Phil, Bob,

I have Dad's copies of the albums of the MacColl and Seeger's "Long Harvest" collection. One of these days, as I mentioned above, I will do something useful with them.

And Bob, you're right, he did encourage a lot of people in their singing, but he always deeply, *deeply* enjoyed the works of others in the group, Song Circle, Seattle Folklore, etc. and aspired to do as good a job with his music as these others did. In particular he admired Don Firth; I remember when Dad first started learning guitar from Don, how animated he was after those lessons. I realize now that he caught on quickly, as befits the passionate student in any field. But when I heard Don sing the first time, I knew why he felt the way he did. Others, like Stan James, and John and Sally Ashford, many I'm forgetting right now, and more recently that scamp Bob Nelson, some names that go way back to my early childhood, were role models. He talked about Suzi and Jean all of the time, and the places they were all singing. (I'm sure I'm not the only one in the group who had singing phone calls when he was learning a new song).

Me, I learned songs as a willing but nonetheless captive audience. I was about six when he started taking guitar lessons. He used to ask me what the words were if he forgot them while he was learning the guitar part. He used to sing to each of us in our bedrooms at night, and when Dad was sitting on the edge of the bed, you were essentially pinned by the covers until he sang all he was going to sing. This was usually a mix of new stuff and requests.

Songs influenced our lives, in subtle and not-so-subtle ways. We lived in West Seattle until 1965, and used to take the Fauntluroy Ferry to Vashon fairly often. I remember my sister, sitting next to the window watching one of the deck hands walk past, asking "Is that the dirty little cabin boy?" ;-D

Keep up the stories, I love them. (If this runs low on folksinging stories, I could always tell you a few fishing stories...).

Goodnight, goodnight, goodnight. Maggie