keep_it_in_the_family raze the piano he was working on was unplayable. it was a hundred years old. he thought it was forty years younger until he found a faded sequence of letters and numbers that told him otherwise, hidden like a string of beads in the belly of the beast. the heads of the tuning pins were small enough for his wrench to latch onto. the threads beneath them were thicker than anything he'd ever seen. the deeper he went, the less sense the instrument made. he got in touch with a friend to ask if he'd be willing to take on the job of replacing the pin block. he got a one-word response: "run." the woman who owns the piano is in her eighties. it's been with her all her life. he convinced her it was a lost cause. the truth was he didn't care enough to try and save it. he called it a heritage piano, rolling the words around on his tongue like it soured his stomach to say them. she asked if there was any part of it she could keep. he said he guessed she could have the legs, though he couldn't imagine what she'd want to do with them. she settled for the lid that once covered the keys. a piece of wood engraved with a french horn and flowers. her daughter plans to incorporate it into a homemade shelf. it'll stay in the family for another hundred years, and the love that polished plank has absorbed will have a decent chance at outliving everyone who fought to keep it alive. 230331 what's it to you? who go blather from