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Community Blog Posts: Big World with Martin McFie
Guitars In Oxford
By Martin McFie
September 11, 2026
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The Ashmolean Museum in Oxford has a fine collection of early guitars, including one which was made by the most famous luthier ever known, Antonio Stradivari. He is renowned for violins and 'celli but he made some guitars. The Stradivarius is the tallest guitar in the showcase and has eighteen frets, although some may have been retrofitted. The museum also houses the Messiah Stradivarius violin. Inlaid on the reverse of the guitar's head is “Ant Stradivarius Cremonen 1688," ...
read moreChopin In Warsaw
By Martin McFie
September 9, 2026
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Afternoon tea at Raffles in Warsaw is always a pleasure, but a visit to Poland's capital is not complete without some music by Fryderyk Chopin. Staying close to the river, next to the Fryderyk Chopin Music Academy, it is a hard climb through a park to get to the main square in the Old Town. Crossing the street, dodging cars and trams, there is an old wooden elevator staircase for the last steep part of the climb. It ...
read moreBossa Nova Discovered
By Martin McFie
September 4, 2026
110 views
In Lima, Peru, the Huaca Pucllana pyramid is made of clay and adobe, the size of cinder blocks on end. A message came from Rio de Janeiro, an invitation to fly there and spend New Year with a dear friend who had recently managed the Equestrian Events at the Brazilian Olympic Games. The mystery of how clay pyramids could coexist with the Amazon rainforest in Peru was solved by checking the annual rainfall in Lima, which is the ...
read moreStaffa and Mendelssohn
By Martin McFie
September 1, 2026
189 views
The Isle of Staffa is an uninhabited nature reserve off the West Coast of Scotland. It was formed sixty million years ago by volcanic activity, the same activity that formed the Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland. Upright hexagonal basalt pillars formed in the cooling process. It's difficult to get to Staffa. It requires two crossings of sea swells, often driven by wind and waves coming directly across the Atlantic Ocean. The first crossing went well. Caledonian MacBrayne's “Isle ...
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