Howdy folks: Thanks to Joe for knowing how to take my e-mail and insert Warren Leming's revue into this thread where I believe it belongs. Both sides can be championed------and knowing Mudcatters, we might have a discussion here to rival the great one we've been having via e-mails on JACK ELLIOTT, this film and, mostly, what, if anything, we owe the biological family as opposed to the artistic family (community) we have joined out on our various hot dusty roads.

For me, once I bought into the mesmerizing lifestyle of "the road" and a life singing folksongs, I realized it would be difficult to also have a family and be there for them while staying true to my musical ideals. I made choices that I hoped would allow me to mesh the two worlds and make both work -- on some level at least. We all had to accept less of the stuff (toys) the American Dream seems to be made of these days. But the path we, as a family, have trod is one that has been loving and mutually fulfilling in so many mentally enriching ways (some might call that intellectual spirituality) that I will forever be ecstatic I took the road I did.

It was Sandy Paton, about 40 years ago, who told me to hit the road and see America if I was going to sing the songs that sprang from her soil. Sandy, jokingly, says that he wonders if I've ever forgiven him. I'd best take this opportunity to thank him in public. (SANDY, THANK YOU !)

If Jack Elliott has had to endure the public flogging from his family because he chose the beat/folk pathway that Woody abandoned so trgically and prematurely (and therefore avoided being called on the carpet himself for similar doings)----I submit it is because he committed the crime of simply surviving until the kids were old enough to take out their anger in a venue like this film. As Roger Ebert said in his review, it does smell very like revenge.

Somehow, Carol and Chris and I, as totally different as we are, made it work---so far. Why?---You might well ask. Probably pure luck !

I'd be interested to see what others here might feel about the points made by Warren Leming or by anyone else posting in this thread. Decisions many of us have made over tha last half of the last century---lifestyle choices---philosophical meanderings----many other factors that have not hit me yet---there's lots of good grist for this forum's mill to be ruminated on possibly.

Art Thieme