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For my Trump supporter friends, this is not Fake News or an indictment of the President but there is a 
consequence when any country or its leader loses standing internationally. This slide of lost trust 
didn't just start with President Trump, as Americans have been losing trust in our greatest intuitions, 
especially after Ronald Reagan proclaimed in his first inaugural address on January 20, 1981 that 
"Government is the problem." Continuing on with this soundbite, Republican Conservatives then 
used this mantra to justify the largest redistribution of wealth in history, through pushing for tax cuts 
that favor the wealthy and large corporations at the cost of cutting services to the Middle Class, Poor, 
Children and the Elderly, as well as cut funding for the country's education. With the latest example of 
this skullduggery, being the current Congressional Republican's healthcare bill dubbed the Better Care 
Reconciliation Act (BCRA) which is really a tax cut for the wealthiest Americans, paid for by a dramatic 
reduction in health care funding for approximately 23 million poor, disabled and working middle-class 
Americans and described by many as Ruthless, Soulless, Vicious and Mean. 
And the truth is that the President Trump, has shown himself to be a shallow, vindictive, cruel, self-
serving man who lies so effortlessly that he probably no longer can tell what is true or not. From his 
unfounded `birther' acquisitions against President Obama, to his misogynistic behavior which would 
have disqualified a candidate for school office in a middle-school, to his absolutely unwillingness to say 
anything negative against Vladimir Putin or Saudi Arabia's monarchy. This is a leader who refuses to 
acknowledge the greatest assault against America since 9/11, the hacking of the recent Presidential 
election by the Russians, which if you or I had done the same thing we would be jailed for decades. But 
his real failing is that he has been exposed as a blowhard, who will bomb Syria because they can't really 
respond but has changed policies on a dime, when confronted with the realities that f@#king with the 
Chinese, Russian or Israel, like every bully, he will suffer a beat down. 
As German Lopez wrote in VOX on May 16, 2017 — Trump could damage public trust in government 
for generations — His actions threaten public trust not just in his administration but in the White 
House as an institution: 
It's a startling reality of the current White House: You can't believe anything President Donald 
Trump and his staff say. The latest example came this week — after a Washington Post report 
on Monday found that Trump had leaked highly classified information about ISIS during a 
meeting with Russian officials. Reportedly, the gaffe came because Trump was bragging about 
the quality of his intelligence. "I get great intel. I have people brief me on great intel every day," 
he reportedly said. 
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At first, White House officials insisted that the report was "false," offering a non-denial denial 
that claimed "at no time were intelligence sources or methods discussed." (The allegations 
never had to do with intelligence sources or methods, but rather the substance of the 
intelligence itself.) Then within 24 hours, Trump effectively refuted the White House press 
shop's line — seemingly acknowledging on Twitter Tuesday that he had given classified intel to 
Russians and arguing that he was allowed to do it. 
Lopez: Before the FBI scandal, there was the very first time that White House press secretary Sean 
Spicer went to the podium. Then, he argued that Trump's Inauguration Day drew bigger crowds than 
President Barack Obama's — a claim that was easily disproved by looking at two pictures of the 
crowds. Shortly after, White House adviser Kellyanne Conway infamously defended Spicer by arguing 
that the administration was merely offering "alternative facts." 
This is not how the presidency normally works. It's normal, if unfortunate, that all presidents and their 
staffs have misled the American public on occasion. But the Trump administration's habit of lying 
even about basic facts is simply not normal. All of this has led me to a question: Could Trump's lies 
and scandals damage the White House as an institution — not just while he's in office, but in the long 
term? 
It's not unprecedented. Political historians and scholars widely agree, for example, that the pervasive 
dishonesty of the Johnson and Nixon administrations during the Vietnam War and the Watergate 
scandal damaged faith in the government in the long term. "If you have an administration where it 
becomes clear over time that the president is lying, that the president is manipulating the truth, [and] 
that the president is abusing power, that can have an extraordinarily damaging effect not just for him, 
not just for Republicans, but for overall confidence in government institutions," Julian Zelizer, a 
political historian at Princeton University, told me. 
Like many who were Hillary supporters, I sort of believed that Donald Trump was not really a hardline 
Conservative or even a Libertarian and would pragmatically work more to the middle. Instead, he has 
made his number one priority, to erase President Obama's legacy, instead of building on its 
accomplishments. Among many things, this included opting out of the Paris Climate Accords, 
castigating NATO and insulting some of our staunchest allies to the point that Angela Merkel felt the 
need to say that Germany could no longer rely on Donald Trump's America: "we Europeans much 
take our destiny into our own hands." With CNN writing, "German Chancellor Angela Merkel 
uttered a single sentence that speaks to how fundamentally President Donald Trump has reshaped --
and will continue to reshape — the world, and America's place in it." 
As a candidate, Donald Trump that he would push for a great healthcare bill that covers everyone and 
would not touch Medicaid. To get a win at any cost, he has pushed Congressional legislators to pass 
the current GOP healthcare bill which does neither. But more importantly, Trump's comments and 
decisions over his first six months in office raise real questions as to whether he can be trusted, 
especially with our[GB1] allies. On the campaign trail, he promised a fundamental reshaping -- both 
domestically and in foreign policy -- of how America is perceived. He appears to be making good on 
that promise in ways many people never imagined. The problem is that as Trump acts, the rest of the 
world necessarily reacts. And his contradictory `policy tweets' often at odds to with people within his 
own administration, and how they impact what other leaders and other countries do, could well have 
lasting influence on America in the world that stretch well beyond the four or eight years Trump will be 
president. Such is why President Trump's international approval ratings are so low and once trust is 
lost it is hard to recapture. So for my Trump supporter friends, this is truly a big thing and this news is 
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not good news, 'alternative facts' or Fake News as it not only affects the President but also the standing 
of the country and our fellow citizens, around the world 
and this is my rant of the week.... 
WEEK's READINGS 
This isn't Fake Media.... These are the Facts.... 
The White House puts out lies, lies, and more lies. How about an apology 
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Three weeks ago President Trump sent the following two tweets: 
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It was a telling example of the astonishing narcissism of our president. Everything is about him and his 
fragile ego: the country be damned. 
Indeed, if anyone deserves an apology it is the American people — from Donald Trump. And not just 
for the incessant lying about his campaign staffs contact with Russian officials intent on disrupting the 
2016 presidential election, but also for peddling such obvious, self-refuting nonsense about those 
contacts. 
This week in Paris, Trump answered a reporter's question for the first time since the New York Times 
revealed Donald Trump Jr.'s meeting with a Russian attorney peddling dirt on Hillary Clinton. He said 
the meeting was one that "everybody" in politics would have held. That's consistent with White House 
chief of staff Reince Priebus's statement last week that the sit-down was a "nothing burger." 
If that's true, why didn't the White House reveal the meeting months ago? 
Why did Donald Trump Jr. go on television six weeks after the June 2016 meeting and say that 
allegations of Russian support for Trump's campaign were "phony" and "disgusting"? 
Why did Trump Jr. and Trump's top aide and son-in-law, Jared Kushner (who also attended the 
meeting), let the president and White House aides consistently deny that there had been any contact 
between Russian intelligence and the Trump campaign when they knew it wasn't true? 
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And why would the Trump campaign and now the Trump administration spend the last year lying 
about an issue that they now claim is no big deal? Why subject the president to a constant drumbeat of 
Russia collusion stories if they could have just cleared things up months ago? 
If one wants to be both charitable and naive, one could argue that the Trump camp didn't want to deal 
with the embarrassment that would come from such revelations. But does anyone really believe that? 
Does anyone seriously believe that the June 2016 meeting with Trump Jr., Kushner, and then-
campaign manager Paul Manafort was the only time that Trump aides ever spoke to Russian officials 
about the campaign? And does anyone truly believe that somehow Trump himself was out of the loop? 
We know that the president fired FBI director James Comey because of the Russia investigation — he 
admitted it publicly. This week, we know why he did it. 
Until recently, the Russian collusion story always struck me as a bit far-fetched. I figured some level of 
cooperation was possible, perhaps by some of the hangers-on to the Trump campaign, but if it was 
something bigger, why hadn't the evidence leaked out sooner? I found it hard to imagine that Trump 
and those around him could possibly be this clueless. This week's revelations are a reminder that 
underestimating the incompetence and corruption of the Trump clan is a fool's errand. 
It's not just the growing mountain of evidence that suggests active collusion. It's the incessant lying. To 
be sure, this president and this White House lie all the time. It's what they do. 
But it's the scope of deception on Russia that is so striking. Mike Flynn, Attorney General Jeff 
Sessions, Paul Manafort, Donald Trump Jr., and Jared Kushner have all lied about their contacts with 
Russian officials — and repeatedly so. The White House and the president have consistently peddled a 
false narrative about Russia — one that those within Trump's inner circle could at any time have 
corrected. When you combine these facts with Trump's stubborn refusal to acknowledge Russia's role 
in the 2016 election hacking and his bizarre solicitousness with Russian President Vladimir Putin, I 
think we all know where this story is going to end. 
In many ways, American politics has become something of a waiting game — waiting for the next shoe 
to drop, the next revelation, and the next story that provides conclusive evidence that the Trump 
campaign actively colluded with a foreign government to win a US presidential election. 
When that happens, Trump should not just apologize; he should beg the American people for 
forgiveness. Just don't hold your breath on that happening. 
Michael A. Cohen — Boston Globe — July 14, 2017 
Which countries have the best healthcare? 
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Neither Canada nor Japan cracked the top 10, and the United States finished a dismal 35th, 
according to a much anticipated ranking of healthcare quality in 195 countries, released Friday. 
Among nations with more than a million souls, top honors for 2015 went to Switzerland, followed by 
Sweden and Norway, though the healthcare gold standard remains tiny Andorra, a postage stamp of a 
country nestled between Spain (No. 8) and France (No. 15). Iceland (No. 2), Australia (No. 6), 
Finland (No. 7), the Netherlands (No. 9) and financial and banking center Luxembourg rounded out 
the first 10 finishers, according to a comprehensive study published in the medical journal The Lancet. 
Of the 20 countries heading up the list, all but Australia and Japan (No. 11) are in Western Europe, 
where virtually every nation boasts some form of universal health coverage. The United States —
where a Republican Congress wants to peel back reforms that gave millions of people access to health 
insurance for the first time — ranked below Britain, which placed 3oth. 
The Healthcare Access and Quality Index, based on death rates for 32 diseases that can be avoided or 
effectively treated with proper medical care, also tracked progress in each nation compared to the 
benchmark year of 1990. Virtually all countries improved over that period, but many — especially in 
Africa and Oceania — fell further behind others in providing basic care for their citizens. 
With the exceptions of Afghanistan, Haiti and Yemen, the 3o countries at the bottom of the ranking 
were all in sub-Saharan Africa, with the Central African Republic suffering the worst standards of all. 
"Despite improvements in healthcare quality and access over 25 years, inequality between the best and 
worst performing countries has grown," said Christopher Murray, director of the Institute for Health 
Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, and leader of a consortium of hundreds of 
contributing experts. Furthermore, he added in a statement, the standard of primary care was lower in 
many nations than expected given levels of wealth and development. 
The biggest underachievers in Asia included Indonesia, the Philippines, India and tiny Brunei, while in 
Africa it was Botswana, South Africa and Lesotho that had the most room for improvement. Regions 
with healthcare systems underperforming relative to wealth included Oceania, the Caribbean and 
Central Asia. 
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Among rich nations, the worst offender in this category was the United States, which tops the world in 
per capita healthcare expenditure by some measures. Within Europe, Britain ranked well below 
expected levels. "The UK does well in some areas, including cerebrovascular disease," noted co-author 
Mann McKee, a professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. "But it lags behind 
in outcomes of some cancers." 
The gap between actual and expected rating widened over the last quarter century in 62 of the 195 
nations examined. "Overall, our results are a warning sign that heightened healthcare access and 
quality is not an inevitable product of increased development," Murray said. Between 1990 and 2015, 
countries that made the biggest improvements in delivering healthcare included South Korea, Turkey, 
Peru, China and the Maldives. The 32 diseases for which death rates were tracked included 
tuberculosis and other respiratory infections; illnesses that can be prevented with vaccines (diphtheria, 
whooping cough, tetanus and measles); several forms of treatable cancer and heart disease; and 
maternal or neonatal disorders. 
How to stop trigger-happy cops 
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In a seemingly endless stream of police shooting videos, the case of Philando Castile stands out. The 
Minnesota man bled to death before our eyes last summer. The image was livestreamed by his 
girlfriend while a police officer held the pair at gunpoint and her 4-year-old daughter watched from the 
back seat of their car. 
The uncensored anguish of those moments, viewed by millions on Facebook, was supposed to be a 
game changer in a national conversation about dead black men and trigger-happy cops. 
But one year later, the game hasn't changed. Despite damning videos and police dash-cam accounts, 
officers are rarely held accountable for what looks like criminal use of lethal force. The officer who 
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killed Castile was found not guilty of manslaughter on June i6. Jeronimo Yanez told the jury he feared 
for his life when Castile reached for what the girlfriend said was his license and Yanez presumed was a 
gun. A few days later, a jury in Milwaukee acquitted an officer of reckless homicide. Video showed 
him shooting a suspect at point-blank range, after the man had dropped his gun and was lying on the 
ground. 
That same week, a Cincinnati jury couldn't agree on a verdict in the second trial of a university cop 
charged with manslaughter and murder for shooting an unarmed motorist in the head during a traffic 
stop. And in May, Officer Betty Shelby in Tulsa, Okla., was acquitted of manslaughter in the death of 
Terence Crutcher, an unarmed man who was high on drugs and standing alongside his car. 
In all four cases, the deaths were captured on police videos. It turns out that video evidence isn't the 
magic remedy for police shootings we'd like it to be. But it does give us insight into what is needed: 
better training to prevent sloppy, unwise and ultimately dangerous policing. 
The officers on trial — Latino, black, white, male and female — all had the same rationale for shooting: 
They feared for their lives and responded as they'd been trained to do. But even jurors who voted for 
acquittal were troubled by the tactical blunders, poor judgment and inconsistencies the videos 
revealed. 
After the Shelby trial in Tulsa, the foreman wrote a four-page letter conveying the jury's distress: "The 
jury wonders and some believe that she had other options available to subdue Mr. Crutcher." Shelby 
testified that her tactical training "didn't allow for a Taser" at the point she pulled her gun. But just as 
Shelby was firing the bullet that killed Crutcher, an officer behind her was firing a Taser round. 
Many of the Tulsa jurors, despite their final decision, "could never get comfortable with the concept of 
Betty Shelby being blameless for Mr. Crutcher's death," the foreman's letter said. Several jurors cried 
in the courtroom when the "not guilty" verdict was read. Still, trial after trial has shown that jurors are 
inordinately reluctant to convict if that means second-guessing the officer's account. The multiracial 
juries in Minnesota, Milwaukee, Cincinnati and Tulsa were trying to do the right thing but were 
hamstrung by guidelines that focus only on the moment of the shooting, and require them to divine 
what a "reasonable" officer in that moment might have done. 
Yanez, for example, must have seemed reasonable enough, as he wept on the stand and told the jury, "I 
thought I was going to die.... I had no other choice." 
But he did have choices. He could have ordered Castile to place his hands on the steering wheel or get 
out of the car, once Castile had politely announced, "Sir, I do have to tell you I have a firearm on me." 
Instead Yanez melted down, began shrieking and fired off seven shots. 
Castile died trapped between contradictory commands — "Do you have your license and insurance?" 
"Don't pull it out!" — from a young officer who stopped the car because he thought Castile's "wide-set 
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nose" matched the nose of a black robbery suspect, then viewed Castile's every move through that 
criminal prism. 
That dysfunctional encounter reflects issues endemic to many police departments: implicit bias, 
inexperience, a warrior culture, inadequate training of officers. Often those factors don't come to light 
until agencies are forced to conduct shooting postmortems. 
The Los Angeles Police Department — which registered more fatal police shootings in the last two 
years than any force in the country — has taken a necessary and laudable first step toward a culture 
shift. 
Last year, the department's oversight commission found tactical errors in half of the 46 police 
shootings it reviewed. This year the commission adopted a new use-of-force policy directing officers to 
try to defuse tense encounters without using deadly force. Officers can be punished if their poor 
choices lead to someone getting shot. 
It's too soon to know how much effect the policy will have. Other cities with similar commitments 
have seen mixed results. 
In Salt Lake City, police shootings virtually stopped. But in Seattle, where deescalation training began 
two years ago, a mentally ill mother of four was shot to death in June when she called to report a 
robbery at her home and met police with a knife. The officer who killed her had left his mandated 
Taser in his locker; it took up too much space on his weapons belt, he said. 
Improved training must go beyond directives and address the role of implicit bias in the judgments 
officers make. 
Race can shape the actions of officers in even the most anodyne situations. A recent study of body 
camera footage in Oakland found officers treated black motorists with less respect in routine traffic 
stops. And it didn't matter whether the officer was white, Latino, Asian or black. 
Use-of-force statistics reflect more lethal repercussions: A third of the people killed by police during 
traffic stops are black. The death rate for young black men at the hands of police is five times higher 
than for white men of the same age. 
Police officers have a difficult and dangerous job. We rely on them to do the right thing in extreme 
situations to keep themselves and others safe. But as we've seen in fuzzy videos and unsatisfying 
verdicts, if we want to avoid legally sanctioned but morally tragic deaths, we need officers who are 
temperamentally suited to their jobs, culturally aware and appropriately trained. 
Unless we overcome the stereotypes that research shows we all carry around in our heads, 
"dangerous" will be the default label that black bodies wear, and fear will drive the choices that police 
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officers make. 
By Sandy Banks — The Washington Post — July 2, 2017 
****** 
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The convention couldn't sound less rock-and-roll — the National Association of Music Merchants 
Show. But when the doors open at the Anaheim Convention Center, people stream in to scour rows of 
Fenders, Les Pauls and the oddball, custom-built creations such as the 5-foot-4-inch mermaid guitar 
crafted of 15 kinds of wood. 
Standing in the center of the biggest, six-string candy store in the United States, you can almost believe 
all is well within the guitar world. 
Except if, like George Gruhn, you know better. The 71-year-old Nashville dealer has sold guitars to Eric 
Clapton, Neil Young, Paul McCartney and Taylor Swift. Walking through NAMM with Gruhn is like 
shadowing Bill Belichick at the NFL Scouting Combine. There is great love for the product and great 
skepticism. What others might see as a boom — the seemingly endless line of manufacturers 
showcasing instruments — Gruhn sees as two trains on a collision course. 
"There are more makers now than ever before in the history of the instrument, but the market is not 
growing," Gruhn says in a voice that flutters between a groan and a grumble. "I'm not all doomsday, 
but this — this is not sustainable." 
The numbers back him up. In the past decade, electric guitar sales have plummeted, from about 
1.5 million sold annually to just over 1 million. The two biggest companies, Gibson and Fender, are in 
debt, and a third, PRS Guitars, had to cut staff and expand production of cheaper guitars. In April, 
Moody's downgraded Guitar Center, the largest chain retailer, as it faces $1.6 billion in debt. And at 
Sweetwater.com, the online retailer, a brand-new, interest-free Fender can be had for as little as $8 a 
month. 
What worries Gruhn is not simply that profits are down. That happens in business. He's concerned by 
the "why" behind the sales decline. When he opened his store 46 years ago, everyone wanted to be a 
guitar god, inspired by the men who roamed the concert stage, including Clapton, Jeff Beck, Jimi 
Hendrix, Carlos Santana and Jimmy Page. Now those boomers are retiring, downsizing and adjusting 
to fixed incomes. They're looking to shed, not add to, their collections, and the younger generation 
isn't stepping in to replace them. 
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Gruhn knows why. 
"What we need is guitar heroes," he says. 
He is asked about Clapton, who himself recently downsized his collection. Gruhn sold 29 of his guitars. 
"Eric Clapton is my age," he says. 
How about Creed's Mark Tremonti, Joe Bonamassa, John Mayer? He shakes his head. 
"John Mayer?" he asks. "You don't see a bunch of kids emulating John Mayer and listening to him and 
wanting to pick up a guitar because of him." 
Guitar heroes. They arrived with the first wave of rock-and-roll. Chuck Berry duckwalldng across the 
big screen. Scotty Moore's reverb-soaked Gibson on Elvis's Sun records. Link Wray, with his biker 
cool, blasting through "Rumble" in 1958. 
'Rock is the Devil's music' 
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Living Colour's Vernon Reid and The Post's Geoff Edgers deconstruct some of rock's most iconic guitar riffs, 
from "Cult of Personality" to "Back in Black." 
That instrumental wasn't a technical feat. It required just four chords. But four chords were enough 
for Jimmy Page. 
"That was something that had so much profound attitude to it," Page told Jack White and the Edge in 
the 2009 documentary "It Might Get Loud." 
The '6os brought a wave of white blues — Clapton, Jeff Beck, Keith Richards — as well as the theatrics 
of the guitar-smashing Pete Townshend and the sonic revolutionary Hendrix. 
McCartney saw Hendrix play at the Bag ONails club in London in 1967. He thinks back on those days 
fondly and, in his sets today, picks up a left-handed Les Paul to jam through Hendrix's "Foxy Lady." 
"The electric guitar was new and fascinatingly exciting in a period before Jimi and immediately after," 
the former Beatle says wistfully in a recent interview. "So you got loads of great players emulating guys 
like B.B. King and Buddy Guy, and you had a few generations there." 
He pauses. 
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"Now, it's more electronic music and kids listen differently," McCartney says. "They don't have guitar 
heroes like you and I did." 
Nirvana was huge when the Black Keys' Dan Auerbach, 38, was growing up. 
"And everybody wanted a guitar," he says. "This is not surprising. It has to do with what's in the Top 
20." 
Living Colour's Vernon Reid agrees but also speaks to a larger shift. He remembers being inspired 
when he heard Santana on the radio. "There was a culture of guitar playing, and music was central," 
adds Reid, 58. "A record would come out and you would hear about that record, and you would make 
the journey. There was a certain investment in time and resources." 
The spell of Hendrix and Santana 
The two guitar icons influenced his playing style. Vernon Reid found the music of Jimi Hendrix after 
he discovered Carlos Santana. He talks with The Post's Geoff Edgers about how the two guitar icons 
influenced his playing style. 
Lita Ford, also 58, remembers curling up on the couch one night in 1977 to watch Cheap Trick on "Don 
Kirshner's Rock Concert." She was 19 and her band, the Runaways, had played gigs with them. 
"It was just a different world," Ford says. "There was 'Don Kirshner's Rock Concert,' Ed Sullivan, Dick 
Clark, and they would have one band on and you would wait all week to see who that band was going to 
be. And you could talk about it all week long with your friends — `Saturday night, Deep Purple's going 
to be on, what are they going to play?' — and then everybody's around the TV like you're watching a 
football game." 
By the '8os, when Ford went solo and cracked the Top 40, she became one of the few female guitar 
heroes on a playlist packed with men, including Stevie Ray Vaughan, Joe Satriani and Eddie Van 
Halen. 
Guitar culture was pervasive, whether in movie houses ("Karate Kid" Ralph Macchio outdueling Steve 
Vai in the 1986 movie "Crossroads"; Michael J. Fox playing a blistering solo in "Back to the Future" 
and co-starring with Joan Jett in 1987's rock-band drama "Light of Day") or on MTV and the older, 
concert films featuring the Who and Led Zeppelin on seemingly endless repeats. 
But there were already hints of the change to come, of the evolutions in music technology that would 
eventually compete with the guitar. In 1979, Tascam's Portastudio 144 arrived on the market, allowing 
anybody with a microphone and a patch cord to record with multiple tracks. (Bruce Springsteen used 
a Portastudio for 1982's "Nebraska.") In 1981, Oberheim introduced the DMX drum machine, 
revolutionizing hip-hop. 
So instead of Hendrix or Santana, Linkin Park's Brad Delson drew his inspiration from Run-DMC's 
"Raising Hell," the crossover smash released in 1986. Delson, whose band recently landed atop the 
charts with an album notably light on guitar, doesn't look at the leap from ax men to DJs as a bad 
thing. 
"Music is music," he says. "These guys are all musical heroes, whatever cool instrument they play. And 
today, they're gravitating toward programming beats on an Ableton. I don't think that's any less 
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creative as playing bass. I'm open to the evolution as it unfolds. Musical genius is musical genius. It 
just takes different forms." 
An industry responds 
Tell that to Guitar Center, now $1.6 billion in debt and so fearful of publicity that a spokeswoman 
would only make an executive available for an interview on one condition: "He cannot discuss 
financials or politics under any circumstances." (No thanks.) 
Richard Ash, the chief executive of Sam Ash, the largest chain of family-owned music stores in the 
country, isn't afraid to state the obvious. 
"Our customers are getting older, and they're going to be gone soon," he says. 
Over the past three years, Gibson's annual revenue has fallen from $2.1 billion to $1.7 billion, 
according to data gathered by Music Trades magazine. The company's 2014 purchase of Philips's audio 
division for $135 million led to debt — how much, the company won't say — and a Moody's 
downgrading last year. Fender, which had to abandon a public offering in 2012, has fallen from 
$675 million in revenue to $545 million. It has cut its debt in recent years, but it remains at 
$100 million. 
And starting in 2010, the industry witnessed a milestone that would have been unthinkable during the 
hair-metal era: Acoustic models began to outsell electric. 
Still, the leaders of Gibson, Fender and PRS say they have not given up. 
"The death of the guitar, to paraphrase Mark Twain, is greatly exaggerated," says Fender's chief 
executive, Andy Mooney. 
He says that the company has a strategy designed to reach millennials. The key, Mooney says, is to get 
more beginners to stick with an instrument they often abandon within a year. To that end, in July the 
company will launch a subscription-based service it says will change the way new guitarists learn to 
play through a series of online tools. 
Paul Reed Smith, the Maryland-based guitar designer, says the industry is just now recovering from 
the recession that struck in 2009. He points to PRS's sustained revenue — the company says they're 
between $42 million and $45 million a year — and an increased demand for guitars. 
"This is a very complicated mix of economy versus market, demand versus what products are they 
putting out, versus are their products as good as they used to be, versus what's going on with the 
Internet, versus how are the big-box stores dealing with what's going on," Smith says. "But I'll tell you 
this: You put a magic guitar in a case and ship it to a dealer, it will sell." 
Then there's Henry Juszldewicz, the biggest and most controversial of the music instrument moguls. 
When he and a partner bought Gibson in 1986, for just $5 million, the onetime giant was dying. 
"It was a failed company that had an iconic name, but it really was on its last legs," Ash says. 
"[Juszkiewicz] completely revived the Gibson line." 
Juszkiewicz, 64, is 'mown for being temperamental, ultracompetitive and difficult to work for. A 
former Gibson staffer recalls a company retreat in Las Vegas punctuated by a trip to a shooting range, 
where executives shot up a Fender Stratocaster. In recent years, Juszkiewicz has made two major 
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pushes, both seemingly aimed at expanding a company when a product itself — the guitar — has shown 
a limited ability to grow its market. 
In 2014, he acquired Philips's audio division to add headphones, speakers and digital recorders to 
Gibson's brand. The idea, Juszkiewicz says, is to recast Gibson from a guitar company to a consumer 
electronics company. 
There's also the line of self-tuning "robot" guitars that Gibson spent more than a decade and millions 
of dollars developing. In 2015, Juszkiewicz made the feature standard on most new guitars. Sales 
dropped so dramatically, as players and collectors questioned the added cost and value, that Gibson 
told dealers to slash prices. The company then abandoned making self-tuners a standard feature. You 
can still buy them — they call them "G Force" — but they're now simply an add-on option. 
Journey's Neal Schon says he battled with Juszkiewicz when he served as a consultant to Gibson. 
"I was trying to help Henry and shoo him away from areas that he was spending a whole lot of money 
in," Schon says. "All this electronical, robot crap. I told him, point blank, 'What you're doing, Roland 
and other companies are light-years in front of you, you've got this whole building you've designated to 
be working on this synth guitar. I've played it. And it just doesn't work.' And he refused to believe 
that." 
Juszldewicz says that one day, the self-tuning guitars will be recognized as a great innovation, 
comparing them with the advent of the television remote control. He also believes in the Philips 
purchase. Eventually, he says, the acquisition will be recognized as the right decision. 
"Everything we do is about music," Juszkiewicz says. "It doesn't matter whether it's the making of 
music with instruments or the listening of music with a player. To me, we're a music company. That's 
what I want to be. And I want to be number one. And, you know, nobody else seems to be applying for 
the job right now." 
The search for inspiration 
If there is a singular question in the guitar industry, it's no different from what drives Apple. How do 
you get the product into a teenager's hands? And once it's there, how do you get them to fall in love 
with it? 
Fender's trying through lessons and a slew of online tools (Fender Tune, Fender Tone, Fender 
Riffstation). The Music Experience, a Florida-based company, has recruited PRS, Fender, Gibson and 
other companies to set up tents at festivals for people to try out guitars. There is also School of Rock, 
which has almost 200 branches across the country. 
On a Friday night in Watertown, Mass., practice is just getting started. 
Joe Pessia runs the board and coaches the band. He's 47, a guitarist who once played in a band with 
Extreme's Nuno Bettencourt and has worked at School of Rock since 2008. 
Watching practice, it's easy to understand why. 
With Pessia presiding, the school's showcase group blasts through three songs released decades before 
any of them were born. 
The Cars' "Bye Bye Love" blends quirky, new-wave keyboards and barre chords. Journey's "Stone in 
Love" is classic '8os arena rock punctuated by Schon's melodic guitar line. Matt Martin, a 17-year-old 
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guitarist wearing white sneakers, jeans and a House of Blues T-shirt, takes the lead on this. 
The band's other Stratocaster is played by Mena Lemos, a 15-year-old sophomore. She takes on Rush's 
"The Spirit of Radio." 
As they play, the teenagers dance, laugh and work to get the songs right. Their parents are also happy. 
Arezou Lemos, Mena's mother, sees a daughter who is confident and has two sets of friends — the kids 
at School of Rock and her peers at Newton South High School. 
"There are a lot of not-easy times that they go through as teenagers," she says, "and having music in 
her life, it's been a savior." 
Julie Martin says her son Matt was a quiet boy who played in Little League but never connected with 
sports. She and her husband bought him his first guitar when he was 6. 
"It was immediate," she says. "He could play right away. It gave him confidence, in the immediate, 
and I think long term it helps him in every aspect of his life." 
She remembers her own childhood in working-class Boston. 
"I know exactly what he could be out doing," Martin says. "That enters my mind. We are so lucky to 
have found School of Rock. He's there Thursday, Friday and Saturday every week, all year." 
Rush's prog-metal is not for beginners, with its time shifts and reggae twist. 
"They've never played this before," Pessia says, turning to whisper in awe. "The first time." 
So who are these kids? The future? An aberration? 
It's hard to know. But Matt Martin didn't need to think long about why he wanted to play a Strat as a 
kid. 
"Eric Clapton," he says. "He's my number one." 
To Phillip McKnight, a 42-year-old guitarist and former music store owner in Arizona, the spread of 
School of Rock isn't surprising. 
He carved out space for guitar lessons shortly after opening his music store in a strip mall in 2005. 
The sideline began to grow, and eventually, he founded the McKnight Music Academy. As it grew, 
from two rooms to eight, from 25 students to 250, McKnight noticed a curious development. 
Around 2012, the gender mix of his student base shifted dramatically. The eight to 12 girls taking 
lessons jumped to 27 to 59 to 119, eventually outnumbering the boys. Why? He asked them. 
Taylor Swift. 
Nobody would confuse the pop star's chops with Bonnie Rain's. But she does play a guitar. 
Andy Mooney, the Fender CEO, calls Swift "the most influential guitarist of recent years." 
"I don't think that young girls looked at Taylor and said, 'I'm really impressed by the way she plays G 
major arpeggios." Mooney says. "They liked how she looked, and they wanted to emulate her." 
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When McKnight launched a video series on YouTube, he did an episode called "Is Taylor Swift the next 
Eddie Van Halen?" He wasn't talking about technique. He was talking about inspiring younger 
players. The video series, in the end, grew faster than guitar sales or lessons. Earlier this year, 
McKnight shut down his store. 
The videos? He'll keep doing them. They're making money... 
By Geoff Edgers — The Washington Post — June 22, 2017 
Five myths about beer 
No, it's not a man's drink, and craft beer isn't a recent trend. 
a
 
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Summer for Americans is a time of backyard barbecues, baseball and beer. Memorial Day weekend is 
a perfect chance to sit outside with the season's first sixer, and the varieties of beer you can pick up at 
the local grocer have multiplied. "This is a golden age for beer lovers," as The Washington Post 
reported in 2016. Yet the sheer number of options could confuse even the most enthusiastic 
consumer. No wonder myths about beer's past and present abound. Here are five. 
MYTH NO. 1 
American beer is a product of the Midwest. 
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Beer calls to mind the great cities of the American heartland, where 19th-century workers slaughtered 
pork, processed grain and brewed. They created iconic brands with staying power, such as Anheuser-
Busch, Miller, Pabst and Schlitz. For several months last year, St. Louis's Anheuser-Busch even 
renamed Budweiser "America," making the country's most-consumed beer brand synonymous with 
the nation itself. Budweiser is "an icon of core American values like optimism and celebration," its 
makers tout. 
Yet American beer has a much longer and more geographically diverse history. Archaeological 
evidence indicates that indigenous peoples in North and South America produced fermented beverages 
from corn, fruits and other plants long before Europeans arrived. The continent's first commercial 
brewery opened in what's now Manhattan in 1612. Barrels of English ale supplied hydration and 
nutrition to the Pilgrims as they sailed west in 1620. In the late 1700s, hops grew at George 
Washington's Mount Vernon. When Gold Rush hopefuls and railroad builders looked west in the 
1800s, German immigrants brewed for them in New Orleans, Denver and San Francisco. As the nation 
grew, beer went with it. 
But when Prohibition began in 1920, it shuttered American breweries. Only a few big producers, most 
in the Midwest (plus Colorado's Coors), survived. Their size allowed them to adapt, redirecting 
factories and refrigerated trucks toward the production of soft drinks, ice cream and even ceramics 
during years when they couldn't brew. They would come to dominate the market and shape 
Americans' palates. In these ways, ties between the Midwest and American beer are products of a 
more recent past. 
MYTH NO. 2 
Beer is a man's drink. 
In 19th-century America, men brewed in modernizing factories and drank in rowdy saloons, becoming 
the public face of beer production and consumption. In print and on TV, loth-century ads broadcast 
beer's masculine image to a wide audience. By 2016, 74 percent of American men drank beer each 
week, whereas only 26 percent of women did. 
Nevertheless, history shows that beer has always been a woman's drink, too. In colonial and early 
republic America, women and enslaved people brewed beer as a domestic task. Martha Ballard, a 
Maine midwife, wrote in her diary on May 18,1786: "A Clear day. we Brewd a barll & II2 Beer." 
Nineteenth-century women, especially widows, operated boarding houses where they served beer and 
food to travelers. And, as women entered wage-earning jobs at the turn of the loth century, they, too, 
came to patronize urban saloons. Soon, however, advertisers' nearly exclusive focus on male drinkers 
reduced its popularity among women. Petite bottles, low-calorie styles and Miller's declaration that it 
was the "champagne" of beers sought to bring women back into the fold. Yet their consumption never 
equaled men's. 
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Contemporary beer culture offers a slowly changing story. In 1983, the American Homebrewers 
Association tapped a woman, Nancy Vineyard, as its Homebrewer of the Year (a feat not repeated until 
2013). Since 2008, the Pink Boots Society, a charitable organization with 5o chapters in to countries, 
has awarded educational scholarships to women in the industry. An increasing number of women are 
studying brewing and founding breweries. 
American women's relationship to beer has been equally, if not more, long-lasting than men's ties to 
the drink. It has just been more likely to occur out of the public eye. 
MYTH NO. 3 
Craft breweries are small breweries. 
What is craft beer? The Oxford English Dictionary defines it as "a beer made in a traditional or non-
mechanized way by a small brewery." Merriam-Webster says it's "a specialty beer produced in 
limited quantities." Similarly, the Brewers Association (BA), the not-for-profit trade association that 
promotes craft beer, designates a craft brewery as "small, independent and traditional." Size seems 
key. Yet the BA also considers eight of the 15 largest beer companies in America to be "craft." What's 
going on? 
According to the BA's definition, a craft brewer produces 6 million or fewer barrels of beer every year. 
Six million sounds like a lot, especially in contrast to early micro-breweries that typically made a few 
thousand barrels, at most. Yet despite the success of big craft companies such as Yuengling, Boston 
Beer and Sierra Nevada, their sales volume counts for a drop, or a few, in the proverbial bucket. 
According to the BA's math, even the largest craft brewer produces no more than 3 percent of the 
volume of beer sold to Americans in a year. In 2016, craft beer counted for 12 percent of the total 
American beer market, by volume. The takeaway is not that some craft breweries are very small and 
others less small, but that companies on top of the beer market — Anheuser-Busch, MillerCoors and 
Pabst — are extremely, gigantically big. 
Ask consumers to define craft beer, and they'll name a variety of factors other than size that appeal to 
them. The brewers often concoct new styles that let drinkers experiment; they run taprooms where 
customers can relax with their friends and neighbors; they build ties to their local communities. Some 
craft breweries are active in philanthropy, others emphasize environmental sustainability, still others 
employ innovative management practices such as employee stock ownership plans, and many pursue 
collegial, collaborative ties with other breweries. Market share, ultimately, is the wrong way to define a 
beer. 
MYTH NO. 4 
Craft beer is a recent invention. 
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The explosive pace of brewery openings and eclectic new offerings could convince anyone that craft 
beer is a 21st-century innovation. Between 2006 and 2016, the number of American breweries, most 
of them craft, leapt from 1,460 to 5,301, exceeding the pre-Prohibition total. As of early 2017, two new 
American breweries were opening each day. Craft beer's surge fits with consumers' enthusiasm for 
artisan foods and the inclination to "revitalize" formerly industrial neighborhoods across the nation. 
Yet American craft beer is much older than that nano-brewery down the block. Loose collectives of 
home brewers began to tinker in West Coast basements in the 1960s and early 1970s, when home 
brewing was still illegal. Bored by light lagers, they found inspiration in English, Belgian and German 
styles during military or educational travels abroad. Motivation came, too, from the California wine 
industry, Fritz Maytag's reborn Anchor Brewing Company in San Francisco (1965) and Jack 
McAuliffe's New Albion Brewing Company in Sonoma County, Calif. (1976). Brewing-science classes 
at the University of California at Davis trained people who would transition from home brewing to 
professional, starting a craft beer revolution. 
Early craft brewers elbowed their way into a market dominated by big beer. They changed consumers' 
palates by introducing porters, stouts and hoppy styles, like Sierra Nevada's iconic pale ale. Initial 
generations' success paved the way for today's brewers, who find eager investors and consumers as 
they experiment with wild yeasts, barrel aging and more. 
MYTH NO. 5 
Wine is for aging. Beer is for drinking fresh. 
Cool cellars evoke images of dusty wine bottles, their contents mellowing and growing in value the 
longer they sit. Beer, on the other hand, should be consumed fresh, right? There's even an iPhone app 
that calculates a beer's age, using codes printed on the bottle or can, lest the drinker be fooled by 
something that has been sitting on the shelf too long. 
For many beers, fresh is better. Certain styles, such as pilsners and most saisons, should be enjoyed 
close to the date of production. Others, especially hop-forward beers like IPAs, require uninterrupted 
refrigeration and timely consumption to preserve the volatile flavors of hops. Nevertheless, certain 
beers improve in character if aged and cellared. American brewers have long experimented with 
holding beers in wine and liquor barrels, aging them before they reach the consumer. High-alcohol-
by-volume styles, such as barley wines, benefit especially from collaring at home. Aging a beer softens 
the high-alcohol edge and allows a complex set of characteristics and flavors (toffee, straw, wood, 
wine) to emerge. 
So how should a consumer cellar beer? First, choose the right styles. If you begin with a six-pack, 
drink one bottle fresh to understand its initial flavor profile. Keep the beer in a cool, dark space. Store 
it standing up or on its side; conflicting opinions abound. Sample aging beers regularly, perhaps once 
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a year, to catch a brew that threatens to age past its peak. When it's time to enjoy it, serve it in the 
correct glassware and at the proper temperature. Cheers. 
Theresa MeCulla — Washington Post — May 26, 2017 
THIS WEEK's QUOTE 
lit 
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People pay for what they do, and still more for what they have allowed themselves to 
become. And they pay for it very simply; by the lives they lead. 
James Baldwin 
Nobody Knows My Name 
THIS IS BRILLIANT 
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