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For Lisa B.May 02, 2006 My friend Lisa Barnett died early this morning, just before 1 a.m. I was thinking about her almost continually on my trip to the big city. Sometimes the thoughts were pretty raucous. Surfacing frequently was the Keelaghan song "Who Dies?" which is rollicking and tongue-in-cheeky --
He didn't play it Sunday night, but I heard it Sunday morning before I left home, on Rich Warren's Midnight Special radio show out of Chicago. I could imagine Lisa singing along, probably at some science fiction con, but while the rest of us were pounding our steins on the bar she'd have been hoisting a glass of Makers Mark. Which reminds me: I still have a bottle of grappa I bought on her recommendation years ago. Nasty stuff. The bottle's still nearly full. I'm thinking of taking one more hit for auld lang syne and using the rest to pour libation to Lisa. Melissa Scott, Lisa's partner of 27 years, created a Lisa page on CarePages.com and has been posting updates since Saturday night. From all over the continent Lisa's friends, family members, and colleagues have been posting messages to her, which Melissa would download and read. I just read them all through, from most recent to first posted. What an awesome and inspiring tribute to a remarkable human being. Maybe Melissa was the only person in the world who knew all the facets of Lisa: Lisa the writer the friend the sister the dog person the Thoroughbred racing fan the volunteer at EPONA (a horse rescue farm in New Hampshire) the supporter of fellow artists -- and especially Lisa the editor. Lisa was senior editor at Heinemann. Theater was her beat and her passion. Several of the most heartfelt messages are from her authors, the writer/theater people whose books she acquired, encouraged, developed, saw into print, and promoted. She changed their lives so that their words could get out into the world and change others. (Teaching Young Playwrights, which she developed from writings left by the late Gerald Chapman, is one that changed mine. Lisa signed it for me: "Gerald can't sign this -- but I can!") My experiences as a feminist bookseller in the early 1980s inscribed in my soul the importance of words, printed words, and along with it the importance of my own calling -- which I heard in those days but was only beginning to understand. Some days the inscription is barely visible: it's half buried in sand, grown over with weeds, worn down by the wind. If it weren't for faith and sheer stubbornness I wouldn't see it at all. These messages to Lisa -- well, they seem to have blown off the sand, trimmed the grass, pulled the weeds, and burnished the words so they glow even though the sun isn't shining. Safe journey to wherever you're going, Lisa, and when you get there, kick some butt.
Carry it on.
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