
We've started the budget process over at the school committee table, and the outlook is bleak: State budgets are getting tighter, health insurance takes a bigger bite out of our state-determined minimum funding level every year, and here in Massachusetts, the only way to raise local taxes is to appeal directly to the voters - a tactic we lost by a factor of 5 to 2 just three years ago when we tried to get enough to reopen the middle school library. It's all part of a larger trend, of course. Since 2002, our school [...]

There's a good bit of the Gershwin brothers in the folkstream, and for good reason: the best of their tunes are catchy, simple, and storied, just as the best folk is. Moreso, more than almost any other composers of popular song for the stage, the universal recognition factor of so much of their songbook marks it as folksong, or something near enough: owned by the culture-at-large, familiar on the tongue and the ear, versatile enough to take flight in the hands of the hundreds of artists and amateurs who have made the songs their own. [...]

Remember this when we all admitted to welling up on public transport when the right (or wrong) song pops up? Well, the commute isn't getting any easier now we're drawing into autumn, is it? Howard and I spoke early doors on Thursday and both admitted to feeling a bit on a misty morning , but as Catherine Howe has only just been posted up here, I'll resist the urge. Instead, let's have some Lurlene-like bluegrass and country classics to celebrate and commiserate life on the road. Listen: [...]