Jul 31st 2012 08:16 am Then there’s sleep mode
I’ve been showing a lot of old cartoons from the mid 90s this summer. The main reason is, these are the earliest cartoons I have stored digitally, so they’re easy for me to access. I don’t have to rummage through old originals and scan them, in other words. Plus, the online archive at GoComics.com doesn’t go back that far, so this is the only place you’re able to see cartoons of this vintage. I figure it’s a win for you and for me.
Here’s an interesting story that should set you to talking. I pass it along without further commentary.
Posted by jimmyjohnson / Vintage A&J
43 Responses to “Then there’s sleep mode”
Steve from Royal Oak, MI on 31 Jul 2012 at 8:32 am #
I have a piano that I have not tuned in years. I hope to get tools to try to tune it myself. Since I do not know how to play, I figured that this would be a fun project. I do not expect to be successful, but hope to learn something. I can imagine folks that love the piano would be sick reading this article.
One of the problems that I had with “Cash for Clunkers” was that they purposely destroyed the vehicles that were traded in. This put a huge dent in donations for charities and also meant that some of the poor could not use these vehicles. But as someone who has had a hand in building cars, it hurts to see something like a vehicle destroyed. I am like Arlo, I like to use a device until the battery is completely dead. Not saying that is smart, but just the way that I feel.
hc on 31 Jul 2012 at 8:42 am #
ouch!
phil in Missoula, MT on 31 Jul 2012 at 8:46 am #
When we moved to Missoula, it took a couple of years to find a one-story house with space for my wife’s 7-foot grand. We were on the edge of selling it and going with a keyboard when we found this place. It doesn’t have a fireplace (after living in houses in LA and TX where we never needed a fireplace), and the piano almost fits. Have to remember to walk around it in the middle of the night.
Popular music has changed such that pianos are no longer featured instruments, even it if weren’t for the non-portability of the instrument. Loud is all that counts.
phil in Missoula, MT on 31 Jul 2012 at 8:48 am #
On the subject of batteries, you can sometimes get a few more milliamps out of the battery if you apply a lttile saliva to the terminals (not necessarily licking it, you idiot) and put it back in the device.
sandcastler on 31 Jul 2012 at 9:21 am #
I have the habit of always carrying spare batteries and power supplies, much like the extra nine millimeter clips.
On subject of grand pianos; knew a lady who had a pair in her living room.
Galliglo in Ohio on 31 Jul 2012 at 9:44 am #
The piano article almost made me cry. But I do understand the practical aspects. Last night I had my adult daughter going through some old pictures – having her take the ones she wants.
We just don’t have the ROOM to save things. And when we give them away, we abdicate responsibility. Out of sight – out of mind. Selfish, I know… but we can’t save everything.
If I had to get rid of a piano – one that I had loved, my children had used, one that had been the center of family gatherings and the lifting of voices in unison – it would break my heart.
But…… life goes on….
Jim in Wisconsin on 31 Jul 2012 at 9:54 am #
Our family had a 106 year old upright that most of us learned to play as kids. When the time came to divide up our folks things, my brother took the piano since the rest of us didn’t really have the space or the means to fix it up. Fortunately he did, and it is now restored so beautifully it is unbelievable. It is a Boston MacPhail full upright and it looks and sounds amazing. How sad it would have been for us if had ended up in a landfill. If any of you have such a piano around, you might want to do some internet research to see what can be done- you would have an heirloom that lasts another 100 years. They don’t make the full uprights anymore and their sound is so rich.
Ruth on 31 Jul 2012 at 9:55 am #
I couldn’t even finish the article on the pianos. What a waste! And depending on the age of the piano the keys were most likely real ivory (impossible to obtain legally now). I know the keyboards use digitized tones from the top of the line pianos but it just doesn’t sound the same. It’s like listening to a recording of the symphony as opposed to being and hearing the symphony in person, some of the richness is missing.
I grew up with and learned to play on a baby grand piano. When my parents divorced, Mom and I didn’t have room for it so she traded it in on a studio piano. We didn’t even consider an electronic keyboard. When I got married my husband suggested we get a keyboard and my response was a resounding NO. Over the years I paid my mom monthly until I had paid her for the studio piano. It was a win-win situation, she got a little extra monthly income and I knew the piano would be mine. When I finally moved the piano into my home, I found a great piano technician who comes in annually to tune the piano and perform routine maintenance on it so I know it will be around for many more years.
Sam in Alabam(a) on 31 Jul 2012 at 10:01 am #
My wife’s cousin is a furniture refinisher who restores a lot of pianos. He doesn’t seem to have any problem selling them for a profit. Maybe some people are just looking for an attractive piece of furniture.
jeff in minnesota on 31 Jul 2012 at 10:15 am #
After the cabin fire, my wife and I hauled the poor Hardman upright (1888 vintage) to the landfill ourselves. Using iron pipes as rollers, we shoved it off the trailer into the big dump box four feet below. Even though its playing days were over, it did not go gently into that good night. Instead, it bounced off the bottom of the box and sailed gracefully over the side, landing with a final crashing chord and scattering itself on the pavement. We found another old Hardman (1880 vintage) on Craigslist, so the rebuilt cabin continues to have home-made, muscle-made music, and sometimes late at night you can hear a distant, crashing chord from the direction of the landfill.
Karla on 31 Jul 2012 at 10:17 am #
Thanks for the links yesterday! And Jim in WI, I almost thought you were my uncle until you mentioned your brother had the piano. *MY* Jim was the one that got it, not one of the brothers. I loved my Gma’s piano and every one of us grandkids spent time “playing” it as we got older. I actually taught myself how to play Old Lang Syne on it.
redagainPatti on 31 Jul 2012 at 10:35 am #
Oh this story made me cry. My dear Aunt Billie passed away back in 2007. She and my uncle had a large home in NC. When they reached to the state where they could not live any longer by themselves, we moved them to Mississippi. They had two baby grand pianos in their large home. I made room for only the smallest one. The larger one was left with the house and the last paid man to wash/clean the place, was told he could have it. I do not know what happen to it.
The little one I have was made in Japan. Any future home I would buy, will first have to pass the test of having room for this baby. Then I would check the roof, pipes, and finally the foundation.
I play .. at playing on this little grand. I have trouble reading sheet music but have found sets of notes within my heart to play on the keyboard. It gives me much joy and support after I spend a little time with this baby. If I am sad or lonely – happy or whatever.. I always feel recharged after a bit of time wandering around the different notes.
Norm in Utah on 31 Jul 2012 at 10:37 am #
What a waste of good pianos. I sure they could have been sold to ACME, who in turn could have kept Wile E. Coyote supplied indefinitely.
Mindy from Indy on 31 Jul 2012 at 10:51 am #
What a sad story. Surely lots of places could use a piano. As for the batteries, taking them out and reversing them helps too. Keeping it short today, as technical? mechanical? aw heck with it, all KINDS of difficultlies at work have me wishing for the relative ease of pushing grandma uphill over uneven mulched paths.
Steve from Royal Oak, MI on 31 Jul 2012 at 12:19 pm #
Galliglo in Ohio:
When my Dad died, we scanned all of the pictures that he had. With 7 kids, it could have hard to divide. This way all of us had digital copies, which has been great to have in this social media world.
Anonymous on 31 Jul 2012 at 12:32 pm #
My wife and I have a spinet style piano she learned to play on as she grew up. It is worn here and there, and we had to have major work done on it about 10 years ago. The problem is being a spinet it can no longer have major work done on it, when it goes next time it will just be a badly tuned pile of sentimental junk sitting in the very small living room. Would we get rid of it? Not likely, it will be our kids, or grandkids choice when we go. We baby it by making sure it sits on an inside wall away from all heater vents and most drafts. We had an upright piano that moved with us to several homes for a long time, before we had to leave it behind on one move. So through out most of our long marriage we have had a piano taking up space in the living room or dining room. My wife has a heard time reading the music sheets now, but the piano still has a home with us.
Robin in Fl on 31 Jul 2012 at 12:35 pm #
Steve
We’ve done the same. I’ve been the family photog for eons. Unfortunately, my uncle has a treasure trove of really old family photos, and he will not let anyone near them. He’s the family genealogist and has long decried others for doing the same but he’s now elderly and apparently fears losing them. Several of us have tried to get to them to digitize but … oh well.
Ruth: my BIL buys old piano keys and turns them into guitar picks, so I believe the keys are often being recycled.
Anonymous on 31 Jul 2012 at 1:20 pm #
I have been a musician all my life…My brother has been a musician all his life….he is an accomplished piano player…when we were just kids we BOUGHT an old upright…took it apart the best we could got all our friends to help us move it into our basement bedroom we shared and put it back together…paid for a professioal to come and do what we couldn’t figure how to do…that piano stayed there being played daily for a good 8-10 years. This story is so sad…like a good violin or a good guitar…the wood ages and absorbs the vibration of sound…it creates it’s own unique sound and timbre. Dumping it on a trashheap is like throwing a much-loved pet into a swamp when they pass….. ” One that sounds just as good made in China”… I seriously doubt that.
Alyre on 31 Jul 2012 at 1:23 pm #
So distraught, I forgot to leave my name on the comment abouve
ursen on 31 Jul 2012 at 2:23 pm #
Oops see I forgot to leave my nom de guerre on that last post about the spinet. Also forgot to note it was a Wurlitzer piano. Also I really miss her playing some boogie-woogie for me on the piano.
emeritus Minnesota biologist on 31 Jul 2012 at 2:56 pm #
c x-p: I had never run to even a suggestion that dinosaurs [other than Archaeopteryx] had feathers until the first article showed up in the journal Evolution back in the late ’60s or maybe early ’70s that advocated birds’ descent from small theropod dinosaurs. So there was no emphatic idea that they were not feathered to overthrow. Restorations were all painted with scaly or croc-like skins, and I believe there was only one fossil impression of scaly duck-bill dino skin, which was on exhibit [maybe the original, maybe a cast] at the AMNH.
Galliglo in Ohio on 31 Jul 2012 at 3:19 pm #
Steve & Ruth: I am in the process of doing the scans. The ones we were going thru last night were undated and I am trying to get some of her memories. The ones I am going to let her have, I have already scanned. Now SHE will have the ones that take up the space! LOL
She will be moving a couple of thousand miles away at the end of next month. I have no idea when I will have the time to finish the scan project and get the digital copies to her. But isn’t it wonderful that we DO have that digital option.
Nodak Wayne on 31 Jul 2012 at 3:32 pm #
When we moved my father into a “home” my sister rescued all of dad’s photos and the BIL spent 2 months scanning them last winter. Now we all have access to them and dad has them all on a digital picture frame. We can’t get him to leave it plugged into power because “if you aren’t using it turn it off” I know his visitors would enjoy seeing them but, oh well.
Mindy from Indy on 31 Jul 2012 at 4:22 pm #
Isn’t family history interesting? My cousin is working on collecting and scanning pictures, and I’m working the genealogy angle. My cousin got off easy (not to hear him tell it though). I’m trying to locate information on John Smith [times two (or is it three?)]. And don’t even get me started on Theodores. At least when our ancestors start looking back, they will have a larger pool of unique names to help track down their family members.
Bob, near Mark on 31 Jul 2012 at 4:42 pm #
Mindy, I only have four John Smith ancestors that I know of, but they’re all from the 1600s.
Mary in Ohio on 31 Jul 2012 at 4:54 pm #
Wow! sad for pianos – and old cars. I have had none of the first and several of the second.
My mother had a plan for her hearing aid batteries: if she turned it off for 4 or 5 hours, she could get another 20 minutes out of the battery.
TruckerRon on 31 Jul 2012 at 6:01 pm #
Whatever else I may do, when my ICD announces its batter is near the end of its life, I’m getting it replaced pronto! That’s one battery you don’t try to squeeze extra life out of!
TruckerRon on 31 Jul 2012 at 6:01 pm #
Make that “its battery is near…” What good is a spelling checker if it accepts the wrong word as correctly spelled?
Lost in A**2 on 31 Jul 2012 at 7:14 pm #
Yep; that’s why I don’t rely on them.
Destroying the clunkers was the right thing to do, since the goal was to get them off of the streets. Still, the definition of “clunker” was looser than it could have been, as was the definition of “replacement.”
I took my mother’s piano when she finished with it. When I tried to have it tuned, we discovered that many of the hinges were broken. I didn’t have the money to pay a professional, and then couldn’t break free the time to do it myself. When we moved the second time after taking it apart, we decided to throw it out. At least it wasn’t very old: it had been built in the 1940′s; the hinges were Bakelite.
Steve from Royal Oak, MI on 31 Jul 2012 at 8:26 pm #
I remember when my Grandma got the diagnosis of Liver cancer in 1976. She had about 2-3 months to live and was an inspiration to my Dad as she “taught him how to die”. I remember the last time that I visited her we had a couple of boxes of old photos and she was identifying everyone one on all of the pictures and writing it on the back of the photo. It was a wonderful evening that I enjoyed and will always treasure. When I left that night, I could bear to say goodbye, instead smiled and said “See Ya” I hope to someday.
Mark in TTown on 31 Jul 2012 at 9:25 pm #
Mindy in Indy, I ran across a site that is doing DNA testing to match people to their ancestors. They can either do the test for the markers specific to men, or women, or ones which can match both. Here is the website: http://www.worldfamilies.net/
I have tried to follow my own family background but haven’t had too much success. But from looking at the information on this site, my family ultimately traces back to one family in Virginia.
Robin in Fl on 31 Jul 2012 at 9:56 pm #
Mark
We might be related! My family started off in this country in VA, and owned some prime land. I’ve been to visit the area and that prime land looks much the same as it did in the 1600s. Yes, we’ve always been great at real estate deals–as long as it’s swampy.
curmudgeonly ex-professor on 31 Jul 2012 at 10:14 pm #
Mindy/Indy & Bob near Mark: In my own genealogy search, I managed to find the only Johann Schmidt in all of Germany who was an ancestor. He was a greatgrandfather and you can imagine how many gents of that name lived in the various German States….
Family info told me only that he had a sister, Lucy, who was the mother of Agnes Ernst Meyer who, in turn, was the mother of Katharine Meyer Graham, late owner & editor of the Washington Post.
It took a lot of emailing to various Standesamts and all four tiers of German church hierarchy, but all that worked. Confirmation came when the records of the church he attended had the correct names and birthdates for my grandfather and grandfather’s brother, as well as the known name of a sister of my grandfather.
Genealogy is a fun game.
Mark in Boston on 31 Jul 2012 at 10:15 pm #
I don’t know which of these 3 is sadder:
1. The piano story.
2. The fact that ALMOST NOBODY has a piano at home. Unless the person I visit is a musician, there is never any piano of any kind in the house (except maybe for the kids’ toy keyboards which are useless as instruments and as educational devices). A hundred years ago, not having a piano in the house meant you just didn’t care about anything; even poor people found a way to borrow or rent one. Even when I was a little kid, almost every one of my parents’ friends had a piano.
3. Seeing a piano like the ones in the story, unmaintained, untuned, soundboard cracked, sounds horrible, feels worse, and it’s the only one in the church or other performance space and they expect you to use it for your concert. (I’m looking at YOU, U—– C—– of C—– in N——, NH.)
The fact is, many pianos need to be put out of their misery. (Actually OUR misery.) A typical piano in sad shape can cost $5,000 to $20,000 to rebuild and refinish, and when done it won’t be as good as a new $7,000 Chinese piano.
Do you know about The Great Piano Bonfire? In 1904 a number of New York piano dealers got together and burned 200 old pianos in a bonfire. Why? To take them off the market, so that customers would have to buy new pianos.
Cash for Clunkers was a similar thing. 1. Old cars pollute and get poor gas mileage. 2. An old car has to get off the market for a new car to get on the market. Plenty of old cars means less demand for new cars means autoworkers out of work.
Mark in Boston on 31 Jul 2012 at 10:19 pm #
I’ll just add that if YOU don’t have a piano in your house or apartment, YOU are the reason one of those old pianos was dumped off the truck.
BTW have you seen the Jet Li / Bob Hoskins / Morgan Freeman movie “Unleashed”?
curmudgeonly ex-professor on 31 Jul 2012 at 10:19 pm #
PS- What also helped was finding Lucy’s obituary online; what didn’t help was finding out later that her first name was Gretje….
Mark in TTown on 31 Jul 2012 at 11:14 pm #
curmudgeonly ex-professor: It helps that my surname is not too common. What doesn’t help is that we were never close to my father’s side of the family after his mother died so I never learned any family stories about his people. I was able to piece together information about his father and grandfather from records and then I hit a dead end.
Robin in FL: The earliest ancestor at the website I referenced above was born around 1640 and died sometime before 1704 at Isle of Wight, VA. From the tree of male ancestors it looks like my line went to NC, SC, AL and some are now in TX also.
TruckerRon on 01 Aug 2012 at 12:17 am #
I’m happy to report that we have a restored piano in our living room. My wife and 3 of our daughters have played it over the years. Me, I just play one note at a time on my clarinet and bass clarinet.
Rick in Shermantown, Ohio on 01 Aug 2012 at 4:55 am #
Janis’ talking:
Why do some people think that their need to talk must naturally be matched by other people’s need to listen?
Rickmeister on 01 Aug 2012 at 4:57 am #
Recently sold my digital Yamaha piano to finance an expensive new ukulele, so maybe I’m partly to blame. That sale didn’t have nearly the emotional whallop as when I had to sell my Baldwin grand piano when we downsized 10 years ago.
Rickmeister on 01 Aug 2012 at 4:59 am #
On the topic…maybe it would be a good time for J.J. to rerun the series about Janis wanting to buy a piano!
Symply Fargone on 01 Aug 2012 at 7:31 am #
I had to make our old instrument of torture Symply Fargone(I have no ear for music other than appreciation), it took my 6 months to find someone who would try to fix it versus destroy it, but I did…there was nor room in the new house for it.
BTW on a side note, if ever you get a chance to go to Portugal, by all means go, the food, wine, castles, monasterys, and palaces are amazing their tiled dating to the Moorish occupation are amazing and all over buildings everywhere. Our hosts made us local dishes that were out of this world…and the produce from the hosts parents farm….OK I could go on and on.
Mark in Boston on 01 Aug 2012 at 4:20 pm #
Does anybody love a digital piano the way one loves a real piano?
I suppose it’s possible. A real piano is to a digital piano as a real dog is to a plush toy dog, and many a kid who can’t have a real dog loves his plush toy dog.