Michiana Chronicles

Friday, March 12, 2010

Chronicle of a Death Told in Facebook Postings

Elizabeth Van Jacob and Scott learned that, like creatures from a horror movie, Scott’s tumors have again repaired themselves and grown significantly. Scott will no longer receive treatment for his condition. We are meeting with hospice later this week.  September 23

Elizabeth Van Jacob is taking a leave of absence from work effective immediately to live la dolce vita with her dolcetto amore.  September 24

Elizabeth Van Jacob just shared the very last cherry tomato of the season with Scott in the garden that was ours and ours alone.  September 26

Elizabeth Van Jacob is so very pleased that as Scott comes out from under the fog of the chemotherapy drugs, his inner light is shining through brighter than ever.  September 27

Elizabeth Van Jacob was amazed at how cheerful and matter-of-fact the hospice nurse was about driving from Elkhart to South Bend after midnight.  October 1

Elizabeth Van Jacob observes that while Scott’s body declines rapidly, the light within burns determinedly.  October 6

Elizabeth Van Jacob is glad this chilly morning to finally fulfill this inexplicable urge she has had the last couple of days to cover Scott with a cozy blanket.  October 7

Elizabeth Van Jacob sadly watched her husband say goodbye to his dear friend.  October 7

Elizabeth Van Jacob‘s Scott is fading fast. We are all snuggling together on the sleeper sofa in the living room, reminiscing, singing Christmas carols, expressing our love. No phone calls, please. Scott cannot hold the phone or focus his attention for conversation.  October 8

Elizabeth Van Jacob just kissed Scott goodnight.  October 8

Elizabeth Van Jacob notes that in the 8,000+ days she has known Scott, yesterday was the first that he did not have a bite to eat. After a restless night, he is finally sleeping. Unfortunately, every time he starts to fall asleep, he thinks he has to say his final goodbye to us. Scott really enjoyed hearing all the messages and emails everyone sent yesterday. Thanks for being with us through these final days and hours.  October 9

Elizabeth Van Jacob is glad that Scott said goodbye to family and friends and had a delightful spurt of energy and lucidness while hanging out with his girls last night. The Scott we were with yesterday is no longer here today since he is barely conscious. It is difficult for me to fathom that I will never really speak with him again. I am overcome by a profoundly sad and lonely feeling.  October 9

Elizabeth Van Jacob and Neil Young are singing Harvest Moon to Scott via YouTube. Neil is a great back-up singer.  October 9

Elizabeth Van Jacob reports that yesterday a Becky daisy blossomed in her garden; they usually finish blossoming in mid August. When Scott was wooing me, he brought me a big bouquet of Becky daisies.  I still see him dressed in a white t-shirt, his long blonde hair illuminated by the late afternoon sun glowing behind him as he held them out to me. Scott died at 4:41 this morning.  October 10

Elizabeth Van Jacob requests that friends attending tomorrow’s memorial approach her children with upbeat voices and give them quick hugs. They crave normality at this very difficult time.  October 14

Elizabeth Van Jacob is grateful to everyone who also played the youtube video of Neil Young last Friday night and sang Harvest Moon to Scott from Vermont to Indiana to Oregon to Thailand, across town, across the continent, across the ocean, and half way across the globe. Thank you for helping usher Scott so tenderly out of this world. If ever there was a prayer that was one.  October 16

Friday, March 05, 2010

America the Interesting

I was in a health food store the other day, helping my favorite vegan pick up a few meatless, non-dairy, cruelty-free foods, when I realized that America is actually becoming more interesting. Health food stores used to seem exotic and wacky to a good number of us heartland types. Kansas City native Calvin Trillin couldn’t visit a health food shop without ranting about the bizarre products he swore they sold there, things like “soy waste, granola dust, and pure extract of balsa wood.” “You know very well there’s no such thing as soy waste,” his wife Alice would say, but he’d rant on about the employees at the store. “If bumblebee leavings and stump paste are so good for you,” he would say, “why can’t any of these guys grow full beards?” But on our recent visit to the health food store I couldn’t find a single jar of stump paste or even one twisty-tied baggie of granola dust. Apart from a couple of the mineral supplements, I recognized pretty much everything I saw there. In the space of only a couple of decades, we have become accustomed to a diet that is much more diverse and interesting.

And even the neighborhood food shops aren’t as parochial as they used to be. Sixteen years ago, on my first evening as a resident of Michiana, I went to the nearest grocery store to pick up something for dinner. Someone at home had an unsettled tummy, so I asked the clerk to point out a few of the less spicy foods there in the deli case. “Oh, no, sir,” she said, “we hardly ever put spices in anything we make.” But now that same store has torn out the giant Aisle 1 racks of Technicolor jello salads and installed a fifteen-foot cooler of imported cheeses. Remember Monty Python’s Cheese shop skit, where John Cleese asks for several dozen different cheeses, and one after another the shopkeeper informs him that they are out of stock? Well, we can finally purchase them all right here in Michiana.

You gather from the Monty Python skit that in 1970 an English family might be acquainted with a pretty nice variety of regional and even some foreign cheeses. But in 1970 the average American household might have had only cheddar and Swiss and what we jokingly called at our house back then, “some really good Velveeta.” Calvin Trillin, of course, is a satirist, and his 1980 essay about health food shops spoofed a quirky fringe of folks out there inventing a new food and health tradition. But he was also spoofing himself and a broad swathe of Americans who could get a little jumpy and critical around any unfamiliar bit of culture, even if it tasted good. In spite of intervening wars and Patriot Acts and acts of terror, we’re getting better at that too. No longer does a Chinese restaurant supply the most exotic food a Midwestern child is likely to eat growing up. Our kids have classmates with names I never heard of when I was in school; our stores and restaurants are more varied. It’s not unusual to be a vegetarian or to know a vegan. I still love the slightly bitter tang and crunch at the pale heart of a head of iceberg lettuce, but face it – America is a more interesting and colorful place now. I’d be happy to have a plate of Boiled and salted bright green edamame anytime.

Friday, January 29, 2010

Phone Call from the Other Side of the World

I got a new cell phone a couple of months ago, and I confess that it wasn’t the one I really wanted. I coveted an iPhone. We stood there in the mall trying to find a family plan that would make all four of us happy. The kids wanted certain sleek models offered by Sprint. The annoying little guy who wears a red cape and sits on my left shoulder said, “Just pull rank and make them choose from the company you like. You work hard, you deserve a cool phone.” The nerdy little guy in white on my other shoulder nodded at the kids, who were grooving on the display models. They sure looked happy. Oh, all right. I’ll take one of these little Blackberry things with a keyboard the size of my thumb and the clunky Internet service and the mouse control that looks and feels like a life-size, realistic white plastic model of a pimple.

Almost right away, my Blackberry started getting phone calls from overseas, or so I figured since the caller’s number was several digits longer than good old U.S. numbers. Presumably this was a friend or family member of the last person who was assigned my new number. I ignored the calls, but they kept coming, so one day I finally picked up and said hello. The person on the other end spoke a completely mysterious language. I said, “You have the wrong number,” and pretty soon he hung up. But he’d call again every couple of days and we’d go through it all once more.  I had the impression that the fellow didn’t understand any English at all, and the words he spoke didn’t sound like any of the European or East Asian languages we Americans study in school or hear in the movies. The calls continued, but there was no communication going on. None.

Eventually I realized that I could look up the caller’s country code. His first digits were 233; in a moment Google told me that the calls were coming from Ghana. I checked out a map of Africa. There was Ghana, south of the Sahara on the continent’s big curving west coast, facing the Atlantic Ocean and looking south. And still the calls came, and when I said, “Do you speak English?” there would be more of that unfamiliar tongue. I looked it up – more than a dozen languages are commonly spoken in Ghana, with names I’d never heard before and didn’t know how to pronounce, like Asante, Ewe, Fante, and Dagarte.

So somebody in Ghana was missing somebody here in area code 574. Maybe some son or daughter had come to study at one of our area colleges? During the Christmas season, more calls – there had been no holiday trip back home to Africa. Somebody was lost here or didn’t want to be found.

I read a little about Ghana. Drug traffic, but too poor an economy for the international drug cartels to launder as much money as they might like. Average education, ninth grade. Lifespan 59 years for men and 60 for women. Home of Lake Volta, the largest man-made body of water in the world. Risk of malaria, rabies, typhoid, and some other diseases I’d never heard of before. I saw pictures of villages and countryside, I heard collections of beautiful rhythm-driven music.

An image of the country started to form in my mind, and I realized that the next time a call came from overseas on my cramped little phone, I could say, “Hello, Ghana.” But what good would that do? Someone was lost here, and half the world away a friend, a father, perhaps a husband, was calling and calling and never getting through.

WWW Michiana Chronicles

A random pick from more than 400 Michiana Chronicles -- refresh the browser to see another set:

April Lidinsky -- A Taste for History / Against Tradition / Second-Guessing Spring / Cracking the Dress Code / Skirting the Issue / A World of Our Making / Second Thoughts on Sex Ed / True Confessions of a Girl Scout / Spring Break for Grownups / A Call to Arms / Why I Want To Do the Splits / More essays by April

Jeff Nixa -- Bad Neighborhood / Lawnmower Boys / Making Up on the South Shore / The Last Customer / A Kid and a Rock / Humor in the Hospital / Bikes & Cars in Michiana / Bike to Work Week / Chair Massage / Alley Walks / Model Train / More essays by Jeff

Ken Smith -- The Local Food Scene / The Last Morning of Summer / Google’s Tips for Getting Ahead / The Music Man Returns / In Praise of Perennials / Beer, Billboards, and Activism / A Season Pass to the Beach / Turning Fifty / The Big-Spending Month of December / A Dog’s Life / For the Love of Cooking Shows / More essays by Ken

Jeanette Saddler Taylor -- Getting Together / Two Incidents on One Weekend in Michiana / Location, Location, Location / Chronicling Michiana / Order in the Court / Patrick Henry in the Marching Band / One Thing A Day / Being Shallow / Dishes / Basketball Monster / Pollyanna Grows Despondent / More essays by Jeanette

Heather Curlee Novak -- Celebration / Feeding Willard / Humbled Handless / Running Music / More essays by Heather

David James -- The Family Dogs / Christmas Eve, 1971 / More essays by David

Elizabeth Van Jacob -- Chronicle of a Death Told in Facebook Postings / Driving On / More essays by Elizabeth

Joe Chaney -- Working for the Minimum Wage / The Call of the Sandhill Cranes / The Dogs of Europe / Innocence Lost in the Stock Market / Return to Glory / Who Gets to Drive? / Greetings, Earthlings / Reading the Names / The High School Football Scene / A Midwestern Spring / The Curse of the Teenage Clone / More essays by Joe

Louise Collins -- A Visit to the Dentist / The Tube and Terrorism / Checking My Change / Children and the American Dream / Flora vs. Fauna / You Ain’t Nothin’ But A Groundhog / I Love A Parade / Bring out the Barbie Dolls! / On Safari / A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Enthusiast / Admiring Irish Dance / More essays by Louise

Jonathan Nashel -- Loretta Lynn, Richard Nixon, and the Wonders of American Culture / The Love that Dare Not Speak Its Name / Pushing a Lawnmower to the Max in Granger / Hitting the Road / Our Governor, My Marriage, and That Whole Time Zone Thing / Life is Beautiful / Bikers, BMWs, and the Nature of Community in Michiana / Trick or Treat, Hoosiers! / Let It Rain / George W. Bush, the Movie / Life after Death, Goldfish / More essays by Jonathan

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About the series

Michiana Chronicles is a series of radio essays by Jonathan Nashel, Louise Collins, Joe Chaney, Jeanette Saddler Taylor, Jeff Nixa, April Lidinsky, Ken Smith, Heather Curlee Novak, David James, and Elizabeth Van Jacob.

Michiana is the region of north-central Indiana and southern Michigan roughly centered on South Bend, Indiana.

Michiana Chronicles airs on Fridays at 7:35 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. on WVPE (88.1 FM), the home of public radio in Elkhart / South Bend, Indiana.

Recent pieces

Heading Toward the Finish Line -- As we near the time to waddle out of the major eating season of the year, I breathe a sigh of both thanks for the opportunity and relief that once again, it didn’t kill me. Starting with Thanksgiving and extending to Valentine’s Day, treats are the order of the day. My creative assistant, Larry, has offered the helpful suggestion that, like any major competition, we need to train for the season. Note now, you need to prepare. You can’t just go into this cold turkey. Beginning in late October or early November, we should begin to overeat just a bit each day in order to stretch our stomachs, so that they can accommodate the coming onslaught. He has named this regimen “The Stomach Pack.” Not such a bad plan, since there almost certainly will be quite a feast coming soon to a table near you. As Oscar Wilde said in The Importance of Being Earnest, “I hate people who are not serious about their meals.” This is crucial business. By Jeanette Saddler Taylor.

Christmas Eve, 1971 -- I ran in for some coffee at a McDonalds, and asked the lady if there was a VW dealership in Indianapolis. She pointed me only a few blocks down, by the bypass construction. We chugged over and turned in; the service bay was open—our first piece of luck. Out comes this short, round, greasy, cross-looking mechanic; working, on Christmas Eve. I explained our predicament; he glanced at her, in the full throes of dazed, dreamy pregnancy, and growled, “Pull it on in.” Dead battery; he and I had to push it on in. She and I moved to the waiting room. I sat and thought, how am I going to pay for this? It was Friday, they would deposit the check that evening and on Monday it would bounce and there was nothing I could do. Fifteen bucks in the bank; me in Atlanta. Overdraft protection was years away. By David James.

Feeding Willard -- Uncle Frank spent a great deal of his daily free time for years caring for my Grandfather. Frank would feed Grandpa Willard at least one meal most days. They would go to restaurants where Grandpa would drink too much and fall asleep before eating much of whatever it was he really liked that day. The whole excursion would take hours because Grandpa Willard was wheelchair bound and needed a special shuttle to travel anywhere. Despite all the trouble to arrange transportation, nurses and equipment Uncle Frank made sure Grandpa also got to his Dreamland cabin in the rocky mountains once or twice a year. He got him loaded onto a ferris wheel, to the opera, ball games and yes, to many, many restaurants. My Uncle took exquisite loving care of him for about eight years before Grandpa Willard died this Spring. By Heather Curlee Novak.

Two Boards (Upon Cold Powder Snow) -- It’s true, the year is ending, but lovers of winter sports know we’re just on the cusp of fun, as well as a chance to burn off some of those one trillion calories from holiday fudge. I’m a bit of a poser, really, in this camp of winter sports fans, since only in the past year have I ventured back onto the downhill slopes after nearly 25 years away. I grew up in Colorado, and downhill skiing is in my blood; it’s the beating heart of my family history. In fact, without skiing, I would not exist. By April Lidinsky.

Model Train -- I won an electric train in a store drawing when I was 7 years old. What a train: a black, green and red American Flyer steam engine with working drive wheels, real puffs of smoke and three long yellow passenger cars. Dad set it up each Christmas and I spent hours watching it clack around the living room carpet on journeys out of town, across the great plains, up into the Rockies. Then each January my dad, a detail-minded rather fussy accountant, sorted the tracks, oiled the engine and wrapped each car in newspaper for storage. When I lost the instructions, he carefully sketched the entire layout on a piece of his office stationery, labeled each track and trestle number and applied a wide piece of masking tape to the end of a sturdy box where he wrote, Electric Train. Jeez, Dad, can I go outside now? By Jeff Nixa.

Farewell, Old Car -- It sure was easy to donate our aging car to WVPE, using the Car Talk web site. We filled out a simple web form, signed the car title, and mailed it off. In a few days a tow truck came to relieve us of the relic that had been dripping oil all over the driveway. Not to mention the car’s occasional demonic impulse to electronically lock and unlock its doors fifty or sixty times a minute. I was very happy to remove the license plate, cancel the insurance, and send it on its way. What could be simpler, and any proceeds go to our favorite radio station. By Ken Smith.

Pollyanna Grows Despondent -- Not to be obscure, I’ll tell you right up front, generally, according to my amused co-workers, I grew up to become a Pollyanna figure. They maintain that I absorbed those positive, plucky characteristics. Until recently, no matter how dark the components, I usually could find a bright, or at least darkly humorous, outlook in any situation. Not so anymore though, I am too besieged! The season of comfort and joy aside, this Pollyanna is growing despondent; the “Glad Game” is getting more and more difficult to maintain. By Jeanette Saddler Taylor.

The Family Dogs -- Our dog developed a great attraction for the mailman and was always escaping to chase his little step van. The attraction blossomed into affection one day when the man stopped the truck, Peanut Butter leaped in, and with the acquiescence of our mother and the grateful blessings of us kids, they both sped off on his appointed rounds. That was the last we saw of Peanut Butter. By David James.

Celebration -- The thing is, at the end of the day we all could do well with more celebrations. We all will be better people with some extra thanksgiving and a little silliness on top. The dog got a bath; bake some special cookies. You conquered Monday; turn off the TV and have a swing dance contest. The neighbor helped you with the yard work; send a cookie bouquet. You choose to be grateful for the small happiness in your life; throw on a feather boa and pop the four dollar champagne! By Heather Curlee Novak.

Action Heroes -- The ER staff and I are standing in the empty trauma room, nothing to do but make restless bad jokes until the patients arrive. The EMS radio only said it was a house fire, one adult female and two minors. The ambulances are three minutes out. We’re ready. Oh man, are we ready. We’ve got a half million dollars worth of technology in this room stocked like an arsenal with medical supplies: Allegiance gauze pads, Kimberly–Clark face masks, NovaPlus powder-free exam gloves, an Agilent EKG monitor, a Newport HT 50 ventilator and the main attraction, sitting on a shelf like a smug Napoleon, the Philips Heartstart XL defibrillator, green light on, fully charged. By Jeff Nixa.

Telling Stories -- Could there be a more delicious time of year for lovers of stories? When I was a kid, the return of cold weather meant happily slouching near the heat register of my bedroom, rereading fat classics like Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, and puzzling over the one line that never rang true to me – Meg March’s lament that November is “the most disagreeable month in the whole year.” For me, and maybe for you, November holds all the pleasure of holiday conviviality without any of the angst of gift-giving. November is about drawing our chairs close to the fire, tucking into pie, and sharing the quiet pleasures of story-swapping. By April Lidinsky.

At the Circus -- There was wave upon wave of daring carried out with the utter precision that transforms crazy danger into highly polished extravagance. It is not enough that someone walk across the tight rope high in the air; now he must walk back with a woman standing on his shoulders. It is not enough that the trick cyclist ride helter-skelter around the very edges of the stage; now he will ride his two-wheeler as if the front end were a unicycle, with most of the now useless bike circling around him like a wacky ornament. Gymnasts leaped out of windows onto trampolines and then rose back up and passed through those windows again; masters of aerial display swung across the highest reaches of the stage suspended by long flowing sheets of brilliant fabric they had merely wrapped once or twice around their arms; tiny child performers catapulted spinning disks into the air, executed two or even three back flips, and then casually caught the disks on a string again. By Ken Smith.

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