Getting Along: Pipe Dreams

By the time I left Seattle the next spring, I supposed Mia Zapata might be lost in history. In this I was too cynical. Her music is still around and well-praised. In 2000, New York Times music writer Ann Powers wrote that "the ornery Seattle band that Mia Zapata led should be a punk mainstay, like Rancid with an earth goddess up in front." The fittingly defiant Home Alive is run by volunteers now, but it continues to offer the empowerment of self-defense classes for anyone who wants them. She left a legacy. No solace for a murdered woman, certainly, but something for the rest of us. Surely those were lovely bones I stood over on that hot Kentucky summer day.

—Mary F. Pols