So a nice Jewish dentist goes to a folk music show...

Last night I attended a folk concert in Marblehead featuring a couple of folk singers I've enjoyed for over twenty years now. The coffee house, actually a Unitarian Universalist church, was packed and was overflowing. But thankfully I was allowed to sit up front because I was taking pictures and was videoing the show. So I got myself over there just behind the massive piano and got my various accoutrements together before the show began. As I set up I started talking to an older couple sitting right behind me in the second row of pews. We chatted for a few minutes before the show started and they seemed quite nice.

Then the show began. The artists before us sang their hits and a few lesser known tunes that meant something to them. All in all a wonderful first set. Then they took a 15 minute break between sets so they and us could all stretch our legs and maybe buy some CD's or whatnot. I had already bought what I wanted before the show had even begun, smart cookie that I am, so I had the luxury of being able to just hang out and hobnob. It was during this time that I got to talk more at length with the husband of the couple. I was so glad I did. He was a joy to talk to and had many a story to tell. Not just about the folk music scene of Boston, though he did have a treasure trove of that as well. But stories of his own life and of his meeting his wife and courting her in the fifties and getting married in 1960 and all of the pictures and video he had taken during that time. Still all stemmed from his seeing my own video equipment. He mentioned artists I knew all too well as well as several I had never heard of, though I'm sure they were all just as good. We even talked politics after he realized I was safe to share his opinion with! It was funny, because he almost said this in a hush. His wife, standing not too far off, didn't like him talking politics, since he got so worked up over it.

The second set began and it was as good if not better than the first one. They all sang old favorites that the crowd, including me, sang along with them. I dutifully continued to record the show for posterity's sake. Who's posterity I have no idea. I just know I love this kind of music and apparently others do too. So the set came to the end that it must with one encore for old time's sake. My equipment did its job, just barely. One battery gave out just before the end of the show. Then the other used up its memory as the last song ended. All in all, not a bad evening.

In the course of the conversation with my second row interlocutor, I found out that he is a retired dentist who is Jewish. We talked about my attempt to learn Hebrew this upcoming summer and the Hebrew his grandchildren had to learn for their Bar Mitzvahs. I shared that I'm a seminary student at Gordon Conwell Seminary who is theologically traditional in my beliefs, but who nonetheless is quite liberal in my social views. As I said earlier, all in all, a very nice evening. I hope I meet him again. He was a real blessing to me.