I sure hope so!

Who doesn't like N.C. Wyeth?

Yeah!

Yeah, how come?

My favorite

My favorite piano is the Sohmer Baby Grand.  They don't make them any more, but at one time it was an arch-rival of Steinway, and had several unique attributes.  And sounds so great. Like no other to my ear. Victor Herbert and Irving Berlin composed on their very own Sohmers.  They knew quality.
Today the name is owned by some stupid South Korean company but is not put on any of their crummy products, fortunately.
In 1910 there was one piano for every 252 Americans.  Now...?  You know what killed the piano?  Radio.  Piano sales peaked in 1924 and then went into a slide they've never recovered from.  Sales of pianos dropped off in step with the increase in sales of radios.  Talk about unintended consequences.
What a shame.

I've had that urge once or twice

I do so often wonder

Shine, perishing republic

Thomas Hart Benton's "Indifference"

While this America settles in the mould of its vulgarity,
      heavily thickening to empire,
And protest, only a bubble in the molten mass, pops
      and sighs out, and the mass hardens,
I sadly smiling remember that the flower fades to make
      fruit, the fruit rots to make earth.
Out of the mother; and through the spring exultances,
      ripeness and decadence; and home to the mother.
You making haste haste on decay: not blameworthy; life
      is good, be it stubbornly long or suddenly
A mortal splendor: meteors are not needed less than
      mountains; shine, perishing republic.
But for my children, I would have them keep their
      distance from the thickening center; corruption
Never has been compulsory, and when the cities lie at the
      monster’s feet there are left the mountains.
And boys, be in nothing so moderate as in love of man,
      a clever servant, insufferable master.
There is the trap that catches noblest spirits, that caught
      —they say—God, when he walked on earth.
~ Robinson Jeffers

The Answer

Then what is the answer?—Not to be deluded by dreams.
 To know that great civilizations have broken down into
      violence, and their tyrants come, many times before.
When open violence appears, to avoid it with honor or
      choose the least ugly faction; these evils are essential.
To keep one’s own integrity, be merciful and uncorrupted
      and not wish for evil; and not be duped
By dreams of universal justice or happiness. These dreams
      will not be fulfilled.
To know this, and to know that however ugly the parts
      appear the whole remains beautiful. A severed hand
Is an ugly thing, and man dissevered from the earth and
      stars and his history...for contemplation or in fact...
Often appears atrociously ugly. Integrity is wholeness,
      the greatest beauty is
Organic wholeness, the wholeness of life and things, the
      divine beauty of the universe. Love that, not man
Apart from that, or else you will share man’s pitiful
      confusions, or drown in despair when his days darken.
             ~ Robinson Jeffers

Strange

There comes the strangest moment in your life,
when everything you thought before breaks free—
what you relied upon as ground-rule and as rite
looks upside down from how it used to be.

Skin’s gone pale, your brain is shedding cells;
you question every tenet you set down;
obedient thoughts have turned to infidels
and every verb desires to be a noun.
                             * * * *
How many people thought you’d never change?
But here you have. It’s beautiful. It’s strange.
            ~ Kate Light