3.  "HOW BRIGHTLY GLOWS THE PAST"

At New Year's of 1985 I went to my first reunion, the twenty-fifth anniversary of people who had performed at Club 47, a three-night celebration of concerts held at Boston's Symphony Hall. I had not intended to go, but Mimi encouraged me, reminding me that after all, I was the first folksinger to have sung at Club 47, and somewhat the mother of it all. As flattery will get you anywhere, at the last minute I packed up and flew with her.

It was a well organized, cleverly promoted production put on by Tom Rush, folksinger gone to market, that included some new groups which had never seen the inside of Club 47, and a great number of oldies like myself, Mimi, Eric Von Schmidt, members of  the Jim Kweskin Jug Band (including Maria Muldaur), the Charles River Valley Boys, Keith and Rooney, Jackie Washington, and others of bluegrass and pure-folk fame. I watched the show from the stage, which was smartly set up with tables and chairs and looked quite homey. Manny was there at a table nearest the performers, like a grandpa at a birthday party. This was his city, his venue, and his music, and these were his people.

I hung out in the dressing room and met people I hadn't seen for ten and even twenty years. For the most part we were well pre -served.

Betsy Siggins, who was going prematurely grey a few years back, was now as white as a snowbank. She had found herself at last by running a soup kitchen in New York City which feeds two hundred and fifty people a day.

Eric Von Schmidt, artist, painter, musician. His hair and beard, which had been bushy and red, were now like silver and black silk, and the upper left missing tooth had been replaced with shining gold. Since the smile seldom left his face, the impression I had was all of sparkling: eyes, hair, teeth, and soul.

Dear Goodie had gained some weight which made his face quite round, and the dimples in his cheeks into great canyons. He lives with Dorothy, makes films for public television, and spends time in the fast lane-he traveled with Jesse Jackson when he was on the campaign trail.

Billy B. is a set designer now, and had made the big sign which said "Club 41' and hung as a backdrop for the stage. As I had suspected, he had barely changed, his hair thick in tight curls and his cut-glass eyes just as blue. I didn't feel any of the old wild attraction, however ... maybe because his answering machine says, "Hello, you have reached the home of Billy and Sue Burke."

And there was Cooke, skinny as ever, looking like a Wells Fargo bank teller from the early 1900s, complete with moustache, vest, black hat and all. "Well," he toasted at New Year's Eve dinner, "I'd better say it now before I drink too much and get all sloppy, how much I love all of you ..." Cooke had just finished a novel, and he said that it's hundreds of pages long and he can't really explain it.

Jim Rooney drank a lot and was the funniest person there. I hadn't known him very well in the old days, and now he's gained a lot of weight, too, and lives in Nashville and still plays the guitar left-handed, that is to say, upside down and backwards.

Fritz plays jug, washboard, and washtub, among other things, has a humor dry as an old oak log, and at dinner ordered the twenty one-dollar lobster dinner and sucked clean every leg, claw, and elbow.

"Surfer Bob" Siggins, a research biochemist transplanted from M.I.T. to San Diego, banjo picker, and pedal steel whiz, had the tiniest, friendliest wrinkles around his eyes, and an aura of lightness to his thinning hair and eyelashes, as though he had tinted everything except his California bronze face.

Urban hillbillies, all. I hadn't realized before that this group of folkies had been the family I had not been able to develop in high school. They were my first second family, gathered during the years of my love affair with Michael and Harvard Square. And they were all still singing. Perhaps that's what impressed me most of all: loud, soft, onstage and off, solo, duet, trio, chorus, fifties rock, sixties country and western and ballads and folk, hymns; all of us sang -- right- wingers, liberals, pacifists, reformed druggies, yuppies, and upwardly mobile guitar pickers; we all still sang.

The last night ended with Tom Rush leading us in a ragtime number. Then we all shifted around to different microphones, for a totally unrehearsed version of "Amazing Grace." I sought out Mimi and Maria, and Cooke got just back of us so he and I could lead in the verses. Everyone came forward from the tables onstage, and the smiles were dazzling. I hugged one of the "new guys," not remembering exactly who he was. Geoff Muldaur ushered his kids on with us. I put one arm around Mimi and the other around Maria. Maria, born-again Christian, more or less, looking like Mary Magdalene, San Francisco Mabel Joy, a white Tina Turner: flashy in hand-med-own clothes-flaming yellow chamois overblouse, punk belt, black skirt, and Ferragamo heels; cheeks ablaze with the love of Jesus and fire-engine-red blush-on; her huge black eyes rimmed with natural lashes so long and manicured they looked like dime store acquisitions; and underneath it all, always the look, the tiniest look of a hungry match girl who's just been slapped for gazing too long at a window display of dresses and fine shoes.

Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me.
lance was lost, but now I'm found,
Was blind, but now I see.

How we all sang. I thought Maria would leave the ground, Cooke sounded like the bass in the Sons of the Pioneers, and Mimi and I  dared not look at each other for fear of stopping to think about this bizarre angel band, and how gorgeous it was, how like a Baptist church choir. After "Amazing Grace" came "Wasn't It a Mighty Storm?," which inspired dancing, swaying, rocking, and more harmony. The audience loved it and was hollering for more, but the time was 11:28 p.m. and overtime started at 11:30 p.m., so we rallied in the dressing room, where the atmosphere rapidly became like that of the winning team's locker room at the Cotton Bowl.

A party was being thrown at the Copley where I had the great fortune to find the best dance partner I've had since some pint- sized Venezuelan swept me off my feet in a discotheque in Paris over fifteen years ago. I was ecstatic and could easily have danced all night. Unfortunately, we were in Boston and the music had to stop at two o'clock, and I was so disappointed I could have cried, right there in my inside-out black Joan Baez T-shirt, pushed-up sweatpants and sneakers, gasping for breath and steaming like a country fresh cow pie.

Something else stands out in my mind about that reunion, involving an entire separate story that resolved itself on that special New Year's.

Mimi and I don't see each other too much now, at least not the way we did when her husband, Dick, was alive. She was still my "little sister" then. After he died, Mimi's life had to begin all over again at age twenty-one, only this time built on her own foundation. She hadn't even known how to drive a car.

She'd left the nest at eighteen to marry Richard Farina, and in his exuberant way he'd been happy to make all of his own decisions and most of hers-about everything. He was killed on her twenty-first birthday, and for years she seemed on the brink of suicide and lived enshrouded in loneliness and sorrow. She told me that on her first night completely alone in her own apartment, she woke up from a dream screaming for help, and continued screaming and banging on the floor with her shoe until the tenant below came rushing up.

I remember her second marriage, held during the Big Sur Folk Festival. She was exotically beautiful, and fragile as Tiffany glass. Mylan was sweet, and the sight of his Abe Lincoln frame and long shocks of shining black hair, all dressed in velvet, and Mimi with a ring of daisies around her head, in a lawn-length white wedding dress, inspired the words to the first song I ever wrote, called "Sweet Sir Galahad."

Mimi and Mylan lived up on Telegraph Hill in a wonderful lop sided apartment which has since been torn down. Mimi began to see a therapist and dig deep down into the fabric of her undiscovered self. She learned to drive. She worked with the Committee, the famous San Francisco satire group, and since she didn't have much of an identity outside of Dick and me, and then Mylan, she began to create one. She and Mylan divorced after three years on reasonably good terms, and she called herself Mimi Farina.

Mimi had been a dancer when she was young. A natural, it's called, when someone is born with her kind of grace and precision. We all thought that she would want to "be a dancer." Perhaps it was after she saw the ease with which I became "famous," and after she had tasted stardom on stage with Dick, and after she understood that to be a prima ballerina meant a kind of dedication she did not have, in a milieu she really didn't like that much ... and perhaps also because she is a good musician, Mimi chose what I thought was the most difficult of all paths possible: she chose to sing and accompany herself on the guitar. She chose the path which would doom her forever to a lifelong fight to be introduced as Mimi Farina, and not as "Joan Baez's sister" or "Wife of the late Richard Farina."

We put more distance between us when I got married, for though David liked Mimi, he was much too involved with our work (and, perhaps, so was I) to do much hanging out, and I was spending a great deal of time being the world's most fastidious housewife. When Gabe was born, I thought Mimi had turned into a shrew.

Looking back, I think Mimi's behavior is not hard to explain. I was infatuated with Gabe, an average spoiled child who could elicit coos and whoopies from me at the utterance of a syllable, and Mimi, feeling jilted, and never having been a mother, was jealous and disgusted. Many years later, she told me of an afternoon at her house when Gabe and I were visiting, and Gabe, in diapers, was twirling around in the middle of her living room rug holding a hardboiled egg. She was trying to carry on a conversation with me, and I was gazing at my miraculous child, spinning so cleverly in circles, when he let the egg fall onto the rug and stepped on it. He was gleeful, and catching his spirit, I gushed, "Isn't he cute?" Mimi kept quiet at the moment, but later said she didn't know who she wanted to shoot first, him or me.

At that point, also, the imperious habits I'd acquired from my inheritance of "Queen of Folk" and, as David referred to it, "Ms. World Peace," were becoming less and less tolerable to her. Granted, I was known for being a benevolent and good queen, for taking risks, giving away money, caring for the poor, going to jail for my beliefs, and sacrificing my career for more meaningful things. But nonetheless, I had become accustomed to special treatment and had developed some unconscious habits which I still retain and recognize only if someone gently points them out to me.

We didn't have much to say to each other for some time. When we talked, the conversation was stilted, guarded, or simply fake. She seemed to be always angry, and I'm sure I just went on doing what I've been accused of doing more than once -- namely, telling stories about myself. Then one day in the late seventies it dawned on us that we had not even a remnant of the close and special relationship we'd had for so many years, and we decided, mutually, to get together for lunch and "talk." We were both late, and later on, confessed that we had both taken a Valium just to be able to face each other.

What I remember most about that lunch was that Mimi had no idea of her own strength and growth. When I suggested that' she had often hurt my feelings, she thought I was bluffing or lying. She still saw me as powerful and untouchable, and herself as powerless and insignificant. There were lots of teary moments and righteous assertions as to who was right and who was wrong, and not much was settled, but it was an honest effort, and the beginning of the long road back to a close and honest friendship.

Since then, we've worked hard to stay close. We've had some successes and some near misses. Mimi runs Bread & Roses, a wonderful dreamchild of her own making, an organization which takes entertainment into hospitals, prisons, old people's homes, and other institutions. She and the organization are well known and highly respected in the Bay Area, and other Bread & Roses groups have started up all around the country, largely due to the talent and persistence of Mimi and the hard work of her staff. She still sings for a living, and like all of us, has had to scale everything down because of the lack of demand for our particular kind of music. She still hasn't let go of Dick, and when she goes out on tour, she calls up to say goodbye and usually gets the flu or a cold, or something.

The morning before the day we were to fly east for the Club 47 reunion, she developed a full-fledged head cold. She was beautiful, sad, funny, resigned, and ill. I felt like a mom and wanted to take good care of her so she'd feel as good as possible when she got up on stage at Symphony Hall. We stayed at the Airport Hilton, and I wished that I had no money problems at all so I could just order up special rooms and valet parking and limousines, like the old days. But the bellman recognized us and let us park close to the room, and we had fun sharing accommodations, Mimi stoking up with aspirin and Actifed. Upgraded to ambassador class, we enjoyed a luxurious flight across the country, and were put up at the Copley Plaza in Boston, treated by Tom Rush to the plane fare and two lovely bedrooms and a huge sitting room.

I watched Mimi's body draw swords against her work. The day of her performance, she woke up barely able to speak, head and nose clogged, chest constricted, voice tiny. She had a slight fever. Her eighteen-minute set would consist of two songs alone, one with Maria Muldaur, and one with me. I went off to do my part at the children's concert, a benefit for Ethiopian refugees. (I hate singing for children. Everybody thinks I can be Pete Seeger and amuse any age group for hours, and I can't.) "I Love My Rooster" saved my hide once again. I also had "Whatcha Gonna Do with the Baby-o?" in which you poke out the baby's eyes and throw him against the wall and scrape him off, and kids just love to hear that song.

Back at the hotel, Maria was telling Mimi that there wasn't time to practice their song. I watched Maria standing in Mimi's bathroom doorway, animatedly talking about pasta and weight and how Mimi ought to wear clothes that showed off her tiny waist, and Mimi trying to listen and put her eye shadow on at the same time, but was mainly preoccupied about her songs. Maria went on about Italian food, and I uttered a quick prayer to St. Jude to help us through the evening.

What I didn't notice was that although Mimi was congested and weary and petrified, she was solid as a green tree and outwardly calm. She and Maria did rehearse in the dressing room co-ed lavatory. Maria kept forgetting the words and when someone accused her of being nervous, she said, "But I never get nervous! The only time I get Mimi is when I sing with nervous!" We all howled, but I realized that, of course, she was scared, too. At the last minute the order of the program was changed, and Mimi was put after Buskin and Batteau, two young men who make lots of jokes and sing strong lively music, accompanying themselves on piano, guitar, and violin, and who are known for doing a rousing set.

"They're on before me," said Mimi regretfully. "And it's not fair."

I was so nervous I went out onstage to watch them perform while Mimi paced quietly and gracefully back and forth in the excited crowd gathering in the wings as the show neared its finale. She continued going over her songs and plunking the guitar. Buskin and Batteau were playing "The Boy with the Violin," a gorgeous ballad filled with rich violin breaks between each verse, about a lady taking a boy in and sleeping with him and waking in the morning to find the window open and only his footprints left in the dew. There was tumultuous applause when they finished, and my stomach was in knots. Anyone hated to go on after a well received, boisterous set. I ducked out the stage door and took Mimi by the wrist.

"Put it in the hands of God," I said.

"I just did," said Mimi.

She strode out steadily in black silk pants and a brilliant blue-green silk top over a black turtleneck, looking stunningly beautiful. The applause died down and she began to talk. I don't know what I was expecting, but she seemed so fine and commanding. She made a few jokes and the audience responded with light laughter. Then she sang her first song, "Old Woman," which she wrote about old folks: "Oh, Grandmama, is it true what they say? / The river of life keeps on flowing, while time will take us away ..." Her voice was strong and pure and steady. The next song was a capella, with the audience snapping their fingers in rhythm. It went flawlessly.

Hunkering in the dark, I began to relax and allow myself to feel total admiration for my little sister, when suddenly she was saying, "There is someone missing from this stage tonight," and I didn't know who she was going to name-Tom Jans, her singing partner for years who died as a result of internal injuries from a car wreck? Steve Goodman, the brave little guy who wrote "The City of New Orleans," and who fought leukemia for half of his short lifetime and had recently succumbed? Or one of the sixties souls like Janis Joplin or Geno Foreman?

" ... and that's Richard Farina. He belongs up here with us. And, in fact, the chances are he's not too far away ..." I found my shoulders shaking softly, with the thousand memories her unexpected mention of Dick conjured up, and with awe that she was saying the name of her sacred person, right there in Symphony Hall, in front of thousands of people. Some of them may have been strangers to Dick, but, by the sound of the applause, many of them were admirers as well. Maria was invited out, and they sang one of the most beautiful duets I've ever heard. It was a capella, and their powerful and true folk voices braided around each other, soaring and plummeting, sustaining words which Dick had written to "The Quiet Joys of Brotherhood." I couldn't get my eyes to dry up through the whole song, and I knew that these ladies were doing something most extraordinary. They were healing wounds. They were telling us something about women survivors.

Surely it was those of us on the inner circle who were the most moved, but who would have expected Geoff Muldaur, Maria's ex-husband, who had always been distant and, I thought, slightly hostile for the many years I'd known him, to say, in the dressing room when we all piled backstage after the finale, "That fucking 'Quiet Joys,' man, just saved me five years of therapy. I mean, I wasn't just spilling a few little tears, I was ..." and he clutched his throat and mocked a rack of sobs. I had never seen him really smile before, so I went over and said, "Can I have my hug now? I've waited twenty-five years," and he gave me a hug. Goodie was all flushed and going on about the finale and "Amazing Grace" and in the middle of a sentence, said, "And then there was Mimi -- Good Christ!" and the tears streamed from his eyes while he turned to hug her. I just kept  smiling and marvelling at my sturdy little sister who had knocked us all off our feet. All of us alive are survivors, but how many of us transcend survival?

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