Instrument

Flashing back to 1998, Jim Benson was another 16-year-old aspiring songwriter who had received his first electric guitar, a low-end instrument from Sears. When the Harford County resident was starting out, he had a dream that he was determined not to give up. With no formal training, no background in music and unable to play an instrument, he still was hearing original songs playing in his head, he said. The components of a song seemed simple and obvious, he said. Determined to turn what he was hearing in his mind into reality, he began piecing songs together.

When Towson offensive coordinator Anthony Gilardi brought up the idea of shifting Thomas DeNapoli from midfield to attack in their end-of-the-year meeting in 2012, the suggestion did not faze DeNapoli. That is because he had done it in the past. A midfielder in his junior year at Lynbrook High School in his native New York, DeNapoli moved to attack in his final season there after graduation sapped that unit of several keep players. Fast forward to last summer, and DeNapoli found himself in a familiar position.

Until recently, I remained secure in my conviction that the accordion was the single most annoying instrument known to man.The sound, which can be likened to a flock of geese being run over by a cement truck, has ruined countless social occasions for me over the years, everything from weddings to parades to quiet evenings in Irish pubs.Mercifully, the number of accordion players in this country continues to dwindle, to the point where there are now probably more dowsers than accordionists, and probably more snake-worshipers, too.As hard as this is to believe, though, I was recently exposed to another instrument that summons the same sweaty-palm terror as the accordion, and might even surpass it in terms of sheer nausea-inducing capabilities.

A little extra bit of Baltimore made its way onto "Dancing with the Stars" last night, thanks to Stevie Wonder. When the Motown recording legend appeared onstage to play a beautiful, pared-down version of his 1969 hit "My Cherie Amour," he accompanied himself on a harpejii -- a fretted string instrument invented just five years ago by a Baltimore County man. "I got a text message yesterday from [Wonder's] keyboard tech, saying it was going to be on there," said Tim Meeks, noting he had worked with Wonder over several days last year, teaching him how to play.

Lucien Boucher Brooks, a retired weather instrument salesman, died of heart disease Oct. 19 at St. Joseph Medical Center. The Anneslie resident was 88. Born in Baltimore, he was a 1935 Polytechnic Institute graduate who attended the Johns Hopkins University. In the 1930s, he became a production assistant at the old Belfort Observatory of the Julien P. Friez & Sons scientific instrument company at Baltimore Street and Central Avenue. Mr. Brooks remained with the firm and retired about 30 years ago from what had become a division of Bendix Aviation.

Washington.--As with any presidency, it's possible that Bill Clinton's -- so boldly and jubilantly begun in a hope-filled inauguration week -- will expire in bad times or by self-inflicted wounds.But there's another scenario -- one that every member of Congress, every governor, county executive or mayor ought to be ready for. It's that Mr. Clinton is inventing a powerful new form of government-to-people, people-to-government communication that will alter our public life for years to come.

It looks a little bit like a body board, and it does ride the waves — sound waves, that is. Meet the harpejji, a fretted string instrument invented and built in the Baltimore area. Coldplay bought one. A.R. Rahman, who composed the score to "Slumdog Millionaire," purchased several of the instruments. A huge global audience saw Rahman play one during the Academy Awards ceremony last February, in a performance of the song "If I Rise" from his score to "127 Hours. " And Jordan Rudess, keyboardist of prog-metal group Dream Theater, plans to feature the harpejji (pronounced "har-PEH-jee")

Jake Shimabukuro is a musician on the rise, playing for big crowds, working with famous performers and earning cheers as his fingers fly over the strings of his ukulele. That's right, the ukulele. Shimabukuro, 27, is a master of the small, four-stringed instrument more often associated with plinking out children's songs than with producing serious music. And as his success takes him beyond his home in Honolulu, Hawaii, he is showing new audiences what the ukulele can do. "I do a little bit of everything, from Latin to jazz to classical to rock and blues," Shimabukuro said.

Outside of Hawaii, the ukulele was once most associated with things like college kids strumming fox trots in the 1920s. Or radio/TV personality Arthur Godfrey doing his folksy thing in the 1940s and 1950s. And then, of course, Tiny Tim in the 1960s, accompanying himself on that diminutive instrument while warbling stratospherically to "Tiptoe Through the Tulips." Today, the ukulele means something much cooler and infinitely more versatile, thanks to the startling virtuosity, musical inquisitiveness and sheer charm of Jake Shimabukuro.

FULLERTON, Calif. -- The pilot presumed to be at the controls of a private plane that crashed in heavy fog near Fullerton Airport killing three people was not qualified to make an instrument landing, federal aviation officials said yesterday.But investigators still were trying to determine whether Michael Benson was at the controls of his Piper Cherokee or whether the other man aboard -- who also was a pilot -- was flying Monday when the six-seat Piper Cherokee slammed into a townhouse complex while attempting to land.

Not all great ideas are fueled by bourbon, but the creation of Baltimore's NOVO Instrumental Festival was. Five years ago, Mobtown Studios' producer and co-owner Mat Leffler-Schulman shared a few drinks at the Windup Space with bar owner Russell de Ocampo. Leffler-Schulman, a recent transplant from Washington, noticed many of the instrumental bands he enjoyed recording also played the Windup Space regularly. "Russell said, 'Hey, we have all these wonderful bands, so let's highlight them,' " said Leffler-Schulman, a 36-year-old Tuscany-Canterbury resident.

The Sun obituary about Dr. Mildred Otenasek (Nov. 26) failed to mention one very important civic contribution back in 1955 and 1956. Then-Gov. Theodore McKeldin included Dr. Otanesek on the committee to change the Port of Baltimore and make it more competitive with neighboring ports. Even though she then was the Democratic National Committeewoman, she never once played politics but stepped in full tilt to learn about the problem - how railroad ownership and control of Baltimore's port inhibited it from competing with the other East Coast ports - and she expended every effort to help establish a public agency to take over.

Marquis Jones remembers Peter Holland clearly. He's the lawyer whose work, with his law clinic students, led to the dismissal of a claim against her - a credit card debt she said she knew nothing about. "If it hadn't been for Peter and his team, I have no idea what would have happened," the Severn woman recalled, saying a debt-buying company had the wrong person and claimed it served the legal papers on her spouse. She's not married. But unlike Jones, most of those who've benefited from Holland's consumer advocacy never met him. Few of them know that in December he will receive an award for his legal work from the Maryland Legal Services Corp.

About six years ago, the Baltimore rock band Arbouretum played at a club in Chicago for an audience of almost no one. You could count the members of the crowd on one hand, singer/guitarist David Heumann recalled, but one of them happened to be Bettina Richards, the founder of indie record label Thrill Jockey. She liked what she heard. "There literally was nobody there but me," Richards said. "It was great. I totally was hooked. " Richards signed Arbouretum to Thrill Jockey.

Dr. William Allan Dear Jr., an internist and former head of the division of nuclear medicine at Mercy Medical Center who also was a practicing magician, died July 20 of heart disease at Union Memorial Hospital. The longtime Guilford resident was 80. "He was the father of nuclear medicine at Mercy," said Dr. Louis E. Grenzer, a Baltimore internist and cardiologist who had known Dr. Dear since they both were residents at Mercy. "In the early 1970s, when they were new, he was doing the first echocardiograms and ultrasounds at Mercy.

Baltimore resident Amy Klosterman was a piano teacher at the Baltimore School for the Arts for 15 years, but her involvement with a youth band in Uganda started with a journey unrelated to music. In the summer of 2007, she traveled to Uganda to do volunteer work. One day, while participating in a community event, rain forced her and others to cram into a tent. "I got to talking to these strangers," said Klosterman, 45. "I told them I was a musician, and they told me about the brass band.

The Hubble Space Telescope's workhorse camera is on the fritz for the second time since June. Officials at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center said yesterday that the problem with the $86 million Advanced Camera for Surveys may be as simple as a sticky mechanical relay. If it can't be fixed, they are hoping they can still have most of the camera's components working again by next week. "We're doing testing, and we're going to see if we can revive it," said Preston M. Burch, Hubble program manager at Goddard.

Vince Demor walked through a hotel lobby in shorts and a T-shirt, looking like any teenager, except for the accordion around his neck, which he wore as naturally as a lawyer sports a tie. He played exercises quietly as he walked. Accordions are all over the Sheraton City Center in Baltimore this week, with more than 300 people attending the 2012 American Accordionists' Association Festival. Since Wednesday, there have been competitions, concerts, workshops and lectures. Orchestras of accordions have been rehearsing for Saturday's final performances.

Blame it on Lawrence Welk. If you're unfamiliar with that name, members of the American Accordionists' Association will give you an extra-warm welcome to their festival in Baltimore this week. Accordionists in this country have long struggled with the legacy of Welk, the bandleader known for "champagne music" and polkas. His TV show, which aired from the mid-1950s to the early '80s, and then for what seemed an eternity in reruns on PBS, always gave a prominent role to the accordion.