What's a boner?  I've never heard  the word used in the context of  
harpsichords before...

Is a boner is a story....?  If so, the boner I enjoyed was the one  
where Thomas Goff, after a weekend with Violet Gordon Woodhouse, where  
she introduced him to the clavichord, delcared he was going to give up  
his career as a barrister, and devote his life to making clavichords.   
As a member of the Royal Family it was odd for him to look into  
carpentry classes, but the found a woodworking class at a college in  
London.  Upon meeting his new teacher, a Mr John Cobby, the students  
were asked what they proposed to make in the class.  Most of them told  
of their ambitions to make milk-bottle-holders and the like....   Goff  
said, "I've come here to learn to make a Clavichord" (in his hooty  
upper-crust accent...  to which Cobby replied "I've been waiting all  
my life to hear someone say that!"     Together they made many superb  
instruments....   which were in their day the Gold Standard of early  
keyboard instruments.

Mmmm  Boner


On Feb 6, 2008, at 9:26 PM, Hendrik Broekman wrote:

> Many years ago, on another college station in the supposedly
> civilized northeast, the Abalone Adagio was announced one memorable
> morning.  The lad may have been from the left coast where, I am told,
> they consume such things.
>
> There is a sign of relatively great antiquity (mid '60s maybe - at
> least it was already there and venerated when I first arrived in
> 1970) hanging in our shop in honor of a delivery man who, having
> evinced some curiosity at the strange goings-on, was shown around and
> given a precis of the craft.  His reaction, captured on the sign,
> sounds like his own version of, "There but for the grace of God, go
> I".  He had said, simply, "It's hard work making harpischords".
> Indeed it is - I have never yet managed the feat knowingly.
>
> Best,
>
> Hendrik Broekman