I randomly came across and revisited this video tonight, recorded at the Prince Theatre (now the Garfield Center for the Arts) in Chestertown, MD in 2006. I had moved to the area about a dozen years prior; enough to become established in the "small pond", despite all of my efforts to lay low in the local music scene. I've witnessed musicians moving to an area such as this with the intention of taking over king (or queen) of the small pond status. I was the opposite. I had plenty going on in the markets I came from, and still could commute (or otherwise travel) to. And I've never taken the approach or attitude of competing with other musicians. There's a place for everyone with a contribution to make. I had no intention of disrupting the status quo, or disturbing the pecking order, or anything like that. All my life, though, at least from high school on, I would become aware of other musicians having competitions with me, that I was otherwise blissfully unaware of. I didn't care, and still don't. I was always and only interested in doing my thing, as best and effectively as I could figure out at the time. And now, this video strikes me differently than before. It reminds me of the place of respect that I was afforded in the community where I lived. Not because I sought it, rather as the result of the contributions I was blessed to be able to make. I didn't seek opportunities so much as receiving them when they came to me, eventually leading up to, among other things, my relationship with The Mainstay and the (literally) hundreds of collaborative shows I've curated and performed there. When a much younger musician, I purposed and accepted music as my calling.  This video reminds me of the blessing of being true to that.