Wow!

What a party! Everybody's come! Set this one up on me, Joe. You ARE a heck of a good guy. Catspaw49, I name you Centiscreed, on account of your looooonnnnnng list of postings and your 49 paws. Father Joe was a model guide, crafty and patient with a www-greenhorn squaring her ignorance with a bolshi swagger. At the end of no-purple-paths, I looked in the glass, & it looked like me.

Thank you all for the welcoming words. That was kind.

Abby, did you study with Mac Leach? It IS a sad twist that his separation of folklore at Penn from English has reverted. I think & hope it's no longer possible to divorce folk verse from its music.

Bill D., I'm glad you're keeping life breathed into "..Notion" and "Pans...". My portion of New Folks gives me the willies! I needed a few more years performing before recording! I'm chagrined Welk (who bought the folk portion of Vanguard) has reissued it - or my portion of it - I bumped into it at Amazon.com, where you can hear the stuff, and I mailed them a "Ouch! Don't buy it!" review. Since they're merchants, I reckon they won't post that one. The Greenbrier Boys were grand on that recording, though. I'd be happy if they'd put Johnny Herald singing "Stewball" on each of my tracks.

Mary, what does a former classicist do?

Yes, Joanne, the net changes the world, doesn't it? Just a few seconds, Click, and we're reading the English pages of nzz.ch/online! Hello, again. I don't remember Curly Goss, but I like that name.

Pete Peterson, those German songs, and that German language I was compelled to learn to work on figuring out some contradictions in the adult community that hovered about me when I was little. They knew everything, including when and why the Revolution would come; they crowded into our living room in Douglasville, Georgia (& other places) and they talked very importantly. They were from all over the place, but primarily they came from NYC. They were specific about what was good and what was evil. A big evil was prejudice. I didn't understand if prejudice was evil, how come it was good to be prejudiced against rich people and Germans, as they seemed to be. When I was 9 I visited NYC where one of those important people who knew everything met me and told me, "You're from the South. Are you prejudiced against Negroes." It was clear he had a vision of a stigma on my forehead. He saw me as a member of an evil group; a cousin of a German. It was also clear he was prejudiced. Eventually I went to Germany to try to clear up the confusion. It didn't really clear it up, because things are NOT clear. Much of what those people said was confirmed. But those "important" guys were all wet. That's how I got to those German songs, Pete. (There are some nice ones from Pennsylvania.)

Tangent finished. 5:30 am is a bad time to write!

Shame on me for the screed! Sorry, Catspaw49.

See you later,

Hedy