How Does She Do It?

Mary-Ellen Buchanan: Pushing Past Limitations

By Janet Pelz

I met Mary-Ellen Buchanan prepared for an interview with a gifted teacher of children with exceptional needs, but within moments of settling down with our coffees, the conversation took its own path.

For me this became less of a story about her professional calling than a broader story about the webs of support that we create, taking turns both doing the holding and allowing others to hold us. Committing to the idea that no one is beyond, beyond needing help, beyond being worthy of it; beyond the limitations we thought that age or mental or physical development brought with them.

This is how we started.

In a soft voice edged with reminders of Queens, Mary-Ellen tells me, “I’m a power lifter -- I’m a competitive power lifter. I’ve won a world championship and I have Washington State records.”

Mary-Ellen is 66 years old. She stands a mere 5’1”.

“It’s all age and weight,” she explains. In the 61 – 67 year-old division, she’ll compete in the 105 – 114 pound weight class for just one more year. The next division will take her to age 75. “You should see those older athletes -- unbelievable. It’s quite amazing what they do.” After that she’ll compete against every woman older than 75 in her weight class. No more divisions, just lots of opportunities to outdo herself. Again.

In 2008 she bench pressed 132 pounds, eclipsing her previous state records of 110 and 115 pounds. “Now I want a fourth state record. I would like to get the world record, which is now 165 pounds. I used to think it’s out of my range, but now I’m thinking it’s possible.”

She pushes a bar loaded with significantly more than her body weight from her chest while lying, back tightly arched against a bench. Under her wrestling singlet she wears a special shirt so tight it takes her coach several minutes to dress her. Once in it, her arms are almost immobile (she demonstrates for me with a kind of zombie walk, arms straight out ahead).  The only thing they can do is press the weight. Up. The weight her coach Joe Head hands her in the meet. How many pounds Mary-Ellen doesn’t ask. She trusts Joe implicitly to know what she can do.

Mary-Ellen Buchanan competing in the World Championships, 2008, with coach Joe Head spotting

While Mary-Ellen embraces the work that’s required – three work-outs a week of between 2 – 3 hours each in the gym and running the other days – she gives the pace and flow of these work-outs completely to her coach, a former pro football player who now runs his own gym, High Performance HQ Fitness in South Seattle.

“You got a coach, you do what he says. He has the goal in mind; he’s always fine-tuning. As you get close to a meet, you start your shirt, you start working on the weight you’re going to lift. I’m trying not ask how much weight is on the bar, I’m just doing what I’m told -- he handles all the numbers. Whatever the next one is, it’s Joe’s determination.” Where’s the next meet? “I don’t know what Joe’s got in mind for me. But we’ll definitely do the World Championships in Las Vegas in the fall of 2011.”

Mary-Ellen started lifting in 1987 after suffering a running injury. Training with Joe since 2000, she didn’t start competing until 2006. What factored into her decision to go competitive? “Joe said I could do it,” she answered matter-of-factly. “He said I had the ability. I remember Joe saying, you know, the Washington State record in your age group is 75 pounds, and I thought, oh man, I can do that! That was a little tease.

“I never competed in anything, except running. I used to do marathons. But I’m not the fastest runner, by any stretch. I’m steady. And, you know, growing up, we didn’t have Title IX. I didn’t play soccer, I didn’t do any of that stuff.

“But I really love weight lifting -- neurologically, I think it suits me perfectly. It is so centering both physically and mentally. You’re holding that weight -- it’s just all that proprioception,” she exclaims, throwing out a term that requires definition. “It’s how your body feels things in space. I just feel the weight go all through me,” she says, swiping her hands down the opposite arms. “It just feels good.”

Mary-Ellen is tuned into ideas like neurological fit and proprioception. When she’s not power lifting, she works as an early childhood special educator at the Boyer Children’s Clinic, a non-profit therapy and early childhood educational facility serving children who have neuromuscular disorders such as cerebral palsy or delay in development.

The work at Boyer “is very physical, very physical. I’m lifting kids, sometimes I lift kids in their chairs. I don’t have a bad back. At work, you have to get up and down off the floor a lot. I said, Joe, I really gotta do legs, and you know what? Since we added legs, my knees do not hurt at all. It’s great because this is a job you don’t see old people doing. I thank Joe for that,” she adds, laughing. “And I always say, I have no plans for retirement -- not a thought in my mind. I tell him, Joe, you’re my old age insurance!”

Most of the kids she works with have vision impairments. “I work on their cognitive, visual and social skills. I want them to be able to look at what I show them, shift their visual intentions so they can scan their environment, and then I want them to be able to choose between options. Do you want the ball or do you want the baby?”

This is how she met Jonah Israel, whose mother’s life was transformed by Mary-Ellen’s work. Said Joyce when I wrote about her for How Does She Do It? last May:

“I remember, we walked into her classroom and she held up these two objects in front of Jonah and she said brightly, ‘Jonah, which of these do you like, do you like the blue (pointing to one hand) or the green (pointing to the other)?’ And I thought, lady, what, are you on drugs? My kid is a vegetable, what are you doing? And do you know, within six months, Jonah was turning his head, making a decision between the blue and the green? She gave me hope. This woman changed my attitude about my child in a huge way. I came to understand that there was somebody home. And gradually, gradually, I learned how to love him.”

On Tuesday and Thursdays, she does home visits of children, some of whom may be too sick to come to school. Often, these families have come to Seattle from places far away -- Somalia, Viet Nam, Ethiopia. “I love going into any foreigner’s home because it feels like I’m traveling and I love traveling.”

For these and others, Mary-Ellen is often the person who can help an overwhelmed family learn how to decipher and attend to their children’s special needs. “What I really enjoy and I’m good at is working with the families. I mean, it’s very painful. You’re the first teacher, it’s an important time in their lives. I get that and I get the pain. Yes, my job has a sadness to it, but I am also often struck by the resiliency and strength of the families.  It is a privilege when they let me into their lives.”

Mary-Ellen singing the ‘Shout and Whisper” song here and the ‘Umbrella Song’ below.  The songs allow kids to make choices during music/circle time and encourage social interactions.

Advancements for these kids don’t come in a straight line. “They can do something real good one day and the next day they have a seizure and it’s all gone. But it’s still worth it to just keep plugging ahead. Because if you’re plugging ahead, the parent is so glad to have someone plugging ahead for their kid. You’re not saying, well, this child’s not going to make it, so why bother.”

Mary-Ellen and several of her colleagues are trained in Reiki, a Japanese technique for healing and stress reduction. It’s a practice she calls upon daily, at home, at work, at the gym. “There was a boy who would come to my classroom -- he has since died. He was the only one there and we would put a towel on the table, turn the lights down and I would just treat him with Reiki for the hour. It’s just something I could do. It was important not to write off that kid or his family.

“I see a lot of these kids being written off. Some would say, why are you working so hard? I’d say, we know what he can’t do, that’s pretty obvious, let’s find out what he can do.”

In her life, Joe helps Mary-Ellen find out what she can do and he’ll push her to get there. He won’t write her off because of her age, or her size. And Mary-Ellen never gives up on herself.

“I got injured once at a meet. I’ve never been one to say, ok, I got hurt, I gotta stop. I say, what do I need to do to fix it? I rehabbed that shoulder for a year. My shoulder is probably stronger now than it was.”

At this age, Mary-Ellen has already lived longer than both her parents. In addition to her exercise schedule, she eats a low fat diet, and with a husband who is a really good cook, she eats well. “I don’t want to deal with weight. Could you imagine having to compete and THEN having to lose a pound or two in 10 hours? Uh-uh. I was 20 pounds heavier at one point. I took it off and that was it.”

In addition to Boyer and the gym, Mary-Ellen’s life is full with friends, her synagogue community, and her husband Tom, who recently retired from a career with Boeing to become a full-time social activist. “I always say, you know, I have a wonderful husband, I have a coach, a Reiki master and two rabbis -- I am very supported.”

Like Joyce Israel, there are countless parents of special needs kids who would list Mary-Ellen as a critical pillar of support in their worlds.

Taking turns – doing the holding and having others hold her.                                                  Mary-Ellen and husband Tom Buchanan

 

Mary-Ellen Buchanan’s Not-So-Secrets for How Does She Does It:

• “When you get older you really take stock. Is there anything I have to regret? I think the only thing that sucks is that half your life is over. ‘Cause I’m stronger, I’m a much better teacher than I was even 10 years ago.
• “I couldn’t be the person I am now without Tom, without all my friends, the families I work with. I wouldn’t be as happy without Joe. The thing about growing old -- some people’s world gets smaller and smaller. The good news for Tom and me is that our community keeps getting larger and larger, stronger and stronger. The synagogue connects to it, the gym connects to it, and work. At the synagogue right away you can become friends because you have so much in common.
• “I have a good job. It’s very satisfying work. People say, oh, I just want some meaning in my life – well, my work gives me meaning. The only bad thing is you don’t make much money.”
• “You hope your life will have activity. You hope that when you compete, you have the mental toughness to get through. And you know what else? You hope you have that mental toughness throughout your life. You don’t want to grow old and decrepit; you want to grow old and strong. And you can -- I’ve seen it!”

What books has Mary-Ellen read recently?

• The Museum of Innocence, by Orhan Pamuk, Nobel Laureate
• One of my favorite authors was Octavia Butler, who won a MacArthur genius award. I was so sad to learn she had died.

Whom does Mary-Ellen want me to interview next?

• A good public school teacher is worth her weight in salt. And I have two very close friends who are teachers who have given a lot of thought to schools in general.
  • Leslie Sager -- teaches 1st grade at Roxhill Elementary in Southwest Seattle
  • Gladys Fox – a middle school librarian in Tukwila

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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One More Day to Find your Cool

There’s a movement happening in Seattle though for most people it’s under the surface.

No, we’re not talking another Nisqually earthquake.

Seattle’s women’s professional basketball team, the Storm, is one game from winning the national title. It could get decided tomorrow night, which means you’ve got one day to become anointed.

Anointed to the power, speed, skill, size and grace of the only team of professional women athletes in this city. Ready to celebrate the first national title by a local pro sports team since, well, since the Storm won it all in 2004.

 

Storm forward Swin Cash after sinking a bucket (Barry Gossage/NBAE/Getty Images)

That’s right, I’m saying national title. This is the World Series of women’s basketball, though if you listened to the café conversations or bus stop chatter you might not even know it was happening.

38 years after the passage of Title IX and women still need to elbow their way into our communal sports consciousness. I’m amazed at the number of local sports fans I talked to on Monday, the day after the Storm won the first game of the series, after Sue Bird coolly drilled the ball through the net with less than 3 seconds to play, who were clueless. “Man, did you see the game?” I would ask. “Yeah, the Seahawks finally won one”, or “Yeah, the Mariners lost another.” Or the lamest one I heard, “I find girl’s basketball boring. The last time I watched was about 8 years ago.”

Sue Bird beats Angel McCoughtry to the bucket for two points.
Aaron Last/Storm Photos

As my daughter would respond sarcastically, “really?” Meaning, “really, are you that out of it?”

But I have to admit, I can see how they would be. Though it’s the biggest sporting event in town, you can’t watch it on network television (it’s not even broadcast on the main ESPN station, but on ESPN 2). The front page of the paper isn’t amping the hype as it might be for, say, a Sounders game in the middle of the season. If you didn’t know what the Storm team flag looked like, you’d think that the fabric waving from the top of the Space Needle might be signaling the end of national pancake month.

So, I’m lending a hand here. I’m helping you find your cool by directing you to a television set tomorrow night at 5:00 p.m. (Check here for places to gather before a communal screen).  On Friday morning you’ll have lots to talk about at the bus stop. Maybe even a national title.

(click here to read my interview with Storm owner Ginny Gilder)

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

Lacey Evans: At the Top of her Roller Derby Game

Lacey Evans is a pioneer.

Not the gingham-bonnet-covered-wagon kind. She’s the kind that rolls on the flat track.

Lacey Evans, a.k.a. Carmen Getsome, is a pioneer in the resurgence of women’s roller derby. She’s a leader in the Rat City Roller Girls, where the women push and shove without apology, the fans scream, and the men cheerlead – in multi-colored tutus.

This is the real deal. None of the action you’ll see is scripted or pre-planned; this is a real sport, and we play for keeps. ratcityrollergirls.com source of text and image above

A former soccer player – the one who liked to stand right in front of the penalty kick daring her opponent – Lacey watched her first bout in 2006. She went there expecting “something hokey like WWF Wrestling,” but instead saw something that amazed her. She was hooked immediately. “I went with a bunch of co-workers and they all thought it looked nuts, so I decided to try out.”

Despite not having been on skates since circa fourth grade (I forgot to ask if she still needed a key to tighten her skates back then, and has anyone yet discovered where all those lost keys went?), Lacey earned one of four open spots on the team. It was sort of a training spot. They made her skate on the outside of the pack for the first three months until she got her chops and could stay upright while her teammates bumped their way past her.

But just as the jammer angles her way past the other team’s blockers, (how’s that for derby talk?) Lacey skated her way up the team ladder to where she sits – or skates – now, as Captain of both her Grave Danger team and of the traveling all-star squad from the Rat City Roller Girls.

Lacey Evans a.k.a. Carmen Getsome leading her team Grave Danger (photo credit Joe Schwartz)

I met Lacey Evans at her team’s Saturday morning practice inside a hidden warehouse in Seattle’s Ballard neighborhood. She and 15 or so of her teammates were skating infinite ovals, their wheels clacking against the plastic tiles laid over cement floor which make their practice rink. Coach Quadzilla, watched the action atop his own set of skates, occasionally barking out commands and issuing blasts from his whistle which would provoke some reaction that my untrained eye was unable to discern. The whistles echoed in the immense space, the open beamed ceilings rising a good forty feet above, and nothing within to absorb the sound, the extent of décor being a few fold-out camp chairs and one overstuffed floral sofa.

One drill had the skaters packed tightly together in rows. At Quadzilla’s command, the trio of skaters in the rear attempted to break through the front ranks, delicately rising to their toes or sending their bodies sideways through the small gaps in the pack ahead. Once to the front, two of the three skaters attempted to block out the third with hip bumps, sliding to close a gap, or splitting their legs wide to grab as much space as possible. Occasionally, any of these actions might send a skater sprawling. The others in the dense pack reacted seamlessly, parting around the fallen while skating onward.

Derby is a full-contact sport and skaters will use all legal means at their disposal to get the job done, including hitting the opposing team with their shoulders and hips, pushing and pulling on members of their own team, and doing a cool slingshot-like maneuver called a whip to speed their jammer through the pack.

- ratcityrollergirls.com 

Practice ended and most of the team headed to the chairs or the sofa to undo their many items of padding and change into street shoes. Some put in a bit more time on the track but Lacey and the coach had team business to attend to. Along with the captain’s title comes the uncomfortable job of informing a couple skaters that they won’t be carried on the roster for the championship bout next weekend. With great talent comes great responsibility.

Afterwards, Lacey and I hook up in the storage room off the track and settle in for our conversation. I find myself facing an athlete like any I might spin with at the gym or play softball with in the evening. A composed and focused young woman, absent any extraneous body piercing or tropical tattoos. She appears to have all her teeth and speaks articulately, her passion for the sport exploding forth in everything she says.

Carmen Getsome rose to her title of Captain with a combination of hard work, aggressiveness, and, as one of her teammates offers on their web site, “she not only is a leader and positive force on the track, but works her butt off getting the league training program up and running. She’s always ready and willing to do what it takes to get everyone motivated. She’s an outstanding member of our league!”

(Carmen in her all-star uniform, photo credit Joe Schwartz)

Working hard means four practices a week, each of which is 2 – 3 hours long. It’s a 50 minute drive each way from her home. In addition to captaining two teams, she’s head of the training committee and pulls extra shifts, as do all the skaters, helping with marketing, p.r., production, and anything else that needs to be done in this all-volunteer operation. She’s one of the reasons for the league’s astronomic growth in its few years.

When Lacey started skating, the bouts were held inside an old airplane hangar in Magnuson Park where the indoor event could be rained out because the roof leaked like a sieve. Nonetheless, the 2,500 tickets for each bout sold out within hours, and Carmen and her teammates always skated before throngs of cheering fans, packed into the temporary bleachers. Rat City Roller Girls lost their permit to skate in the hangar at about the same time Seattle’s NBA team, the Sonics, picked up and moved to Oklahoma, leaving lots of empty dates at KeyArena. So now these women are skating in the premiere athletic venue in the region, where they recently set the national derby sales record of 5,700 tickets for one match.

“I thought when I started that this would just be a fad. I didn’t expect it to be picked up and become mainstream, but it has. We’ve been lucky and we’ve worked really hard. But without the people loving roller derby here we wouldn’t be successful.”

If you haven’t yet checked out Rat City, you’ve got one more chance this season. The championship bout is being held at KeyArena Saturday June 5 at 5:30. You can buy your $14 general admission seats in person at Fast Girls Skates in Wallingford and Bird on a Wire Espresso in West Seattle, or get them on-line at Ticketmaster. Find more information at ratcityrollergirls.com

What should you expect if you go?

“As long as you’re open to anything, you’ll have a great time,” said Carmen. “We are PG 13. Some of the leagues I’ve played against are ‘R’ rated, with girls wearing racier clothing. But I appreciate that we are so family friendly. And everybody’s really friendly.” In the audience Lacey sees an eclectic group that includes “lots of die-hard sports fans that stumbled into roller derby and they love it. My parents are always there. We get a lot of support from the Gay/Lesbian world; people go on a date to watch roller derby. We’ve got biker chicks, moms with their families – it’s just awesome”!

From what I saw, she’s got the eclectic label nailed. When I went last month, my friend Leslie and I sat behind a row of silver haired fans dressed in Ralph Lauren country club. Next to us were two moms with their 13 year-old daughters, (who spent as much time cruising the merchandise table as watching the bout, and who could blame them with cool items for sale such as these) and across the aisle was a group of army fatigues and brightly died Mohawks. We made for one big happy family.

I think some of the crowd could actually follow the rink action, but Leslie and I had a blast just taking in the audience and the half-time show, which featured three cheerleaders dancing expertly to Beyonce’s ‘Single Ladies’. The overhead center court scoreboard showed repeated close-ups of the long hairy legs on the center dancer, a 6’3” mustached man in a pleated skirt. Much hooting and hollering accompanied the music. (right: Derby cheerleaders in the Sockit Wenches team colors orange and blue)

Like all the ladies, Lacey brings her skater name and alter ego to the track. When she first started skating, her Carmen Getsome personality provided a toughness she didn’t yet have on wheels. “I just focused on being Carmen, a bad-ass girl who thinks she’s tough and can do anything she puts her mind to. Now, I’m pretty outgoing, but at the time I was kind of quiet and a little bit on the nerdy side of life. So I created this Carmen character who was stronger and able to overcome everything and never let anything bother her. I mean, it’s hard to be the slowest person on the track, but that doesn’t bother Carmen.”

Make no mistake, skate names are a major part of the show. Names like

• Georgia O’Grief
• Ida Slapter
• And Lacey’s and my favorite, Sara Problem?

Skate names are so important, in fact, that they must be entered on a national registry. Before you can create your own, you’re responsible to make sure there is no one else by that name or anything close. “If there is, you have to get the permission of that skater. Like, there is a skater named Drew Blood and another woman wanted the name Nancy Drew Blood, so the two came to an agreement they could each use those names, but if anyone else asked to be anything close they would both have to say no.”

Lacey will be adding a new name to her persona on August 21 when she gets married, though she won’t know until the kickball game that day what her new last name will be. Lacey and her fiancé, who is “incredibly supportive, probably the most supportive derby widower there is” are each mounting a team of wedding guests to spar for the right to choose the couple’s new last name. If he wins the two hour kickball match, she’ll be Lacey Ramon. If she wins, her name will be Lacey Roxx.

Whatever the outcome, they’ll take their vows later that day after a shower and a change of clothes.

Best wishes from us all, Lacey Whatever-Your-Last-Name-Becomes. May your marriage be as successful as your career on the flat track.

Carmen Getsome blocking a jammer from Derby Liberation Front(photo credit, Joe Schwartz)

- Janet Pelz

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

• A lot of time management. If I’m scheduled to take a rest, I’m going to take a rest. If I don’t plan on taking a rest I won’t do it.

• I have to use every minute and be committed. It always boils down to commitment. What are you more committed to, going out and having a margarita or going to practice? My team always comes first over those other activities. If I ever feel like I wanted to do XYZ and then I get to practice, within minutes I know yeah, this is where I need to be.

• Measuring and balancing the important things in life.

What books has Lacey read recently?

I’m a multi-book reader, one book that makes my mind work and one that’s completely relaxing. I have to keep one of each to stay interested.

• Mind Gym: An Athlete’s Guide to Inner Excellence, by Gary Mack and David Casstevens – a mental training/emotional mastery book (order by clicking the Amazon ad to the right and support this blog when you do!)

• Anything by Harlan Coben, mystery writer. They’re my comfort read.

Whom does Lacey want me to interview next?

• Val Tron 3000 (Valerie Morris), we call her Dr Tron. While skating she finished her doctorate. She’s a research person at Fred Hutch. She’s really smart and one of the most caring people I know.

• My mom is wonderful – she’s changing the world one child at a time at the elementary school where she works.

After the bout

• If you go to the bout June 5, or anytime you’re at Seattle Center, don’t forget you can support Melissa Erickson’s foundation (read her story here ) by buying a drink in her name at Jabu’s Pub, 174 Roy Street (between 2nd Ave N & N Warren Ave). Jabu’s is also a sponsor of Derby Liberation Front, one of four teams which make up Rat City Roller Girls

Ginny Gilder: In training for Storm ownership all her life

Ginny Gilder is a rower. It’s something you should know about her. It explains a lot.

She brings the ethic of a competitive rower to most aspects of her life. Break it down. Train. Train some more. Persist. Bring the pieces together when it’s time to perform. Compete to win.

So, it’s no surprise, really, that she would be one of four women to buy the Seattle Storm basketball team from the departing owners of the Sonics. In some way, she was training for that her whole life.

And rowing played a big part.

“Almost everything I learned in life I learned from rowing – or my kids.”

It started when, as a junior in high school , Ginny went to Boston to see a rowing race. “I just thought it looked amazing.”

That race was the Head of the Charles, famous enough for this non-rower to know of. Ginny saw it for the first time in 1974.

In 1982, 1983, and 1984 she won it. She set the course record in the women’s elite single in 1982, and that record still has not been broken.

Ginny comes from a family where business acumen is held up as the ultimate trophy. No one in the family had much experience in sports. “I was a complete non-athlete; I was asthmatic.”  The summer after Ginny first saw the Head of the Charles, her dad suggested that for her birthday, “he get me some rowing shoes. There is no such thing as rowing shoes – it just shows you how much we knew about the sport.”

She started rowing as a freshman at Yale, training with two Olympic rowers. “So I thought, hmm the Olympics. I want to do that. No one thought I had much of a shot, with my coach at the top of that list.”

Ginny is one of thousands of women in this country who came to sports along with Title 9, who were instrumental in crashing down the doors that opened the field to millions of young women, Ginny’s daughter Sierra among them.

One door to crash – the lack of facilities for the women’s rowing team at Yale. After a month of waiting in wet clothes on the bus while the men showered at the boathouse, Ginny and her teammates held a ‘Strip In’. With ‘Title IX’ written on their backs, they walked in to see the head of women’s athletics, turned their backs to her, and dropped their sweats. The moment was caught by a New York Times stringer and the Yale Daily News and the image went out over the wire. By the following fall, Yale had started an addition to the boathouse.

Too bad the digital archives don’t go back far enough to relive that moment.

With Olympics in mind, she tried out unsuccessfully for the national team in 1977, 1978, and 1979 while still at Yale. After graduating, she moved to Boston and continued to train.

Finally, she made the Olympic team in 1980, the year the Americans stayed home.

After that huge disappointment she retired from rowing. Still in Boston, however, the Charles River lured her back and she learned to scull from one of her former Yale teammates. “By myself, I could practice when I wanted and hold a full-time job. And then I just got manic and good.

“One of the biggest things I learned from rowing was how to structure my life. I loved the rhythm of getting up and going to practice. So I’d get to work at 9:00 and I had been up since 5:30, and I would look around and just feel sorry for everyone because they hadn’t been out on the water; they hadn’t seen the sunrise; they hadn’t gotten to sweat; and all they had was this dumb job. And then I’d go and work out in the afternoons.”

In 1982 she made the national team in the quad (four scullers), racing in the world championships where her boat came in 4^th.

And in 1983 she won the singles trials, and was recognized as the fastest sculler in the country. That year she came in 3^rd in the World Championships.

Things were going well for Ginny. She was shooting to finally make it to the Olympics as the single in 1984, “but ten days before the trials I broke my rib. I was over-training and I injured myself. It was my own fault.”

The odds-on favorite, she went to the trials anyway, “but then it all came apart and I did really badly.” She went to the doctor the next day, who saw the broken rib on an x-ray. “He said, you’re not alone, some of our best athletes won’t be in the Olympics this year, and I just thought ---- you. I’m going.”

Her recent times combined with the information about her injury convinced the Olympic coach to add her to the quad (quadruple sculls with coxswain). “And I won silver as the stroke of the women’s quad at the Olympics in Los Angeles in 1984. So, it worked out ok.

“Rowing was the driving force in my life for 10 years. It’s all about testing, figuring out how much pain you can inflict on yourself. Plus, rowing gave me a sense of purpose. On some level at the time I was fighting a battle to know what was meaningful enough to keep me tethered. And I think rowing was it. It gave shape to my life at a time when I was not very solid internally.”

Family is another driving force in Ginny’s life, both the family of her parents and siblings, and the one she has fashioned with her own children and partner.

Ginny rowing the Head of the Charles with her son, Gilder, in a parent/child double in 2008

Her mother, fiercely pro-choice and “her own version of a feminist”, passed those qualities down to Ginny and her two sisters. Her parents divorced when Ginny was a pre-teen and it is her relationship with her father that has endured.

The shadow cast from that divorce still hovered over Ginny into adulthood. In the early 80’s Ginny had been in a relationship with a woman but broke it off because she wanted a family. “This was at a time when I wasn’t very close to my mom and I really needed my dad and I felt like if I came out then I would lose him.

“I met this very lovely guy and we were engaged within about two months. Everything was ok for a while, trying to be happy but not quite understanding why I wasn’t. And then I met Lynn. I had signed my husband and me up for tennis lessons because we needed to do more together and she was our tennis instructor.”

Falling in love with Lynn was “really was like a bomb going off. I knew that everything had changed. It was like walking through a door and not being able to go back.”

Still, facing the idea of divorce seemed impossible because of her kids – Ginny and her husband had their son Gilder then adopted Max and Sierra. “Because when my parents got divorced I resolved I would never get divorced.” Ginny shared her dilemma with a therapist who challenged the notion that she should stay married because of her children, pointing out the unhappiness and resentment that would result.

“One of the promises I made to myself was that this relationship was going to be worth breaking my kids’ hearts for -- each one of my kids to this day remembers when we told them we were separating, and it’s really hard to be the one who breaks your kids’ hearts the first time. I promised myself that I would not turn away from my kids’ pain – and that was the hardest part. Acknowledging when they were struggling and being able to look at them in the eye, hold them and listen. I just said to myself that there would be no question when they left our household as to what love looked like.”

Relaxing on the beach at Lopez Island: (left to right: Sierra, Ginny, Max, Lynn; in front, Gilder)

Ginny and Lynn merged their two families, creating a picture that makes the Brady Bunch look simple. Ginny had her three children (Gilder, Max and Sierra) and Lynn had a daughter, Toni and son, Jesse. “We had some very hard times with five kids. Lynn and I have been living together since 1999 and have had teenagers in the house the entire time. We call it ‘teenage hell swamp.’”

That will change soon when “my baby” Sierra heads off to Division One Colorado College with a soccer scholarship in the fall. (at signing day, below)

There’s plenty to fill the void, starting with the family business.

In the years after Ginny left home, Richard Gilder became hugely successful in his investment business, and has shared his success generously with many New York institutions. In addition to plaques and statues that recognize his generous contributions to the Central Park Conservancy and the Rose Planetarium, he has endowed the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, and owns one of the biggest collections of original documents from American history, which he is donating to the New York Historical Society. “He is extraordinary.”

Ginny’s tremendous love and respect for her father is a chorus to our interview.

In his late 70’s now, her dad began to wonder what would happen to the family business once he was gone. None of the four siblings were particularly interested in taking over, so Ginny has stepped in to help build a bridge to her family's financial future. She spent the last six years learning the investment business.

“I do it because I love my family and I love my dad. I’m providing for my family. But it doesn’t fuel my competitive fire to make money.”

Rather, Ginny gets her juices going with social justice issues, which she currently impacts through the family foundation she started, the Starfish Group. Focusing on the intersection of climate change and poverty, they “get to fund the issues and organizations we care about, all over the world.”

It’s not the only social justice effort Ginny has taken on. In 1992 she founded Washington Works, after she learned from the birth mother of her adopted children Max and Sierra that she had given up her kids because she couldn’t afford to raise them. Ginny stayed with Washington Works, a non-profit whose goals were to help women get off public assistance and into livable wage jobs, for about six years.

Later she served on the Board of Directors of Seattle Girl’s School (SGS) along with Dawn Trudeau. A private middle school, SGS strives to bolster self-esteem and academic confidence of girls during their critical adolescent years.

Enter the Seattle Storm.

“The world of finance is so heavily dominated by men I was just thinking, I really wanted to do something again with women.”

When her SGS compatriot Dawn Trudeau organized a lunch with Lisa Brummel, Senior VP for Human Resources at Microsoft and a former three sport athlete at Yale, Ginny was happy to meet with them to discuss the possibility of keeping the WNBA franchise in Seattle after the Sonics moved to Oklahoma. “The three of us talked about why we would do this. I think for Dawn and Lisa, they really love basketball. Me? I love women’s sports. I was intrigued by the idea that we could invest in something that would open the doors for women at the highest echelon of sports.

Seattle Storm owners at a game: (left to right) Ginny Gilder, Lisa Brummel, Anne Levinson, Dawn Trudeau (from Seattle Times)

“It was the opportunity to bring together all the things I love about life. I love working collaboratively. I feel really lucky to be part of an ownership group like this. We respect each other, we work well together and we work hard. I love that I’m doing something for the community. I love really getting to roll my sleeves up, to work on the business side. It’s rooted in my own history, and I can take my kids.”

A package deal. All of the things Ginny has been training for, peaking for this performance

Force 10 Hoops, the ownership group, “sees a business model that gets us to profitability and we’re investing to make it happen.” Just like any other professional sports team in America they need a deep fan base, a deep sponsorship base, good ownership and a championship caliber team. “We have the best player in the world – Lauren Jackson who just re-signed, and a great coach – he’s our diversity hire.”

Storm’s Lauren Jackson attempts to block shot of Becky Hammond. Aaron Last/Storm Photos

And that leaves the rest of us, the back-up band to the Force 10 lead singers. The Storm home opener against the National Champion LA Sparks is coming up May 16 at KeyArena. I’ll see you there.   Go to www.wnba.com/storm for ticket and schedule information.

- Janet Pelz

Ginny Gilder’s not-so secrets for how she does it:

• I don’t think I do anything particularly extraordinary, I just do what’s there.
• My general policy is to catch whatever ball is falling down fastest
• I do a lot of self care – I usually work out everyday.
• I try to remember, if I die tomorrow a lot of stuff would go undone and no one would care, so I try to deal with what I can handle and not worry about the rest.
• I have really good partners everywhere – nothing that I do I do alone. So I never feel that if I’m struggling, I have to figure out the answer by myself.
• I have a partner who has been really good at making it desirable to be at home. It’s really fun to be in this family.
• I’m a real believer that persistence pays – the darkest moments are before the dawn, so don’t give up.
• I love what I do, and I have a really clear sense of responsibility. I love my family and my work is an expression of who I have to be to support them.
• I think dysfunction occurs when you keep secrets and you don’t tell the truth, because you don’t get to have your assumptions tested.

What books has Ginny read recently?

• The Glass Castle, by Jeannette Walls (in case you think your family is dysfunctional!)
• The Hours, by Michael Cunningham
• American Pastoral, by Philip Roth (“a great book!)

Whom does Ginny want me to interview next?

• Karen Bryant, CEO of Storm, “she’s been involved in professional women’s basketball since it started in Seattle. She’s really quite an amazing person.”
• Sharon Hammel, a co-founder with Ginny of Seattle Girls School
• Nancy Nordhoff – “oh my God, she is incredible!”
• Leanne Moss – Executive Director of Women’s Funding Alliance, “she’s kick-ass”

Melissa Erickson: an athlete, teammate and friend, living with ALS

“I want people to know I’m just not a diagnosis.”

When Melissa isn’t struggling with some activity that she once could do while spinning a basketball on a fingertip, Melissa is the Melissa she’s always been. “I want to be viewed as strong, emotionally and physically; compassionate, empathetic and loyal.” And a really good basketball player.

Melissa Erickson came to the University of Washington with the first recruiting class of coach June Daugherty. After a strong career at her Colorado high school and an even more impressive traveling AAU team, Melissa had four universities interested in her. “I remember walking into Hec Ed and thinking, wow, this is so cool!” It was her first recruiting visit, but “as soon as I came home I committed to the UW.”

It’s a decision she’s never regretted, even during her junior year season when the team hit the skids. But their fortunes turned around in senior year and despite Mo’s (that’s what Melissa goes by with her teammates) ACL injury, which sidelined her for the end of the season, she was right in there cheering her team on to a PAC-10 title.

After playing four years at UW, Melissa tried her hand at coaching. She picked up a couple gigs, her first year at a small school in Louisiana, which taught her more about the reality of race relations in the south than it did about basketball. Happy to leave behind the Confederate flags, she took another graduate coaching job at UNLV in Las Vegas.

But she just couldn’t shake the urge. That itch to be out on the floor making the plays rather than calling them from the bench. So she pursued an agent, who landed her on a team in Krefeld, Germany, and in the fall of ’02 she went to Europe for the first time. “I loved it. It was exactly what I wanted to do. It was just a blast. I didn’t get paid very much. I basically got paid to travel and experience the culture.” And, what could be better? Paid to play basketball.

After the season in Europe she returned to the States and got a job working at Echo Glen, the state’s juvenile rehab center, in the drug and alcohol unit. “I really enjoyed it and felt I had found my niche. I’ve always wanted to help people who are less fortunate, and had been intrigued with at-risk youth.”

Soon autumn was coming and with it the migration back to Europe for women still playing. A friend of Mo’s was playing in Portugal and she was invited there for a trial and then made the team.

“Around then I started feeling that my body was kind of different. At the try-out I just figured I was out of shape. I remember not being able to get off the ground, and my balance was really off. But I played through it. I lost weight and got in better shape, but my deficiencies continued and began to get pretty evident. So I started to work out harder. I just figured that whatever was wrong with me could be overcome with getting stronger. That’s how athletes work, right? Well, obviously, that didn’t happen.”

Muscle weakness is a hallmark initial sign in ALS (also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease), occurring in approximately 60% of patients. Early symptoms vary with each individual, but usually include tripping, dropping things, abnormal fatigue of the arms and/or legs, slurred speech, muscle cramps and twitches and/or uncontrollable periods of laughing or crying.

In September of 2005 she started going to doctors to figure out what was going on. She remembers the date, September 18, when she got the initial diagnosis that “it was a motor neuron disease of some kind but the doctors didn’t know what.”

The process was frustrating. At first doctors thought it was a pinched nerve that could be cured easily with surgery. Melissa’s biggest concern at the time was how she would be able to take time off from work since she hadn’t yet accumulated sick time. “Man, if only it was that easy!

“With ALS there’s no blood test, nothing that says for certain, this is what you have. So the doctors kept coming back with what it wasn’t – it wasn’t cancer, it wasn’t MS. While I was happy that those were cancelled out I kept wondering, but what is it?”

Melissa was referred to the regional specialist at Virginia Mason, Dr. Ravits, who continues as her neurologist. (Melissa has nothing but praise for him. “He’s overflowing in compassion. He immerses his life in finding a cure and a treatment.”) Ravits takes on patients “that are a little different than the normal ALS.” Melissa’s young age, 26, and gender put her squarely in the column of ‘different.’

Most people who develop ALS are between the ages of 40 and 70, with an average age of 55 at the time of diagnosis. ALS is 20% more common in men than in women.

By Thanksgiving the diagnosis was confirmed.

When her doctor told her, he waited for a sign of understanding from Melissa. “I didn’t know what it was. I had heard of both ALS and Lou Gehrig’s disease and didn’t know they were the same thing. Even when they were saying it was a motor neuron disease, I didn’t know the gravity of that diagnosis.”

Understandably, the news hit hard, but with the conviction of an athlete she immediately focused on how to fix it. She tried alternative treatments “some of which were terrible and took my money and offered nothing; and others which offered, not a cure, but ways to treat it through dieting and other things.”

Fortunately, as the bad news came, Melissa’s friends and family stepped in. Her parents moved to Seattle from Colorado. Her girlfriend Jessica, who she started dating just a month after she was diagnosed, “has been there pretty much the whole way.”

(Melissa, right, with Jessica, left)

And then there were the teammates. Still getting her back, they started the Melissa Erickson Foundation to raise funds to help Mo manage the costs of the disease. www.melissaerickson.org

The dollars raised “are for anything I need. A trip to see friends, a bed that will be more comfortable, anything that helps me. I am surrounded by just, the most amazing people. My words can’t do justice to how awesome they are.”

In his famous retirement speech, Lou Gehrig told the crowd: “I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth. Look at these grand men. Which of you wouldn’t consider it the highlight of his career just to associate with them for even one day?”

Listening to Mo, I quickly understand that her teammates provide more than monetary support. They sustain the link to the Melissa inside, the one a stranger can’t see. To them, Mo is still Mo, the one who had their back on the floor and who might have snapped them with a towel in the locker room after the game.

“Melissa was a 6’2 reserve small forward who could hit the 3 and bang with the best of them. She was an enforcer who wore a goofy white headband back when no other white girls were wearing white headbands. She was different. Melissa never met a sprint that she liked and enjoyed partying far more than studying. I was a young and energetic first year D1 assistant coach and I was gung ho about class checks, discipline and following the rules. As you can imagine, I was Melissa’s worst nightmare and she was my biggest challenge. That might be why I loved her so much.”

-   Shimmy Gray-Miller, Head Coach St. Louis University women’s basketball, former UW assistant coach. Read her full story about Melissa here:  http://www.coachshimmy.com/blog.html

“ALS is kind of a funny disease because you lose parts of yourself gradually,” says Melissa growing quiet.

Until now our interview has reviewed a chronological progression from the University of Washington to where we sit today, Melissa in her electric wheelchair and I at her kitchen counter. It’s the first time we’ve met, but the conversation has flowed easily like two friends catching up after a long time apart.

She takes a moment to resist the tears that come despite her effort to hold them back. “I’m trying to get good at this so I don’t cry every time,” she explains, as if her left-handed hook has been eluding her.

“I mourn, I mourn the loss of basketball and the athlete. But even when that was gone, I still had so much more, I still walked and could do everything else. And then you lose walking and you mourn that and then you lose the ability to sit up and you mourn that. It’s like a never ending grief/acceptance, grief/acceptance cycle. And I think that’s the hardest part of living with this disease. I continuously say, if it just stops here I’ll be fine, but obviously it didn’t really listen to what I wanted.”

No, what Melissa wants is not part of the ALS agenda. So, like any good basketball player, she’s working on her defense.

Her basketball career and the incredible friends she made help sustain Melissa physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Even today, while she’s trying to get comfortable in the wheelchair she has relied on for the past two years, I can see in her smile that the feeling of running the floor is not far away.

Melissa is living her life everyday with strength, optimism, and humility. Though memory is leaking from her muscles it is still strong in her spirit -- memories of the adrenaline rush from a game, and the camaraderie of teammates afterwards, win or lose, on the court or off.

Basketball is that drug her doctor can’t prescribe, and it may be the thing that is most effective in her struggle against this insidious disease.

(Mo with her white headband at left)

Mo’s not-so secrets for How She Does It?

• “I surround myself with close friends and family.”
• Healthy denial – she doesn’t descend into interminable Google searches about the disease.
• Vodka – it’s part of the denial part but also important to being able to let loose and have fun
• “I try to view myself as normal as much as possible. I’m pretty independent and stubborn, which helps get me through my daily life with ALS.”

What books has Melissa read recently? In a book group now, she’s “super into reading recently.”

• Water for Elephants (“love it!”), by Sara Gruen
• Little Bee (“I recommend!” Amazon Best of the Month 2/09: “… braids the fates of a 16-year-old Nigerian orphan who calls herself Little Bee, and a well-off British couple”), by Chris Cleave
• Say You’re One of Them (“tells of the horrors faced by young people throughout Africa”) by Uwem Akpan
• and Mo’s confession, The Twilight Series, by Stephanie Meyer

Whom does Melissa want me to interview next?

• Sonya Elliott, a fashion model, basketball player, and designer. Check her out at Peace, Love, Basketball www.peacelovebasketball.com . 50% of their March profits go to the Melissa Erickson Foundation. “Sonya’s is a story of huge tragedy, which she’s come out with so much grace.”

What Can You Do to Support Melissa?

• Make a Pay Pal contribution on www.melissaerickson.org
• Buy a cool t-shirt this month at www.peacelovebasketball.com
• Stop by Jabu’s Pub, near Seattle Center, and enjoy one of two drinks named in Melissa’s honor: the Motini and the Motail. $1.00 from each drink will go to the Melissa Erickson foundation http://jabuspub.com/Home_Page.php
• Let Melissa and all of us know how her life and story has made an impact on you by leaving a comment by clicking the link below.

- Janet Pelz