Noel Paul Stookey (Paul from Peter, Paul & Mary)

Worry less about hitting a wrong note and more about making music together.

I grew up loving the folk tunes of Peter, Paul and Mary. I remember day dreaming and imagining singing their songs with my own children. In 2008, when I had accepted that I wouldn't meet my blueprint plan of having a husband and a child before the age of thirty, I wrote a book of universally applicable lessons that I had learned from interviewing people of all backgrounds from around the world. By chance, I ended up having a signing in the same bookstore as Peter Yarrow in Roseville, Minnesota. Though childless at the time, his music brought me back to my childhood and the sight of grown adults singing alongside young children brought tears to my eyes. I had dinner with Peter that evening and met up with him at subsequent concerts and events several times. In 2013, when I was in New Orleans attending the National Conference on Race and Ethnicity, I finally had a chance to introduce my then 18-month old daughter to the Paul of Peter, Paul and Mary. Paul presented a program called Music to Life, in which he showed the capacity that music, combined with love, has to change our world.