cjsmith: (Default)
cjsmith ([personal profile] cjsmith) wrote2018-10-25 04:22 pm

Guitars per capita

"The goal of higher income is not just bigger piles of money. The goal of longer lives is not just extra time. [...] Culture and freedom, the goals of development, can be hard to measure, but guitars per capita is a good proxy."

--Hans Rosling, in Factfulness
wcg: (Default)

[personal profile] wcg 2018-10-26 05:04 pm (UTC)(link)
Three guitars per this capita.
wcg: (Default)

[personal profile] wcg 2018-10-27 04:53 pm (UTC)(link)
All three of mine are acoustic. Two are six strings, and one's a twelve string. I got the 12-string when I was stationed on Okinawa in early 1979. It's a Yamaha FG-630, which is modeled on the 1936 Martin 12-string. Both six strings were gifts. One is a Hondo H-18, which was the first mass marketed guitar sold in the US. It's an awfully good guitar considering its origins. The other is a B. C. Rico jazz guitar made around 1958. When I got it the poor thing was in awful shape, but a local luthier restored it for me (and would have been happy to keep it if I didn't want it).

I play mostly folk music at local coffee houses and song swaps. Though these days I'm much more likely to be dancing than playing.