I hate that I'm about to feed the off-the-thread topic of posting about builds, but I feel the need to speak on it and didn't want to start another thread. My apologies to Dave the builder, Dave the recipient, and everyone else.
I can empathize with sculptor. I've gone through a good part of my life seeing other people acquire things I couldn't even come close to affording and, sometimes, resenting them for it. There's an old Russian proverb: "Never complain about the size of your apartment to a homeless person." (Actually, it's probably not Russian, and I think I may have made it up myself, but people seem to take notice of it more when I introduce it as being an old Russian proverb than when I don't.) It would bother me if recipient Dave was complaining about his custom ukulele (the size of his apartment in the proverb) to people who can't afford one (homeless people in the proverb), but he's not. He's sharing an experience, the way someone might talk about what a great time he had in Europe, even if some of his listeners couldn't afford to travel to Europe. And there's an informative aspect to this thread, too, for people who are curious about how ukuleles are built and how different builders make the build decisions they make.
I admit that I have my share of expensive ukuleles, and as I type this there's an under construction baritone Ono Ukulele in Dave the builder's workshop with my name on it, so I'm not going to pretend that I can't afford an Ono Ukulele. But over the past several years, and without any change in my finances, I've migrated away from resenting people who have more than I do to a different attitude of being grateful for all the things I do have, and that has meant learning not to want the things I don't have or can't afford. During that process I've learned two things: First, for every lump of coal in my stocking, there's someone else with even more lumps of more coal than I have. So I don't complain about anything I have, even if it isn't the most expensive one there is or the one I would have gotten if I had the money (I drive a Honda Civic, for what that's worth) because i understand that despite everything in my life there is to grouse about, there's someone else on the planet who would be extraordinarily happy and grateful to step into my shoes. So I give myself the gift of that same gratitude, and when I do that, the list of things I don't and probably won't ever have becomes insignificant to me. Secondly, I have learned the joy of taking pleasure in the pleasure of others, even if their pleasure comes from owning something I can never have. I saw with my own eyes that stunningly beautiful waterfall inlay Moore Bettah ukulele that Chuck exhibited at the recent Ukulele Guild of Hawaii show in Waikiki. I couldn't afford an ukulele like that in 100 lifetimes, but it was a beautiful uke and I was grateful just to have been able to see it in person. Instead of feeling resentful, or wishing it were mine, I put myself in the head of the person who bought it and imagined the joy he was going to feel when he received it. (I even do this with cars - when I get mad at a driver who does something stupid on the road, I imagine him on the day that he bought his car, and how happy he must have been to have become its new owner, and then it's harder to be mad at him.) I'm not trying to preach to you, sculptor. I completely understand how it must feel to see someone posting photos of an ukulele you know you wouldn't be able to buy. Please try to remember that whenever you say something about your inexpensive ukulele, there's someone out there who couldn't afford your ukulele and might feel about you the way you seem to feel about recipient Dave. I'm just trying to encourage you to see the world a little bit through the eyes of other people - those more fortunate than you as well as those less fortunate than you, and to try to be thankful for the things you CAN call your own.
Jon, I also have to say that I don't think your last post (#56 in this thread) is at all in the spirit of Aloha, Ukulele Underground, or empathy. Just my opinion, of course. But I strongly encourage you to delete it, and I'll delete this reference to it in this post.
Thank you for allowing me to weigh in on the propriety of posting a build thread, and I apologize for contributing to the derailing of the thread.
