She introduced me to her daughters' piano teacher, a Julliard-trained concert pianist who confirmed that I was a hell of a songwriter, capable of schmoozing with the big dogs, and couldn't afford not to visit Italy with my kids.

Kasha was my first blogger, sending enlivening emails back when most of us were still using the text version of Compuserve. She called them Emeals. Tasty!

I last saw her when she, her daughters, and her long-time friend Karl Lindstrom stopped by for dinner while on a hiking vacation to the Northwest. I made celeric soup. We giggled a lot.

Kasha's was an old soul in a frisky body. She was, and will always remain for me, the very embodiment of brash. Cheers, old soul. On to the next assignment.

She succumbed to the effects of pancreatic cancer, a disease which is startlingly common in Silicon Valley. Something about silicon manufacture that pancreases don't like.

Sleep well, dear one.

One of Kasha's earliest Emeals (I have a complete archive) follows:

Down, Down in the Tao

A Grand Unnameable
inaudibly speaks
from endless here,
else could speak we not
nor be.

Feathers, we,
on a deep bird
unseen between
two night skies,
flying because
feathers can.

Listening are we, with
our universe held to one ear,
to keeps-playing scuffles
between Isn't and Is, boisterous
in their muffled playroom.

To dance is the rule
in our This-That school
excepting that sleep
too is a rule
and quite more deep.

End of the world?
Peace after that?
Perhaps--but from within
the Night of All Nights
some eventually tickled
divine sleeper may
dreamingly laugh aloud,
stirring breathing into the mist--
and back soon will be we,
guns, and daily newspapers.

Call this if you wish
"The Little Laugh Theory"
although nameable is the Is
no more than is the Isn't,
down, down in the Tao.

from The Wheel of Yes
Poems and Reflections by Alan Harris 1995