Subj : FidoNews 41:44 [01/07]: General Articles To : All From : FidoNews Robot Date : Mon Oct 28 2024 00:04:58 ================================================================= GENERAL ARTICLES ================================================================= Janis Kracht - June 14 1991 - October 21st 2024 Ward Dossche - 2:292/854 I got the message of Janis' passing from Lauren, her daughter, and that is one of these moments when the world stops ... for a few seconds anyway and you become innundated with sentiment. Janis, assisted by hubby Ron, was actively present in the Fidonet nodelist from June 14th 1991 till the day of her passing October 21st 2024 .. 30 years to the day when I entered the nodelist as 2:2/0 ... They say that lightning does not strike twice ... At least I hope it doesn't. She was the 2nd longest ever serving ZC. Janis had been a guiding light for years to many people, super friendly and helpful as described by some, the ultimate bitch as described by others. I had the good fortune of meeting her. There was a trip from Belgium to Connecticut for a wedding and it took me virtually past her front door. So we decided to meet ... at a pizza place on the way to the wedding. She came down with hubby Ron doing the driving. It was immediately obvious how well Ron took care of her, lifting her out of the car, assisting her getting on stairs ... Janis suffered from multiple sclerosis but she never let that detract her from doing things. Actually, I was a bit cautious for this meeting but seeing how these two interacted made it easy. She immediately wanted to delve into Fido-business, these were the days still of PSTN-only and there was ample opportunity for massive fights ... Probably the notion of "Keyboard Warrior" was invented in Fidonet. We talked about a lot of things, mostly non-Fido, that got her a bit nervous because she was all into the politics at that time. The proprietor of the pizza-plaza obviously needed our seats for other customers ... so we concluded that meeting (after all, I still needed to get to a wedding) and said our good-bye's. Photos were taken and distributed, I probably lost them in a crash ... Don't know if anyone kept copies somewhere. Later we got a couple of times head to head as no action was ever taken about the verbal abuse of the one whose name we're not supposed to mention. Invoking the ZCC to overrule rulings (something which was never done before and never happened afterwards). There was the period of suspicious undertakings where she was the "ZC whisperer"; the so-called conversations with the illustrious and evasive ZC6 Bin Li filled multiple screens full of doubt. The man obviously did not understand English, was incompetent at running a node and just did as he was told. And Janis called-in her markers. Let it be understood that the atmosphere with Janis in general was good, nomatter how you interpret the above paragraph. When her system backfired and messed-up her ZONE1-segment I could just call her voice as she had 6 hours, because of the time-difference to fix whatever needed fixing. And when my own system suffered a major crash, she was instrumental for it to surface again. There was no animosity, just help. We never discussed it but you could notice that over the years her agility for maintaining her system was lagging. There was "something" but she did not volunteer any information and I had no right to query her for it. When she decided to call it quits for her ZC-status in 2018, it did not come as a surprise. She and I remained in touch; love her or hate her but she was a monument in Fidonet. Lately we talked about a possible renewal visit as I always wanted to see the Woodstock site at least once, and it isn't all that far from Slaterville. Janis could go on about that how she and her sister had secured tickets to the festival, her sister could go but she couldn't as she was deemed too young at that time by her father... Ahhh, those memories. Despite our differences 20 years ago or so, the years have softened our views of each other and the end product was a special friendship that few would have thought possible. I will miss Janis, maybe no one believes it, but the relationships between Fido people are of a unique character that you don't find in other computer realms. It's truly a community. We have fought so often that you know the other. And then suddenly she is gone. Eventually it happens to all of us, and yet it remains sad. I felt like the last chapter in Janis' life story had not yet been written. Let me conclude the way she concluded her last email to me ... "Love Yah". Ward Dossche IC - Fidonet ----------------------------------------------------------------- --- Azure/NewsPrep 3.0 * Origin: Home of the Fidonews (2:2/2.0) .