That's good to hear, Joe. I picked up a copy in a local bookstore, read the title list, and bought it. I was when I got it home that I discovered how much of the material in the book had been rendered "politically correct." Including the illustrations. Everybody has dark skin. But not too dark.
And their features were sort of indefinite. Racially not quite this, not quite that. And miscellaneous other things.

If the book has been "de-bowdlerized," I might see if I can find a copy of the new edition. Because it would have been a good source if you could trust the lyrics.

Seattle Song Circle flushed a lot of good people out on Sunday evenings. Merritt Herring was up from California and living on Vashon Island in Puget Sound, Sally and John Ashford, Mary Wilson, Mary Garvey, John Dwyer—all kinds of good people. We swiped learned songs from each other, and Sally listened to a bunch of tapes we made (we all carried little battery operated cassette recorders) and put out a mimeographed book of songs that people in the group sang and made it available of a nominal fee (this was shortly before computers and printers). Great stuff! But this was for learning, not for singing from, hymnal style.

About the only group songs we did were sea chanteys, and the bunch got so good at those that we were invited to sing at the Moss Bay Sail and Chantey festival—on the deck of the Wawona, a schooner that used to sail various kinds of cargo up and down the West Coast. I got a chance to sing a bunch of fo'c'sle chanties in a genuine fo'c'sle. And on one of the nights of the festival, we did a concert in a theater in Kirkland, Wash., across Lake Washington from Seattle, on Moss Bay. A whole bunch of Canadians came down from Vancouver, B.C., Paddy Hernon, Paddy Graber, and a bunch of others, adding their prodigious talents to the event.

And then we started getting a bunch of newcomers, which would have been a good thing, were it not that instead of wanting to learn the songs as we did, they insisted on using song sheets and coming with an armload of books they sang from.

Looking back on it, we could have been hard-nosed about drawing some guidelines for the group, but . . . didn't happen, and things pretty much went to pot. The "old timers" like Merritt, John and Sally, John Dwyer, et al got pretty fed up and dropped out. Last I heard, the Seattle Song Circle is still sitting around singing together out of "Rise Up Sinking."

But I'll see if I can rustle up a new copy and give it a look.

Don Firth