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What a way to end a work week! Three friends and I attended a concert at First Unitarian Congregational Society in Brooklyn which is home to First Acoustics, a terrific music series that is now in its 8th season. This concert (co-sponsored by First Acoustics and People’s Voice Cafe), was in celebration of the new songbook called Rise Again — put out by Peter Blood and Annie Patterson, the creators of the original songbook called Rise Up Singing. Rise Again has new songs that do not appear in the original songbook. To say these books are labors of love is an understatement. To winnow all the possible songs down to the mere 1200 that are in each book is mind-boggling. But they have done it before and they did it again. In the spirit of what the songbooks represent, a crowd of music lovers all met last night to join a talented group of folk musicians to sing songs from the new book. How amazing it was to sing with Emma’s Revolution (Pat Humphries & Sandy O); Bev Grant and the Brooklyn Women’s Chorus; Magpie (Terry Leonino & Greg Artzner); Jean Rohe; and of course Annie and Peter, the creators of the book we sang from! I am a big fan of singing in community, as was Pete Seeger, and the Carry It On Fund was created to help further Pete’s and his wife Toshi’s mission of keeping the spirit of song alive — as well as supporting peace, social justice and protecting the earth. I hope you will support this worthy cause. I also hope you buy one (or both) of these great songbooks and sing as often as you can — hopefully with others! (For those of you in the NYC area, Folk Music Society of NY hosts a relaxed, casual folk open sing the first Wednesday of every month in Brooklyn. Grab your new songbook(s) and come sing with us!)