Inspirational Impact

H E L L O ? L I F E C A L L I N G !

When I was four years old sitting at our large sea-green upright piano, the sky thundered in the bass and the treble streaked with lightning, while a little girl just like me skipped through the forest on the black keys. Already I was a “writer,” and talented enough musically, my mother thought, to start piano lessons.

I remember pretending to write in cursive, filling the paper with curves and loops just like Mom. At age ten she handed me Anne Frank’s Diary of a Young Girl, which got me to keep one of my own. Around that time, my father, seeing my garage-chalkboard drawing of a movie marquee that read, “The Story of the Thousand Thumbs,” casually suggested I write that story out. It was my first. And I’ve been writing ever since, a lot of it poetry.

While going for my BA in Community Service and the Arts (self-designed) at Fairhaven College, I did counseling and ran poetry and art groups at a halfway house for adults with mental-health challenges. I helped Lummi and Nooksack Indian high schoolers with their homework, through Upward Bound. My Fairhaven senior project was a poetry contest I created, with winners’ poems displayed on city buses, a first for Bellingham, Washington. The summer I graduated, Head Start hired me to teach a class of migrant farmworkers’ children — ten six-year-old boys. I knew so little Spanish! After various clerical/admin positions and working a reference desk at the Seattle Public Library for three years, I needed to be someone’s fresh blood. I got a job with a prominent retail financial consultant booking his keynote speaking engagements around the US and Canada. Soon, I was ghostwriting his articles for national trade magazines. Two years in he laid me off and I found my life calling.

D I V E R S E ~ D I S T I N C T ~ D E D I C A T E D

Scientists and CEOs. Surgeons and scholars. Visual artists and entrepreneurs. Renowned photographers, musicians and composers. I’ve also interviewed and written about people who have recovered from drug and alcohol addiction, children living with disabilities and Buddhist leaders and Catholic postulants. A state representative, a kidnapping survivor and a lifelong 80-year-old artist’s model have shared their stories with me, too.

To prepare for interviews, I thoroughly research the subject and people so I can form the most thoughtful and intelligent questions for them. Many interviewees have told me they’ve never been asked some of the questions I’ve posed, and that they arrive at new ways of thinking about the subject and/or their and others’ places in it. Meanwhile, I’m always meeting interesting people and learning new things, feeding my “curioeclecticism.”

I love everything about the writing and editing process: My trusty organizing system for those interviews and other sources. The texture of the pencil moving across paper, as I take notes. The feel of my fingers racing on the keyboard. Climbing into the meanings and music of words to land on just the right ones and listening to how they sing with the rhythm of the sentence. The ease when the paragraphs flow and the struggle when they don’t. And then there are my clients, who are just plain fun to work with.

A S O F O C T O B E R 2 0 2 5

Chamber Music Magazine - American Patchwork Quartet takes timeless American folk songs into jazz improvisation, country twang, West African rhythms and East Asian ornamentation, stitching traditions together in unexpected ways.

Chamber Music Magazine - With 2023 as its 40th year, the Grand Canyon Music Festival spotlights the string quartet and high schoolers’ works from the Native American Composer Apprentice Project headed by Pulitzer Prize-winner Raven Chacon.

Clark Partners Magazine - More women are donning welding helmets and heat-resistant gloves, thanks to Clark College.

Colby Magazine - The prestigious Rome Prize takes scholar Gabriella Johnson even deeper into the Mediterranean Sea’s influence on early-modern art.

Colby Magazine - International-award-winning scholar Nikky-Guninder Kaur Singh talks about her translations/interpretations of Sikh literature and art.

Colby Magazine - The plein-air artist’s path leads painter Matthew Russ to Maine’s coastal landscapes in his effort to help protect them.

Communication Arts - From LA street scenes to famous haute couture, French photographer Franck Bohbot seizes the details.

Communication Arts - Christopher Payne’s industrial photography shows us everything from pianos and roller skates to pencils and the first 3D-printed rocket being made—all in the USA.

Communication Arts - Advertising photographer Tim Tadder pushes color and light to new heights in his images for Nike, Verizon, Forbes and others.

Community Foundation for Southwest Washington - Jeff and Lola Stark’s annual scholarship lights the way for aspiring teachers, while a variety of causes benefit from Gayle Rothrock’s Donor Advised Fund.

Costco Connection - Breast cancer is a woman’s disease, right? Everyone has breast tissue, so anyone can get it.

Muscular Dystrophy Association - Losing a loved one to a neuromuscular disease is hard. Knowing how to cope with the grief helps.

Muscular Dystrophy Association - A gamut of emotions hits anyone after receiving a diagnosis, for themselves or their children.

Muscular Dystrophy Association - For kids with a neuromuscular disease, making friends is easier with the right mindset and guidance.

Oregon ArtsWatch - Feminist artist Phyllis Yes says no to gender stereotypes with her new body of work, Dusty . . . at Home.

Remedies For Life - Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) can lead to a difficult adulthood of physical, emotional and behavioral problems.

ScienceDocs Inc. - My interview with the co-founder of Inherent Targeting spotlights this $2.25M NIH-grant-winner’s surgical technology.

Strings Magazine - The Lafayette String Quartet takes its final bow after 37 years together, solely with its original members, a rarity.

W H A T E L S E ?

I’m often asked if I write my own stuff. I do! Creative nonfiction and poetry. And when I need to get outa here, isn’t it great that I live at the base of an extinct volcano right in town? I wander those woods up in Mt. Tabor Park nearly every day, follow Forest Park’s and other city-park trails, hike the Pacific Northwest’s wilder parts, and head out to the Coast. Portland’s arts and culture and the best of friends also get me going. Currently, I’m exploring volunteer opportunities around town to round things out. And I’ve always got bookmarks somewhere, right now in Forest Under Siege: The Story of Old Growth After Gifford Pinchot, by Rand Schenck and Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks.

And, yes, I still play the piano.