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 ‘Mi-KAY-leh) lived on the Calabrian hillside where my father was born. | Family photo
IT’S A GUITAR THING | It’s easy to hit a wrong note in a time of plague. So, I cautiously began a recent post from TheStoryIsTheThing.com, titled: “IN THE TIME of CORONA: Who Gets My Beloved Guitars.” 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 fact—if you or I make a wrong turn in public and enter a spew of aerosol droplets left moments ago by some ‘maskhole’ asymptomatic person, we might be …
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 states—and I reiterate here for the probate lawyer who settles my large estate—my 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 Michele—a 1963 Martin dreadnought made of Brazilian rosewood—soon after moving to West Virginia in 1988. I’d taken my first job out of college at the Huntington Herald-Dispatch. Michele was my first major-league guitar.
A sheriff’s 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 Fret’n’Fiddle on the city’s 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. | TheStoryIsTheThing.com 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 Earth’s 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 price—and becomes your pal for life ...
It was the kind of instrument you bring out at music festivals and singalongs to ‘ooohs’ and ‘aaahs’ from learned folks. That’s another thing about West Virginia—every fifth person you pass on the sidewalk can play guitar like a mother …. um …
Like a guitar-strumming god.
The Martin’s provenance also helped conceal the fact I was a bounder from Ohio. And I could not, in fact, play “Whiskey Before Breakfast” at breakneck speed like everyone else around the circle. I’d distract from this fact by gazing lovingly at the Martin, saying something like: “Yeah, I got this from Joe Dobbs. The top is made of …“
READ ON: “Who Gets My Beloved Guitars”
“Pandemic Memorial Video Project.” | 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) …
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. It’s an attempt to create something—however tiny—to put a face and lived story to the losses. Please pass it forward. Here’s 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 “win” the day’s new cycle. He’s a damaged man-child, aided, abetted, and protected by some of American history’s worst political malefactors—Mitch McConnell, Bill Barr, Lyndsey Graham, and a political class of sellouts.
I don’t 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 grandma’s virtues encoded in their hearts, even as they stand, mask-less, waiving ridiculous protest signs.
I hope a few of those people—who may not yet know someone directly who has died from Covid-19—get 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: “Pandemic Memorial Video Project”
GETTING OUT OF DODGE: Where do you go when you need to get away from quarantine central? Here’s 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 ‘Croak-Croaking.’ 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
“Creature from the Blue Lagoon.” | Hoeft Marsh, West Virginia | 2018 | 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 chapter—a big ol’ huge chapter—was added to the book of her life that none of us knew about.
We found it in a closet.
Suffice it to say she was—thank the gods—happier than I suspected. And that’s a good thing, if a bit involved. It will take time for me to get to it. Meanwhile, we all just marked Mother’s 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 Mother’s Day was born right here in West Virginia in 1908? That’s when Anna Jarvis held a memorial for her mom at St Andrew’s 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 Martha’s Vineyard mansion with gargoyles on it parapets, checking his billionaire balance from the end-of-business-day sales of Mother’s Day cards and candy.
For my Mother’s 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 Alzheimer’s 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 “Atomic Standard,” and features some of the atomic elements matched with his illustrations of famous scientists. That is, all except for the “Queen of Hearts,” which features our Mom, holding—appropriately—books of “Knowledge” and “Wisdom.”
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)—to 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: IT’S A MOTHER’S DAY THING: One Rant, One Song, One Memoir
IT’S 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 phrase—and then rejects it utterly.
El-ephants?!
There have never been elephants in West Virginia …
But you would be wrong.
Oh, so wrong.
At the link, see the concluding Part 2, “Elephant On the Loose in West Virginia.” 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: TheStoryIsTheThing.substack.com. The website is at: TheStoryIsTheThing.com | E-mail me at: douglasjohnmartin AT icloud.com | Stay Safe. Be well. Wear a mask and be a superhero. | Douglas John Imbrogno
PS: Spin Cycle
