Santa Cruz Muse
I saw my muse in a harvest moon
wearing a frilly suede jacket
and a bent Fedora askew
balancing on one leg
making his Stratocaster cry
hopping across the universe
singing songs of injustice
the harm of GMOs
reclaiming the land
that’s rightfully ours
somewhere in Santa Cruz.
1958 Fender Stratocaster
Clarence Leonidas "Leo" Fender and Clayton Orr "Doc" Kauffman began the K & F Manufacturing Corporation to design and build amplified Hawaiian guitars and amplifiers. In 1944 they patented a lap steel guitar with an electric pickup that Fender had already patented, and in 1945 they began selling the guitar in a kit with an amplifier designed by Fender. The 2 partners split in 1946 and Fender renamed the firm the Fender Electric Instrument Company. In 1948 Fender and George Fulerton finished the prototype of a thin solid-body electric guitar, which was marketed in 1950 as the Fender Esquire and then as the Broadcaster before being renamed the Telecaster in 1952. Bill Carson, a Western swing guitarist, complained that a new model should have individually adjustable bridge saddles, 4 or 5 pickups instead of just 2, a vibrato unit that could be used in either direction and return to proper tuning, and a contoured body for more comfort than the Telecaster's slab body. Instead of redesigning the Telecaster, Fender and steel guitarist Freddie Tavares began developing the Stratocaster in late 1953. Although Fender never learned to play a guitar he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992, a year after his death.
ReplyDeleteGMOs are genetically modified organisms. In 1973 Herbert Boyer of the University of California, San Francisco (who later, in 1976, founded Genentech, the 1st genetic engineering company) and Stanley Cohen of Stanford University transplanted genes from one living organism to another, creating the 1st GMO.
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