Yes, indeed, Fred Miller, "good criticism is hard to do". We've grown up (unless we've been fortunate) with the notion that critique is criticism, is "put-down". It's not. To know somebody, to know something, in a true sense, is to love it. "How do I love thee? Let me count the ways..." You want to understand what you love, you want (in the words of an old scifi fan) to "grok it in its fullness". This may mean, with folk music, that you want to understand its "quiddity", its "what-ness". What is is about this music that I love? I've been in love with folk music since I was 16 - 40 years of adoration. Bill D and Art Thieme are with me here, I think. I think I'm closer to understanding that which I love, by virtue of struggling with definitions: "I love *this* and not "that" - why?". I think I'm a better person because of it. The struggle to understand is neverending, and if you truly love, you never stop trying to understand. My life in and with folk music has been just that.

I have a hard time with people who use the phrases "folk Nazi" or "folk police" because the the way in which these phrases are used are so full of hate. I ask myself, "what is it that they hate?". I don't believe they hate me, or people like me, or traditional music. I belive what they hate (and I think a better word might be "fear") is the thinking that goes with loving. They have perhaps grown up in a culture which abhors thinking and overvalues feeling, and the notion of "criticism" is for them entirely negative. My 2c.

Jon Bartlett