Operation: Luthier (part 1)

I recently acquired, for free (and via almost entirely legal means) this:



It was dusty bits and pieces of a beat-up kit for a replica Les Paul-style electric guitar (already cleaned and rough sanded before I took these pics). The neck fitting needs to be fully redone, the bridge pickup is AWOL, and the body is all but unfinished -- in short, it's a mess. However, the body seems solid and usable, the neck is complete and the frets & fretboard look OK, the bridge hardware is all there, and the internal electronics are functioning properly.

New project for Jay: see if I can work it into playing condition, and perhaps make it look halfway decent too...


If the project is successful, who knows? (As you can see here, it would be the right guitar for Ace's role in a KISS cover band...)

Happy spring! :)

Heidi's Birthday Adventure

To celebrate Heidi's birthday we decided it was time to visit somewhere new -- a day trip to the small former milling town of North Adams, in the Berkshires in the NW corner of the state. As the milling industry faded, the town was left with a wealth of warehouse space, a portion of which was redeveloped into the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, or MassMoCA.

To fuel up for our adventure, we started our day with breakfast at a local "sugar shack".

Early spring is prime season for maple syrup, and there are a number of these sugar shacks in the upper Pioneer Valley, all open for a month or so during tapping season. A tasty breakfast with super tasty maple syrup makes Heidi smile:

Next, a scenic drive approximately 50 miles up into the sparsely populated Berkshire hills - a very pretty drive this time of year.

A view of the Deerfield River, the hills, and of an impressive stretch of icicles along the highway.

MassMoCA.



Photography is not permitted in most of the gallery spaces, but we did get a few pictures of one exhibit, called "Projections" -- a massive room (roughly the size of two gymnasiums end-to-end) with poetry projected in a constantly moving stream, very cool because of the sheer size and because the work is in motion around you...

So that's how you say it?

A clever (or not, depending upon your point of view and or city of residence) advertisement has gotten a little buzz in the region lately, as Athol is a town just north and east of us.

Here’s the full story.


For those not in the know, there are plenty of town names with unexpected pronunciations here. Amherst is pronounced like “Ammerst”, Worcester is pronounced like “Woostah”, and, Athol is pronounced, well, you can probably figure it out.

As for us? Break week is just a week away, and we can’t wait. Our massive piles of snow are rapidly disappearing, but, like last spring, it has been rather overcast for much of the time, so it has felt a bit dreary despite the warming trend. We’re hoping we’ll get a nice long dose of sunshine soon.

- JBC