Monday, June 15, 2009

Will airports post "no harmonica" signs?

I ran across something in the New York Times recently. The title of the post indicated that it discussed ways to occupy time during airline flight delays and layovers. I figured that might be something for my Empoprise-BI business blog, but I was wrong. You see, Bruce Turkel likes his harmonica:



Weird Guy with Box of Harmonicas by sara mattiace (The Divine Miss M.) used under a Creative Commons License


I studied the trumpet and play in two bands in my spare time. But I don’t travel with my trumpet. I travel with about a dozen harmonicas.

I can blame my love affair with the harmonica on business travel. A friend gave me some harmonica music, and then later, when I was in Charlotte, N.C., waiting for a plane I wandered into a small gift shop and found a harmonica instruction book that was packaged with an actual harmonica. The price was right, so I figured why not give it a try?


And yes, he does play it in the airport:

When I was in Heathrow recently, I actually had a little jam session with two fellow travelers who were playing guitars. I whipped out the harmonica and asked if I could join them.

I think we sounded pretty good. But even if we didn’t, it was still a lot of fun.


And Turkel isn't the only person who plays the harmonica in the airport. I was unable to find an appropriately licensed picture of a harmonica in an airport to incorporate into this post, but Flickr does have two "all rights reserved" pictures of people with harmonicas in airports. If you'd like to see them, go here and here.

So there's a lot of harmonicing at airport facilities. However, people at airports are often very tired, and therefore very sensitive. So for every person who would be overjoyed to see Turkel or the other two guys whip their instruments out, there would be another person who would probably scowl at them for the "racket" they're making.

The solution is simple - electronic harmonicas, with headphones.
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