Duluth’s 18th annual Homegrown Music Festival, featuring local musicians, begins today and runs for 8 days.

Despite the strangeness and, yes, despair of much of our national politics, the Northeastern Minnesota young and young at heart, still sing and make music. They sing and play in a variety of styles and voices. Diversity! Some music styles please my ear; the rest I must learn to hear. But it all enriches my life. Audiences applaud and hoot in appreciation and sway to the music.

If only some of the elders running for office hadn’t forgotten how to dance and sing and sway. We sing and play while many of those who seek to be our leaders rant in tasteless screeds.

We wish music and song; not fear and hate!

Next year the stodgies of gloom will be gone and we will be swaying to the music of the 19th annual Homegrown.

That’s what I believe. I think these young believe that.

In that belief and this variety lies our hope.