... but I really need to get both of those done NOW, because the."summer repairs" are coming in very soon EVEN THOUGH I've been swamped with school repairs for this entire school year, which is really unusual.
(The same college for which I did all that picky detail/detailed work on those Bach and Conn professional-grade trombones for about $3,500 is getting ready to send me all of their marching band instruments again - as just one example... but these half dozen instruments won't be amongst them anymore, because - again - the trombone teacher/chairman has pulled them away from the marching band program).
I've got some cool stuff (that we ourselves own) that I'd really like to get to the finish line and offered for sale here, but I just don't know how that's going to happen... and I'm not going to talk about it by nomenclature, make, and model, because I don't need people messaging me about "cool stuff" that's not ready to sell.
It seems to me that the band instrument repair industry is a whole lot like all the other so-called " blue-collar trades", whereas most people who do this stuff fairly competently are of retirement age, but can't afford to stop, because the years 2021 through 2024 robbed them of half of their savings due to a top-down engineered economic shutdown while the Fed engaged in epic money printing (ie. being forced to live off our savings, while - at the same time - our savings being defined as worth half as much via Fed-engineered hyperinflation), with a large percentage of young people being mostly interested in doing things that don't require them to perspire, nor get dirty, nor get sore, nor work outdoors, or etc. (due to having grown ups with these adult-engineered sanitary so-called "play dates")...
... and even when a significant percentage of the few young people who are interested in doing work in the trades present themselves, the problem is that (while growing up into adult-size humans) they were almost never we're allowed to play outdoors, mess with random stuff without being supervised (which would have otherwise allowed them to learn about things on their own), or mess around in their dads' workshops with hand tools (because their dads didn't even have workshops or tool sheds), such people have to actually be taught how to hold a shovel, how to hammer and nail, which direction is clockwise for a wrench, how to prevent a wheelbarrow from tipping over...or even how to show up on time, or even how to remember to show up.
actually, a bad sign:
Think about how few children these days are seen walking around with arm or leg casts (from having broken or badly sprained something). This means they are always protected from any sort of danger, and aren't allowed to learn about the physical/dynamic aspects of the world - as the world is a physical place, and whereas the things that they are most exposed to are only synthetic. Also, think about how early children are required to get up in the morning, how long every day there required to sit in hard chairs and not say a word, and then they have to go home and do "homework" (and possibly -.though totally exhausted mentally - then fit in some things that actually interest them, and yet those things that interest them are completely adult supervised). Through age 18 (or perhaps 24 or so), they're taught to be obedient serfs, mostly only taught "general" things that those who rule over all of us decide that they need to know or believe, with very little time or energy allowed to pursue things that actually interest them, or things that interesting that they could learn to do in order to be self-sufficient. (Think how the kids in the back of the school who learn how to weld, or machine metal, or work on cars are viewed by many as "the losers".)
