I posted the following on the Bears Mailing List in 1996:

A Woof for NEFFA

I spent a day recently at the New England Folk Festival, an annual
weekend extravaganza at a suburban highschool that attracts a couple
of thousand people of all ages & sexes, mostly for dancing & singing.
Perhaps a majority of the men are bearded, and a striking number are
bears with comforting bellies & plentiful hair, some with
heartbreaking faces & voices. I did not try to find out how many were
queer, but as a spectacle such a gathering, IMO, merits attention from
arctophiles. I see no reason to suppose that the concentration of
bears in organized folkiedom is peculiar to New England.