake some time ago in building a guitar for a very important client who was connected with the Mob.  He mistook the massage lotion for the wood glue and used it on that project.  These substances look quite alike, you know, and this is an easy mistake to make. I’ve done it myself.  Anyway, this individual had to leave town quickly and has gone into the Federal Luthier’s Protection Plan, and no one knows his whereabouts.  We think he may have been sent to Costa Rica to work anonymously.

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Dear Dr. Dovetail:

I’ve been hearing a lot about Ervin Somogyi lately: his unusual sense of design, his controversial politics, his pioneering nontraditional methods, his eccentric teaching style, his checkered work ethic, his highly Bohemian manners of personal behavior, his groundbreaking body of work, and the heroic array of medications that keep him going.  This guy has made quite a splash.   I hear he started out with nothing.  Is this true?

                                                                                    Signed,  Gudfur Nottingham

Dear Gudfur:

Yes. And common sentiment is that he still has most of it.

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Dear Dr. Dovetail:

How long have Alembic guitars been around?  I seem to have heard about them all my life.  And didn’t Rick Turner make them?

                                                                                                Signed, Old Timer

Dear Old Timer:

Turner guitars have indeed been around for a long time.  As a matter of fact, diggers at a prehistoric archeological site in North Central Southeastern Germany recently unearthed a perfectly preserved petrified wood  Rick Turner guitar.  Experts said it was the earliest example of a rock guitar they’d ever seen.

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Dear Dr. Dovetail:

Why do archtop guitars have so much bigger pegheads than regular acoustic guitars?

                                                                        Signed, Angelerenzorinaldi Manuelmauriccio

Dear Mr. Manuelmauriccio:

 It’s because Italians have such long last names.

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Dear Dr. Dovetail:

I’ve been trying to come up with a great, socko byline for my guitars, but I’m hitting a brick wall.  All the good slogans have been taken.  Do you have any advice for me?

                                                                               Signed, Looking for a good Line

Dear Looking:

Before Boaz El-Laskin got on the bandwagon with his new slogan “Guitars so good you’ll plotz!”  he was going to use “Miracle Guitars: if it sounds good, it’s a Miracle!”.  This was originally intended to be marketed to seminary students, but he changed his mind after rethinking his demographic. It’s become available should you want it.  Also, we hear that D. Angelico Corleone was going to release his new “il Padrone” model along with the slogan A Guitar You Can’t Refuse.  But, since his mysterious disappearance, that one seems to be available as well.

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Dear Dr. Dovetail:

I’ve been hearing about Larry Robinson’s inlay work for a long time and I finally got a hold of some of his books.  Wow.  Where does he come up with these complicated, intertwined, colorful designs and images? But aren’t they a bit on the busy side?

                                                                  Signed, Snowblinded by m.o.p.

Dear Snowblinded:

Well, yes, but overall there’s general agreement that Robinson’s work is quite a lot better than it looks.

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Dear Dr. Dovetail:

I’m a wealthy collector of fine things who is considering buying some guitars. My problem is that the most expensive guitars are made of rosewood, and my home is decorated in Danish modern style, so the guitars really wouldn’t match the décor.  Do you have any suggestions?

                                                                 Signed, Max from the Hamptons

Dear Max:

Why yes, I do, and your timing in asking this couldn’t be more perfect. Luddite’s Mercantile Inc. wood supplier in Healdsburg, California, has just received a large shipment of extremely expensive Brazilian rosewood which was recently culled from a pocket of the Amazon basin in which there has previously been little logging activity. This new wood is quite amazing. Far from looking like the same old dark Brazilian rosewood which everyone has been using for years, different samples of this new wood have the appearances of Danish maple, oak, Finnish birch, Dutch mahogany, and even Swedish chromed metal.  Our staff feels that guitars made from unique materials would undoubtedly make the perfect accent statements to go with your couch, curtains, or gazebo.

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Dear Dr. Dovetail:

 I haven’t seen any of the Greedlove guitars around in a while and I heard that the company went out of business.  What gives?

                                                                                                Signed, I. M. Curious

Dear I. M. Curious:

Unfortunately Greedlove & Co.  got involved with the advertising company that was also Enron Corporation’s former Public Relations organ.  Everything started to fall apart when, through the error of a dyslexic adman, the advertising for their new Domed-Top Guitars was spelling “domed” with a double “o”.

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Dear Dr. Dovetail:

I‘ve been a guitar maker for a while now, but I’m finding the politics and egos involved are complicating my enjoyment of the work much more than I ever thought such things could.  What advice do you have for a young guy with the hots to make it in this game, but doesn’t want to either take sides, get politicized, or alienate some people? 

                                                                          Signed, Disconcerted Dave

Dear Disconcerted Dave:

There are Four Golden Rules to follow in negotiating the complications and pitfalls of working with others.  First, look for the humor in every situation.  Second, don’t take sides.  Third, never tell people everything you think.

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Dear Dr. Dovetail:

I’m a bit disconcerted by the entry of so many foreigners into guitar making. Used to be that it was only real Americans that did this work — for instance like Roy Noble, one of the real old timers.

                                                                                    Signed, Patriotic

Dear Patriotic:

Yeah, I know what you mean, but in this case I have to pop your balloon. Roy Noble’s family originally came from Eastern Europe, where their family name was Nobulshitzky.  They shortened the name to something easier to pronounce when they arrived here.

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Dear Dr. Dovetail:

I’ve been reading Al Carruth’s articles for years now with increasing fascination.  He has the most impressive grasp of musical acoustics and dynamics, and all done from a very scientific point of view.  Yet, outside of his brilliant writings, no one I’ve talked to seems to know much about him.  What can you tell me about this intriguing but shadowy figure?

                                                                                                Signed, Al Anon

Dear Al Anon:

 In truth, Al is all but impossible to describe adequately.  The best I can do is tell you the fact — widely agreed on by his friends — that if there were a contest for which First Prize would be a dinner with Al, then Second Prize would be two dinners with him. Third Prize would be three dinners with him.  And so on. You get the picture.

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Dear Dr. Dovetail:

I understand that luthier Martin Einstein has a PhD. in philosophy and is very smart.  I met him once.  I was standing on a ladder, trying to throw a tape measure up to the top of a flagpole, hoping to catch the flagpole’s tip.  I needed to measure the flagpole’s height, you see, and I wasn’t having much luck. This fellow took one look at me and said, ‘hey, wouldn’t it be easier if you took the flagpole out of its socket, laid it out on the ground, and measured it like that?’  Then he walked on.  I thought that was a pretty silly thing to say, don’t you?

                                                                                                Signed, Flagpoleman

Dear Flagpoleman:

Yeah.  Obviously, he didn’t understand that you were trying to measure the flagpole’s height, not its width.

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Dear Dr. Dovetail:

 I’ve been hearing about something called the Doppler Guitar.  Is it made by someone named Doppler?  Who is he, and what are his guitars all about?

                                                                    Signed, Coming & Going

Dear Coming & Going:

The Doppler guitar is the brainchild of luthier Martin Gibson.  It’s based in the Doppler effect, in which objects approaching at high speed make a high-pitched sound and objects withdrawing at high speed emit a low-pitched sound — as when a car zooms past you on the highway as you are hitchhiking in the desert.  

This enterprising designer saw a possibility of using this principle of physics to improve the response and tonal balance of his instruments. He is, at this time, attempting to patent a guitar the sound of which has its high end boosted as the player runs toward the audience with it; and the bass register is enhanced as one runs away from the audience, while playing the guitar.  A special guitar harness is included at no extra charge, and this guitar provides something no other brand can boast of: tremendous aerobic and health benefits.

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Dear Dr. Dovetail:

My brother and I used to see Gustav Taylor at many guitar shows, but haven’t seen him lately.  Has he dropped out?  We’ve been really hoping to see and play some of his newer guitars.

                                                                                    Signed,  Isaiah Wahoppen

Dear Mr. Wahoppen:

I’m happy to tell you that Gustav is still making great guitars.  He went through a rough patch a while back and has simply found it hard to get to his tables at shows, because of all the restraining orders against him.  Watch for someone who looks heavily disguised and it’ll probably be him. 

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Dear Dr. Dovetail:

I’ve been reading your column for years and I think you’re making this stuff up. No one could write real letters like this.  I’d like to see what would happen if you were hooked up to a polygraph.

                                                                                    Signed,  Wired for Soundness

Dear Wired for Soundness:

You’re not the first one to bring this concern up.  Not long ago I made an appointment with a luthier-polygrapher to settle people’s suspicions once and for all.  Since he too had thought that I told incredible whoppers, he hooked me up not to a polygraph but a seismograph — in anticipation of getting truer readings. The needles held rock steady.  

At least, until he plugged the machine in.

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Dear Dr. Dovetail:

 As a marketing student on my way to an M.B.A., I know that Ford, Oracle, 3-M, Toyota, Chef Boy-Ar-Dee, Pepsi-Cola, etc. have long since zeroed in on the perfect sound-byte for increasing sales and market share.  I’m wondering what might be the absolute best marketing slogan you’ve ever come across from a guitar maker?

                                                                               Signed, Future Biz-Whiz

Dear Future Biz-Whiz:

My personal favorite is from Ervin Somogyi’s pre-lutherie career, when he was making vacuum-cleaners.  His slogan was Somogyi; Our Products Really Suck. His business went under just before the advertising campaing that was to use this line got off the ground. Too bad; he really had high hopes for it.  We hear that he has been working on an entirely new model of guitar called “The Miracle Model”, to soon be marketed as “The Miracle Guitar: if it sounds good it’s a Miracle!”.  We wish him luck.

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Dear Dr. Dovetail:

My most embarrassing moment in lutherie happened one night when, in the dark, my girlfriend and I mistook the white glue for the massage lotion.  The next morning the fire department had to be called in to hose us apart.  Living in a small town, everybody was there to see the show.  It was really embarrassing.  Say, this is the “most embarrassing moments” column, isn’t it?

                                                                        Signed:  Togetherness in Tillamook

Dear Togetherness in Tillamook:

It is now.

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Dear Dr. Dovetail:

I really need help.  I’m an alcoholic with a bad problem that’s getting out of control.  I’d like to try one of the 12-step programs, but I can’t afford them.  What should I do?

                                                                       Signed, My Wood is Drier Than I Am

Dear Dryer Woods:

I’m glad you wrote, because there’s a fix.  Luthier’s Anonymous offers a fifteen-percent-off, ten-step, program which has had good results. To make the transition easier, L.A. takes you off the hard stuff gradually by putting you on a temporary diet of wines which are specially developed for luthiers — and which are the same stuff the National Luthier’s Guild bigwigs enjoy at their symposiums (have you ever noticed how sober they look?).   The current offerings are the award-winning Vin du Pay Forever, this year’s best near miss Chateau Clos But No cigar, the somewhat overinflated Le GrandPinot Envee’, and the perennially asymptotic Maison Clos-To-Being-Done.  Good Luck!

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Dear Dr. Dovetail:

I’m puzzled by some aspects of Harry Fleishman’s persona.  In his writings, he comes across as a thoughtful, highly professional and smart guy.  But in person, when he lectures or gives classes, my impression of him is that he just woke up.  Am I missing something?  What gives?

                                                                                Signed, Puzzled in Peoria

Dear Puzzled in Peoria:

Harry really is, in fact, a phenomenally gifted, charming, witty, and urbane man of penetrating intelligence who is, after everything is said and done, sparklingly brilliant.  Because of this, the directors of lutherie events have long made it a point to ask Harry to mumble, stutter and say inane things when he makes public appearances.  It makes people in the audiences not feel so bad about themselves.

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Dear Dr. Dovetail:

As fur as hand-applied finishes go, do ya’ think that if’n I rubbed sausage grease all over mah guitar I could call it a French Polish finish?

                                                                                                Signed, Jes’ Wonderin’

Dear Jes’ Wonderin’:

That does it.  I quit.

Dr. Dovetail is a [humorous] advice column for luthiers.  It consists of some earnest letters of inquiry that Dr. Dovetail has been helpful with.  

Be it noted that no one is named who has objected to their name being used, and other names have been disguised to protect the innocent. There is no subtext, there are no hidden messages, there is no weirdness or backstabbing going on outside of my own silliness.  If I really don’t like someone, I certainly don’t make fun of them in public.  I go after them in other sneaky ways.

On the other hand, nothing is trickier than writing humor. It’s more difficult than any other kind of writing; it’s impossible to not offend someone, no matter how hard you try. So if this isn’t going to be quite your cup of tea, please don’t read on. 

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Dear Dr. Dovetail:

My boyfriend is a luthier and I’ve been going to lutherie shows with him for some time now.  I’ve noticed something odd going on.  All the luthiers part their hair on the left.  Is this some weird membership or dress code thing?  Why do they all do this?

                                                                                        Signed, Puzzled in Topeka

Dear Puzzled:

Their mothers were all right handed.

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Dear Dr. Dovetail,

I am thinking of hiring some luthiers for my guitar factory.  I have heard that Leo Buendia is a fine luthier that I should get to work for me?  What do you think?

Signed, Anxious

Dear Anxious,

You will be very lucky to get this man to actually work for you and I would waste no time in hiring him.

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Dear Dr. Dovetail:

My teacher at the Roverto-Benn school gave me a lutherie problem to solve:  A famous guitarist is playing a big concert in a renown music hall in City A at 8:00 p.m. City A is 200 miles from City B, and 300 miles from City C.  A luthier in City B wants to sell the performer in question a guitar and starts hitchhiking with his guitar to City A, at noon.  He averages thirty miles an hour.  But, unfortunately, he forgets to take his medication along.  A second luthier, in City C, also wants to sell a guitar to this musician.  He starts driving his Yugo toward City A at 10:00 a.m., flooring it all the way.  He averages 40 miles per hour. Unfortunately, he leaves his concert hall tickets at one of three bars he stops at to ask for directions.

 Which luthier gets to the musician first and makes the sale? 

                                                                                                        Signed:  Al Thumbs

Dear Al Thumbs:

Obviously, the luthier at the bar who found the mislaid concert hall tickets.

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Dear Dr. Dovetail:

I’m a part-time luthier and computer hacker and I’ve just hacked into the central C.I.A. database files at Langley to find out what kind of dirt our top national security agency has gathered about the. board of directors of one of our larger lutherie supply organizations.  Amazing!!! These people are the most incredible bunch of misfits and ne’er-do-wells I’ve ever read about.  They’ve run their own businesses into the ground, cheated on their partners, colluded in price fixing of a vast array of their shoddy merchandise, have wild sex orgies at their annual sinposiums, and take drugs regularly.  The most disturbing thing was that none of them seems to have ever been convicted of anything.  Do these people have any previous convictions?

                                                                                    Signed,  Amazed

Dear Amazed:

Well, yes; they all used to believe that honesty is the best policy.

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Dear Dr. Dovetail:

I have a problem.  I have two brothers.  One is a luthier.  The other was put to death in the electric chair for murder.  My mother died in an insane asylum when I was three years old. My two sisters are both prostitutes and my father sells narcotics to high school students.  Recently I met a girl from a reformatory where she served time for smothering her illegitimate child to death.  I’m really in love with this girl and I want to marry her.  My problem is this: if I marry her, how do I tell her about my brother who is the luthier?

                                                                                                Signed, Fred in Omaha

Dear Fred in Omaha:

It’ll sound better if you tell her he’s on the Board of Directors of a  nationally prominent luthier’s supply organization with certain connections to a major national security organization.

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Dear Dr. Dovetail:

I understand that individual guitar makers, having no advertising budget, are forced to market their instruments by going to guitar concerts and hawking them backstage, after the shows.  Amazingly, some luthiers do very well at this.  I’m told that Jason Kostal has been particularly fortunate in this method of marketing.  How did he start?

                                                                               Signed, For The Record

Dear For The Record:

This luthier’s early career in somewhat vague, but we have an unverified report that before he was a guitar maker he made grand pianos.  He would drive them to concerts and haul them backstage to show musicians.  It was working pretty well for him, but his back eventually gave out and he needed to lift lighter things.

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Dear Dr. Dovetail:

Supposing you are making a guitar out of Egyptian Yew and Baltic Wormwood that have a density of six point two and five point nine pounds per cubic foot, respectively, at 26 degrees centigrade and 36% humidity.  The woods are worked to .130″ during light Santa Ana wind conditions in October, when Young’s Modulus for the topwood is precisely 3.  The braces are made out of Thuringian poplar felled at a 7000 foot elevation in December, with a grain count of 13 per centimeter.  The air cavity is 17.85 liters and the soundhole is 4.25 inches in diameter.  The bridge, made from rare aged Tasmanian Devilwood, weighs 39.7 grams at sea level at 60 millimeters of barometric pressure.

What would you expect the effect on the guitar’s 0,1,1 resonance dipole to be, and also on the impedance midrange transient of the 5000 to 8000 Hertz band (including bass signature roloff), of increasing the scale of this guitar by one centimeter?

                                                                    Signed, Scientific Guitarmaker

Dear Scientific Guitarmaker:

None at all, unless you put strings on it.

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Dear Dr. Dovetail:

I’ve been reading about the Kasha bracing system, with its radial asymmetrical bracing and impedance damping split bridges.  I find this radical approach thought-provoking and intriguing, as it seems to come out of a heretofore unexplored concept of guitar acoustics that has ramifications into both monocoque and structural engineering, as well as exciting implications for entirely new bracing systems.  Can you explain some of the dynamics and thinking behind this important contemporary breakthrough in guitar design?

                                                                                                        Signed, Fascinated

Dear Fascinated:

No.

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Dear Dr. Dovetail:

Frank Ford, of A.S.I.A.’s board of directors, is a well known repairman and an avid adherent of hide glues.  He recently wrote the definitive History of Glue.  Is this book any good?

                                                                                  Signed,  Curious about Yellow

Dear Curious:

No one on the staff here could put the book down once they picked it up.

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Dear Dr. Dovetail:

I hear Ervin Somogyi has broken ground as an artist by developing a new art form: woodcarving art inspired by the techniques and materials of lutherie work. Some people say this artwork-for-the-wall is pretty brilliant.  What have you heard?

                                                                                  Signed, Aesthetic Woodworker

Dear Aesthetic:

The consensus in the art gallery world and among the doyens of the National Endowment is that at least Somogyi’s wall-art work, if not the man himself, is quite well hung.

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Dear Dr. Dovetail:

I’m impressed with Michael Bashkin’s guitars, as well as his marketing acumen. He has worked hard at placing his instruments in the hands of prominent endorsers and is constantly striving to increase his market profile.  What advertising blitz will we, the members of the public, be treated to next?

                                                                                                Signed, MBA plunker

Dear MBA plunker:

 This man has really surpassed himself by recently signing an exclusive-use endorsement deal with the prestigious Gallaudet University Guitar Symphony Orchestra.  They love the sound of his guitars!  Look for their CD soon on the Music Mime label.

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Dear Dr. Dovetail:

I want to buy a guitar, but am concerned that I find one that’s made with New Age Consciousness, with regard for all living things, and with an attitude of respect for the earth.  What brand do you recommend?

Signed, Conscientious in Fargo

Dear Conscientious:

I’d try a Taylor.  They don’t use laboratory animals to test their products.  They use real consumers instead.

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Dear Dr. Dovetail:

It’s been a long time since anyone’s heard about Larry Robinson, the famous guitar inlay artist.  He made it Big Time in the seventies and eighties, but then ran into trouble with controlled substances, gambling debts to the Mob, various nervous breakdowns which led to hospitalizations and electroshock therapy and, of course, some sexual escapades notorious to the point of becoming legendary. What ever happened to him?

 Signed, Reminiscing

Dear Reminiscing:

The individual you named has really cut a wide swath through the barrel bottoms of life, there’s no denying.  After several attempts at drug rehab, counseling, and ultimately finding religion, his parole officer assures us that Robinson has turned his life around a full 360 degrees.

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Dear Dr. Dovetail:

Me and my brother-in-law Biff went into partnership to import inexpensive Mexican guitars. Our business plan has been to rent a truck, drive to Mexico, buy a load of cheap guitars, and haul them back across the border to sell.  We’ve done this a few times, buying the Mexican guitars for $50 each, driving them across the border, and selling them for $40 each, stateside.  Cash flow is terrible, and we’re just scraping by.  We’ve been tryin to figure out what to do about this situation. What do you think we oughtta do?

 Signed, Mack from El Paso 

Dear Mack from El Paso:

You obviously need a bigger truck.

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Dear Dr. Dovetail:

I read that the National Luthier’s Guild. recently completed some rigorous controlled listening tests on guitars made by its members. What were the findings?

   Signed, Acoustician in Nashville

Dear Acoustician:

The N.L.G. found that Nothing sounds better than a Manzer guitar.  Much better, in fact.

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Dear Dr. Dovetail:            

It’s always interesting to know how various prominent luthiers got their start.  After all, it’s not as though one could go to school to learn these skills, until recently, and all  the old timers segued into guitar making from something else. One of the most fascinating individuals on the scene is Kasha Michael, who heads a world-famous enterprise that carries his name: how did he get his start in designing and making soundboxes?

 Signed, Anecdotally Curious

Dear Anecdotally Curious:

He started out making caskets for dead pets.

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Dear Dr. Dovetail:

 The name C.F. Martin is known the world over.  The first initial stands for “Christian”.  It seems to me that to have four generations of the most famous guitar making dynasty in the world having this name can’t be an accident in this day and age.  Do you know anything about the nexus between Christianity and guitars, which this name suggests?  There’s probably a significant history, perhaps even an entire metaphysic, involved. Can you cast any light on this?

Signed, Christian luthier

Dear Christian luthier:

 There’s been a lot of speculation about the nexus. You can read all about it in the recently published  The Day Christ Died: The Real Story Behind “X” Bracing, which is available through The Luddite’s Mercantile catalogue.

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Dear Dr. Dovetail:

I’ve been following Lewis Santer’s career for some years now, and I’m really impressed with his work.  What accounts for his fabulous success as a repairman?

Signed, Motown groupie

Dear Motown groupie:

This man’s work is motivated by an attitude of extremely conscientious, almost compulsive, carefulness and fastidious attention to the smallest details.  Why, he’s so meticulous that when he misplaces something, the place he finds that thing is not the last place he looks— just to make certain he didn’t lose it somewhere else!  No one else we know of functions at this level.

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Dear Dr. Dovetail:

I’m a psychologist and part-time luthier.  In doing archival research for my doctor’s thesis in weird personality disorders, I’ve stumbled onto the fact that Bick Doak, who is associated with the Marlin Guitar Company’s custom shop for many years, once aspired to become an engineer as well as a writer of literature.  He wrote at least one book in which he tried to combine engineering, fiction, ethics, marine science, whaling, theology and topology, but it seems to be out of print and I can’t find any references to it tell me what it was about either.  Can you help?

Signed, Rosewood Sheepskin Man in Tulsa

Dear Rosewood/Sheepskin:

Mr. Doak has indeed had a varying palette of interests in his past lives. The book you refer to is  Mobius Dick, (or What Goes Around Comes Around), which became an obscure but intensely studied cult classic some years ago. It was unfortunately doomed by vicious academic infighting between the engineering and ethics departments of the Universities at which the book was taught, that culminated in the unfortunate and subsequently hushed-up lawsuit between the Vatican and M.I.T.  Psychologists have argued that the book, which carries the author’s first name in its title, is autobiographical. Pirated versions can still occasionally be found on the Vatican’s website.  Mr. Boak is presently working on a specialty catalogue of inexpensive woods and materials for the guitar maker, titled Cheap Thrills In The Woodshop. We can hardly wait for it to come out.

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Dear Dr. Dovetail:

Many luthiers have had previous careers in everything from business to photography to the arts, and have been successful in these.  Furthermore, when they become guitar makers they often bring specific skills and attitudes from their former occupations with them, and use these to great advantage in mastering the skills of lutherie.  I understand that one of the most prominent female luthiers on the scene today used to be a lawyer.  What legal skills did she transfer over?

 Signed, tax-accountant/guitar maker

Dear tax-accountant:  

She actually wasn’t ever a lawyer: she was a dyslexic law student who dropped out when she found out she wouldn’t ever be joining the American Bra Association.  But, even so, she did have a bit more trouble at first than the average second-careerist in transferring her legal skills over into lutherie.  Due to a semantic misunderstanding, she believed that her guitars’ ease of playability needed to be actionable.  She made many like that. 

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Dear Dr. Dovetail:

I went to the opening of a fancy new yuppie restaurant in my town and was attended by a most attractive waitress.  When she asked me what I wanted I told her that I wanted a quickie  from her, and she slapped me.  She said that she didn’t do that kind of thing, and what did I want? Brought up short as much by her reflexes as by her looks, I repeated that I really did want a quickie  from her.  She slapped me again, and said for me to forget that, and what did I really want?  I didn’t want to get hit again, so I left.  What gives?

Signed, Bubba von Dresdner

Dear Bubba:

It’s pronounced keesh.  We could recommend a good finishing school for you.

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Dear Dr. Dovetail:

I’ve been hearing reports about Santer Instruments but I can’t quite get a fix on them.  I hear that they have a guitar model called the “Zero Defcets”, which happens to be my name.  Can you tell me something about its founder?  

 Signed, Zero Defcets

Dear Mr. Defcets:

Miroslav Santer is a man who has achieved the American dream.  Originally an immigrant into the U.S. from New Jersey, Mr. Defcets started out with nothing.  But like many self-made men he has, through sheer hard work and will power, made his way to the very highest pointof the Bell Curve.

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Dear Dr. Dovetail:

I’ve long been fascinated at how guitar making work has attracted aficionados who previously have had other jobs, interests and careers.  I’m particularly fascinated at how these creative individuals have brought with them the skills and disciplines of their former work lives — be they training in fine arts, machining, architecture, pattern-making, cabinetwork, commercial design, music or physics — and adapted them to guitar making.  Have any luthiers come from the automobile making industry?

Signed, Edsel from Detroit

Dear Edsel from Detroit:

Why yes, there is one prominent luthier, whom we cannot name, who has come from that well-established industry.  His current main project is a guitar with listener’s-side air bags.  Frankly, it’s generally felt that his instruments really do need them.

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         Dr. Dovetail’s column will be continued in the second volume of this set.

I try to stay away from the news these days.  The lies and lying really get to me.

Speaking of lying, there was a t.v. series called Lie To Me, starring actor Tim Roth, a while back.  He played an expert in reading body language and facial expressions, who was brought in to solve a crime or mystery when something really bad had happened.  Roth figured out who the bad guy was by interviewing people and following out those kinds of facial and postural clues.  It was an interesting show; particularly because in explaining how various body and facial tics indicated lies, photos of various real politicians’ faces (when they were being interviewed, questioned, or just speaking) were used in illustration.  My God but our leaders are brazen and mendacious.

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Having mentioned actor Tim Roth, I want to say that he starred in one of the best movies I’ve ever seen . . . and that no one has ever heard of.  I found it by accident surfing channels late one night.  It’s titled “The Legend of 1900” and, as I said, nobody has ever heard of it.  But it’s a GREAT movie.  It’s about a piano-playing prodigy who is born in the year 1900; it’s basically a romance, but without any actual romance — and with a cameo by actress Melanie Thiéry, who is one of the three most achingly beautiful females who have kept their clothes on that I’ve ever seen on a screen.

The musical high point of the film is a sequence in which the famous Jelly Roll Morton (“the Father of Jazz”) challenges the Tim Roth character to a public piano-duel.  That sequence is to die for.  Give yourself a treat some evening and watch this gem.

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         On a different level entirely, I want to show you an image of my “Diospyros” guitar.  Diospyros is the generic name for ebony, and this guitar is made up of lots of ebony tiles mixed in with contrasting tiles of Yellowheart wood.  Overall, the pattern looks a bit like all the Midwest farmland that one flies over and sees if one looks out of the airplane window; or, on a different scale, a stylized version of the fitted-together-cobblestone streets one finds in Mexican towns.

 

This guitar was, in fact, inspired by exactly that: the appealingly geometric look of the fitted-together cobblestones one can see on Mexican streets.

         There’s a bit of a story behind this, of course.  Part of that story has to do with how I notice, and get distracted by, the visuals in the world around me.  I notice patterns, colors, textures, proportions, disproportions, continuities and discontinuities of line, evenness and unevenness, and all kinds of beauty in things no one else seems to notice.  Textural stuff REALLY grabs my eye.  This propensity really gets in my way when I’m trying to get anything done; so I try to hide when I’m working so as to get away from interruptions.  Interruptions REALLY kill my focus and concentration.

         Anyway, I was in a relationship with a woman some years ago.  As I was married at the time it was, technically, an adulterous relationship — although my wife knew about it and really didn’t care.  The marriage had, how should I put it, passed its “discard after . . . “ date.

         This lady and I went to Puerto Vallarta for a week’s . . . uh  . . . romantic getaway.  Puerto Vallarta has long ago been converted into a tourist trap and is not nearly so pleasant a place in which to spend time as the travel industry might want you to think.  The tourist hotels are about a mile out of town and isolated from the riff-raff. Those resort buildings are magnificent, impressively large, and soulless. They also jettison an awful lot of sewage directly into the ocean, not far from the town.  Charming, that.

Puerto Vallarta is picturesque but has the scuffed and worn look of something that’s fallen on hard times.  It’s right on the ocean; but the beach sand itself is a shockingly narrow strip . . . and it’s brown and looks dirty; it looks like a brown sugar truck had a major spill there.  (The tourist hotels, in contrast, had imported tons of white sand that really does look nice, although the overall effect is that of an incongruous patch of white off in the distance, in the middle of an otherwise brown landscape.)

The main industry in the town is tourism, of course: the stores, restaurants, tours, crafts objects and imported merchandise, street vendors, etc. are all geared to that.  (The crowning touch is that in order for the government to protect its tourist income, Puerto Vallarta is policed by soldiers from a nearby army facility who are armed not with pistols and rifles, but with machine guns.)

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It was during this romantic getaway that I found out that I didn’t really like the woman I was with.  She was . . . well, let’s just say that we were appallingly mismatched.  It was sort of like going on a romantic hideaway trip and discovering that your partner is a transvestite.

This lady was smart, attractive, and, among other things, a competitive scrabble player.  For months, she beat me every time we played.  I didn’t really mind; I like words and playing with words, and I didn’t have anything riding on whether I won or lost.  And, in any event, the more we played the better I got and the closer the gap between our scores became.  We took the scrabble set down to Puerto Vallarta and it was while we were down there that I beat her at scrabble for the first time.  MAN, WAS SHE PISSED!  Outraged, in fact.   And she had a major tantrum.  Such . . . uh . . . misbehavior for such a seemingly trivial reason . . . well, it was pivotal for me.  The relationship went quickly downhill after that.

In any event, after that tantrum, rather than to hang out with her, I walked around Puerto Vallarta a lot.  As I walked, I noticed beautiful visual patterns and textures everywhere.  I hadn’t quite realized until that week how much these things impinge on me; but IT WAS VERY PLEASANT for me to simply walk around and see the sights.  I looked at wrought iron work on the houses, the colors of the buildings, the cobblestoned streets, iguanas for sale, etc.  I learned a bit about Puerto Vallarta itself, too.

For instance: there are insect in that region that live in hidey-holes at the bottoms of small craters that they make in the dirt; if you go out of town you’ll see lots of these little conical craters in the soil.  These “V”-sided craters are about the size of a walnut, and their sloped sides are lined with VERY FINE sand.  Being fine sand, these craters are a lighter color than the surrounding dirt, and are therefore not hard to find; but of course insects don’t care about color.  Anyway, when another insect walks into one of these conical depressions the sand all around is so fine that it cannot get its footing and it slides down to the bottom of the dip; then the insect jumps out of its hole, grabs the unsuspecting victim, and eats it.  This predator is called a “Lolita” by the locals, by the way.

Who knew Puerto Vallartans were so literate? Anyway, it was fun to look and learn.

         Fast-forward some years. I came into possession of a coffee-table book titled ARTEFACTOS, which has lots of photographs of arts and crafts artifacts from Latin America.  One of the photos was of a beautiful cobblestones street of the kind I’d seen in Puerto Vallarta, where squarish and rectangular-ish stones (rather than more rounded or oval ones) were fitted together.  Wow.  That image just jumped out at me.  And I filed that away as something that I could do something with at some point.

         Fast-forward a few more years to when I had a hankering to make a guitar for myself — for no other reason than that I wanted to do something different from all the usual stuff. Enter the idea for the Diospyros guitar. The attached image is of this instrument.

I have to tell you that carrying this project out was VERY time consuming . . . but I didn’t really mind.  Just like losing at scrabble.  I was chasing something new simply because I really wanted to do it.  And I could. And eventually the Diospyros guitar was completed.

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The thing of it is: it probably never would have been made had I not disliked that girlfriend as much as I did and stumbled on the otherwise invisible beauties of Puerto Vallarta.  (I mean, who ever goes anywhere to look at pavement?)  I have to tell you that in a weird way I feel indebted to her; the Diospyros came about, in part, with her unwitting help.  I have more than once been struck by a philosophical sense of how an irritant can ultimately become a pearl.

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Speaking of “philosophical”, I had a Mondegreen experience with that word some years ago.  A Mondegreen is a mishearing of a lyric or poetic line in which one imagines that something quite different has been said.

The Mondegreen originates from a Scottish ballad where the hero of the narrative is slain . . . “ and . . . [they] laid him on the green”.  Someone heard that as  “. . . and Lady Mondegreen” instead . . . and thus Mondegreens were born.

Anyway, when I was in High School there was a popular Harry Belafonte song called “Island in the Sun”.  It’s a Caribbean tune that goes:

 

This is my island in the sun

Where my people have toiled since time begun

Though I may sail on many a sea

Its shores will always be home to me

Oh island in the sun

Hailed to me by my father’s hand

All my days I will sing in praise

Of your forests, your waters, and shining sand . . . etc. etc.

The song goes on to the phrase  “. . . and Calypso songs philosophical . . .”    And that’s when I Mondegreened.  I thought Belafonte was singing “Calypso songs full of Soffy Cal”.  I couldn’t figure out what Soffy Cal was.  For years I thought it might be some exotic Caribbean substance.

O.K. I’ll clam up about that now.  It’s just getting too nacreous and chatoyant around here.

 

More later.

 

-Ervin

November 12, 2018

 

Someone asked about why I don’t post photos of current builds, comments, updates, etc. on the lutherie discussion forums.  Well, there are several reasons.  Mostly, I just don’t have the time.

I think that the Acoustic Guitar Forum is mostly a good thing; it gives individuals a chance to show off their latest work and get comments and information and support.  I particularly am impressed by the postings such as one that I saw by JESSUPE (Jessupe Goldastini).  What a painstakingly original and unique piece of work he’s accomplished!  I have myselfposted my thoughts on various internet sites in the past.  I did quite a bit of this some years ago on the ANZLF (Autralia/ New Zealand Luthier’s Forum), as well as on this one, and on a third one the name of which I’ve forgotten.  These were mostly good experiences.  But spending time on internet forums at this point in my life is not really for me; they can really soak one’s time up.  And, frankly, not everyone behaves well.

Aside from all that, I have put everything I know and think about how guitars function, into my two books.  My information is all there.  Really: I’ve kept very little back except the specific thicknesses of my guitar woods.  This is largely because there is no specific target thickness: each guitar top is a bit different in thickness.  This is itself because I’m going for a specific stiffnessevery time, not a thickness.  Each piece of wood is a little bit different, and it’s meaningless to give one number that would include tops for Jumbo guitars, and OM guitars, and OO guitars, and everything in between . . . that would furthermore include no information at all about bracing, string gauge, scale length, voicing procedures, doming, selective thinning within the same top, and the specifics of wood selection.  PLUS: there are by now fully two dozen HOW-TO books that will give one or another specific number for top thickness.  So the best I could do is to give an average thickness.

GOOD VS. BAD TEACHING

I produced a DVD a few years ago of a lecture that I gave in which I listed and explained the factors that are responsible for a guitar’s sound: voicing work, bracing, materials stiffness, and vibrating modes of guitar tops.  I laid out everything that I’ve discovered and use that I consider important.  I even brought some guitar bodies that had been voiced to different degrees of completion, and tapped on their tops to illustrate the progression of tap tones in my voicing work.  Such tap tones audibly reveal how a guitar top “opens up”, and I find them indispensable as guides.

At the end, when the audience was asking questions, someone asked if they could see the final shapes of my bracing (that was producing those tones that had reflected my voicing efforts).  I responded that he’d have to take my voicing class to see that level of the work. That may have been a mistake, and I got some blowback from it as the word spread that I was stingy and secretive with my work.  I regret having sounded so flip and glib.  I wish I’d had the presence of mind to have said the following — or something like it:

“I’ve described every principle and consideration that I find important in dealing with guitar sound: wood stiffness in guitars, optimal bracing, top vibrational motions, torque and string pull, an evenness of the vibrating gradient, the Cube Rule of stiffness, guitars as projectors and as diffusers, and top doming. [NOTE: this stuff is all in my books.]  I’ve told you what I think, and why I think it, and I used visual aids and diagrams. I’ve talked about how I came to discover these important things, and even what mistakes I made along the way.  And, mainly, these are precisely the factors that I work with as I make guitars the sounds of which everyone likes.  Now, if I just show you the shapes and profiles of my bracing . . . youwillimmediatelyforgeteverythingIsaidandgohomeand copywhatyou’veseenmedo.  And that, in my opinion, is really bad teaching”.

I said above that it may have been a mistake for me to refuse to show my final configuration of voiced bracing to the audience member who asked to see it.  That’s half of it.  The other half is: Are you kidding me?; you expect me to show you what it’s taken me four decades to figure out, just for the asking — and then criticize me when I say no?  Pal, I just told you ALL the things that I think about in order to do the work that I do.  I owe you that because I promised to speak about these things.  But I draw the line there; that SPECIFIC stuff is entirely proprietary. I do not owe you to show you the specific fruits of forty-plus years of my learning curve just because you’ve bought a $10 ticket to a presentation I’m making.

I wish to be a cheering section for the honing of one’s own thinking skills.  Also, I know something important that a lot of younger people don’t: things acquired without effort or equitable exchange — sort of like sex on demand — have no significance.  You can stop reading now, by the way; I will post further postings on this matter but they are merely additional commentary.

 

 

May 20, 2018

Hi again.  I want to repeat that you don’t have to read all this stuff.  Or, if you do, try to pace yourself.  And if you find this material interesting it’s perfectly all right with me if you share it, or part of it, with your friends. Or not.

I’ve been rambling on about maleness and femaleness.  I think that ideas of maleness and femaleness are as deeply hardwired into our language as they are hardwired into our minds.  As I suggested, it seems that the very word “environment” reeks of maleness.  At least, that’s how it seems to have started out; these days there’s a bit of an ecological spin to it.

Ditto “patriotism”, which word is much on the political forefront these days, if only in the negative.  The thing about both “patriotism” and “environment” is that they are such fundamental ideas that it never occurs to anyone to question them or see how they fit into the scheme of things.  Instead, people consider that the scheme of things fits into them: they are that basic.  Yet both are man-created concepts, and both of them seemingly trace back to maleness. “Patriotism” comes from the root-word “pater”, meaning “father”.  Patriotism = loyalty to the fatherland.  That root also gives us a whole slew of other words that begin with “pater” or “patr”. Many of them are pretty arcane, but we still use “patriot”, “patrician”, “patrimony”, “patriarchal”, and “paternity test” in everyday discourse.  We also “patronize” people.

In view of that root, what’s the deal with naming a woman “Patricia”?  Also, Athena was the Patron Goddess of Athens and the Patroness of the Arts.  Read up on Athena; those words are used.  But aren’t these all examples of those . . . uh . . . oxygenated moron things?

Given the discouragement that people feel with both the world and with government in general, I’d offer a gentler alternative to the forced, self-serving, ugly, and debauched version of Patriotism that people are rabidly claiming for themselves and/or hysterically accusing others of lacking or betraying.  Become a Matriot.  Believe in the gentler, healthier, and more nourishing principles.  “Matriot”, of course, comes from the word “mater”, or “mother”.

Which brings me to Hillary Clinton, the most hated female of our generation.  It’s true.  People HATE her.  I was listening to an interview with author Amy Chozick, who has just released a book about Ms. Clinton.  Ms. Chozick has put a lot of research and work into her book and ran plentifully into people’s attitude that, well, a woman might be a good president . . . but not that one.  Anyone but her!  A lot of people, women included, have a visceral hatred of Hillary Clinton.  Perhaps you are one such person.

Interestingly, and disturbingly, many people can give no reason for their hatred when asked; they just are adamant in their kneejerk revulsion of her.  Pointing out that such irrationally held opinions are not based in anything real, or documented, or even dispassionately looked at does not seem to help.  Fact-checking is lost on them.  Hillary is literally the most investigated and accused-of-malfeasance person of our generation and no one has ever found anything to charge her with nor found her to be culpable of except being stiff and unspontaneous. Well, Trump did once comment (on national television) that Hillary urinates, and he labeled her as being disgusting for doing so.  So there’s that.  The fact that Trump has such feelings about bathroom breaks is the surest proof that neither Melania nor Ivanka ever urinate.  He couldn’t stand it if they did.  But it’s very odd that he didn’t comment on those Russian prostitutes . . .

                             . . . well, you know . . . when in Moscow . . . arrgkh . . . .

 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  uh . . . . . . . . . sorry.  I lose a bunch of brain cells every time I think of that sort of thing.  But no one censured Mr. Frump for his narrow-minded stupidity nor his lack of grace.  And people do HATE Hillary.  There is something seriously wrong here.

I’ve had some conversations of my own with people about these matters, and while I haven’t come away with any greater clarity I do sense that these are still hot topics a year after the election.  People are very frustrated with both Hillary and the Democratic establishment.  Interestingly, to me, almost all the conversations I’ve had were ones in which I was told whom to blame for the mishandlings of Hillary’s presidential campaign.  Or commenting on Hillary’s various failings as Secretary of State.  As though the whole thing was a massive tactical error on someone’s part . . . and without commenting on the incredible peccadillos of the opposition, the big picture, context, political history, Trump’s political track record of minus zero, etc.

Notice that I’m not saying this or that party is right or wrong; to even try to go there will inflame the situation further.  I’m commenting on how polarized the matter is.

That is soooo weird and troubling.

You might ask from where do the Republicans get their ideas that Hillary is    crooked, traitorous, dishonest, untrustworthy, repellent, and/or criminal?  In my next newsletter, a doctor with a flashlight will show us exactly where those ideas come from.

More later.

May 10, 2018

I learned a new word the other day: androcracy (pronounced an-DROK-ruh-see).  It means a system ruled by men.

Androcracy indeed; we’re all familiar with that.  “Andro” is the Greek root for “male” or “maleness”; the Latin root is “vir”, as in “virile”.  I’m under the impression that the Greeks also used “vir”, however, so I’m a bit confused on this point: Socrates’ wife Xantippe was famously a sharp-tongued scold and nag, and she was referred to as a “virago”.

Well, I suspect she had reason to be.  Her hubby seems to have been gone all the time, talking philosophy all day long with other men, and in general building up his resumé as a great thinker.  But not being a hubby. From everything I’ve ever read, he ignored his wife; he basically fled from her. He didn’t work as far as I know, and I don’t know what he could have brought home money-wise to make his wife happy (my guess is that he owned land and lived off his rents).  As far as I know there’s never been any mention of whether he had children, although he probably did. Somehow, I doubt that Xantippe started out as a virago.  Well, to the best of my knowledge domesticity was not a priority of any sort in Greek society; what was a priority was the polis, or community.  At least, it was so among the citizens.

Well, certainly the male citizens; slaves and foreigners (called “exenos” in Greek, from which we get the word “xenophobia”) didn’t count.  On top of that, in those days, women weren’t only not part of the social or political picture, but once they married they weren’t part of any picture at all — except maybe in mythology.  They became invisible. At least, that’s what historians have concluded from the remaining writings, folklore, statuary, stories, etc. about Greek daily culture. Greek daily culture, as far as any extant literature or records show, was very male-centered.  As a matter of fact men loved and adored each other in ways that would be viewed as very suspicious by some moderns.

There may have been heterosexual domestic life aplenty, but that’s the kind of thing that is so ordinary that no one ever puts any of it down on paper.  At some future time archaeologists may be trying to decipher the American sense of normal domesticity by referring to surviving historical documents like our Tabloids’ reports on Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt’s marriage, novels by the likes of Ayn Rand and Norman Mailer, media fare such as Divorce Court and Judge Judy, and things that Donald Trump and Woody Allen said.

“Virility” is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as: “the period in life during which a person of the male sex is in his prime; mature or fully developed manhood or male vigor; power of procreation; male sexual potency; strength and vigor of action or thought”.  Hmmmmm. I guess women must not have any of those attributes, urges, or capacities. Not if the Oxford English Dictionary doesn’t say so, and it doesn’t mention women at all as far as this kind of thing goes. So I guess there’s no doubt about it: virility is entirely a guy thing.  Interestingly, I haven’t run across any female version of this word. There’s “chastity”, which is a behavior solely attached to women who aren’t fully developed in their womanhood nor frisky in the procreative department. Its male counterpart is “celibacy”, which is sort of an anti-virility stance.  But there’s no female counterpart to “virility” that doesn’t border on sluttiness, at least that I know of. Women aren’t supposed to want to fuck.  Surely Stormy Daniels is an aberration.  Of course, perhaps she doesn’t want to be a sex object but merely does it because it pays the bills.  You know, like most people’s jobs.

I’m sure that the word “virgin” — which of course means a woman who has not yet had sexual relations — connects in some way to the “vir = maleness” trope.  I mean, they seem to have the same root. The Latin root for “virgin” is supposedly “virgo” or “virge”, but Virgo is also the name of a constellation; and that word is really not all that different from the Latin root for “male”.   Hmmmm. “Virgo/vir” might be something like the similarity between the words “male”/“(fe)male”?

Even Spanish has this odd similarity: “hombre” and “hembra”.  

How come they couldn’t come up with different words for genders that everybody since the beginning of time has agreed are not the same thing at all and perhaps not even from the same planet?

Maybe “virgin” was originally something like “vir + gen“, or “vir + gyne”, indicating that the male essence, when added to the primordial female essence, would start a process to bring some other essence into life and being.  “Gen” is, after all, the root word for beginnings, growth, creating things, procreation, starting things, giving life, and of course generating things.  

On another level (in medicine) we have mutagens, things that start mutations. Androgens are chemicals that stimulate maleness.  Organisms in which gender is not easily identified as being either male or female are androgynous (i.e., male/female).  And, more recently, there is the genome . . . the blueprint that everything starts from or begins with.

“Virtue” doesn’t exactly mean “manliness”, but it does mean something like it.  VIRTue, VIRTual, VIRTuous and other words in which there is a “T” after the “VIR” come from a different root: virtus, meaning excellence, position, or link.  The Oxford English Dictionary devotes almost an entire column to the many meanings and attributes of “virtue”, so it can mean lots of things.  Two of them, however, are “chastity or purity on the part of a woman” and “the display of manly qualities”. So I think we’re still in the same polarized male/female ballpark here.

Getting back to plain old vir: “triumvirate” means ” the rule by/of three men”.  Ergo, virology must be the study of men and maleness, no?  

Well, actually, no.  That word, and also virus and virulent, seem to descend from the root “virulentus”, which means “poison” or “poisonous”.  It’s very suspicious to me that the roots of “man” and “poison” are so similar. Once again, couldn’t they find some other word that actually sounded different???   

We’ve never had a triumgynate.  We’ve never even had a gynate of any sort.  We’ve only had gynecologists . . . who have virtually (there’s that pesky “T” again) all been men.  Go figure.  It does help to explain why the Greek Myths don’t mention the story of Gynocles and the Lion, or Androcles and the Lioness.  Still, everything comes from Mothers, so my mind wants to play with the word origin (origyn makes more sense to me than origen).

Well, mothers indeed: everything does come from them and out of them.  The root word for “mother” is mater . . . as in maternal, maternity, alma mater, matricide, matrimony, matrilineal, matrix, etc.  I don’t think the word “mattress” comes from that root, though. “Mater” gives us the word material.  “Material” is that out of which everything comes.  Everything is made out of, or comes out of, material.  Everything does really come out of the mother.  Likewise, the matrix also has mother-like characteristics.  It is that which holds and contains everything, and within which everything exists, and out from which things come.

Getting back to vir, I wonder if, somehow, the environment secretly refers to . . . all the men around us?  Or all the maleness around us?  How arrogant is that? Yet, there must be something to it.  In ancient Greece once a woman was married the world hardly ever saw her again.  Men did see prostitutes (the Greek word for which was “porne” by the way, from which we get pornography) out in the open – although certainly not in public places where The Men congregated to see and be seen, to be men of affairs, to discuss the matters of the world, do business, participate in the affairs of the community, vote, hang out and network, gossip and socialize, talk of poetry and war, hear the latest news, etc.  I’m pretty sure that the agora (the open public space in the community) was an all-male environment – as was, as I mentioned, most of the remaining literature and whatever historical record that has survived from those times and that culture.  (I suspect that Greek women were agoraphobic in the contemporary feminist meaning of the word.)

I mentioned that the focus of Greek socio-political thought was the polis, the community.  It was the adult Greek male’s responsibility to participate in community events (for a fuller account of this, read some Edith Hamilton or H.D.F. Kitto).  Polis gives us the words “political”, “policy”, and “metropolis”, and maybe even “polite” and “police”.  Those citizens who kept to themselves and did not participate in the affairs of the community were called idiots.  That’s where the word comes from.  Idiot comes from the root idio, which means by itself or from itself.  An idiot was someone who kept to themselves and didn’t participate in the community’s social, political, military, and economic affairs and culture.  It’s the same root as in the words idiopathic and idiosyncratic – which describe a condition or phenomenon that is its own, that arises out of itself, and is not connected to a prior cause.  Idiom, too; an idiom is some figure of speech or phrase that came about by itself by way of grammatical accident or convenience, but without being beholden or connected to, or deriving from, other words, roots, or common speech.  “Idiotic”, likewise, bespeaks of: “man, you’re on your own on that one; no one else is on board with it or is even going anywhere near it.  That’s all yours”.  

Finally, does it not seem to you that, in a way, matrix is just as apt a word as environment is?  They both refer to the . . . uh . . . vessel, membrane, or context that contains and holds everything — both literally and metaphorically.  Except that it is a female/feminine counterpart to “environment”.  The fact is that we exist in the Matrix of the world just as much as we exist in an Environment. Well, I think there must be some very good reason why the word patrix does not exist.  Anybody out there agree with me?  Do I see any raised hands? Hello?  Anybody there?

More later.

March, 2018

SOME FINAL THOUGHTS  (NOTE: YOU DON’T HAVE TO READ THIS PART; IT’S RATHER A DOWNER)

Hi:

As I said, these are new thoughts for me, and I’m still mulling them over.  It’s . . . complicated.  It’s even more complicated than that.  Yet I think that these are accurate assessments. I also think that the things I’m describing will be my most important legacy.  My guitars will be sought and bought and sold at high prices, and many people will make more money off them than I ever have.  And maybe some day someone will write a book about me.  

But the air will be foul; the water will be putrid; the oceans will be dead and full of plastic (there is reputedly an “island” of plastic the size of Texas in the Pacific Ocean; currents have carried the waste from many nations there).  Most of the species of animals [we don’t actually know how many there are; new ones are being discovered all the time even now] will be gone; Nature’s food chain will have been COMPLETELY disrupted; the rivers and the land will be polluted. Shame on us.

I can hear some of you thinking, oh, come off it; sure that’s all a little bit true; but it’s not ALL true. Don’t be such a bleeding heart.  Well . . . I think that a little bit of any or all of this is way too much.  It’s not really what I signed on for.  Or, you might also be thinking, oh stop being such a purist; everybody and every country that can does things like that.  Hmmmmm.  Is this helpful?

See, the thing is, I actually think about this stuff.

I quipped in my last posting “that if Trump and Kim Jung Un don’t destroy us first”.  This is a thought that I find utterly horrifying . . . and possible. Trump himself, before he ran for office, was described in one of the New York magazines as being “a wounded monster”.  That he is. He’s a psychopath and a narcissist. I don’t know what Kim Jung Un is, but he’s scary too.

Let me explain what the above terms mean.  The DSM (The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual) is the Bible of the mental health field; it contains the diagnoses, and language that can be used to describe the inner workings of someone who has come to attention of the mental health network.  When I was in grad school studying clinical psych we were on DSM III-R (Third version, Revised). That got replaced by DSM IV; and we’re currently using DSM-V. The diagnoses and categories of mental abnormality have shifted; for instance, homosexuality was classified as a mental disease in DSM-I.  That has changed, of course.

In DSM-III-R sociopaths and psychopaths were considered to be different categories.  The difference was that a sociopath would lie, cheat, manipulate, charm, and worm his way to getting what he (or she) wanted.  The psychopath would feel no compunction about harming you to get what he wanted, if you stood in his way. In DSM-V these categories have been blended into a single one, with the sociopaths and the psychopaths simply being on different parts of a spectrum that encompassed all such personalities.  

While Republicans may disagree with this it is clear that Mr. Trump lies, has no interest in nor skills in governing, has no conscience or impulse control, is pathologically thin-skinned, and is vindictive and malicious.  And dangerous. He frightens me; he’s essentially no different from Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, Joe McCarthy, Mitch McConnell, Ted Cruz, Mike Pence, or Putin.

Equally troubling is that no one in the media seems horrified.  They just keep on reporting on business as usual, while the comedians keep getting paid for mocking plentifully but impotently.

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

This all leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth.  So I’ll tell a joke of sorts.

A company CEO is dealing with taxes at year’s end, and tells his accountant to prepare the necessary paperwork.  The accountant spends two weeks getting all the numbers together and delivers them to the boss, and says that it’s all there except for a $200 discrepancy that can’t be accounted for.

The boss says to go back over the figures and find the source of the error.  The accountant goes back to work to look through the numbers, receipts, bills, invoices, payroll records, etc. again.

A week later he reports back to the boss, saying that he can’t find the reason for the discrepancy.  He says, “Boss, I don’t get it. You’re paying me a lot more than $200 to find this thing. This company makes more than a million dollars a year.  So what’s the big deal about this $200?”

The boss says, “well . . . I know we make more than a million dollars a year . . . but the truth is that I don’t really understand a million dollars.  But two hundred dollars: THAT I understand!”

Ecce Trump.  He doesn’t understand the job he got voted into his office for.  But an eight-year-old schoolgirl criticizing him? THAT he understands.

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I grew up in Mexico.  I remember being in a park one day, when I was young.  I had to go to the rest-room building. When I got there I saw that, like many construction projects in Mexico, this one had not been completed: it was a large bare room without toilets or sinks or toilet paper or any other bathroom paraphernalia . . . and the floor was completely covered with piles of human shit.  People had found a bare spot, squatted down, and dumped their load.  I didn’t make that mess; but when I listen to the news I feel like I have to go into a room like that.  That’s sort of what I feel like these days. I didn’t go into that particular bathroom, by the way; I held it in.  

I’m holding it in on different levels and in different ways, these days.  And as I said, when I started out making guitars many years ago . . . I had no suspicion whatsoever of any of this ever being so.

Wow.  If I were a real Buddhist I’d be in the present and not concern myself with this stuff.

More later,

Ervin.

March, 2018

Hi once more:

I have been writing about selling guitars to China, and some reports on how China has been modernizing.  I’m writing this narrative as I have been understanding it; I may be in error; but as far as I know I’m describing things as they are.  And I was in the middle of the “you don’t have to read this part because it’s too disturbing” section.  It certainly brings me down.  But here’s the rest:

Global warming has also affected rainfall patterns in China, exacerbating a growing series of droughts.  But while there is rain it washes over the mountains of waste I’d cited; it’s all junk that the U.S. can’t dispose of domestically.  In China the water runoff from the heavy metals in the junk, the electronics, the wiring, the motherboards, the switches, the screens, etc. leaches into the ground.  Runoff from rain as well as the low-tech washing, cleaning, processing, and reclaiming procedures used to salvage the gold from the gold-plating of parts, etc. plus the scavenging for other precious metals . . . has polluted the rivers in Southern China.  The water is a horrible color. The water table has been poisoned so that the water for whole provinces is undrinkable; China is now importing water into its cities for the first time. As I said, all of this is occurring on a vast industrial scale.

It is indeed occurring so on many levels.  “Racing to Extinction” is largely about exactly that, but from another point of view than being suffocated in discards.  Part of it touches on the Chinese fishery industry. The most shocking footage I saw is of one of the largest shark fin processing plants in the world; it shows  A VAST ACREAGE OF PILES OF SHARK FINS — mountains of fins of sharks that have been killed by the many tens of thousands (that month!) . . . and that could cover a football stadium several feet deep.  It is all done wholesale, with no thought to depletion of the oceans. It is all part of the same effort that humanity — as exemplified by the Chinese fishing industry — is hell-bent toward.

I was horrified to see these documentaries, and horrified to see what the Chinese are doing.  And feeling bad toward them. Until I realized that they’re basically boring holes in the bottom of the boat that we’re all in . . . and that we (the U.S.) are complicit in this.  There are a lot of American companies who have set up branches in China, and a lot more are fixing to do so. China wants to keep these foreign merchants out, but I think they’ll find ways in.

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O.K., YOU CAN START READING AGAIN

That’s about when I stopped being able to draw a line that separates “us” from “them” . . .

. . . and it started me asking where, exactly, do I fit into all this?  

O.K., I’m the clever little luthier who is making beautiful guitars.  Just what do my clients do to get the money with which to buy my guitars?  Is it honest work? Are there shrewd thefts involved? You know, these are questions that one just doesn’t ask.  Don’t even get me started on Banks . . . [except to ask: do you know where the word Bank comes from?  Well, before Banks as we know them existed, moneylenders first practiced their trade during the expanding economic growth and activities of the Renaissance; money was needed for trade, for commerce, for wars, etc.  The moneylenders were mostly Jews – by default, not genetic predisposition — because the Catholic Church forbade all Catholics from dealing with money; money was corrupting and evil. Anyway, before they moved into offices, moneylenders would set up in the town marketplace; they’d have their own spot just like any vegetable vendor, and they’d sit all day long on a little bench or stool that they brought with them, and do business with anyone who came along and needed their services.  At the end of the day they lugged their benches home and counted their money, I guess. The Italian for bench or stool is “banco”, and when you wanted money you would go to “the banco”. So there.]   And just what do the people whom they deal with do for the money that they pay my clients with so that they can pay me?  The thing is . . . the fact is that I am dealing with people who are dealing with people who deal with people who deal with people who deal with people who deal with people . . . who are ruining our air, our water, our food, our relationships with our fellow man, our animals, our land, and our sense of being human.  I have banked with Wells Fargo bank since 1972 – well before many of you reading this were born. This bank is not my friend; it is not your friend; it is not anybody’s friend. It is a criminal enterprise that has opened millions of accounts that their “owners” didn’t know about; and it funds projects that degrade the environment.  Read the news. But is there a better bank for me to move my funds to? [SEE SIDEBAR, BELOW]

You, by the way, are dealing with the very same people.

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SIDEBAR

*** The difference between Savings and Loan Organizations and Commercial Banks used to be that the former were only allowed to loan out as much money as they had in deposits; the latter were allowed to loan out many times as much money as they had in deposits, under the fiction that the government would cover losses if the bank failed.  This distinction is no longer in effect: S. & Ls (remember Charles Keating?) are now fully as dishonest as the banks are. How does that work? Well, besides helping to finance nefarious ventures that degrade the environment, and bilking millions of their customers as Wells Fargo was recently convicted of, and laundering money, etc. loaning out more money than you have is profitable (so long as the banks don’t all fail at the same time as they did in 1929) but it is inherently wrong.  For one thing, it inflates and devaluates all currency.  See, if the supply of goods is fixed, and the banks create six times the amount of buying power of the actual cash on hand (that’s what credit is, dude: buying power), then it’s the equivalent of having six times the amount of actual cash on hand . . . and prices will rise.  Why wouldn’t they? Result: everybody’s money is worth less – except for those who don’t actually work for a living but make money by getting others to do the real work for them. One of any government’s proper functions is to ensure that there’s a balance between the amount of cash on hand and the amount of goods there are; it keeps prices stable.  There’s a great Hugarian word: csibész (pronounced Chi’-base).  Look it up.

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How is this something to not think about?  And what is my relationship to it? Is my selling guitars into the Chinese market going to help or hinder?  And how?

Well, these are non-questions, I fear.  It’s a global phenomenon that I’m caught up in like a leaf in a river and that I have no influence whatsoever over.  We’re all caught up in it. Even if I sold no guitars to any Chinese dealer, they (I’m sorry to resort to such clichés as “the Chinese”) will buy all the new and used Somogyi guitars that they can find from my dealers and/or private sellers, and Bob’s your uncle.  I’m part of it regardless of whether I want to be or not; if not very much now, then certainly later.

I can almost hear you thinking, hey, wait a minute; the people you’re dealing with aren’t doing anything like that.  What are you thinking? Well, as I said, the fact is that I’m already in the mix.  We’re all already in the mix. How long has it been since you’ve purchased anything NOT made in China?  As every Buddhist knows, I have no control over anything other than myself. Not only that but, as every psychologist knows, I also don’t have nearly as much control over myself as I want to think I have.

Ethical behavior is the only thing that makes sense to me.  But it’s easier said than done.

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REFLECTIONS ON MY LIFE

It is interesting for me to contemplate all this at this point in my life.  As you know, I have recently had a life-changing event, the significance of which is that I see that I am at the end of my career and my life.  At least, relatively at the end.  And because of this I have a new perspective from which to look back on my life as a whole . . . and to assess its significance, as well as to think about how I want to live the rest of my life.  That realization is that I do not want to work six days a week as I’ve always done.  I want time to think.  I want time to relax.  I want time to do art projects in wood.  I don’t want to have to prove anything to anyone.  I want to be happy, not just busy.   And, largely, I don’t find the prospect of breaking into another new market all that exciting – even without the complications I alluded to above. Been there; done that; got a t-shirt full of sawdust, wood shavings, and sanding dust.

So, it’s seeming to me that the “significances” of my life are several.  There are personal relationships, of course, and family.  There is “growing up and being successful”.  There’s the “being a good person” component.  There is also the “being young and then growing old” one. Some people count the notches on their shillelagh or will have their final bank balance or College Board Scores carved on their tombstone.  And there is also the “how do I fit into the world?” component; you know, the socio-economico-political-cultural-ethical one.  Well, (if Trump and Kim-Jong-Un don’t destroy the world first, that is), I will have trained and taught a number of talented guitar makers who will be important and prominent in that world market.  I will have made that possible.

When I was starting out, years ago, I couldn’t have imagined any of this happening.

This is the end of part 3.  Part 4 is next.

March, 2018

Hi again:

I was describing the rumbling growth of the guitar market in Korea and China.  You can’t have growth and economic bubbles without rich people’s gambling speculatively on the chance of getting even richer.  It’s beginning to happen in China now; I don’t know what they want to call themselves politically, but their economy is Capitalism on steroids.

Socialism and Communism?  Hah! No way, José.

China has already had one real estate bubble burst, and no doubt more things like that will happen because no one is doing anything to keep any of them from happening.  It’s like what happened in our own bubble of 2008 in which several million people lost their homes because of the criminal depradations of our own Banking, Lending, and Home Mortgage institutions . . . and no one has ever been held accountable for it . . . and has been continuing since.  We all know that those wily Orientals (shades of Earl Derr Biggers, Charlie Chan, and Fu Manchu!) are great at copying things. Well, they’re copying Capitalism with a vengeance.

Anyway, I am beginning to be invited into this new and growing market . . . which I think I’m managing to make sound quite distasteful.  Dealers (who are attending the NAMM show I described earlier) are eagerly and hopefully approaching me and other luthiers like me . . . like . . . uh . . . like moths to a sock.  In my case this is because I am prominent in the world of guitar making; they want to have my guitars because to carry merchandise from a prominent Western luthier will get them an edge with publicity and sales.  I think they’d promote my guitars as being the best, exotic, expensive, superb, and almost magical . . . and will probably help cure baldness and impotence.

As part of this thrust, I’m being interviewed and filmed a lot these days. Part of this interest is coming from new Chinese guitar magazines (there’s even a Chinese edition of Fingerstyle magazine!).  But also, as I’m part of the rapidly aging American lutherie community (and that includes makers of guitars, banjos, mandolins, violins, etc. etc.), I am being interviewed and filmed and recorded and being sent questionnaires by American institutions, museums, archives, etc. that want to preserve pertinent historical record.

I mean, once we’re dead we are no longer available to be interviewed and allowed to tell our stories.  (Where were these people when I was younger and needed the attention???). Anyway, I’m spending more time than ever before receiving visitors who have these projects to carry out.

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CHINESE GUITAR FACTORIES:

The Chinese market is very competitive.  There are hundreds of guitar factories in Guangzhou, in Southern China.  It’s a huge city that is made up entirely of factories and dormitories. They make EVERYTHING, including guitars.  

I’ve been approached by two of their factories to this point, as well as two distributors.  One of the factories has paid me for a consultation. This is a pretty impressive outfit; they are young, smart, eager, motivated, well funded, and focused.  They showed me pictures of their facility: it’s impressively large. The factory floor is meticulously clean, and dotted with state-of-the-art computer-operated machinery that cranks out (they told me) 125,000 guitars a month.  Wow. These are mostly $100 and $200 guitars, but (did I mention?) the market is huge and growing. And they are eager to start production of a limited number of handmade guitars that were better. That’s what they wanted to consult about.

A number of my colleagues already do business and/or consult with companies in China.  They have contributed guitar and inlay designs, and have helped teach the Chinese workers how to make and assemble guitar parts.

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SIDEBAR:

Speaking of a huge and growing market, I was listening to an interview on the radio recently, with an American developer of golf courses; he was selling golf courses to the Chinese.  The interviewer commented that golf wasn’t really a Chinese game, so he wondered how much business this guy could do. He replied (quote): “well, essentially zero percent of the Chinese play golf, but zero percent of one-and-a-half billion is still a pretty good number”.  No, I didn’t make that up.

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THE GREATER ECONOMY

From what I’m seeing, it is looking as though China will be the dominant economy in the world in twenty or so years.  The sheer sophistication and scale of the productive machinery that I’ve gotten a peek at is stunning: robotics, laser machinery, CNC automation, etc.  And what isn’t automated is attended to by handwork carried out with the focus of a sweatshop on steroids; factory employees put in incredible hours to meet inflexible production quotas.  The work ethic is unreal.

For the time being, as I said, China is only beginning to find out and learn about and appreciate handmade guitars.  There is a lot of new money there and rich Chinese are happy to buy expensive American things.  They’ve started with American cars; they are inching toward guitars. There is, as in the U.S., a rapidly developing 1%-vs.-the-99% of their very own, although, no one really talks about that. They just report Economic Growth statistics baldly, in terms of abstract things like market penetration . . . it all sounds evocative of the Wisdom of the Ancients, and just as hard to interpret or understand.

It is one thing to say things like “China is modernizing and growing at remarkable speed”.  It is another to have some understanding of what that means.

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SOME REALLY AWFUL STUFF; YOU MAY WANT TO SKIP THIS PART

The factory I cited above, that is cranking out 125,000 guitars a month, is one of the bigger and more sophisticatedly tooled up ones.  But it is one of hundreds. Can you imagine the sheer amount of wood that is gobbled up in the making of these instruments? They’re mostly plywood, and they look very clean and pretty.  But My God . . . that’s a lot of precious wood being turned into these things.

A LOT of wood.

I’ve recently become aware of two documentaries about current China that have had an impact on me.  One is titled “Manufactured Landscapes” and the other is “Racing to Extinction”. They’re really horrible.  One of them features the city of Guangzhou, which is a big city made up of factories and dormitories. There are factory complexes larger than football fields in which thousands of young Chinese men and women slave away at work stations, all day long, every day, assembling parts and pieces to all the electronic goods that we buy — from on-off switches to the equipment that will have those on-off switches.  This is not skilled, meaningful work. It is capitalist piece-work. All of these products will sooner or later wind up in a Chinese, American, or European landfill.  Actually, probably European or American; many Chinese factories are for export only.  You can’t get what they produce, in China.

There are HUGE MONTAINS OF JUNK outside another city whose name I can’t pronounce — very largely electronic waste, but really including everything made of plastic and metal and glass, that has been shipped to China from the U.S., and probably Europe.  China is one of our dump sites, and has been for a while. Africa has been another. And I’m not kidding about the mountains; they’re unbelievable in size; all the millions of computers and electronic stuff we get rid of every year wind up there.  They’re made to not be fixable, and we don’t have the capacity to absorb such amounts of recycled waste; the current watchword is N.I.M.B.Y.

Well, see, we don’t actually recycle it; we export it; the Chinese recycle it . . . badly and inefficiently and pollutingly. There is footage of Chinese people going through these mountains, looking for this or that to salvage, in very low-tech ways.  Yet the scale of the waste from these efforts also staggers the imagination. The cities near these mountains of junk look like recycling yards themselves. There is junk piled up everywhere; in the streets; in the yards; in the fields; in the houses. None of it is under a roof or other cover; it’s all out in the open.

 

This is the end of part 2; part 3 follows, if you’re interested.