I really do hope I am wrong about the state of the clubs, but little that has taken place here indicates that I am.
Plenty of argument on re-defining the term to justify what happens in many clubs - little on the importance of the music itself and its importance, beyond keeping the (apparently) dwindling number of bums on seats.
Nothing about getting the music taken seriously beyond the confines of the few clubs which still cater for folk music, so it can take its place as the art form it is.
Lots and lots of antipathy, even contempt, for the music that brought me and thousands like me onto the scene all those years ago.   
"Jim, do you want people to take you seriously or not?"
I don't care one way or the other Bryan, it's not about me.
Our collection is archived and freely accessible to all, as far as it can be - so the singers and storytellers and what they sang and had to say will be taken seriously long after we're gone.
By the end of the year, over 400 local (Clare) songs will go up on line in the Country the singers belonged to.
We are talking to a local man about getting together all the hundred or so locally composed songs we have found and putting them out in book form to draw attention to a song-making practice we were unaware of until we re-visited our collection.
We've now embarked on two, hour-long radio programmes on Ewan, in time for the hundredth anniversary of his birth next January.
I've found somewhere to sing regularly again (without being deafened by electric soup)
I can turn on the radio or T.V. or ramble down to a session any night of the week to hear top class traditional music played by musicians ranging from being just old enough to be in a pub to those just about fit enough to hoist their waistbands up under their armpits!   
And to top it all, we've found a few elderly people with songs who are prepared to sing for us.
You can only take so much seriousness at my age.
The only thing we have to worry about is whether Castle really did die at the end of the last series - but then again, that does leave Beckett free to.....!
Jim Carroll