Bio

As challenging public health issues make us homebodies, the BRC founder and spouse interact with grandchildren and their parents in Texas, Illinois, and Missouri, simultaneously via Zoom link-up.

Strumming his long neck Ode banjo, granddad leads the virtual family reunions in sing alongs of familiar animated kids` tunes. The youngsters happily dance on the sofa at home while moms and dads join the grandparents in a noisy and spirited chorus of “You are My Sunshine.”

The lakeside BRC domicile, where our kids grew up and the grandchildren visit each summer, has an almost year-round audio backdrop of a noisy flock of Canada geese. These honking avians recently vanished from the neighborhood leaving a discernible silence.

Only a Great Blue Heron, a couple of hawks, and an occasional bald eagle now patrol the silent waters. Canada goose couples are monogamous, and the March through May nesting season explains their disappearance and quietude. The female goose builds the nest and incubates the eggs, and the gander guards it. Sometime soon, the newly expanded families will proudly ply our lake in linear flotillas of fuzzy goslings bracketed by noisy and watchful parental honkers.

In the meantime, the grandkids send artful notes of appreciation to Grandpa Doc between the Zoom songfests.

Hopefully, our grandchildren will be able to revisit these familiar Missouri environs sometime this summer and watch the goslings growing-up.

In these uncertain times, the BRC founder wishes all our readers Peace and good health. Stay positive and don’t let those strings get rusty.

Nearly three-fourths of the our world`s surface is covered with water. The ocean is a complex biosphere and food source, and greenhouse gases are trapping the sun’s heat causing rising global water temperatures which stress marine and coastal ecosystems. The food chain from plankton up to the great whales is impacted by these climatic changes. As stewards of this Earth, we are obligated to protect the environment and the creatures that dwell in it.

To kick-off the new decade, the BRC founder completed a banjo named “The Dolphin” to portray the ocean which is under siege in its fragile roll as a food source. Although the dolphin is a magnificent creature of beauty, power, and grace, like all things that swim in the sea, it is vulnerable to climate change, plastics pollution, and overly-aggressive industrial fishing. Might we all take heed to the mother of pearl “Save Us” message at the 19th fret space and up-regulate our commitment to recycling and environmental conservation. The Dolphin is a BRC postcard to Mother Earth for Valentine`s Day.

The banjo was marketed via an online auction and sold. In the feedback profile of the auction website, the new owner reported,” Beautiful Dolphin themed 5-string Banjo. Fast shipping, Packaged well, Thanks!”

Departing the snowy Show-Me State, the BRC founder and spouse journeyed to Texas to visit grandkids and attend a spelling bee. As class projects, the new art teacher at their elementary school had her students fashion banjos from construction paper, yarn, paints, and glue.

 

 

 

 

 

Hundreds of these colorful images wallpapered the hallways of the school, including a “Picasso” banjo by an imaginative young artist. Is this banjo heaven?

 

 

 

After days of family fun in the Lone Star sunshine, the grandparents bid farewell to their cheery grandkids and returned home to the wintry Heartland and Missouri grandchildren who live only 3 blocks from our lakeside home and its BRC workshop. The lake is frozen-over, and a resident flock of Canada geese cautiously tread its slippery ice. Trumpter Swans, a protected species and the heaviest extant birds native to North America, visited here a month ago. Our world is a precious place.

 

P.S. Have a Happy Groundhog Day.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The BRC founder`s son, also a musician, set up the Banjo Rehabilitation Center website for the pater familias in April of 2011, as his dad`s computer skills were not advanced enough to engineer such a cyber task. Our son`s two children are pictured below in the foyer of his Texas homestead.

Over the ensuing years, the BRC founder  has slowly but steadfastly expanded his techno-skills to maintain and upgrade the website. Letters from across the English speaking world are chronicled in the BRC Mailbox under the Vega Martin Banjo Info header.  The Hall of Fame is a pantheon of special BRC friends. This month, our website search engine hits incredibly surpassed the milestone of one million.

 

At family gatherings, the grandchildren always have a songfest with the BRC founder who accompanies them on guitar. A son-in-law, an architect, recently drafted a quick sketch of the kids` song leader and labeled it “G`pa Doc.”

 

 

After singing on stage with his grandfather at the local brewpub not too long ago, a Chicago grandchild drew a crayon likeness of his BRC banjo guy. What a lucky grandpa.

This last week at the art gallery where his “St. Paddy`s Partita”  5-stringer and award ribbon are on display, the BRC founder conducted an interactive dialogue on banjo building with a young group of “Grade A Plus” students from an after school academic support and enrichment program.

He has many blessings- more than a million of  them.

 

Last winter, the BRC founder and his wife were gripped along with the nation by TV coverage of the Thomas Fire that incinerated 440 square miles of central California. This month, we again traveled to the Golden State to attend the annual Ojai Music Festival in this small and friendly township that miraculously escaped the runaway conflagration. A photo from the local tourist guide depicts a malignant firestorm cloud teetering over the mid town music park, but the flames capriciously went elsewhere.

Although green springtime undergrowth has since re-carpeted the landscape, the charred skeletons of trees reaching eerily for the sky like boney fingers abound in the surrounding countryside and map the fiery path of the destructive inferno. The community has rebounded from this cataclysm with “Ojai Strong” determination to help all of its citizens impacted by the blaze. During the music festival, we visited the community museum that features a show by local artists whose  “Scorched Souls”  exhibit captures the emotionally exhausting features of the California fire with its loss of homes, life, and dreams.

Like last year, the BRC founder again attended a Bluegrass jam session in the neighboring village of Oak View which was also incredibly bypassed by the omnivorous wildfire. In the background of a group photo of the musicians, who experienced the fiery peril first-hand,  leafy trees bear witness that Oak View was spared from the Thomas flames and its rogue embers which devoured nearby areas.

At the end of the Ojai music fest, the BRC founder and his spouse attended a unique performance by a string quartet in a small theater where the house lighting was extinguished into absolute darkness for the event. Never has the wooden resonance of stringed instruments been heard with such crystal clarity than in this envelope of complete blackness. Brighter days lie ahead for the good folks of Ojai and Oak View.