Today Kim held her annual hootenanny. I went, even though I think
"hootenanny" is the most gormless, ungainly, mawkish word in the English
language. Stephan's shortening it to "hoot" did nothing to cut its
calculated rusticness; it sticks out with all the charm of a bulbous nose.
When I said that to Stephan, he looked offended, and countered that when
he'd invited Evan, Evan had said, "Gee, that's funny, my mom had one just
last week." As if having a hootenanny was a regular kind of thing.

It's not. Like nudist colonies, vegetarianism, and calling your parents
by their first names, hootenannies are distinctly outside the contemporary
repetoire of American behavior. I love Evan and Stephan, but sometimes
when they get snotty about things like this, I feel like tearing my hair
out. The ranks of organizers are populated with a lot of red diaper babies
for whom civil disobedience is a rite of passage, not an unprecedented
risk. It gets cliquish, with a culture you feel compelled to exchange for
your own if you're going to join in.

This can't possibly make newcomers comfortable. To a lot of people, I
imagine, sitting down with your mandolin-playing friends to sing old union songs as a means of entertaining yourself, or telling people to avoid
buying Disney t-shirts must seem like fanaticism. For me, it just plays
into my self-consciousness: my mom and dad were not active protesters;
they ultimately returned from the blissful fields of hippiedom to take
boring desk jobs; and as a result, in this kind of company I feel like I
missed a head start. (Don't worry, Mom and Dad; this is a schoolgirl
twinge, like when I'd listen to hip hop in high school and worry my hip
Nirvana-devouring boyfriend would snub me for it.)

I was pleased to learn, in the end, that I did know a lot of the
songs in the book, including some that the other people there didn't -
"Now That The Buffalo's Gone" and "Wond'rous Love," among others. I got to
see a dobro and a steel guitar up close for the first time, and heard them
played roughly, as I imagine is fitting. Some union types who were friends
of Kim's thumped out some hard old blues and Irish tunes. At one point we
had two mandolins, a guitar, a flute and a pair of spoons bumbling through
"Dueling Banjos." We sang "Goodnight Irene" and a breeze came in the window. I was suppposed to head to a party in Brooklyn, but hanging out
with a bunch of recent college grads terrified of their futures seemed
less appealing, somehow. I felt like I was back on Topeka Street, picking
avocados at an early summer family barbecue with A Prairie Home Companion
drifting from the radio inside.