One woman’s war It’s 1939, in Edinburgh, Scotland. An 18 year-old Scottish woman was tired of living at home with her family in an Edinburgh tenement (block of flats). The usual path for women of her age was to find employment in an office or store and/or find a husband and become a housewife. She…
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SmartWood and dumb decisions: Gibson’s checkered history
Memphis, Tennessee In the fall of 2017, I did a classic road-trip through the American south, accompanied by my daughter, Katie. We set off to soak up the music and the history of the American Civil War and the Civil Rights Movement. Our itinerary took us through Memphis, Tennessee, home of the Civil Rights Museum,…
Tall trees, tunnels and train robberies: recycling Redwood
Tunnel 13 On October 11, 1923, Southern Pacific train number 13, the Portland-San Francisco Express, entered Tunnel number 13 at the summit of the railway over the Siskiyou Mountains in Southern Oregon, close to the border with California. It was pulling 13 carriages. The train never made it fully out of the tunnel. Instead it…
Admiring imperfection: enjoying “ordinary” treasures
(Extra)Ordinary Nature I’ve been lucky to be able to travel to some amazing places and see some of the iconic natural places in the world – places like the Grand Canyon, Yosemite, the Galapagos, and the Kimberley of Western Australia. As well as that, I’ve been fortunate as an ecologist to be able to visit…
A violin needs a bow
The previous post looked at classic violins and the future of violin making. It’s easy to forget, when delving into the world of Stradivari and classic violins, that without a bow a violin is – well, maybe just a fancy ukulele. Although the bow generally plays second fiddle to the violin itself (OK, sorry, I…
Stradivari, Cremona and violin mystique
In this post, I’m straying a bit from the focus on guitars to consider another wooden stringed instrument, the violin. There are a number of threads to this story and it does relate to the overall themes of the Nature of Music (trust me on this…). A few things to clarify to begin with. First…
The house of a thousand guitars: on being obsessed
John Stubbins titled his beautifully crafted book about guitars “The Devil is In It: Love, Obsession and the American Acoustic Guitar”. In this post, I want to focus on the “obsession” bit. As a biologist, I’ve been surrounded by friends and colleagues that are all passionate about their interest in the natural world, with that…
Trees that nobody loves: weedy guitars
Weeds: plants in the wrong place A recent post focused on my quest for a guitar made entirely from Australian timbers. The guitar made by Aaron Fenech featuring Wandoo wood from here in Western Australia is certainly a magnificent guitar in all regards. There is much more to be said about native Australian woods in…
And . . . what are we going to do about it?
In an earlier post, I discussed the multiple dimensions of our individual responses to ecological damage and change. I likened this to the grieving process – grief over what is being lost and destroyed and despair about our individual collective ability to do anything about it. Grief elicits a series of reactions including anger, denial…
Wheatbelt woodlands in Western Australia: loss, hope and a guitar
A Scot ends up in Australia Although I grew up and spent the first part of my life in Scotland, I’ve now lived in Western Australia for over half my life and most of my professional life. I arrived in Perth, the capital city of Western Australia in July 1984, having spent the previous 2…