PrairieDog

Thanks!!

What the heck? are you some kinda jekyll and hyde type? You are an absolute a delight over here.

Hey, thanks, Dub-T! I’m just glad it sounds as lush as it looks🙂

Ok, so I you understand, I did not know you made a typo right? INO looked like just another brand in context, no idea what it was, but I assumed you were listing what you considered off brand guitars. So all I saw at the time was yet another in a long line of swipes here by many folks over how much Taylor’s suck. C’mon, you started the whole thread in a classic, “WHY WOULD ANYONE BUY THIS?” There was nothing implying you were only stating your opinion, but rather your whole set of comments was aimed at sniping at folks who would be interested. You even ignored my comment that it cost less, and that alone might be a good enough reason to buy one. You just came back to RB and just said “spend more.” Then you went on to say (not knowing you made a typo) that TAYLORS HAVE NO SOUL! So sorry if I responded rather diplomatically to such a direct slam. Not sure where in any of this, until your reply to me claiming the typo, you were leaving any room for other tastes, or the possibilty that other people may feel differently about a different brand than what you prefer. I’m not the only one that called you out, and I thought I was rather diplomatic about it. And you are just doubling down with a classic, tired, “I’m rubber and you’re glue” attack. You could have just admitted the oops, and perhaps seen where your thread might be read as a pretty judgy…. So sorry, I did mean exactly what I said: I really, truly, do not care what guitars people play, I’m just glad they play them. rock on.

😄 yeah, that’s what I’m talking about, classic “wuhhh???” 😆

And the corollary for me is over-directed camera work during airings/videos of live performances. Just let me see the whole stage and choose what I want to look at in any given moment. Hang a camera midway somewhere in the good seats, and let it just record the action. Then I can watch the show just like I was in the audience. I don’t want to be zoomed up the singer’s nose while the guitar player is thumping a particularly heavy riff. I don’t want my gaze directed or cut off to one part of the stage while something important may be happening on the other side. I was watching a PBS ballet special once, I think it was the Harlem Ballet, and I swear to god the camera spent most of the highlight Pas de deux focused on the dancer’s faces! I was literally screaming at the TV.

How about softening that a bit to “No soul to you”?… I manage to find a lot of soul in our US made Taylor’s. You pay lip service to folks having different preferences but then turn around insinuating yours are the only legit ones. For me, I have never yet met a Martin, Guild, or Collings I thought was worth taking home, but I don’t diss you for enjoying yours, and I don’t get chippy about the fact you made choices for yourself that I likely never will.

I hear you, Sheep. These transitions are all tough. Except for my wife, like the Gillian Welch song says, “the ties of kinship, I have not known them” but because of that, I’m always especially sensitive to the heartaches/breaks and losses in happy families I see around me. Even if I didn’t get to benefit directly from a nurturing home, it honestly thrills me and warms my heart when I hear folks praising and rejoicing in their families/wives/kids. Happy families make happy people, and happy people make the world a better place for us all, with anything they do. And kudos to you for raising a bright, confident, ambitious kid. You done good, dad!

Thanks for backing up the bit about the bullets. Really dangerous way to approach a really simple problem. We have to cope with yahoos who come up from the city to visit our neighbors who are firearms “enthusiasts” and enjoy shooting off their various weapons. Our neighbors are safety conscious, but their young relatives from the city think they are in unoccupied wilderness just because they can’t see the houses nearby. Aside from the occasional Tannerite explosions stopping your heart and knocking things off the wall in the middle of a puttery Sunday afternoon, the weekends full of random shots and even automatic rounds (I’m assuming because the sound is the same uninterrupted, rapid fire like you hear in war movies) triggers the PTSD of our vet friend. And how much fun it is when we have guests over, enjoying a quiet summer evening on the deck only to have the conversation interrupted by the soundtrack from Saving Private Ryan. Our city friends freak out. It drove our dogs into panics so bad we had to ask the neighbors to let us know they were going to start shooting so we could give the pups valium or else they smash through the house hurting themselves trying to get away from the noise. Not to mention that we moved up here from the city specifically to get away from the constant gun fire in our old neighborhood. Anyway, one day my wife was out walking in the woods behind our barn when the shooting started. A beat later she heard pattering raining down on the barn roof then bits of something pelting down her. She didn’t know what was going on, until it happened again right after another round fired off. She booked into the barn, and called me to say what was happening as more shots and more stuff came down on the barn. Even up at the house, I had thought the shots sounded closer than usual. There is about 6 acres of wetland and woods separating our two places. Nobody answered my phone call, so I jumped in the car and sped over there. As I drove up I saw the kids in the back yard and a new girl holding a rifle, with one of the boys helping her. It seemed he was teaching her how to shoot. They were at the edge of the pond, target shooting across the wetland towards our property, right where my wife had been walking! (They have 13 acres and a wide shooting alley where they could have been firing cleanly away from anything). I jumped out of my car screaming a foul blue streak. Surprised by this new commotion, they all turned to look at me and the girl cluelessly swung around with the loaded rifle pointing right at me. The kid next to her had the presence of mind to pull it skyward before she accidentally tensed up and pulled the trigger. Anyway, they apologized and then literally tried to excuse it by saying, “Oh, we didn’t know there was anything over there!” WTF? You don’t fire if you don’t know where the bullets are going!! Don’t get me started on all the lead they dumped in the wetland used by the eagles and other wildlife. Their backyard where the children grew up playing probably has more lead in the ground than an old urban city block. Their youngest has a neurological issue that is common with lead poisoning, but they never made the connection with where the kids played and the family hobby. All the lead from the charges discharges in a cloud and settles on the clothes and ground around the shooter. Then the lead gets tracked into the house where it gets picked up by the HVAC where it gets breathed in, and settles on every surface. Well, do that for a decade…. if we were in the city, the building inspector would order the soils and house to be decontaminated before they could sell it. Now they are about to be grandparents, and won’t it be fun for baby to run around that big, lead soaked backyard!

Thanks, Sheepdog, for the nice words and great chuckle to wake up to. Both your comments 😁

Aw. Thanks MP!

DubT: So what if he doesn’t have any experience? I’m guessing that is exactly why he asked. And come-on, it’s a G-writer, not an Original banner. I doubt the guy is expecting to hang his retirement on it. Anyway, Brodie, listen to Phil. He knows what he is talking about and is being helpful. Just mentioning, setting it where the sun can hit it would likely change the finish in some manner, but it would be really unpredictable. It might age it faster, but you couldn’t be sure it would turn the shade you want it to or do it consistently. Like Sarge says, it’s your guitar, go ahead do what you want with it, but stripping and refinishing likely the only way you’ll get the results you are looking for. but for that price, it might be more economical to trade this one for a guitar with the finish you want. Good luck and welcome.

What a great area you are in. Hope you can stay safe from the fires out there. We have several trail cams set up around our place to see who comes by. Besides the usual deer, raccoons and bears, we’ve had fishers, otters, grey and red fox, even an unofficially confirmed wolverine (The DNR asked us to collect a touch DNA sample from it’s tracks but covid shut down the lab the next day, argh). The one thing we’ve always hoped to capture is a mountain lion. There don’t appear to be any residents right now in the state, but they have been spotted passing through, and when they do, it’s often just a couple miles from us, following the St Croix river. I’m not eager to meet one in person, but it sure would be cool to have one show up on the camera.

Thanks, m-e!

Chuckle, good for you! I’m sure that was exciting. That was exactly the right thing to do, and you can tell that was all you needed to do since he compliantly booked off.

Following for the info! Thanks Phil and Lars.

Sigh, no, no, no. Sure, grown bears are shy, they’ve figured out humans are generally lousy. This was just a silly, curious first year. They are as clueless to danger as human teenagers. That is why it didn’t run away immediately. Mom had just kicked it out of the house in favor of new, younger siblings. It happens every year. The yearlings are wandering around trying to figure out where dinner is and asking, “is this food?” We all are bear savvy up here, I assure you, none of my neighbors are socializing it. There is no need shoot off guns or traumatize them to get them to learn to avoid where people are. I only had to walk up to the screen and firmly but quietly tell it to move on. Just the sound of my voice was sufficient to have it decide this place wasn’t going to pan out. Actually, in fact, you don’t want to scare it so bad it panics and runs amok, possibly right into the building. You just want to convince it to move off. They are looking for peace and quiet, not an area with lots of activity and intrusions. I gotta tell you, I’m sure glad I got the chance to get so close. Looking that deeply into its eyes was pretty cool. Anyway, in this case no reward, so no reason to come back. Unlike the pair of smaller, younger 1st years visiting our 2nd story deck and the bird feeders back in April. They were awfully cute. It was hard shooing them off. One tumbled and landed in a bush, but it bounced and was okay. They came back a few times because they had scored some food, even if it was a handful of birdseeds and peanuts. All we needed to do was bring in the feeders for a while to convince them that patch had been cleaned out. Then a few years ago, a full grown bear walk up on my wife while she was photographing birds out at the back of our land. It was just lumbering along and she realized it probably couldn’t see her in the grass, and she was downwind so it couldn’t smell her. She just calmly stood (camera ready), and said “Hey Bear!” Like she was greeting a friend. It looked up at her, paused for a moment (for some beauty clicks) then shrugged and just changed course to go around behind her. Trouble is, she lost him in the woods, so had to walk the long way around the fields back home to be sure she didn’t come up on him and surprise him again, 🙂 This little guy will eventually settle into a suitable habitat, either down by the river or deeper in the woods. Males have to go quite a distance to steer clear of mom since she doesn’t want them nearby. The female cubs are often allowed to stick around.

Perhaps when I’m a better player these kind of details will begin to attract my attention. For now, I’m just amazed at how much easier running up the fret board is. I’m finding the wider/flatter spacing higher up helps with my accuracy. I’m not double fretting nearly as much now. But then, I’ve always been one to adapt my playing to the needs of the instrument, not limit my instruments to ones that meet my needs. I’m just as comfortable playing Beethoven on a Steinway grand as a rickety, upright Kimball.

Nod, It’s hard to not sound immodest, but it really is something. In a herd of some nice guitars, it does stand out. And it’s not just pretty looks. After sneaking out of work to play it, my wife came back declaring, “It has tone for days!!” I think the DIF may be pouting, believing it’s been upstaged. I’ll have to spend some time with it to reassure it 😁

Sure! Wasn’t sure how much folks wanted to see, but since you asked 🙂 I had to take it outside, the light is fading and the mosquitos nearly carried me away. The color morphs hues in different light.

Thanks, Saturn!

I was! Thanks, I was hoping you would know. 😁

Oooooohh, love this! What a wonderful trip. I often wonder if we’ll ever have a chance to get back to the ocean. Congrats on a successful whale watch.

🙂 Love that color. We worked in the Caribbean as youngsters, really there is no color like the sea. I’m sure that is why I was so beguiled by the Sea Foam.

Dang! Gently and calmly shooing it away before the cats caught on was more important than getting a pic, but a first year, Newfie-sized black bear came up to the open office door this afternoon to ask if we had any handouts 😄 Perfectly adorable, but with just the screen slider between us, he really had to be encouraged to move along. To get the door closed I had to walk right up to him as he watched, I was pulling the glass door slider before it turned around and shuffled off the porch. Funny, it was so sweet and peaceful as we were walking up to the house from the barn an hour before, just the soft summer buzz of bees and birds singing, and the warm pines perfuming the air, I had just commented to my wife, even only being just outside the Twin Cities, “who needs an ‘up-north’ cabin?” I guess the local wildlife wanted to agree. We’re actually pretty lucky he didn’t stop by while we were up at the house, he likely would have walked right in to sample the various snacks on the desks. I wonder how we would explain that deliverable delay to the clients? “A bear ate your report?” 😄 Turns out he also stopped by the watering hole on his way out. He is about to snoofle the trail cam in this shot.