Title: An Annotated Bibliography

 
Jane Leslie Newberry

Jane Leslie Newberry is my mother, the most wonderful, kind, powerful, strong, resilient, balanced, beautiful, smart, clever, courageous, good woman I have ever met. She wrote her own obituary.

Jane Leslie Newberry, Bainbridge Island, died on June 27, 2018, of ovarian cancer. She was 67. Jane Leslie spent her early years on the family farm in south-central Kentucky.¹ In addition to her immediate family, Jane Leslie was surrounded by a tight-knit clan of aunts, uncles, and cousins — most of whom had been or were public school teachers.²

At the rural school she attended for all twelve grades, foreign languages were rarely offered. However, a brief introduction to French in 8th grade prompted her to major in French in college, with minors in Russian and Spanish. She later took classes in Hungarian, Latin, German, Arabic, and Romanian — for fun!
Jane Leslie was a born traveler. She would eventually visit 49 states and 6 provinces. Her first trip outside North America came a few months after her college graduation when she packed her bags for a year-long position as an English-teaching assistant in two high schools in Bordeaux, France. She later found great satisfaction in assisting other college students from Kentucky explore their own options for living, working, and studying abroad.
She thought planning a trip was as much fun as actually taking the trip. She once spent several snowy Saturdays in the lodge at Snoqualmie Pass poring over guidebooks for a summer family trip while her family skied. She had no doubt she got the better end of the deal.
Jane Leslie had many jobs during her working life — teacher, secretary, university administrator, lawyer, baker — but the one she enjoyed the most was as parent to Eli.

Survivors locally include her sweetheart of 30 years, Tom Backer; their child, Eli Backer; long-time neighbors Reijnen, Yentzer, Ruzumna, Lindsay, Bauch, and Atkinson; goddaughter, Julia Holmlund Thompson, and her family; and friends at the Downtown Seattle YMCA, especially members of the Pedaling for Parkinson's class.

Radio Station: KUOW^{3 4 5} [keɪ-juoʊ-ˈdʌbəlju]

KUOW is a Seattle NPR (National Public Radio) station run by the University of Washington. The radio fills a space in my life that TV does for many people—the backdrop to an afternoon, cooking, breakfast, gardening, driving, and a point of gathering with others. The radio was almost always on in my home growing up and this was the station we would always tune to. It was my access point to shows like Wait Wait Don't Tell Me, Car Talk, BBC World Service, Morning Edition, as well as local news and many other programs. The choice to put audio—without visuals—at the forefront of the home is central to my being.

Radio Station: C89.5^{6 7}

Seattle’s growing electronic music scene wasn’t visible to me when I was growing up on an island, 8.6 miles away from the city. Still, when reception was clearer at night, I could tune to the station playing electronic music (during the day it was overpowered by the religious station 0.2MHz up the dial). It was here that I would first hear Lusine's Gravity⁸ for the first time at 1 AM, realizing almost six years later he was a Seattle artist. The station is run by students from Nathan Hale High School, which impresses me to this day.

Radio Station: KCPR^{9 10} [keɪsi-piɑr]

KCPR is the radio station of Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, where I majored in Electrical Engineering/Computer Science and minored in Music Theory. “K” because it's a west coast station and “CPR” for Cal Poly Radio. For most of the three years I worked there, I held a show called Club 91. By the time I left, it was on air six nights a week, each with a different DJ. This group of people, and our collective commitment to electronic music, finally bridged the gap between the isolation of living on Bainbridge and the scene I wanted to be a part of and share.

Song: Ich Bin Meine Maschine¹¹

When I was working at KCPR, everyone was given several CDs to “time” each semester. This not only meant checking that the times listed for each track were accurate, but noting how each started and ended (fade, cut, false start/end) and where any profanities occurred so the DJ would be ready to bleep them. My first two CDs were Light Up Gold by Parquet Courts (a punk band) and HD by Uwe Schmidt (a German electronic artist), under his Atom™ alias.

I timed both CDs at home over spring break, and didn't think much of either. Back at school and before returning the CD with my notes, I relistened to HD, and absolutely loved one of the tracks. My friend Mike Dooley¹² picked me up to get sandwiches at High Street Deli, and on our way back I insisted that we put the CD on. I meant to play Riding the Void¹³, but accidentally selected Ich Bin Meine Maschine. Regardless, we both enjoyed it and I now attempt to share it as often as possible.

Radio Station: KPLU^{14 15} [keɪpi-ɛlju]

KPLU, now KNKX, was the other NPR station we would listen to growing up. They played Car Talk on Saturday an hour earlier than KUOW, and good jazz in the afternoon if the news cycle had gotten too repetitive.

Radio Station: KCRW^{16 17} [ˈkeɪsiɑr-ˈdʌbəlju]

Before Les Sins became a side project of musician Toro y Moi, showcasing his heavier tracks, I was working in LA for a summer and tuned in to KCRW around 3 AM to hear:

Don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't
Don't bother me I'm working [x4]
Don't bother me, working, working
I'm working
Don't bother me
Don't bother me, can't you see
Don't bother me, working, working
I'm working
Don't bother me
D-d-don't bother me, can't you se-ee

It seems silly to write these down now, but the words scribbled in a notebook were my only attachment to that moment. At the end of the summer, I found a one-minute youtube clip of it being played live at a Toro y Moi concert. Four months later it was released on the album Michael and, to my surprise, under the new alias Les Sins.

As well as killer 3 AM tracks, KCRW and their DJs put on a series of shows at UCLA's Hammer Museum during the summer where I got to see Nosaj Thing¹⁸ and Doc Martin¹⁹ play as well as looking at the current exhibitions late into the night. KCRW kept me company, kept me engaged, kept me informed over the summer of 2014.

Radio Station: BBC Radio 1²⁰

BBC's Radio 1 was another way for me to project myself off the island I was growing up on and into a music scene that I dearly wanted to be a part of. Many Fridays I would come home from school and sit at the computer from 3–5 PM and listen to Judge Jules play his 11 PM–1 AM slot in the UK. I still remember the episode from January 23, 2009²¹—the first time I heard the Adam K & Soha remix of Reflekt's Need to Feel Loved²²—which would become a backdrop to my year and a touchstone to that time in my life.

Radio Station: 710 KIRO^{23 24} [ˈkaɪ-roʊ]

If the radio wasn't on to NPR, it was probably on to Dave Niehaus²⁵ commentating a Mariner's game. 710 KIRO was the “Home of the Seattle Mariners.”²⁶ Even if the game was broadcast on public television, Jane Leslie preferred Niehaus’s heartfelt commentary to the TV announcer, so we would watch the game on mute, with the radio informing us, often several seconds ahead, of what what we were about to see. (Sometimes there would be a fantastic play in the game while JL was upstairs making dinner or something else, and we'd run downstairs to catch the replay.)

"Get out the rye bread and mustard, Grandma, it is grand salami time!"

On the day Jane Leslie died, she listened to the Mariners play against the Orioles. It took 11 innings, but the Mariners finally won 8–7. She instructed Tom and me to give two big cheers for her—one when the Seattle viaduct comes down, and another when the Mariners win the World Series.

Song: Sanctified²⁷

Tom let me know that Jane Leslie had passed the morning after it had happened (I was in LA, staying with my friend Parker²⁸ and visiting Cindy²⁹, which was exactly what JL had hoped for). I wandered around the apartment absently, took a shower for about two hours, and cried. I wandered into Parker's bedroom, found this record, and put it on. The melody is sampled from Donna Summer’s Spring Affair.³⁰