How Does She Do It?

Kathleen Flenniken: Finding Her Way from Engineer to Poet

- Janet Pelz

Kathleen Flenniken turned my perception of poetry upside down when she offered the attribute of convenience. “You have time to write poems when you have small children. You have little bits of time and poems feel like they’re a better match for that,” she described, reflecting back on how her pursuit of this craft fit within the daily chaos of young motherhood.

When I was at that stage, I would have had “take a shower”, or “clean away the minefield of plastic toys” filling that bit of time. Poetry -- not the reading of and certainly not the writing of it -- would not have seemed like something to wedge between diaper changes and playground excursions. I always harbored the idea that poems required ponderous hours of contemplation by the reader; which by extension would require thousands more for the writer. But Kathleen, enrolled as she was in an evening poetry writing course and with young children at home, grabbed the space to spin bursts of inspiration into analogies and metaphors and put them to paper.

Before the birth of her second child, Kathleen spent her working hours as a civil engineer. Stationed at the Hanford Nuclear site, the archeology of this nation’s race to atomic weaponry, she monitored groundwater for radioactive contamination. Her job was the natural outgrowth of a BA in Engineering from Washington State University, followed by an MA in the same field from UW.

The Hanford Site is a mostly decommissioned nuclear production complex on the Columbia River in Eastern Washington. Established in 1943 as part of the Manhattan Project, the site was home to the first full-scale plutonium production reactor in the world. Plutonium manufactured at the site was used in the first nuclear bomb, and in Fat Man, the bomb detonated over Nagasaki Japan. -  Wikipedia

 

          The B Reactor at Hanford from The Seattle Times

That she would find herself working at Hanford was also a natural fit, having grown up in nearby Richland, Washington, where the nuclear site has been the town’s major industry. Her father was a PhD scientist working at Hanford during its heyday. Looking back she admits, “Engineering was never a really great match for me. I think I went into it in part because I wanted to please my dad, and I didn’t really know what I wanted to do. I wanted to do architecture for a while, but didn’t have the guts to follow through. I was very worried about being rejected in those days.”

When her childcare provider moved away, Kathleen had a reason to put her engineering practice aside. Looking for something to balance her newfound stay-at-home-mother status she perused the Experimental College course catalog. After trying classes in handwriting analysis and jazz improvisation, she chose an evening poetry writing class.

“From my very first class I took it seriously. It didn’t feel like just a night class. I thought, ‘wow! I really want to do this!’ Right away, I was trying to be conscientious and working on it as hard as I could.”

After finishing that class, she took it again. And again. She developed a peer group of poets and found a mentor in her teacher. And more and more of those bursts of time got filled with writing.

“I don’t know, I think our passions find us in some way. It just kind of hit me on the head when I was ready for it. Growing up I played piano, but I never wanted to practice. I don’t mind practicing at poetry. Everything about it is something I enjoy. I love the drafts, I love the revisions, I love reading it, I  love talking about it. I don’t even mind sending work out. I don’t love being rejected – maybe that’s one thing. But there was never that feeling of, ugh, I don’t want to practice.”

This was back in the days when Washington State did not have a Poet Laureate, not that Kathleen would have given it much thought. It would be several years before she knew that such a position could exist, her first awareness coming much later, when she learned that Rita Dove was the Poet Laureate of the United States.

Fast forward through two published volumes of works and decades of practice later, Kathleen Flenniken became Washington State’s Poet Laureate in 2012, having been chosen for the work she had already produced and for the agenda of poetry literacy she proposed to bring to people throughout this state.

From engineer to poet, it was a transition that this mother of three embraces as perfectly natural. If natural sums up Kathleen’s life path it also describes her personality. Cuddling a cup of tea at my dining room table, words and laughter spill from her without restraint. If poets are supposed to be pompous and pedantic, Kathleen did not get the memo. The character she evinces before me is evident in her poems. Straightforward, accessible, and, well, natural.

“The curtain lifts on Bryant Elementary School’s Spring Recorder Recital. Ninety third-graders fumble with their instruments, take a breath

and blow. Their parents, braced, breathe too as “Hot Crossed Buns” emerges, a little scattershot -- the Normal Distribution brought to life.”

From Kathleen’s poem, “The Beauty of the Curve”, excerpted from Famous (University of Nebraska Press, 2006)

“I think my style as a write is quite pared down. I don’t write ornate sentences or anything of that sort; it’s a kind of clean, lined style. Probably influenced by the science writing that I did for many years.”

More than a decade after her first poetry class, Kathleen embarked on a project that returned her to her roots. Armed with distance and knowledge, she turned her craft on the dark secrets of the Hanford Nuclear site and the culture it engendered in her home town. In an interview with Dick Gordon for The Story, on American Public Media, Kathleen talks about facing -- and embracing -- the truths that touched every aspect of her childhood. (Listen to the full interview  here. You’ll hear Kathleen’s wonderful voice talking of her experience growing up in Richland and reading some of her poems aloud).

Kathleen Flenniken at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, Photo credit Alexander Flenniken

Her second volume of poetry, Plume, (University of Washington Press, 2012), is “a whole book of poems about Hanford. I wanted to write about a subject. And for me that’s the most dangerous, most difficult writing I can do. Writing towards a subject is difficult to come off as a real poem because It often comes off as an assignment or a little mini essay. It doesn’t always have the right kind of turn that I’m looking for in a poem. I wrote a lot of those poems that did not go into the book.”

During the Cold War, the Hanford Nuclear Reservation was expanded to include nine nuclear reactors and five large plutonium processing complexes, which produced plutonium for most of the 60,000 weapons in the U.S. nuclear arsenal. Many of the early safety procedures and waste disposal practices were inadequate, and government documents have since confirmed that Hanford’s operations released significant amounts of radioactive materials into the air and the Columbia River, which still threaten the health of residents and ecosystems.

The Hanford site represents two-thirds of the nation’s high-level radioactive waste by volume. Today, Hanford is the most contaminated nuclear site in the United States and is the focus of the nation’s largest environmental cleanup. - Wikipedia

By its reviews, Plume succeeded. It has been hailed as: "Not only an education about Washington State and its role in the Nuclear Age but of an awakening in the American public as well as the poet herself to the peculiar dangers of invisible poisons and of trusting too much the authorities of science and government." (Jeannine Hall Gailey, The Rumpus, May 2012)

Included in this volume are pieces coming to terms with the death of her good friend Carolyn’s father, who was given a diagnosis when he was in his 50‘s of “a chromosomal deviation consistent with people in Hiroshima. But doctors in Hanford attributed his illness to farm chemicals.” Unlike Kathleen’s father, Carolyn’s dad was among those who did the plant’s physical work, which put them in close proximity to radioactive elements.

“at the same time inside your marrow

blood cells began to err one moment efficient the next

a few gone wrong stunned by exposure to radiation

as you milled uranium into slugs or swabbed down

train cars or reported to B Reactor for a quick run-in

run-out”

Excerpted from “To Carolyn’s Father”, Plume, (University of Washington Press, 2012)

“Some people think that poetry shouldn’t be helpful. Some think poems should be art for art sake -- and I do believe they need to be artful to work, but I also think they can be more than that. I think they can ask hard questions. Not necessarily provide answers, but I think they can be a stepping off place for a conversation, for thinking.”

I ask her to talk about one of her poems that she thinks might describe this aspect of helpfulness, but she demurs. “That makes me feel somewhat uncomfortable. Because, if it falls short for someone, I wouldn’t want to be saying, oh, this is such a great poem I wrote.” But after some prodding, she relents.

“There’s a a poem in Plume called Rattlesnake Mountain. On its surface it’s a description of a landmark mountain on the outskirts of Richland, on the perimeter of the Hanford Nuclear site. The poem is about the mountain, but it’s also about how we got there; Richland, the history, the Manhattan Project. How we saw this place as empty and ugly, which allowed us to savage it. When I grew up I used to think it was ugly too. I thought we lived in an ugly landscape. And now, when I look at it I see it’s very beautiful. I can finally see how it’s a sacred place that we have fouled. I’ve had people tell me that the poem matters to them. Because they both love the place but they feel shame about the environmental calamity there, and the poem reflects both.”

“...the mountain’s folds and shadows

roll with stars, soft April greens, and lupine,

belying missile silos hidden in catacombs

and the waste of 50 years of atomic bombs.

Our families all came from elsewhere,

and regarded the desert as empty,

and ugly, which gave us permission

to savage the land. The Mountain,

figure in repose, looked on

as we buried what we buried at its hem.”

From the poem “Rattlesnake Mountain”, Plume, (University of Washington Press, 2012)

Writing about Hanford, Kathleen saw her poems help tell a story that was important to many people, which has provoked her to keep moving in that direction. Today, she says, “I find myself writing about America; my confusion about where we are as a country. I’m writing those poems because I need to do it for myself, but I think if I’m successful they will be helpful for other people. The more I write the more ambitious I get for my writing.”

Getting to the point of success in poetry Kathleen enjoys now was a long process with much work and many sacrifices along the way. One of those being her well-paying engineering career. She admits, that decision wasn’t without its burdens. “Oh yes, there was a lot of guilt. I remember one of my advisors in my engineering Masters program sitting me down and asking, ‘you’re not one of those women who get a Masters who gives it up to have babies and never uses it?’ And I was like, ‘oh no!’ I can’t tell you how many times that conversation came up in my mind when I was in that shifting period.”

I reminded her of conversations we had many years back in the days I was coaching our daughters’ basketball team, my initial introduction to Kathleen and her family. That was when Kathleen was knitting together small writing contracts. I asked her about her transition from night class student to professional poet.

“Now, that’s the really hard part. Taking your work seriously is one thing and really applying yourself is one thing; saying in public that you’re a poet, now that’s a really difficult thing to do. And for me it came in stages, through getting paid, which means teaching. I found my way as a teaching artist, first through Washington State Arts Commission, their artists roster, and then Writers in the Schools, and then through organizations like Jack Straw. I feel conventional in that sense that I had to get paid to do the work to be able to call myself a writer. Once I did have checks coming in, small checks, really small checks, it was easier for me to call myself a poet.”

And then, with new focus, Kathleen sits up straight to make a point. “I should mention too my husband, who is very supportive through all of this. My husband is quite remarkable. He’s very open to letting me be who I want to be, and he always has been. When we first met I was a bit frustrated because it seemed that he wasn’t hands-on enough. I had some kernel of old-fashioned ideas about what a relationship should be, and thank God, he wasn’t like that. He’s the kind who hangs on loosely. So, that’s really been helpful, to allow me to find my way.”

When I ask Kathleen to define that phrase, “hangs on loosely”, she seems pleased and surprised that the phrase escaped her lips. “It’s from some old pop song -- horrible old pop song. I don’t even remember it.”

Interesting, I point out, that she would draw from song lyrics, which are a form of poetry. “Well, that’s why we have poems in our society! They fulfill a purpose. They are there when you need them. When I say, ‘hanging on loosely’ -- I mean, his ego and his happiness are not tied up in what I do, they are tied up the way we care for each other and our family. I let go of a fairly lucrative career choice for one that is much less so, but he was fine with that because I was happier.”

As well as her husband, Kathleen’s children have also been very supportive of her pursuit.

“I know that they are proud of me. This is something they have had to sacrifice for because I am away a lot. My daughter, especially. I bought ballet tickets for us and I haven’t been able to go to a single ballet. She’s gone with friends, twice with her dad. He sort of got dragged along but it turns out he’s enjoying it! It’s nice for them that they have this, but that wasn’t the intention. I was supposed to go with her. I know she’s disappointed that I didn’t go to any of them, but she’s a good sport about it. And my family knows it’s not forever. So I’m lucky. Having said that, they can only tolerate so much poetry talk before they glaze over. Yeah, they keep me humble.”

As someone who reads mountains but almost never poetry, I asked Kathleen to put on her Poet Laureate hat and advise me on becoming a poetry reader. “I think a great way to find voices that speak to you is to check out anthologies. A collection with of a lot of voices. It’s guaranteed there will be many poems there that you will not like, but just turn the page and keep reading. And try something else. Even if you’re just reading half a poem, keep at it. If you find one just one poet who speaks to you, find a book of that poet’s work and read the book. And maybe you’ll find that poet leads you to another poet. And that’s what takes you in the door.

“Poetry is like music. You’ll not like at least as many poems as you do, probably more. You just need to give yourself a chance to find the ones that speak to you. It’s not as easy as dialing the radio around. You have to be more proactive about it.”

And what separates poetry from other literary forms? After admitting that as Poet Laureate she feels she should have a better answer to this question she responds. “Well, it does have the song quality. So distilled. And it’s so much about sound and image. Poems don’t have to be burdened by stories. They go back into our history so far -- that idea of people sitting around the fire, telling stories through poems because there’s the rhythm that helps you remember them. I think poems need to work out loud to really be poems.”

Finishing up this story, I have a couple minutes before making dinner. I think I’ll read a poem.

The poet is shown here, overlaid by her own poem, “Natural History”

PHOTO CREDIT: Hayley Young (Seattle Magazine)

Kathleen Flenniken’s Not-So-Secrets for How She Does It?

On the demands of the job of Poet Laureate:

• “Basically it’s a full time job. It’s more than I’ve ever worked since I’ve had children. It bleeds over my entire day. I’m working all day long; after dinner, I’m working in the evening.
• “There are lots of things I can’t really pursue right now. The house is a mess. Floors need to be refinished. I look forward to having some time to buy some new lights for the dining room. Some of those things that I love to do.
• Despite that, “I try to enjoy everything I do as much as I can. Part of that is knowing it’s only two years. It’s like an adventure, like a vacation. You’re accumulating experiences and you can think about them later when it’s snowing outside.
• “I’ve learned how to let go of my mistakes. I used to hang onto them. I’d wake up in the middle of the night and punish myself severely for some stupid thing I said, or a missed opportunity. I try not to do that any more. I move on to the next thing. I let go. I let go of my accidents, and try to look forward to the next opportunity.”

On the importance of friends and mentors in guiding her transition from engineer to poet:

• “It’s no accident that I had to make a new set of friends when I became a poet. You surround yourself with people who understand that world. My new friends make me feel comfortable with my choices.
• “I’ve had mentors and they’ve have mattered immensely to me. That’s been a real source of comfort and joy.
• “I have a wonderful friend who has been my mentor. When I was 4 or 5 years into my writing I decided I wanted to go to the next level, so I found a poet. I had one of her books that I loved, and I found her on-line and contacted her to see if she would take on a private student. She has been there every step of the way ever since. And even though I’m at the stage where I shouldn’t need to have someone tell me it’s ok, if there were one person I would need to say it’s ok, it’s Sharon. I ended up getting a Masters in Creative Writing from PLU and she was my thesis advisor. She said, you’re already doing the work, so why not get the degree, so I decided to do it.

On knowing whether a poem is finished:

• “One thing is sitting with it for a while. I have a fairly bad habit of thinking after I’ve finished the draft of a poem -- oh, this is fantastic! This is wonderful! Then coming back to it a few days later and realizing, this isn’t wonderful at all. So the first step is incubator, let it sit for a while.
• “Another is sending it out and see if it’s rejected. When you open the results and see it was rejected, yes you’re disappointed, but there’s that 5 minute period where you can see the poem with different eyes. And that’s often a gift. Sometimes that helps you locate the problems. Maybe helps you find a solution to the problem. Or maybe you realize, this piece isn’t as good as you thought it was.”

What has Kathleen read recently?

• “I’ve been asked to write a lot of blurbs. And of course, when you write a blurb, you have to read the book very carefully. You have to read it a couple times with great care. I’ve been reading with a lot of intentionality. Whereas it would be fun to read a fun book, like last summer I read, Financial Lives of the Poets, which was just a fun book, that made me laugh. It’s by Jess Walters.  He’s a Spokane author, he’s great, he’s fantastic.”

Who Should I Interview Next?

• Executive Director of Jack Straw -- Joan Rabinowitz .  She built the organization into an arts and cultural center; financially in the black; they own their own building; they do all sorts of wonderful work across lots of cultural boundaries. She is an amazing collaborator. Works with all sorts of other organizations. She’s somebody who keeps going. Really smart and fun. She’d be great. They just won a Mayor’s arts award. Very accomplished.
• Barbara Earl Thomas. I love her to pieces. She says 10 smart things every minute, she’s amazing.
• Liz Mattson -- works for Hanford Challenge, an advocacy organization. She’s taking on the work of trying to get people to know about the Hanford Nuclear Reservation.

Jen Gay and Elizabeth Klob of Cicada Bridal: Doing Traditional Women’s Work in a Non-Traditional Way

- Janet Pelz

Like the French bakery whose scent lures me with the promise of butter on the tongue, I’m drawn to Cicada Bridal to tease my fingers across the textures of raw silk and lace. Not to mention dreaming in the stunning designs and outrageously rich colors.

Starting the day at Cicada, 1121 1st Avenue Seattle 98121

I’ve been pulled in like this on several occasions since that magical day 15 years ago when I exited the dressing room in a lavender shantung silk column dress to see my friend Judy dialing her cell phone. “I’m calling Mario’s to tell them not to hold that other dress,” she said nodding at me, “because this is what you’re wearing for your wedding.”

It was an odd place to find a dress shop, on an upper floor of the old Rainier Office Tower, and one that I happened upon only because of an overwhelming need to pee and a memory of the public restroom hidden nearby. It seemed that much more fatalistic to have found this store, clock ticking the days away before my wedding -- way too soon for a future bride with any sense of decency.

I was rescued then by the artistry of Jennifer Gay and Elizabeth Klob, the pair that owns and manages Cicada Bridal as well as designing and sewing the unique pieces of art hanging on the racks where we now sit, in their current shop on First Avenue in downtown Seattle. 

As they will do throughout our interview, the two throw back their heads in laughter thinking back to that old location. “What were we thinking? Why would ANYbody open a dress shop there? It was huuuuuuge; it was like an indoor golf course. All the space you could ever wish for, but nobody could find us.”

Playing off each other they recreate some of the more outrageous stories from that phase of their career, including the time an employee took after a thief with a couple of their prized  gowns in a backpack.                                                                        Elizabeth (left) and Jen in the shop

Jen and Elizabeth were in the back of the store, where they spent much of their days at their sewing machines. “You would think half of the dresses would have been stolen,” says Jen laughing.

But as odd a location as that one was, it was at least bigger than their prior 1,200 square-foot shop they shared with the go-to designer for the city’s drag queen clientele. “There was a fire in that building,” says Jennifer thinking back. “A fire, but no flood -- there,” Elizabeth picks up. “We’ve been through fires and at least three floods in our current building. I’ve had our insurance on speed dial. It just happens when you’re a retail shop in an old building and you’re underneath condos with plumbing problems.”

Oh well, just one more obstacle -- rather, learning opportunity as they prefer to call them -- to push through. If they knew when they first met in the basement of Retro Viva, stitching up creations from whatever bolt of fabric awaited them in the morning, that they would journey together through so many misadventures to get where they are today.... OK, after talking with them for a couple hours I have to guess they would probably do it all over again.

“So many young women want to interview us to find out how we did it. Our friend Maggie called. She used to work for us and she’s opening a bridal store in Denver. ‘Oh my God!’, she said, ‘I think about you every single day! How did you do it?’ Here’s how -- we didn’t think about it!”, says Elizabeth, laughing.

“We are hard as nails,” declares Jennifer, seriously. “Yes, we are hard as nails, Elizabeth agrees. “We didn’t have time to think. All these people call us and ask how we did it -- It was really 90 percent balls and ignorance. Really!”

Jennifer can’t wait to agree. “Oh my God, not a day goes by that we don’t fuck something up and learn a valuable lesson.” This line gets them laughing in stereo. “We are crazy!” says Elizabeth, stating the obvious.

Crazy maybe, but after 18 years, also very successful at what they do: designing, sewing, and fitting the perfect dress for any special occasion, from holiday party or prom to wedding.

They met when Jen stopped by Retro Viva to sell some hats she had made. “The big drag queen who worked there was like, you gotta meet Elizabeth down in the basement! And he takes me down to this dank, crap-ass basement, not even a daylight basement, but a basement basement with concrete floors. There’s Elizabeth, working away all by herself down there, weren’t you?” She turns to Elizabeth who throws in a response from the reception desk where she’s attending to details, making it clear that the two are used to jumping seamlessly in and out of each other’s conversation.

Jen joined Elizabeth in the basement until the store owner realized she couldn’t make dresses for less than they cost coming from China, “so she very nicely said, “I don’t think we can do this anymore,” and we said, “well, how about we do it ourselves?

“One of the things that was helpful is that we weren’t friends first. We walked into the relationship like work associates. It was a totally clean slate, with no weird pre-history. I mean, we learned we could work in a basement eight hours a day without killing each other!” laughs Jen.

With a boost from the store owner, who rented them all the equipment at a reasonable rate, they started a wholesale line selling mostly through trade shows. Their showroom was in Georgia “because that’s where our rep was based,” explains Elizabeth. “We were just flying by the design seat of our pants.”

“It was a lot of work for just two people,” adds Jen, thinking back. “You’d get an order for a dozen shirts and you’d have to sit down and make a dozen shirts.”

After listening to them describe fabric shopping trips to the garment district in New York City and a business where items were made in Seattle and sold in Tennessee I asked for specifics, like how much time and money they were putting into those shirts, and how much they had to charge in order to pay themselves?

“Those are GREAT questions that we probably should have been asking ourselves!” answers Jen, laughing once again. “That’s when we realized, we didn’t have any trouble selling our garments,” adds Elizabeth. “We were selling them way too cheap!”

“But then we decided we didn’t really like doing wholesale -- it was kind of soul sucking,” Jen reflects. They were running into problems collecting. Some stores went out of business, others bounced checks. “That was really new to us, having to chase down money. And at the same time we were getting a lot of requests to do wedding dresses. The business kind of suggested itself to us. I think we had done about five or six wedding dresses before we decided to put a really small collection together.”

Jen and Elizabeth will both say that the essence of their job is to make each customer feel exceptionally beautiful. “The thing with wedding dresses, we get to buy really top quality fabrics,” says Jen, and it’s evident that behind that statement lies years of polyester and velour remnants. “Really high quality fabrics and we get to put a lot of time into a very special item.”

(right: Elizabeth describes a gown she particularly likes these days, noting the textures, layering of fabrics and asymmetric hem)

A student of acting, Elizabeth appreciates the dramatic quality of the wedding, with the gown the essential costume. “There are so few rituals left in our lives – I’ve always been drawn to the ritual of a wedding. A woman gets to transform herself as if she’s on stage.”

The two of them take seriously their role in making that transformation exactly what their clients want. Says Elizabeth, “If I were asked, What’s the biggest things that’s saved us? Customer service and really listening to our clients. In this business people are so emotional, there is so much at stake. We hear time and time again about bridal shops that are indifferent to their clients. We really, really take our relationships seriously.” And in return? “We get hugs, tears, thank you letters. For all the trials and tribulations of owning your own business, this really means a lot.”

Jen handles most of the customer service on the floor while Elizabeth does most of the custom work. They credit their solid work relationship to having discreet areas of responsibility “without getting in each other’s hair,” Elizabeth observes. “We used to fight a lot before we did that,” pipes Jen. “We’re both east coast girls, so we speak our minds; we don’t hold back. When something is wrong we get it out!”

There are many gorgeous choices on the floor but if someone is coming in for a specific style, Elizabeth will do a custom design. “I work a lot with full-figured women who can’t get something off the rack but who really want something to flatter them. When we first started out I was eager to please no matter what. And now I’ve gotten to a point where I will not do something that’s not going to look good on the person’s body. I ask them to trust me. Or they say, thank you very much I’ll go elsewhere. But that doesn’t happen too often.”

“She’s very good at looking at a ridiculous number of pictures and distilling them into one dress,” says Jen admiringly of her partner. “You’re really good at that.”

(left: Jen shows one of her favorite party dresses, hand-beaded in India.  One thing Jen loves about owning her own store – the ability to pursue new creative directions.  “Some work, some don’t” she admits).

Most of their bridal gowns range in price from $1000 - $1700 with a custom design starting at about $2000. Since the economic downturn they’ve added a less expensive line, more appropriate perhaps for a beach or destination wedding. And on the opposite side of the store is a fabulous variety of eclectic designs for special occasions. So even if you aren’t planning a wedding any time soon, there are dozens of reasons to consider a shopping trip – or sensory indulgence – to Cicada. Either Jen or Elizabeth is likely to be the one welcoming you into the shop.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  (A bridal gown and evening dress in the Cicada collection.  To see more, visit their web site.  photos by Rathbone Images)

While they love their work, it’s not all that fills their lives. They both had children during the course of their partnership. “And we’re both really active, creative people outside of work,” says Jen earnestly. For her part, as you might expect of someone who spends her days sewing wedding gowns, she fills her non-work hours playing drums in local punk bands. She started on her son’s rejected miniature drum kit and still takes lessons at Seattle Drum School. “I love learning new things,” she effuses. Click here to listen to her “girl punk” band Minirex, for whom Jen designed the group’s costumes, of course. You can hear her keeping the beat in the sample songs there. Or you can find a youtube video of her playing with Witches Titties in a show with Alice Bag, whom Jen describes as Chicana Punk.

Having a teenage daughter at home with a penchant for reality shows, I had to ask about the impact to their business from shows like “Say Yes to the Dress.”

“I don’t have a television,” admits Elizabeth. Jen has seen the show once or twice when on the road. “Why would people bring so many people to their appointments? And everybody wants to have to have alcohol. We don’t allow that. They need to think about it sober -- we do not want any bubbly decisions that are regretted later.”

For her part, despite the craziness of the business, Elizabeth has nothing to regret. “I want someday to walk out of this and say, that was the best decision I’ve ever made. It’s still what I want to do – I love coming to work everyday and I’m not good working for someone else.”

(In the back of the store where the creations are made)

Jen and Elizabeth’s Not-So-Secrets for How They Do It?

• I’m not sure I’ve interviewed anyone who had an answer for this question as quickly and as categorically as Jen, who looked me straight in the eye and pronounced: “I don’t quit. Anything. I will do it until I’m the last person doing it. I will never give up. I never stop doing what I start doing. I will always be the last man standing. They say that 90 percent of success is showing up. I keep showing up.  It would never would occur to me to pull the plug.”
• And here’s probably the most important factor in their success – Elizabeth picked up precisely where Jen let go. “I personally don’t know when to say no. We never quit. Nobody has ever been backing us. We weren’t given any financial support to get started. It’s just us and two crazy credit cards.”
• And then of course, the two started laughing in stereo again.   Which suggests another key to their success – finding the humor in any situation.
• “Underlying everything is a huge amount of trust. This is paramount. Mistakes happen. We’ve been at it since the beginning and we’ve made every single mistake we could make. There is no escape. You’ve got to trust each other.”
• And as for the customer service end of the business? “You have to be really present and observe what’s going on. If I see some subtle thing on a client’s face coming out of the dressing room, I have to get to it right away.” Jen will often take the dress to the back of the store and make the alteration right then while her customer waits.

What has Jen read recently?

• Violence Girl: East L.A. Rage to Hollywood Stage. A Chicana Punk Story; by Alice Bag

“I mostly read biographies, non-fiction and brain science books.  I lost my appetite for fiction.”

Who should I interview next?

• A friend of Jen’s, who plays in the band, leads Ghost Tours of Pike Place Market and makes dolls.

Sandy Hirsch: Helping Others Find their True Voice

- Janet Pelz

Her own childhood marked by a series of 11 checkerboard moves -- from Belgium to Germany to Switzerland to England to Germany and back to England -- Sandy Hirsch brings a certain empathy to her clients.

“I had an immediate affinity with never really feeling at home anywhere as well as feeling at home everywhere because of all the traveling I’ve done. Never feeling ‘bien de sa peau’ -- feeling right in one’s skin. I have the ability to morph constantly because that was what I was trained to do as a child. I know what it’s like to feel as if you don’t belong.”

Sandy’s clients, those who make up about 95% of her private voice and communication practice, are transgender women -- men in the process of becoming women. People in the middle of a complex journey to become the person they’ve always wanted to be.

Whether through her studies of French and the classics, teaching herself languages as she moved throughout Europe, or her first career as an actress and singer, Sandy’s life has all been about communication. “My passion is voice. Mimicry is something I’ve done since I’ve been able to speak.”

But after tiring of waitressing while trying to support herself as an actress, Sandy went to graduate school to study speech language pathology.

“My very first voice client in graduate school was a transgender woman. I was one of a few ‘mature’ students there. People knew about my theater background.” The match was made. “Working with her was such fun, so challenging.

“In that period of time before starting my practice, it was obvious to me that I would be seeing transgender clients.” One of the supervisors at the UW Voice Clinic had a two year wait list “so she started sending her clients over to me because I was the only one in town. Then once the web hit, it went national and then international.

“Suddenly, you’re the person in the world who does it -- along with a bunch of other people, but there’s only a small group. When I started there were fewer of us, but there’s been a real explosion of people transitioning and coming out. Society’s views have changed, and by definition, the need has increased the number of services.

“Which is why we wrote the book because there was no clinical text for people to turn to in the voice world.”

Sandy shows me the book she edited and co-authored: Voice and Communication Therapy for the Transgender/Transsexual Client: A Comprehensive Clinical Guide (Plural Publishing, March, 2006). Included within are cd’s which we listen to together. They feature transgender women speaking before and after therapy. The difference is dramatic – the ‘after’ voice every bit female.

In addition to speech and voice work, Sandy provides training in other aspects of communication, such as walking, posture, sitting, facial expressions, and gestures. Counting off her fingers with delight, Sandy points out “I get to do my theater, I get to meet really interesting people, I help people speak the truth, which is what being a speech pathologist is all about -- you get to help people express themselves the way they always wanted to, or get them back to where they were before.”

It is for this reason she calls her business Give Voice. 

Her clients come to her at varying times in their transition. She sees most of them in her home office and Skypes with others further away. “It’s a little different with everybody. They come to me having just started hormones, and others have been transitioning for a couple years, and they’ve never done any voice.”

Her one criterion, “I require that people come to me in their feminine mode, in some relatively honest manifestation of their gender transition. They may not be out at work yet, but they’re spending enough time as a woman to use what I’m teaching them. It’s like the difference between textbook French and being in France. Their goals and outcomes are more achievable with a certain amount of immersion time.”

As part of their gender transition, Sandy helps her clients learn a new way to use the body to produce different sound. She works on pitch -- how high or low the sound is; resonance -- the timbre of the voice; where the sound resonates (men tend to resonate in the chest or lower larynx, and women in the upper larynx or head); and inflection -- how the sounds move higher or lower in pitch from word to word.

“Women produce a light sound, which is not just about pitch, but where the voice plays the mouth and in the head. The sound is out front,” she says, pouting her lips forward. “I’m training people to begin raising pitch so the vocal chords are vibrating faster. It’s nearly all ear training. Really, it’s like learning a foreign language, but learning sounds rather than words.”

Sandy clicked on a video to show me the affect of her work with a client. 

In it you’ll see Jerica alternating clips from before and after her therapy over the course of nine months. “Initially, she’s presenting as an obviously transgender woman and later, you wouldn’t know if you saw her on the street.”

(click the above to hear Jerica’s challenges with mastering a new voice at work, her estrangement from her parents, and her new boyfriend)

 

The vast majority of her transgender clients are men transitioning to becoming women. “There’s a reason for that. For transgender men, testosterone does change pitch.” Transgender women, on the other hand, have to train their bodies to produce sound in a different way.

But changing voice requires a lot more than the physical work. “I warn people that when they want to move to complete change in the way they sound they will hit a psychological wall at three months. It’s like going through the Looking Glass -- they begin to ask, where’s this other part of me? As long as you sound the same, you can still pretend you haven’t changed.”

Who among us can’t relate? I hear my own voice and think I’m still 35 years old.

(When Felicity Huffman was nominated for an Oscar for her performance in Transamerica, NPR produced a story about her voice training and that of transgender women. Listen here and you’ll hear Sandy at the end of the story).

“Our voice is our inner anchor.” The hardest time to retain one’s new voice is with family or on the job -- in a context where you’re either forced to be hyper-intellectual, or with people who evoke from you your former self. Sandy knows those situations well.

“I can speak street German pretty well, but I could never give a professional presentation in that language. The higher the cognitive level, the harder it is. It’s just like levels of fluency. For my clients, being able to present professionally, that’s a much higher level test vs. can I order my coffee.”

Similarly, when Sandy gets on the phone with English friends or family, her childhood voice returns. “A while ago I went to London to present to a conference. It was like I’d never left -- It was like putting on my bedroom slippers. The way I communicated, the way I behaved -- everything -- the pace of my walk. I fell back into being in London.

“That’s the change my transgender clients have going back to their families I sometimes tell my clients to make sure there’s a mirror around so they can constantly remind themselves of who they are.”

If voice is such a critical inner anchor, I asked Sandy how she reconciled her own voice shift. During the course of our conversation I hear traces of her native British accent fluently intermingled with American ‘r’s’ and idioms. “I have a pretty confused voice -- I don’t mean that in a deep psychological blah-blah way. It’s really different all day long.” Sandy finds herself moving from a very English voice to one that is very American, depending on whom she is speaking to and what sort of mood she is in. “When I’m doing my community volunteer work I’m in my American head, because I never did any of that in England – I was too young. But when I’m annoyed at my kids I’ll often realize I’m using a very English sound. Or like after I’ve spent time with (our mutual friend) Jane, I’ll say, “How are you? How’s Jim? How’re the boys?”

Her replication of Jane’s voice is uncanny. I wonder immediately about how Sandy will imitate me to Jane when she sees her next.

(Sandy with her husband Jim West, and sons John and Finn West)

She relies on her speech pathology training to work on voice with her clients, but for the other package of verbal and non-verbal communication, she falls back on her experience in acting and the fact that she is both “an acute observer and a woman.”

Much of the information she imparts has to do with how women relate to one another. “If we were men,” she says leaning back against her chair, “we’d be talking like this.” She drapes one arm across the back of the chair and extends her legs in front of her, “instead of like this.” She caresses her coffee cup in both hands placing her elbows on the table and leaning toward me. “It’s the art of the chin wag, that’s a British expression, which means getting together to chat.” Women do this; men, not so much.

Laughing, I pointed out that in addition to different posture, we also weren’t likely to be having this conversation if we were both men – I wouldn’t have called her to ask for an interview and not knowing me, she wouldn’t have accepted.

Sandy has taught workshops about the secrets of Girl Talk at a Port Angeles conference called Esprit. “We’ve done everything to quilting to bead sorting, to looking at photographs together -- experiences that force people into this different kind of communicative style.” As I listen, I imagine her students taking notes: women choose beads and talk like this when they are sewing quilting squares… It’s fascinating to consider how her students are working intellectually to adopt a whole series of actions that women perform everyday, whether they come to it naturally or train themselves over a lifetime.

“There’s a book called I Know Just What you Mean – the Power of Friendship in Women’s Lives, by Ellen Goodman and Patricia O’Brien. (From Publisher’s Weekly: Goodman and O'Brien discuss how women listen, talk, care for and empathize with their women friends). “An exercise I’ll have my clients do when they’re out there in the real world is to say at least five times an hour, ‘I know just what you mean.’ Men don’t have that empathy piece. They are more like to say, ‘Just give me the facts, ma’am’.”

Sandy’s approach towards teaching “authenticity”, which includes everything from hand and facial movements, to voice and ways of thinking, has made a huge difference in my confidence and ability to live more fully in my chosen gender. I would recommend her without reservation to anyone seeking true authenticity in their chosen gender presentation and voice.

 

B.C.

Her private practice is just one leg of Sandy’s professional stool. She also works part-time doing acute care at Swedish Hospital Edmonds with patients on “everything from the neck up: language retrieval, speech, reading, writing -- the whole communication ball of wax.” Issues that could come about from stroke, cardiac arrest, traumatic brain injury or other causes. She also works with an agency in long-term care facilities, mostly with geriatrics in rehab.

“My patients make me laugh; they make me cry.” Sandy played for me the role of a recent 83 year-old patient – a woman with a southern accent who married for the first time at the age of 72. “I was an undiscovered treasure,” she mimics, whistling the ‘s’ in treasure in a way that would make Tennessee Williams smile.

Juggling different part-time jobs leaves time for Sandy to be involved in her kids’ schools and in community work and provides some freedom to pursue her many other interests. “Singing is a huge part of my life – our whole family is very musical. My husband plays sax and I sing classical and jazz.” (click here to listen to Sandy sing jazz at Tula’s). “Food is a huge part of my life -- having people over for dinner gives me great joy. If someone moves into the neighborhood, I make them welcome -- I’m a networker. The community work I do has fed me. I feel enormously lucky in the randomness of my life and so I do feel a need to be giving back.

“I feel like there’s so much in the world to feel, smell, see, eat and hear, and the patients I work with remind me every single day that I could not have this in an hour, in five minutes. That keeps me moving forward. Realizing, I can do this, I can do this. It makes me think, how dare I not? When I was trying to decide whether to write an update to my book, my sister reminded me, it’s not bloody rehearsal, come on!”, she says in her English accent. “Why wouldn’t you write that book? How dare I not?”

Sandy’s not-so secrets for How She Does It:

• My life is: Danny Kay, Nichols and May, opera, languages, good food, skiing and visual arts. All of those things have led me to where I am now.
• The obvious answer, this is the only way I know how to do it -- to have many different things going on because it’s never boring. Life is never boring -- that’s how I do it.
• I was lucky enough to have been born to great parents who offered me lots of wonderful experiences as well as a superb education. I'm constantly shocked at the randomness of that fact. They were very organized parents, so I have a sense of multi-tasking.
• I have an unbelievably supportive husband; we support each other’s careers a lot.
• It goes without saying that my kids give me huge joy, but that’s sort of a category of its own.
• I feel really privileged to have a healthy mind and feel like it’s my duty to use what I have – there’s no excuse for being bored or lying fallow. My mother died when she was really, really young, so in some ways I feel it’s my responsibility to live my life fully in honor of what she didn’t have.
• Keeping things new as well as keeping tradition.
• My brother and sister give me tremendous joy. We have a language we speak together – our own terms of family humor
• Traveling with my husband and sons gives me an enormous joy; being outside of my comfort zone culturally.

What books has Sandy read recently?

• Consider This, Senora: by Harriet Doerr
• Enduring Love: by Ian McEwan
• Half of a Yellow Sun: by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Whom does Sandy want me to interview next?

• Our mutual friend Jane Zalutsky, who knows everyone and everything interesting, “obviously.”
• Liz Bullard – a speech/language pathologist who spearheaded the creation of The Children’s Playgarden – a playground designed for children with special needs.
• Sandy Eshelman – very interesting friend who has had every career known to man.

One Year, 25 Amazing Women and 13,000 Page Hits Later…

 

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It was one year ago that I launched How Does She Do It? promising prospective readers:

“You’ll be inspired by the extraordinary and ordinary life stories of women in the Seattle area.

Each week I’ll interview a single mom, elite athlete, artist, or community volunteer; women who have arrived at their destination or women in transition – about who they are now and what choices they made to get to this point.

I’ll ask these women to tell who has made a fundamental impact on their lives, and what resources they turn to for support. And I’ll ask, whom should I interview next? We’ll start a thread that could weave throughout the region, and we’ll follow it wherever it takes us.”

  With the first story about my mother Kelly Pelz I’ve gone on to write about 24 other women, ranging in age from 13 – 99, women involved in the arts, sports, non profit organizations and business; women making an impact in this country and around the globe.

In the process I’ve also had my eyes opened to the power of the web to connect us. Google provides more information than I can use, but here are some of the more impressive statistics:

• Since I posted my first story, I’ve had more than 13,000 page hits. When I started writing, I was excited to see the number of readers rise by 25 with a new story. Now I regularly get between 30 – 60 hits on the days I don’t even post from people who have Googled something and seen my page on their results page.
• My biggest single day was 328 hits about Lacey Evans, captain of the Rat City Roller Girls. By way of update – you’ll recall she was planning a kickball game at her wedding to determine the couple’s new last name. The groom won, and Lacey is now Lacey Ramon.
• 85% or so of my readers in any month are new to the site. These are people who might be looking to read about a specific person I’ve profiled, or they may be looking for information on a topic like raising children as a single mom, living with ALS, or owning and operating a restaurant.
• Through Google searches I’ve been found by readers on every continent. A reader in Kenya read about Trish Dziko’s efforts to educate children of color. Someone in Venezuela read about Marla Smith-Nilson’s organization Water First and their efforts to bring clean drinking water to the poorest parts of the planet. Readers from European and Asian countries regularly visit my site.
• Without question the story that is most often Googled is the one I wrote in two parts about the young violin virtuoso Simone Porter and her mother. Simone’s high profile as an international performing artist has inspired a lot of interest. (She got a nice acknowledgment for her performance with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the concert she was preparing for when I interviewed her).
• Sometimes another web site directs their readers to me. There was the time when the website Feministe picked up my story about Joanie Warner, who has been living with breast cancer for 17 years and her daughter Abby, who was organizing a rock concert as part of a high school project to raise money to eradicate the disease. I saw a spike in readership from that link, including one woman who was an old friend of Joanie’s from North Carolina. The two friends found each other through my web site and are once again in each other’s lives.
• 70 of you currently subscribe to the site – thank you for your vote of confidence! If you don’t do so yet but like the idea of each new story showing up in your inbox when I post, just fill in the white box in the upper right hand column where it says “enter your email address here” and hit the “subscribe” button. No cost, no obligation even to read, but it’s there if you want to. Likewise, if you prefer not to receive my regular emails notifying you of the new story, please don’t hesitate to ask to be taken off the list. I know how email overload can become an issue.

While most women eventually agree to be interviewed, almost all of them start with the disclaimer that they aren’t interesting enough to merit a story. A few have turned me down, including one woman I greatly wanted to interview who sent me this:

“I do wish I could say I'm enjoying my time as a full-time teacher with the Seattle Public Schools, but that's sadly not the case. Rather, I feel thwarted at every turn. It seems to me that creative people are not wanted in the public schools. I don't believe I can continue as a public school teacher.

“Due to my present lack of inspiration, both for teaching and writing – teaching has taken all the time and energy I had for writing – I'm afraid I'll have to decline Janet's gracious invitation for an interview at this time. I wish I were in a better place to provide inspiration for other women.”

Heartbreaking.

Although I get wonderful kudos about the stories I write featuring other women, I don’t feel as successful in trying to establish the site as a place for readers to connect with each other. My other goal in starting was this:

“So, how do you do it?

Is your secret as basic as a crock pot or as meaningful as the words Aunt Lola whispered to you on your wedding day? What gets you up on a rainy morning and sustains you through one more meeting, rehearsal, breast feeding, burnt casserole, proposal deadline, or arrival of the Great Hormonal Onslaught?

I’ll open up topics and ask you to weigh in.

We’ll learn from each other, share our secrets, and promote the people, organizations, books – even kitchen gadgets -- that add value to our lives.”

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The times I’ve put out a question for your response I’ve been met with deafening, well, silence, which makes me think, either I’m asking the wrong questions or you don’t have an interest talking to each other through the milieu of a web site.  Consequently, I’ve become reluctant to try.

Likewise, the comment function of the site doesn’t get much use. My hope is that the site could grow into something more like a book club than a text message – something that inspires conversation rather than tweets.

All of this represents the growing pains, the adjustment period.  You can help me with your ideas by clicking here to take a survey.

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And finally to the business side of this project. I spend between 10 – 20 hours a week on the site, arranging and attending interviews, writing and posting stories and trying to master the technical aspects of blogging. As compensation, I’ve made about $94 in advertising and referral sales. I thank the person who ordered a camera on Amazon by clicking from my site -- that grossed me a whopping $16! If you want to help support this project, you can do your Amazon (and affiliated sites) shopping by clicking their ad on my site. I’ll get a percentage of your sales as a referral fee at no cost to you. Similarly, if you just click on any site ad, you’ll earn me a few pennies even if you never make a purchase.

Obviously, I don’t have the business model to make this a financial success, but I definitely feel as if I’m building something of value in writing these stories. I’m looking for other ways to share them (a book, perhaps?). If you have any ideas, I hope you’ll send them along.

If you have a few minutes, I’d appreciate your responses to a brief 10-question survey. Click here to take survey. I’d love your ideas for how to make the site a more valuable place for you to spend some of your time each week.

I can’t thank you enough for your support.

- Janet Pelz

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Anne Green Gilbert: Engage Your Brain and Dance!

It’s bustling on Saturday morning at the Haller Lake Social Club, home to the Creative Dance Center for the last 15 years. The 1920’s wood frame structure, with its creaky stairs and broken up spaces is alive with a “Cheaper by the Dozen” kind of feel (I mean the 1948 book, not the cheesy Steve Martin film). There’s a sense of family among the multiple generations coming to dance with their babies or to drop their grandchildren off for class. And there’s Anne Green Gilbert, the nationally and internationally recognized visionary in the field of dance education, unassumingly weaving herself through the crowds to join a group of first graders for class.

This year Anne celebrates the 30^th anniversary of the Creative Dance Center where she has served as Artistic Director, teacher, intellectual and philosophical guru, mother and grandmother to the more than 10,000 dance students who’ve entered her doors.

On this morning, she brings an excited group to gather around her on the floor. Unfazed when an apologetic grandfather interrupts to explain that his granddaughter is reluctant to come in, Anne is quickly on her feet to help locate an extra leotard (though clearly there is no dress code for this class). With a graceful yet businesslike bearing, Anne quickly returns. The purpose in her steps, the ease of her posture, the effortlessness with which she re-seats herself on the floor -- it’s clear that this 63 year-old grandmother of four is a dancer.

Unlike my own daughter’s ballet experience, which lasted approximately four minutes -- the time it took for her to break down in tears when the teacher insisted I leave the room -- Anne’s class is suffused with an aura of acceptance. I’m sitting in the back of the room with my 9 year-old while another mother watches nearby. The door opens periodically when a curious person peers in. Anne’s attention is on the kids and their attention is on her.

“We are very flexible. I don’t know why people can’t have more of that feeling. Many of these traditional dance schools can be so harmful. Dance should be joyful!”

I recognize elements of the Anne’s BrainDance in the warm-up she leads, though rather than using scientific terms such as “core-distal” or “vestibular” she encourages her students to express different emotions like a puppy, wagging its tail or shaking its head. Each of these she does as if for the first time, the emotion in her movement as convincing as it must have been more than 40 years ago when she first started teaching.

(photo credit: John Lok, Seattle TImes)

Every class Anne teaches will be similar to this one and every one unique. They will be based on the 5 - part lesson plan that she developed, “always moving back and forth between technique and improvisation, to really create a whole dancer. It’s a very multiple intelligence, very holistic approach to dance.”

From the parents dancing downstairs with infants in their arms, to the adult and senior classes, the summer institute for teachers and Kaleidoscope Dance Company, Anne’s presence is indelibly evident. The approach to dance is one that Anne developed, in part a reaction to what was wrong with her early dance experience (“I hated my dance studio when I was young. I had a ballet teacher who hit me with a stick, who yelled and screamed”), but developed and constantly refined in response to need, experience, experimentation, science, and movement. Always movement, in a forward direction.

“I’m a Thrust. When you’re a Thrust you don’t look at things as a challenge. Because you just do it, there’s something inside you, a passion, a fire, where you don’t have a choice. And you don’t really think too clearly about what you do,” she says laughing.

“Like my books, I never should have written each book. I didn’t know what I was talking about, but I needed textbooks.” What she needed didn’t exist, so she created. Three of them.

The first in 1977 was Teaching the Three Rs Through Movement Experiences, born from her frustration teaching third grade students who were chained to their desks all day, expected to regurgitate facts rather than solve problems. Photos of children moving joyfully as they gallop their letter P through space and arrange their bodies together to make an asymmetrical shape illustrate the very clear lesson plan suggestions.

Her second book, Creative Dance for All Ages, first printed in 1992, receives only 5-star reviews on Amazon with comments such as: “Her methods are generous and joyful, reflecting her passion for giving children (and adults) the experience of dance without fear or feeling threatened.”

Anne’s third book printed in 2006, Brain Compatible Dance Education, starts with a section for Understanding the Brain and outlining the four stages of brain development from conception to adult. With the basic science explained, she moves on to describe the BrainDance.

“The BrainDance is an exercise I developed in 2000 comprised of eight fundamental movement patterns that we move through in the first year of life,” from touching and squeezing to creeping and crawling. “These movement patterns wire the central nervous system by laying the foundation for appropriate behavior and attention, eye convergence necessary for reading, sensory-motor development and more.”

As Anne taught children over the years, she was seeing an alarming increase in motor learning development problems. The culprit? Hours spent sedentary before a computer screen or strapped into a car seat, families under stress, high-stakes testing in schools. “Movement is the key to learning, but people today spend hours simply sitting. When we watch television, we go into ocular lock, staring with no movement in our brains. In the critical years as their brains develop, children should move, dance, play and interact with peers rather than stare at screens.”

Anne launches in on new negative forces creeping into children’s lives. “I read this awful article about toddlers on the iPhone -- it’s like a drug. They have these special apps. They can just do this,” she says swiping her hand through the air, “and wild animals come on, and these kids are hooked. But they don’t know what the thought process is, so we’re just creating more stupid people. They just see flashing lights, but there’s no tactile, no three dimensionality -- their brains are not really wiring the way ours were. And some of the research says, so what? This is evolution. These people don’t need the hunter gatherer brain anymore.

“And I say, ok but the kids I’m seeing are obese, they’re nervous if they sweat, they can’t relate to people, they can’t read, they can’t write. And what really kills me is the whole social relationship -- when we lose that, the violence is right here. If we don’t have a moral compass, if we don’t know empathy, than we’re just going to keep killing. To me, that’s not evolution, world peace is evolution,” she sighs.

BrainDance was born from the need she saw to prepare her students for learning, “I just started trying it out in the schools, it made kids focus, and over the long term it made children behave better and in certain cases, it made them learn better.”

Not just BrainDance, but all aspects of Anne’s methodology and philosophy come from perceiving then addressing a need, starting with her first days teaching at the University of Washington in the early 1970’s. “I was asked to teach dance for children and I knew nothing about that. But I said yeah, I can teach dance for children, I can teach dance for the P.E. majors, I can teach folk dance, I can teach ballroom. I had never done any of these things, so that’s when I became an autodidact.  

 “I just started to read. I read every book on creative dance there was. I got Arthur Murray dance records and I would teach myself the tango at night and go teach it to the students the next day. And the next night I’d learn the fox trot. And then I thought, here I am teaching these college kids how to teach children, I better teach some children dance. So, it was like a laboratory. I started organizing classes for preschoolers while I was teaching at the University and dancing in a dance company. I would see what worked and then I would tell my students the next day. I began to just make up my own ideas and own philosophy and own methodology. See, most of the time I don’t know what I’m doing,” she says laughing at herself.

Anne’s assiduous study of the brain introduced her to another concept that guides not just her teaching but the way she manages the Center and even how she understands her husband. It came from Betsy Wetzig, Coordination Pattern theorist (explaining the impact of movement on learning, communication and creativity by making movement a window to the mind’s work) who developed terminology that resonated with Anne.

By this theory, Anne is a self-described “Thrust/Swing -- I get things done and I love to play. I’m not so much a Shape, which is about what’s correct.” She goes on to explain.

Swing: “This person is always giggling, bouncing, one leg on one side, shifting legs,” says Anne, demonstrating all of those movements from her dining room chair. “They are the networkers, they love social groups, they love talk, they’re the playful people, they love to add color, they’re good nurturers, hostesses.”

Shape : “Is about being correct. Their movement is sitting still, they’re much more about what is correct, and usually it’s their own point of view. They like to edit; they put things in a box, they make lists, they’re analytical. My husband is very analytical but rarely gets things done because he’s afraid that it might be the wrong thing.”

Hang: “Falls off the chair,” says Anne, sliding from one edge of hers to the other. “They have meandering pathways, they are the ones that have the big ideas, constantly conceptualizing, big idea, big idea, they can’t edit, can’t get it done, They kind of take on other people’s personalities, they get pulled in, so, they’re kind of messy. Sometimes you can’t be quite sure what they’re saying because they’ll start in the middle of a thought that they’ve been thinking so hard.”

Thrust: “Is a doer; often sits forward, they move in a forward, diagonal direction,” says Anne, while gesturing with her right then left hands. “They get things done, they’re activators, they like to reorganize data, they don’t have the big ideas themselves. That’s basically what my books are -- I’ve taken all these things I’ve read, reorganized it, made it very accessible. I’m really a translator.

“I’m so attuned to movement I can see someone come through the door and think, Hang, and I can be prepared for a certain communication style. And you really need every single type in a committee.” Anne attributes the success and longevity of her non-profit’s Board of Directors to carrying a balance of the four types. “You want to encourage the Swing person to be the hostess at your auction, encourage the Shape to do your budget and encourage your Thrust to get things done. If you have all Shapers, or all Swingers on a committee, you’re in trouble.”

In case you haven’t yet caught on, I’m not writing about a ballerina here with an equal amount of sawdust in her head as in her toe shoes. This woman, so generously sharing her time and her dining room with me is mindful, purposeful, bursting with energy, inspiration, and evangelism for movement.

Anne and Dionne Kamara, teaching partners at CDC's Summer Dance Institute for Teachers

Anne shares the BrainDance widely. You can read about it in her book, on her web site, or purchase a dvd or video to watch it in action. She shares it with classroom teachers and through her Summer Dance Institute for Teachers (“designed for educators, dance teachers, arts specialists, and therapists who wish to understand the vital link between movement and cognition”). But she has no desire to trademark or register it. “People say I should own BrainDance, but I don’t want to, I don’t own these patterns. Whoever created us created these patterns. I just translated it and made it accessible.” That’s the Thrust talking.

And she sees the application of the BrainDance reach far wider than young children. “Because BrainDance goes through these patterns it really does rewire the brain. It reboots the computer. It’s not just random movement. It’s specific neuro-developmental movements that created our central nervous system. And if you do it everyday, you really do change. Your memory is better.

“As I get older, I’m moving into older populations and doing a lot of workshops on BrainDance for adults and seniors. It’s exercise, but it’s also expression -- much more interesting than going to 24-Hour fitness and looking at a screen because it’s about emotion, and feeling and community and connections. We do these improvisations and I say, ok, this is going to delay Alzheimer’s; this is better than crosswords because we’re using our whole body, we’re thinking of solutions.”

And what would she to say to somebody who hasn’t danced at all or hasn’t danced in a really long time? “Come, come! We see people who haven’t danced for 30 years and are re-finding that voice, and we have people who have never danced. It’s very open, very flexible. That’s what this method is.” The age range of her weekly adult class is 39 – 69 years. “I wish there were more opportunities for creative dance for adults. There is wonderful contra dancing, and senior dancing, but it doesn’t have the community. In my class, we’re always touching, weight sharing, talking, observing. It’s much more in-depth than just exercising – it has that emotional, expressive component.”

Anne is all about movement – movement of ideas, movement of bodies, of spirit, moving on to new projects, to the next class, the next workshop, the next performance. She suggests that really she is quite shy, that she would prefer to be reading her classic English novels in a quiet corner of the living room, but within moments she betrays herself yet other new ideas. “I want to write an alphabet book, do more dvd’s,” her expressive hands in movement to illustrate a point as if the energy can’t be contained.

“Everyday is a lab -- I’ve been teaching 40 years but I’m still trying new things and trying to be better. I’m, excited about planning the next lesson, I like thinking of new ideas, I like creating so much. And this gives me such an opportunity to be using my brain, solving problems, and playing! That’s what it is, it’s not work, it’s play.”

To re-energize, every summer Anne retreats to the old 1916 stone schoolhouse in the grazing land of rural Colorado. It’s the place where her father, a true cowboy reluctantly turned lawyer, went as a boy each summer to work as a ranch hand. Reachable only in the warm months, the schoolhouse is now shared by Anne and her three sisters, each of whom an artist in her respective discipline. But it is Anne, the dancer of the four, who finds a special history there. “This is where Agnes De Mille went to her first cowboy dances and got the ideas for the choreography for Rodeo and ultimately, for the Broadway musical Oklahoma. These were all-night dances with fiddlers and she danced on the same floor! Whenever I go to this schoolhouse, I always dance on this floor – it’s very romantic. Agnes De Mille is one of my total heroines because she never had a dancer’s body and I never did either.”

Anne with grandchildren Pryor, Emerson and Finn and daughter-in-law Tindley dancing on the old schoolhouse floor

Over the years Anne has brought her three children, all dancers themselves, and now her four grandchildren to join her, handing down the ritual and joy of dance through the generations. And soon, she’ll see her daughter Bronwen back at the Creative Dance Center, this time to dance with Anne’s new granddaughter Kaija Isadora (named for Isadora Duncan, the mother of modern dance). 

There are a lot more people to move. “I see changes in these kids everyday and it’s not me that’s changing them, it’s the dance. I’m just allowing that to happen.”

Happy Birthday Anne.

- Janet Pelz

 Anne Green Gilbert’s not-so secrets for how she does it:

• “I’m doing what I love to do -- it’s this passion I’ve had since I was little. And it doesn’t mean that everyday is great. It’s difficult sometimes, difficult parents to deal with, difficult grant issues, fundraising, costumes. But I think a lot of it is that Thrust personality.
• “My husband is very supportive of what I do. He has always worked long hours – he’s an excellent physician very dedicated to his patients just as I am dedicated to my dance students.
• “I didn’t have the time to stop. I had 3 kids in 5 years, I was teaching, traveling, organizing, creating. I took the kids to class when they were sick; I’d teach my class and then come home. Now I’m sitting back a little and wondering, how did I do that? It all went so fast. I can’t even remember it.
• “I just kept going.”

What books has Anne read recently?

•  Prisoner of Zenda, by Anthony Hope, an 1894 classic of swashbuckling romance she read with her book group;
• The Barsetshire Novels, by Angela Thirkell published in the 1940’s, Anne is re-reading these well-written classics. “I’m a person who rereads novels that I love because I don’t want to waste time on a bad novel.”
• Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain, by John J. Ratey . “I read a bunch of neuroscience books.”

Whom does Anne want me to interview next?

• My neighbor works for the Seattle Police as a Community outreach officer. She’s so passionate about what she does, and I think her job is so needed, and she just got a pink slip. She’s the most empathetic, sympathetic, loving person, and she has to work with these old boys. She’s living in a world that I can’t fathom and trying to change that world like I’m trying to change mine.

Stephanie Ellis-Smith: Volunteering Changed Her Life (and it could change yours)

It was the way that both Donna Moodie (see January archive) and Trish Dziko (see March archive) offered her name and hers only when I asked them whom I should interview next. “Have you met Stephanie Ellis-Smith?” they both asked. No, was my answer, but clearly I was meant to.

Not long after having found Stephanie at our café rendezvous (are you Stephanie?) I wondered how it was that I had lived in this town so long and known as many people as I did and not yet met her. I suspect Stephanie has this affect on everybody.

Stephanie Ellis-Smith by her own admission is a preparer. Like the scientist she was trained to be, there is a clarity and organization about how she expresses herself, and how she approaches life and work. And yet within that context, there is boundless creativity and impulse and passion, like the artist and cultural thinker she has come to be.

“I am inconsistent and I take some pride in that. To think bigger you do need to be inconsistent. I change my mind a lot. I like that about myself.”

After she had “literally wrung every nickel out of my education at UCLA“, taking classes wherever her curiosity led her, she finished with a double major in biochemistry and English literature. Which, she admits, should have tipped her off to what would come later.

She set out on a biochemistry career and then moved to Seattle with her new husband, Russian historian and author Doug Smith. In the world of science, she had developed a name for herself. Accomplishments aside, being noticed was never a problem.

“Being Black and being female – well, there weren’t very many women at all in the field, and no Black people period. Everybody knew who I was. There are plusses and minuses to that. When I was hot I was a superstar, and perhaps unnecessarily so. I think expectations were low, so when I would hit the mark, she is a genius! And I would think, no, I’m just doing my job. But the flip side – if I would make a mistake… well, we told you about those people. They’re not very committed, they’re not very focused.”

In Seattle Stephanie almost lived in the lab, working grueling 80-hour weeks while earning a meager paycheck. “I never saw my new husband – he would bring dinner to me at the lab. And I finally just said, you know, I don’t want to do this any more. But my whole identity had been wrapped up in science. That was a very, very difficult transition, not knowing what was coming next.”

   Stephanie Ellis-Smith with husband, Russian historian Douglas Smith

Released into daylight, she set out to discover the city she had been living in but “I had never seen an inch of because I was always in the lab.” One day she stumbled into the Francine Seders Art Gallery. (See related story on Gail Grinnell, December archives). Stephanie had heard that African American artist Jacob Lawrence lived in Seattle and on a lark asked the gallery staff if they happened to have any of his works.

“They were so kind they pulled down everything they had even though they knew I wasn’t going to buy anything.” After many hours of this they suggested Stephanie seek out “this little non-profit that had prints (of Lawrence) they were selling, for much less money to raise money for their work.”

It took Stephanie a few weeks, batting away a creeping depression that came with her lack of life direction, before she tracked down the organization. “It was a non-profit technically, but essentially it was just two art historians who were cataloging, researching and re-photographing for publication all of the extant works of Jacob Lawrence.”

On the white board in this little office was written in bold letters: FIND A RESEARCHER. “So I asked, what do you need a researcher for? And they told me they needed someone to call every single gallery in the country to ask if they had any works of Jacob Lawrence. So I said, well, I’m a researcher. I had zero marketable skills, much to my father’s chagrin after spending all that money on my education. I mean, I couldn’t even send a fax. But they said they just needed someone who could handle a lot of information, and I said, I can do that.”

Stephanie began volunteering 10 hours a week making scores of phone calls. After about six months, her volunteer post transitioned into a fulltime job which she held for five years. “The project we were doing is called a catalogue raisonné. It’s very, very prestigious. Only the most highly esteemed artists have a catalogue raisonné done in their honor. And this was the first one ever done for an artist of African descent. So it was a big deal. All of this I learned in the process.”

Stephanie Ellis-Smith is an evangelist for volunteering, and understandably so. Volunteering changed her life.

“Volunteering gives you the opportunity to just feed your soul, open your mind to doing something else. A job is not going to do that – that’s not the function of employment. With volunteering, you explore worlds and ideas that you can’t when you’re only working and coming home to turn on the TV. I just find it to be incredibly, incredibly rewarding. I mean, how would I have ever met art historians, or Jacob Lawrence and his wife Gwendolyn?

“I loved them so much – just thinking about them gives me chills. I’m very close to my family. I grew up with both sets of my grandparents. Leaving home, one thing I missed was being around old folks, so they were in a way my surrogate grandparents. And it was such a lovely way to learn about art history and museums and art book publishing, design -- the whole nine yards.”

Stephanie finished the catalogue raisonné, coming to appreciate how “Jacob’s work was unequivocally about the African American experience, but it spoke to so many people from all these different backgrounds – white, black, rich, poor – they each found nougats and kernels of importance in his work. I learned from that how the African American culture is so unique but so universal – it represents monumental triumph paired with struggle.”

One of Stephanie’s favorite works of Jacob Lawrence: “The Lovers” Taken from the site: The Jacob and Gwen Knight Lawrence virtual resource center

Working on that project along with her reading of Quintard Taylor’s The Forging of a Black Community – the History of Seattle’s Central District  “opened my eyes to the unique and inspiring history of African-Americans in the Pacific Northwest.”    

So, with a how-to book on starting non-profits and a founding Board who shared the vision: To inspire new thoughts and challenge assumptions about African American culture, Stephanie Ellis-Smith created the Central District Forum for Arts & Ideas.

“I wanted to get people thinking about African American arts and culture from a broader perspective -- more contemporary; what people are thinking about now.”

Initially, she gave the effort three short years, but a track record of successful programs kept it strong enough for Stephanie to retire from the organization ten years later. Along the way, she and the CD Forum collected commendations, including the 2004 Mayor’s Art Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Community, and the 2008 Seattle Weekly recognition for Best Expander of Cultural Boundaries.

Their program, Black to the Future – Blacks in Sci Fi, “was amazing. Hundreds of people came, 60% of them from outside Washington. It was avant garde, intellectual and slick.” Under her leadership, CD Forum examined LGBT issues in the Black culture, (“there’s a big strain of conservatism in the African American community”), identity issues, such as who is African American, and the impact of gentrification in the CD. Dance, theatre, and Food as Art were also part of the dynamic year-round programming that continues with Stephanie no longer serving as director.

“I loved the CD Forum, but it was my job. My first duty to this community is to unleash two well adjusted kids.” At ages 10 and 6, raising her kids is now Stephanie’s job. “I cannot outsource the existential growing pains of a 10 year-old girl – that is MY job, no one else’s. I’m just fortunate enough to be able to do this.

“I miss having an identity entirely around my job. But it’s actually more important to me to spend these next 10 years at home and get my kids out of the house to the best of my ability, and then I can get back to that. Right now, this is my priority.”

Setting priorities is a big theme in Stephanie’s life. “For the things that are really important -- you’ll find time for it. If people want to shake things up, get into a new way of thinking, we all have two hours a week we can spend on that – we just do. Whether it’s volunteering or whether it’s rollerblading. It comes down to priorities. We all have the same 24 hours a day.”

In her 24 hours, Stephanie continues to find time for volunteer pursuits, or “community writ large.” She was recently appointed to the Seattle Arts Commission and continues on the board of KUOW public radio, (to which she hopes you will pledge if you didn’t get around to it during the recent drive). She’s got more time to volunteer at her kids’ school, and most importantly, time for family and friends – “community writ small.”

Stephanie’s physical community is about to change for a while. She and the family are moving to London for a year while her husband is writing and researching his next book.

“My 20’s were about science, my 30’s were about art. I turn 40 in June – I think my 40’s will be about family. I can’t wait till my 50’s – I’m not sure what that will be.”

Now that I’ve met Stephanie Ellis-Smith, I can’t wait to know either.

- Janet Pelz

Stephanie Ellis-Smith (far right) with sister and parents

Stephanie’s not-so secrets for How She Does It:

• With a lot of support and sacrifice from my parents and family. I was raised essentially by 6 adults. They poured every ounce of everything that either they earned or mental energy into my sister and me. They gave me my education, which I think gave me the tools to manage my life currently.
• I ask for help, from friends, I hire help. I have no shame. I don’t believe in running myself into the ground. Self-preservation is a big driving force.
• I play squash to get out my energies and anxieties; I do Pilates to keep me relaxed.
• I take a lot of time with my husband who is my best friend, and other friends, socializing, going out to parties. I don’t think people do that enough, but it’s so important – it feeds your soul.

What books has Stephanie read recently?

• The Unwritten Rules of Friendship, by Natalie Madorsky Elman and Eileen Kennedy-Moore
• Wench, by her friend Dolen Perkins-Valdez (Stephanie just did a book launch party for her)
• The Pearl, by Stephanie’s husband Douglas Smith

(to find these books, click the Amazon ad on the right side of this page)

Whom does Stephanie want me to interview next?

• Sarah DeRuyck – a mom, a volunteer, a runner, and a PhD candidate. “She’ll be mortified I gave you her name but she deserves it.”

Joanie Warner and daughter Abby Mahler: a mother/daughter partnership living with and fighting breast cancer

After years of failed fertility treatments, Joanie Warner and Bob Mahler felt a great exhilaration in finally declaring, enough. “We are done! We are totally done! When we look back on it, Bob and I say, that was all just a way of stalling, all just a way of making it so we could get Abby. I’ll never forget the picture of this little tiny baby who was ours over there in Korea. It was just meant to be.”

Abby has been a wonderful presence in Joanie’s life for the past 17 years.

Another presence entered Joanie’s life just two years after getting Abby, in the form of a lump in her breast. The cancer it represented has been a part of her ever since that discovery. After years of chemotherapy, periods of remission and the anxiety of re-appearances, Joanie would love to declare “we are done!” once again. But while she’s made choices about how she deals with the cancer, she doesn’t have the choice to leave it behind.

Though she has no memory of when her mother discovered the lump, Abby also has no memory of a time when her mother was cancer free. The disease has shaped the relationship between these two women who talk with me openly about its impact, Joanie in her introspective yet straightforward way and Abby in the way of a high school senior heading out on a life path to help change the world.

“I found the lump myself. I was 38 and had gone for a mammogram because I had a cyst the year before. I remember the nurse saying, ‘you were just here last year, are you sure you want to see the self exam video?’ And a little voice inside me said, ‘you need to watch this and you need to pay attention.’ This time, unlike the last, I paid attention, and two weeks later I found a lump. I had a mastectomy and they put in one of those implanted ports and I went on a heavy dose of chemotherapy for about eight months.

“Abby was amazing. I would have the needle put in on Monday morning and they would send me home with this little attached bottle which would push the chemo in over 24 hours. With Bob, Abby would be wild and crazy running around the park, and with me she would just get quiet and cuddle as if she intuitively knew that mommy really didn’t have a lot of energy and just wanted to throw up.

“She was with me the day that my hair fell out. I went into the bathroom and shut the door and I was crying and Abby toddled up and opened up the door and came in, and she ran her hand through my hair and it came out by handfuls. I called a friend who cut my hair really, really short. Abby would rub her hand on my head. Then Bob shaved his head and she would rub both of ours.”

Abby’s first realization about the seriousness of her mom’s disease came later. “When I was 11 it had come back and it was pretty bad this time. I remember I was sitting right here at the dining room table and my dad was gone. My mom came downstairs and she was crying and I didn’t understand why. She hugged me and told me that maybe things might not be ok this time. I think that was the first time I realized the kind of disease it was and that it really could take your life. Growing up it was something I was around so much it wasn’t out of the ordinary. Thursday night was chemo night when we would all go to the chemo center and eat Thai food and watch movies and hang out together. I wouldn’t really think about my mom getting drugs, it was just family time.”

When Abby was in 8^th grade, she discovered the exciting alternative music scene in Seattle. Going to clubs, checking out new bands, forging friendships with like-minded peers grew beyond a teenage fad to become a clear career path she hopes to explore in college. So when she got to high school and learned about the requirement of a Senior Project, she locked in on an idea that would combine two pillars in her life: a desire to book and promote music and a passion to help eradicate breast cancer. She started planning her senior project when she was just a sophomore.

This Thursday, February 25, her years of planning and past few months of work -- “it was just like, completely grueling” -- will culminate in a benefit concert for The Keep A Breast Foundation. Check out their website at http://www.keep-a-breast.org/ where they tout, “Through cutting edge art events and awareness programs Keep A Breast has evolved into the leading youth focused global breast cancer organization.” We’re talking Susan G. Komen for the under-25 crowd, accompanied by electric guitar and a touch of body piercing.

poster for Abby’s benefit concert

Abby could have taken the path many other seniors choose – Senior Project Lite – something that didn’t require much time or effort (like learning to salsa dance, or practicing henna tattoos). But the seriousness of breast cancer, not just in her life but in the lives of many of her friends and their families, spurred her to do more. So during lunch time and after school, she activated the email, MySpace and Facebook networks to secure a venue and line up five separate acts.

“I finally got it all figured out just two weeks ago. Now it’s just promotion and getting the word out about the show. Donating to KAB could be such a positive thing and make such a difference. If I get $2500 it would be solid – the money will go straight to the organization.

“I want to work in the music industry doing promotion and booking. And I just want to prove to myself that I can do this, that all the hard work is going to pay off. This is the hardest thing I’ve ever done and the fact that it’s actually happening is just the most amazing thing ever.”

You can help Abby reach her goals, to pack the house and raise the dough, by attending the benefit or, if you worry that your ear plug supply is low, making an on-line contribution at the website she set up: www.firstgiving.com/abbymahler

Joanie has nothing but admiration for Abby’s perseverance, though her idea of a musical celebration takes a much different path. Joanie grew up in the small town of Ashville, North Carolina, and she has brought the tradition of Hoe-Down with her to Seattle.

“My mother was the kind of effervescent, out there person -- everyone was her friend. I can’t tell you the number of times we would go to Denny’s and before you knew it the people in the booth next to ours were coming to Thanksgiving dinner. So I grew up with a great sense of community. We had some friends who lived way up in the hills who would have a square dance two or three times a year, always with the fiddles and the guy who played the saw – really old fashioned, old timey stuff. I spent a lot of my childhood hanging out with people who played music on the front porch, who didn’t have any teeth and made moonshine in their back still. Some of my favorite times were way up in the hills listening to music.”

 

Whatever your taste in music, you can offer your support to Abby and Joanie and help say, “We are done! We are totally done!” to breast cancer in our lifetimes. www.firstgiving.com/abbymahler

Joanie and Abby’s (not so) secrets for how they do it:

• For Abby it comes down to family support. “We rely so much on each other for love, positive energy and advice. Both of my parents are there ready to listen and to help.”
• Doing her Project, Abby has been driven by the sense of accomplishment and pride she anticipates feeling this Saturday. “Being able to do something I love – it’s so satisfying to know I’m capable of doing it.”
• Joanie’s survival has been similarly anchored in family. “Having family members who intuitively know how to step in and help. Bob has been amazing. When I’ve been sick, he’s done everything.”
• Joanie is grateful for her job at Seattle Children’s Hospital where she works as a Nurse Practitioner. “It helps to have a routine, to have a reason to get up and out of bed even when you feel lousy.”
• Her medical training has given her the faith to “attack this as heavily as possible from the physical side” while at the same time working on the spiritual side. An acupuncturist cured a searing pain; she’s done lots of meditation, guided imagery and spiritual retreats. “Part of my growth was to learn to forgive myself for getting this. I felt very guilty as if I let my body down.”
• And together, Joanie’s disease has meant that she and Abby have learned how to talk to each other. “I’ve been blessed by having a daughter who is wise beyond her years. I think that Abby is a very open and honest person and she has given me the gift of being able to talk about uncomfortable things. I wouldn’t describe this as a fairy tale – there are always struggles – but we always talk about it. We trust each other.”

What books have Abby and Joanie read recently?

• Joanie’s reading The Glass Room by Simon Mawer. Amazon review: “It moves through six decades of European history, much of it unspeakably tragic, using the glass house as a window on the hopes and fears of its various inhabitants and the conflicts that rip Europe apart.” (see link to Amazon on this page)

• Abby just re-read the Twilight series and is starting an Agatha Christie novel for school.

Whom do they want me to interview next?

• Jennifer Argraves lived across the street from Joanie and Abby before moving to eastern Washington with her family to develop a sustainable farm, the Crown “S” Ranch, where they use no hormones, steroids, pesticides, genetically-modified feeds, or unhealthy grains.

By Janet Pelz

Mother/Daughter -- Deborah and Simone Porter

Deborah Porter had only a couple classical music cd’s in her collection.  But her daughter Simone, though just a baby, always picked out the opera Tosca.  “There’s a line in an aria that goes ‘Mario, Mario’, and my parents told me that one day when I was two I sang ‘Momio, Momio I want my milk!’ in the same melody,” explains Simone, arms gesturing as a diva might on stage. 

 

“I don’t know anything about music myself, but what I saw in Simone from the earliest age was a love of classical music, of opera,” said Deborah.  When I saw how determined she was – this was not something forced on her.”

 

Deborah started bringing Simone to concerts of the Utah Symphony when she was a little more than two.  Simone saw the orchestra pit and the begging to learn violin started sometime thereafter. “I waited an entire year and finally I gave in, and at 3 and ½ found a wonderful teacher,” said Deborah.  Simone started with a Suzuki program.  “And right from the beginning I could tell there was something different.  There was no screeching, no terrible noises.” 

 

Simone interrupts – “yes, there was.  It was horrible!”

 

“We know of some kids who were pushed by their parents at age two or earlier.  Not Simone – it was she who was pushing.  It’s so foreign to me I would never have dreamed of this.  My whole family is lawyers!”  Deborah smiles at the irony.

 

 

Simone Porter

 

Before moving to Seattle, Deborah found Margaret Pressley. http://www.pressleystudio.com/  At age five Simone auditioned for and was accepted as one of Margaret’s pupils and stayed with her for six years.  “She was amazing!  She’s the one who brought me so far,” Simone declares effusively . It was Margaret who recommended Robert Lipsett recognizing that Simone’s skill had expanded beyond what she could give her. 

 

But starting with Lipsett meant starting over for Simone.  For the first months, her weekly journey to Los Angeles was filled with hours and hours of repetition as her new teacher tried to dispel Simone’s “jerky” technique.  “I would fly down to L.A. and I would just play one note.  And scales – only scales -- for four to seven hours a day.  It definitely was hard.  But I knew, this is going to help me so much in the future with everything I want to do.  Now I’m finally getting to a place where things are automatic – that’s my goal, that’s our goal.”

 

But for Deborah, the drudgery of scales “proved to me that Simone was doing what she wanted.  She had already played with the Seattle Symphony and she went back to playing scales.  And I knew, if she could do this, she was really committed.”

 

The other thing that came with her L.A. study was the recognition it was time for a violin.  One of her own, not just borrowed from her teacher.  “The one I was using had served me really, really well, but it couldn’t fit the gigs I’m doing right now.  I needed an instrument that was more versatile, had more range.”

 

Just how does one go about purchasing an instrument that will cost somewhere between tens and a hundred thousand dollars?

 

“I looked all over the country.  I was being sent violins from all over the place.  For over a month I would bring these violins down to LA.  For entire lessons I would play violin number 1, then violin number 2, then 3, and 4.  How does this one compare to that?  I was looking for an instrument that had a great ‘G’ string and a great ‘E’ string (lower and higher) because a lot of violins have either one or the other.  I really, really wanted something that had both.  I wanted something that could handle rough things like Khachaturian and dainty things like Haydn.”

 

And then it came down to the final two, one English and one French.  “I had to send one of them back.  So, over the course of 24 hours I thought about this, going back and forth.”

 

Finally she settled on one.  The French Joseph Hel, built in 1899.  At a price of $50,000.

 

“I was astounded that we could get a violin of this quality for so little,” said Deborah.  “It’s gorgeous.  It projects beautifully.”

 

And how did she finally make her decision?

 

“The English one suited me for where I am right now, but this one I chose is more for the future.  It will allow me to grow.  It’s a little harder to play.  I’m really going to have to work hard, but this will get me to where I want to go.

 

“Ultimately, I had to trust my instincts, which was a big step.  Not just thinking but knowing, feeling.”

 

And how does that feel to trust your instincts so confidently at age 13 that you are prepared to make a $50,000 decision based on them?

 

“That’s something I’ve been building up to for so long.  If I’m not going to trust what I believe, if I’m always trying to be what someone else wants me to be, I won’t be an authentic performer.”

 

Simone shows her authentic side

 

And she’s just as authentic off the stage.

 

Indeed, any hint of the personality that describes some of the “true” prodigies they know – aloofness, seriousness, social awkwardness --  is absent in Simone.  Quite the opposite.  She seems to possess a social ease and awareness beyond her years.  She speaks thoughtfully of books she’s read, smoothly adjusts the last name of a teacher to reflect her recent marriage, even pauses to appreciate an analogy I make. 

 

If you don’t spend much time around teenagers, you’ll have to take my word.  This is not standard stuff. 

 

But she’s a standard teenager in other ways.  Last year I was hanging out on the playground with a P.E. teacher at Simone’s school while she supervised a game of touch football.  I pointed to Simone and asked the teacher, “Did you know that girl is a violin virtuoso?  She has played Carnegie Hall.”  The teacher’s eyes grew wide.  “And she’s playing football, oh, my God! ”  The two of us watched as Simone ran around and played like all the other 6^th graders and, thankfully, finished the class with her fingers still working, a smile on her face, and a glow of sweat on her forehead.

 

Those classmates are part of Simone’s peer group just are the other musicians who join her at the Aspen School or who will play with her in London this April.  “No one group is more my peers than the other.  I’ve come to not see it not as two separate lives, just separate experiences.  I have different opportunities with each group of friends,” Simone explains.

 .

Deborah points out one difference between the two groups of friends.  The musicians “understand about the practicing and the time commitment because they have had the same experience.” 

 

So where is all of this hard work and travel taking Simone and her mother?

 

At this point, Simone hopes for a career as a professional violin soloist.  “And my goal is to play with the New York Philharmonic!”

 

I asked Simone if she felt the pressure of other people’s expectations as she follows this path, and immediately she grew pensive as if this were a question she was not often asked.

 

“Mmm, that’s interesting.  I guess there is some pressure to be certain places but I don’t feel like it’s anything unfair.  Because I’m the one who signs up for these concerts.  I’m the one who recognizes I have to meet certain standards.  The pressure is all chosen.”

 

As for Deborah?  “She can stop anytime she wants.  I tell her, when you’re done I don’t care.  Although, when you sign up for a performance and you’re getting paid for it as she is now, you have to do it.  And if you’re going to go to LA, you have to practice four hours a day.  All I want is that she tells me – right away – if she doesn’t want to do it anymore.  I mean, what a ride we’ve had so far -- it has all been joy.  Simone has taught me so much.  I’m incredibly grateful for the privilege to nurture someone who brings beauty to the world.”

 

How do Simone and Deborah Do It?

 

• Simone has a Jascha Heifetz scholarship that covers full tuition to study with Mr. Lipsett.  She has a merit scholarship to study with Danielle Belen, Mr. Lipsett's assistant.  Colburn Conservatory has graciously allowed Simone and Deborah to stay in their dorms during their extended stay.
• Simone has mottos that she turns to: Carpe Diem – live each day to the most; Work Hard, Play Hard; Another Door is Another Opportunity
• “My mom has taught me not to procrastinate, so my time becomes more flexible once I get everything done.”
• Simone draws inspiration and emotional insight from Harry Potter which she translates into her violin playing.
• Deborah came to her University of Washington job as Professor of Chinese Studies with tenure and several publications under her belt, which means she is free of the “publish or perish” pressure and can arrange her teaching schedule to match Simone’s.
• Simone’s father, also a Professor at the UW, is very involved and supportive of Simone’s career though he and Deborah are no longer married.
• Deborah has a “Virgo sense of organization” and she macro-manages their schedule

 

What books have they read recently?

 

Simone:

• 1984, by George Orwell
• Pride and Prejudice and Zombies,  by Jane Austen and Seth Graham-Smith
• The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown

Deborah:

• Sophie’s World: A Novel about the History of Philosophy, by Jostein Gaarder
• The Winter Vault by Anne Michaels

 

Whom do they want me to interview next?

• Daisy Thompson, Energy Intuitive

How Do They: Nurture the musical prowess of a young violin virtuoso and the spirit of a teenager?

My 13-year old daughter is preparing to play the middle school basketball play-offs.  Her classmate, Simone Porter is preparing to play a concert with the Royal Philharmonic in London this April.

 

I drive my daughter across town for basketball practice.  Deborah Porter accompanies Simone to Los Angeles for violin studies – every week.

It won’t be Simone’s first concert in England.  That took place last year, at The Sage Gateshead, in a concert billed as featuring “The World’s Greatest Musical Prodigies”.  For that, Simone, at age 12, was selected as one of four young soloists to perform a new concerto, ‘Velesslavitsa’, written and conducted by 16 year-old Alexander Prior. 

Ø   Before you read this story, take a moment to see Simone as she competes and is chosen for this honor.  Watching and listening to her play the violin will give everything that follows its proper context.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLkL3__NlVw&feature=PlayList&p=4CE9D31063C27251&index=0&playnext=1

As you can imagine, this London gig is a pretty big thing.  But it’s hard to top the year Simone was 11.  That’s the year she made her Carnegie Hall debut and followed it three months later by playing for the Dalai Lama and a crowd of 55,000.  In between these two performances she won the Seattle Young Artist Music Festival Competition, open to musicians from 5th grade to college.  Simone won the violin division, as a fifth grader.

  Simone playing Carnegie Hall, Age 11  Photo credit: Stefan Cohen/WGBH 

 

That’s Simone.  The same clear-eyed teenager sitting across the café table from me, her slender body in constant rhythm as she speaks animatedly about everything from Khachaturian to Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  The one who, after describing her unrelenting schedule says matter-of-factly, “It is all just a joy to me.  I’ve never had a day when I thought ‘I don’t love playing the violin’.”

 

I want to understand just how much time Simone and her mother Deborah dedicate to Simone’s violin study each week and shortly into my interview two things become clear: 1) I’m going to need an abacus to add it all up; and 2) this calculation isn’t something they’re in the habit of doing.  I’d suggest that the amalgam of classes, performances, teaching sessions and practice has grown haphazardly, but I know from the exchange of emails to set up the interview and Simone’s punctual – and bubbly --  arrival that conscientious organization keeps this machine running smoothly.

 

It has to.  Consider this schedule. 

 

For these three months leading up to the London concert the pair has added two extra days to their weekly trips from Seattle to Los Angeles to study with the renown violin pedagogue Robert Lipsett at the Colburn School of the Performing Arts. 

 

After studying with him at the summer Aspen Music Festival and School, Lipsett agreed to take on Simone as one of a handful of young violin students. (You can read an interesting article about him here: http://www.usc.edu/dept/pubrel/trojan_family/winter98/Lipsett/Lipsett_pg1.html)

 

Mom and daughter leave Seattle every Sunday mid-day after Simone has spent the morning rehearsing with her piano collaborator in Seattle.  She’ll do school homework on the plane or later than night, and once in L.A. on Sunday afternoon will study with Mr. Lipsett’s assistant.  On Monday she’ll have 1 – 2 lessons with Lipsett and practice for four or more hours.   “We work on seasoning a piece and performing it as much as possible, which is really important in preparing for a concert.”  Tuesday there is more practicing and usually two lessons, one with Mr. Lipsett and one with his assistant.  And then a flight home.

 

Wednesday through Friday Simone spends at Hamilton Middle School in the public school’s Accelerated Progress Program along with her seventh grade friends, though she won’t arrive until third period.  She spends the mornings – what else? – practicing the violin and catching up with her on-line study of math through the Johns Hopkins University Center for Talented Youth. 

 

“My teachers have been extremely, extremely supportive,” says Simone, who sometimes turns in homework assignments via email from Los Angeles.

 

For seven hours on Saturday Simone is taking academic musical classes (history and theory) and playing in a small chamber orchestra, the "Young Virtuosi", at the Seattle Conservatory of Music located at Seattle Pacific University. http://www.seattleconservatory.org/

 

And then there are the extras.  Like a performance of Vivaldi this past Sunday with the Olympia Symphony Orchestra, a late night attending a Seattle Symphony concert featuring violinist Itzhak Perlman, and just prior to our get-together an appointment with Daisy Thompson, an Energy Intuitive with the Northwest Healing Studio.  http://www.northwesthealingstudio.com/

 

Energy intuition is the ability to sense how energy flows through and around a being.  Daisy has helped Simone “unlock” energy blocks, some of which came when she moved to her new teacher.  “Daisy’s amazingly talented.  I work with her on the violin – she helps me with energetic stuff.  We also work on the energy of the stories I am telling through my music.  She has also helped me get over my nerves.” 

 

 

You can see why Simone and Deborah couldn’t produce a precise answer to the question of time – it adds up to a lot, though the two are careful to make sure the balance doesn’t tip to too much.  They’ve seen other young musicians flame out from a schedule that demands far more.  “We work on efficiency – getting the practice she needs in four hours rather than eight.  I don’t want her to hurt herself.”  Furthermore, they both recognize that the skill of focus is required of anyone pursuing a career as a soloist.  With travel, rehearsals, and the other demands of a performing life, being dependent on eight hours a day of practice will not be practical. 

 

Despite all of this, she and her mother wave away the characterization of Simone as a violin prodigy.  “Mozart was a prodigy.  Alexander Prior is a prodigy,” says Simone, who reserves that description for the children who play Paganini at age five – with full orchestra.  Simone didn’t even pick up a violin until she was all of three and a half.

 

• To be continued in next week’s story: How Simone got started with the violin; what her goals are for the future; and what the experience has been like for mother and daughter.

Gail Grinnell: Carrying the Art of Women's Work from Farm to Family

My conversation with Gail Grinnell develops, layer upon layer, circling back to themes of caretaking, women’s work, relationships, love and loss, light and dark. We do not start with A and proceed methodically to Z. We spiral, adding to the conversation each time we re-touch a topic.

Layers is an appropriate term to use here, for Gail describes her art as rooted in them. “My work is a reference to how I feel about people and relationships in my life. There is a transparency and layering. It’s bringing disparate elements together.”

In physical form, her layers are made of dressmaking materials – elements “humble, simple, nothing too refined. I don’t labor under the illusion that my pieces will last any significant period of time. Life is temporal and so is my art.” The inspiration for her work is rooted in layers of memory, tradition, ritual and work.

On the eastern Washington farm where she grew up, “people were always making things. My mother’s seamstress business was always visible on the dining table.” While from earliest memory, she was always drawing or decorating in her own way, it took a while for her artistic impetus to bloom.

After becoming pregnant at age 17, she married the father like a good Catholic girl. The teenagers and their baby started life together, in a room of the motel owned by his father. Their early years together revolved around her husband’s preparation for the world of work, earning a degree from Eastern Washington University. Gail dabbled in a couple courses there but was terrified of the university setting. “It was out of everyone’s expectations for me to go to college. I was supposed to just be paying attention to my baby.”

It wasn’t until after another child at 23 and a second marriage with two more children that she pursued more formal instruction, earning a degree in painting from the University of Washington.

Immediately she recognized that painting as a medium didn’t make sense given where she was in life. “I had kids at home, I didn’t have the space or the money for those materials.” Though she drew heavily from her training, she deliberately turned from the tradition of fine art.

Instead, she focused on “the tradition of the everyday” using materials that draw from “the intergenerational memory” of women’s work. From her personal history of “having been a domestic my entire life, taking care of others” she found the impetus for her own artistic expression. “I wanted to express the value of caretaking. Wanted to leave a track back to that activity through my art.”

In the early days, she worked on her creations between diaper changings and parenting interruptions, her pieces often migrating from the spare bedroom she had designated as her work space to the kitchen table. Intertwining the kids and her work, she learned to include them in the making. From a young age, they would often participate by cutting or gluing.  Now adults, they helped put together some of the final touches on her piece currently on display at the Bellevue Arts Museum.

 
Lightly Here at night at the Bellevue Arts Museum

The piece, titled Lightly Here, is the marriage of line and drawing with the memory of women’s work, done by her and her mother and her mother’s mother, imbued in her own bones and evident in the bones of the piece.

She spent two months in Ballycastle, Ireland in 2008 doing an arts fellowship. To this remote destination all that she brought with her were bolts of interfacing fabric -- the primary media of her work, a gallon can of acrylic, and marking pens. No paints or other means of providing color. For inspiration she turned to memory of that most basic task of domestic work – the laundry. She felt the movement in her muscles of plunging the fabric into water, the twisting to release water, hanging to let the air do the rest. She thought of these movements and the actions that might follow when the laundry was done – drinking a cup of coffee at the kitchen table – and layered the two. Soon, she was dying the interfacing she brought into tubs filled with coffee or tea, the beverages adding not just subtle color but the richness of tradition to the materials.

Back in her Seattle studio she crafted the individual pieces used to construct her piece, the construction itself the last part of the creation. Like life, Gail’s work cannot be contained within a frame, but “has to respond to the space where it lives.

“You have to consider the volume of the space, and the light” – in this case both artificial from within the museum and external through the window. Even the movement of air as it circulates through the space and animates the art factors into the final design.

Not having many artistic instincts myself, I imagined my personal terror in choosing that first panel and each addition thereafter. But Gail harkens the construction of the piece to a drawing “each line changes the picture. In a real way, assembling the piece was like drawing in the space.”

The first time she constructed the piece she was not satisfied. “It looked like a sad white curtain, dusty and derelict.” The timing of the show hadn’t been great. Gail was being pulled in many directions, including final preparation for a show at the Francine Seders Gallery with her now grown son Sam, who had recently graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design. The scar on her hand, sliced open by a glass she was washing, is a reminder of how distracted she was at the time. After her life settled some she returned to the museum to re-hang, or re-draw the work to what it is today.

More than my other interviews thus far, Gail worked hard to be sure that all the words she used in answering questions were exactly the right ones. It became obvious that this is a person who demands of herself a precision of expression – she wants to be very clear about the statement she puts out. But at the same time, she’s thrilled when people bring their own references to its interpretation.

Almost giddy, she described comments she overheard from a young woman upon viewing her work. Although her words were very different from the ones Gail would use, it was clear that this stranger found something within Gail’s art that spoke to her own experience. That’s what Gail strives to find – some image or reference that has layers of commonality even across uncommon backgrounds.

To see more examples of Gail’s work, both finished and in process, check out her lovely web site.

- Janet Pelz

  

Gail at work with her grandson.

Gail’s (not so) secrets for how she does it:

• she always has a physical space designated to her art, whether that be a spare bedroom in her house, or as it is today, a studio separate from her home;
• she takes time away from the daily crush of responsibilities to focus on and advance her art. Her residencies have been instrumental, though they bring with them a difficult separation from the people who mean the most to her;
• when she’s not away, she finds avenues to involve family in her studio work whenever she can, bringing her two worlds together;
• all the electronics that facilitate communication are invaluable -- cell phone and email to stay in touch with her kids and grandkids everyday, and the computer to stay in touch with everything else

What books are on Gail’s bookshelf?

Fortress of Solitude by Johnathan Lethem

• From Publisher’s Weekly: “If there still remains any doubt, this novel confirms Lethem's status as the poet of Brooklyn and of motherless boys.’

Motherless Brooklyn also by Johnathan Lethem

• From Publisher’s Weekly: “Lethem's gonzo detective novel that unfolds amidst the detritus of contemporary Brooklyn.”

Favorite reads include Housekeeping, A Novel, by Marilynne Robinson, and anything by Annie Proulx

Whom does she want me to interview next?

• Elizabeth Bryant, Seattle artist and writer, also caring for a husband with MS