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Hitting Hard Below the BeltThey don’t have pink ribbons or funny slo-gans to help raise awareness—yet. Though more than 88,000 women are diagnosed with gynecologic cancer each year, it’s just not talked about that much. pg. 16

NATIVE ROOTSChief Robert “Two Eagles” Green reflects on NoVA’s only remaining Ameri-can Indian tribe.

UNDERCOVER MUSUEM The CIA equals mystery. Now, you can see what some of their secrets are, or at least, were.

THE REAL THANKS!GIVING The first Thanksgiving was at Plymouth, right? Virginia’s Berkley Planta-tion says, “No.”

HOT BLOGS Navi-gating the web has become a job in and of itself, but these local bloggers make finding fun, easy.

BEN COOK This Lorton teen takes on Broadway in his lead role in the Tony Award-winning show “Billy Elliot.”

TALLY HO The old second-run theater is getting an update, mak-ing it Loudoun’s western hub for live music.

www.northernvirginiamag.com 15

16 November 2012

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“Before we start, let’s join hands and Instagram.”

SECURETAIN [SI-KYOOR-I-TEYN]n., a person with the superhuman ability to remember, without using a password sheet or the aid of a software, dozens of login/password combos for online websites

For those who may be intimidated by re-membering scores of letters, numbers and symbols, there are retail software and smart-phone apps that have emerged for this pur-pose. App47, headquartered in Reston, devel-ops advanced enterprise mobile application management services, and recently an-nounced its partnership with CloudLink, an Austin, Tex.-based company, which o!ers password management solutions.

On his route home, via Metro, Je! sat down and pulled his tablet out, checking his on-line finance accounts. He flipped through his mental Rolodex, remembering the appropri-ate logins and passwords. Within seconds, he had logged in to each site, reflexively re-membering all passwords. A securetain, he had been blessed with the ability to retrieve his personal details on demand. —DAVID GIGNILLIAT

Next month: What should Northern Virginia’s New Year’s Resolution be?

A) Fix the roads; B) Extend mass transit; C) Build more schools; or

D) You tell us. VOTE AT NORTHERN VIRGINIAMAG.COM

POLL!

YES(67%)

VIRGINIA IS A HOT SPOT FOR THIS ELECTION YEAR.

WILL YOU BE DONNING ANY OF YOUR

POLITICAL FLAIR TO SUPPORT YOUR

CANDIDATE!RED OR BLUE, PACHYDERM OR EQUIDAE?

#NoVA

by Libby BurnsThrough the National Race to End Women’s Cancer (Nov. 4 at Freedom Plaza), organization

members hope to raise awareness about the cancers that a!ect women’s reproductive organs, as well as raise money for research to stop them. “Nobody wants to talk about gy-necologic cancer. It seems dirty,” says Pam Mielnik, 37, the new Survivors Committee Co-Chair for the Na-tional Race to End Women’s Cancer. She joins Jennie McGihon, 36, who chaired the committee last year. The two women know that in order for women to catch their cancer early, and for advances to be made to stop it, people need to talk about gynecologic (GYN) cancer. Both women are survivors of women’s cancer, and neither falls within the group that is expected to be a!ected—that of post-meno-pausal, overweight women. “I think that’s a big misconception, and so the idea is putting our faces on this race and helping people under-stand that it’s not just a disease of old women,” says McGihon. Because they were both young and healthy and didn’t know much about GYN cancer, the women didn’t recognize the symptoms when they began having them. And because they were young and healthy—both were marathon runners—and didn’t fit the mold, their doctors weren’t looking for GYN cancer. Though it took longer than is ideal, both Mielnik and McGihon were able to catch and obliterate their cancers, and they both attribute much of their ability to recover to the fact that they kept their bodies healthy, both before and during. Now, the two want to ensure that other women can do the same by sharing their stories. The one piece of advice Mielnik and McGihon want to share with all women is: Eat healthy, stay fit, and listen to your body. / endwomen-scancer.org –CHERISE FANTUS

McGihon and her mom

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