I hate to be a killjoy, but I've always felt that Mary Wheeler first picked up and then dropped the ball in her too small book, "Steamboatin' Days". Most of the songs are fragments at best. The info on the informants is very scant and in the case of a woman she only calls "Nancy" the only photo show the BACK of an Afro-American woman. I think it's a strange book. But Dillon Bustin and others have taken the fragments therein and made some wonderful and very singable songs out of them. Check out Dillon Buston's LP---don't know if it's on CD yet. But it could be I'm confusing Dillon's record with the fine tapes Sandy and Caroline made of him sittin' around in the glorious setting of Pinewoods Camp in Mass. several years ago. Many of those songs seem to be as much Dillon as they were Wheeler; maybe more.

Abby, I do look forward to hearing your autoharp SOON. This must be autoharpus interruptus--or whatever...I know how Bill felt.

Art