Last weekend Bill and I attended a concert in Olympia, by my friend, Janis Ian.\u00a0 This week she\u2019s in LA.\u00a0 Rather than bounce back and forth to Nashville between gigs, she and her road manager spent the weekend with us.<\/p>\n
I grew up in Bisbee, Arizona, watching Ozzie and Harriet.\u00a0 When Rick Nelson turned into a singing sensation, I thought he was terrific, but the idea of being able to call him a friend and have him drop in to spend the weekend was something that was beyond comprehension.<\/p>\n
If you\u2019ve been to one of my presentations and heard me sing Janis\u2019s iconic song, At Seventeen, you\u2019ve heard how our friendship came about.\u00a0 In the late seventies and early eighties, I was living in Arizona, selling life insurance, and struggling with the decision of whether or not to divorce my first husband.\u00a0 I drove from appointment to appointment, listening to the music of Helen Reddy, Gordon Lightfoot, and Janis Ian. So many of her lyrics were about broken hearts, and they hit me where I lived.\u00a0 I sang along with them and knew the words to every track.<\/p>\n
I was six feet tall in seventh grade.\u00a0 I was smart.\u00a0 I wore glasses.\u00a0 That was a lethal combination as far as social inclusion was concerned.\u00a0 So Janis\u2019s At Seventeen, written about not being one of the \u201cin\u201d girls, really spoke to me.\u00a0 Once I started writing and doing signings, I began ending my presentations with that song.<\/p>\n
In 2008, I was invited to be the keynote speaker at a writers conference in Idaho.\u00a0 That engagement had been on the books for over a year, but then my husband\u2019s bilateral knee replacement surgery was rescheduled.\u00a0 On the day I was supposed to be in Boise, he was being transferred from the hospital to rehab.\u00a0 At that point, I tried to back out, but my daughters said, \u201cNope.\u00a0 We\u2019ll look after Dad.\u00a0 You go keep your promise.\u201d<\/p>\n
And so, muttering under my breath, I went.\u00a0 I did my keynote at noon on Saturday, ending the presentation with my rendition of At Seventeen.\u00a0 What I didn\u2019t realize was that in the audience was a woman from Nashville who was a fan of my work and of Janis Ian\u2019s.\u00a0 She went straight back to Nashville and squealed on me.\u00a0 As a result, on Sunday evening of that week, an e-mail from Janis Ian showed up in my computer.\u00a0 \u201cHey,\u201d she said.\u00a0 \u201cI heard you sang my song and that you did a good job of it.\u201d<\/p>\n
And that was the beginning of our friendship.\u00a0 She\u2019s visited our homes; we\u2019ve visited hers.\u00a0 What we\u2019ve discovered is that despite our many differences, we have a great deal in common.<\/p>\n
A few years ago, she came to the Tucson Festival of Books and the two of us were invited to do an event at Saddlebrooke.\u00a0 Since she\u2019s four-ten and I\u2019m over six feet tall, we called it the long and the short of it.\u00a0 We have it on good authority that we were the \u201chit of water aerobics.\u201d<\/p>\n
This past weekend, Janis was telling us how, for the last several years, she and her wife have spent a number of months in Florida, starting in October. \u201cHey,\u201d I told her.\u00a0 \u201cI\u2019m doing the Tampa Bay Book Festival in November.\u201d To which she responded, \u201cMaybe we should reprise the Janis and Judy show.\u201d<\/p>\n
And we\u2019re going to.\u00a0 I sent a note to someone at the festival and we\u2019ve now been officially invited.\u00a0 It\u2019ll be fun.\u00a0 I\u2019ll be with my friend.<\/p>\n
Details to follow.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Last weekend Bill and I attended a concert in Olympia, by my friend, Janis Ian.\u00a0 This week she\u2019s in LA.\u00a0 Rather than bounce back and forth to Nashville between gigs, she and her road manager spent the weekend with us. I grew up in Bisbee, Arizona, watching Ozzie and Harriet.\u00a0 When Rick Nelson turned into […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1407","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-festivals","category-tour-2"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3nsBA-mH","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1407","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1407"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1407\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1410,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1407\/revisions\/1410"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}