Here's a message I sent to some of my FMW friends; I apologize if it's too verbose:

I gather from the "CDSS E-News" I received today that Pinewoods Folk Music Week is no more, replaced by "Harmony of Song & Dance" week which the Amidons will be running. From the thumbnail description, sounds like more dance teaching, emphasis on music education as well.

I haven't attended Folk Music Week for the past few years, after regular attendance of about a quarter century. Variety of reasons, but chief among them was the decline of the informal song-sharing and music-making –– "jamming," if you will –– that characterized FMW in the '80's and '90's, where the incorrigibles among us would stay up to the wee hours playing and singing together in the Camp House or the office. To me, as special as the classes and the presentations always were, the most enjoyable experience of the week was sitting with friends and new acquaintances, playing and singing together. I expressed my feelings on the subject in the recent on-line survey for CDSS, suggesting a re-emphasis on this aspect of the program. I gather a different direction was chosen.

I had the good fortune to be a junior FMW staff member for several years –– my special thanx to Jerry (Epstein) and Dick (Swain), as well as Andy Cohen –– and some of my most enduring friendships and brightest memories were found at Pinewoods. Time, changing preferences and the availability of alternatives eroded the base of FMW over the past decade or so, and I can surely understand that CDSS needed to schedule a program that would attract as many campers as possible.

So I hope those who find the new week's emphasis attractive will support it, or the other established CDSS weeks at Pinewoods. I have a framed picture postcard over my desk, taken by Susan Szasz in the '80's, showing a bunch of FMW campers sitting around the Grenocide porch where Cathy Fink was leading one of her "pickin' parlor" jams. Toby (Fagenson) is there, and Abe (Gershowitz), and others to whose faces I can no longer attach names. I am deeply thankful for the summer weeks I spent at Pinewoods, for all I learned there, and for the wonderful people I met and the wonderful music I shared.