Giving My Guitars Away
Plus, putting faces to Covid-19 and my mother as the Queen of Hearts | may15.2020

I hope my great-grandfather Michele Napoli, seen here with his wife, Luisa Nigro Napoli, is down with me naming my guitar after him. Luisa and Michele (pronounced โMi-KAY-leh) lived on the Calabrian hillside where my father was born. | Family photo
ITโS A GUITAR THING | Itโs easy to hit a wrong note in a time of plague. So, I cautiously began a recent post from TheStoryIsTheThing.com, titled: โIN THE TIME of CORONA: Who Gets My Beloved Guitars.โ In a week or so, America will pass the shocking, politically reprehensible benchmark of 100,000 deaths from Covid-19. Nothing to josh about. But persist, we must, even in the maw of cataclysm. And in point of factโif you or I make a wrong turn in public and enter a spew of aerosol droplets left moments ago by some โmaskholeโ asymptomatic person, we might be โฆ
A goner.
Weird, weird times. So, if I should make that wrong turn, who gets my beloved guitars? Writing about that turned out to be liberating. It also opened up all sorts of memory rabbit holes that were fun to explore.
As the piece statesโand I reiterate here for the probate lawyer who settles my large estateโmy son gets Gilda the Guild back; my daughter gets majestic Michele the Taylor; and great-nephew Wes gets my cool traveling guitar, Blue, which has been to Venice and back.
I purchased Micheleโa 1963 Martin dreadnought made of Brazilian rosewoodโsoon after moving to West Virginia in 1988. Iโd taken my first job out of college at the Huntington Herald-Dispatch. Michele was my first major-league guitar.
A sheriffโs deputy named Larry Stephens, whom I knew from covering the cops, was also a guitar player. He said if I was looking for a good guitar to head to FretโnโFiddle on the cityโs west side, run by a guy named Joe. It turned out Joe was a big deal in West Virginia, musically speaking:

Michele, working on his tan. |ย TheStoryIsTheThing.comย photo
[Joe] turned out to be a legendary, beloved West Virginia fiddle player. He was also a purveyor of fine instruments, such as a classic Martin steel-string I spotted on the wall, fashioned from one of Earthโs primo resonant woods.
SIDE NOTE: That is West Virginia in a nutshell for you. The deputy sheriff you quote in the local newspaper tells you where to find a guitar he can fix for you, and that you can buy from the legendary fiddle player on the other side of town, who sells you a world-class guitar for a decent priceโand becomes your pal for life ...
It was the kind of instrument you bring out at music festivals and singalongs to โooohsโ and โaaahsโ from learned folks. Thatโs another thing about West Virginiaโevery fifth person you pass on the sidewalk can play guitar like a mother โฆ.ย um โฆ
Like a guitar-strummingย god.
The Martinโs provenance also helped conceal the fact I was a bounder from Ohio. And I could not, in fact, playย โWhiskey Before Breakfastโย at breakneck speed like everyone else around the circle. Iโd distract from this fact by gazing lovingly at the Martin, saying something like: โYeah, I got this from Joe Dobbs. The top is made of โฆโ
READ ON: โWho Gets My Beloved Guitarsโ
โPandemic Memorial Video Project.โ | TheStoryIsTheThing.com Video
REMEMBERING THEM: Less frivolous has been the spectre of seeing vast leaps in the number of Covid-19 deceased. And yet these numbers remain faceless, ticking up like a rising fever: 500, 10,000, 50,000, 86,571 (at the moment I write this sentence) โฆ
All of a sudden, about eight weeks ago on Twitter, memoriams began appearing. In 280 characters or less, they noted people killed by the virus, often dying alone, clutching a cellphone for their goodbyes. I started screen capturing them, not quite sure why. This video (above) turned out to be why. Itโs an attempt to create somethingโhowever tinyโto put a face and lived story to the losses. Please pass it forward. Hereโs the Youtube link: youtu.be/RcsO3bIbYvs.
I also kinda cut loose in the text introducing the video:
I am beyond anger at a so-called President incapable of empathy, desperate only to โwinโ the dayโs new cycle. Heโs a damaged man-child, aided, abetted, and protected by some of American historyโs worst political malefactorsโMitch McConnell, Bill Barr, Lyndsey Graham, and a political class of sellouts.
I donโt know why I made this video, except that it was something to do with these lousy feelings of helplessness. I maybe made it, too, for the handful of people still in the middle. These are people I hope and trust still have their grandmaโs virtues encoded in their hearts, even as they stand, mask-less, waiving ridiculous protest signs.
I hope a few of those peopleโwho may not yet know someone directly who has died from Covid-19โget to know the faces and stories of the many who have already died.
If even for a few seconds.
All these people in this video are strangers to me. But they are not strangers to their children, their grandchildren, and their grieving loved ones.
READ ON: โPandemic Memorial Video Projectโ
GETTING OUT OF DODGE: Where do you go when you need to get away from quarantine central? Hereโs one place I head, an expansive marshland along the Ohio River. This is a shot from 2018, when I took my brother, David, there. It remains the same and sounds the same. Canadian geese honking overhead. Frogs โCroak-Croaking.โ Water lapping. On the way back from sheltering-in-Nature, I stop at one of the Seven Wonders of West Virginia for a gourmet vegetarian hot dog. This, too, is peak West Virginia. | READ ON: 3PHOTOS | Images Outside the Pandemic Box

โCreature from the Blue Lagoon.โ | Hoeft Marsh, West Virginia | 2018 |ย TheStoryIsTheThing.com
DEAL HIM IN: I am not yet ready to talk about my mother, though she has been gone 18 years in 2020. I just turned 63-years-old and am still figuring her out. Then, a few years ago, a whole new chapterโa big olโย hugeย chapterโwas added to the book of her life that none of us knew about.
We found it in a closet.
Suffice it to say she wasโthank the godsโhappier than I suspected. Andย thatโsย a good thing, if a bit involved. It will take time for me to get to it. Meanwhile, we all just marked Motherโs Day. (How did yours go? Got a simple, loving, straightforward, uncomplicated relationship with your mother or her memory? Great for you!)
I trust you know Motherโs Day was born right here in West Virginia in 1908? Thatโs whenย Anna Jarvisย held a memorial for her mom at St Andrewโs Methodist Church, in Grafton:
Jarvis later repudiated how the day was quickly colonized by commercial and unctuous interests, intent on requiring you to spend money on Mom in the first week of May and to write something sweet as sorghum in a card. Somewhere out there is a guy in a Marthaโs Vineyard mansion with gargoyles on it parapets, checking his billionaire balance from the end-of-business-day sales of Motherโs Day cards and candy.
For my Motherโs Day post, I shared a rant by a retired minister friend who really hates the capitalist version of the day. I included an article and song I wrote memorializing my mother at her funeral, whose difficult last years ran through that crushing gauntlet of cruelties known as Alzheimerโs Disease.
In the post, I was pleased to feature the world debut of an image from a deck-of-cards-in-the-making, crafted by my graphic artist/artist younger brother Rick. The brilliantly conceived and artfully illustrated deck is called โAtomic Standard,โ and features some of the atomic elements matched with his illustrations of famous scientists. That is, all except for the โQueen of Hearts,โ which features our Mom, holdingโappropriatelyโbooks of โKnowledgeโ and โWisdom.โ
The deck is a work of art. It deserves unveiling in the world. Please leave a comment for Rick below. Urging him, exhorting him, beseeching, coaxing, goading, cajoling, imploring, insisting, importuning (and whatever other synonyms you can find at Thesaurus.com)โto finish the damn deck.
And get his mini-masterpiece out on the world where it can be properly appreciated. Below is Mom in all her queenly glory. | READ ON: ITโS A MOTHERโS DAY THING: One Rant, One Song, One Memoir

ITโS AN ELEPHANT THING: This recent post features two of the silliest videos I have ever made (and I have made hundreds in my day).
They were the best of times. They were the worst of times. They were the time of the Elephant in West Virginia. You may not believe it. I would well understand should you not. The querulous mind dances lightly upon the phraseโand then rejects it utterly.
El-ephants?!
There haveย neverย been elephants in West Virginia โฆ
But you would be wrong.
Oh, so wrong.
At the link, see the concluding Part 2, โElephant On the Loose in West Virginia.โ READ ON: A LOOK BACK: When Elephants Walked in West Virginia
GRAZIE MILLE: Thanks for reading, listening, sharing. If this newsletter was forwarded to you, subscribe for free at:ย TheStoryIsTheThing.substack.com. The website is at:ย TheStoryIsTheThing.comย | E-mail me at: douglasjohnmartin AT icloud.com | Stay Safe. Be well. Wear a mask and be a superhero. |ย Douglasย John Imbrogno
PS: Spin Cycle
