You asked so here goes:

Besides collecting songs, I also collect instruments. I usually buy them at thrift shops and swap meets. I used to buy many of them at The Akron and Cost Plus. The majority of them are displayed on the wall of my living room, under the endtables and on top of the wall unit. There are others hidden away as well. Seeing my love of instruments people have urged me to adopt theirs, extracted from attics and closets: a bouzouki (which died in one of the earthquakes), a melodica (small keyboard-type which you blow into), a banjo-lin (so I now have two), and a piano (sister-in-law's response to my son taking lessons on a keyboard) I traded a borhan (sp?) for a button accordion and gave away a pump organ.

Ordinary instruments: a hammer dulcimer, 3 button accordions, a regular accordion, an electric piano, a mandolin, a Yamaha guitar (bought in the 60's for $15), a child's guitar, a regular ocarina, 7-8 animal shaped ocarinas, a ceramic water bird whiste (and innumerable plastic ones), small xylophones (wooden and metal), a soprano and alto recorder, 5-6 pans pipes, castanets, maracas, clackers, 2 graggers, wooden and metal spoons, a bowed psaltry, 2 small zithers, a bagpipe chanter, a slide whistle, an autoharp, 2 xylodrums, a Native American drum, a concertina, an organetta and lots of children's instruments.

Unusual instruments: a yang chin (chinese hammered dulcimer), a mandolin guitarophone (I call it an auto-hammered dulcimer), a violin-uke (I've heard it called a ukelin), 5 or 6 ang-klungs in various keys, a South East Asian mouth organ which sounds like a bunch of car horns, two thumb pianos made of gourds, a chistu (Spanish flute), a Shaku Hachi (Japanese flute), a Yugoslavian bowed thing(?), a Yugoslavian double flute, and a drum with a stick in the middle of it that you pull with a wet cloth.

I usually answer that I can make noise on all of them and music on most. Like Barry my favorite one has always been voice. Never needs practice, can go anywhere, always available. But before children, when I had more time, I liked the button accordion, the hammer dulcimer and the bowed psaltery. My best played instrument is the recorder. I used to sit for hours on end playing through each song in library songbooks. Then I'd copy the ones I liked into my notebook(until xerox came along). I once kept a job I didn't like very much because they allowed me to use their xerox machine (on my own time and I bought the paper and a toner cartridge)

judy