Sir Alistair Chichester is in the habit of quaffing two pints of bitter at The Thane of Thoth every afternoon from 3 to 4 p.m., excepting Sundays. Each pint costs a quid tuppence. (Sir Alistair, of course, is indifferent to the pecuniary setback of his libations. He lives, after all, in Chichester Towers on the splendid interest of his ancestral bequeathment.)
Question: Suppose Sir Alistair stoops to charitable giving? He contributes what he otherwise would fritter away in defrayal of his quotidian refreshment to, let us say, Saint Mordred’s Institution for the Afflicted. How much would Sir Alistair’s contribution, accrued in the lapse of thrice a fortnight, permit Miss Primley, the headmistress of Saint Mordred’s, to squander on ready-to-wear apparel?
(Copyright 2018 James Mansfield Nichols. All rights reserved.)
EthicalDative 
Why Learn the Fretboard? (6-23-2012)
I learned touch typing in high school and have used it intensively all my life. My dream is to enable my fingers to find the notes they need on the fretboard as automatically and unconsciously as they find the letters they need on the keyboard. I feel certain that sublimely accomplished guitarists such as Sharon Isbin and Pepe Romero have this facility, cultivated from early youth and refined over a lifetime of practice.
For this Johnny-come-lately to serious musicianship it’s a pipe dream. Nevertheless, something can be achieved. The effort to improve my grasp and practice of music on the guitar provides good thoughts when I go to sleep and a motive for getting up in the morning.
My chief goal in learning the fretboard notes is to become fluently conversant with chord anatomy. When I’m fingering a chord I want to know at a glance which finger is playing what interval of the chord: the first, the third, the fifth, the seventh, a suspended fourth, whatever.
(By the way, in music talk a “suspended” note is one that’s played, not one that’s left out. I can never get used to this. One writer says a suspended note creates melodic “suspense” calling for resolution. I buy that, but I would call it a “suspending” note if I were inventing musicology.)
If I’m building a chord I want to know where my alternatives are. You can’t finger a chord just anywhere. I can perform this analysis now, but more laboriously than I would like. I often drift off into idle song as a result of the mental fatigue incurred, and have to wrench my brain back to the task at hand.