Banjo pickin'

So I got a banjo last week. A tenor banjo, to be precise, which is necessary because there are three kinds of banjos. I have chosen one of the two non-five string banjos to play. People don't get the variety of banjos out there. They seem to think all you can play on a banjo — which they envision as a five-string banjo — are bluegrass tunes. My God, people, there is a world of music out there that can be played with a banjo. Heard of Bela Fleck?

Well, not like I'm going to be playing abstruse banjo jazz. Honestly, I'm a bit overwhelmed by the sheer number of chords in the world. I'm just trying to pick some songs out that I want to be able to play, and get to a point where I don't sound awful. And banjo music makes people happy.

In contrast to my parents' telling me I ought to play cello (mom — and I tried it and didn't like it) and dulcimer (dad — there is one around the house in Arkansas and it's supposed to be easy), Ray has embraced the banjo playing with an enthusiasm that almost scares me. He has actually gotten his saxaphone from his sister's house, an instrument he has not played in a decade, and some music that has chords in it so we can "jam." And though the jazz classics he has the music for is good stuff, I'm looking at chords with what appear to be fractions next to them. I thought there were a few kinds of chords, but there's apparently a whole world out there of ways to structure notes that people actually use and that sound pleasantly consonant. Go figure.

I am using a beautiful 1930s-era banjo on loan from a banjo band leader who has loaner banjos for would-be banjo players. It has inlaid mother of pearl and is heavy as all get out. So far I can play "Clementine," "London Bridge," and a few other songs that rely on C, F, G, G7, C7 and A chords. There are quite a few. I can just barely get out the D chords. I'm getting somewhere.

I've got a mess of books to read. I finished a Chandler Burr book about the making of Un Jardin Sur le Nil and Lovely (they are scents) and you know, he is one lucky duck. His book is okay, there are some draggy passages and some exceptionally self-concious writing about talking to a celebrity (Sarah Jessica Parker). It really works when he actually talks about molecules and scent, and really, that was the book I wanted to have more of. I think the book was called "The Perfect Scent."

I have plenty of books to dig into — I put them on hold a year ago and that hold expired at once and, boom, eight books drop in my lap. I have a couple that don't look that interesting to me anymore (one about the Christian Right in the U.S., another about the black market of nuclear weapons. I must have been feeling paranoid or something for that one) and others that are more appealing (Atul Gawande's notes on being a surgeon, "The Book of Air and Shadows," "Coal Black Horse," which sounds so full of rural poverty, desperation and child-in-peril plus historic setting that I am thinking of getting it for mom for Christmas. The more grinding the poverty, the more she likes it).

I had a fun surprise this weekend. I thought "Battlestar Galactica" was having its season finale, but it was just the mid-season finale. I suppose "fun surprise" is the wrong way to put it since there was kind of a depressing cliffhanger. And now I have to wait for the return of the sexy killer robots and psychologically disturbed on-the-run humanity. But if I can wait for summer weather, I can wait for BSG.