The Blurgh

So there I am, hanging out at my favorite little café after work, waiting for Andi to show up so she can tell me all about her law school classmates’ drama and I can tell her the cute things my girls did today. I’m leafing though this magazine we got at the office this week and totally loving it. It’s called Femiyinz – awkward name, but awesome mag. It’s a new publication (this is the first issue ever) and it was started by three English/women’s studies majors at Chatham to highlight feminist issues with a bit of local flavor.

The barista walks by my table on her way back behind the counter, arms full of plates and coffee cups. She stops, backtracks a few steps, and stands right next to me. I look up to see her smiling broadly.

“You’re reading Femiyinz!” she cries. “My friends are going to be so psyched. They started that magazine. How did you get it?!”

I tell her about the PWF and how everyone was really impressed with it. She asks me what my favorite articles have been.

“I loved the piece about unions offering free childcare to mothers who are working to get off welfare and learn some trades,” I replied. “And the profile of the new president at the zoo was really cool.”

We talked for about twenty more minutes, long enough for Andi to come and join the conversation. It’s so cool having all these little outlets for feminism in Pittsburgh – from what my mom tells me, it was not exactly a feminist haven when she was my age. And how much do I love just randomly running into people who have a hand in all the cool stuff that’s going on around town?!

Yesterday afternoon at the Pittsburgh Women’s Foundation was freaking adorable. I was in charge of helping the girls I work with make Christmas cards for their families. Red and green and white construction paper, fancy white-ink markers, and silver and gold glitter everywhere. (Seriously. Everywhere. I rode the yellow line home and when I got up to get off the train at Wood Street, I left a trail of glitter behind me like Hansel and Gretel.)

The effort the girls put into making their cards was admirable and the messages they wrote were just too sweet. Angie cut out about fifty gingerbread men and glued them to the front of her card. Inside she wrote “Mom, Merry Christmas. I am so happy that of all the moms in the world you are the best mom and you belong to me!” Madison made her card in the form of a snowflake and of course covered it in silver glitter. She made it for her older sister and wrote “I love you, even though sometimes we fight, but we always make up because we’re sisters and we can always work things out!” And Shante put a big red heart on the front of her card and decided to give it to her grandparents, writing “Grandma and Grandpa, you are so cool it’s a good thing it’s winter and you can be cool all season long! (But you’re cool in the summer too.)”

I was so happy that they were getting along and helping each other. We’ve come a long way since this creative writing program started a few months ago and we’ve hit some rough patches. But seeing them giggle and be creative together yesterday really (at the risk of getting too mushy) warmed my heart and put me in the true Christmas spirit.

I realized that while I’ve blogged about my job before, I’ve never really explained how the Foundation began or what all it does. And it is super awesome, so here goes.

Back in 2013, Alicia Mulraney, a sociology major at Pitt, and Janessa Crosby, a women’s studies major at Carlow, had internships at the Pittsburgh YWCA during their last semesters of college. They were impressed at the number of programs the YWCA offered women in the community, but they realized that there was more that needed to be done.

So they decided to take matters into their own hands. They applied for grants from the Sprout Fund, the Heinz Endowments and a few other places, and got them. They began renting a small one bedroom apartment in North Oakland and made it their headquarters.

The first program they began offering was the sports program. It’s basically a way for girls who normally are not encouraged to play sports to get involved in physical activities and build their self-confidence. And although the girls are not very athletically inclined when they begin the program, you better believe they’re true athletes within a few months. It’s pretty amazing.

After the success of the sports program, they decided to band with Students for a Sustainable Pittsburgh and advocate for on-site child care in the majority of businesses downtown - a pretty big deal, since this was about the time when all the technology firms were making their way to the Golden Triangle. Through their efforts, they managed to have all new incoming businesses and 70% of existing businesses with 25 or more employees in the city commit to on-site child care.

By then, the PWF had been in existence for five years and their success had caused them to hire more staff and move to the present offices, in Squirrel Hill. They began their own grant program for women who wanted to start their own non-profits.

I was brought into the PWF to work on their newest program, the girls’ creative writing program. The CEOs (still Alicia and Janessa) realized that girls who aren’t really interested in sports had few options for afterschool programs, so they started working with the local middle schools to offer the creative writing program to interested girls. So far, the response has been great and I can honestly say I love going to work every day.

This afternoon was one of the best times I’ve had in my life. Normally, at the Pittsburgh Women’s Foundation, I work with girls who enjoy creative writing, but occasionally I’ll pitch in with the girls on sports teams as well. (I was pretty good at volleyball and soccer back in my day, though the girls who come to PWF for sports could have wiped the floor with my fifth grade self.) Anyway, this afternoon I, along with two of my colleagues, got to take 10 of the PWF girls to the North Side to meet the two new female coaches for the Steelers.

We all rode the blue line together to the North Side. Once we got off the subway, we walked the few blocks to Heinz Field. It was kind of slow going, because Samara’s still on crutches, but we arrived just in time to be greeted by some very chipper Steelers representatives, who escorted us up to one of the luxury boxes. The girls were enthralled with the box and took turns sitting on every piece of furniture in it. Then they started pretending that half of them were hot shot sports agents and the other half were star athletes being courted by the Steelers, so there was a lot of silly exchanges about trillion dollar offers and all the Faygo pop endorsements you could dream of.

A few minutes later, the two coaches entered the box and a hush fell over the girls. The special teams coach, Maddie Byers, spoke first about her experiences playing high school football in rural Texas and the prejudice she encountered in the community as a black girl who wanted to play football with the guys. She ended up breaking her school’s record for longest punt return during her sophomore year, and everyone in her town stopped complaining about her and started celebrating her. In college, she excelled once again on her school’s football team, but during her senior year she decided that what she really wanted to do was coach, so she started out as a coach for her own college’s team and worked her way up from there to her present position with the Steelers.

Next we heard from Elizabeth McGraw, the defensive backs coach. She is one tough woman. Like Maddie, she was a star athlete during her high school years, although Elizabeth was a kicker who comes from northern Ohio. She received an athletic scholarship to college and played on her school’s team until halfway through her junior year, when she was injured. She didn’t want to lose her scholarship, so her school offered her the opportunity to begin working with the team as a coach. She learned more about the defensive side of things in football and became really interested in it. After college, she coached a women’s football team in Ohio and then came to Pennsylvania to coach for the Pittsburgh Passion. A few years later, the Rooneys approached her about the defensive backs coaching position and she accepted it.

After the women spoke, lunch was served and the girls peppered the coaches with tons of questions. They were so excited to be sitting with women who were living out their dreams of one day making a living in the world of professional sports. The coaches were very gracious and patient with the girls. After lunch, we all trooped down to the field, where the coaches helped the girls with their techniques. We left to go back to the PWF around 4 and made our way to the subway, the girls chattering the whole way about what teams they want to coach for when they grow up.

Yesterday afternoon, I was just taking the first sips of my after-lunch decaf coffee when the door to the PWF flew open and Robin, one of my colleagues who works with girls in sports, burst in, her face extremely pale.

“Samara’s hurt,” she blurted out. “I think she broke her leg.”

I jumped up from my desk and followed Robin two blocks to the field that she and the girls had been using for baseball practice. A dozen girls surrounded Samara, her muscular frame on the ground, while Shalini, one of our high school student interns, knelt beside her. Her leg was bent at an odd angle and silent tears streamed down her cheeks.

I pulled out my cell phone and called an ambulance. It arrived less than two minutes later. The crew gently lifted Samara onto a stretcher and into the cab. I got in the front seat, while Shalini stayed in back. Robin stayed with the girls on the field. We went to UPMC Shadyside and the doctors worked quickly to take an x-ray of Samara’s leg - yup, broken - and then molded a cast. Her mother arrived as they were fitting the cast on her leg, and we stayed with her until the hospital released Samara. Shalini and I walked to the subway together, talking the whole way.

“I’m so glad Samara will be all right,” she said.

“Me too,” I said. “And I’m glad we didn’t have any hassles at the hospital.”

“Yeah, this national health care thing’s been working out pretty well,” she said.

I nodded. I can just barely remember the time before the U.S. had national health care - I was born in 2004, when millions of people in the country didn’t have health care. I can still remember the look on my mom’s face the day the U.S. decided to get with the program and consider health care a right, not a privilege. My mother worked as a nurse before she retired, and she used to come home with horror stories about her hospital not admitting people who needed medical attention because they lacked insurance to pay for what they needed. It took a toll on her every time, having to turn sick people away and tell them there was nothing she could do for them.

People predicted all sorts of horror stories - waiting months to see a general physician or having necessary surgeries postponed for weeks because of the wait. Nothing like that has happened. People are getting more preventive care, rather than letting medical conditions worsen until an emergency situation happens. It’s been more or less smooth sailing all along.

At 7 AM, I press the snooze button and crush a pillow onto my head. I am not ready for the day to begin. Today will be long and exhausting and yikes I don’t even want to think about it.

At 7:30 I grudgingly get up and shower, eat some scambled eggs for breakfast, down a glass of cranberry juice and walk a few blocks to the Wood Street station to catch the Yellow Line. I read an article about the mayor meeting with the current co-presidents of Students for a Sustainable Pittsburgh. I get off the train at Forbes & Murray.

At 9 AM I walk in the front doors of the small but welcoming office of the Pittsburgh Women’s Foundation and do paperwork until 3. It’s electronic paperwork (which never fails to crack me up), but boring and tedious as always. Why did I major in English again? Why not computer science so I could work for one of the dozens of software development or Internet behemoths in the city? Why not business so I could work for one of the companies here who are big into telecommuting and encouraging success among women and minorities and community development?

3 o’clock rolls around and the five students in my afterschool program arrive. Shante shows me the latest story she wrote for her fifth grade English class – it has a big “A+” on the top and she thanks me for helping her get her ideas out on paper so she could write the story she really wanted to write. Madison pulls her notebook out of her book bag and tells me, brown eyes wider than plates, that today at recess she thought of a great play she could write and perform with her schoolmates. I work with Maria for half an hour on a new poem she’s writing for her mother’s birthday and when I walk away she’s still scribbling down notes and ideas. I am reminded for the millionth time of why I decided to major in English.

I walk back to the Forbes and Murray stop, swept along by the crowd of workers eager to get home and spend time with the people they love. I notice the mural on the wall celebrating the history and future of Squirrel Hill, all bright colors and smiling faces. I listen to the melodies wafting through the air from the violinist on the next level down. I squeeze into a train car and actually read the advertisements for once – a neighborhood festival in Homewood, a new restaurant in Uptown, a new citywide field hockey league is forming. I get off the train at Wood Street again and ride the elevator up to our cozy apartment where I’m greeted by the cats. Frank’s already making dinner and it smells delicious. I can’t wait to dig in.

So, Frank convinced me that I was missing out on the elation that comes from pouring your soul out on the Internet for all the world to read and I agreed to write on here and see what all the fuss is. I’m not usually this much of an exhibitionist, so we’ll see how this plays out.

I’m Gretchen. I’m a writer. Currently I’m working on my first novel (more on that later). Appropriately, I double majored in creative writing and women’s studies at Carlow. I work at a feminist organization in Squirrel Hill, the Pittsburgh Women’s Foundation, which does many things such as awarding grants to women interested in starting their own non-profits and forming local sports teams for middle school and high school girls who don’t have access to the sports they want to play in their schools. My job there is to work with elementary school girls who love to write – write stories, poems, plays, songs, whatever – and help them develop their skills. It’s pretty much the greatest job on earth.

I am originally from New Wilmington, PA, and I love western PA and Pittsburgh. Love love love them. I’m so happy Pittsburgh has grown into the city it’s become. My family is migrating to Florida (my parents just moved down there last year), which I hate, but oh well. As for a significant other? That would be Frank. We live together in a cute little apartment downtown and spoil our two cats to death.

I think that’s about all you need to know about me right now. I hope you enjoy reading this blog as much as Frank and I have enjoyed creating it!