> > Do you often encounter musical instruments in your wanderings?
> > Not that anything fancy would come along
...
> Every so often; they're usually old student grade stuff.  Some old 
> 50s and 60s Sears-level guitars.  A few older violins did surface 
> once, but I saw them as someone else was buying them. They weren't 
> the good stuff either.

It's highly unlikely that you would see the good stuff. A little
more possible to make interesting finds, such as lesser Italians or 
Germans or French or English or instruments made by otherwise 
well-regarded amateurs. I once played on an FE & FO Stanley violin and 
mentioned that to Robert Shelton, the curator at the Library of Congress, 
and he was interested in acquiring it, but the instrument was gone when 
I went looking for it. But that's the sort of thing one might find more 
easily in your venues than through normal channels.

> > > antiques.  They often increase the value of some Pacific island 
> items 
> > Perhaps because evidence of repairs speaks to antiquity and 
> > authenticity. Or perhaps the repairs require as much skill as 
> > the original fashioning of the merchandise?
> All of the above, I'd think.  It's especially true for bowls and the 
> like.

Reminds me of the phenomenon I discovered during my brief
flirtation with stamp collecting. Normally, unused mint-condition
stamps are the most sought after, but during the '40s-50s some smaller
countries such as Tonga and San Marino discovered philately as a 
potential source of revenue, so they commissioned big presses, such as 
the American Bank Note Company, to print vast numbers of stamps, which
were sold directly to collectors, most never setting glue in the
countries whose name was on the face. These were of course unused, and
at some point hobbyists decided that was bogus, and so used stamps of
these varieties became much more valuable than new ones, which affected
the market to the degree that fake cancellations started happening.
A most amusing sidebar.

> > It's bad for the tone as well as the structural integrity.
> > Of course, in a blind test at Kresge Auditorium a couple
> > decades ago, it was proven quite conclusively that expertly
> > made modern violins sound better than famous old masters, and 
> > even respected musicians could barely tell the difference at
> > a distance beyond a few meters. In the case of Strads, the
> I'm not surprised.  There are some seriously good luthiers out there. 

For sure.

> > all the other violins were Gaglianos of one generation or the
> > other, and I was playing on a fresh minted Wallin from the
> > 1990s, and my instrument, if not my playing, blew the others
> > away. It was not a great classic instrument of a famous make, 
> > nor ancient, and, horrors, it was made by a woman. In those
> > days, women did not make violins! She made four based on the
> Horrors!  Girl germs on the violin!  

Worse, girl germs in the design.

> > It's kept me company for maybe 500000 of my 3 or 4 million air 
> > miles and has remained mostly intact. She persisted and went on
> > to become the first woman president of the Violin Society of
> > America, and her instruments command more than a house in Detroit.
> Not that the latter commands much as often as not, but even so.  

When my sister's father-in-law died, I could have bought his house,
unattractive and somewhat rundown but in a goodish neighborhood insofar
as such can be in Detroit, for 17K. Now, the average house in Detroit 
is worth 60K, though this one probably would go for less, if it's still 
standing.

> > To some extent, but really eminent instruments have a living
> > history, and in most cases their condition and that of their
> > owners is an open book. That puts the kibosh on the extremes
> > of portability and some conditions on the saleability.
> Likely, but it would still have to be easier than dealing with 
> something you can't pick up and move.

Real estate has generally good return but is involved to transfer.
It was one of the Bond villains who kept his assets liquid and
portable using postage stamps as above and Venezuelan bolivars;
in the long run, stamps would have been a decent investment, with
hardly anything more portable or cachable, but lost his shirt on
the currency, which as of Ian Fleming's writing, was indeed one
of the most stable in the world, backed by vast natural resources,
but in the last decades of turmiol, a bolivar from that period
would have devalued by now by a factor of 10^8. My Venezuelan
uncle once gave me a silver bolivar, then valued at 33c, maybe
close to its metal value. Now the metal value would be a buck or 
so, but the purchasing power would be a billionth of a dollar.

> > So did my 10th-grade math teacher, as it turns out. I'm given to
> > understand he's now going with one of my classmates despite having
> > been plumpish, nerdlyish, and a little awkward back in the day.
> That would describe a lot of us. 

Well, yeah, but his story shows that there may be some hope.

> > I've never had a paper towel stuffed into a pocket get shredded 
> > in the wash, not that I'd know.
> Can't say I've ever run one through the wash.

Since I use paper towels extensively, sometimes cramming a
double in my back pocket while cooking the way sous-chefs do
a dishrag, ... .

> > > These days however, people don't want to hear it.
> > It along with schmaltz and other good things are low on the
> > ecological soundness scale, requiring as they do the sacrifice
> > of the original grower. As do vegetable oils, I may point out,
> > which cause the deaths of trillions of corns, canolas, and 
> > soybeans. It would seem that by that criterion too butter is 
> > best.
> Butter is made from a waste product, at least if you're a cow, so 
> it's ecologically more sound than soy or corn oil. 

Except for the methane.

Steak San Marino
categories: main, Italian, beef, crockpot
servings: 4 to 6

1/4 c all-purpose flour
1/2 ts salt
1/2 ts pepper
1 1/2 lb top round steak, cut into six pieces
2 lg carrots, sliced
1 celery rib, sliced
8 oz tomato sauce
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 bay leaf
1 ts Italian seasoning
1/2 ts Worcestershire sauce
3 c hot cooked brown rice

In a large resealable plastic bag, combine the flour, 
salt, and pepper. Add beef, a few pieces at a time, 
and shake to coat. Transfer to a 4-qt. slow cooker.

M says: brown first in butter or oil.

Combine the carrots, celery, tomato sauce, garlic, 
bay leaf, Italian seasoning and Worcestershire. Pour 
over beef. Cover and cook on low for 7 to 9 hr until 
beef is tender. Discard bay leaf. Serve with rice.

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