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.

Detective Cookie Bouldin: Stopping Violence with a Chess Board

- Janet Pelz

It seems like everyone knows Detective Denise “Cookie” Bouldin, even at the times she hadn’t known herself. In the Chicago projects where she grew up, opportunities to make the wrong choice were a plentiful commodity. But thanks to strict parents and a number of adults who took the time to care, Denise Bouldin learned to know herself. And she’s determined to return the favor those people paid her, in a hundred different ways, every single day.

In a loud and lively lunch spot in Seattle’s Rainier Valley, I wait my turn to say hello to Detective Bouldin. Dressed in police blacks with a purposeful bearing, makeup and nails mastered from her days modeling for Ebony and Jet Magazines, her entrance commands the attention of wait staff and diners alike. She knows someone at every table, shaking hands and patting shoulders, some stopping her proudly to show off their children and grandchildren. She finally takes a seat at my table, but not before her eyes meet most every other pair in the room.

Everybody here knows Detective Cookie.

(photo credit: KING 5 News)

I came to know her after listening to a story about her by Jamala Henderson on our local public radio station KUOW.

I stayed in the car until the piece was over and scribbled a note to myself. It took a while to track her down and find a time to squeeze into her schedule for a quick lunch between two elementary school classroom visits where, as a community relations worker for the Seattle Police Department, she delivers lessons in anti-violence. And chess.

It started like this. A while back she was given the task to organize an activity for kids in the neighborhood – something healthy for them to do while interacting with the police in a positive way. So Officer Cookie organized a basketball game between the neighborhood kids and a police team. It was a rousing success. The kids outlasted their grown-up opponents and relished the chance to rub it in.

So, when time came around the following year for another activity, she assumed she’d be organizing a repeat match.

“But the kids said, Officer Cookie, ‘We don’t want to do a basketball game again. Not all of us play basketball.’ And when I thought about it I realized, there were a lot of kids who didn’t play basketball but just sat and watched. So I asked them, what did they want to do? And a few of them said, ‘Let’s have a chess tournament.’ A chess tournament? That’s the last thing I expected to hear. But I’m saying to myself I gotta make this happen, so I said, OK!”

But then what? Officer Cookie didn’t know much about the game and what she did know, she didn’t particularly like.

“As a kid, I was pretty much brainwashed that I wasn’t smart enough for chess. I never saw a black person playing chess. Never. And then someone showed me all the pieces on the board and said, ok this is what this one do and this one do, and I got frustrated ‘cause I kept forgetting. And I said, you know what? I hate this game, I hate it, hate it, hate it. Don’t ever want to play it again,” she declared, hand sweeping the table as if she were clearing the board. “My brain just wasn’t made for chess. And when anyone would try to teach me I would say, I can’t do it, I’ve tried.”

But this was for the kids, not for her. So she went to the Parks Department and got some chess boards and organized a picnic in a local park.

“So, we got ready for the chess tournament and I set up the boards, and to my surprise there were only a couple of kids who knew how to play chess and the rest of them were just standing around watching.                          (photo from Detective Bouldin)

“I asked the kids, be honest, how come you don’t play chess? And they would answer, ‘I’m not smart enough to play chess. I don’t play because chess is for smart people. Chess is for white people, for nerds.’ I realized that the answers these kids were giving were the same answers I gave for not playing chess. The same reasons!

“Now, I was a real good, set-the-chess-board-up-person. And making sure kids came. But whenever the kids wanted me to play chess I would just mimic their moves. Wherever they moved their piece, I would move my same piece. I had no clue to why or whatever reason it got there and for what purpose.”

She was getting ready for another such match when she heard a little kid whisper to her opponent. “He was about 4 or 5 years old and he said, ‘don’t worry, you’re going to beat Officer Cookie’, and I’m like, oh no he didn’t! No, he did NOT say that! All I could do was laugh, but he was so right!”

So Officer Cookie connected with the American Foundation for Chess, who promised her she would be playing chess in 30 minutes or less if she came to one of their trainings.

“So I went. And they taught me chess piece by piece. We started with just pawns. And after about 20 minutes, I was playing chess and I was LOVING it, I could not get enough of it. And I wanted to play chess day and night.”

And the more she played chess with kids in the neighborhood, the more she realized that it was much more than a game.

“I use the chess boards to teach anti-violence and to teach about making good choices. Cause if you don’t make good choices, there will be consequences. If you’re so quick to take somebody’s pawn and you don’t notice that there’s this knight over there hoping you make that move so he can take your queen, it’s going to kill you! Same thing on the streets! You’ve got to make this choice -- do you want to be in a gang? Do you want to pick up a gun and shoot somebody? What are the consequences? I’ve had kids tell me, Detective Cookie, you know, chess is like real life! And when a kid tells me that I know I’m getting through.”

(photo from KING 5 News)

Denise Bouldin knows well what real life is like for these kids.

“In my neighborhood people tried to get me to do drugs, to sell drugs, to do prostitution. I refused to do that, basically because my parents were strict. Back in the day, you knew you would get a whipping -- you wouldn’t get a time-out or spanking, you got a whipping. After you get one, you don’t want to get another. That’s not to say I didn’t try. Some times I would meet my friends dressed in hoochie-mama clothes,” she confesses, arching her eyebrows to make sure I knew just what she was saying.

A young Denise showed up once at the local Boys and Girls Club wearing some super-tight pants when an older woman pulled her aside to offer some advice. “She said, you know what? You’re not that type of person. Because of your clothes, it’s going to make people think different of you. She gave me a long talk about it. Back then, everybody could say something to a kid; everybody was your parent. I tell people today, talk to kids, cause sometimes just saying something can make a difference like it did with me.

“I trusted what this lady said and I never dressed like that again. I started thinking about how other people would see me. It made me realize, I had friends who were gang members, but I wasn’t in the gang. I didn’t want to be seen like that so I had to give up some of my friends. Someone could come by in a drive-by shooting, they’re not going to tell me to move aside because I’m not in the gang. They just shoot.”

When Detective Cookie addresses third graders at a south end elementary school, she shares this life history with kids who sit up straight, hands folded on their desks, listening intently.

“There’s going to be times when someone is going to ask you to do drugs -- by the time you get to high school, maybe even middle school. You will have to be ready with your answer. If you have a weak ‘no’ they’ll hear that as a ‘maybe’. Don’t be afraid to say no; you have the right to say no; you have a right to mean no. Make your no mean no.”

And then Detective Cookie gets out the chess boards. Quietly, the group divides into pairs and sets up. The kids have all learned the lesson of the first move – reaching across the board to shake hands. And then they get started. Most of the students seem to have a good command of the game. Solid moves and captured pieces activate the classroom. The few who are still learning the game work together in one corner where Detective Cookie circles back frequently to answer questions.

In the school hallways the kids smile at her and wave. “Hi Detective Cookie!” is offered down the line. She knows these kids and she knows their families. If one of them misbehaves in school she’s got the family’s number on speed dial in her cell phone, and she’s not afraid to use it.

This kind of police work has earned the recognition of many notables. In 2011 U. S. Senator Patty Murray awarded Detective Bouldin a “Golden Tennis Shoes” award. In accepting the honor, Detective Cookie used the podium to inform the crowd the chess club would be coming to an end due to lack of funding. Read this clip from The Stranger about her moving address. 

 

 

 

In 2011 she received a Community Builder Award from the Seattle Neighborhood Group. In 2010 she was chosen as the Best Police Officer by the Rainier Valley Post.

Becoming a police officer would surprise the people she grew up with. Back then cops were rarely your friend. “I hated the police, just like everybody else. I thought all police harassed young black people.”

(photo credit: Red Fish Blue Fish Photography)

But when she got to high school, “I met a police officer who was at our school everyday, it was his assignment -- and this police officer was the nicest person. You could go up and talk with him. That’s when I started thinking I might want to be a police officer like him, interacting with people.”

Success in the Seattle Police Department didn’t come easily. “When I came to the Academy they thought I was sort of joke, because I didn’t look like a police officer. When I went to my personnel interview I dressed like my other job -- a professional model. I was in my modeling clothes; make-up perfectly done.”

There was one white woman in her Academy class along with about 25 men. And one African American woman in the entire Seattle Police Department.

After she graduated she learned that her classmates had placed bets that she would fail. “The ones betting against me didn’t make it through the Academy themselves! What they didn’t know, I’m from Chicago, I got five brothers, I’m street smart, very street smart, I’m athletic, I’m a tomboy.”

After the Academy she had to make it through training. Although she met some encouraging officers along the way, “some were trying to get me to quit. We would sit down for coffee and they would tell jokes about the white man, the china man and the black man, and always the black man would get the butt of the joke. I didn’t say anything, all I wanted to do was to get through. One guy wrote me up for taking too long to do my report. He didn’t mention that before we got to the precinct he had us running all over town picking up his laundry and all his other jobs.

“I had a supervisor tell me the same thing, I took too long on my call. But you have to realize what I’m doing! This old lady got in a car accident, it totaled her car. I’m waiting until the tow truck comes to get it and I’m not going to leave this little old lady ‘til the cab comes to get her. We once did a raid on a house and I stayed a little longer because I saw that there were kids in the house with no food, so I went out to get some. And then I volunteered to take the kids to child protective service so they could get in a foster home. It takes me a little longer because I’m not going to leave until the job is done.”

(KOMO TV: see the full clip here)

Detective Cookie finally made it through training, and this day over her lunch order delivered to the nodding waiter as ‘my regular’, she realized she had just passed her 32 year anniversary on the force.

“I tell kids, you gotta start planning your roads now. What you want to be way down that road to success -- start that road right now. Even if you’ve done some wrong things in the past, you can make a change right now. I stopped hanging with people doing the wrong things, and it allowed me to become a police officer. “

As a police officer Detective Cookie has experienced some of her proudest moments. She was a body guard to Rosa Parks when the civil rights leader spoke at Garfield High School. “And I was one of the Seattle Police Officers on security detail for the inauguration of President and First Lady Obama. I had tears running down my eyes. I got a beautiful gold badge. This is something I will cherish for my whole life.”

Look for an upcoming column on Detective Cookie along with directions for how to support her Urban Chess Program.

Tomoko Moriguchi-Matsuno: A Giant in the Grocery World (if not in sensible shoes)

- Janet Pelz

For Seattlites, Uwajimaya is not just the destination for home-made sushi ingredients, it is a journey to a far-away place at the end of the ride-free bus. Amid the shelves piled high with exotic food items you’ll see the regular neighborhood customers, many of whom are elderly immigrants, filling their grocery carts with reminders of home. You’ll see pre-school classes ogling the live fish and bins of strange fruits and vegetables, tourists taking photos and office workers on lunch break. It’s a place that has come to define Seattle almost as much as the Space Needle.

I enter the sprawling retail complex that is Uwajimaya looking for my interview with its CEO, Tomoko Moriguchi-Matsuno and notice a woman whose head barely rises above a display of rice sacks. She is engaged in what looks like any conversation between two neighbors catching up with family news, although here, one is the store owner and the other a customer.

I introduce myself as she finishes her impromptu chat and she takes up with me as if I were the next neighbor. We climb the employees-only staircase until Tomoko stops a man descending. “What’s up with that -- ‘Can I meet in an hour’?,” she asks him tauntingly. “The soy sauce rep, doesn’t he understand we’re one of their biggest customers?”

“Not one of their biggest customers,” corrects the man with a smile, “their biggest customer!”

“Well, you tell him next time that won’t work, and I don’t give a rat’s ass what he says!” She giggles with these words. “And don’t forget,” her voice shifting to business mode as she continues upward, “I need the names and addresses of the big-wigs in San Francisco to invite to our event down there.”

We’re on a hunt to find a place to talk, and though she has just arrived, she knows what’s going on in any possible space. “That one’s busy with a 401(k) training,” she nods as we approach a room filled with employees. Tomoko offers greetings and personal comment to each person she passes. Striding into an office area she raises her voice loud enough to address everyone sitting at their desks. She breaks into a friendly exchange in Japanese with one woman as we squeeze through to a small room at the back, where Tomoko pushes a stack of supplies to the edge of the small round table, and pulls up a stacking chair.

Across the table from me in this supply-closet-turned-Executive-Conference-Room sits Tomoko Moriguchi-Matsuno, Uwajimaya’s CEO, dressed in a palette of color suggesting an artist’s sensibility. She carries none of the officiousness one would expect from a corporate executive and indeed our interview is peppered more frequently with self-effacements than with boasts of business success.

In the next hour I’ll come to see that this one woman, who reaches 4’10” in a pair of sensible shoes, embodies a package of contrasts which she moves between as quickly and easily as images in an iPad commercial. She speaks fluent Japanese and in English can swear like a sailor. She is an artist surrounded by engineers and business leaders. She was born in the custody of an internment camp yet embraces her American heritage. She can barely reach a kitchen counter, but she worships the giants of the NBA, calling herself a Kobe Bryant ‘freak’.

Raised in a traditional Japanese American family where the men are in charge, she sits at the head of her family business, which last year had $95 million in sales.

From the moment we begin talking, Tomoko demurs, suggesting there is nothing so interesting about her that would fill the paragraphs of a story.

“This is really just a grocery business, it’s not rocket science. I think my family is more interesting than me -- what they are to Seattle and to the Japanese community.”

Although I’m not convinced, I agree to travel back in time to the beginnings of the business at the top of which Tomoko sits today.

          (some of the colorful shelves at Seattle’s Uwajimaya)

Uwajimaya, named for the Japanese town of Uwajima where Tomoko’s father Fujimatsu Moriguchi learned his trade (the suffix ‘ya’ means ‘store’), began in 1928, when he started making fish cakes in Tacoma to sell to the Japanese farmers and fishermen around Washington State. It was part of his plan to make $5,000 and then return to Japan. “My father was very, very poor. He had just a seventh grade education, if even that.”

But before Fujimatsu Moriguchi could realize his dream, the war came, and with it Executive Order 9066 in 1942 which forcibly relocated to internment camps 120,000 Americans of Japanese descent, the Moriguchi family included.

An arranged marriage had partnered Fujimatsu to Sadako Tsutakawa, sister to George Tsutakawa who later would achieve international renown as a Seattle sculptor. Mr. and Mrs. Moriguchi had sent their oldest child, a girl, to Japan before they were interned. Tomoko, their youngest child, was born in the land of the free but not in freedom. She was the last child born in the internment camp in Tule Lake California, her sister having the distinction of being the first child born there.

Tule Lake, in northern California, was one of the most infamous of the internment camps. Prisoners there held frequent demonstrations and strikes, demanding their rights under the U.S. Constitution. As a result, it was made a "segregation camp," and internees from other camps who had refused to take the loyalty oath or had caused disturbances were sent to Tule Lake. At its peak, Tule Lake held 18,789 internees. Tule Lake was also one of the last camps to be closed, staying open until March 20, 1946.  -- J. Willard Marriott Library, University of Utah

With two other children born before and three born in camp, the Moriguchis were released in 1945 -- a family of six children with $75 in their father’s pocket, the dreams of returning to Japan having vanished like the smoke from an incense burner. “So, we came back to Seattle and moved into what I learned a little while ago was a barn -- I always thought our house was a little bit strange,” her voice floats higher as her eyes roll upward. “You know, we were very poor but we didn’t know we were poor because we had such good people in our lives.”

Her father started a store at 4th and Main in Seattle’s Nihonmachi, or Little Japan Town, an area just a shadow of what it had been before it was cleared of many of its residents. “It was a very small Uwajimaya store where he made his fishcakes again.”

The family worked hard. “Oh, we lived in the store, my mother and father worked 7 days a week; 15 - 20 hours a day.” Knowing a life of poverty, Fujimatsu was determined that his children would have greater opportunities, starting with a solid education. Undoubtedly reflective of his recent experience he would tell his children, “There are many things that can be taken away from you, but not an education.”

 Of the seven children, every one went to college with the exception of the oldest sister in Japan. Represented among them are engineering degrees, chemistry degrees, home economics, and Tomoko’s fine arts degree.

(Left: Fujimatsu outside the original Seattle Uwajimaya)

While he was still alive, her father gave the business to the four boys. “He expected the girls to get married and not do anything.” With the sad passing of the family patriarch in 1962, Tomoko’s brother Tomio Moriguchi left his job at the Boeing Company where he was working as   an engineer, and took over the family business, running it for the next 40 years.

Meanwhile, the youngest sibling Tomoko, was working as a graphic artist in San Francisco, living near her sister. Tomoko married her husband, Koji Matsuno, a San Francisco native, and they had two daughters. But when her sister announced that she was moving back to Seattle for her husband to take a job with the family business, Tomoko told her own husband that they would be leaving, too. “He was an engineer for the Navy, and I told him he would have to transfer.”

When she came back was it to be involved in the business? “No, no, no, no. Trust me, this is not what I thought I’d be doing today,” she says sotto voce.

And what did she think she would be doing? “I didn’t think anything beyond just bringing up my kids. I do everything for them, but I’m a tiger mom, too. People criticize that woman, I don’t criticize her. First of all, she’s not telling you what to do. That’s the way I brought them up, we were tough and they’re successful. I didn’t beat them, but we were tough.”

Shortly after her return to Seattle, “I was working part-time, fixing up the stores, setting up the displays. It was just a nice way for my family to give me a job. Actually,” she says conspiratorially, “I don’t know if they did give the job to me -- I think I just ended up doing it. We always kid that no one would hire us so we all had to come back to the family business.”

Over the years, her job at Uwajimaya grew to entail oversight of much of the business’s day-to-day operations. Tomoko was the one responsible for opening new stores in Beaverton, Oregon and in Bellevue and Renton, Washington. Along the way, she put her artistic flair to work in designing vivid store displays.

Then in November 2000, Uwajimaya made its second Seattle move since the 4^th and Main location, to anchor Uwajimaya Village. Along with the grocery and gift market, the 66,000 square foot retail space includes Kinokuniya Bookstore, an Asian food court, underground parking and several other retail stores and services. Above the store sits the 176-unit Uwajimaya Village Apartments. Altogether, it represents a project of incredible magnitude for a family business.

(You can read more about the business in this Seattle Times story commemorating the 80^th anniversary of Uwajimaya).

 

 (Exterior of Uwajimaya Seattle; Village apartments visible above)

“And then, the four brothers for some crazy reason all retired within years of each other and they said, oh, we’re going to have you run it.” Tomoko was 62.

Her answer? “Well, I guess there’s no one else to do it,” she says with her eyes moving from side to side, feigning a search for an alternative. “We wanted a family member. So I thought, I think I can do it for a year (I’m in my third year now). But I’m very, very bad with numbers. I’m an art major! And my brothers said, we’ll just put good people around you and that’s what I have -- I have really good people around me. So, what choice do I have?” she asks as if scheming to find another solution.

“I was already doing so much of the day to day operations for the retail -- but I didn’t have the wholesale and everything else. But I’m always good at telling people what to do,” she says mischievously, her eyes sparkling.

She jokes about what the first days were like. “I just sort of sat around and thought, hmmm,” her shoulders hunched as if her goal were to make herself even smaller than she already was. “You know, I don’t have a secretary, I don’t have an assistant. It wasn’t like I was in a whole new world where people were driving me around and bringing me lunch -- in fact, I have to go out there and beg people to get me something,” she says, faking outrage.

She acknowledges that much of what she knows about the business comes from having been in it basically all her life. “I not just grew up in it but I understood from my brothers which were the important parts.

“The store is us and we are the store.”

The store seems to function as the sun in this family’s solar system. Each of the siblings, like planets, may rotate independently but their orbits always bring them back to Uwajimaya. Over time, each of the siblings have added to the family network, like moons to the planets, but still they all feel the gravitational pull of a business in its third and fourth generations, that is open seven days a week for most every day of each year after year. And like the sun, its steady presence becomes indistinguishable from the daily pace of life. It is no wonder there are no apparent boundaries in Tomoko between the personal and the business, from a chat with a neighbor to instructions regarding a contract. In addition to her Japanese upbringing, to which she attributes her reticence to take credit, the business is such an intrinsic aspect of daily life that it often goes unnoticed for how amazing it really is.

At this point in the interview Tomoko stops to challenge me. “How interesting is this? It’s so weird to think that anyone would want to read about me. Running the grocery store -- that’s not interesting, that’s second nature.”

After she describes all that is part of this family business, including an arm that sells wholesale products to Asian restaurants, I challenge her initial premise that this isn’t much like rocket science. It sounds pretty complicated to me.

“I wish I could say it is but because we’re in it every single day and it’s human. Retail is like farming -- you have to work with what you have, you have to have good common sense, good social skills, you have to think fast, and because you’re working in a grocery store, you can’t tell everyone to go to hell.”

I ask what changes Tomoko has witnessed in the decades her family has been growing the business. “It used to be (in the original Seattle store) that people actually worked for us -- and I don’t mean this in a power play at all -- because we were a business. Now the company works for the employees to give them good jobs and good benefits.” I note the 401(k) seminar we passed and she nods her head. “Thirty-seven cents of every dollar goes to employee benefits. For a small Asian family business, we work hard to take care of our 500 employees. We want our employees to be citizens, to pay their taxes, to get the same privileges of any other person.”

She points out that if the philosophy weren’t so ingrained, the family “would have taken a lot of money out of the business to drive fancy-dancy cars, but that doesn’t suit us. Now, were not starving,” she states sincerely, to assure me that martyrdom isn’t part of the business plan, “but we are not here to live the kind of life that we wouldn’t know what to do with.”

Where their clientele was once all Japanese, they are now 50% non-Asian in all their stores, and their Asian products represent every part of the continent. “The mix makes it stronger,” she says noting that the mix comes not just from the products they sell but from the different cultural and ethnic backgrounds and 30 native languages represented in their employee base. “But our policy is that you can only speak English on the floor unless a customer asks for something in another language. Because we’re America,” she says with a mixture of national pride and retail pragmatics. “We find it insulting to customers if we’re talking away in a language they don’t understand.

Has she changed during these three years of being in charge? “Yeah, a lot, but I can’t tell you exactly how because they are subtle things. I understand numbers better but I still hate them. Numbers are good but your heart is even more important.

“At the end of the year if we didn’t make $1 million but we made $900,000 and we did it by not letting people go -- the numbers can’t always drive you. If we were a public company, the investors would come in and tar and feather me. But for all my life working in this business, there are many stupid things I have done, not once have I been reprimanded. But also, my family figures since I never listen to them, why tell her?”

Tomoko sees herself in this position for another two years, but her family insists it will take longer than that to groom other family members to take over. And when she’s done being a CEO? “I’m going to find myself in either art or food or both. I like to cook, but I also have this art in me. I do crazy things with fabric. Somewhere I’ll find a mix with my art and my food, but I don’t know what it is yet. And I would like to tell women, in Japan mostly, that they don’t have to abide by the old rules.”

Before our interview comes to a close, Tomoko pauses to check her cell phone for a message. “My lawyer’s wife fell down today and he said he would call the minute she was diagnosed.” We leave the supply closet whereupon Tomoko issues a few more jokes to the office workers and a couple instructions regarding a contract negotiation before heading downstairs to see an old friend. I leave her by the rice sacks, talking to a customer just as I had found her a couple hours earlier.

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

• You know what I’ve gotten with age? I’ve been able to kiss off worrying about things I have no control over.
• If she had a group of Japanese women here what would she would tell them? “First of all, if you’re a mother, be a good mother, be a good wife, a good partner, whatever you are. I’ve had the opportunity to break some silly social glass ceilings both for my family and myself. I would tell them, you have to not feel inferior. There is always something you can do -- I don’t mean reinvent the light bulb, but even the littlest thing, every single day, if you have some control to make it better, you need to make it better. I think, as women, we sort of think, oh, somebody else should do that, especially in the Japanese community. You don’t have to be a leader, but you can focus everyday on what you can do. That’s the advice I would give them.”
• I’m always figuring out how to have a really good time, but the good time comes because you’ve had some crappy times.
• Being able to wake up is a good time. Everything is a good time, even when my mother died it was a good time because she suffered so much.
• I always have a really good time with my two girls when we take a good trip -- those REALLY are good times.  My other good times? Just laughing. I love laughing -- I feel that it’s really good for your heart.

What has Tomoko read recently?

• Besides every grocery article in the whole entire world now? I read the newspapers inside out. I read the NBA sports stories. I’m a Kobe Bryant freak. I was very sick one year and I had to stay in bed, and the NBA playoffs were on. What I was admiring about Kobe, not only do I think he’s cute, but he had this incredible physical talent. I fell in love with him. And of course his name is Kobe -- probably because his mother liked Kobe beef. I am just impressed with NBA physical talent -- you can see them do nine things in half a second -- if you don’t admire that there’s something wrong with you. I love basketball. I’ll lie to people, if a game is on and there’s something I have to go to, I’ll lie in order to watch it.

Whom does Tomoko want me to interview next?

• Megan Macphee -- a young woman who is an artist, going through melanoma. Her story is amazing -- the art piece she’s creating is just amazing. It is something she needs to be doing.
• Mickey Flowers -- she used to be on channel 7 news. She’s done a lot with the African American museum. She’s one of twin sisters -- it would be very interesting to interview them together.

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.

Following the women of How Does She Do It?

I knew what it was before I unwrapped it. It came from Esther Instebo with this note:

Dear Janet:

I have had this special card for a long time, and it has always been a card that is too good to use. But for a hard working Mom and an excellent writer, at last there is the occasion that warrants its use.

How you managed to write a piece that made good sense out of that garbled interview I gave you will never cease to impress and astound me. Then to think that you could go into the internet and find that piece that must have been written about back in 1997 or 1998 really overwhelmed me as anything related to the computer world always will. Thank you for that effort on my behalf using time out of your very busy life.

- Esther

When my mother handed it to me I said, “It’s Half the Sky: Turning Oppression of Women into Opportunity Worldwide“, the one Esther recommended at the end of my interview with her.

I was engrossed in the volume immediately, knowing why it moved Esther and understanding how she knew it would move me. In my head I was writing the thank you letter I planned to send her, along with copies of the stories of other women I had included in this blog. (Esther doesn’t own a computer, so sending the web link would have been pointless).

And then my mother, the one who had urged me to interview Esther and to get around to it quickly, called to tell me that Esther had passed away the day before. Not too surprising for a woman about to celebrate her centennial birthday, but full of poignancy nonetheless.

You see, according to my mother Kelly Pelz, Esther availed herself of the Death with Dignity services now legal in our state. The date and the setting of the event had been planned out long in advance.

And in that list of things to do before her date, she had included the wrapping of that book and the careful typing of that note. She had other things on her to-do list. According to Kelly, Esther wheeled her mobile walker from her apartment through Freeway Park to the Convention Center whenever she could to collect signatures for Initiative 1098, the measure that would restore funding for critical government services through an income tax on the state’s highest wage earners.

Esther Instebo. Filling her days with the good fight and leaving it on her own terms. Look for her obituary – I contacted the Seattle Times and encouraged them to write a story about her and they’ve indicated that they will.

Here are some other updates which don’t require a handkerchief but could require good eating and drinking:

Back in January I wrote about Donna Moodie and her restaurant, Marjorie. Thankfully, she has reopened this wonderful refuge, this time in the Central District. She has been getting great reviews. Stop by for a meal and tell her you read about her on How Does She Do It?

You don’t get many chances to support a good cause while drinking at a string of local bars, so you should put this one on your calendar. Melissa Erickson’s friends and supporters have once again organized a Ring Around the Needle Pub Crawl: Back for Mo! on August 28. To learn more and to sign up, visit Melissa’s redesigned blog. If you join the action, let Melissa know you heard about her through How Does She Do It?

Melissa’s new site is looking great and has some inspiring updates on how she brings passion and commitment to each day she lives with ALS. You’ll also get connected to this youtube video Melissa helped do for the Evergreen ALS Chapter. Watch and listen to Melissa and others describe their journey with ALS and where you could go to lend a hand.

As for me? I just spent a wonderful week on Kauai with my family, snorkeling, paddling, hiking and zip-lining. It is a magical place, well worth returning to. I’m currently doing some work that will help pay the expenses of this web site – I’ll have the money to buy a laptop, which should make the whole writing thing more efficient, but the pace of new stories will be slowed as a result.

If you want to help add some pennies to support the site, you know what to do – click the ads on the site and do your on-line shopping through them.

Thanks.

- Janet Pelz

Kanti Mani: Finding Her Path to and out of Homelessness

What does the face of the homeless look like?

Does it look like this?

There are many paths to homelessness, and in her lifetime, Kanti Mani has seen many of them -- her own path as well as those of the numerous women who end up at the shelter Kanti once called home.

Her path began half a world away in India, growing up in a solid middle class family. Family in Kanti’s culture extends far beyond the parents and siblings who share a house. It includes cousins and cousins of cousins and friends of cousins and onward. It is a universe that extends around the globe but is as close as a phone that whispers the goings-on of each member of its extended community. It is a place where love and dedication to parents means doing nothing that would cause them shame. It means marrying the man they have chosen for you even if he lives a world away.

Kanti never really thought twice about her arranged marriage. After all, it had worked out well for her sister, and the man her parents had chosen for Kanti was the cousin of her sister’s arranged husband -- family.

Without even the benefit of a current photo beforehand, Kanti celebrated her engagement with her future husband when he came to meet her in India. Her extended family was there to witness the engagement and to send Kanti off to the new world for a new life there.

Kanti (right) at her engagement party with father, mother, sister (behind) and other family

The actual marriage happened within days of her arrival in North Carolina. Kanti had no use for the dress she had carried from India for the occasion. They got married in a courthouse, with her husband’s father and their cab driver for witnesses.

The abuse started that night.

Often it was just emotional, the constant criticisms of her dress, of her cooking, of the way she spoke. But then it became physical, often escalating after her husband had been drinking, which was frequent. So frequent, in fact, that the good job he had presented for himself to Kanti’s parents was gone within weeks of her arrival. “He had a Master’s in computer science. He looked like a pretty stable person with a good job. But a week and a half after I got here his company gave him notice that he had to finish rehab if he wanted to keep his job, and he did not comply with that.”

And then he lost his driver’s license after a DUI conviction. Though she had held a professional position with LG Electronics in India, in her new country with no paperwork to get a job of her own Kanti spent many of her days driving him around and many of her nights in fear.

At first, she suffered the abuse in silence. “I knew that it was not normal, but I didn’t know how to react to it. Being the kind of independent woman I’ve tried to be I didn’t want to ask anyone for help. I wanted to fix it myself.”

But then slowly, carefully, she began to share her situation with family. “My mom and dad were very supportive of my position. My father told me to stay away from him a little bit, but he did not want me to get a divorce. Maybe my husband would find that he would miss me and want to do something to make our life better, but that never happened.” As the situation worsened at home, Kanti became more convinced that this was not something that could be cured with a light dose of ‘absence makes the heart grow fonder’ medicine.

“He was physically abusive. He’d throw stuff at me, push me against a wall. There were so many nights we slept in different rooms and I would have to lock myself in the other bedroom. One time he had a knife in his hand, chasing me.”

She told her cousins and word spread. “There was lots of opposition in my family to leaving him. Divorce is not very common in India. Everyone talks about everyone and there was a lot of pressure on me. So I was worried I would be coerced to get back with him even though that was not what I wanted to do.”

She knew she had to go. Kanti contacted her cousin in Seattle who offered her a place to stay for two weeks. After she bought the airplane ticket she had had just $100 left.

“I had planned on running away but I didn’t know what would happen to him, if he would try to get in the car and go looking for me and get in more trouble. I decided it was best to tell him I’m going to my cousin’s house on the west coast.”

He wouldn’t let her take a suitcase, so she shoved what she could in a garbage bag, the wedding gown brought from India left behind. On the way to the airport she stopped by the Goodwill and spent six of her precious dollars on an old suitcase and emptied the contents of the garbage bag into it.

“When I left he got really mad and his parents were really mad because everyone found out about it and it reflected badly on them. It showed that they had hidden a lot of things they shouldn’t have. At first I was thinking I should support my husband and not share his weaknesses with other people. And then I thought, this is an arranged marriage that everyone was supposed to know about beforehand.”

As Kanti tells me this story I’m struck by the dispassionate recitation of her past, similar to the way one might describe one’s employment history to a recruiter at a job fair. And it occurs to me that this is a story that has been told many times. Undoubtedly recited to the many agencies and care workers she came across once her flight had started.

I also see Kanti, a world away from what is familiar, from the parents and sister who had always been her pillars of support, making choices for herself that she knew would provoke a torrent of criticism and rebuke from the outer circle of family. Having the wisdom to know what she needed to do and the strength and independence to do it.

Where did that come from, I ask. Who were the people in your life who showed you this way? “My mom is pretty strong but I won’t call her independent. She works as a clerk for a public agency, but even for the smallest things she would have to ask my father.  Now that he has gone she has become stronger.”

Whatever its source, this young woman sitting before me exudes poise and self-confidence. She owns her own past without apology and refuses to pass blame to anyone else.

“I figured it was a decision I had made to move out of the relationship. If that meant that I had to live on the streets for a week or two weeks I knew I would do it. I didn’t have the money to go back to India. I couldn’t ask my cousins for the money. It was a choice I had made and I knew I had to face the consequences.”

When I point out that her husband was not her choice, she remains consistent.

“If I wanted not to be married I could have told my parents, and they would have felt bad about it. It could have happened, but I guess that was my choice to follow my parents’ decision.” Looking back it seems like a risky choice to make, but not for Kanti then. After seeing her own sister’s husband chosen by her parents, she had been expecting the same for her.

(young Kanti with father, right)

Plus, there was the promise of America. Kanti’s father was ill and she knew it would be up to her to support her parents and help pay the medical bills. “I anticipated that I would move from a middle-class family in India to a better off family in the United States.  That would allow me to send money that I earn to my family, which would be considered a shame to the girls' family in India."

But things didn’t work out the way she anticipated.

Finally away from her abusive husband, Kanti now became hostage to the deadlines that dictate the lives of the homeless.

Before the clock ran out on her Seattle cousin’s hospitality, Kanti found New Beginnings Shelter. By now, her irate husband had crossed the country and tracked her down. When he began stalking her, counselors helped get a protection order. “The protection order kept me safe. I was able to call the police.”

New Beginnings provided a room for her first 45 days. Before that clock struck, she had to find another shelter or face living on the streets. Fortunately, she found Elizabeth Gregory Home.

When one looks at the process of transitioning to a bright path, it is like undoing an intricate lock, one tumbler at a time. For Kanti, leaving her husband was the first. New Beginnings the second, and Elizabeth Gregory seems to have a bearing on every tumbler thereafter, including the one the brought her to me.

I had the privilege of meeting Kanti as a result of my previous story about Joyce Israel (finding unconditional love for her special needs son). After our interview, Joyce and I arranged to get together for dinner with our husbands, and it was Rick Israel who suggested I meet Kanti. A successful businessman, Rick had been looking for a community charity for his company to adopt. He wanted to do more than write some checks, he wanted to really make a difference. After reading this story in the Seattle Times about a shelter for homeless women that had lost its funding and was on the verge of closing, he found his target. (Several other donors responded similarly. Read this inspiring follow-up story in the Times). Rick now serves on the Board of Elizabeth Gregory Home (EGH) where he met Kanti.

Today, after having been a resident there for ten months, Kanti Mani works at Elizabeth Gregory Home. “I started out being an overnight resident manager. Then I got promoted to being an operations manager, and I’m the program director now.” She does some accounting, the field in which she earned her Bachelor’s Degree in India, as well as some fundraising and general operations work, because the shelter doesn’t have the money to hire a development director. As program director, “I pretty much sure the program runs smoothly; enforce the rules; and ensure that everything is going fine for the resdients and the agency.  Due to lack of funding we have downsized our staff from 10 - 3, which means a lot of multi-tasking for everyone.”

“My job at EGH has been the most fulfilling job I’ve ever had. Because I’ve gotten so much out of EGH, I feel that I should give back.”

In July, Kanti will start work on what she hopes will eventually be a PhD in either clinical psychology or social work. She’ll be enrolled in evening and on-line courses in that pursuit.

After leaving EGH, she moved to permanent housing through the Seattle Housing Authority, and now happily lives in the U District with roommates her own age. She has no plans to return to India, though she dearly misses her mother, sister and niece. Her father passed away recently.

She likes living in Seattle, where “the people are friendly and the houses are closer together” (than in North Carolina). “People have big hearts here. One thing I appreciate about this country, especially, is that people, if they believe in something, they give money or they help in one way or another. That’s different definitely from India.

(Kanti with Seattle roommate)

“I do want to get married some day, but I don’t think I’m ready. Thinking about my last marriage, I would have been in a lot better situation if I had been financially stable. If the marriage did not work and I had money I could have gone back to India, but that did not happen. Instead, I had to buy the $6 Goodwill suitcase.”

About being homeless, Kanti would have us all remember, “people don’t always become homeless because it’s their choice.” There are many paths to take, and Kanti’s is one.

If you would like to help others like Kanti find their way out of homelessness, she would be happy to take your contribution to Elizabeth Gregory Home. Your gift can make the difference to a woman like Kanti, to set them on their own path towards a life off the streets.

- Janet Pelz

Kanti Mani’s Not-So-Secrets for How She Does It

• “It has a lot to do with my self confidence and my love for my parents. Every decision I’ve made I’ve thought, how does this reflect on my parents? When I left the marriage I knew people were going to talk about them but I thought eventually I would get a job and I would be able to support my family, and keep my father alive. I was sending money to them from the little government support I got. I feel a responsibility to my parents.  I miss my mom very much and I would like to bring her here to stay with me a few months.”
• “I think people need to believe in themselves. That a tiny bit of confidence in themselves goes a long way.”

What books has Kanti read recently?

• Women are from Venus, Men are from Mars, by John Gray “It’s helped me understood a lot of things about the opposite sex and I learned a lot about myself.”

Whom does Kanti want me to interview next?

• Many women at Elizabeth Gregory Home have amazing stories to tell.

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.”