A large bookcase full of music books of various kinds, such as The Ballad Tree by Evelyn Kendrick Wells, The Ballad Book by MacEdward Leach, The Viking Book of Folk Ballads, and various books on regional ballads, sea songs, books like Positively 4th Street by David Hajdu, The Mayor of McDougal Street by Dave Van Ronk, Joan Baez's autobio, Follow the Music by Jac Holtzman, Folk Song U. S. A. and Folk Songs of North America by miscellaneous Lomaxes, The American Song Bag by Carl Sandburg, and on and on. . . .    These, along with song books 'til hell won't have it. Several music theory textbooks and workbooks I used when I was at the University of Washington School of Music and Cornish School of the Arts. Several books on vocal technique.

Two 2-drawer file cabinets full of guitar technique manuals (folk, classic, and flamenco) along with folios of guitar music, folders full of sheet music, both store-bought and hand-copied, lead sheets, folders full of the words to songs and ballads both learned and to be learned yet. Problem is, to get at the drawers, I have to move two guitar cases. GO-GW travel guitar in it's gig-bag right beside the bed.

Between my wife and I, we have about 12 feet of shelf-space devoted to LPs (stacked on edge) of classical music, folk music, jazz, and miscellaneous. These were acquired before we started buying CDs. Enough CDs (same variety of music) that, if stacked one on top of the other, would reach about 14 feet (I'm not kidding!). About 300 cassette tapes, some store-bought, mostly home made or tapes of various musical events such as song circles and hoots. Two old phonographs for the LPs, various devices for playing CDs and cassettes, in addition to CD-DVD player-burners in both Barbara's and my computers.

Two organs in the living room, both Barbara's:   an Estey reed organ (have to operated foot pedals while playing) that used to be in a church somewhere, and a small reed camp organ (operates the same way) that folds up into a box the size of a foot-locker—used to be trucked around to religious camp-meetings before Barbara bought it. She also has huge stacks of piano music (took lessons for years when she was a kid--she's very good with keyboards), but we don't have a piano right now. Problem of figuring out where we can put one and still get into our apartment. A hog-nosed psaltery, various instruments that resemble zithers, a whole quiver of penny-whistles, a case of recorders, and a laud (Spanish street-lute).

Musicians? Well . . . looks kinda suspicious. . . .

Don Firth