I've read Stewart's, Barry's, and PoppaGator's posts while nodding some.

I wouldn't swear to it, but I don't think the blurb on the Seattle Song Circle web page has changed in several years. Apart from the comments about RUS, it pretty much outlines the way SSC started out, as I described above, and continued for the first few years. But it went through the period that I also described, where newcomers to the group began showing up with armloads of books. We wound up politely sitting there while person after person struggled with songs they didn't know and admittedly hadn't encountered until an hour or two before the meeting, while looking for something they might sing.

There was one person who was not particularly interested in folk music, he was into the songs of Jacques Brel—sung in French (which he couldn't speak and which he pronounced egregiously). And these were songs which he had heard, but hadn't particularly attempted to memorize.   So he sang them haltingly, craning his neck to one side so he could read the words out of a song book balanced on his knee while holding his guitar up high and trying to figure out what chords went with "Ne me quitte pas" and other songs.

It was not a pretty sight. Or sound.

He had sung a number of other songs from memory (so he could do it) and he was a fairly competent guitarist. He could have done it with these songs too. So why did he feel that instead of learning the songs at home and working out the chords, it was okay to inflict his first attempts at them on the rest of the group?

Since there was no hierarchy of authority or "Sergeant at Arms," no one policed this kind of thing and everyone did their damnedest to be patient and polite. But when the same sort of thing, by several different people, went on meeting after meeting, many of the originals, people such as John Dwyer, Stan James, Bob Nelson, John and Sally Ashford, and others, including Barbara and me, dropped out. It just wasn't enjoyable anymore.

Later, we heard that SSC had adopted Rise Up Singing as the Official Song Book and that the meetings had turned in hymn-sings, using only songs from the book.

Maybe things have changed, but last I heard from someone who attended recently, it was pretty much the same.

I have a great deal of sympathy for and I like to support and encourage people who are just learning. I remember my first efforts to sing in front of a group and I really appreciate the support and encouragement that I received, not just from other newbie's like myself, but from the more experienced singers such as Walt, Sandy, and Claire. It was a warm plunge, and it gave me the energy and incentive to keep plugging away. And a goodly portion of my professional life has been teaching, so I am well acquainted with the plight of, and sympathetic toward, the beginner wanting to try their wings.

Don Firth