An auspicious beginning

I had a feeling that yesterday would be a good day. Turns out my instinct was right. Not only did I get off to a nice start with my new web-first job, but my day and night were bookended by renewing acquaintances with two amazing women I came to know as collegiate journalists and who've each achieved success on their own terms.

Just goes to show how today's technology can help refresh friendships formed two decades ago.

 First up, Patty Chang Anker. Patty was a University of Pennsylvania student who I worked with on "Voices," a daily tabloid newspaper produced by a select group of students and professional editors who came together for a week to cover news of the Asian American Journalists Association national convention. It was held in Seattle that year, 1991, and the editor-in-chief asked me (the only Latino) to help out. I remember Patty being earnest and upbeat but also somewhat conflicted about a career in newspapers. She found work at a book publishing company in New York, then went into public relations.

She found me on Facebook yesterday morning and a few minutes later I was reading her blog post on The Huffington Post taking issue with a woman I'd seen interviewed on The Today Show that very morning, contending that Chinese mothers are superior because of their super-strict disciplinarian ways. The response to the HuffPo piece was overwhelming and Patty shared her exuberance on her own blog, called Facing Forty Upside Down.

I think the photo above says it all. Married and with two children, Patty describes herself as "a mother, yoga teacher and public relations pro who exhorts anyone within earshot or email range to new experiences." And she leads by example. Click here to read "Walking on Air" and see her make good on a vow to learn how to do a handstand before turning 40.

Next up, Heidi Durrow (rhymes with Thoreau). Heidi was a news reporter intern at The Oregonian in the summer of 1990, following her junior year of college. I was an assistant city editor then and worked with her on several stories, impressed with her poise. She had graduated from Portland's Jefferson High School, the city's only high school with a majority of black students, but people looking at light-skinned, blue-eyed, kinky-haired Heidi couldn't figure her out. They didn't know she was the daughter of a Danish mother and African American father who'd grown up in Europe and moved to Portland at age 11. She spoke Danish in the home and English outside it, and excelled in the classroom.

Heidi wound up graduating from Stanford -- as well as the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and Yale Law School -- and became a journalist, then a corporate litigator. She eventually quit to pursue a childhood dream of writing a novel. Who knew that it would take 6 years to write it and nearly 6 more to get it published? And who knew that her debut novel, "The Girl Who Fell From The Sky" would win a literary prize and widespread praise from book critics all over the country?

Heidi read from her book last night at the indie bookstore in our neighborhood so I went, and wound up writing about it in my first blog post in my new job at The Oregonian. Read it here.

I was surprised she recognized me instantly as she stepped to the microphone. It was gratifying to talk with her afterward and learn that, at age 41, she's been married for 17 years and that she's been reading the Rough and Rede blog for several months, never leaving a hint of her presence. We talked again today on the phone to tie up some loose ends and I asked her when and where had the idea to write a book taken root.

"When I was a little girl, probably six or seven years old," she answered. The inspiration came from her mom, who was a homemaker in her early 30s and taking a correspondence course in writing children's books when she submitted an article to an obscure magazine called American Dane. One day, the mail came and with it the news that her article had been accepted. Inside, a check for $10.

"I remember my dad taking a picture and Mom holding up the check, beaming like the sun itself," Heidi said. "I think I latched onto it, that moment of joy and pride, and thought I wanted to be just like my mom."

Mom was there in the audience last night, beaming at her lovely, accomplished daughter, and I got to shake her hand, too.