In honor of Midwinter and the world not ending, I’d like to share the following video from a folk song festival I attended back in October.

First, a little background:  When my mom and her sisters were little, they used to spend part of their summers at a Lithuanian camp called Dainava, in Michigan.  And one summer when I was nine, my mom and grandma took my brother and me for a family weekend (things I remember: playing with our cool new beach buckets by the lake; learning to make tuna salad on crackers; totally wishing I had one of those Caboodle organizers like the other girls … P.S. remember Caboodles? 😀 )

Flash forward to this past year, when some of the camp alumni decided to organize Bardų Festivalis (Festival of Bards), an informal gathering of fellow former campers and a few folk bands.  It really felt like a big family reunion — the comfortable, laid-back kind where everyone’s just there (forgive the cliche) to have a good time.  We sang both in English and Lithuanian, going through familiar songs we’d learned as kids and new ones written just for this occasion; serious songs about those who fought for Lithuania’s freedom and jam session renditions of “Don’t Worry, Be Happy.”

One of the guest bands was Mustard’s Retreat, a Michigan-based duo consisting of David Tamulevich and Michael Hough.  And one of their songs was a kind of ode to the Winter Solstice and the spirit of this time of year (you might recognize the melody from a well-known Christmas carol):

P.S.  ZOMG Martin Freeman was the most adorable Bilbo Baggins and now I have those two stanzas from “Misty Mountains” stuck in my head and was that Benedict Cumberbatch’s silhouette? and Eeeeee! he’s going to be Smaug and we’ll get to hear that deep, rumbling voice and…  sorry, I’ll stop now.