To add my 2cents:

Organizations often go through some predictable phases.

A group starts, with a fair amount of hegemony.

a)Group wants to expand, because it needs fresh blood, but tries to retain the same character.

b) Group decides it wants to stay the same.

c) Group throws open the doors to any and all: open invitation.

b) scenario will inevitably die; it is ingroupy and snobbish. "purists," etc.

c) will mutate so much the group it not what it once was, and originals are dismayed, and drop out.

a) scenario is a healthy organization, with the proper creative tension and a constant dialectic process between old and new.

Mudcat is the best exmaple of a) I've ever seen.

I've known one artists collective and one Morris Dance group where newbies took over and kicked out the founders, creating unbelievable permanent ill will.

I was a newbie in a folk club where the originals could be downright unpleasant, just because someone wasn't an old timer. It died an ugly death.

Let's continue the conversations we want to hold; I think I'm goingtogo start a thread on the NPR segment covering Jenny Armstrong, and her daughters Susanna and Georgia Rose Armstrong-Park.

MAG