Janet

Janet is my next door neighbor and is teaching me to draw and paint. I don't know if it will stick, but for the time being we are having a good time. She's a good teacher but also an accomplished woman with a wicked sense of humor. She can fly airplanes and was a logistics engineer in the air force for over 20 years. She was one of the few people not evacuated from Homestead Air Force Base during hurricane Andrew in 1992 because she was the only person who knew where things were. She was safe but her home was destroyed.

After the Air Force. her husband, Paul was a pilot for American Airlines. He flew out of Miami Florida and they lived on Key Largo where sho opened an art gallery, largely so she could have a place to sell her own paintings. they moved to Santa Rosa, where she grew up and has lots of family when Paul reached the mandatory retirement age for commercial pilots. Their house burned down in the Glass fire in 2020, but it was a sensible house, sensibly rebuilt on a flat lot next to the street, so they were able to move back in in December.

We know so many people who have lost everything in fires and it's hard to imagine what that is like. Houses can be rebuilt, but all the little knick knacks and tchotchkes, photographs and paintings that make a house feel like a home and not a hotel room are gone. Not to mention the hammer needed to hang pictures on the wall, the vases for flowers, the salt and pepper shakers on the table, and in Janet's case all of her work which was in her studio that also burned down.

Being in the military,  she had been more organized than most of us about having bins of things to evacuate in case if a fire, so they had a few prize photographs of airplanes and her treasured Persian Rug purchased in Istanbul. She loves to comb thrift shops and antique stores and troll Internet sites like eBay and Craig's List for furniture bargains, so their house is quite comfortable. She was very excited about a two beautiful rugs, possibly Nepali, that she found on the curb outside someone's house yesterday. 

We worked on drawing today and drew a picture of a lighthouse while we talked about all kinds of things. She volunteers at the Pacific Air Museum, a mostly outside display of old aircraft behind the airport where they keep their Cessna. As we talked and drew she also identified the planes we heard Cal Fire plane flying over by the sound of its engines.

She says that our sessions have inspired her to go back to work on her art. The extra is a papier mâche  rabbit she's been working on.I hope I will be equally inspired to take up some sort of drawing or painting, although I think it will take some time and effort for me....