By Leah Garchik {Chronicle Collumnist}

"After yesterday's memorial service for Mimi Farina at Grace Cathedral, when the crowd of 2,000 had filed outside and gathered in the sunshine of the courtyard to share their personal memories, men stood around swapping stories of how they'd fallen in love with her.

The year was 1964 or 1965, and novelist Tom Sanchez was sitting at the Big Sur hot springs, when "suddenly appeared this extraordinary apparition, a luminnous creature." She reached down and lifted up a "small black cat, and picked it up to her face. There was all of this black hair flowing down around her and the cat, and I thought, 'Oh, I've met the woman of my dreams.'" And then Richard Farina (her husband at the time) appeared "and he said, 'Come on, baby, let's go.'"
Sanchez still sounded wistful. "I'm sure everybody has a story. You could put a book together: the first time I fell in love with Mimi Farina."

It was apparent from the service that affection and respect for Farina, who died July 18 at age 56, came in many forms. She was a well-known public person committed to a cause. Bread & Roses, the nonprofit foundation she founded in 1974, brings live entertainment to isolated audiences. The ceremony was in part a formal tribute from Farina's colleagues, who continue that work, and fellow musicians and entertainers, who had participated over the years. Kris Kristofferson was there, as well as Marsha and Robin Williams, Don Novello, Paul Kantner and rock photographer Jim Marshall.

More painfully, the service reflected the piercing sense of loss for those closest, who had surrounded and supported her during the years of her illness. Her sister Joan Baez recalled the wit of dying Farina. "You know," she told Joan, "I think you're really much more involved in this than I am." Baez also spoke fondly of their sister Pauline, who calls herself "the other one," and acknowledged the knotted relationship between the two singing sisters.

Farina's partner of four years, Paul Liberatore, described her "achingly gorgeous singing voice" and said, "She could transform the simple act of walking into a room into a moment of exquisite beauty." And a friend, state Sen. John Burton, described conversations in which Farina (sibling of a famous older sister) and he (whose famous older brother was Rep. Phillip Burton) shared notes about being the little kid.

Farina believed that to reach people, "you don't have to preach or say anything," said Lana Severn, former executive director of Bread & Roses. "You just have to be there and make music." So it was fitting that the plaintive sounds of the singers' voices soaring through the vaults of the cathedral's ceiling seemed the holiest presence at the ceremony. Judy Collins, Maria Muldaur, Holly Near, Boz Scaggs and Jackson Browne performed, the dramatic echoes eerily suggesting that Farina's spirit was near.
After Farina's death, she was dressed in the silvery gown she had worn to the 25th anniversary of Bread & Roses, as she had planned, and her body was placed in a casket decorated with roses painted on it by her sister Joan.

But she still seemed present at the service, which started when the cathedral was filled with the sound of her voice singing, "Quiet Joys of Brotherhood," and concluded with peals of her laughter, recorded a few weeks before her death."
"You'll have to let her go some day," Browne had sung, in his own composition. "Don't you want to see the angels appear?"

Taken from The San Francisco Chronicle article on Wednesday, August 8, 2001
Email Leah Garchik at: lgarchik@sfchronicle.com

"Whenever Bread & Roses gives a show, a community of caring is created. Bread & Roses is our legacy to future generations. Together, let's celebrate that and all of us who choose to help our fellow human beings. Thank you for helping set the stage for human kindness."

~ Mimi Farina, Founding Director Bread & Roses ~
25th Anniversary

"They all came out. Eight-year old patriarch Pete Seager and the beatific folk queen Joan Baez were there. So were rock stars Jackson Browne and Bonnie Raitt, the sedate Boz Scaggs, and the rough-hewn Kris Kristofferson. Comedians Robin Williams, Lily Tomlin and Father Guido Sarducci leavened the earnest atmosphere.
Mimi Farina put out the call to her peers and colleagues in acoustic music to join her 25th anniversary celebration for Bread & Roses, the Marin County based organization that brings light and music into prisons, hospitals and nursing homes. They came..." - Joel Selvin, San Francisco Chronicle

UK Magazine fRoots 21st Anniversary Edition Review of
‘Pack Up Your Sorrows: The Best Of The Vangaurd Years’ Vanguard VCD 79538-2
By Ian Anderson

Like excellent sleeve-note writer Ed Ward, I too was entranced by Dick and Mimi Farina when an impressionable teenager back in the mid 1960s. Dylan towered over everything then, most of his New York/New England songwriter contemporaries seeming insignificant by comparison, and every album a revelation. But in among them snuck this Vanguard LP (Fontana here) called Celebration For A Grey Day, which was disarmingly different. The Farinas centered their sound on hard-strummed Appalachian dulcimers, autoharps and acoustic guitars wrapped up in proto-folk/rock, featuring attractive harmonies, beat lyrics, and the inestimable guitar of Bruce Langhorne.

They had a bit of left bank mystery about them, something rather more intellectual that hinted at late-night discussions on life, the universe and everything wreathed in clouds of suspect smoke – they sounded groovily sophisticated and like they probably wore berets. As well as fine originals like the title track, they also re-wrote traditional songs in a way that got hooks in, notably The Falcon which was an anti-war spin on The Cuckoo. Oh, and as Ed Ward noticed too, Mimi (Joan Baez’s sister, but even that we couldn’t hold against her) was a bit beautiful. Hell, that mattered to teenagers…

It was rather shocking to hear that Dick Farina – first encountered on a (very re-issuable) recording with Eric Von Schmidt, done down in Dobell’s basement, singing the likes of Xmas Island – had been killed in a motor bike crash before we’d even had a chance to read his remarkable novel, ‘Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me.’ That put an instant halt to a real “what if” career path: the Buddy Holly of folk.

Much water under many bridges: how d these recordings culled from Grey Day, it’s follow-up Reflections In A Crystal Wind and a couple of other sources stand up in the high-tech 21st century? Very well indeed is the answer. They still sound original, timeless rather than dated, the funkiest dulcimer playing you ever heard, and streets ahead of what the large majority of today’s self-obsessed singer/songwriters are churning out daily. Object lesson, history lesson, and downright pleasurable and inspiring music all in one package. And Mimi…sigh…

Bread & Roses Official Website

Mimi with Friends of Bread & Roses - addition: Women In The Age of The Child
Affirmation: "I am a woman of beauty and strength!"

~ Heart Warmers Jupiter around the Zodiac (pg1); Tips from Bread & Roses Handbook
Insights from Mimi Farina and Bonnie Raitt (pg2)

Robert Altman photo of 'The Committee' reunion for Bread & Roses

Order info about 1977 Bread and Roses Festival, Berkeley CA from Fantasy Records

Bono and Macca take the Live 8 stage on July 2, 2005

 

 

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