So, I feel that I got the better part of the deal, as I had a great time, saw beautiful sights, made new friends, drank good beer (and Grappa), whereas they only got a poorly delivered speech-certainly the worst I have given in my life. Instead of a huge hotel, the ETF rents a retreat center (owned by the Catholic Church) in the charming town of Langenargen, Germany, which is found on the northern shore of Lake Constance (AKA the Bodensee), the lake that separates Germany from Switzerland. In sharp contrast, although few tube-related goods could be bought at the festival, ETF itself is nonprofit. If more money could be made holding a show devoted to cat litter boxes, then such a show would push the stereo show out of its way. And the reasons are obvious: the whole point behind ETF is friendship, community, and enjoyment, whereas the point behind a stereo show is money, money, and, ultimately, money. This is all but impossible at a Stereophile show. In spite of so few days, I know that I have made some new lifelong friends, as I am sure that many others did as well. Rather, it is a true festival: a small, intimate gathering of 80 tube-loving aficionados for four days and three nights of talking, drinking, listening to lectures and music, more drinking, eating, and making new friends. First of all, it is not a "show," not a trade show nor an open-to-the-public convention. (But then, tube lovers are always an interesting lot.)īut before I list any further benefits that fell my way, I should explain just what the ETF is all about. I met some truly wonderful men and women. I am not sure that they got their money’s worth, as I got much more than I gave.
Actually, they paid me the great complement of inviting as this year’s special guest. Well, it’s now December and I have just returned from Switzerland and Germany, where I attended the European Triode Festival (ETF). With this program, I was able to rescue most of my much-needed data. I tried many data-recovery programs, but only one worked: GetDataBack for NTFS. But worried I became, once I realized that my fonts (which I had collected for over more than a decade and from many sources) were gone and my old files that required them no longer looked right without them that my email was gone as well (I used to back up my email, but when I switched from Eudora to Thunderbird, I failed to assign its email to the backup) and other files and programs that I needed were gone. I wasn’t too worried at first, as I keep three layers of backup on all the files that I have produced. On a much more trivial note, a month ago I lost my main system hard drive. It never took more than a few notes before he would rightly identify the name of the jazz saxophonist or pianist playing. Although never an audiophile, he was a great music lover. His biggest regrets were not learning to speak German and not traveling to Italy. In fact, he probably read more novels in Portuguese (which offers the smallest catalog of fiction of the five languages) than most English teachers have read in English.
For example, his library held a few thousand books, more than half of which were not in English, and he enjoyed reciting from memory Shakespeare’s tragedies in Italian.
After a few minutes, the anguished animal was calm and attentive to my father’s every word and gesture.Ī true polyglot-something very rare in the USA-he had at least reading knowledge of five languages: English, French, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish. And I remember being a child and our visiting the zoo, where I watched my father speak reassuringly to a distressed monkey. For example, he would visit friends and if the stay was long enough, their dogs would want to go home with my father. His kindness and understanding nature allowed him to connect quickly and easily, especially with children and animals, domesticated and wild. Because he was kind and generous, he had many friends and few if any enemies. Like man falling down the stairs, each new step more painful than the last, and like falling down the stairs, his decent was filled with plateaus between falls, short pauses that falsely promised the chance of climbing back to health. But very quickly his health failed him, with each new ailment spawning at least another new one. And while no 85-year-old’s death can be wholly unexpected, his death was startling as just one month prior, he had been happy, living alone and seemingly with many years of life left. In early November, my father died of heart failure. Yes, it’s been a long time-quite possibly, a much longer time for me than for you.