The recently resurrected Pacific Northwest Folklore Society was initially organized in 1953. For a fledgling organization, it was quite ambitious. It co-sponsored, with the East 42nd Street Arts Association, an arts fair in 1953, which included a concert by Walt Robertson, dance exhibitions by a couple different folk dance groups (The Scandia Folk Dancers, and Dance Circle, which was into Balkan dancing), and an exhibit of Northwest Indian dancing and mask carving. The following year there was another festival, and in October, we sponsored a concert by Pete Seeger.

The PNWFS was strictly a-political. But that didn't save it from panic at the sponsorship of the Seeger concert because he had been butting heads with the House Un-American Activities Committee. People withdrew from the organization in droves, fearful for things like security clearances. Strangely enough, the Seeger concert had no effect on the East 42nd Street Arts Association, despite the fact that both the E42StAA and the PNWFS were organized and headed by the very same people—us.

I spent a couple of years in Denver, and I was dead-set on reorganizing the PNWFS, possibly under a different name, when I returned to Seattle. I corresponded with a couple of people in Seattle about it. When I returned, the word was spread far and wide (farther and wider than I would have preferred) and a meeting was called. Some former members of the PNWFS were there, but there was also a group of people who were hell-bent on turning it into a politically oriented organization rather than an academically oriented one. No interest in collecting Northwest folklore, only in having singers like Walt and me do fund-raising concerts for their pet politcal causes. Not what I had in mind!

These new acquaintances treated me as if I were The Messiah Returned. But since they had given me all this power, I quietly chose to table the project until further notice (until these people got bored waiting for me to do something and simply went away!).

Shortly after this meeting, I was visited by a dignified, grey-suited gentleman from an office downtown. His card identified him as a Special Agent from the F. B. I. He wanted to know who all was at the meeting. I wasn't able to help him much, because, other than the usual suspects whom he already knew about, I had met so many new people all in one whack that I really couldn't remember most of their names.

I told him that I wanted the organization to be academic, oriented toward the collection and preservation of Northwest folklore—not political action. He urged me to go ahead with the organization and include these folks. And he wanted me to report back to him on who all attended meetings and keep my eyes and ears open for anything that seemed significantly political. A fishbowl!

I told him I'd have to think about it. He agreed. He contacted me again in a couple of weeks. I told him (the truth) that I was going back to school—to study music seriously, and to resume voice and guitar lessons—and that I simply wouldn't have time to get involved in what I had originally planned regarding the folklore society. He allowed as how he understood, and that was the last I saw of him.

From then on, if anyone new showed up in the Seattle folk group, I tended to watch them pretty closely, wondering. . . .

In the interim, a number of folk song and folklore societies have come into existence in this area, and subsequently folded their tents. One organiztion started solidly and is still going strong, but their orientation seems to have veered from its original focus on traditional folk song and folklore.

But after a long haitus, the Pacific Northwest Folkore Society is back. [And unless we suddenly attract a large number of "enemy combatants," we should be in healthy shape from here on!]

Yeah, I think they probably have a file on me. . . .

Besides, I know Bob Nelson!!

Don Firth