Download a good text from Digitrad, or, if you don't particularly like the Digitrad vesion, photocopy one from any of the fine songbooks you have been acquiring of late, Joe, then run off a couple dozen copies on the copy machine. I think you can find better versions among the books in your growing library. Let your song circle learn them! You'll be doing the tradition a favor.

I may have told this story before, but some years ago, Caroline and I were on the staff at Augusta, assigned to encourage group singing among the confidence-impaired. We were leading a song-swap session in the Chapel when one of the participants asked for "Careless Love." Okay, I've been singing "Careless Love" for fifty years, so I said, "Sure," and launched into it. Zingo! Out came half a dozen RUSes, noses were immediately buried in the pages, and when my text deviated from the printed version, I heard someone cry, "Hold on! You've got it wrong!" I tried to explain that folksongs are always in a state of flux (quoting Bruno Nettl), vary from one source to another, and pointed out that I liked to sing it the way I had learned it many years before RUS was born. But then I asked one of the RUSsers to lead the song in the way they chose to do it, giving her a chance to prove to herself that she could do it, which was good, and allowing me to avoid making a somewhat rude suggestion concerning a possibly appropriate use of the paper to which they were so obviously dedicated. Had I been a presidential candidate, I would have been glad that my mental microphones were turned off. Even Caroline might have concurred: "Right! Big time!" (and she's a very kind and gentle person, far from curmudgeonish).

Sandy