Animals:

• Gayle loved all animals, but she seemed to be very fond of raccoons.  I'm sure that was her favorite animal.  I know that she also liked birds.  During the time I knew her, she also befriended a neighborhood cat she called "Batman" due to the way his face looked.
  

Food:

• Gayle was a vegetarian.  She did, however, eat chicken.  She liked guacamole a lot, too.

Movies:

• Gayle was into dramas and comedies.  She wasn't into action, horror, or sci-fi.  You've got to keep in mind she was very much against violence and war.

Music:

• Gayle liked folk music, but it wasn't her favorite style.  She preferred "jazzy" stuff like traditional jazz, anything Latin, definitely Samba, and blues.  Pop was, of course, an obvious favorite.  Gayle was raised on classical music, but I know that was certainly not her favorite kind of music.  I don't think classical was even in her top ten.  She preferred more modern sounds.  Especially anything moody.
• Every once in awhile, Gayle would mention someone whose music she liked that would really surprise me, like Jimi Hendrix and The Doors.

Musicians:

• Out of all the New Christy Minstrels, the ones Gayle liked best were Jackie Miller and Dolan Ellis.  She still got along with them fairly well until the end.
• What surprised me is when Gayle said she went to the now-famous 1967 Monterey Pop Festival, and LOVED Jimi Hendrix's performance.  She thought he was awesome.
• Gayle was pretty fond of Mama Cass; the voice and the person.
• Gayle was also pretty fond of Jim Morrison and his band, The Doors.  She thought "The Doors" film was a farce!
• Gayle was also a great fan of those she wrote songs for, like Frank Sinatra, Nancy Wilson, and Astrud Gilberto to name a few.
• Rickie Lee Jones was another favorite.  Gayle liked her cover of "Cycles".  Gayle said to me that although Jones' "Cycles" is not how she would have envisioned it, it was really quite good.
  

People:

• I know I was definitely one of Gayle's favorite people.  I found out shortly after she passed away that I was about the only person she didn't snap at in her later years.  I helped her out a lot, and I found out that most people that helped her got chewed out.  She didn't like to be "babied".  I never babied her, I simply tried to give her ideas or motivation that I thought she could use.  She approved most of my ideas, which made their way to her CD, "All is One".

Political/Social Views:

• I loved Gayle.  She was a "career hippie" in the truest sense of the term.  Unlike a lot of the posers in the 1960s, Gayle was the real deal.  Real hippies never called themselves "hippies".  That was a label put on them, usually by people trying to slam them.  Gayle never would have called herself a hippie.  I mean it in the nicest way possible.  I think "real" hippies are the best people that ever lived.  Gayle was definitely against war and was all about peace.  She was VERY patriotic, but she never blindly followed the government.  I don't think she was against the "establishment" per se, but she was definitely against what was passing for the "establishment", because what they were doing was wrong.  That was true in the 1960s, and it was true in the 2000s.  She was greatly against deforestation of the California Redwoods.  Basically, she was against everything wrong and was for everything that was right.  She had a "Peace is Patriotic" bumper sticker on her car.  That pretty much says it all.