Mm. So, I'm home for the weekend to go see the play tomorrow. Tonight Mom took me out to the Sons of Severn annual charity benefit concert (Admission: all the canned goods you can carry. They had a Ryder Truck, and it got *full*.) Fun, very fun, even if two of the groups supposed to sing cancelled at the last minute. I know I joke a lot about how Anne Arundel County is a vast wasteland of townless suburbia, but really? Underneath all the cookie-cutter developments and stupid planning decisions and lack of local government (Turn the first mall in the US into a *shopping center*? Are you nuts? Are you trying to destroy my childhood? Even if it is a very pretty shopping center and The Rock is still there.) err, where was I? Oh yes, under and around and above all the modern suburban commuter spirit of placelessness, there is a strong gossamer network of old-fashioned community that's very real and very vital, you just have to go looking for it, and *choose* to take part in it. Which probably makes it a much nicer place really than a true soul-crushing small town. And much of the most visible part of it is through school and community arts programs, and we must *never* let them die. (D'you know I am the proud owner of programs from high school plays in which my sister acted, and my dad acted, and my grandfather acted? No sports stardom for us, nope.)

And I could not name a place I'd rather have grown up in, truly.

Also I occasionally give in to mild snark about Folk Music. That is because what I saw tonight is what I've always wished Folk Music *should* be, even though it's clearly not what it actually means in music culture. Because somehow Sweet Adelines and middle school choirs and barbershop quartets and intensely earnest teenagers with acoustic guitars don't seem to have quite found their niche in high culture enough to even get a genre name. Which is why they're real folk music. Because it's music that folks get together and make on their own, that hasn't been pre-empted by professionals and festivals and corporations and academics and it's a hobby not a fandom or career and it's songs people sing that their grandparents sang because their grandparents sang them and they want their grandkids to sing them too. It's people music and community music and all of us together music ...

I'm going very maple-sugary my last few entries, aren't I? It's the spring air. Must be.