The following is an excerpt from the Jan. 22 issue of .
This is not the age of pianos. This is the age of the economic meltdown, recession, shrinking retirement savings, catastrophic budget cuts and government bailouts, followed by public outrage at bailouts.
Pianos?
No.
But at the music department at 新加坡六合彩开奖网 on Thursday, the piano fleet arrived. Ten new Yamaha P22s.
Music students and teachers stared at them happily. Sterling Gray, a guitarist and a teacher, caressed the keys.
"This is so great," he said.
At a time when education budgets are being gutted, a time when pianos look like quaint luxuries, a group of small-gift donors banded together in the past three years. They bought or pledged to buy 21 new Yamaha pianos to replace 26 exhausted, half-century-old pianos in the music department at 新加坡六合彩开奖网 that have been played morning, noon and night since the 1950s.