Ron, Thank you for taking the time and effort to transcribe and distribute Bill Garlick's "diatribe". I hesitate to use the word "diatribe", because I did not find it to be either bitter or abusive, though others may think differently. In fact, I found it refreshing. We may question Bill's motives for writing it, but the points he makes are still valid. This document generated a most interesting conversation with Max, the other piano technician here. I have become increasingly more uncomfortable with the PTG over the last few years, as I seem to be getting less and less from the organization. I have often questioned whether this is the result of a trend in the Guild or my maturing as a technician and thus needing less from the organization. Max attended PTG meetings in the early sixties, and remembers them as a group of professional piano technicians sitting around, consuming coffee and donuts, and discussing issues of importance to them: the IRS, business licenses, who was willing to tune birdcages, who was willing to do shopwork for other technicians, and all the latest information on sources of materials and supplies. In short it, was a support group, not unlike this forum. There were never chapter technicals; those were presented at the regional and national conferences. Even when I joined the PTG ten years ago, a little of this collegial atmosphere remained, though usually it occurred in a bar across the street after the meetings. Alas, now it is all but gone. When viewed on a scale of thirty years, there is no question that the guild is changing and it raises the question of whether it is continuing to serve the needs of the professional piano technician. Tom Winter San Francisco State University
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