Klarinet Archive - Posting 000197.txt from 2003/01

From: Mark Gresham <mgresham@-----.com>
Subj: Re: [kl] RE: Chinese Clarinets
Date: Thu, 9 Jan 2003 08:42:44 -0500

Steve Fleckenstein wrote:
> Let me explain in detail.
>
> Four buses full of high school band kids from NY head to Toronto to play in
> a music festival for 3 days.
> Each of the four buses are full of fairly new instruments.

You may need go no further...
I bet it's because it was a festival (organized event) and a large
group crossing the border, rather than an individual crossing with a
clarinet.
I went to a Chorus America conference in Vancouver one year, crossing
the border on bus coming up from Seattle. I was one person, but they
questioned a small stack of music I had for conference uses, and whether
I had intent of selling it (VAT and all that, I bet).
More telling is that half of the large shipment of conference
materials that came from what was then the CA home office in
Philadelphia didn't arrive on time because they were being held in
Canadian customs and someone had to go fight to dislodge them, and try
to convince them that they were indeed for the conference and not part
of commercial business transactions (we're talking about printed
materials with no commercial value, not even instruments). I don't
remember if it was the morning of the second day or the evening of the
first that they were able to retrieve the materials, but they were in a
panic because the conference had to start without some of the necessary
stuff.
So my guess was in part that quantity of people and things headed for
an organized event played a role. I do remember, when a teenager, of
once having to go to Japan with a group and *every* item of value (like
cameras) had to be listed on various forms. So I bet it the ages of the
majority of your travelers might have been a factor as well.

--
Mark Gresham, composer
mgresham@-----.com/
Lux Nova Press http://www.luxnova.com/
LNP Retail Webstore http://www.luxnova.com/lnpwebstore/

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