I can only say that I am new to this type of forum and music. I've been playing music for 30+ years and all of my ideas were directly related to what the Carter Family started. Folk was "Blowin in the Wind" and "The Crawdad Song", which didn't make a lot of sense to me at the time.

So what you see as boring I see as cutting edge, where you find little to stimulate I find new and exciting, what you guys have been doing forever I've just bumped into, and it is just cool beans in my opinion. I've heard musicians I never knew existed outside of my state and country. Jerry Rasmussen, IanB, Rick Fielding, Jed Marum, John Walker, Cyder_drinker, Nutty, Jon Freeman, they are all different from what I am used to. Yet amazingly similar in that they all sing about real life and make joyous music.

So when you point one of us towards a thread about who knows what, and think - "Geez, doesn't everybody already know this?" well we don't. Or tell us to put something into the forum search and quit bothering you all with details - well remember that it is possible to share the same information more than once in the same space but different time and different person.

I'll never learn all of the songs I want to. I'll never meet all of the people I'd like to, but I never forget that as the Indians say, "We are all related." We breathe the same air, sing the same songs, and dream the same dreams. For that I am eternally grateful.

I am grateful for having lived here in this time and the internet to meet and learn all of these new people/things.

Spaw, Bobert, CarolC, and lots of others that I say are in my thoughts and heart. You've changed me and the world - I believe - to a better space. Nuff babbling -

Steve