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The progress reports

Each week (hopefully) we update this page with new photos of instruments in progress. The updates will usually be on Monday.

We hope that you enjoy seeing the progress on your instrument and those of others who have them on order.

 

Week ending August 16, 2005


See last week, or next week, or the index of other weeks for more pictures.


This week we've been thinking a lot about Cindy Sheehan's protest.

Cindy is asking the same question that many of us are asking: "What are we doing in Iraq?" When we as a nation got involved, at least some people in the government felt that we had good reasons: the weapons of mass destruction, and Saddam's tenuous link to the 9/11 tragedy. The WMD's failed to materialize, and there is no real evidence of Iraqi support for the actions of Al Queda.

Now we're the hated and feared occupying army. We took over Saddam's role of ruler and torturer, and we're doing our best to impose our form of government on the Iraqi people. Is it any wonder that there's an insurgency? Our leaders didn't expect one, but there it is.

Let's put this in a different perspective for a moment. Let's imagine that the Chinese had invaded the United States and were occupying it, with a puppet pro-Chinese government in Washington writing a new constitution that made us a Communist nation instead of a republic. So here we are, under military occupation with a foreign country imposing a new form of government on us. Would we sit quietly in our homes watching TV and eating pizza? I don't think so! We'd band together to throw out these foreigners by force.So maybe we can understand a little of why there's an Iraqi insurgency. Why our leaders didn't forsee such an obvious consequence of occupation is another question entirely.

It still doesn't answer the question Cindy Sheehan is asking: why are we there?


It was a long week in the shop, though not a lot of hurdy-gurdy building got done, because we were doing Other Stuff:

All the ductwork you see here is for our new dust collection system. A few hours ago we completed it to the point where it could be turned on and tested. Yippee! It sure does suck... ;-) All the tools aren't hooked up to the system yet, and there are still a few modifications to do, but the bulk of the work is done.

The collector itself in the new addition

Some of the ductwork.

Thanks to everyone who helped: Patrick, Kathy, and Justin. Special thanks to Heather at Oneida, who worked very hard with me on the design. We highly recommend Oneida dust collection systems.

 


Thanks for watching - tune in next week!


Beati illi qui in circulum circumeunt, fient enim magnae rotae.

Please contact us if you have comments or questions about this page or other pages on this site.

Alden and Cali Hackmann
Olympic Musical Instruments

Beati illi qui in circulum circumeunt, fient enim magnae rotae.

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