Carlene Thissen Music has always been part of my life. I think I sang before I could talk, but I really don't remember. My father sang and played the banjo, guitar, piano and accordion. When we were very young, my sister Kathy and I would do duets with him in the taverns where he played the piano and sang with his friends. Our best number was "I Don't Want to Play in Your Yard." My mother gave us the gift of piano lessons starting when I was seven or so. When I was eleven or twelve, my cousin Patsy taught me the guitar. Her favorite song was "Springtime in the Rockies." My father continued teaching me the guitar, encouraging me "put the song over!" For my grammar school graduation my parents gave me a brand new Gibson acoustic that I still play today. When I got older I played and sang at some of the early folk masses in Catholic churches. Then I became a hippie, my best me,and sang at coffeehouses and around campfires at music festivals, including Woodstock (the best time of my life!) Favorite artists were Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Judy Collins, Joni Mitchell, James Taylor, Melanie, Donovan, Peter, Paul & Mary. I went to college for a year and a half, majoring in pre-Med. I had planned to be a doctor working in ghettos, serving the very poor, but I got sidetracked, big time, in a career that lasted twenty-five years, working with bar codes and other supermarket technology. After living in Minneapolis, San Mateo and Chicago, I ended up in Naples, Florida, married to Barry Kotek, working with him in our technology consulting business. All that time I sang and played at parties with friends and at church. But as I approached fifty, I realized I needed to do more with my life. I joined the Innerlight Raja Yoga Meditation Center and they helped me find my way to a new world, all involved with music. I started singing with little children at the Guadalupe Center in a nearby agricultural community called Immokalee, Florida. Later I joined the choir at Our Lady of Guadalupe Church in Immokalee. Then I damaged my vocal chords and found a voice teacher named Michael Trimble who fixed my voice by teaching me opera and “centering.” Nothing has ever been the same since. I got a Master’s Degree in Latin American History at Florida International University in Miami and later my thesis, about the immigrants in Immokalee, became a memoir/narrative book called Immokalee’s Fields of Hope. Then a friend from Innerlight, Char Rowe McEwen, talked me into making a documentary based on the book. Lately that documentary has taken on a more political role – that of softening hearts so our country can come up with a compassionate approach to comprehensive immigration reform. I wrote “Take These Hands” for that documentary, and Char liked it so well that she created a music video montage that we hope will touch some hearts all by itself. You can see it on this website under Videos. It had never occurred to me that I could write music, but I have discovered that when you’re passionate about something, you can do a lot of things you never thought you could do. Now I’m so busy that I can’t do anything on a regular basis. I sing at Our Lady of Guadalupe church in Immokalee, with little children sometimes, write music and am just finishing my second book, about a priest named Father Sanders who was based in – you guessed it – Immokalee, Florida. They buried him on the church grounds where his headstone reads, “Love One Another As I Have Loved You.” Life is good, and the best days are days that include as much music as possible. I’m working on improving my guitar, piano and banjo playing, keeping my voice in shape, writing a few songs that might touch some hearts and – who knows? – maybe I’ll do something that will help change the world. We all can. And we all should. Peace.