Well Stewart, that's why good upstanding folks like me are needed. This event not only needs me and those like me, to offer, for free, what we do for our livings and donate our time talents and energies to the event but they also need goodhearted folks like us to explain to them, using words with as few syllables as possible, the fact that they have made a boo boo. They need knowledgeable folks like us to define big words for them, like the word unconstitutional.

Because in their hasty schedules, full of meetings, filled with pomp, where they sit around and try to dream up new ways to screw things up and screw us over in the process, they've lost their way and lost sight of the real purpose of life. And it ain't about trying to stick it to folk musicians.

Being a compassionate kind of guy and a giving individual, like most, if not all, folks musicians, I'm more than willing to take even more of my precious time, talents and energy to guide them toward the path of enlightenment...and if that "carrot" approach don't work, well then there's always the "stick" method. Let's check the score in this battle. The score among lawsuits over this issue, thus far, seems to be Freedom of Expression - 2 and Restrictions against such, by the Seattle Center and the city of Seattle - 0, zero, zip, goose egg, nada, nuthin. I wonder who will win next time? Who do you think, the Northwest Folklife Festival, or those advocating for our First Amendment right to freedom of expression? Care to place your bets?