Seeking more personal time for herself and to spend with her family and friends, Mary Katherine Aldin will discontinue hosting “Alive & Picking,” her longtime weekly radio show that airs Saturday mornings on Pacifica Radio’s KPFK 90.7 FM in Los Angeles, after the Dec. 31 broadcast. The show — which also is simulcast on stations in Santa Barbara, China Lake and North San Diego — has featured vintage and current recordings of traditional and contemporary bluegrass, folk and old-time roots music, as well as a community calendar of live music events in Southern California.

In a note posted to her blog (or, as she calls it, “blob”) late last month, Aldin wrote that although she has “loved serving the music all these years,” the decision to end her radio show was not a hard one. Employing some occasionally cutting language, she wrote:

“I’ve been doing a radio show in one form or another for over 35 years now, and all this time I have always said that when it stopped being fun I would hang it up. And that time has come; it has stopped being fun. Getting up at 4:00 a.m. on Saturdays? Not fun. Working every single weeknight evening on prep for the coming Saturday’s show, instead of playing with my granddaughter or visiting with friends or, you know, just having time to read a book? Not fun. Listening to countless recordings of mediocre singer/songwhiners to find the few jewels that I just love and really want to play? Not fun. Going in to the radio station to find missing or broken equipment, the control room a mess, and things not being done that should be? LONG ago stopped being fun. The fundraising pledge drives, so essential to the radio station’s continued well-being but so incredibly draining to do? NEVER were any fun”

Discontinuing the radio show also will enable her to go away for a weekend “without having to say, no, sorry, can’t leave till after I do the show Saturday morning,” she continued. ”But the most important thing is this: listening to music, which I used to love, has become a chore and an obligation.”

Aldin has been engaged in preserving, playing and promoting American traditional music in its various forms since she moved to Southern California in 1962. She’s been a freelance independent reissue producer and annotator, worked at The Ash Grove folk club during the 1960s, ran a record store during the 1970s, worked for the booking agency Folklore Productions, contributed essays to several books on music, and wrote a blues column for the L.A. Weekly for more than 20 years (ending in late 2005). A frequent speaker on American roots music; she also has written about it for a number of magazines and played it on radio shows on several radio stations over the years. Aldin plans to continue to maintain her calendar of live music events in Southern California on www.aliveandpicking.com.