I think it is sad that so many who deplore the BS side of the Mudcat miss the songs that arise out of even the silliest threads.

I also think it should be noted that at our recent MudGathering, which was attended by several people who are *G* pretty serious *G* about the scholarly side of folk music, there was A LOT of chat about non-music. It always turned back to music, but if anyone got impatient for that to occur all they needed to do was start a song. Here, all they need to do is contribute a song to a thread, or start a thread with what is exciting to them in their life musically.

I especially missed what I think might have occurred if people had not focused on feelings of upset-- threads between the heavy hitters of scholardom here asking each other the high-level questions that might have been at their level of interest and knowledge. I do not know why that did not occur much. I'd have learned a lot.

But make no mistake that this is at all times a music site. Last night I decided that a certain thread I found destructive of community relations should sink in the thread list a bit. So I opened as many music threads as I could to bring them back up. In most cases I made a comment on the topic of the thread, though some had not required it because a request had already been met, etc., and those I simply refreshed. And I found that the overwhelming number of threads were music threads. I learned much and contributed little.

I also noticed, for the first time, that I can only be "in" so many music threads at a time until my brain needs to head off into other territories simply to allow the music material to process. It's intense, this thing we call music, and it uses a lot of us all at once.

In that sense, the BS here also reminds me of what I saw in the Red Cross' intense atmosphere, and also of what I saw when our two boys came home from Navy nuke school-- and also, with our friend in seminary. In these information-rich, highly-charged subjects, the BS has to assert itself to keep one functioning. It's a natural accompaniment to the intensity of the experience. Maybe the music scholars have a higher tolerance for that intensity, and if so, great for them. But most people need to bust loose to keep their attention flexible enough to handle the serious stuff.

A good text for the purists here might be-- if they want to understand the rank and file around here-- SURELY YOU'RE JOKING, MR. FEYNMANN, the stories of the great physicist Richard Feynmann, who was to the development of the Bomb and other scientific wonders what a few of our members here are to folk music. (Their egos are as big as Feynmann's so I do not need to name them for them to get their strokes!)

People are just going to be PEOPLE. Why not just work with that?

~S~