MEDIA in the Middle East: More Than Meets The Eye

by Kathy Cadwell and Rob Williams

Are all Arabs “terrorists”?

Are all Americans “fat and stupid”?

Are these two stereotypes true?

Vermont and Jordanian high school students explored these and other media related questions during a MEDIA exchange program in Amman, Jordan from April 9-29, 2005. This program, funded by ECA and conducted under the auspices of Project Harmony in Waitsfield, Vermont, brought Vermont teenagers to Jordan where they lived with host families for the first time in the history of these two countries. On June 20, the Jordanians will travel to Vermont for a three-week reciprocal visit. They will live with families and complete media projects with their Vermont counterparts. Before ending their visit to the United States on July 10, they will visit Washington, D.C.

The Media Education and Democracy In Action (MEDIA) program is the first Project Harmony initiative to establish cross-cultural ties between the United States and the Middle East. It brings together a range of organizational partners and synthesized a variety of time-tested educational approaches. As the two MEDIA program teachers, we share an avid interest in global history, hands-on approach to pedagogy and leadership development, and the power of one-on-one interaction to improve mutual understanding.

Kathy helped found “Project Harmony” in 1985, with the goal of building cross-cultural relationships and breaking down barriers between Soviets and Americans. Rob helped found the Action Coalition for Media Education (ACME) in 2001, with the hope of building an independently-funded national nonprofit educational network championing media literacy – teaching students and citizens to access, analyze, and produce media – with the goal of strengthening civic engagement in a rapidly changing 21st century multi-media world. With United Palestinian Appeal as a Project Harmony partner, and Champlain College and Green Mountain Valley School generously providing us with release time, we accompanied ten Vermont students and four staff to Amman for a remarkable journey of discovery and learning.

In designing the MEDIA program, we laid out a variety of goals. Pedagogically, we wanted our students in explore contemporary global issues, first through ongoing online learning discussions via web forums, and then through F2F (face to face) communication and project-based work. Our online conversations began in early January, with Vermont and Jordanian high school students introducing themselves to one another in our web forum. The teens introduced themselves and talked on line about their media interests and their concern about global issues, such as poverty, women’s rights, racism and media ownership,

During the winter months, our students used the web forum to push each other to consider media-related contemporary issues more closely. We asked the question, “Was it right of some Danish newspapers to publish provocative cartoons poking fun at Islam?” In our Amman F2F conversations, we probed the positive and negative aspects of our 21st century media culture in depth. We looked at the ways in which the brain processes different kinds of information, how advertisers and other powerful media makers “construct” media “realities” using sophisticated production techniques and how news outlets report on the events of the day.

After watching Egyptian-American filmmaker Jehane Noujaim’s 2004 documentary film “Control Room,” which scrutinizes Al Jazeera television’s coverage of the U.S. 2003 invasion of Iraq, we discussed questions of “objectivity” in journalism. We then took our questions to Jordanian newspaper editors at the Arabic language daily “Al Ghad” and the English language weekly “The Star,” both with offices in downtown Amman. Their revelations about the nature of “objectivity” in the newsroom reminded us that the process of news reporting involves an ongoing dialogue with a story as it unfolds from day to day.

Other highlights of MEDIA trip included seeing real newspapers in action, watching news broadcasts with a critical eye, and talking with news producers about the difficulties and rewards of making news happen in a fast-moving multimedia world proved. Catherine Moore, a graduating senior with an interest in journalism, walked away from the experience even more motivated to dive in to her studies at the Boston University School of Communication next fall. We teased her- only half jokingly- that she might become our Amman-based contact for future MEDIA programs, if she manages to learn fluent Arabic AND complete her journalism degree!

Knowing Catherine as well as we do, she just might do it.

A second goal of our MEDIA program was to provide students the necessary steps to produce their own multimedia stories. Short, personal, and provocative, digital stories are designed to personalize a global issue and propose solutions to the common problems that plague us. Our online conversations and F2F work in Amman saw our students brainstorming, scripting, and storyboarding their own digital stories that focused on issues they felt passionate about. When the Jordanians travel to Vermont in June, our young media-makers will learn how to produce and edit their digital stories in our Mad River Valley editing studio. We plan to work with them to strengthen their leadership and presentation skills and prepare them to present their stories to audiences in their home communities.

A third goal of the MEDIA involves the breaking down of cultural stereotypes, often media-created. Hannah, McMeekin, from Sharon, Vermont, and Eman Al-Araj who attends Amman’s Al Ahliyyah School for Girls in Amman, are working on a digital story about cultural stereotypes. “When I told my friends I was traveling to Amman, many of them thought I was crazy,” explained Hannah. “But after spending several late nights walking through busy city streets with my Jordanian friends, I learned that Amman is much safer than many American cities”. Eman similarly observed, “In meeting the Vermonters, I learned that American high students are like Jordanians teens in many ways,” she said. “ But I was really surprised by how interested our Vermont friends were in learning about Jordanian history and culture.”

Another objective of the MEDIA program goal was to study the history and culture of each country. Our Vermonters spent several days on the ground in Amman visiting schools, non-governmental organizations, news outlets, cultural centers, and the United Nations. We spent an emotional morning at the Bakka Palestinian Refugee “camp”, a settlement of 120,000 people outside of Amman where we visited a school for disabled students and a health clinic. We also journeyed out of Amman to other regions of Jordan. We rode camels in the ancient cliff civilization of Petra and traveled in jeeps across patches of desert in the Wadi Rum natural preserve. We hiked amongst the spectacular Roman ruins at Jeresh and swam in the to the Dead Sea (the lowest point on earth and a site steeped in biblical history). These experiences, along with the evenings spent with our host families discussing all manner of topics, enhanced our understanding of Jordan’s history, tradition and culture.

As a final program goal, we sought to harness the promise of new 21st century media. Much attention is being paid, and rightly so, to the problem of corporate media ownership and its attendant perils. But our 21st century media technologies – with blogs, low power FM radio, digital video, podcasting, wikis, and the like – offer all of us, as global citizens, the promise of democratizing and distributing information around the world. Using digital cameras and one mini-DV recorder, we captured the sights and sounds of our work in and travels throughout Jordan, and then posted them at our MEDIA “vlog” (a video web log). This allowed friends, family, and colleagues to keep track of our learning as it unfolded.

While this MEDIA vlog served as a pilot project, an experiment in the power of digital communication across the miles, the power of “vlogging” holds much potential for future MEDIA trips. Imagine, for example, if our students each had a video camera and could narrate their own educational and travel experiences, creating a personal vlog portfolio of their own learning in the midst of their travel adventures, F2F learning conversations, and digital story production?

Our hope is to use the lessons learned from our pilot MEDIA program to continue to build relationships with Middle Eastern partners so we can offer future cross-cultural MEDIA programs for students of all ages. This remarkable experience, (one in which we worked for 12 days without a break!), combined a bewildering mixture of culture, education, history, leadership, and multimedia skills. We remain excited about the prospects for future work between Vermont, Jordan and other communities in the greater Middle East.

“None of us is as smart as all of us,” is a Project Harmony adage. Our MEDIA trip to Jordan proved a constant reminder of this simple truth, and will no doubt continue to prove true in our weeks of work and learning that lie ahead. We have much more to learn from one another’s experiences, and we have much to gain from creating new and exciting ways to tell each other’s stories.

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Thank You For Smoking: Filtering The Truth

609 words

The tobacco industry manufactures a product – call it a “cancer stick,” a “nicotine delivery device,” a cigarette, whatever – that kills 1/3 of the people who use it.

1,200 Americans a day.

440,000 a year, give or take.

Well-paid advertising and PR execs hired by the tobacco industry spend more than fifteen billion dollars every year on some of the most sexy and sophisticated multimedia propaganda known to man.

Their primary target?

Our kids.

90% of Americans who smoke begin the “habit” before the age of 18.

Whether its product placement in Hollywood movies (the majority of the most popular rental films contain scenes glamorizing smoking), television (check out “OC,” for example), or many of the latest video games, the tobacco industry spends piles of money trying to “normalize” tobacco as a habit embraced by the masses.

And tobacco costs all of us – dearly.

Here in Vermont, we lose 1,000 of our neighbors each year to smoking-related illnesses, costing us Green Mountain taxpayers $80 million a year in health care costs.

All of this data is satirically showcased in director Jason Reitman’s new mock-umentary film called “Thank You For Smoking.” Based on Christopher Buckley’s book of the same name, the film tells the story of PR lobbyist Nick Naylor, “the Colonel Sanders of the tobacco industry.”

“I earn a living fronting an organization that kills 1200 people a day,” Naylor explains unapologetically. Charming, clever, handsome, well-dressed, and completely devoid of scruples, the “Yuppie Mephistopheles” charms, grins, and schmoozes his way through the story, pitching pro-smoking messages to everyone from the young students in his son’s grade school class to random passers-by, holding “power lunches” with fellow shills fronting the alcohol and gun lobbies (the MODs – merchants of death), and sweet-talking industry executives and investigative reporters (Katie Holmes’ Heather Hollaway of the “Washington Probe”) alike.

Why does he do what he does?

Reason #1. “Overpopulation.”

Reason #2. The “Yuppie Nuremberg” defense. “Everyone’s got a mortgage to pay.”

Reason #3. “I’m good at it. Better than at anything else.”

Reason #4. See reason #2. Above.

As the story unfolds, Naylor, self-described “man of the people,” is charged with brokering a sweet-smelling product placement deal between Big Tobacco and Hollywood (Happens all the time in real life, despite laws on the books to the contrary). Brad Pitt and Catherine Zeta-Jones smoking together after cosmic sex, to name one possible scenario, will cost him $25 million, he learns. His added challenge? Shutting up Sam Elliott’s former Marlboro Man, who has irascibly decided to hold forth on the industry’s stinky propaganda due to a recent cancer diagnosis.

“Sultan of Spin” Naylor’s nemesis in the film is Vermont Senator Orland Finnistre (the wonderful William Macy). Hyper-serious and self-righteous, Macy plays a fine foil to Naylor’s aura of suave unflappability, mounting a national campaign to use a “skull and cross bones” to label as “poison” all cigarette packages and debating Naylor on Dennis Miller’s national “news” (and I use the term loosely) show. And, of course, Vermonters must see the film if only to hear Macy utter the memorable line:

“The great state of Vermont will not apologize for its cheese.”

How the film’s story plays out, including one of the weakest wrap-up endings in recent movie history, I leave for you to discover.

And will this movie change the public debate about smoking? Nope, and that, of course, is not the filmmaker’s intent.

Instead, “Thank You For Not Smoking” functions as a semi-serious if vaguely unsatisfying celluloid meditation on the trade-offs of human (and corporate) cynicism and greed.

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Teen Harmony: Peace, technology, and understanding in the Middle East

By Shay Totten | Vermont Guardian

Posted April 7, 2006

Two decades ago, the perceived foe of the United States and the free world was the Soviet Union, otherwise known as the Evil Empire.

During the 1980s, it was the media that helped to shape the images U.S. citizens had of our perceived nemesis, the Red Tide. They were shown as brutish thugs who would stop at nothing to ensure that their particular brand of communism would overtake the world; cold, detached from being human, artless, and spiritually devoid.

During that time, a small group of people decided that one way to bridge the cultural divide, and bring about change and understanding, was through one-on-one contact and collaboration through the arts. At the time, there was heightened tension between the United States and the former Soviet Union, with many believing that a nuclear war between the two superpowers was inevitable.

However, four years after the first delegation of Project Harmony made its way behind the Iron Curtain, the curtain collapsed. The era of détente arrived.

“At the time, we used the message of the performing arts to develop these one-on-one relationships and those relationships grew and changed as the world changed,” said Kathy Cadwell, one of Project Harmony’s founders, and a participant on the first trip 21 years ago to Leningrad in the former Soviet Union. “We like to think that we helped to play a role in that change in some way.”

Today’s global geopolitical tensions are no longer focused on the former Soviet Union, but rather on China and the Middle East, on one hand due to economics and on the other hand due to a mix of politics and policy.

After more than two decades of fostering mutual understanding between citizens of the United States and countries of the former Soviet Union, to improve U.S. relations with and understanding of people in the Middle East, Project Harmony is now partnering with the United Palestinian Appeal, which provides humanitarian relief to the needy.

Cadwell will be joined on this new adventure with 10 Vermont students from around the state. The group departs for Amman, Jordan, on Sunday and returns April 29. In July, 10 Jordanian students and their faculty will come to Vermont.

The Media Education and Democracy in Action (MEDIA) Youth Leadership Exchange Program represents Project Harmony’s first program in the region. The program enables Project Harmony to bring its unique blend of Internet technology, cross-cultural learning, and civic engagement to the Middle East. MEDIA is a program of the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs under its Linking Individuals, Knowledge, and Culture initiative.

“I feel the exact sense of excitement and risk-taking and sense of adventure today as I did on the first trip in 1985,” said Cadwell. “These kids have an intense desire and make these personal connections, and to do it in a time when there is a lot of misunderstanding going on. And, we now have the ability in the organization to deliver … . [W]e have an infrastructure and we are building on things that we’ve learned and taking a similar message to a different area of the world to meet new challenges.”

When Project Harmony started, Cadwell notes, many skeptics said the group would never succeed. She’s glad to have proven the critics wrong, and to be able to put the organization’s talents to work in the Middle East. Back then, the group was three people with a vision. Today, the organization has 100 employees and seven offices around the world.

“We are now able to combine what we know about face-to-face intercultural communication and utilize new developments in technology as a way to meet each other,” said Cadwell.

Students, though they have yet to meet face-to-face, have already been fast at work in pairs on research projects, which they will complete, and present, when the Jordanian students come to Vermont.

The group is not only using technology to engage the students, but to share the experience with people back home. One of the project’s participants, and media professionals, Champlain College professor Rob Williams, created a video log, or vlog, for relatives and others to see firsthand what the students are experiencing. Each day, Williams will interview a student and then upload the video.

The 10 student pairs are now working on assignments, focusing on working a topic they feel passionate about and creating a digital story, said Renee Berrian, Project Harmony’s program manager. While in Jordan the students will take pictures and conduct additional research. When Jordanians come to Vermont in July the pairs will make final edits to their production and make a public presentation. The projects will also be posted on the Internet, she added.

Later, the students will go back to their communities and present their project at either their school or some other setting, Berrian said.

Crossing the divide

The students taking part in the Project Harmony trip were picked for their interest in media, and media literacy, as well as their thirst to meet and learn from peers in different countries. In preparation for the trip, the Vermont students took Arabic lessons for two months, Berrian said, and also met with others who have traveled to the region, to give them a primer on cultural dos and don’ts.

Students in Vermont and Jordan know there is more to understanding each other’s cultures than what they read in brochures or see on television or in movies.

In the United States and the Middle East, media plays a dominant role in the lives of young people, shaping their views of themselves and the world around them. The proliferation of the Internet, satellite TV, and global product brands have allowed media images and messages to penetrate nearly all facets of youths’ lives.

Teaching young people to be smart information consumers is important to building vibrant and healthy societies, and is key to Project Harmony’s work.

In an e-mail exchange with student participants, the Vermont Guardian learned that teens in Jordan and Vermont were acutely aware of the media’s role in shaping their worldview of each other’s culture.

“Media creates the impressions we have about people, especially from different countries. For instance, people in the U.S. and Europe have a wrong idea about Arabs and Muslims. This whole image was created through media,” wrote Mira Yaseen, who attends Al Ahliyyah School for Girls.

Yaseen hopes the personal connection she makes with peers will allow her to give her peers “the right idea about us and make them see us as we are not as the violent media has shown us. In their trip to Jordan, they will create a different image of us; they will understand our lifestyles, our principles and culture.”

Yasseen’s Vermont counterpart, Taylor Dobbs, who attends Montpelier High School, agrees and believes that there needs to be conscious effort to counter the impact of the media on cultural impressions.

“I would say I would like to try to figure out a way to balance all of the biased media in the world into sort of one central source. To let all views be heard is a very difficult task, but I don’t think it’s possible to have a totally neutral form of media, so the only way to make media neutral is to get input form both sides,” wrote Dobbs.

Dobbs does expect the group’s real-life experiences in the Middle East to be much different than what is portrayed in the media.

“Currently all we are seeing on the news is bodies, riots, and people running around with AK-47s,” Dobbs added. “A big reason I want to go on this trip was to alter the common misconception of myself and others that everyone in the Middle East is like that.”

Janet Janbek, who attends Prince Hamzeh School in Jordan, hopes to not only represent her culture, but to learn more about her peers in the United States.

“I hope to see how other people live, I like discovering new things and learning about different cultures, so I think this exchange would be very beneficial for both of us. I think that I would maybe become more open minded and a lot more understanding which would of course affect every side of my life,” Janbek wrote. “And I hope I can present my culture in its right portrait. I also hope to show others that our religion is not how some say it is.”

Often the media’s portrait distorts reality, she added, something starkly clear “when we look at the way others think of us and our religion. In my opinion, that picture created by the media can sometimes mislead a person and hold him back from learning new things,” she added.

There is perhaps no age group more targeted by the media than teens, and these 20 students are acutely aware of it, perhaps even more than how the media distorts their cultural traits.

“As far as being a teenager — I would say that media plays a huge role in my life. Although I only watch TV every couple of nights for an hour or so, I am constantly encountering it through magazines, store advertising, school studies, etc. I definitely believe that the media has affected how I view Jordanians or other people from the Middle East,” said Catherine Moore of Harwood Union High School. “Despite my ideas of keeping an ‘open mind.’ I realize after only briefly talking to the Jordanian students in this exchange that I have created a false stereotype which is unfair to the Jordanians. I believe that they have found this truth to be equally correct from their end of the exchange.”

While many of the students found out about Project Harmony through their schools, teachers, or a visiting talk by one of the group’s members, the family of Uli Botzojorns, of Mount Mansfield Union High School, has hosted people from several former Soviet Union countries through previous exchange programs.

“I think that media often gives a stereotypical image of people from other countries, especially the Middle East, because of America’s relation with them and I would like to attempt to bring about more understanding between these countries,” said Botzojorns.

Finally, there is Ahmad Al-Ali, a Palestinian refugee living in Jordan and attending Al Hussein College.

“I would like to show the American team our daily life and introduce them to the Jordanian customs and traditions,” wrote Al-Ali. “Also, I want to correct the ideas that people have about Islam. I’m sure the American media do not show the complete picture about what’s happening in the world and as far as I know a lot of Americans think that all Muslims are terrorists and evil. Also I want to explain the Palestinian issue from our point of view.”

Al-Ali hopes to learn more about U.S. culture and society, most of which he has learned from various forms of media, in person saying, “It’s fantastic to meet people from other cultures and religions.”

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From the Wednesday, April 5, 2006
BURLINGTON FREE PRESS

BHS students learn about the corporate marketing of alcohol and tobacco

Published: Wednesday, April 5, 2006
By Jill Fahy
Free Press Staff Writer

Ryan Atwood saunters out into the night air and reaches into his pocket for a pack of smokes. The teen rebel fires one up with a flick of his Zippo and catches a glimpse of seductive brunette Marissa Cooper.

“Can I bum a cigarette?” Cooper asks, emerging from the shadows.

The teenagers light up off each other’s smoke, sharing an intimate moment.

Laughter tittered through the Burlington High School auditorium Tuesday as the scene from the popular television series “The OC” was presented for some 500 juniors and seniors.

“This is one minute, an eternity in television, in which we’re walking an 8- to 12-year-old audience through how to use a cancer stick socially,” said Rob Williams, a Champlain College professor and local media educator. “It’s called product placement, where products are written into story lines of TV shows.”

Williams used more than a half-dozen examples and a healthy dose of humor to show students how corporate marketers of alcohol and tobacco products use the media to sell kids on drinking and smoking. BHS’ student prevention group — Friends of Zeus — sponsored the program as part of the high school’s annual drug awareness day.

Williams travels to dozens of Vermont schools each year to put media education on the map.

“How many of you read “Glamour” magazine?” Williams asked students, who answered with a few raised hands.

He showed the group an article on the health page, in which the author writes about the negative effects of alcoholic drinks on the body. More prominent on the page, however, is a large picture of a blond female college student holding an enticing, gooey blender drink. The article also includes large, colorful graphics of different types of drinks.

“Which are you likely to remember more, the printed words or pictures of alcohol?” Williams asked the crowd. “This is not a ‘let’s all be fit and healthy together’ story. This is alcohol propaganda.”

In his presentation, Williams interspersed a number of sobering facts on alcohol and tobacco use among young children. In the United States, he said, 1,200 smokers die each day. As many as 750 Vermonters die each year from smoking-related disease.

Williams also pointed out the effectiveness of target marketing on kids. He said research shows that 990 of 1,000 8-year-olds can identify the Budweiser logo when it is shown to them.

After the program, a group of BHS seniors weighed in on Williams’ presentation. Senior Mollie Campbell said she was amazed that young children can be so influenced by the media. They also were impressed with Williams’ ability to make what he presented interesting and funny.

Williams said injecting humor into his program is a must.

“You’ve got to make people laugh every five or six minutes,” Williams joked. “To be an effective educator, in an age of entertainment, you must also entertain.”

Just as important, he said, is to disseminate basic media facts and try to get kids “off the couch” and involved whenever possible. He said his latest project involved creating an anti-smoking commercial, called “Butts of Hollywood,” with Concord High School students.

Sarah Maher, a senior at BHS, said she liked the fact that Williams’ presentation was informative without being preachy.

“It helps you realize what kind of stuff they’re putting out there for young kids,” Maher said.

Williams said he wants students to walk away from his programs with information they can use to make healthy choices and to be more aware and wiser about the impact the media have on their lives.

“It’s not about demonizing media,” Williams said, “it’s about recognizing the ends to which they are put.”

Contact Jill Fahy at 660-1898 or jfahy@bfp.burlingtonfreepress.com

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Guitar: An American Life

Tim Brookes’ Love Letter to The Continent’s Most Versatile Instrument

As a guitarist and historian both, I’ve long been searching for a book that did the six string some poetic justice, an account that might historically situate the guitar within a big picture perspective in a loving and intimate way, telling the story without sounding too stuffy, academic, or scholarly.

At long last, author and musician Tim Brookes has crafted a book that does just this. In his wonderfully readable and often-hilarious “Guitar: An American Life,” Brookes juxtaposes the creation of a handmade guitar by Running Dog Guitar luthier Rick Davis of West Bolton, Vermont, with the sweeping story of the guitar’s touchdown (or multiple touchdowns) and dispersion across the North American continent these past several centuries.

Brookes is a writer in love with the guitar, and it shows, As luthier (defined as “a guitar maker who charges more than $1,000 per guitar”) Rick Davis remarks early on in the book, a passionate guitarist on the hunt for THE perfect instrument often displays “the eternal and infinite capacity of the consumer to confuse making a purchase with falling in love.” As a musician who years ago spent several months searching for my handcrafted Taylor 812 Grand Concert six string cutaway, I know exactly what he means, and I haven’t worked up the gumption to look for another guitar since. I’m still emotionally recovering from the Taylor purchase.

In his story, Brookes takes us on two journeys. The first and much shorter tale is the ménage-a-trois among Davis, Brookes, and the guitar that Davis agrees to build and for which Brookes agrees to pay. This intricate three-way dance is by turns funny and painful, as Brookes walks us through the conflicting rise and fall of emotions that any seasoned musician experiences watching a new instrument being constructed right in front of him. “Can you let me know when you start working on the innards of the guitar, all those struts and bracings and giblets and whatnot?” Brookes e-mails Davis at theat one point. “No,” Davis replies, “That’s where the art of luthierie, or at least the romance, is hidden.” Aside from this secretive process, though, the reader is treated to a step-by-step guitar construction guide that remains interesting, even for the layperson.

The second adventure Brookes relates is the sweeping saga of the guitar’s arrival on continental shores, and the ways in which the guitar transformed and was transformed in contact with a wide variety of cultures. From Spanish colonial times (the Spanish, remember, “discovered” the continent long before the French and English – they just settled it bass ackwards, as they say, southwest first, and lost subsequent imperial wars) through the invention of American blues music, and the transmogrification of American guitar sounds through the importation of Hawai’ian paniolo (cowboy) and slack key culture and the “British invasion,” Brookes’ tour is a rollicking ride.

The best part about the book is Brookes’ own exuberance and sense of humor. While he takes his guitars seriously, he refuses to do the same with himself, and his light and slightly self-deprecating tone throughout his story, along with a sort of open-eyed marveling and occasional confessional asides (interludes, he calls them in the book) make for fun reading. And don’t miss the wonderful photographs at book’s center, or the hilarious glossary at book’s end. “Bluegrass” music is defined as “three men sharing a sinus,” for example, a “classical guitar” is an “instrument played by a socially phobic overachiever under a brutal regime of constant discipline until the results begin to approach what a guitar is truly capable of,” while an “electric guitar” is define as “an inert lump of wood wired for sound.”

As a fellow acoustic steel-string guitar purist, I couldn’t agree more.

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