Here's hoping that the grass-roots enthusiasm will remind the
powers-that-be at Mystic Seaport Museum that the artifacts to
be preserved aren't just made of wood or ivory, but also of
memory.

And that, unlike wood or ivory, memory can't skip a quarter
of a century and survive... if the cultural artifacts aren't
passed down by the hearing (not the writing on musical staves)
then they don't survive. You can't stick 'em in a brick building
across the street and climate-control them into survival!

When the last of us who learned from Stan are gone, we're gone.

Now that the tenure of Adm. Fund-Raiser is behind us, perhaps
MSM will look to a future which values cultural artifacts, even
if they aren't as flashy as beluga whales and dolphins. Even if
they aren't amplified, intensified, and processed.

Yeah, it's a good party and a world-class piss-up. But it is more,
and it is directly an out-growth of a program which ONCE employed
four full-time chanteymen and parts of a few more.

The message must be clear--- it is in the music that the story
of 'America and the Sea' is as well-preserved as anywhere else.
If it's important to replace the timbers of the C.W. Morgan, it
is JUST as important to replace the aging and passing chanteyman.

MSM once hoisted "blue peter" for all of us.

Here's hoping that it does again.