My mother was the singer in our family.  She had a lovely, lovely soprano voice.  She could just get those high notes light as a feather.  She’d sing in church and for funerals.  As a little kid, I sang too.  I sang outside, it was a farm so animals, maybe cows, heard me, whatever.  There was a windbreak; it was a grove of pines that my grandfather had planted to save us from the northerly wind.  I would go out there and climb the trees and I would sing in there.  I don’t know if anyone’s sung in the pines, but it does amplify the sound rather beautifully. It wasn’t until maybe 4 or 5 years before my mother passed away she told me she did the same thing when she was a new young bride on the farm before kids came along.  She also went to those pines and sang.  Maybe it was two years ago I thought, I do enjoy singing, I might as well learn how.  So I started taking singing lessons, and I found the group the Family Folk Machine.  I keep thinking what my mom would have thought if she had heard me sing on the stage that night.