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title: Building mandolins?
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  <h1>Progress</h1>
  <ul class="posts">
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      <li><span>{{ post.date | date_to_string }}</span> &raquo; <a href="/mandolins{{ post.url }}">{{ post.title }}</a></li>
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  <h1>Why?</h1>
  <p>Who knows? The beginning of this year I decided I wanted to build a harpsichord.
     That morphed into a desire to build a mandolin.
     I was ambivalent about whether or not to use a kit, but found a cheap one in a local music store and bit the bullet.
     That's all I can say. Hopefully I don't mess it up too bad!</p>
  
  <p>Most importantly, why not?</p>
  
    <blockquote><p>As long as ideas are expressed, as long as friction makes bright, as long as vibrating wires make music of harps, we do not want redeemers.<br />
     — <cite href="http://forest.leanside.com/2009/04/15/this-date-from-henry-david-thoreau-s-journal-april-15.html">Henry David Thoreau's Journal: April 15, 1852</cite></p>
    </blockquote>
    
    <blockquote><p>We are instruments endowed with sentience and memory. Our senses are like keys plucked by the environment which surrounds us, and that often pluck themselves; and there, in my judgment, you have everything that takes place in a harpsichord constructed like you and me.<br />
     — <cite href="http://harpers.org/archive/2007/09/hbc-90001129">Denis Diderot</cite></p>
    </blockquote>
        
    <p>See also: <a href="http://dudenbostel.leanside.com/">Lynn Dudenbostel builds much better mandolins</a>. <a href="http://leanside.com/">My website</a>.</p>
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