3 profiles

Gail Shister: Inquirer’s irreverent TV columnist tones down for school. NOT!

Gail Shister is not like everybody else. She’s not like anybody else. And if you forget that fact, for just a sec, she’ll remind you that she’s a Jewish, out lesbian who integrated previously all-male sports staffs at three newspapers. Gail Shister, television columnist for the Inquirer, is on a semester-long fellowship at Penn, studying, counseling, editing and generally stirring up trouble.

She’s taking three courses. For the History of Jews in America, she says, “I’ve been devouring the books. I am reading more than I have since college. I asked the professor to recommend more novels. And she did. I’m reading them all. My daughter is 12 and on the bat mitzvah track, and I’m feeling more and more spiritual as I grow older.”

She’s taking an intro to political communication course, taught by Annenberg Dean Kathleen Hall Jamieson, one of Shister’s idols. “I had heard stories about what an incredible teacher Jamieson was. She has 130 students in her class, and she has to cut it off at 130. When I read in the catalog that she lectures for three hours, I thought I’d have to bring my No-Doz, but in fact you can hear a pin drop.”

And she’s studying the psychology of women, “my big discussion course,” she says. “It’s one of the reasons I’m really digging being on campus. The students are young, smart, motivated.”

Shister is savoring a Richard Burke Fellowship, which offers a journalist who’s been at the Inquirer at least 10 years a mid-career fellowship at Penn or Swarthmore. During the fellowship, the paper pays the reporter’s salary, and the participating school underwrites up to four courses.

Fellows may participate in other activities at will, and Shister hears she’s doing more than other fellows have done. “The academic stuff is for the neck up,” she says, “and the non-academic stuff is for the neck down. It’s for the heart. I’ve gotten tremendous satisfaction from developing on-going relationships with students.”

At the Lesbian Gay Bisexual Center, she counsels students and runs a weekly women’s discussion group for students, faculty and staff. Compared to the six or eight Shister expected, more than 20 women show up each week – and the number is growing. Calling this discussion “a delightful surprise,” Shister recently arranged to continue it beyond the term of the fellowship.

Occasional evenings, she attends news meetings at the Daily Pennsylvanian, serving as writing coach and mentor. “I help students think through what stories are important and how to cover them. I act as a sounding board and a pseudo McLaughlin. I ask questions, and if they give the wrong answer, I say WRONG. They don’t teach journalism at Penn – they don’t consider it a worthy academic pursuit. So at the DP you have smart, eager kids who don’t know much about journalism or putting out a daily paper. They worked on their high school papers, but at the DP they have no guidance, no faculty advisor.”

The 45-year-old Buffalo native has been “teaching in dribs and drabs” and fantasized about applying for the fellowship for years. “I come from a family of academics, and I have to admit I am an academic snob,” she says. “I prefer students who are very bright and very motivated. Happily all the kids I run into and have coffee with at Penn have been exceptional.”

Describing herself as “always a jock,” Shister captained the women’s basketball team at Brandeis University and wrote sports for the student weekly. After applying to Ph.D. programs in English, “I had an epiphany during basketball practice. I didn’t want to teach. I loved the passion, the spontaneity and the unpredictability of sports. I thought, ‘You love sports. You love writing. Why not be a sports writer?’ I thought that was a great idea, so I went to the career center. The woman at the career center looked at me and said, ‘There are no women sports writers.’

“I’m the type of person, when you say, ‘You can’t do it,’ I’m very contrary to a No.” So she applied for, and got, an internship in sports at the Buffalo Evening News, becoming one of the first women in the country to cover sports. Later she attended the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. Gail Shister, girl reporter, knows a good story when she tells one.

“When I graduated from J School in 1975, it was right after Watergate, and enrollment in J schools had skyrocketed. Everyone thought they’d be Woodstein [meaning Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, the Washington Post reporters who covered Watergate]. I interviewed in Oshkosh, Green Bay, all over the country, looking for a job.

“Meanwhile I was stringing [writing freelance stories] for Pro Football Weekly, taking dictation from sports writers. I got 25 bucks and all the pizza I could eat. By sheer luck, I took dictation from a sportswriter from New Orleans twice in a row. As a lark, I asked him if there were any openings in sports. Washington was the furthest south I’d ever been in my life.

“One day I got a call from the States-Item, which was the evening, renegade liberal paper. They flew me down to New Orleans and wined and dined me. I was 23 years old. At my J school, not one person got a newspaper job in Chicago. Some classmates weren’t getting jobs in journalism at all. And I got this dream job.” In 1975 she became Louisiana’s first female sports writer, a role she reprised in 1979 at the Inquirer.

“I was lucky. To my knowledge, I was the first openly gay reporter at a major metropolitan daily. I was a Jewish, out-lesbian, female sports writer in Louisiana. Imagine.”

Which brings us to sexuality. “I was out since I was 17,” says Shister. “I was queer way before it was cool to be queer. I’ve always been ahead of my time. They talk about ‘nature-versus-nurture’ [as in, what causes homosexuality]. I’m on the nature side. I’m grateful for always knowing I was gay, grateful that I never had to go through a crisis of conscience, never had to go through the lacerating break-up of a heterosexual marriage. I know hundreds of women who did.

“I’ve been out for 28 years, and lesbianism hasn’t been an issue for me for 25 years. I’m very committed to being a mentor to gay young people. When I was in college, I did not know one single gay person. To be in an atmosphere at Penn that’s gay-friendly and where there are 10 gay student organizations – I find it astounding. And please be clear on this: I work at the center to help, not to recruit. I’m good at helping to ask questions, helping kids figure out where they want to go and what they want to be.”

Shister has a 12-year-old daughter, Elizabeth, the biological daughter of her ex-wife, to whom she was married for 10 years. “We unofficially share custody, and Lizzie goes back and forth. My kid has two Jewish moms and two step-moms. We put the psychiatrist on retainer before she was born.”

In 1993 Gail Shister married Penny Jeannechild, an editorial assistant at the Inquirer, in a “moving ceremony” performed before 80 guests by a rabbi at the Ethical Society. The brides, who registered their patterns and groovy tastes at Urban Objects, won the “best wedding” honors from Philadelphia magazine. “The hardest part was finding two brides for the cake.” Mission never accomplished, but an artist friend sculpted the two women in miniature.

As the Mummers return to Broad Street, Gail Shister will return to her television column, which Knight Ridder sends to more than 350 papers, and she will continue running her group at the LGB Center. Whether or not you care about television – or own one – she’s as good a “read” as she is an interview.

Maria Sepe Refuses to Worry

Talking with Maria Sepe, MD, the day after surgery for advanced breast cancer is like meeting a tennis player who just won the championship. She’s bright-eyed and excited, eager to share her victory with anyone who listens, keen on sharing her blue ribbons and gold cups with any novice.

Sepe (pronounced sep-ee), 40, practices family medicine on Long Island. In 1997, she says, “Out of nowhere, this perfectly fine, healthy 35-year-old person, me, finds this lump. I saw this thing on my breast one day. I was getting dressed, and there it was, The day before, there it was not. Because I’m a doctor, I knew it was cancer. I also knew I didn’t want to die. We staged the cancer [testing to see how aggressive, or advanced, it is] immediately. It was Stage 4 with metastases to the liver – and me with no prior anything.

“I have an eight-year-old son who just had his First Communion. He’s smart. I’m divorced. He’s my life.” So she fights to live that life.

Sepe stays as positive as the Washington Senators singing “Ya Gotta Have Heart” in Damn Yankees. “I was chosen to do something,” she says, meaning she was chosen to have metastatic cancer. “I don’t know why it was me, but it was. I am a strong person. I am a very religious person. I’m Catholic, but it doesn’t matter, that’s just my brand.”

The physician/patient felt fine for several months. Then suddenly the cancer deteriorated fast, bringing anemia and dizziness. She’s whispering now, because her mother, who doesn’t know how sick her daughter was, is in the room. “Anyone could see that I was sleeping 24 hours a day and not eating. I was dying.”

She wanted to start taking Herceptin, but at that time it was prescribed only for compassionate use, “Which means it was not approved and not believed in, but you could get it if all the other medications failed and you won the lottery. Yes, there was a monthly lottery: If they approved you, you applied once a month to be allowed to take Herceptin. I was at death’s door and didn’t know if I would make it to the next month.”

Happily, Sepe won the lottery and started a course of IV Herceptin – plus a selection of alternative-medical treatments – and the combination “basically put the cancer away for a long time.”

For a year and a half, to be precise, when a CAT scan of her abdomen and pelvis showed two new lesions. “My oncologist made light of it, saying how small they were, only two centimeters, but I’m thinking, ‘They’ll grow and I’ll be dead.’”

Eventually the Herceptin stopped helping Sepe, and in November 1999, her oncologist recommended Xeloda, an oral chemotherapeutic agent produced by Roche Laboratories. It’s a treatment that helps many women for three to six months before failing, but in her case, it’s been a gift that keeps on giving. “It’s wonderful,” she says of the drug. “It’s phenomenal. Taking Xeloda is like taking vitamins. It’s nothing.”

As a physician and a single mom, Sepe has as busy a life as many women today. And, like many survivors, she has chosen to live every day to its fullest, plugging away as much as is comfortable. Prior to Xeloda, she didn’t take time off from work, but with Xeloda, free of IV poles and hours-long drips, she had the ability to accomplish even more: She quit working for other physicians and was able to set up her own independent practice.

Sepe thinks her cancer makes it easier to deal with cancer patients, as well as with friends, neighbors and sisters-in-law of butchers and bakers. “I always say, ‘I know exactly what you’re going through, because I went through it. You can beat this.’”

She talks as fast as an auctioneer, with a smile in every word. “I’m in recovery,” she insists. “I want to have bigger family. I do not intend for my son to grow up a single child.” Despite setbacks, despite additional surgeries (four in one recent five-week period), Maria Sepe remains optimistic. How? For starters, she says, “I have an unbelievable oncologist; there’s nobody like him on this planet. And the priests at church are so great, and I have the faith thing.

“Every freaking time something happens, it’s nothing. I won’t worry. I refuse to worry.”

Rennie Harris Puremovement: He Pops

A man in a black outfit stands on a black stage in the dark. A beam from above encircles him in white light. Everything else is void. He’s “popping,” a strobe effect that makes him appear to bounce. He dances slowly, quietly, to a recording of his breath and heartbeat. “Molestation is as American as apple pie,” he says, and the audience gasps. “Would you like a piece? I’ve already had mine.” Gasps. “I thought so,” and he laughs.

This is Rennie Harris, the creativity, the energy and the spirit of Rennie Harris Puremovement, a leading hiphop dance company with a predominantly male cast. “Not just theatrics,” says Harris. “We’re taking the hiphop form to the fine arts circle. Our work educates people about hiphop, its culture, its expressiveness and its spirit.”

About the company that performs at the Smithsonian, in Belfast and in Venice, the choreographer says, “My goal is to perform more often here in Philly than across the country and around the world. I want to educate kids, create more work for the company and build awareness and appreciation of hiphop.”

Puremovement faces the challenge of “Convincing everyone – the audience, the staff, the dancers – that I know what I’m doing,” he says. “Now is the time to restructure and strengthen the foundation of the company. I’m 39 years old, and I need more foresight, especially if I want to go back and affect my Philadelphia community. Which I do. I need to look at our next 15 years. We’re beginning to do some strategic planning. I need to see on paper what my options are and where I can go. I need to assess whether I have the means to do what I want to do. On one level, I need to hire an office manager.” Harris balances these business and planning needs against his wishes for enhanced artistic freedom.

Rennie Harris’ Puremovement faces the same challenge as every other cultural organization in America today: planning a durable future without the stalwart financial backing of the past. Why is this situation recurring now? Let us count the ways.

Performing arts organizations count on subscription revenue. But people are “cocooning,” especially since September 11, 2001, with audiences watching reruns more and live concerts less, and subscriptions have fallen from 65 percent to 45 percent.

There’s fallout, too, from the national economic recession, which has adversely affected organizations’ investments; individuals’ portfolios and gifts; and government and foundation endowments, investments and grants. As a result, arts institutions are enjoying less earned income and receiving fewer and smaller contributions. Unfortunately, because of the downturn, many foundations are donating less money and only to organizations they have formerly funded. So leaders of theatrical companies and museums need to be creative in earning and raising money in order to keep their doors open. These are the stories of three organizations that are involved in strategic planning so they can keep their doors open.

A man in a black outfit stands on a black stage in the dark – hoping, perhaps, for a financial windfall.