Beatrice Flaming:  

After graduating from Hopkins High, I went to Tabor College for one year in Kansas, fell in love with a senior, Paul Flaming, whom I married in August of 1971. We moved to Denver, CO and lived there for two years while I worked first at a Farrell's Ice Cream Parlor and then in a mortgage banking firm. In June, 1973 we moved to the Washington, D.C. area (ultimately settling for a couple years in Springfield, VA) where I again worked for a Farrell's and then in an accounting office at Fort Belvoir, VA. In June 1975 we moved back to MN intending to return to the mountains of Colorado a couple years later, but never made it. We're still here! Since then I worked for a Montessori school and in a stained glass studio, then as a receptionist at the U of MN dental school in pediatric dentistry. In May, 1980 I went on staff with Youth Investment Foundation (a Christian youth ministry which I had been volunteering with) in the Hopkins school district, but left in May, 1982 in my fifth month of pregnancy with our first son. At this time, I became involved with Birth Community (part of the home birth movement) and worked part time at Linden Hills Co-op doing the payroll and then for a friend who needed a hand with things. After the home birth volunteer work, I helped connect people in the home school movement with MACHE, had second son (who is 23, as of 2008, and has Down Syndrome). I also volunteered with Twin Cities Creation Science Association. In 1993 our oldest son, Benji, got a banjo and started taking lessons at Homestead Pickin' Parlor in Richfield. This really impacted my life as I am now the administrative assistant for the Minnesota Bluegrass & Old-Time Music Association (part time paid position - it is called MBOTMA ) and have met many acoustic musicians as a result. Benji currently plays with a band called Monroe Crossing, but the best way to find out about him is to go to his solobanjo website or his MySpace site. In 1995 Benji was in a band called the Warp 7 Ramblers with some other teens and they were hired to play at a festival in Iowa. It was there that we met Druha Trava, a band from the Czech Republic (I have been their US Rep si...Expand for more