Our local paper says that Tucson is on the short list for hosting the National Folk Festival in 2011-2013. Wahoo! Just hope that there's the option to hold it some other time than July... does anyone know how flexible the dates are?

The local equivalent (which is apparently sort of auditioning this year) is our Tucson Meet Yourself festival, now in its 36th year. It's fondly known as "Tucson Eat Yourself" for the great food booths, and this year they're doing a food stage and "iron chef" contest. But it's about music, dance, and folkcrafts, as well.

In fact, if the point of the NFF is to encourage a community to start and then maintain a festival of that type, maybe Tucson doesn't make that much sense, because we're already doing it, and doing it well... but it sure would be fun to have the National here.

~ Becky in Tucson