Yesterday we attended two totally disparate events here on the Peninsula, each of which reinforced why I choose to live on this little patch of sand and sea above all other places.  In the late morning we attended Senator Sid Snyder’s funeral and in the evening, Mary Garvey’s Sunny Camp.  Each gathering included friends and acquaintances and strangers, and there the similarity between them ended.

Sid’s service was held at the old high school gym, undoubtedly the venue with the largest seating capacity on the Peninsula.  Folding chairs all-but-filled the gym floor and people spilled over into the bleachers on either side.

It was a far from elegant setting, but one in keeping with Sid’s down-to-earth values, with his interest and concern for all of his constituents on the beach, and for his honest pride in his own humble beginnings.  Even if we had a five-star cathedral here on the beach, it couldn’t have been a more appropriate place to say goodbye to Senator Snyder.

I knew Sid more as a friend and neighbor than in a political sense.  I think I first met him at one of my folks’ Christmas parties back in the seventies.  I was always impressed with the great respect he seemed to show my mother regarding her father’s term in the Senate back in the early 1900s.

Often, when he visited, he would bring her a copy of something he had run across at the capitol that had to do with Harry Espy.  He always expressed pleasure to be “following in Senator Espy’s footsteps” – never mind that Sid, himself, had a much longer career in Olympia and was many times more influential than my grandfather. Sid always made the playing field seem level.

Dignitaries sat throughout the audience and speakers included Governor Gregoire and U.S, Senator Maria Cantwell.  Their words gave a clear picture of Sid, the Senator, but it was Sid and Bette’s son Sidder and long-time peninsula resident Nabiel Shawa who spoke of the Sid we knew – the family man, the grocer, the friend.  I couldn’t help thinking what an eclectic crowd of mourners we were – and absolutely fitting for the occasion.

In the evening we went to Mary Garvey’s Sunny Camp at Morehead Park in Nahcotta.  Mary had kindly and gently insisted that we needed to be there.  Our inclusion, both this year and last, is a bit of a mystery to us since it is a gathering of folk musicians from all over the northwest who come spend the weekend singing, playing and learning music from one another.  Nyel and I are totally non-musical except in the realm of clapping and cheering.

Even though there were fewer than two dozen participants, we knew several and remembered several others from a year ago.  That’s just the way it is on the Peninsula.  There is always a familiar face or two and it always seems to make any group feel welcoming.

Last night, I finally concluded that it’s the history connection that Mary is interested in promoting as far as we are concerned.  Many of the participants are collectors of songs and stories, especially those with maritime connections – sea shanties and ballads about shipwrecks and other salty folksongs.  Certainly, there is a bit of a connection regarding research and the desire to disseminate the information.  For them the vehicle is music; for Nyel and me it’s through story-telling on stage or paper.

But the most concrete connection made last night was with Matt Moeller of The Whateverly Brothers out of Olympia and Seattle.  We talked a bit about House Concerts and he lamented that Len and Marion of The Sou’wester are no longer here.  “We’ve lost our Peninsula connection and we miss it,” he said.

Nyel and I left last evening hoping we could remedy that.