Guest Column | Dare To Be Fabulous

VIEW FROM THE TOP by Nalini Nadkarni, Forest Ecologist

2009-04-22T02:23:00.000-07:00

Nalini prepares to rappel to the rainforest canopy.

Dr. Nalini Nadkarni is known as “The Queen of the Forest Canopy.” She is a professor at The Evergreen State College and a leader in the scientific field of rainforest canopy research. She even started a unique method for rappelling to the top of the canopy, using mountaineering equipment. She was featured in an Emmy award winning National Geographic documentary “Heroes of the High Frontier” and is the author of three books and numerous scientific research articles. She lives with her husband and two children. The family splits their time between Washington state and Costa Rica.

I have a great job; I climb trees to study the rainforest canopy. My journey to understand trees started early in my life, when I climbed the eight sturdy sugar maples in the front yard of my home in suburban Maryland. Most afternoons, I would drop my school books inside the front door, grab a snack and a book, and scramble up one of those trees, each with its own vertical pathway to a comfortable nest aloft. Those perches were refuges from the world of homework, parental directives, and the ground-bound humdrum of the everyday. I could look out across my home territory, check on the progress of squirrel nest constructions, and feel the strong limbs of those trees holding me up for as long as I wished. It was in those afternoons of arboreal repose that my sense of kinship to trees germinated.

Trees were not my only focus in those formative years. My parents provided me with modern dance lessons from Erika Thimey, a German-born dance teacher who offered the gift of creativity to her students. I learned the expressive ways the body can move and acquire the discipline that is needed to hone my muscles. From Miss Erika, as we called her, I learned that with mindfulness, the simple act of walking across a wooden floor or noting the graceful fall of a leaf can be an aesthetic action. It opened up a whole different way of seeing that has kept me aware of the multiple ways that one must look at nature to understand it fully, an approach I now bring to my scientific work.

In college, I first discovered the world of forest ecology through the lectures of an ecologist, Dr. Jon Waage. When he wasn’t teaching undergraduates, he carried out research on damselfly behavior. I was amazed to learn that he could make a living by sitting at stream edges to record the movements of these aquatic insects. From him, I learned about the world of academic science. He posed seemingly narrow questions that later turned out to relate to much broader issues about life and death, competition and mutualism, and the evolution of life on Earth. Wrestling through the labyrinth of the scientific literature, I learned to trace citations to their sources and recognize the key players in a scientific discussion. Science seemed the right approach to really understand the world.

But what of dance? With my deepening passion for science, I soon fund myself in something of a love triangle, having to choose between very different professions. Parallel with my enthusiastic forays in science, I delighted in the sparks of creativity that flew from each composition in the dance studio, the sense of feeling my body move with others, the messages about life and emotions conveyable on stage, which no scientific paper could communicate. Right after graduation from college, I decided to test out which would be the better profession for me – field biology, manifested in the scholarly persona of Dr. Waage, or modern dance, exemplified by the graceful spirit of Miss Erika.

I first tried on the life of a field biologist. By writing letters to 70 field stations all over the world, and offering my services as a volunteer field assistant, I found a temporary position to help a septuagenarian entomologist (insect biologist). He studied the taxonomy of tropical leaf-feeding beetles and directed a tiny field station in the highlands of Papua New Guinea, in the South Pacific. I accepted with joy. In January of 1978, I arrived at the entrance of the Wau Ecology Institute, in the foothills of the Morobe Province. The field station consisted of a few shabby wooden buildings, a small herbarium and insect collection, and a central table occupied by a chipped coffee pot around which staff gathered each morning to discuss progress on their research projects. I spent the next twelve months on expeditions around the country, thrilled by the stunning diversity of the rainforest. In that rainforest cloister, I felt at home with the people and work I encountered.

After the year in Papua New Guinea was over, it was time to investigate dance. I traveled to Paris, and made contact with a modern dance company, Danse Paris. I first took classes, and was then invited to practice with their troupe. The opportunity to dance for hours at a time and hang out with professional dancers was perfect to test out my potential future profession. After a year in the rainforest, it was a delight to gulp in the cultural offerings that only Paris provides. The art museums, city parks, urban architecture, and evening concerts filled my non-dancing times.

After six months, I had to make a choice. I knew that I could not do both professional science and professional dance. The former demanded years of academic preparation and wildland settings; the latter required years of physical and aesthetic training and an urban homespot. On a sunny morning in April, I sat down with my journals from both locales at a neighborhood café. Over numerous cups of tea, I read through them all and then sat back to decide which was to be my choice. The forest or the stage? As much as I loved the world of dance, the time I spent in the tropical rainforests seemed truer to my own spirit. I felt closer to my biologist colleagues, and more at peace in the forest environment.

I returned to the USA and entered graduate school in forest ecology at the University of Washington’s College of Forest Resources. I spent a summer in Costa Rica on a field biology program, surrounded by fledgling graduate students and experienced faculty who opened the world of tropical ecology with enthusiasm and expertise. Each had his or her own specialty: hummingbird physiology; beetle distribution; songbird migration. Early on during that course, my eyes looked up to the complex world of the forest canopy – the plants and animals that lived their lives high above the forest floor and were among the most poorly known in the world.

I had the good fortune to encounter another graduate student who was studying canopy interactions. Don Perry had developed modified mountain climbing techniques, and he agreed to ‘show me the ropes’ in exchange for help with his field study. After a month, I was ready to climb on my own and to pursue my own set of canopy questions – activities that would enliven my life for the next three decades.

My canopy research colleagues, students and I have enumerated the rare and often unknown species that dwell on branches and twigs that never appear in ground surveys. I discovered that some trees put out “canopy roots” from their own branches and trunks, which gain access to the arboreal soil that accumulates beneath mats of canopy-dwelling (“epiphytes”). We learned that treetop versions of traditionally terrestrial insects and even earthworms – are found in this canopy-level soil, living out their entire life cycle high above the forest floor. We have measured the amounts of nutrients that the epiphytes intercept and retain from rain, mist, and dust, which can be considerable.

Over the last 30 years, new techniques of canopy access have evolved to include hot-air balloons, treetop walkways, hanging platforms, and 30-story construction cranes. The answers that canopy researchers report in scientific meetings confirm that trees are a critical part of ecosystems, landscapes, and the biosphere. Canopy researchers now quantify the amount of oxygen tree canopies produce, the amount of carbon dioxide they store, the volumes of soil they protect, the amount of water they retain, and the scores of wildlife species they support. Urban foresters have documented the “ecosystem services” provided by trees in urban settings: reduction in noise, temperature, and pollutants. Thus, the growing body of treetop research documents that loss of canopy diversity and function is a loss to the forest as a whole and to the landscapes beyond them.

Over the years, aware of the importance of the forest canopy and forest ecosystems in general to the health of the Earth, I have made deep forays into doing outreach and communication of what I have learned. I am especially interested in reaching “non-traditional” audiences, those who don’t automatically pick up a Natural History

magazine, or watch a nature documentary film. Each of these projects involves connecting with other partners. One of my programs involves gathering scientist, urban youth, and scientists to spend time in the field and create rap songs about trees and insects. Another program brings science research projects involving endangered plants and animals into prisons so that incarcerated men and women can contribute to solving environmental problems, even though they are behind bars.

Another set of my partners to help communicate scientific messages are artists. One of my favorites is a wonderful collaboration with a modern dancer and choreographer. On an afternoon last year, I got a telephone call from Jodi Lomask, the Director of the San Francisco-based modern dance troupe. She wanted to make a modern dance about tropical rainforests, but wanted it to be based in science – could she come to my rainforest study sites with me to learn about them? Indeed she could, and did, and this year, we are performing the dance she choreographed while climbing my rainforest study trees to public audiences in Seattle, San Francisco, and Washington, DC. I feel happy that the two seemingly divergent forces in my life – studying trees and making modern dances – has come together for the sake of protecting rainforests.

"A WOMAN SHOULD..." by Pamela Redmond Satran

2009-01-15T01:48:00.000-08:00

Pamela Redmond Satran

Perhaps you've received that email that's been going around, titled, "Maya Angelou's Best Poem Ever." Well, as it happens, Maya Angelou is not the author of that beautiful and sassy poem. The real author's name is Pamela Redmond Satran and she wrote that poem in 1997. She's a published novelist and regular contributor to Glamour Magazine, where it was first printed. Somehow her name got lost in its forwarding, and Ms. Angelou's was attached, instead. Read Ms. Satran's column about this experience in Huffington Post.

We thought it'd be nice to honor the true author of this poem by listing the poem here, as a featured Guest Column.

A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ...
enough money within her control to move out
and rent a place of her own,
even if she never wants to or needs to...

A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ...
something perfect to wear if the employer,
or date of her dreams wants to see her in an hour...

A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ...
a youth she's content to leave behind....

A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ...
a past juicy enough that she's looking forward to
retelling it in her old age....

A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ...
a set of screwdrivers, a cordless drill, and a black lace bra...

A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ...
one friend who always makes her laugh..
and one who lets her cry...

A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ...
a good piece of furniture not previously owned
by anyone else in her family...

A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ...
eight matching plates, wine glasses with stems,
and a recipe for a meal, that will make her guests feel honored...

A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ...
a feeling of control over her destiny..

EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
how to fall in love without losing herself..

EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
how to quit a job,
break up with a lover,
and confront a friend
without; ruining the friendship...

EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
when to try harder...
and WHEN TO WALK AWAY...

EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
that she can't change the length of her calves,
the width of her hips, or the nature of her parents..

EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
that her childhood may not have been perfect...
but it's over...

EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
what she would and wouldn't do for love or more...

EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW....
how to live alone... even if she doesn't like it...

EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW..
whom she can trust,
whom she can't,
and why she shouldn't take it personally...

EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
where to go...
be it to her best friend's kitchen table..
or a charming Inn in the woods....
when her soul needs soothing...

EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW..
What she can and can't accomplish in a day...
a month...and a year...

Season’s Greetings

2008-12-08T01:49:00.000-08:00

Anne with friends Cookie, Teacup, Gabby, Bodhi and me, Buddy Mueller (behind the couch)

Anne, the artist behind the wonderful Anne Made Cards, bases her paintings on real dogs and cats that she knows, with a few exceptions. She started painting animals while attending Philadelphia College of Art (now The University of the Arts) and started her own card business in 1998. This month, Anne is happy to extend this beautiful holiday greeting card to all Dare To Be Fabulous visitors and subscribers.

"peaceable kingdom"

and the dog lay down with the rabbit
and the chicken said 'hey' to the pig
and the squirrel said 'look at my nut'
and the horse and duck were speechless
and the orange cat wore a top hat
to celebrate the occasion.

WHO’S THAT OLD BAG? by Renee Sklarew

2008-11-03T23:48:00.000-08:00

Renee Sklarew

Sklarew graduated from Indiana University and studied social work at Catholic University. Throughout her childhood she lived in seven states and two foreign countries, ultimately settling in her hometown of Washington, DC. Her motto: “You can take the girl out of Washington, you can’t take Washington out of the girl,” explains her passion for politics. Married with two girls; her oldest, Allison, received a heart transplant eight years ago. An essay on their family's time in the hospital will appear in Chicken Soup for the Soul Power Moms in March 2009. Formerly PTA president, Sklarew writes for Northern Virginia Magazine and other publications. Read her blog on reneesklarew.wordpress.com.

I’m in line at the grocery store, and everyone’s avoiding me. I am one of those people who slow the line down by asking the cashier to use bags I brought along. Normally I find someone like me annoying too. Still, I would rather be a social pariah than waste those plastic bags. Seeing them metastasizing in the outdoor bins. Where do they go? What use do they have? Are they really made into sandals or roads like they say?

This small effort to recycle has become a source of shame for my nine-year-old. She cringes when I explain to anyone who will listen, that I like to reuse my bags. A lot. That’s my tiny contribution to protecting the environment, and wouldn’t it be nice if everyone made that effort?

The nine-year-old pulls on my arm with embarrassment. “Don’t talk about it, Mom,” she begs. Maybe it would be less obvious that I am holding everyone up, if I actually kept my mouth shut. But that’s not likely, since my days as a cashier are permanently embedded in my memory. I refuse to treat people the way some people do, making you feel anonymous and devalued. It’s against my principles, so I basically have to have that conversation. What else can we discuss, besides the weather? Describing our position on bags is a great ice breaker.

Renee and daughter Danielle

As the pre-Thanksgiving crowds pushed through the store, I asked my favorite Safeway cashier Helena Funt, about people who ask to reuse bags. She says, “Customers want you to put a lot in, but they don’t want the bag to be too heavy. That can be hard.” There’s always a line to have Miss Funt process your groceries, because she is efficient and tries to honor every request. “Customers tell me - I look for you, because you can pack it perfectly,” she laughs.

Last year, legislators in my home state of Maryland decided not to pass a law that prohibits distributing plastic bags at retail outlets in that area. The inspiration behind the bill was to curb the problem of bags polluting the Chesapeake Bay. Fortunately, it brought to the citizens’ attention the basic question of paper or plastic? What is truly better? The truth is neither. Just bring your own, and no one will get hurt.

For the sake of my little girl, if others join in, her mother won’t seem nearly as weird. We would also contribute to the friendliness factor at the grocery store. Eventually, people waiting behind you won’t get as frustrated waiting for this anomaly to occur. Furthermore, we might hasten impending doom promised by scientists working their little hearts out to slow down global warming. See how easy it is to make a small difference?

So today, when you leave the house, take an extra bag to the store with you. Start a revolution!

PICTURE PERFECT, by Kamala Lopez

2008-10-07T01:28:00.000-07:00

Kamala Lopez

Kamala Lopez is a filmmaker, actor, and Yale graduate whose feature film debut, A Single Woman, is about the life of the first woman elected to the U.S. Congress, noted pacifist and co-founder of the ACLU, Jeannette Rankin. Born in New York City to an Indian mother and a Venezuelan father, Lopez is known for her many roles in television and film, such as Deep Cover, Born In East L.A., and I Heart Huckabees. She recently hosted the PBS series Wired Science.

I'm not sure why I was determined to be an actress from such an early age but I was – ever since I can remember having thoughts of what I would "be." Living in Caracas, Venezuela, although I was already doing plays, was not going to cut it as a place where I could get the training that I knew I needed to become an actress like my idol – Meryl Streep. I knew that I had to be in New York, and I needed to start studying right away. I was thirteen when I began hounding my parents to move back to the States, to New York City, in particular.

My parents, who were somewhat flummoxed by my steely intransigence on the subject, nonetheless eventually agreed and when I was fourteen I began studying at the Herbert Berghof Studios in the Village. I would take the D Train from Flatbush, where we had bought a house, and would lug a huge sack of props on the subway and drag it all the way to the studio. HB Studio's methodology was based on the teachings of Uta Hagen – Berghof's wife – who was a big proponent of having real objects that had been infused with personal meaning in the scenes, hence the fledgling actors and their multiple suitcases tromping up and down the west village day and night.

In addition to my training, I started teaching myself the "business." I did this by reading the trade paper BackStage and figuring out that if I wanted to work as an actress, I would need auditions; if I wanted good auditions I would need an agent; and if I wanted an agent I would need headshots.

My father, who made his living as a creative director at an ad agency, knew a great many of New York's top photographers. I remember my first photo session as being very glamorous. I was in a big industrial type photo studio, there was a fan blowing my hair like the models in the hair commercials; the French photographer, Memo, was a little sleazy but probably too scared of my dad to really get out of line... Anyhow, I walked away from that session with some amazing shots.

Next step: an agent. I picked up the monthly booklet called The Ross Reports which listed every agent in New York. With my new photo portfolio under my arm I took the subway into Manhattan to go to the agencies. The first agency on the list was the Michael Amato Agency. I remember the building as a typical New York office building, old with that weird smell, not too fancy but definitely legit. I took the elevator up to their floor and walked into their office, announcing myself as an actress looking for representation.

After a while I was taken to a woman at a desk who eyed me, then took the portfolio and flipped through the pages quickly and, I felt, disparagingly. She slammed the book shut and said, "No, no, no. These pictures are terrible. They will never do. You will have to get new pictures."

I stood up, leaned over the desk, whisked the portfolio out from under her shocked face and said, "Well, I like them and I think they're great." I turned on my heel and walked out of the office and down the hall to the elevator.

Before the elevator could arrive Michael Amato ran down the hall and signed me on the spot. And the rest is history.

For me, the lesson is (and believe me, I have to constantly bring myself back to it): be who you are; do what you want; the rest will follow. And always, always dare to be as fabulous as you actually are.

A BODY OF WORK, by Kelly Dobbins

2008-09-08T02:50:00.000-07:00

Kelly poses after winning first place in the 2007 Emerald Cup bodybuilding championships.

Kelly Dobbins has been competing in amateur bodybuilding championships for the past 20 years. She resides in Oakland, California, and owns her own personal training facility there, appropriately named, Kelly's Gym. She invites you to come for a complementary consultation! Just mention Dare To Be Fabulous when you call. (Tel: 510-601-5432.)

I was raised in a small farm town in Oregon in a very athletic family. My brother was a professional fighter and a Gold Medal Champion, traveling around the world to places like Romania and Russia. He started boxing when he was six years old, and he would quite literally train all day long, so I pretty much grew up around a gym, but despite this exposure, I didn't feel personally drawn to it. I didn't yet know what I wanted to do.

I then went to college, majoring in business, but I still wasn't sure what do in terms of a career. After graduation, I got a job at a construction company doing their accounting. At the same time, I started working out at a local gym. One day, the gym owner approached me and said, “You should get into bodybuilding.” I didn't know anything about it, so he explained what it was and what it entailed. He added that he would be willing to train me for free, reasoning that it would be good publicity for his gym. He also told me that there was a show coming up in Portland, which was 60 miles from my hometown. I was naive at that time, completely not knowing what I was really getting into, so I said, “Cool, let's do it!”

In the middle of my training, and before the Portland show, I found myself having to make a sudden move to California. That was a bummer. I was just getting into it and I didn't want to stop. As soon as I got there, I immediately joined a Gold's Gym and became consumed with the training -- the bug had bitten me. I loved it so much that I even took a job there working at the front desk. I now knew what I wanted to do. I was twenty-one.

Bodybuilding in California was big stuff compared to where I came from in Oregon. There were lots of competitors and bodybuilders around me. The support was strong and my body got even stronger. When I finally did my first amateur show, I won! And from there it went. I just kept going and going and learning even more about the sport. I just loved it. My major goal was to “do the Sacramento,” because it was a big National qualifying show. To qualify for the Nationals, you had to place in the top three, so it's not easy. I trained and competed and guess what? I won. I qualified for the Nationals!

After “the Sacramento,” I took a couple of years off from competing to train, because I was really small and the girls competing in the Nationals were relatively big. I just couldn't compete with them at my size. I started training really hard and was always at the gym. That's when I met my husband, Rick. He was at Gold's Gym, working out. You might say he was dedicated. He had totally set his sights on winning me over. I was dating the manager at that time, who obviously didn't much care for it, but Rick would sit on the steps and wait for me and wouldn't leave. What can I say? It worked. He stole me away.

Rick also became my personal trainer and I that's when I really took off. He's since been my trainer, my nutritionist, and my choreographer, which can make our relationship rough during pre-contest time! I've gotta say, it's not that fun. Sometimes, I'm just exhausted and I want him to focus on being my husband, not my trainer.

To train for a contest, we start 16 weeks prior. The diet is a huge part of it. At 16 weeks out, I cut out dairy and fruit. The fructose in fruit is the main source of carbohydrates from sugar, and it goes straight to your liver, so if your liver is already full with glycogen, the sugar turns into fat. I also start limiting alcohol. Believe me, I like my daily glass of wine, but I start cutting it down to maybe four days a week, or three days. At the 12-week mark, it gets tough; I start weighing and measuring everything, and it's down to the ounce. There are limited amounts of things I can eat, generally just small amounts of protein, broccoli, yams, and brown rice. At 10 weeks and eight weeks out, I carb-deplete a lot and can go into ketosis. Fortunately, Rick monitors me on a daily basis.

A typical day during pre-contest means that I get up at 4 a.m. and do an hour of cardio. Then, I do some weight training. I then head to work and train my own clients. At mid-day, I do another hour of cardio and more training. And, finally, I do one more hour in the evening. The last week before the contest, I don't train at all. That's because the cuts won't be there. You want your muscles to relax so your cuts will be visible when you pose.

Every contest is a challenge. I get four to six weeks out and I think to myself, “Why the hell am I doing this?” When you can't eat and you're carb-depleted, you're really weak minded. Everyone around you is eating. You have to stay strong. It's different when you're one week out -- you're almost there.

My goal to compete at the National level happened last year. At the 2007 USA Championship in Las Vegas I took third, which is huge, because there are so many women competing at that level. Most women do those shows to turn pro. Turning pro is just not a goal of mine. Honestly, if I turn pro, I'm toast. They're huge women. I have to work harder than most of the women in the amateur contests, because there's no test for performance-enhancing substances, and many of the bodybuilders take advantage of them. I see what using them will do and I have no interest in doing that to my body. I have a life ahead of me, you know? Fortunately, they want us to compete smaller now, actually, so it's to my advantage. I only came in 6th in the last championship, because they thought I was too hard, too shredded. The rumor was that they wanted us to come in 20 percent softer, but it's really hard, because you can never really know what the judges are looking for.

For national competitions, you weigh in on Thursday night. On Saturday, they do the pre-judging. There's a pump-up room in the back and there are bodybuilders there that oil you up. Then you go up to the stage and do quarter turns and a 60-second routine without music. They want you to look simple for the pre-judging. Nothing fancy. Your hair is usually up. When you come back and do your one-and-a-half minute routine to the music, you get dolled up. I can hear Rick to the side of the stage, coaching me as I pose. People in the audience are cheering. Friends have come from all over. It's really exciting.

There is so much discipline involved. Everyone asks me why I love it and I can never give a definite answer. I love taking my body to the limit, but I also love to compete. I love the actual training and I love to see my body progress.

I should see a psychiatrist about this because I work my ass off, but I'm uncomfortable going out in public! I'm kind of a freak in public. I joke about this, but it's true. I stay covered up. I'm getting a little more comfortable with it now, but even when it's hot, I'll probably cover up. If I'm with a guy or with Rick, I'll go sleeveless, but otherwise, I won't. I've been competing for 20 years, so it's been happening for a long time. I can't think of any negative things that happen; I always get positive reactions, but I'm just uncomfortable with the attention. People always stare, even if I'm not in pre-contest shape. I have my own personal training gym now and when I'm out with clients, they will always comment on the way people stare at me. I don't like it, even though I'm proud of what I've accomplished. Go figure, right?

My mother and father are super supportive and proud of me. I'm different from my brother because of how I look, so it's not really comparable that way, but they've always been proud. They love it. My mom is actually pissed off now because she hasn't gotten the latest pictures from my last contest. I laughed and said, “Mom, I haven't gotten any.”

I have two girls who are now 20 and 22 years old, respectively, and I enjoy being with them on my down time. We're great friends and we laugh a lot. I'm proud of them, and they've always been proud of me. They've seen me train and compete since they were very little. They even have pictures of me in my poses on their MySpace pages!

I'm proud of myself for being so disciplined. Doing this isn't easy. I may or may not compete in the Nationals, coming up in November. I'm not sure yet. I'm already part way there from having trained for the last contest, but I don't know if I'm up for the intense dieting. We'll see. I started dieting a little this week. ... Just in case.

A TIME TO GROW UP by Libby Wright

2008-08-08T04:41:00.000-07:00

Libby Wright

Libby Wright was born and raised in San Marino, California. After graduating from San Marino High School, Libby traveled across the country to begin college at Penn State University. In the Fall, the nineteen-year-old will be studying Public Relations at The University of Southern California, where she will happily be fifteen miles away from her family.

As a child, I always felt ready to be a “grown up.” When I was seven years old, I would step into my mother’s high heels and walk around on the hardwood floor to hear the clunk, clunk I associated with older women. Whenever my mother caught me, she would say, “Don’t wish your life away!” But I never could stop wanting to be older than my actual age. In middle school, I would see the big high school kids and wish time would hurry up so I could be as pretty and happy as they were. Yet when I was finally in their shoes, I didn’t feel as adult as they always seemed to be. Thus, I was unsurprisingly ready to move on to college way before my time.

While I wasn’t exactly sure where I wished to attend college, I knew one thing: I needed a change of atmosphere. I had lived in little San Marino, California, my entire life. I went to high school with the same people I met in kindergarten. San Marino is one of those cities in which the whole population hears about a sneeze within two seconds. I was sick of this place and its drama, so I wanted to go far away to a big college where my personal business would not spread like a wildfire. I eventually decided to voyage to the middle of nowhere: State College, Pennsylvania, home of the Penn State Nittany Lions.

Unfortunately, my plan to travel 3,000 miles away for four years was not met with encouragement. I believed in the theory that it was “only a plane ride away!” My mother told me it was too far, too big, and too cold. I had never been homesick in my life, so I did not see why the distance would be an issue. And too big? C’mon, the campus is only twice the size of San Marino! The cold didn’t seem too big an issue, either, because after eighteen years of year round perfect weather, I was dying to see seasons. I became so frustrated with all the negativity and pressure surrounding my decision that I didn’t even want to attend holiday family events. I was tired of hearing my grandfather try to convince me to stay in California. Why wouldn’t they just let me make my own decisions? My brothers kept telling me how crazy I was for wishing to leave the Sunshine State, and they never failed to let me know how much they thought I would hate Pennsylvania. My family, who had always been my backbone, was making me even more anxious to leave.

As my arrival at Penn State neared, my excitement grew. I could not wait to finally be a college girl! I would have so much fun and meet great people from different backgrounds. When I arrived, the question I heard over and over again was, “Wow, why did you come all the way over here from California?” I was sick of this after an hour of meeting people, mainly because it was so hard to explain. I needed the experience. I did not want to stay stuck in southern California my entire life, never knowing the opposite side of life. Plus, I always dreamt of living on the East Coast, bundled up in fashionable winter clothes, Starbucks in one hand and shopping bags in the other. I wanted to be daring and different. I wanted to escape my sheltered life and become a well-rounded, informed individual. It was never simply about wanting to change my life; I also believed living in the East would give me a new knowledge of the world. So I did it. I came to Penn State despite the pressure to stay close to home.

My goal, my reason for leaving California for Pennsylvania, was accomplished more quickly than I imagined, and I learned more than I expected to learn. The first few weeks, I fell in love with the new college scene. I’ve always been an outgoing person, so I loved meeting new people. Going out at night was fun and different from the small house parties in San Marino. The football games were exciting, but the early start times and the lack of tailgating disappointed me. I thought college would be the best four years of my life. After all, that’s what everyone else says. I started to believe I would love Penn State, and I did not feel at all ready to go home.

And then homecoming arrived, and it just so happened to be on the same weekend as my high school homecoming game. Every single person I knew went home for homecoming, and my little brother was the quarterback, so I felt awful for missing out. I wanted to be home with my friends, good weather, and my family. Homecoming here was incredibly different. In high school, I was a cheerleader, so I spent weeks preparing for our game. But here, it was just another football game to me. I was frustrated because I made this decision that really wasn’t “just a plane ride away.” It was two plane rides that took up an entire day, so there was no possible way I could ever go home for a weekend like everyone else at Penn State did. I began to realize that “too far” was accurate.

A month later, I finally went home for the first time, and everything was different. I felt so out of place, as if I had no home. My high school friends were not the same, and I did not feel the same. However, after a few days, this strangeness wore off and I was dreading coming back to Penn State. I didn’t hate it, but I hated being away from my family.

After winter break, I went to New York City, where I had characterized as the epitome of the East Coast. I hated it. The people were rude and worn out compared to the lively population in California. Everyone seemed so unhappy and uninviting. Plus, the city was filthy, so I could not see how anyone would love it. Not to mention, the style was nowhere near what I expected. When I traveled to Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, I was not impressed, either. The East was a huge let down, but I never would have known until I tried.

Through my experience, I also began to see the immaturity of college students. I figured it ended with high school, but I should have known better. All anyone ever talked about was getting drunk or having sex. I thought to myself, “You know, there are more important things in life.”

Before I came home for Spring Break, my grandfather took a fall, broke his wrist, and had to have surgery. The doctors say he will probably never retain full motion in his wrist. My 99-year-old great grandmother suffered a stroke and was put in a convalescent hospital. This, of course, left my grandmother going absolutely crazy because she had to take care of her husband and her mother. At my cousin’s engagement party, I overheard my grandparents arguing, and it broke my heart to see them falling apart because of a stupid injury. I looked at my beautiful cousin and saw bones – she had developed anorexia when I was 3,000 miles away. I kept thinking to myself, why wasn’t I there? Why did I leave my family, the people who mean everything to me? I thought I let them down and I became overwhelmed with guilt for not being there when they needed me the most. I felt selfish for not listening to them when they wanted me to stay closer to home. I left them behind to seek for myself.

I had to do it. If I had not experienced this other side of the world, I never would have known all of the beauty I had all along. It’s easy to take things for granted, but now that I realize what I have, I never want to let it go. It doesn’t matter that I feel ahead of my time, because there is one place I will always belong: with my family. I can’t wish my life away, because right now, in this moment, I have all that I will ever need. It is more than enough.

PLAYING THE CANCER CARD, by Simon Chaitowitz

2008-07-08T01:44:00.000-07:00

Simon Chaitowitz

Simon Chaitowitz is a writer and two-time cancer survivor living and working in Washington, D.C. As much as she dislikes the word "survivor," she admits it can be useful. :) You can email her at simon.chaitowitz@gmail.com

Some clouds have some surprisingly useful silver linings. Cancer, for example.

No, I'm not one of those cheery and "oh so brave" sick people who thinks that cancer made me a better person or helped me find my true self. I hate cancer. I'm pissed I got it the first time and even more mad I got it a second time (an unfortunate little side effect of treatment from the first one).

So no, I'm not into pretending that cancer isn't horrible. But the Big C does have one little perk that doesn't get publicized much. And I'd like to make sure that no cancer "survivors" guilt-trip themselves out of using it. (Like yours truly, until recently.)

What I'm talking about is taking advantage of any possible opportunity you have to do what you want and not do what you don't want. For example, if you're immune suppressed, the doctors tell you to quit cleaning litter boxes, changing diapers, taking out the garbage, or weeding gardens (yes, yes, yes, and yes!) but there are tons more Get Out of Jail Free Cards just waiting to be picked up.

In other words, don't feel shy about using cancer to your own ends -- whether that's making your life better, furthering your cause, or just helping yourself get through the day. I call it Playing the Cancer Card. Kristin Boles, a cancer listserv mate, says she and her husband call it the Fringe Benefits of Cancer.

Here are just a few examples. All are either based on my experiences or those of other cancer survivors:

* Get out of a parking ticket. Write a nice letter to the city explaining how you were rushing to your CANCER appointment when you noticed the meter you chose wasn't working. Voila! Fee waived.

* Talk your way into meetings with secretaries of state and the prime minister. Adrian Sudbury, an advocate for bone marrow donation in England, says his disease regularly opens doors for him. Brilliant.

* Skip long, boring events. No need to feel obligated to attend that dreaded yearly family reunion if you don't enjoy it. You need your rest, after all. But if you find yourself at the event, and just can't take it anymore, no worries. No one will take your departure personally.

* Get discounts at nice hotels. No kidding. The last time I went out of town for a check-up, I found out that one of my favorite hotels offered a 20 percent discount to guests visiting the nearby clinics. Easier to justify luxury with that kind of savings.

* See your words in print. If there's one phrase that virtually guarantees you'll make it onto the Letters to the Editor page, it's "As a cancer survivor, I feel ... ." Nearly every letter I've started like that has been published. The Letters page is a great place to share your ideas about doctors, the pharmaceutical industry, or anything else related to cancer. (Of course, if you're already famous, you can probably use cancer to get yourself on Larry King.)

Those of us who are immune-suppressed have even more built-in excuses. One woman just told me she talked her way into the use of an indoor bathroom at a summer festival where everyone else had to use the portable toilets. Two points for creativity and boldness! (Disclosure: I'm still sometimes too chicken to ask to be the first on the buffet line.)

Those of us who are genetically disposed to guilt complexes may have an extra hard time following this advice. But trust me.

When life hands you cancer, this is your chance to eat dessert first, stop shaving your legs, switch to part-time work, or get out of jury duty. Whatever you want, whenever you want it. Go for it.

THE GREAT CIRCLE, by Tiffany McGinn

2008-06-09T04:57:00.002-07:00

Tiffany at Ha Long Bay, North Vietnam, as she travels the Great Circle.

Tiffany grew up in Texas, Massachusetts, and Southern California, and earned a B.S. in Molecular Biology from University of California, San Diego. She has done research at Salk Institute and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory as well as in the private sector. Her hobbies include mountain biking, SCUBA diving, and writing.

Let me start this by telling you a little about me. I have an inquisitive mind, some might say nosy; I have always wanted to know what was going on in life, both internally and externally. I'm highly intelligent, but love being a kook and just letting loose, silly style, and while I can be easy-going, I will stand up for myself when I feel it is warranted. I have battled with my weight for as long as I can tell, along with a number of other self-esteem issues, the same problems that have affected many other women, and have struggled to define myself in this world where it seems that everyone wants you to choose a box and stay there: be a brain, a sexpot, a homemaker. In my life, I have been all three and more, and usually at the same time. My problem was and is that I don't fit neatly into a box, and no matter how hard I tried to in the past, no matter how hard I squeezed and pressed myself, I never fit in the box for long. I would paint myself a costume, and as long as I didn't move too much, I could blend, but pieces of me always poked out, revealing the disguise for what it was.

As for what makes me fabulous? I suppose if I had been asked that 10 years ago, I wouldn't have even understood the question. As a teen, I was a tough kid in a tough space going through the paces of life day by day, trying to survive. Having a belief in myself was a foreign concept; I knew that I was strong and resourceful, had survival down pat, but when I looked into the future, there was nothing, a dark hole. I was frozen. My life finally started when I decided to detach myself from the thick wall I built around myself, and started living, instead of just surviving.

I used to spend a lot of time feeling sorry for myself, wondering why amazing things would happen to others, miraculously, while I was left with the dregs of what was left. Eventually, I realized that opportunity was something that had to be met half-way; the door opens, but I have to be open as well to both recognize it and decide to walk through. Opportunity isn't something that just happens to people, although people who know me seem to be under the impression that it does, because I have had some really amazing opportunities to work and travel, but it took hard work on my part to bring them to fruition. I decided a long time ago that I didn't want to be one of the those people who, late in life, looks back with regret at all the things they didn't do, the places they never experienced, the people they didn't pursue, that language they never learned, the person they didn't become. That was when I made my first active decision to be a participant in my life, instead of a spectator. As such, I opened my eyes to the world, and when the chance of an opportunity presented, I pursued it. I became an extrovert because my shyness created a loneliness that I couldn't bear. I became adventurous because I couldn't bear the thought of sitting in my home, watching others on TV doing the things I dreamed of. I jumped out of airplanes and swam through underwater canyons because the sensation of freedom is sweeter than any drug or drink that has ever existed.

When I was 23, I thought I was at the top of my game. I had gained admission to a prestigious school for science to study Molecular Biology, had secured a job at the Salk Institute, a top research institute for biology, and had won a fellowship to do research at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. I was strong, fearless, untouchable -- and then I was hit by a drunk driver on New Year's Eve, and became a statistic. The discs in my lower vertebrae were blown, and I went through a year of tests and surgeries, each worse than the last, and watched as day by day, my very ability to walk slipped away. In the end, I needed to have a double spinal fusion, where they fused my lower three vertebrae and wrapped a titanium cage around my spine to keep it in place. They told me that a successful surgery would mean that I regained 65 to 75 percent of my previous mobility, and I may not know for over a year whether the surgery was a success or not. One week after my surgery, I was in so much pain that I feared I had made a mistake in having the surgery after all.

Once again I had a decision to make: either wallow in my condition and be a victim of my circumstances, or I could decide to be a participant in my life. The stakes were high; one of my deepest fears has always been losing the ability to take care of myself, and I was as helpless as a lamb. I chose to live, no matter what, and pushed myself, every day. I set small goals for myself: today I will make it to the bathroom on my own, next I will walk out to the living room, next I will walk downstairs. I watched the Travel Channel and Discovery, and made notes about all of the places I would go to one day. Every day was a new victory, and soon I was walking, then swimming, then hiking. Within five months, I had already regained 75 percent of my mobility, and as I was cruising the airfares on a travel agency's website, I found a fare to Europe for $300, round-trip. Something clicked, I had the money, and I knew that this was the trip I HAD to take. Opportunity had presented itself; all I had to do was step up.

On that trip, I went to all of the places I had promised myself I would go. I traveled for two months, backpacking from Italy to Brussels, from the gothic beauty of Prague to the emerald green of Ireland, and learned how to be self-sustaining again, how to stop thinking of myself as a victim, an invalid, and instead began to see myself as a whole person, with just a little extra titanium that the average bloke. By the time I returned, I had achieved a miraculous recovery, according to the doctors. I had regained 85 percent of my mobility, and no signs that my recovery had completed yet. Returning to college, I learned how to S.C.U.B.A. dive, and explored Caribbean wrecks and held sharks in my arms. I found a way to go to Moscow and learn Russian, and reveled in the city under the twilight skies of the Muscovite summer. I knew that I have been given a new lease on life, and to this day, I am determined to make the most of it.

A few years ago, while still in college, my grandfather posited a challenge for me: travel the Great Circle, which is the line that covers the circumference of the earth as it passes through the equator, and stop off in each country that falls on the line. Political strife and social unrest were not allowable excuses for skipping a country, only declared war or other legal issues were permissible. Also, this challenge included the requirements that I maintain a website during the trip, and write a book about the experience, in any form, fiction or non-fiction, that it might take. If I agreed to these terms, he would fund part of the trip. I accepted.

So, I am on the go again, backpacking the globe for six months with a good friend of mine and writing a book about my experiences while on the road. This line will take me through Southeast Asia on into Asia, then down to the Middle East and North Africa, and finishes off in South America. The only countries on the line that I will skip, which include Viet Nam, India, Israel, Algeria, Mauritania, and Peru to name a few, are Saudi Arabia and Iran, both of which did not allow unaccompanied women to travel alone in their countries at the time of planning. Already, I have worked at an orphanage in the Philippines, creating a web site for the facility, and learned to surf in Bali, Indonesia. This trek is about exploration, both externally and internally, and I can't wait to find out who I'll be at the end of it. I don't know what is in store for me, but I do know that wherever I go, I'll have myself, and that's the best ally I could ever ask for.

Check out Tiffany's website as she travels the Great Circle.

IT'S ALL ABOUT THE CLICK by Barbara Stitzer

2008-05-07T02:40:00.000-07:00

Barbara Stitzer with daughters Zoe and Tenley.

Barbara Stitzer lives happily ever after in Arizona with her perfect, popular and brilliant daughters, Zoe and Tenley, and her fabulous, handsome, athletic right-handed husband, Buzz, who, despite her utter lack of respect for keeping anything neat and clean, treats her like the princess she always hoped she was. She has won more than 400 local, regional and national awards for her work and is available for photographic and painting commissions throughout the world.

When I was a little girl, every shooting star, every coin tossed into every fountain, every candle blow of the birthday cake candles resulted in the same wish: to be the same as everyone else. I used to make lists of how different I was from everyone else. I had dark, curly, frizzy hair, in the land of the blonde and blue. I was way,wayyyy taller than everyone else, 5'10" by the time I was twelve. My parents were 43 and 47 when I was born, so everyone told me that I was adopted or that I was abandoned by my "real" parents and living with my grandparents, and I kind of believed them.

The lists grew. I couldn't draw a straight line, or even color within the lines. I was left-handed, which meant that I had to use those little snub nosed left handed scissors, as if by virtue of the fact that you're left-handed, you are going to lose control of your left hand and start flailing around and stabbing yourself if you have a real scissor.

I had the highest IQ in the State of California at the time, which I desperately tried to hide. But every single month, a group of adults invaded my classroom with pads and pens and "studied" me, which of course made me immensely popular with the other kids. I skipped a grade, so that I, with my one of a kind holiday birthday, the Fourth of July, was almost two years younger and now even more uncoordinated and immature than all of the other kids in my class, which was really great when I was ten years old in sixth grade and looked on in horror from my Barbie Friendship as take two of the Summer of Love raged on five feet from me. Tod Fisher, bless his sweet little redheaded soul, would walk up and hold a softball on my bat for me to hit it. Even then, actual contact with the ball was iffy at best.

I joined a group of kids who put on musicals to raise my self confidence. When I sang, people actually, physically turned around and asked me to stop. So I mouthed. For four years.

Although I got into Stanford, Harvard, UCLA, and more, my mom made me go to the crappy loser school down the street, because when I started applying to college, I was only 14. After graduation, I couldn't muster any enthusiasm to interview. Besides, my mom had a big dream for me: A job at the DMV. "It's so safe", she'd coo, her minty green eyes shining. "Once you get in, you're in for the rest of your life, benefits, two whole weeks vacation," she pleaded. So I did the only thing I could do: I became an actress. Big mistake for someone with no self-confidence. In one day of auditions, I was too tall, too short, too fat, too skinny, too pretty, AND not pretty enough.

When my mom came down with lung cancer, I went to stay with her while I decided what I wanted to do with my life. Well, things got really sad, and I bought a used Canon AE1 camera to keep my mind off it. There is a riverbed behind my parents home in Los Angeles, and when it rains, which isn't very often, some bright guy gets the idea to take a boat down the riverbed and they usually drown, so about three days after I bought my little camera, the news crews were there filming a helicopter that was training with a dummy to rescue those guys, so I took my camera and ran down there.

I didn't have a press pass, so they wouldn't let me around the 8 foot chain link fence to get to where the action was, so I was trying to shoot through the fence, and this guy turned around and asked me what I was doing. "I'm taking pictures, duh" I said, and he's like, "Well, you're on the wrong side of the fence." I said, "I know, I'm new at this, and they said that I couldn't go over there." He said, "Look, if you want the shot, if you really want this shot, just jump the fence."

I'm still not sure why I decided to jump that fence. But something inside me welled up, and even though I was in high heels, a little short skirt, nylons, and was holding my purse, I did it. I jumped the fence. And he just thought it was so funny -- there I was with my little manual pawn shop camera, and he had this super space age digital model. But I didn't care. I shot for all I was worth. I bobbed and weaved, I laid down and shot up, I shot through a broken bottle top. I felt powerful, invincible.

Onyx

After it was over, he asked me to "come to his 'place' and develop the film." I wasn't about to go to any guy's "place" -- I had, after all, just gotten OUT of that business s --but then he gave me his card, and it turned out that he was the head of a large Los Angeles area newspaper's photo department, so I went back to the newspaper's office with him, and lo and behold, my picture was better than his. "Whoa, that's so cool!" he said. Where did you get an eye that let you see like that?" It was the first time that anyone had ever looked at my difference as a good thing. I was stunned. He published my shot and gave me a job.

Things just clicked after that. For the first time ever, everything I did was right. The Northridge earthquake came and our paper won a Pulitzer for coverage, and then everyone under the sun wanted to see my portfolio. I shot fashion, food, jewelry, editorials, magazine covers, everything. I got on an airplane to North Dakota for an assignment to shoot an RV show, switched seats with a guy, and wound up sitting next to the cutest, sweetest, funniest, most fascinating man who I married exactly a year later in a dream ceremony at the Ritz Carlton Laguna Niguel, followed by a dream honeymoon on a private island in Fiji.

Beach family (painting)

I opened a studio in my new home state, and was booked a year out immediately. Why? Because I was different! I had my subjects wade in a waterfall, balance on train tracks, roll in mud. Nothing was too out there for me. Everything I touched turned to gold. I started winning awards. I got invited to a press trip in St. Kitts, in the Caribbean, got bored during the presentation and went out to feed the monkeys. An older gentleman came and sat down with me, and we started talking and laughing at how stupid the meeting was. It turned out that he was the Minister of Tourism, and that was his meeting! He invited me back to shoot a calendar, and again to shoot all of the tourism for the island. I insisted on bringing my own models from North Dakota. None of them had ever been on a plane before, much less seen the ocean. Watching their faces was awesome. People saw those shots, and we kept getting invited to different islands to shoot. My oldest daughter, Zoe, has been to 16 islands shooting with me, and my youngest, Tenley, nine.

I learned to digitally paint my photographs, and my work has taken a new turn. One of my paintings won grand prize in a contest and was sold at auction for $25,000 to a collector in Austria. When he flew me out to sign it in front of him, I asked him why he would pay so much for my painting, and he took my hand, looked me squarely in the eye, and replied, "Oh my dear, it's going up. Way up."

I've been busy photographing and painting people from around the world who fly to Arizona to see me or fly me to their area of the world to work with them. I've built a reputation on having an individual sense of style, and people seem to really value my view of who they are behind the facade. Now if only people would quit asking me to stop when I sing...

BOOBS by Rory Freedman

2008-04-07T03:23:00.000-07:00

Rory Freedman

Rory Freedman is the proud owner of small boobs and the coauthor of the #1 NY Times and international bestseller Skinny Bitch. A million copies of SB are already in print and it's been translated into twenty languages. She is also the author of the new Skinny Bitch in the Kitch and is a regular contributor to Veg News magazine. And, no surprise to those who know her, Rory was voted "class clown" her senior year in high school.

What is it about boobs, anyway? Why do they make people so insane? And by "people," I don't just mean men. You can hardly make it twenty-four hours without someone you know complaining about her boobs in some way, shape, or form. And you can't make it twenty-four minutes without seeing fake boobs on TV.

How did this madness start? At what point in time did it occur to women that a certain shape or size or bounce of boobs would be considered more viable than another? I sincerely doubt that cavewomen were sitting around signing and motioning and grunting about their own and each other's breasts. I suppose it doesn't really matter how or why boobs became so important in our culture. But to me, it does matter that millions of women are endangering their lives, undergoing anesthesia and surgery, and forever altering their God-given bodies to have different breasts than the ones they were born with. For what? (Just to be clear, I'm not talking about women who are disfigured or who have had mastectomies.)

I know women constantly say, "If it gives you confidence and makes you feel better about yourself, than why not?" Well, for starters, how about building confidence from the inside? Having small breasts isn't a problem. Thinking your small breasts are less acceptable than large breasts is. If your breasts are somehow "wrong," than what's to stop you from thinking your hair, cheekbones, nose, lips, wrinkles, legs, butt, and stomach are "wrong," too? Where does it end? Do you just look at yourself and see what "needs to be fixed"? At what point do you say, "I'm fine just the way I am." Can you say it?

Believe me, I'm no stranger to self-critiquing: I pinch the insides of my thighs, I hold my stomach in, and I lift my ass up in front of the mirror and think to myself, "If only blah blah blah, then I'd be happy." And as a woman with 32A-minus boobs, I've spent my fair share of time imaging how life would be different, better, easier even, with boobs. Sadly, until I was thirty-two years old, I wished my boobs were bigger. What a waste of time. What a waste of self-love and -acceptance. What a waste of me.

Somehow, this year, at the age of thirty-three, it occurred to me: My boobs are perfect. Just because I say so. And goddamn it, I love my small boobs now! I feel so lucky and blessed to have these exact boobs. Not because they're small, like, "Ha ha, don't you big-boobed women wish you had small boobs?" No, I feel lucky and blessed because they're healthy, happy boobs. Women are being diagnosed with breast cancer left and right. To pine away for bigger boobs or bouncier boobs or smaller boobs is not only stupid, it's pitiful. And on a less dramatic scale, I love my boobs now because it's so much more gratifying than hating them. It simply feels good loving the skin I'm in. Period.

While so many of us walk around thinking of our breasts as accessories or man magnets (or women magnets, for our lesbian friends), we forget the primary reason we have them to begin with: Breastfeeding. Duh. I can only imagine the bliss of looking down at your newborn nursing and finally seeing your breasts for what truly they are—miraculous, precious gifts from Mother Nature herself. All mammals nurse their young. But we're the only ones running around obsessing about our boobs and dressing them up like Yorkie terriers!

Life is too fleeting and too valuable to waste one minute feeling bad about our boobs or any other parts of our bodies. For whatever reason, the world we live in values a specific physical aesthetic. But if we can remember that we're spiritual beings encased in skin and flesh—whether we represent that physical aesthetic or not—life can be dramatically different and dramatically fulfilling. Great hair, perfect boobs, long legs…they're all fools' gold. They mean nothing other than someone got lucky in the gene department.

Whether they're big, small, saggy, or pert: love your boobs. And while you're at it, love your fat ass, too.

SHARING THE JOY OF DANCE by Michele Goldin

2008-03-11T02:32:00.000-07:00

Michele Goldin

Michele Goldin divides her time between Madrid, Spain, and New York City, where she is currently pursuing a Masters degree in Performance Studies at Tisch School of the Arts. A native of Fairfax, Virginia, she studied Spanish dance and ballet in in Madrid, Sevilla, Cádiz, Washington D.C., New York, and Chicago, receiving a diploma in Spanish Dance from Spain's Sevilla Conservatory in 1999. Her research paper, Dance Anthropology: Spain in the Flamenco Trilogy of Carlos Saura and Antonio Gades was published in 2005 in Hispanic Culture Review. Between her busy schedule of dance and scholarship, Michele still finds time for her other loves: her fiance Richard, teaching, languages, animals, and children, especially her new baby nephew.

In September 2004 I had been for several years the director of my own Spanish dance company, Danzamarina, a group of children and adults that performed the music and dance of Spain throughout the Washington, D.C., area. This was the second year that Wolf Trap National Park for the Performing Arts had invited Danzamarina to perform in its annual International Children's Festival in which young artists from around the world come together to share their talents on one of the most important stages of the East Coast. At only 18 years old I and my youngest students were given the opportunity to dance on the same stage that icons Mikhail Baryshnikov and Maya Plisetskaya, and flamenco phenomenon Farruquito had appeared on, to name a few. For me, these were big shoes to fill.

The students I chose to perform with me formed a group of nine young girls that I had been working with for about a year. All of them shared the right combination of passion and commitment. Their incredible enthusiasm, talent, and dedication astounded me and they had quickly become very important to me -- my pride, joy, and motivation as a dance teacher.

On that sunny September afternoon my nine little girls showed up early and bright-eyed at the stage door. Their mothers had allowed them to miss a day of school for this performance, but until they saw with their own eyes the scale of the stage they would dance on did its reality set in. The girls had had experience doing countless shows in all sorts of venues from schools and churches to community events and small theaters. They had danced to both recorded music and with live musicians, done presentations both on the street and in auditoriums, changed their costumes in both make-shift dressing areas and actual dressing rooms, and they had learned that what made their performance professional was their attitude -- their hard work, optimism, determination, and confidence. Appearing on a professional stage of the importance of Wolf Trap raised their standards to a new level. It was no small accomplishment for them and they knew it. Facing an audience of nearly 2,000, the girls took the stage looking impeccable, beaming with excitement and nerves, and prepared to give the best performance they ever had.

Michele (in white, left center) with her students.

As I watched from behind the curtain a surreal and overwhelming happiness came over me. It wasn't like anything I'd felt before. I had always been proud of my perseverance and my accomplishments in the past, but this was a different kind of pride. This was knowing nine young girls had looked up to me, had absorbed whatever it was I had to offer, soaking it up like little sponges and learning not only about the world of dance, but a little something about themselves too. They were beautiful and talented and strong. I hadn't given them that. But in that moment I thought perhaps I might have helped provide them with a stepping stone along the way to becoming the best women they can be, instilling in them the skills and, most important, the drive and the confidence it takes to present oneself in front of thousands of people. And be successful.

At the end of their performance the crowd cheered with enthusiasm. Success! The girls ran off the stage, relieved and thrilled, and surrounded me with a massive and heart-warming group hug because they had done an amazing job. My little dancers had performed on the great stage of Wolf Trap. It was a fabulous moment, the kind that takes your breath away, lifts your spirit, and makes everything worthwhile.

LE BAISER (THE KISS) by Ann Walsh

2008-02-08T01:52:00.000-08:00

Ann, Guy, and Blossom.

Ann Walsh is a native of Oregon and has lived all over the U.S. and in England. She has run Boston, New York, and Marine Corps marathons, among many other races. A world traveler, Ann currently lives in Bel Air, Maryland with her pilot husband, two sons, and the amazing dog Blossom. She recently embarked on a new career teaching math and language arts to children who "learn differently," and hasn't kissed a Frenchman since this story took place.

Valentine's Day is a day for kissing. Kisses come in all shapes and sizes just like the people that give them. As I turned the calendar to February, I reflected on the kisses and the people that have been part of my life and conjured up the memory of my ultimate dare to be fabulous kiss.

I was 25 at the time, an age when I owned the world and adventures were sought after on a regular basis. Running had just hit its heyday and road races for the masses were slowly popping up everywhere. England was my home for two years and I was taking every opportunity I could to branch out into the neighboring European countries. Running was a new hobby and I decided to buy a copy of an international running magazine and check out where I could combine the hobby with the adventure. "Paris-Versailles 16K; a French road race starting in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower, with the scenic route taking you along the banks of the Seine, through the Bois DeBoulogne forest, and finishing next to the beautiful Palace of Versailles." Say no more, I was in!

The autumn day was perfect for running 9.942 miles. The weather was on the chilly side but not cold. Thirty thousand people were ready to go the distance and there I was in the heart of it all - in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower! The race had started and I left the silhouette behind and started looking for the banks of the Seine; but with that many people running, the banks were barely visible. Eventually, everyone found their pace and by the time I was heading into the Bois DeBoulogne forest, I had found my stride and life was grand! The endorphins had kicked in. Combined with the oom-pah-pah bands and stunning scenery, I was in heaven. At the crest of the final hill, in the forest, I kicked into overdrive. The scenery faded away and the rhythm of the running and my breathing took over. The end was only a few miles away and the adrenaline was pumping. I felt incredibly strong.

I like my space; I don't like anyone getting too close when I am exercising. I like to breathe! I could feel someone approaching me. I hadn't let anyone pass me since the crest of the hill and I wasn't about to let anyone pass me now. Suddenly this guy was on my heels. That's when the game of cat and mouse began. He passed me, I passed him back. He was running fast, I was running even faster. He would say a few words to me in French and since my lack of international language is limited to hello and goodbye in three languages, I said nothing back. I was ahead of him and that's what mattered! For two miles we chased each other. The Palace of Versailles was just ahead and I was in the lead. The finish line was getting closer and closer, his breathing was labored but he wasn't giving up. He wasn't going to let an American girl beat him and that's when the competitive side of my personality decided to show up. The pace increased, it was a full-out run, we were neck and neck, and then I took the lead and didn't give it back. I crossed the finish line and I felt like I had won the Olympics!

That's when it happened! All of the sudden I felt myself being lifted into the air, I turned around and I was face to face with the gorgeous Frenchman that I had just outrun. He laid those French lips on mine and I got an official "French kiss"!! He put me down and smiled and then he walked away into the beauty of the Palace of Versailles.

These days I bask in the glory of my family's kisses and hope to smother them with my own as Valentine's Day approaches. Running still makes me happy, although the pace is slowed and the mileage isn't what it used to be. Every now and then I think of that international running magazine and the ad for the Paris-Versailles 16K - the shadow of the Eiffel Tower, the banks of the Seine, the DeBoulogne forest, the beauty of the Palace of Versailles, and I smile to myself as I can add, "complete with a French kiss at the finish"! *: )

A JOURNEY OF INFINITE MILES by Aimee Halihan Baum

2008-01-14T02:46:00.000-08:00

Aimee Halihan Baum

Aimee Halihan Baum resides in the East Bay of San Francisco. She works for the world's largest privately owned ISP. She is an aspiring writer, who never gives up hope to one day be published. When she is not working, she spends her free time laughing with her husband and watching the world unfold for her daughter.

Have you ever had a moment in your life where you knew beyond logic a change was needed? Not the ordinary kind of change, like a new hair color, but a heavy, significant change, like leaving an abusive boyfriend after having your self-esteem slowly stripped away. A change that causes your life to be turned upside down, shaken and tossed 3,000 miles to the east.

I had buried myself deep within a beautifully made up façade of platinum hair and dark red lips. The world saw an unflappable and elusive woman without need for anyone or anything. On the inside, I felt like a terrified teenage girl, who had gotten carried away in a game of "Grown Up". I didn't feel capable of living my own life.

There were few people I considered friends, though I had many acquaintances. Everyone participated in a superficial, pretentious game of "Who Knew Who", partying at the cool clubs and wearing the right look. Without knowing any better, I played this game very well.

Romantically, I opened myself up to foolish experiences which were detrimental to me instead of nurturing. I had reached a point where I had nothing to share with any man other than my body. Having naively believed sex equaled love, sharing myself, physically, left me feeling used and ashamed. On the brink of total self-loathing, I holed up my heart. I decided never to allow another person to inflict more emotional wounds on my soul. I felt the heavy bricks piling higher and tighter around my heart.

I was living a life barely alive. Half of my waking hours were spent in misery, wishing to be elsewhere, far away. The other half of my waking hours I spent pretending I wasn't miserable. I bottled up my emotions tightly. I locked my pen and paper in a remote drawer, and turned my back on the only creative and emotional release I'd ever had.

I knew mistakes I had made when I was younger would continue to haunt me no matter my desire to change or grow, because I would never be able to bloom, in the environment I was in, and put the past to rest.

I felt as though I stood on the threshold of life, knowing I could not be the woman I wanted to be, the woman I felt aching to break free from the bonds I had created for myself, if I continued with the path set in front of me. The life I was living was surrounded by lies, insecurity and anger, from the world outside, as well as within. I needed a fresh start. I needed to be somewhere I could be me. I needed to step onto a new path.

At 26 years old, I made the most frightening and liberating decision of my life. I moved 3,000 miles away from everything familiar.

I had lived my entire life in the San Francisco Bay Area. Either out of spontaneous madness or intuitive necessity, I moved to Boston on June 27, 2001. It was a Wednesday.

Upon my arrival in Boston, I was overly optimistic. The problem with too much optimism, though, is it does not afford a person the luxury of sincere reality. I could feel, down to my bones, my new life about to blossom as I stepped foot on the soil of Massachusetts. The thought of my new life not being fabulous and easy did not even cross my mind.

I was alone, on my own, for the first time in my life, save for the close proximity of a sister. I had to learn to rely on myself. I had to learn to navigate my way around an unwelcoming and strange city. After a couple of weeks, I lost my optimism. With the stress of quickly finding and moving into an apartment while diving headfirst into job hunting, I didn't have time to acclimate to my surroundings. I felt like a fish out of water. When you add it all up, I had been drained of any ideas I had had of happily ever after.

Sadness crept in as the significance of my decision hit me. I sought comfort in paying exorbitant long distance phone bills for calls made to California, in hopes of cracking a smile or hearing my lost friend, laughter. After a few months of dead end temp jobs and a horribly matched job placement, I began to close myself off from everyone. In my mind's eye, I was failing at what I had set out to achieve. I hated my job. I hadn't made any friends since my arrival. I continued to experience culture shock and I was not adjusting well. In the evenings, I would busy myself with cooking elaborate dinners for myself, and eating every last morsel I had prepared, adding 50 pounds to my petite stature. I didn't want anyone to see me fail, especially after I had spouted to everyone in California, within hearing distance, about how wonderful my new life would be.

One unusually warm day in November, after spending my lunch hour reconsidering my move to the East Coast, I was fired. I had never been fired from a job before. Shock ran through me, though not surprise. Instead of being upset or worried about losing my source of income, I felt freed from a job I had hated to begin with. Believing it would be unfair to accept a new position while pondering a possible move back to California, I took the next few weeks to come to a decision. I weighed my options carefully, and after a lengthy visit to California in December, I made up my mind. I decided to give Boston another shot.

After I returned to Boston, I went in search of a job. I was determined to meet people. Experience had taught me I would not meet anyone in a stuffy office environment, so I hot stepped it to the nearest Starbucks. I was hired by the store one half mile from my house. This time I made a note to myself not to get impatient for life to happen. I reminded myself I needed to let life unfold naturally.

Over the next few months I met people, some I took a liking to, some I didn't bother taking to at all. I lost weight thanks to walking to and from work every day, and remembering portion size during meals. I found I had friends in my life I was beyond grateful for, old and new. My first love found its way back into my heart. My release, writing, returned to me after a 10 year absence. I let my soul sing. I had found my place in this world. I had found me.

These months were incredible. The walls I had strategically built around my heart crumbled. My soul was naked. I was no longer angry or cynical.

The three years I have lived in Boston have been sprinkled with discovery. I have learned what it feels to be alive. I have inhaled life and savored each moment, grateful for the million pleasures offered everyday. I learned to slow down and just be. While drinking in the shade of an old oak tree one hot summer day, listening to myself think, I had a moment of clarity. I realized trying to be the best person I could be each and every day is all that I can ask of myself.

My sister once told me I am strong and could not fail. Although I did not listen when the words were spoken, I am listening now. The time I have taken to reflect on my life has helped me to be more self-aware, to propel myself forward, to face my fears, and taste the sweet with the sour.

My most humbling experience of making friends, and of learning how to be a good friend, is a lesson I hope to never forget. Patience, understanding and acceptance of others, their choices and lives, no longer elude me. My friends truly make my heart smile. We share hopes, dreams, tears and laughter. We are an enormous support for one another, always.

While working towards perfecting the art of being me, romance has been riding in the back seat. When I am ready, I have faith love will follow an open heart.

I have learned that nothing and no one is perfect, and have gloriously opened up to the gentle beauty and the roaring fury of the world around me.

Life inevitably gets in the way to throw a twist in my journey, and I find I am in a foreign land without any idea of how I got there or which direction to go in order to get back on my path. No map. No compass. Just me and my heart.

I have learned that if I listen very carefully, my heart will lead me home.

IN VINO VERITAS by Ginny Lambrix

2007-12-08T02:22:00.001-08:00

Ginny Lambrix

Ginny is the Director of Winegrowing at the award-winning DeLoach Vineyards, in Sonoma, California. Not only is Ginny one of a handful of women vineyard managers blazing trails in the wine industry, she is leading the way by establishing sustainable farming in grape-growing practices. Here, Ginny tells us how, in wine, she was brought back to the truth that is herself. Or, as the Romans once said, in vino veritas!

Writing about what makes a person fabulous is incredibly easy, unless that person is you. Suddenly you are struck with writing something similar to a personal ad and my first few lines were something like "loves slugs, and ice cream, but not slug ice cream". Perhaps my ad would go unanswered? But seriously, one of the hardest things about writing this story was realizing how difficult it must have been for my parents to watch a daughter whose sole goal in adulthood was to flee her childhood. I wish that I could instead write about them and the friends who have helped me along the way. I am sure it was not easy for them and they are truly fabulous. But here is my story.

I spent much of my adolescence roaming the fields around our farm in upstate NY, planning my escape. In retrospect, it was not that life was so bad. Shoveling up after cows was just such a far cry from the pages of the fashion magazines that I subscribed to. I wanted to live in a city, be sophisticated and look bored and mysterious. When I was accepted to Colgate University and awarded some scholarship money, I knew that my calculated efforts were paying off. With glee, I shed my McDonald's after school polyester uniform, loaded up my mother's car, and promised to never look back.

Even though the university was a short 45 minutes drive from the farm, I spent the holidays at school working. I could not see beyond the campus that held the promise of success, glamour and a glimpse of a world that was so completely foreign. My new friends willingly made me their project, giving me makeovers and things to wear. It was surreal. At some level though, I never quite left behind my love of the land and the outdoors. In the summer, while my friends took off to work as interns in NYC, I was holding a garage sale to raise money to move to New Mexico, where I lived and worked in a state park selling hot dogs and hiking. Not the fast track to corporate success, but I was happy. While I could now dress reasonably well and navigate a cocktail party, the core of who I was proved to be much more resilient...

I am grateful that the twists and turns of life have led me back to farming. Ironically, when I went to apply for a job as viticulturist at De Loach Vineyards, the biggest impediment seemed to be that I was dressed too well to possibly be a farmer! I had to convince the French owner of the company, Jean Charles, that I could be completely happy in grubby clothes, with dirt under my nails. My Colgate friends would have been so proud! I think I even said "I can be really dirty" and then turned eight shades of red as I back pedaled. Fortunately the opportunity was granted.

My work is now so completely interwoven into my life, that I know I can not separate the two. I help guide our farmers towards organic and biodynamic farming practices, showing them the things that their piece of land is trying to tell them. A combination of awe, when a conventionally farmed vineyard suddenly comes to life when the chemicals are removed and passion for making great wine have forged friendships that are real. The people I work with both at the winery and in the fields have become a second family.

I have no illusions about being the most beautiful, intelligent, athletic, or interesting woman around -- the competition is too fierce. Although more than one person might nominate me for being the most stubborn!

What makes me unique is a reverence for nature, a commitment to being true to myself, and the ability to open other people's hearts to the lessons that can be learned from the earth. Each season, together, we learn new things about the complexity and beauty of life. These resonate within us, and, if we are lucky impart the finished wines with a fresh and elegant voice.

KATIE GOES SKIING by Katie Laborde

2007-11-10T01:32:00.000-08:00

Katie Laborde (center) with mom Heather and sister Emily.

My first time skiing was a true experience for me. I was 12 years old and was in North Shore, Tahoe, near Christmas time. We spent this time with my cousins, uncle and aunt, and some friends of theirs. With them, we went sledding outside on a nearby hill, made snow angels or snowmen, and even had the occasional snowball fight.

Even though it takes so long to get there (especially in the snowy weather) I was most excited this time, because we were going to stay in a cabin that I had never been to before. When we got there, it was beautiful! Not just the cabin, but everything around us. All I wanted to do was run inside and sit by a warm fire and drink hot chocolate. For a while, I just wanted to see it all from the comfort of this cozy cabin, but I knew that wouldn't work unless there were windows situated around the whole cabin.

If I decided that I wanted to go inside, all of my clothing would be wet. If I wanted to go outside, I would have to cover myself in anything or everything I had. Knowing my cousins, they hadn't come all that way just to relax. Their days were planned snowboarding at some resort nearby. Unlike me, they always had the right equipment and were able to snowboard very well. Of course, all I had for such a sport were nylon pants, a sweatshirt and jacket, and a pair of cotton gloves. Not to mention, a DTBF tee shirt! I had to borrow almost all of my equipment from my cousins, as a result.

I would have to say that that day was probably the worst day to learn to ski. All we had to do was step outside the car at the ski resort and the wind almost blew you over. With skis on it wasn't any better. My sister and I had planned on taking lessons, but the next session wasn't until a few hours later. We decided to take the first steps ourselves. We started by simply stepping onto a long strip of sliding metal with our skis. Because of the wind, that was even difficult. Not to mention our clothing, which we could barely move in, and the blinding snow. We had to stop once we were told that the moving lift was only to be used for private lessons. Now the only thing to do was to be pulled up a much larger left and go down ourselves.

I was terrified to go down, but my cousins went along with me so I wouldn't be afraid. Once my uncle realized I was doing it completely wrong, he climbed up the icy hill to show me how to do it correctly. I had thought that you go straight and hope that you just stop at sometime. Ha. I learned that that was far from the case. Slowly, yet gradually, I made way, left to right, until I got to the bottom. Once I mastered that, it was a snap. It was time for me to face my fears and take the ski lift to the top of the hill.

I went up the lift with my cousin, Blake, and my other cousin, Zach, following behind us. It was no way near as hard as I thought it would be. I learned that my problem before was being too caught up in making sure that I didn't hurt myself and making sure I didn't let myself down. I had to just go for it. As a result of trying not to let myself down, I worked harder towards my goal. I ended up being at the level of my "professional" cousins and it was all because I knew their "secret."

There were jumps that I eventually landed and races that I eventually won. It turned out to be absolutely fabulous!!

Hey! My name is Katie Laborde and I now attend Vintage High school as a freshman. I wrote this story when I was about 12 and it is a true story. I love to play tennis, run and I enjoy art and literature. By writing, I find out more about myself. It’s a way of me keeping up with, well … me. In this story I simply dared to be fearless! I have become less fearful when faced with difficult challenges and I have had less fear to simply face them. I didn't particularly stand out from everyone else around me; I just stood out in myself … if that’s even possible. I dared myself to do what I thought was impossible. Fear can come to be courage and bravery can become confidence. So I dare you to crawl out of the darkness and walk into the radiant glow of fabulosity that you've always dreamed of! And I dare YOU to be fabulous!

THE SUNDOWN DIP by Corrie White

2007-09-01T03:50:00.000-07:00

With a ripe undergraduate diploma in her hands, Corrie White is embarking upon her career as a budding writer with an enthusiasm for the natural world and a running list of potential pursuits. Currently, she blooms where she was planted, in her hometown of Gold Hill, North Carolina, but she waits for the call of adventure to wisk her where she has never been. She has dreams of clog dancing, writing novels, and exploring the sublime Iceland.

I lick the salt from my lips and toss my tangled hair, wet from the sea. I plop on the towel I laid flat, flex my sandy feet, and dig my fingers into the course earth, a pleasure that comes natural for a fidget.

I am alone today, and like most days spent alone, I engage and fine-tune the range of my senses. Books fill my bag, but I'll leave them there; sand will surely crawl into pages I haven't yet read. Before me today rolls an ocean, the playful mystery, and the recent thief of my bikini top.

My first instinct, of course, was to escape from public view and dive into the ravenous wave that forced me into helpless submission. Somewhere inside its gulp, my nylon suit swam into a tangle and left me bare.

I am a lady far from the beaches of France and even further from having a French physique, but in this moment I took ownership and said farewell to the covering of my breasts.

Forcing my hands by my side, I looked ahead and scrounged all the courage I could muster into a half graceful walk. Heads surely yanked my direction. Giggles sounded from the peripheries, but this was my day alone, and no longer was it in vain, for the audience had taken a sudden interest.

Winds carry the scent that brings me back each year. Faded pictures of my toddler legs toting pails of water for the sandcastle mote linger behind my resting eyes. Mommy would dip me down, swoop me up, and make me soar like a swan over the sinking kingdom. I'd cackle and ask her to do it again.

I look deep into the horizon where sail boats blur and remember pouring Mommy's ashes off the pier back home. The haze was too thick that day to see where they drifted.

The heat is rolling away, and the sky glorifies color. I promise myself I have never seen a pink so arresting, a purple so aroused. I shiver at the chill of sundown and remember my exposed chest. Skin, so untainted, shines through the dimming sun, and I rise to take another dip.

OH, IT WILL HAPPEN SOMEDAY! by Diana Rissetto

2007-08-01T03:54:00.000-07:00

Diana Rissetto is a native New Yorker currently in the midst of her quarterlife crisis. She has been published in Teen People magazine, was featured on Access Hollywood as “the Teen Who Touched Frank Sinatra’s Heart” and has naturally curly hair. She hopes to write for the stage and screen…someday…and would like to sing and dance on Broadway as well, but she can’t sing and dance. Her two current goals are to meet Prince William (just so he can shake her hand and go, “Ah, yes … that is an easy name for me to remember.”) and to do something that will get her famous enough so she can be a star on Dancing with the Stars.

When I was 21, I got my first New York City job. Nothing in the world made me feel more proud than to be able to say that! In fact, even just going on the interview was enough of a thrill for me…it all could have ended there and I would have been happy enough.

I was working as an intern for a Broadway public relations firm. Broadway had become a very sacred part of my life, and most weekends, I’d hop the train from New Jersey and get off at Penn Station and enter the magical world of the New York City theatre district. I lived for student rush tickets and for meeting my idols at the stage door after the show. Bernadette Peters had given me hope that a small, pale, curly-haired girl like myself could become a huge sensation.

For the summer before my senior year of college, I worked part-time at Barnes and Noble and worked at the office four days a week. I barely slept, and my mother became concerned that I looked too thin from running around and not eating enough, but I was thrilled as I lived the life of a typical intern … I was getting paid $5 a day (that was actually for transportation, but considering I was coming in from NJ, my transportation was $18 a day. And it didn't even count for college credits. So, that internship actually cost me! (I think it's probably considered slave labor somewhere.) I fetched coffee, looked for a nanny for my boss’s child, and, in one afternoon, made dozens of calls to bakeries trying to find out just who had the best brownies in New York City. We were trying to lure a certain actress to come to a party we were throwing, and word got out that this actress simply adored brownies! (Yes, I am sure she did nothing but sit around and eat brownies and watch the Lifetime Movie Channel.)

My fellow intern and I made phone call after phone call. The exchange went something like this:

Us: Hello, are your brownies especially spectacular?
Bakery: They’re … good …
Us: No! They have to be more than good! They have to be spectacular!

Our boss stood there and coached us on what to say, telling us that if we were going to be publicists, we NEEDED to learn how to ask things like that.

The next day, I rode in a cab to the Upper East Side to deliver especially spectacular brownies to one of Primetime television’s biggest stars. I handed the package to her doorman and caught a glimpse of how the other half lived.

She didn’t come to the party … but I’m sure she loved the brownies. “Brownie Delivery Girl to the Stars.” That would look nice on my resume, I thought. This was part of playing the game, I told myself. This was just a pit stop! Today, I am calling bakeries asking them how they’re brownies are…tomorrow, I am running the world!

Thursday in the city in the summertime (at lunchtime in midtown) is a magical thing. From 12:30 to 2:00, the casts of all the different Broadway shows perform, and our story takes place on such a Thursday. That entire summer, I kept dreaming about the afternoon that the show my office (a little show called Chicago) represented performed, and how I would get to stand under the tent with the stars of four of Broadway’s biggest shows. I would attend these concerts every year, and sit on the grass sweating with the other folks on their lunch breaks. This year would be different. This year, I was on the other end!

On that magical Thursday, I helped carry feathers over to the park (for Billy Flynn to sing "All I Care About is Love" with, obviously) and tried to suppress my giddiness. I knew my constant enthusiasm and fascination for Broadway grated on my boss' nerves, and I honestly couldn't blame them ... I was pretty obsessed.

This is why I had slaved and suffered all summer long…to stand under an air-conditioned tent… an air-conditioned tent!!! AN AIR-CONDITIONED TENT!!!!! … with the stars of four of Broadway’s biggest shows. When my boss told me to take some Vitamin Water from the bin (it was roughly 300 degrees that day) I looked up at him in awe and wondered if I really could just take this sacred Vitamin Water from the same bin that the Broadway stars were reaching into. To this day, red Vitamin Water will always be special to me, even though I have long-traded it for sugar-free green tea.

Thoroughly Modern Millie was one of my favorite shows running. It was bright and fun and happy. I connected so much with Millie … she was just a simple young girl, but when she started singing and dancing on that stage, all I could think was, “What I wouldn’t give to be her.” I cried every time I saw that show. (Which made no sense, I know, since it was billed as the “feel-good” hit of the year.) And, it also ended with Millie finding out that she really did love Jimmy, even though he didn't have any money...only to learn that Jimmy actually, like, OWNED New York City. What girl doesn't dream of that?

That afternoon, the star (well, actually it was her lovely understudy) of Millie sang “Gimme, Gimme,” the show’s 11o’clock power ballad. (Millie would wear a sparkly red dress when she sang that song, and ended it with her hands thrown into the air. Ah. That’s what life was all about.)

Today, she didn’t wear a sparkly red dress, just a t-shirt with her show’s logo and jeans. Still, I watched in awe, and said out loud to myself (or to anybody who might listen, as I have a habit of often doing), “Every time I see that number performed, I just get so upset because I know I will never be up there!”

Because, of course, I couldn’t sing to save my life…or dance…and I wasn’t taking lessons or auditioning in anyway. Yes, it was a pretty safe bet that it really never was going to happen to me, and I had to accept that … sort of … .

Suddenly, I felt a hand on my shoulder and heard a voice say, “Oh, it will happen some day! It will happen!”

I looked up (far far up, as the owner of the voice was over a foot taller than I) to see an impossibly attractive young man with impossibly blue eyes and an incredibly warm smile. (I fought back the urge to laugh in his face and go, "Nope, it really isn't going to happen, but thanks for the encouragement, kind sir!")

He wore Thoroughly Modern Millie t-shirt. He was a chorus boy and an understudy, and that day, he was performing in place of the male lead. We spoke for a few minutes…he really was as kind as his smile implied, and as I walked away that afternoon, I introduced myself and told him it was really nice to talk to him. He said, "It was nice talking to you, too, Diana...I'm Cheyenne! (I did have a brief, "No, really, what's your real name?" thought.)

Thank goodness for Google. Back at the office, I looked up this fellow, who I learned was Cheyenne Jackson (and, yes, Cheyenne really WAS his real name), he was fairly new to the city, and Thoroughly Modern Millie was his Broadway debut. I was able to send him a message through his official website. Within a day, he responded (actually, that was the day of the Blackout of 2003, so it was delayed a bit, because, you know...the city didn't have electricity) and, for some reason that I will never quite understand but am eternally grateful for, that tall good-looking boy in the Thoroughly Modern Millie t-shirt and I struck up a bond via email over the next year.

A year and a half later, I watched and cried (once again, I was crying at a very, very happy show) as he performed the lead in the new musical All Shook Up. It was his first original role, and the audience fell in love with him. His picture was soon on a 30-foot billboard in Times Square and the reviews raved, "A Star is Born!" I couldn't have been prouder of him if he had been my own brother. Just a small-town boy with a dream! I'll always remember that afternoon in Bryant Park and smile.

You just never know who is going to (literally) tap-dance into your life.
When that summer ended, I was terribly sad to leave my internship. (Despite, you know… the tears, the frustration, the lack of salary, and the slavery). I would no longer be a member of the Broadway community. However, I had something very special to always remind me of this experience … a Playbill from the show Chicagowhich had my name listed next to “Press Intern.” I handed out copies of it to all of my friends and relatives. My name was in a real Broadway Playbill! (I later learned that you cannot eat or pay the rent with a Broadway Playbill with your name listed after “Press Intern.”)

However, I still stare at that page at least once a day and think back to that summer when it wasn’t rare for me to go home in tears some afternoons…but which I would never trade for anything. For three months, I was actually a part of something that I loved as much as the New York City theatre community. That summer, it really felt like anything was possible. I finally felt like I was on my way!

FINDING MY VOICE by Renel Brooks-Moon

2007-07-01T05:09:00.000-07:00

Renel's voice is widely recognized in the San Francisco bay area. She is the host of "Renel in the Morning," a popular program on KISS FM. In the afternoons/evenings, she is the public-address announcer for the San Francisco Giants at AT&T Park, a job she has held for six years and counting. On July 10, Renel will be announcing Major League Baseball's All-Star Game at AT&T Park. This will be the first time in history that a woman announces an All Star game, and one of many firsts for Renel, whose infectious enthusiasm and positive example have been an inspiration to people everywhere.

Johanna interviewed Renel on June 25. Renel's story was borne from that conversation.

I've been announcing San Francisco Giants' games for seven years and every game is a new experience; it's more fun than I'd imagined. My first day of announcing was a totally out of body experience! Last week, I heard my voice announcing the Yankees line up and I was beside myself. I mean, I hear my voice saying, "Number 2, Derek Jeter! Number 13, Alex Rodriguez!" And then, Roger Clemens was called to pitch in relief and pitched to Barry Bonds. A rare occurrence indeed!

All my life I've been a baseball fanatic. My parents became Dodgers fans as a result of Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier. My grandfather was a big fan of Negro League baseball long before that. My grandfather even taught my mom how to score games. My mother was pregnant with me in 1958 when the Giants moved here from New York, and she has been a fan ever since. So this team has been a part of my life since I was in the womb! My brother had aspirations of being a big league pitcher. My family has always been into baseball. The A's and the Giants. When I was growing up, you could actually support both teams and both leagues. Those days are pretty much over!

The Giants are a very progressive organization. There are lots of women in upper management in the organization that you don't see. The VP of Marketing for the Blue Jays came into the booth to say hello last week. Women are increasingly in heavy-duty positions. And the Bay Area is very tolerant. I feel protected and supported by the guys that I work with; they're great. We are like family during baseball season. I mean, we see each other more than we see our own families! And some of the guys in their 20s and 30s have told me that they see me as an example; that they learn from me, and I in turn learn from them. You want your work to speak to have that kind of impact. I had no idea what to expect from this group of guys, and they all could not be more supportive and caring.

I'm a Virgo and I have the qualities ascribed to that sign. I strive for perfection. I put more pressure on myself than anyone else ever could! I have a sense of responsibility now, because I am looked at as a pioneer and a trailblazer, so I don't want to screw it up!! Radio wasn't a possibility when I was a little girl. I'm so proud to have a little something to do with inspiring young girls and women and changing their thought processes and expanding their possibilities! When I was young, there were few women and even fewer women of color doing what I'm blessed to be doing now. Getting into radio was pretty much a stroke of good luck. Although Oprah Winfrey says there's no such thing as luck...but rather it's preparedness and opportunity coming together. When I graduated from college, I took an entry-level job at KCBS, worked my way up and around, and also, I have to say, was in the right place at the right time more often than not. Opportunity meeting Preparation!

I've been in the business for over 25 years and it's not easy to see my male counterparts make more money than I do, and be treated with a great deal more respect and professionalism. But I stay true to myself and keep on pushing, and so far it has served me well. If you stand up for yourself, as a woman, you're viewed as not being a team player, you're considered a bitch or too aggressive. But I will ALWAYS stand up for myself. Always. I'll be as professional and as courteous as I can be, but I will always stand up for myself, and my team for that matter. I've been demoted, I've had my show taken away and replaced by a syndicated show that turned out to be a failure, but in the words of the great Destiny's Child, "I am a survivor." I have my audience to thank for that, because when management does something shady, they write, they call; they are very vocal in their support for me. That means so much. In radio, you have to be competitive...or what are you doing? But I think you can have a healthy competitive spirit, and not be mean-spirited or nasty. I think I've proven that you can have a successful and entertaining radio program that is positive and uplifting. I don't get down like the so-called "shock-jocks," that will never be my thing or my style. It isn't necessary, as many women I'm sure understand.

Of course I feel fear. I feel fearful every day. I'm the biggest wuss! I just keep on going. I think of my dad saying, "C'mon, don't let ‘em getcha." That brings me to earth and sanity. My parents have been through so much. My mom just turned 81. She was diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of 80 and she went public with her experience. Her attitude is wonderful. Instead of "poor me, why me, God?" she'll say, "Lord, just guide me." She stood by my dad and I can't even put into words the admiration that I have for them. My dad was the first African American high school principal in San Francisco. He always had a big personality and I take after him that way. I'm definitely a daddy's girl. He passed away four years ago, but I think of him every day. I want to make him proud. He's my greatest inspiration and role model. Thinking of my parents and the experiences they endured gives me great strength. My dad and I are the same person. Same astrological sign, same sense of humor, same face!! Everything I'm doing now in my career is everything that he and I enjoyed together...music, comedy, entertainment and sports. I definitely think of myself not as a broadcast personality, but as a performer, something my husband and my immediate family will attest to!

I found my voice at Mills College in Oakland. Kind of ironic, I suppose. Or not? Mills is a women's college and is all about women finding their voices. Up until then, I struggled with my voice and my sense of self. My school years were difficult as they were during the height of integration and the civil rights movement. I had a really hard time finding my place, and struggled to be accepted by both black and white students. My first day of high school in 1972, disgruntled and I guess racist students even threw rocks at the bus and it was like Little Rock, Arkansas. in the 1950s! But again, I would think of my parents and find my strength; I CAN do this and I MUST do this. I entered Mills College in 1976 and that experience forever changed me. It forever changed me. It was that experience that helped me find my voice and confidence. I met wonderful women; African American women with the same experience as my own. It helped me find my voice as a feminist and community activist. My parents' greatest lesson was: "The biggest deterrent to racism and sexism is education. Get your education and be the best Renel you can be. And make a difference in the community and the world." Last September, I delivered the convocation address at Mills. That was AMAZING. Unbelievable. It was a full circle and profound moment for me.

As we get older, we start to just get it. I have a posse of five best friends. We've been tight for 14 years. Every December we have a blowout slumber party at my house. We met at our neighborhood Jazzercise class and we all just clicked. And all these years later we realize we were all meant to be together as sister-friends. We've been through divorces, cancer, raising children, aging parents, career struggles... you name it. There's nothing better than best girlfriends to pull you though the ups and downs of being a woman in this world!

My husband was a student at UC Berkeley when I was at Mills. That's when we met, but we didn't get together until 13 years later. He saw me performing in a talent show on campus and claims that he knew one day I'd be a performer. It takes a special kinda brotha to be married to me and all that comes with the "Renel Experience"! I think it helps that he's the oldest of six siblings, four of whom are sisters! And while his dad was in the Air Force, he had to step up and help his mom raise the family. He and his mom have a great relationship, so Tommie is pretty good with women!

My favorite thing to do is just to sit with a glass of wine in the tub. I usually take a vacation during the All Star break, but hello! Not this year! We'll probably go this fall. I love tropical weather, so I like to go to Mexico or the Caribbean. I can sit there for hours. My husband will visit with me, but then he's off to do something again. I guess I love sitting still because I don't get to do that very much in my daily life. I usually get up at 4:00AM to start getting ready for my morning show, which airs until 10:00AM. Then, I'll go to they gym or take a nap. Or prepare for the next day's show. I have to be at the ballpark by 4:00PM for pre-game interviews. Then, after the game, I'll go home and do some more preparation for the next morning's show. I usually sleep about five hours. People have called that amazing, but it's not amazing. Single moms are amazing! Moms in general are amazing! There are women who are juggling way more than I am an under great adversity. That's what I call amazing.

I wouldn't turn back the clock ever. Not on your LIFE. Life is good. Life is good. It's quite the journey, is it not? When I think of the woman I was in my 20s and even 30s I refer to myself as "her," because she was totally a different person...but she got me to the woman I now am...preparing to turn 50 next year, welcoming it, and daring to and continuing to be FABULOUS!

AGORAPHOBIA AND ANTHROPOLOGY by Molly Doane

2007-06-01T05:06:00.000-07:00

Molly Doane is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She is currently studying producers of fair trade coffee in Chiapas, Mexico, as well as the roasters and consumers who purchase it in the Midwest.

I feel like lately I have read quite a few accounts of agoraphobic middle-aged women. They don't like to grocery shop or go to work or otherwise leave the house. I think, "of course you are agoraphobic." I think, "agoraphobia is an irrational fear of the outside world. What is irrational about fearing the outside world?" I became a gardener in my late thirties after years of doing nothing of the kind: before I cycled and ran and spent hours at the gym. The garden is an extension of the house, surrounded by fence and foliage; it is an outdoor room enclosed from the city streets. I always thought it was kind of cruel to keep cats indoors. They should be allowed to roam as is their wont. Why should cats be restricted for their own good, like so many Victorian wives? Yet lately I have become an indoor kind of cat. I cannot precisely place the transformation. I feel however that I have less and less interest in what goes on outside of my house. I have no interest in meeting new people. I don't like to try new restaurants. I don't know what this is exactly. A creeping fear or shyness, sensory saturation, diminishing returns? My husband, who is perpetually writing four novels at once, feels we are mirror opposites. His surfeit of interests makes it difficult for him to finish anything and so he feels like he accomplishes nothing. In contrast, he thinks I have become overly specialized. I have narrowed down my interests so much that I am in constant danger of attempting nothing. And yet I must do something. I am a relatively successful anthropologist. But the struggle is there.

Where does the struggle come from? As I age, I do find it less satisfying to live an outside kind of life. The ambient vibes, positive and sexual, don't bounce from the pavement anymore. In fact, there is a negative or absent quality to my public face. Being in public I am no longer affirmed, and sometimes I am effaced. Recently, I was in a café awaiting someone I was to interview. We had not met, but we had exchanged descriptions: he, grey-haired, medium height, thin build; me "big" curly dark hair, on the short side. I saw him arrive, order his coffee. This was obviously my informant—he was the only grown-up in a small sea of Midwestern college students. I waited for him to approach my table. I watched as his eyes scanned the crowd and scanned it again. I watched him turn back to the coffee counter to see if I was there. I watched him turn to scan the crowd in my direction another time, his eyes never touching my face, as though they had an internal editor. At that point I hailed him enthusiastically, with a smile, and we proceeded with the interview.

My experience as a college professor has been disillusioning. Even in the enlightened university hamlet women ought to "be nice." If your colleagues find you pushy, aggressive, or bossy (a former boss's preferred adjective to describe me) within the department you might not get tenure. If you are not assertive, confident, and self-assured outside of the department you will never get past the negative reviews of your colleagues, essential if you want to publish and not perish.

And I am also more fearful. Out at a salsa club in Mexico a few days ago, I told some friends that I had once ridden my bicycle through Mexico. "And yet now I am terrified I will be hit by a car as I walk along on the sidewalk." It is just mortality, said my friend. You are becoming aware of your mortality.

Mortality, sexism, diminishing returns. These are all persistent themes in our lives, and yet we live them still. I notice the themes in Chiapas, Mexico, where I study coffee farmers. To get to the coffee communities, I take a collective taxi on a daily death-defying journey over curving mountain roads that the taxi drivers handle quite deftly. As they narrowly avoid the oncoming traffic, they tell me stories of migration. Pasqual tells me he was a gardener, a carpenter, and a handyman in Washington. I ask which Washington? He says the one that is the home of George Bush. We laugh. To arrive in Washington, D.C., he had crossed the Sonora Desert in Arizona. It took four nights of walking, with some hours of rest during the day. The polleros (this literally means someone who raises chickens) charged $2,500 and took him in a truck to Virginia. Life was very sad, he said, during that year, because he missed his family. But he said life in Tenejapa is also very sad because you can't earn enough money and that makes everything hard. You make maybe 80 pesos a day ($7.50) and you have to buy food out of that and everything else. (Groceries are running me about $10 a day). I have heard dozens of variations on this story. Some taxi drivers allude to the deaths of compatriots. Increasing border security has led migrants to across ever more dangerous desert routes.

Dangerous crossings are not new. Before roads and buses made it possible for rural people from the far south to migrate to the border, they made long journeys to the coffee plantations on the coast. What is now a bus journey of a few hours from mountains to seaside was once also a four-day walk. A snapshot. Alonso, Ana, and their son Umberto are together a nice family. They fill in each other's stories and listen to one another with interest and compassion. The couple is in their late sixties. Their unmarried son is in his thirties and their only helper. Umberto tells me they have had a particularly hard time in the last few years because they are Zapatistas and therefore have lost access to the few government programs that exist. They grow organic coffee for the fair trade market and organic honey. Alonso and Umberto dress me in a beekeeper's outfit to take me on a tour of their hives.

Alonso, the father, was an orphan. His dad died when he was ten of drink and his mother when he was 12 of fever. So he had to go work on a coffee plantation when he was ten, at first working in the kitchen because he was too young to work in the fields. When he was 12, he began agricultural work on the plantation under the care of a man from his own community. The man felt sorry for him and was kind, making sure that Alonso got to pick the most loaded trees so he could fill his bags quickly and earn well. Alonso worked seasonally for 12 years on this plantation. As an adult the work was much harder. He had to get up at two or three in the morning and work until five in the evening. He worked from about 1950 until about 1975 on the plantation where he often "felt lonely in his heart."

Eventually he inherited six hectares from his father's estate and married Ana. At first they grew peanuts for the world market and corn and beans to eat. Alonso continued to work seasonally on the coffee plantation. About thirty years ago he started growing coffee, which was promoted through a government agency called INMECAFE. At that time, the government had a lot of progressive programs aimed at raising the economic position of rural people. Growing coffee at home meant that Alonso no longer had to make the seasonal journey to the coastal coffee plantations. Coffee cultivation has brought some improvement for Alonso.

In the old days, Ana had to bring all of their water for drinking, bathing, and cooking from the well that was one and a half kilometers away. There is now tubed water, but even with this improvement, life is still very hard. Ana is too weak to grind the corn for tortillas, even though it needs to be done, and making tortillas is painful because she has terrible rheumatism. Ana says: I want to die already. I am ready to die. I am discouraged with this coffee. There is still no result. Look at my kitchen. It is falling apart. It is like the house of the black wasp [a mud house]. All of our work and I live in a house like this. I would just as soon abandon the coffee and go live in a cave! Ana starts to cry.

I know how she feels. I want to abandon it all and go live in a cave! Of course, unlike Ana, I get to escape the grind. I often retreat to my garden, my cave. It keeps me satisfied and sane. But when am I happiest? When hurtling irrevocably toward an oncoming semi, ranchero music blaring in my ears, the taxi driver busily looking for a new CD he would like to play. Or stuffed into a beekeepers suit, stiff as an astronaut, deafened by the whine of worried bees and blinded by smoke.

EXCERPT FROM GRANNY D: WALKING ACROSS AMERICA IN MY 90TH YEAR By Doris Haddock with Dennis Burke

2007-05-01T03:35:00.000-07:00

Doris “Granny D” Haddock received a lot of attention when she walked across the country, campaigning to raise awareness and support for campaign finance reform. She probably got more attention for being an 89-year-old grandmother attempting this feat, and she knew it, but the more important and driving reason was her passion for the issue and the cause, which she spoke about frequently along the way. She walked through arid deserts and hiked the Appalachian mountains during blinding blizzards, even skiing her way into DC when the snow conditions worsened and prevented her walk from being continued. Doris is a believer in taking action and making a difference. Her passion was and continues to be infectious. Today, she is 96 years old and continues to speak publicly and travel the country for campaign finance reform.

This month we celebrate her passion and her work by sharing an excerpt from her book about the walk. (See the links below the story for more information.)

I spent the weekend with my daughter, Betty, and her family in Chevy Chase. Then Jim and I, at long last, got in the vehicle and drove home to Dublin, New Hampshire. My, it was delicious to see the miles fly by and not have to even think about walking them! And then my town ahead, and there it is! And the old house! My old chair! Bathtub! Books! Ahh, my tired bones!

On Tuesday morning I made my way back to my old friends - our Tuesday Morning Academy. They were happy to see me, but it was rather as if I had been ill for a time or off on a cruise. Within a few minutes, I was one of the girls again - except for one difference. One of my friends, after a few minutes of conversation about my walk, said she didn't see what was so important about campaign finance reform.

It is reported that I took her rather sharply to task with a presentation of memorable ferocity. Well, was that me? Old Doris? It was not the Doris who had sat meekly among them a year and a quarter earlier. Even at my age, I had changed quite a bit.

For the first time in my long life, I was clearly not afraid of what someone might think of me - I cared more about the issue than my vain self. That transition was worth the walk, though I must keep working on it.

Several weeks later I received a call. A group of campaign finance reformers from the Alliance for Democracy were going into the Capitol Rotunda to petition for the redress of our grievance against campaign corruption. Yes, I said - I would go with them this time. I could care less anymore if people thought I was crazy. This was a way to push the issue forward - to demonstrate the depth of our concern and to take the pain of social change upon ourselves.

So I returned to Washington. On the evening of April 20, 2000, I walked from a train at Union Station to a church building near the Supreme Court. There I was to meet thirty-one others who would risk arrest. I was a bit late, as the streets of Washington can be confusing. I entered a room where the thirty-one were seated in chairs gathered in a great circle, and my perilous seat waited empty for me.

In the few steps across the room, I reminded myself that my whole life had been spent worrying too much about what others thought about me. Go ahead, old girl, have a seat.

It was a comfortably well-worn chair, and I looked around with wonder at the smiling people around me, bathed as they were in the golden light of the old room. Many had lost themselves to their causes many years ago. Some, like me, were young beginners.

I was arrested the next morning for reading the Declaration of Independence in a calm voice in the Rotunda. I did so to make the point that we must declare our independence from campaign corruption. My wrists were pulled behind me and cuffed. I was taken away to jail along with the others. When you jump fully into the river of your values, every moment glows with a blissful joy, even when your arms hurt behind you.

But, oh, dear husband, Jim! Are you up there looking down, laughing at me in the pokey? Get used to it, dear.

The fear of not being liked - of not belonging - has been central in my life. "She's not like the others. She's different. Sometimes I wonder if she's mine at all, like I found her in a basket on my front doorstep," I overheard my mother say when I was seven.

Not knowing how else to proceed, I embraced the idea that I was different. I was a princess in disguise. The pink granite Laconia Public Library, complete with turret, became my castle, and I read every adventure book in it. At home, my nose was always in a book until Mama scolded me to do my chores.

That overheard conversation, and that uncertainty helped me to become well read and adventurous, which has made me a connoisseur of life and of people. It has sent me on a lifetime of adventures - I can't imagine how boring I might have otherwise become to others and to myself.

It does help to know that I was, in fact, loved. At Sybil's wake, when a priest asked Mama who would be taking care of her now that Sybil was gone, Mama's eyes brightened with joy when I said, "Why, she will be coming to live with me, won't you, Mama?" It may have been only the sparkle of an extinguished worry, but I have clung to it.

Do we see who we are, finally? Do we see, behind the curtain, the scars and the insecurities that have controlled us? And when we see them and look them squarely in the eye, do they lose their power over us, backing down from their bullying bluster? Indeed they do. We become free to take our lie in whatever shape it has become, and find a good and enjoyable use for it, serving others and ourselves.

Interesting! After all this chattering, I have not told you five minute's worth about my long career in the shoe industry. For so many years, that was all I could think about, and now it hardly seems worth bringing up. I think the lesson there is that a career, in the end, is a much smaller part of our lives than we can possibly imagine at the time. Our career distracts us from our real work, so we must learn to see past the limits of that blinkered world. All those years condense now in my mind to a chuckle.

The aftermath of my arrest was that I was later brought before the judge in Washington for my crime of being a troublesome person. While I hoped he would not put an old woman in jail for six months for reading the Declaration of Independence in the Capitol, as well he could, I yet worried that perhaps all of this, all of me, had been silly and he would now send me away to contemplate my silliness for a few months. As he sat expressionless in his great robe, I wondered what this wise-looking old man thought.

Judge Hamilton finally spoke, and most mercifully. He sentenced me, and the others, to the time we had already served, and he added these words of heavenly grace:

As you know, the strength of our great country lies in its Constitution and her laws and in her courts. But more fundamentally, the strength of our great country lies in the resolve of her citizens to stand up for what is right when the masses are silent. And, unfortunately, sometimes it becomes the lot of the few, sometimes like yourselves, to stand up for what's right when the masses are silent.

His honor gave me a fine hug in his chambers afterward. His staff members were tearful and I was tearful, and America felt like my own country again.

So I am happy for how my walk has turned out, and for how my life has turned out. I am thankful for the troubles that have shaped me. If you and I were having a cup of tea and you were telling me your stories, as I have told you mine, I would see that it was your hard times that made you so interesting, so wise and able to laugh at life. Aren't we lucky, friend, to be the creatures of such a genius Creator that even our darkest troubles graciously serve to deepen and wide our hearts? And all our memories, like days cast in amber, glow more beautifully through the years as the happy endings finally reveal themselves and flow slowly into the bright and mysterious river of the Divine.

Well, I am not finished ... with my life or with my passion for campaign finance reform. There is almost always time to find another victory, another happy ending. I hope that is your feeling about life, too.

Check out the PBS documentary about her walk, entitled, Granny D Goes to Washington (DVDs can also be purchased there.)
Check out this book and another book by Granny D, entitled, "You're Never Too Old to Raise a Little Hell" (Random House; 2003).

OF MEN AND A MACHINE By Anne Singer

2007-04-01T05:14:00.000-07:00

Anne Singer lives in Washington, D.C. where she works as a freelance writer and communications consultant for political and public interest causes

You live in a city like New York long enough and you learn to ignore things. The urban cacophony – sirens, horns, music, and that relentless commentary on you and the body you walk around in. You know, those verbal flares men send up that illuminate you in the crowd and alert everyone to the woman over here with the audacity to unbind her feet and venture out into the public spaces men think they own.

I have been asked by complete strangers, men passing on the street, Why are you wearing that baggy jacket that covers you up? Where are you hurrying that's so important? Do you have a boyfriend? At newsstands and markets, men behind the counter have seized my hand, locked my eyes and smiled lasciviously while asking for my number. And I can't even count the number of times male passersby, store clerks or strangers in restaurants have asked me why I won't smile for them. Why are you so serious, baby? Smile!

Of course, the most celebrated hecklers, the men most likely to remind you most loudly that it's their world and not yours, are construction workers. I think it's the mob-like nature of their commentary that makes them notorious. Or maybe it's their primitive vocalizations of grunts and hollers and that thing they do with their tongues. But when a crew of them sets their sites on you and send up their call, you begin to feel like the sickly caribou at the back of the herd and you put down your head and pick up your pace. At least, that's what I always do.

Until the day I didn't.

I was back in my Midwestern hometown, a college town where intellect is prized, and gender, though endemic, is well controlled by healthy doses of liberalism. It's the kind of small city where a girl can grow up believing she is equal to men. I suppose there was a sensation of safety for me, being back in such a tolerant little place after fifteen years in New York where gender, ethnicity and wealth form a brittle template that defines all human interaction.

It was a balmy July evening, and I was strolling downtown with my old best friend from high school. Dating back to the ninth grade, I had walked like this with Wendy through shopping malls and high school halls and also these same downtown streets. And although I can remember both the drama and the joy of being teenaged best friends, what I remember most vividly is the reflections of our two selves in every window glass we passed: Wendy, the tiny, adorable and utterly feminine one with perfectly feathered hair; and me, the tallish, heavyish, lumbering one with her hair pulled back tight in a hair band or barrette. I saw myself as Big Bird and Wendy as the gorgeous guest host who makes Kermit swoon.

But now, in our 30's, that mirror image was reversed, and I was learning to enjoy the way I looked in a pair of black jeans. And, apparently, on that July evening, so did a crew of workers resurfacing a downtown parking lot.

As we passed their worksite, their call went up and the flares went off and sounds began to issue from the men as they turned away from their work and towards we two women in our summer garb. But amidst the unintelligible chorus came a string of words in the form of a question: You wanna' take a ride? One of the men was pointing at one of their machines. It was massive, easily 10 feet off the ground, with a shiny hot steel cylinder nearly as high that slowly rolled across the sticky black asphalt in a wake of tarry steam. He asked again, You wanna' take a ride? and gestured at a driver's seat high atop this mechanical monster.

And apparently, on that particular summer evening, I did want to take a ride.

I turned off the sidewalk and moved towards these hard-hatted men – to their utter delight, it seemed. They turned off their equipment, ceremoniously pulled back the sawhorse barricades, and cheered me on as I entered their hot, hard-working world. When I stepped onto the plywood planks that crossed the lot, I looked back and saw Wendy standing there, hands clasped just below her beaming, slack-jawed smile.

I don't remember how I actually mounted the rolling machine, but somehow I found myself sitting up high, next to its driver as it rumbled and jolted and began to move. We took a few runs across the lot, back and forth in the kind of pattern you see combines travel at harvest time.

I have to tell you, it was exhilarating. The sheer scale and power of the machine beneath me gave me a glimpse into what makes men and boys stop and marvel at cranes, bulldozers and concrete mixers at building sites. I also have to tell you, it was a little bit scary, so I remained firmly seated rather than stand up, as a different woman might have done, and wave my arms in some gesture of liberated abandon.

As I've shared this story with friends, however, I've come to think that a different woman might not have accepted this invitation in the first place – let alone spread her arms like Kate Winslet in "Titanic." And this surprises me.

It surprises me that I, of all people, the one with the baggy jacket and the Big Bird stride would seize this moment, defy expectations, and turn a sexual taunt into an invitation by saying ‘Yes.' Did this fellow in the caution-yellow vest and work boots really want me to ride his roller?

Back in my New York days, I was once walking along with a girlfriend, beautiful Lydia. An old, disheveled man passing by muttered that she should stop and give him some time. So she stopped. And then she yelled, You want me stop, old man? You want to drop your pants so I can give you a blow job right here on the sidewalk? Is that what you want? Well c'mon then! The man, however, just kept walking.

Men don't really mean it when they ask you, a total stranger, to stop and engage in whatever it is they're asking for – your phone number, a smile, a ride on an asphalt roller. Men with the gumption to make such requests of women they don't know are usually just singling you out for scrutiny and judgment, flagging you as a trespasser in the world they dominate. But it's also true that you can stand your ground and claim your place in this world by proceeding with confidence, acting with joy, and, sometimes, by simply saying ‘Yes.'

DARE TO BE FABULOUS! By Gretchen Wyler

2007-03-01T03:58:00.000-08:00

Gretchen Wyler has celebrated a spectacular and distinguished career in the theater and television, including Silk Stockings, Damn Yankees, Bye Bye, Birdie, and the original Guys and Dolls. While performing on stage by night, she was managing an animal shelter by day. Gretchen went on to found The Ark Trust, producer of the annually televised Genesis Awards, honoring the media and entertainment for shedding a spotlight on animal cruelty.

I have lived in two worlds – as a working actress in show business for 50 years, and as an animal-rights activist for nearly 40. Neither of these worlds have a high success rate, but I have succeeded in both. I attribute that to my energy and my passion. I collect quotes. Words drive me. Pictures can make me smile and touch my heart, or pictures can make me sad and make my heart hurt. But words inspire me. I am often surprised – and yet, pleased – when someone has crystallized MY thoughts in their words. In a recent conversation with actor Mike Farrell, I asked him how he continued his fight to save the environment, and he replied, "My outrage fuels me." HIS words fuel ME. My favorite is, "A doer doesn't dwell on victory or defeat. A doer just does." I have always been a busy person. When I was asked in an interview what my idea of happiness was, I replied, "Being in pursuit of something," which brings me happiness. I never cared about being rich; I cared about being happily busy. I recall when one asked if I ever, just to relax, drove to the beach and watched the tide come in. I responded with a smile and said I did not, but I would if I wanted to. I am hardheaded. I used to wonder how President Ford found time to play golf, which was often reported in the newspaper. How could a president find the time – or want to MAKE the time – to play golf? I've never envied the people who have time, or MAKE time, to relax… to sleep late… to watch TV… to take vacations. I'm awake. I'm busy.

I have three favorite words. I call them "the Power Three"- strategy, manipulation, and closure. I am, admittedly, "street smart." I graduated from high school and started pursuing goals. I am action-oriented, not study-oriented. I like to fearlessly move forward. It works for me.

Goals. Realistic goals. The word "realistic" is important. I admire people who yearn for the impossible, but I would rather reach for attainable goals. I know what triggered my first goal - to be a great dancer. I was born in 1932 in a little Oklahoma town, Bartlesville. When I was 18 months old, my mother found baby Gretchen in her crib, and her eyes had crossed overnight. In 1933, there were a lot of cross-eyed people since the medical technology had not pioneered the research to straighten eyes. I knew how ugly I was and there's not one picture of me looking into the camera. My little head was always down. I was sent to dancing school at the age of 5 and, as if it were yesterday, I remember deciding I would grow up, become a great dancer, wear beautiful costumes, and no one would see how ugly I was. In 1941, breakthrough surgery straightened my eyes and changed my appearance but didn't change my dream. I was determined to be a successful dancer. I wasn't too sure how, and there are no "how-to" books on the subject, but I had a strategy. It reminds me of a favorite quote: "How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice, practice, practice."

Growing up was wonderful. I took center stage. In the first grade I was the leader of the rhythm band, at eleven I had a playschool for children, at fourteen, a dancing school. I was president of my class, editor of the high school paper and basketball queen. Those years gave me a great sense of leadership and a strategy to move forward and take control, knowing that there was a high price for such a position.

My parents supported my dream, but they probably thought it was just that – a dream. Meanwhile, they insisted I go to college, so I made a deal with them. Since I was a straight-A student, I asked if they would let me graduate a year early and then go to college for a year to see if I liked it. But all that changed one night. A few months before I was set to go to Northwestern, I met a beautiful woman at the wedding of a friend. She'd heard that I was a good dancer, and she invited me to join her new ballet company in Little Rock Arkansas. She had just hired a renowned ballet master from Carnegie Hall, and I decided this was the opportunity I could not miss. I packed my bags and left town three days later. My folks did not try to stop me. It felt just right to run away from home to start my career. That year in the ballet lived up to my expectations and I dreamed on. My first job was in the corps de ballet at the biggest outdoor theater in America – the St. Louis Muny Opera. The only limits one has are those of vision. I envisioned Broadway, and at 18 I auditioned and was selected to be a dancer in the chorus of Where's Charley? starring the great Ray Bolger (the scarecrow in "The Wizard of Oz"). That led to a chorus job in the original company of Guys and Dolls, and then my "big break" came as the singing and dancing star of Cole Porter's last musical, Silk Stockings in 1955. Throughout those early years, there was a LOT of strategizing and manipulating, and I did get a lot of closure!

In 1956, I married Shepard Coleman, a cellist with the New York Philharmonic, later to become musical director of the original Hello, Dolly! in 1964. It was a good marriage – he was a brilliant musician and an intellectual, but divorce came twelve years later. In retrospect, I know it was my energy level, my drive, and his attempts to slow me down that brought the separation.

Over the years, I had many lovers, but I kept moving on. Not for one day have I wanted to settle down or commit again. I had things to accomplish. And I never felt having children was my calling.

Until 1997, I earned my living as a union actor, dancing my way through stardom, replacing Gwen Vernon as Lola on Broadway in Damn Yankees, replacing Chita Rivera as Rosie in "Bye, Bye Birdie," loving the "new" variety television – dancing on Ed Sullivan, Perry Como, Gary Moore, Bell Telephone Hour and Andy Williams. A highlight was starring as Sweet Charity at the Prince of Wales Theatre in London's West End. I even met her Majesty the Queen at a Royal Command performance at the Palladium Theatre.

My life was full and I continued to pursue my theatrical goals. I once counted the number of starring roles I played - on Broadway, in road companies, summer stock and dinner theaters. I counted 22 shows! (Another favorite quote: "Boredom is what we feel when we are not participating in our own life.") In 1972, while doing a production of Company, I fell off the stage and broke my leg. I was told I would never dance again. We can't control what happens to us, but we CAN control our reaction to it. I decided to stay in show business and go for acting roles. I'd miss the overture and the excitement of "stopping the show" with an especially exciting dance number, but by then I was 40 years old, and I'd done my last tour jete.' I also decided I wanted to produce an off-Broadway show – fearless – but I did it. It was not a hit, but it was a marvelous adventure.

Also, I decided I could put more time in my animal work. In the early 1960s, I had Great Dane show dogs and became a "stage mother" as I watched a number of my dogs become champions. I had a lovely home in Warwick, New York, and in late 1966 I heard terrible things about the local dog pound, located on the village dump. At that time, no one even knew if there was a dog pound, or where that dog pound might be. I wanted to see for myself. I remember it was a December snowy day, and as I drove up, and hid in my car, I watched a toothless old man loading dogs into a truck from New Jersey. He slammed the door on the tail of one poor dog who let out a scream - I later learned that the truck came every two weeks to pick up all the dogs and sell them to a laboratory for experimentation.

An activist was born. A person does not search for a cause, it finds you. I'd been found. I vowed to do something about the dog pound. Determined. So I started what I called "the Power Three" – strategy, manipulation and closure. It worked. On October 13^th, 1968, the new Warwick Animal Shelter opened its doors and welcomed the first of thousands of unwanted dogs and cats. I managed the shelter for ten years while continuing as a New York actress. I also became the first woman elected to sit on the Board of the A.S.P.C.A. in New York City. And I was the first person to be dropped from that Board as a result of suing my fellow Board members for "corporate waste and indifference to animal suffering." The case was settled out of court in my favor, in favor of the animals.

Slowly but dramatically, my life changed. In the '60s, no one cared where furs came from, how animals were treated before they got on your plate, and what was being done to research animals behind closed laboratory doors. As information came to me, my passions were fired by my outrage. But in those early days I was in the closet! I told no one when I got rid of my fur coats and became a vegetarian. But I steadily began to find the courage and the words, and I knew I had work to do.

Animal-rights was not a phrase in the '60s. Peter Singer's Animal Liberation came out in 1975 and lured throngs of compassionate people into something called "the humane community." I began to feel comfortable with my new set of values, and eager to share them.

In 1977, I had a television series, was a performer on a Broadway show ("Sly Fox" with George C. Scott), managed the shelter in Warwick and ran a 60-member volunteer program at the A.S.P.C.A. Life was good, my health was perfect and I was happily busy. I traveled to Los Angeles with "Sly Fox" for the summer of' ‘78 and decided to stay for a while. I soon found out that California was a very fertile state for animal-rights progress. At that time, the President of the Senate was an animal advocate. I became active in city and state politics, arranging celebrity flights back and forth from the State Capitol to help me lobby. My most satisfying achievement was to sponsor and have the President of the Senate author an Animal-Rights Resolution - the first in the world – a legislative text that recognized the rights of animals. A fine use of the Power Three that brought the resolution to closure DESPITE heavy opposition on the Senate floor. One Senator actually said, "If God wanted animals to have rights, it would say so in the bible." Although I continued to perform in film and television, my focus at that time was almost exclusively on efforts to raise awareness of animal abuse and exploitation.

In 1986, with the increased power of the Political Action Committees (PACS), I became frustrated with politics and decided my time would be better spent working to change minds rather than to change laws. I founded an event called the Genesis Awards – an award show that honors members of the major media who produce works which raise public awareness of animal issues. The name Genesis was selected since it is the book that tells the story of Noah and the Ark, the first "news report" of an animal rescue! The Genesis award event is now in its 21st year.

In 1991, I was left a sizable bequest for my animal work, and I decided to start my own organization, The Ark Trust, Inc., working with the media and producing the Genesis Awards. For the past 18 years, the event has been seen as a television Special, first on Discovery, and now on Animal Planet. Power Three at work – from a 1986 luncheon for 140 people, and now a star-studded crowd of nearly 1000 in the International Ballroom of the Beverly Hilton.

In 1997, I starred in a grand production of "Hello, Dolly!" at the Muny in St. Louis. I had an agenda. Closing night, I made a curtain speech, telling the audience of 12,000 people that I had started my career in the corps de ballet in the Muny 47 years ago, that life is choices, and I had chosen to end my stage career that very night. The decision was good. It was a clean "exit" from the stage.

In 2002, The Ark Trust merged with The Humane Society of the United States (Power Three!), the largest animal-protection organization in the world. It seemed right.

In 2002, I had breast cancer. I am a survivor: pain is actual, suffering is optional. Again, We can't control what happens to us, but we CAN control our reaction to it. I keep doing what I do. I will not feel sorry for myself, or allow fear of death to fill my head. Radiation did affect my immune system, so I have some physical ailments. But that doesn't stop my clock from running, or slow down my days. Along the way, a doctor told me I have a low energy level. Me? I assured him he'd misread the tests. He replied, "Just picture your mind dragging your body around." Okay.

What's ahead? I wonder. I'm not religious. I'm not opposed to religion, I just don't feel a need for it in my life. I am spiritual. The Earth is my church, all the Earthlings are my friends, and I don't eat my friends.

I now have a home in the country-there is an orchard, a rose garden, 2 rescued horses,
and 4 foundling cats. I intend to keep working hard, but I know I'll "wear out" one day soon.

That's okay. I believe I have done the best I could do to help animals. It has been a seemingly impossible task, but I continue to draw my inspiration from thinkers of history past. I have memorized the words and the phrases, and continue to be driven by a new generation of profound thinkers.

Man, instead of being lord and, therefore, protector of the lower animal kingdom, has

become its tyrant.

I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self-contained.

They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time.

Extreme horror of cruelty is the mark of the spiritual man.

Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.

We need a boundless ethics which will include the animals also.

We live by the death of others. We are burial places!"

The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are

treated.

The question is not, Can they reason? Nor, Can they talk? But Can they suffer?

Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages.

We draw the line between us and all the rest of creation.

A fabulous life? Webster defines "fabulous" as "extremely good, pleasant or enjoyable." Yes, mine has been fabulous. One journey. I have been accountable to others, and to myself. Life is choices, and I believe I have made the right ones – at least I stepped up to the plate.

GO WITH THE FLOW By Karen Wolf

2007-02-01T05:21:00.000-08:00

The cruising life of sailing has taken Karen half way around the world. Currently residing in the "Middle Earth", Karen has found a community of friends and family in New Zealand that would have remained strangers had she not decided to "go with the flow".

My life's headlines might read like a National Enquirer front page: KILLER BEES ATTACK SAILORS IN VENZUELAN JUNGLE; HURRICANE FLOYD SWAMPS COUPLE IN NEW JERSEY MARSHES; SOUTH PACIFIC STORM TESTS SAILOR'S SKILLS. Such splashy journalism might reflect a landlubbers view of some of the experiences I've weathered in ten years of open ocean cruising. I might even use such headlines to describe some of the events through which I've tested my abilities to be fabulously daring while sailing around the world in a 36-foot sailboat. Sure I've had some fearful events and lonely hours when I've had to find the inner strength to pull through. But the key to all of these adventures was a willingness to change, to leave my safe and comfortable lifestyle, to dare to do something completely different. And all because of a butterfly.

This story starts back in 1993 when I was a 34-year old divorcee, homeowner and landscape architect, contentedly living and working in northern California. Alone, but in a home that I loved and with a job that gave me creative independence. I had a good circle of friends and felt content in my life. I was quick to say "yes", however, when my folks invited me to join them for a week of time-share vacation on the island of St Marten, an alluring destination in the eastern Caribbean. I was sure to find white, sandy beaches, and a friendship with my parents whom I had seen seldom since their move down south. I hoped the following week to find the crystal blue waters for which the Caribbean is famous on a solo dive adventure to the Virgin Islands.

The time share was a dream hotel with lovely, breezy rooms and a large balcony looking down on the beach of Great Bay. The curving crescent of sand was backed by a multitude of sailboats anchored in the turquoise water, There were daily activities organized Helen, a woman about my age, and she and I established a friendship that went beyond the companionship of the daily events. One night after a catamaran "sunset cruise" she and I joined another friend for dinner and drinks at Chesterfield's, the restaurant and bar at the marina. After dinner, a rock'n roll dance beat drew our attention to the dockside bar which was crowded with a motley assortment of boatees and water-oriented locals. We sat at the bar, talking, and joining in the revelry of the funky band whose music had everyone in the mood to party. When it came time for an audience-participation number, folks were hooting and hollering, and knocking their beer mugs on the table in beat to the rhythm whenever their group was called out: "all the women clap your hands", "all you fellows stomp your feet", "everybody with orange hair swing it to the beat". Or something like that ( I would have tried to memorize it had I known that it was a song that was bound to change the course of my life.)

The distinguished looking "fellow" to my left kept knocking his glass on the table, no matter which group was being singled-out. Jovially, I turned to him and asked if perhaps I should tell him when to knock.
"'Schuldigung" he said to me. Obviously, this guy doesn't speak English.
"Oh, sorry", I said. "Thought you might need some help interpreting the song, my name is Karen. Where are you from?"
"My name is Horst," he replied. "I am from Austria and I am here on my boat, waiting for the right weather to cross the Atlantic and return to my home sea, the Mediterranean."

Our chance encounter at Chesterfields led to an invitation to sail. Of course, since this was a family vacation, my parents had to be included, too. Later, we all had dinner at the timeshare, lunch at a little Chinese Restaurant, a drive around the island in our rental car. It was almost as if Horst was already a member of the family. Sadly, our week together was coming to an end, and I was flying on to the Virgin Islands.

"Don't fly there, let's sail there together."

How could I pass up an opportunity like that? We said good bye to my folks as they flew home, then set sail into the sunset for a nighttime passage to Tortola, BVI. I had sailed the San Francisco Bay a few times with friends, and had done some small-boat sailing on lakes as a kid, but I had never been out at night, out of sight of land, or with anyone who used English as a second language to command our navigation. Some things got lost in translation, but I did learn that "fock" is a German name for sail, and a "sheet" is the rope you use to tighten the fock. Horst and I laughed a lot about the misunderstandings that inevitably occurred in our mixed German-English-Spanish vocabulary, and we spent a delightful week exploring the coastline and diving the rocks and wrecks of the beautiful island waters.

When I woke in my parents house the first night home, the billowing curtains had become sails, the soft spring breeze, a Caribbean caress. But I was back in California. It was time for me to fly north, back to the workaday reality of the real-world.

Horst and I continued our romance by fax, and helped each other rediscover the art of letter writing. It's interesting what we reveal in the written word. Horst was lonely single-handing his sailboat, but he had decided he really wasn't ready to return to Europe. Instead, he would spend another year as a charter skipper, sailing with guests from Europe aboard his 36-foot sailboat. I was alone in a big house, working hard to maintain a life in the big city, and wondering what I was doing getting involved with an older man, from a different culture, who lived the life of a gypsy in the eastern Caribbean. Our letters to each other describe such different worlds. Nevertheless, we found ourselves growing closer and more comfortable with each other as we shared funny anecdotes about the events in our lives.

Several months passed and the stack of letters grew taller. I was turning 35, an age at which I had always envisioned myself as being settled, at least married, maybe with a child or two. Instead, I was single with a mortgage and a car that had another year's worth of payments before it was truly mine. When Horst invited me to spend my birthday sailing the outer islands of Venezuela, I really did have to think twice. It's not easy acting irresponsibly when you're almost middle-aged.

I flew into Caracas. Settled high on a plateau where the Andes plunge down to the Caribbean Sea, the city was a striking contrast to the remote, sandy islets of Los Aves, a coral-encrusted natural reserve 80 miles across the sea, which was to be our sailing destination.

We shopped for a few provisions at the local "tienda", papaya, mango, potatoes, cabbage, onions, garlic and beer. The fish we would catch ourselves. The limited refrigeration meant that anything else would come from a can. We took a long shower at the marina before casting off, because the limited water supply meant that fresh-water showers would be mostly in the rain.

We were heading for virtually uninhabited, barely charted, little specks of land across a deep sea probably infested with pirates, armed with nothing more than a bottle opener and a fishing spear. The weather report mentioned a tropical disturbance east of the area, but that kind of thing is barely noted in Venezuela, where hurricanes are only a little more frequent than snow in the Amazon.

Horst and I spent the days and nights in an intimacy that is rarely found elsewhere; two people alone together on a small, floating platform, surrounded by nothing but water, coral reefs, and an occasional sandy hill. We swam and fished, cooked and talked, made love and talked some more. Days went by without any human contact, only the radio voices that talked about the heavy, windless weather that becalmed us halfway back to the mainland.

When Horst asked if I would like to live with him on the boat, I was both intrigued and uncertain: traveling by boat could be a great way to explore the world, but would I have much opportunity if I were "crew" on a charter boat? Someone has to do all the cleaning, shopping, and cooking. Charter guests are probably interesting to meet, but do I really want to live with strangers for two weeks at a time on a sailboat? And what about when there are no guests, can I live with another person in a place where taking a walk to "cool off" means jumping into the ocean? And what about my house, my car, my job?
I settled on the foredeck of "Flow" in the shade of the sails which were beginning to fill with a freshening breeze, my thoughts filled with the contemplation of the future. What should I do? How could I set aside all that I had worked so hard to achieve for an uncertain adventure? Could I change my lifestyle attitudes to endure moderate deprivation? Our relationship is good now, but what happens when we really get to know each other? As I looked broodingly across my toes at the darkening horizon, a tiny yellow butterfly landed gently on my foot. It shook its wings, silently danced across my toes, and settled down as if for a conversation.

Suddenly, Horst came forward from the cockpit. The voices on the radio were now sounding an alarm. Perhaps, that far-off tropical depression is deepening into a tropical storm. It looks like it is going to hit Caracas. Perhaps it's headed our way. Perhaps we'd better hurry-up and find a safe place. We started the engine and plotted a course to the nearest port, where I could eventually catch a bus back to Caracas and my flight home. Horst would hurry to the deepest lagoon to secure himself and the boat against the incoming storm.

Six months later, I moved aboard. How long would it last; six days, six weeks, six years? In twelve years we have sailed from Venezuela to Boston, Florida to Panama, San Diego to Tahiti. We've lived for a time in Austria, Maryland, and California, and I've been blessed to see the world at a truly leisurely pace. We've faced many storms together, both physical and personal; the life isn't always easy, and it's not for everyone. But I am happy I took a chance to change my life.

I'll never forget that yellow butterfly. It said, "if butterflies are free, you can be too. Go with the Flow!"

GOLD MEDAL MERMAID By Kelly Crowley

2007-01-01T03:52:00.000-08:00

A life-long competitive swimmer with dreams of Olympic glory, Kelly accomplished her goal of making the Athens 2004 Paralympic team, where she won two gold medals in the relays. When she is not training, Kelly works as the Outreach Coordinator for a volunteer-based habitat restoration and education project at Ulistac Natural Area, the last 41-acres of open space in the City of Santa Clara.

When you're the odd kid out at a small Catholic grammar school, you're destined to get picked last for every kickball game. In my tiny class of 17, the odd kid out was me. I suppose it was not only inevitable, but also a precursor for every success I've had. But at the time, it was traumatic, since, as middle-school popularity goes, I had several things going against me.

First, I kind of enjoyed learning, which was completely uncool. I did my homework, I tried to get the right answers, and I refused to let anyone copy off me. Except for the boy I had a crush on. I helped him out once ... and then felt incredibly guilty for the rest of the week. I was, undeniably, a goody-two-shoes.

Second strike against me was totally out of my control: my family was not rich. We lived in "that" side of town, or as I like to joke, eight houses and one drug dealer from the freeway. The freeway separated my sleepy, boring town from the crime-ridden city, which would later be called the "homicide capital of the country." However, there was this handy little footbridge that went up and over the freeway ... right at the end of my street. Anyone running from police cars on the other side of the freeway could handily find escape in our neighborhood.

Okay, really, it wasn't that exciting or dangerous. We neighborhood kids played tag on our front lawns, and careened up and down the block on our bikes. Still, I did not have everyone over for swimming birthday parties in my backyard. The only pool we had was plastic and about 18 inches deep.

Strike three was my arm. My early medical records call my condition "congenital microdactyly." Yeah, exactly what the Latin says: I was born with a small hand. To be more specific, my right elbow is fused, the bones in my lower arm barely grew at all from when I was a baby, and I have this tiny hand with three little fingers. No one else in my tiny grammar school class had that, and although it made little difference in the early years, by the time we were in junior high, my friends had all abandoned me for the "cool" crowd, which was the rest of the class. And, at the time, I was utterly convinced the reason they all stopped wanting to hang out with me was because of my stupid, ugly, rotten arm. It was, in my young view, the cause of all bad things that happened to me. I would eventually discover that I was totally wrong, but that was my reality at the time.

High school couldn't come fast enough, as junior high dragged to an end. The last big hurdle before high school was The Eighth Grade Play. This was an honor-laden tradition, at my elementary school. The most popular kids always ended up with the lead roles. It was, I thought, my last chance at redemption, my last chance to prove to all those jerks who picked me last for kickball that I was, too, cool, and perfectly capable of doing anything I wanted.

While most of the previous classes got do actual known theatrical works, we got the less-well-known "Magical Musicals," which consisted of a seemingly random collection of songs chosen by the music teacher, who was drawing heavily on The Little Mermaid. There was a sprinkling of stuff from Little Shop of Horrors and Les Miserables, but most of it was by Disney.

As the solos got assigned, I sat patiently waiting for mine. I was in the church choir and was feeling confident. After all, I could hear when people around me were singing the wrong notes, when they were off pitch. I could pick out harmonies, and taught myself to read music more or less. Singing was something I could do. But at the end of class, when, as expected, the Queen of the Popular Crowd got the best songs, and the rest of the solos were handed out, I was without one. I was disappointed, but there was a ray of hope.

"That's it for today," our teacher said, "but we might add another solo or two. Probably Ariel's solo from The Little Mermaid. We'll talk about it next week."

On our way back to homeroom, I planned. I would have a solo part in The Eighth Grade Play, and then they would have to respect me. I made a mental note to look for my Little Mermaid soundtrack. Of course, I didn't have to look hard. The soundtrack was in my tape player, of course, since it was, secretly, my favorite movie. A little voice in the back of my head wondered if this really was my ticket to respect, since it was no longer cool to like The Little Mermaid. But I decided to ignore that little voice. If anyone asked how I knew all the words to the song, I could just say, "Oh, it USED to be my favorite movie."

I dug out pen and notebook, and set the tape deck next to me on the bed. Painstakingly, I hit play, stop, rewind, play, stop, rewind, for what seemed like hours until I had transcribed every single lyric into my notebook. I then spent the next week listening to the song incessantly, memorizing every beat. The next week in music class, I knew I'd get the solo. No one else cares enough, I thought, no one else would work this hard to sing a stupid Little Mermaid song. At that point, it wasn't about what song I would sing. Clearly, any song was good enough for me, so long as it was a solo.

The next week in music class we practiced and practiced the choral numbers. And we watched some of the soloists prefect their performances. We did that over and over for the next several weeks. I went in there every week, hoping that the teacher would ask for tryouts for the part, but she never asked. "She forgot," I said to myself one week near the end. "Oh well. High school is almost here. It doesn't matter."

In fact, that day, I had other, grown-up things on my mind, like the fact that I had, for the first time, gotten my period. Really, I just wanted to go home. Music class, let alone standing up in front of everyone to sing a song, one I would probably get teased for knowing, was the last, last thing I wanted to do. But it was apparently my fate. I ended up sitting in the exact middle of my classmates when the music teacher asked if anyone knew the words to the Little Mermaid solo. I looked around at my silent classmates. Everyone was looking to see who would put their hand up. No one did, and I finally, sort-of, kind-of half-raised my hand.

"Kelly?" was the surprised response from the teacher. "Um, okay, stand up."

Before I could think about it, she hit play and I was standing in the middle of my class singing along with Ariel. I finished, and the teacher hit stop. Our gymnasium was awfully silent. Either it was really good or really bad, because no one was even moving. And then it happened.

"That was really good, Kelly," I heard her voice say. No, not the teacher. The Queen of the Popular Crowd. Relief washed over me, and I totally forgot about wanting to go home.

"Yeah, good job," several of her minions chimed in.

I did it. See, they did think I was good at something—something other than school. I knew I was good at something, and now they did too, because I finally had the courage to just do what I wanted. I had been true to myself, and I had worked hard. The success of that moment was exhilarating.

That moment was almost fifteen years ago now, but it is still vividly real in my imagination, and its lesson enduring. In fact, I could have picked a hundred other moments in life when I dared to let Fabulous Me out of the box I tend to keep her in. Like many others, I sometimes hide, or disguise, or misplace the lady I discovered that day in eighth grade. It is a conscious decision to be fabulous, a decision I try to make on a daily basis.

Some days I'm more successful than others. On the really good days, the moments of daring, where I listened to my heart and followed my dreams and my desires, divorced from my inner critic and others' expectations, my life has shot off like a rocket in exciting and new directions. The results of such forays have been stunning: Valedictorian of my college class and two gold medals in swimming at the 2004 Athens Paralympic Games. Fabulous Kelly hasn't failed me yet, and honestly, I don't think she ever will.