January 26th 2026

Buongiorno amici,

   This past week, the island of Sicily was hit by a dangerous cyclone. The damage was extensive on the eastern side which encompasses the cities of Messina, Catania and Siracusa….The wind and raging water took out many of the wooden beachfront concession stands and tourist area stops. It’s going to take a long time to rebuild, but the people here seem to have the energy to make it happen… after all it wasn’t a volcano or an earthquake! On the west side of the island, Trapani suffered some high waves and very strong winds with cold temperatures that would make any East Coast North American sweat! (58° Fahrenheit 15°Celsius). At any rate, the weather seems to cooperate. It’s windy and downright chilly sometimes, but the sun always shines at some point in the day and the rain usually comes in the middle of the night when it’s soothing, so life is good although I certainly miss my family and friends. I’m looking forward to my daughter Grace arriving on February 5th.

       On Saturday, I attempted to drive my scooter to the Museo Regionale Agostino Pepoli. It’s in a different neighborhood than I’m used to traversing and there are not many "curb cuts" which are essential to handicapped traveling. It’s quite bumpy and there were several occasions where I had to lift my scooter over the curb. When I got to the museum, the elevator there was not functioning! All of the museum is on the second and third floor so I turned around and left. I had been to the museum before and it’s really quite an incredible place that is housed in an old convent and church building. Agostino Pepoli was the consummate collector…paintings, furniture, jewelry, sculpture, antiquity……you name it, he bought or acquired it by whatever means. He was from an old, aristocratic family that developed a beautiful estate near the top of the Mt. Erice as well as owning a great deal of land across the region. On the way out, I was wandering through the grounds, and there were all kinds of things laying there that were also part of his collection antiquities, things unheard of in our time….things from Roman days, and Greek building blocks, just strewn across the grounds. Collecting sometimes gets out of hand.

      I’ve been going through a lot of my old "John’s Corners" and rereading them…. some with humor, some with sadness and some with delight. This paragraph is from several years ago just before Julie and I moved to Penn Yan and we’re faced with getting rid of lots of the things we had collected over the years. I wrote this then about collecting and it still remains true. 

     "I have never been a collector of musical instruments. It would of course be a conflict of interest. Dealers who are collectors just keep the best stuff for themselves and sell their customers the cast offs. I have often sarcastically remarked that my collection is everything that has not sold! This past week a customer asked me if I had any recollection of a banjo that I sold to him back in 1999. Of course I had all the details including serial number and pictures. That got me to looking at my database which I believe shows an excess of 50,000 instruments that we have cataloged, described in detail, photographed and sold. We have been selling instruments to players and collectors for a long time but it is the collectors who have the interesting stories. Some collectors are wealthy and price means nothing and others are on a budget but there is one thing they have in common..... passion for history and discovery. Now it may seem foreign or excessive to some folks that someone has more than one of something that is utilitarian. Why do you need more than one banjo? Of course we are not talking about need. We are talking about curiosity and passion and thirst for knowledge. There are no boundaries with this. Recently I polled my staff about collecting and they looked at me rather quizzically. They are all young and they don’t know any collectors in their generation. It is a foreign concept and it is not about money. Many of them are minimalists and distain the idea of having a burden of things. Collecting certainly is a burden and weighs heavily with the responsibility of maintaining and "feeding’ the herd. However, collecting forces us to give the reason why we like something, it expresses our values, it lends order to the world around us."

    That was written a while ago, and many collections that I know of are starting to come to market. Once again,  there are collectors out there that are facing the decision of how to disperse and maximize their collections. I would just like to give a little plug here for Ryan and Sam. Lately they have been dealing with some very special collections and have treated the folks in a very professional manner. They have been able to bring to the public some great instruments that have been tucked away for many, many years. So, if you have instruments that you need to have evaluated or a collection that you’re thinking of selling, feel free to give us a call. These guys have all of my trust.    

You can keep up with my adventures in Sicily by following me on Facebook. It seems about the only place I can throw a bunch of pictures up each day and make it easy.

Cu la paci,

John Bernunzio 

Seascape Sunday morning…

Now that the skating rink has been removed, yes, they had a skating rink for winter time for the kids in Trapani….there’s a lot more room in the Il Parco Regina Margherita. The Banyan trees certainly look much happier.

Park entrance