Janet, age 12

This would have been just after she got back from Singapore. While return would find her condemned to the evil Broughton High (home of the infamous marching band which she would later escape from to Interlochen Arts Academy). Still, no trace of that dark cloud here (not that she really let it get her down). Perhaps nostalgia for Singapore's culture with its private school and horses to ride mixed with relief at leaving muggy weather and giant bugs behind.

Oh wait, she moved back to North Carolina. Well, at least she was reunited with the stuffed animals she'd had to leave behind. She told me that they stopped talking to her after this point. She believed it was because they were miffed she'd put them in a box.

Hmmm...looking at this picture, would anyone have guessed that she'd grow up to be a voracious reader and stalker of used book stores?

Janetism

Having been told by our dog training friend Nan that you should never move around a dog, but make them move, lest they put on airs, Janet invented a new dog command.

"Move butt"

Training is real simply. Kick them in the fuzzy tush until they start moving, say the command, then reward.

Come to think of it, I think she used it on me a few times.

Nanowrimo

National Novel Writing month. It's a bit silly. Every November, it's a challenge to write 50,000 words by midnight November 30th. Janet always encouraged me to do it. She once did what she called NaNoSymphMo, which was her writing a symphony in a month. Obviously quite harder. I don't think she finished, or at least she didn't consider it good enough to give me a listen. But I hope I'll find it someday as I poke around her music files. There's a lot.

This year, I was all set to write a fiction about a tough gal on a space station riding a Victorian bike. It was the kind of story she'd like. I'll still write it someday.

On November first, the day of the Nano kick off I had lunch with a friend who survived stomach cancer, although she lost 75% of her stomach in the process. She asked me what I was doing, and I told her.

She shook her head and said, "You have to write about her. For her. And for you." Funny how we don't mind cliched dialogue when it carries truth. When it's real.

This blog is about happy stuff, about Janet the person. Like what she liked, and even her silly habits. Like, why did she think vanilla extract had to stay in the fridge? What was with the "no folding over the towels on the towel rack" rule? And did she really ice her feet before getting into bed? Just saying.

But I'm not writing about just the happy stuff with this book. It's a Yang Yin thing, eh? The good sometimes needs the bad to make us realize how precious the good is. It's kind of like Janet and me in public. She looked even prettier when juxtaposed next to my ugly mug.

It's not an easy thing to write. I'm about 9000 words in. But I'll finish it, even if I'm the only one who reads it. For her, and yeah, for me.

Deming, NM

I'm paralleling the same route that we took 15 years ago in the Citabria. Right after I left the Navy, we piled into the little two seater and flew, pretty much at highway speed, east to my Mom's place in West Palm Beach. Right out of the California hills, we hit a bit of turbulence, which may have given Janet, or at least her tummy, second thoughts. But at an Arizona FBO, we met up with the couple who ran the place. While the husband showed me his biplane he was working on, his wife plied Janet with ginger candy. Airsickness disappeared immediately. Janet was in love. With the candy, and I suppose with me, too, or she wouldn't have made it that far.

Come evening, we landed in Deming, NM, where I'm writing this. The cabbie who took us into town told us it was the land of clean water and fast ducks. The town is set on a spring, and every year, they have a duck race. Later, we'd discover they used plastic floaty ducks, much to Janet's disappointment. She always did like ducks, maintaining that the best part of the Disneyland Jungle Boat tour was seeing real ducks nesting on fake crocodiles.

That evening, we found ourselves watching Sesame Street. Hey, it's better than most of the other stuff on TV! And I remember this song coming on:


We waltzed around the room, singing "Batty batty bat bat bat bat" until we got tired and went to sleep. Or something like that.

I won't be somber, but just before she passed, I held her up and we waltzed as best as we could to that song, then finished with an Arbeau pavane. But in deference to M. Arbeau, I think Janet liked the bats better.

Bat bat bat bat bat...

Beethoven Bear

Janet's teddy from when she was six. She thought he had the same scowl as old LVB. Flower was a gift from a student, although I'm afraid I can't remember which one.

Tunes

For the last couple of weeks, I've been busy tracking down some of Janet's old performances. Josef Kucera, the recording engineer UCSD (among a few thousand other hats) retrieved the recordings done at university performances and mastered them for me. So I've got four CDs of her music now, as well as a DVD of her Master's recital from 1994. I've put most of the last up on YouTube now, as well as all of the Apparatus and Goliard CDs.

With those and the UCSD recordings, there should be enough to put together a decent amount of her work up on a memorial site. In the meantime, if you want to watch and listen, they're over at http://www.youtube.com/user/DPW1889

Perhaps it's the early musician in me, but this is my favorite, a pair of 14th century madrigals she performed with Kristin Korb. This is how I like to remember Janet, in full on performance mode, the life shining through her.

And cute ears. They always seemed to poke through her hair like she was some sort of Tolkien elf. But don't let that distract you from the music.




And wickedness prompts me to tease her about the ever present kleenex she'd wad up and leave in her pants/skirt pocket. At least she didn't drop it on the stage.

Flutes

Janet always described her medieval flutes as "basically just a tube with holes in it". It's literally true. Even the basic taper bore (which helps upper octave intonation) wouldn't appear until the 17th century. I think. She was the flute nerd, not me. And what a flute nerd she was. The expressiveness she'd pull out of those simple instruments was amazing, as was her ability to come up with weird fingering for the accidentals, and still stay in tune. I've been playing her flutes lately, and truthfully, there's a couple that are essentially unplayable. By me, that is.

Janet's old enemy Rheumatoid Arthritis kept her from playing baroque period flutes for the most part. Their length required too much of a finger stretch. It's a crying shame, because she had a hard plastic baroque flute that she could rip away on in her early twenties, before RA showed up. I remember her entering an SCA music contest (a medieval/renaissance themed group). I know, sounds like slumming, but the organization actually has a number of good early and folk musicians in it. Still, as one of the judges told me later, the discussion about the winners started with "Okay, everyone's agreed on the girl with the flute, right? Now, let's decide on the runners up..."

She did have a special baroque flute made for her by the instrument maker Jim French, who also made that deerbone flute she played on the Goliard album. It required her to bend every note up or down up to a quarter step. Even for Janet, it was pushing things, but it did allow for a closer finger spacing. She'd haul it out from time to time, though. I'm pretty sure she's the only one who was ever able to play it. Call it the Excalibur of flutes. I have it, and it's beautiful. But it just can't sing without her.