Eleanor and I are here at my Aunt Frieda's apartment for her memorial service.  I am sitting in her bedroom where she spent fifty years of her life feeling her presence and remembering memories.  Here is a song I wrote to commemorate her:

Frieda

A young girl fled from her country
she was forced to leave her family and her roots
She came here to seek a life of freedom
She came here to start a life anew

She met a good man in New York City
A place they could safely call their home
They wed and raised a beautiful family
which gave them love, beauty and tragedy of its own

Frieda, mother, grandmother, artist and a friend
Frieda, with open eyes and a wisdom without end
loved life with a passion not often seen
with the elegance and grace of a queen

Art was her love and lover
Beauty her companion and friend
listening to your voice was her pleasure
a listening that could help the soul mend

She breathed and drank of life’s pleasures
She understood and felt life’s pains
remembered for her presence, grace and wisdom
invoked by singing of her name

Frieda, mother, grandmother, artist and a friend
Frieda, with open eyes and a wisdom without end
loved life with a passion not often seen
with the elegance and grace of a queen

Frieda, mother, grandmother, artist and a friend
Frieda, with open eyes and a wisdom without end
loved life with a passion not often seen
with the elegance and grace of a queen

Alan Graf plays a traditional song on banjo and guitar in Floyd, Virginia, on the Crooked Road of traditional bluegrass music

Dead or Alive continues its second set at the Dome, in Summertown, TN.  Joe Harris, Shauna Thomas, Alan Graf, Miky Cramer, James Kohn, and Pat O'Connor with Joey Thomas on sound

This is a take I did this morning on the traditional song Columbus Stockade.  I play guitar, banjo, dobro, mandolin and fiddle, besides the bad singing.  Its a song for the road