The questions below are the original comprehension questions posed by Katherine Schulten on the New York Times Learning Network.
Self-study activity:
Watch the video by double-clicking on the picture below or here and answer Katherine's questions.
WHO is the speaker in this video?
WHEN did O’Mara Meehan Piano Movers first open for business?
WHY are piano deliveries down, and WHY are old pianos being discarded?
WHERE are more pianos ending up, according to him?
HOW many pianos does Bryan O’Mara estimate he has thrown away over 24 years?
Mr. O’Mara says that the “main part that hurts about disposing” of pianos is that people “take them for granted.” WHAT do you think you take for granted that others might value?
You can self-correct the activity by reading the transcript below.
To gain further insight into this topic you can also read Daniel J. Wakin's article for The New York Times For More Pianos, Last Note Is Thud in the Dump, where he writes about the value of pianos and the growing number of disposals these days.
Just watch him, he´s good, he´s good. Watch your toes!
My name’s Brian O’Mara. I’m a piano mover. We’ve been in business since 1874, I’m fourth generation. Myself, I’ve been doing it since 1987. Retails down so much so we don’t get many deliveries any more. In today’s economy where there’s old pianos and nobody wants to spend time to refurbish them or fix them, they ask me what are you going to do with it? I try to tell them I’ll try to get rid of it if I can. It does go to a dump site. I just couldn’t believe how many pianos we throw away in the course of a month, let alone in a year.
Go forth, let it go!
Over a period of 24 years I threw out over four, five hundred pianos.
Go for it, they’re on top. It’s gonna slide, Jimmy, let it go, let it go.
And then watching ‘em break up, was… I can’t believe people are actually throwing away pianos. Like a lot of other things yeah out here, we all take a lot of things for granted. That’s one of them that really bothers me. Somebody else will take pride in it, other people just take it for granted. That’s the main part that hurts about disposing all of them.