For years now, when I’m getting ready to host a dinner party, Janis’s is the music I listen to as I sweep the floors.  This connection between Janis and domesticity feels dissonant in a productive way.  I might be chopping vegetables and making bread and wiping counters, but just listen to that scratching, full-bodied rock howl.

This fall, I put a Janis CD on in my car.  In recent months, life has leveled me.  But here is Janis.  Honest and complex and full of raw, defiant jubilance.  And here I am in my car, holding somewhere inside a glimmer of renaissance — of possibility — listening to Janis wail.