... and being peaceful in Colrain

While Melina leads her jet-setting Gen X life in Manhattan, clubbing and what-not, here at the "Round House" in the beautiful hills of Massachusetts a bunch of vacationing adults are eating quinoa tabbouleh and singing.

Last night was "Campers' Cabaret" - the campers presented songs and skits of their choosing. Because I figured they were sick of hearing my voice after all our rehearsals, I didn't sign up, but now I'm sorry I didn't. A lesson I have to learn over and over - participate, don't lurk!

The last number of the night was the "Radicals' Fight Song," a parody one of them had written of the "Vegan Fight Song," written by Lisa Pickel - which itself was a parody of the "Lyke Wake Dirge," a song of more-or-less medieval pedigree sung brilliantly by the Young Tradition back in the 60s. Sadly, 66.6% of the Young Tradition trio is deceased, and the vocal ensemble called the Solstice Assembly, which I directed in the 80s and 90s and which recorded the "Vegan Fight Song," exists no longer. But we at the Round House, we are still above ground!

As I watched my new silver-haired friends sing inspirational songs after a screening of the documentary about Martin Luther King and the Children's March, I had the thought that we, who of our own free will choose to spend ten days together in a hippy house eating tofu curry, with our songs of protest and memories of "Flower Power" and civil rights marches, with our silly bumper stickers, are becoming marginalized as elder generations always are - after decades of demographic importance, we are being supplanted. We and our quaint ways are passing into the East (or was it the West?), out of Middle Earth.

Many will no doubt say "Good Riddance!" and I can certainly understand that. But I wonder - will ours have been last generation to know the fun of cooking dinner together, big pots of thick soup and home-made bread, and eating together around a big beat-up old table? Will the kids now growing up hunched over their computers in their bedrooms ever gather around a room to sing? Will anybody remember the Children's March? Does anybody care?

I guess these sunrises over the mountains and valleys and late-night harmonies are getting to me. I'm not usually this sentimental.

That's today's report from Rivendell.