In a message dated 9/10/2003 1:42:28 AM Eastern Daylight Time,
[log in to unmask] writes:
The ultimate stupidity of those laws came a few years ago when a famous
Canadian pianist was heading South to play a concert with the Houston Symphony.
She was taking her own historic grand piano for the concert, but the thing was
stopped at the border because it had real ivory keys.   She had to have the
keys stripped and replaced with plastic before the historic piano could enter
the USA for the concert.

The land of plastic replicas certainly has little tolerance for the real
thing.   I guess Disney won the first round, but thanks to you folk, it apparently
ain't over yet.

cp. in absolute elsewhere
Culler,

All right, I admit it:  there are some things our United States Government
does, every now and then, that may not make complete sense all the time, to
everybody.  Even to me.  NOW are you happy?

In the meantime, it seems to me that this story puts the kibosh on the notion
that all you goddam holier-than-thou Chances up there are all a bunch of tree
and whale huggers if this girl piano player is running all over the world
with an instrument  -- and her own personal instrument, it would appear!-- made
out of God knows how many elephant tusks.  That's not very nice, is it?

Does she have a baby seal fur coat, too?  How about roasting kittens on her
screen door?  Does she wait 15 hours to see some communist doctor (who went to
meed school in Cuba, no doubt) in your wonderful national health plan, or do
people with their own grand pianos get to have their own doctors and just waltz
right in by flashing a wad of money?

Ralph