I need to post the title above on my refrigerator. I am getting up early tomorrow morning and heading down to Turkey Run where I will be meeting with my cousins on the Grismore side of my family. It’s going to be a quick trip and I may even try to manage a backpack trek – you know, a change of clothes and one or two possible necessities, such as a spork.

It will be a bittersweet gathering. My cousin Robert lost his son, Patrick, a year ago this past August to a long fight against cancer. I still remember over 33 years ago when I moved to Palatine, Illinois and while scouting the area, pulled into his driveway in another Chicago suburb. His wife, Donna, opened the door, and before I could introduce myself after a decade of not seeing her, she beamed, literally beamed a trademark smile, and said, “You’re Jody.”

Years later when Robert and Donna came to Mother’s visitation (2009), we all went out to dinner. Patrick had been ill earlier, but was recovered and confided in his mother he was “so glad it wasn’t cancer.”  A lot of people were at the table that night, and Donna wasn’t even talking to me when she said it. I overheard her remark and for some reason it burned itself into my memory.

It was the first thing I thought of when word came in April of 2012 that Patrick had a tumor in  his liver ducts. He was to be married the following fall. He did get married – in August – and one year later in that same month his wife was a widow.

I have written many times about Robert being named after my father, his uncle. We always called his Robert Allen because I believe Daddy was self-conscious about  having someone named after him. That is also why we called my son Robert, Robert William for a long time.

I have also written about the close relationship my father had with Robert Allen when he was a little boy. So many years ago.  A lot happens in life – and it is all so real, even if it was yesterday or decades ago. Surroundings change but the remembered moments are always the same, complete with an embedded recall of scents and textures and background voices.

And then in a century or so, it is no one’s actually memory; but still it exists. It happened. The relationship of people and the love that will always be.

So, I’ll see Donna again tomorrow and we will be sitting at a dinner table and I will overhear her say things, and as they say, life goes on. But, so does the truth of love; it is forever.

Once you have had experience with a good hospice program, you never forget it . . . ever. And you always appreciate the job it does. Yet, it is a fairly new concept in American medical care, and when Karoline Carney at the Noble branch at Parkview Home Health and Hospice hears about an article on the program, she remarks, “Good, so many people don’t know what we do.”

I am going to be very blunt: Hospice services allow people to live as comfortably as possible in their homes while they are dying; it concentrates on quality of life and on the act of living itself while patients go through this business of saying goodbye.

Yes, it may not seem at first to be a topic that is anything but sad, but that’s not true. Hospice can give so much more than symptomatic relief and comfort; it can provide opportunities – to be with family, to participate in friendships, to give caregivers a bit of a respite.

Ann Hosted of rural Brimfield knows all about this; she has lived it. Her husband Paul – “but everyone called him Pete” – was a Hospice patient from mid-October of 2006 until May 11^th of this year.

She talks about it, calling the illness a long siege. She says Pete had shingles for 2 ½ years and that the pain was terrific. When he was in the hospital beginning October 1, 2006, he was on oxygen 24/7 and a nursing home seemed to be the next step.

But that was not where he wanted to go. She says, “I said we can live with that . . . We can live with you being on oxygen. If you want to go home; we’re going home.” You hear the determination in her voice as she recalls that moment.

“The hospital would not release him until everything was set up at home – hospital bed and table, oxygen machine, bedside commode, sheets . . . everything. Our daughter called and said Hospice had brought all this to our house and he could come home.

“So we brought him home.”

She calls the nurses and aides “the girls” – her voice carries affection for them: “The girls were here when we got home and they were with us the whole time from when we left the hospital until he passed away.”

Talking about the schedule, she says, “Aides came on Monday, Wednesday and Friday and the nurses on Monday and Thursday.” And, of course, they were never more than a phone call away.

“Ken (Weaver) came quite often to visit – the preacher with Hospice. Ken, the girls, all of them . . . you couldn’t ask for a better crew. They took care of him like he was one of their own.”

And that “taking care of” part was more than procedures and whatever. It was actually caring and interaction. Ann remembers Linda Yoder: “She would get down on her knees right by his chair and shake her finger at him and she would say, ‘Well, Pete, you have to do this and you have to do that.’ He believed every word she told him; he would take it from her, not from me.” She chuckles at the memory.

“Pete was in a lot of pain most of the time and they really regulated his pain medicine, and Linda really, really took good care of him in the medication field of it. I don’t know what I would have done without them.”

They cared about her as well. She says, “It (Hospice) really helped me to get away for a little bit – not that I didn’t want to be with him – but Linda told me, ‘You have to go on with your life too.’”

So, for instance, on Wednesday mornings, she knew either Joyce or Judy would be there when she left and that her daughter would be coming up from Avilla. “He was never alone for very long at all.”

The months moved on.

“He was in a lot of pain – his oxygen level – he could get maybe 15% oxygen in the end, they said.”

On May 11^th, she and Pete were sitting at the table at suppertime. He had told her he didn’t want much to eat, so she made him a sandwich and brought something to drink.

She tells what happened then: “He said, ‘I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe,” and I said, ‘Okay, go in and sit in your lazy boy.’ So we were in there. I was right here by him and I had my hand on his heart and it was going so fast . . . he was trying to breathe so hard. I gave him a shot of the medicine that Linda said I could put in his breathing machine.

“He said, ‘I can’t breathe,’ and I said, ‘Well, just lie back a little bit . . . his heart was going so hard and he opened his eyes and tried to say something and them his heart stopped and I knew he was gone.”

He passed away about 8:30 on the evening of May 11, 2007.

“Linda told me, ‘He was where he wanted to be and he was with you – and that’s what he wanted.’”

But, you see, because of hospice, passing away in the evening wasn’t the only thing he did that day. And that is very important. Ann tells the story of that afternoon:

“He wanted to go down to our daughter’s house in Avilla – they raise Belgian horses – and he wanted to go down and see the two little babies. On (that) Friday, he said, ‘Let’s go down there and I said okay, so we went down. He sat there on the porch and talked to his daughter and I went around with my granddaughter. And he said, ‘I want to go down and see (one of the baby horses)’ so I and backed up the truck and he saw the baby and mama and we got home about five thirty.

Then the evening happened. Ann says, “My older son called my daughter Amy, and she said, ‘He can’t be dead; he was just at my house.’”

Ann then wonders, “Well, I don’t know what effort he put in it to go down and see her . . . I said, ‘Well, you have a good memory, Amy; he made an effort to come down and see you.”

She continues, ”He went to our other son’s to see him; he went to see Amy; and he would go over to the barn – just around the corner, the home place – and visit our older son . . . He couldn’t have done that if he had been in a nursing home. That’s another praise for Hospice – that he was capable of going and doing these things with his kids before he died.”

As for the people in Hospice who had cared for him, Ann says, “He thoroughly enjoyed all of the people and when he passed away, it was very hard. Some of them got to know him quite well – Linda, she had quite a time . . . “

She pauses and says, “I don’t know how I could have done without them; they are  a bunch of wonderful, wonderful people and it takes special people to do this work.” After another pause, she says, “So that’s all I can tell, you.”

Well, I guess that’s great big “all” – encompassing so much: family, friends and community.

Noble County has been their community all their lives. Ann says, “My kids all went to school at Rome City and then went into East Noble and most of my grandkids did too.” All together, she and Pete have three children – two boys and one girl – and eight grandchildren.

Speaking of being the runt in a family of six-footers, Ann says, “I love them all and I don’t know what I would do without them. They are all special to me; I’m like my grandma said: “Every cow thinks her calf is the cutest.”

She chuckles and goes on, “I don’t know maybe I’m prejudices but they are all pretty special to me, grandkids and kids.

They are her future – along with her own interests.

She’s one of the Brimfield Methodist ladies of Apple Festival Beef & Noodle fame. This year she says they made noodles and cracked 5,050 eggs in two days, and she adds with a laugh, “That’s a lot of eggs.”

She will also be speaking at the Festival of Trees, the fundraiser for Hospice. “Jenny (Weigold, Hospice coordinator) said they debated asking me to speak because it is not long since he died. I asked her to let me think about it and I called and said, ‘I guess I could because I know how I feel about Hospice – nothing but good things about them and their work. I’ll say what I can and if I don’t say the right thing you can always yank me off the stage.”

Well, she’ll tell it like it is . . . and that will be just fine.

You can pretty much tell a Carnegie library just by taking a gander at it- even if it is not being used as one anymore. We have seen them everywhere in towns across the United States. I suppose you could say they were one of the first “chain/franchise” buildings to pop up. The symmetry, the entrance, the basement being enough above ground level to provide much natural light – they might be considered the “golden arches” of their day, although they provided food for the mind.

Subdued and dignified buildings, they were a comfortable haven, a welcoming place – where knowledge was available to all.

The building in Kendallville, located at 124 E. Rush Street, was one; I knew it the moment I drove by when I moved here in 1995. At that time Joe Rowe’s law firm was in residence.

Now it is home to the architectural firm of Terwilliger & LaCluyse. Richard Terwilliger and his wife, Patty, kindly let me come in and take some pictures and Dick Terwilliger told me a little bit about  how he became interested in the building.

Speaking about the church kitty-corner to the old library – Trinity Methodist, he notes that his firm used to be headquartered in Fort Wayne and says, “We were hired to design an education wing and fellowship hall and while we were working on that, I would attend job meetings once a week and did notice this building. I thought it would be kind of a neat place to have an office – and a whole lot closer to home.

“We approached the attorneys and they agreed to lease the lower level and that’s what we did.” That was in 1996. “We were down there for five or six years and enjoyed it and the opportunity came to buy  . . . (in 2002)“

They have not regretted it.

Andrew Carnegie started funding these libraries in 1886 and continued to do so until 1917. The one here was built in 1913 – the cornerstone laid on July 19th – which means the money needed to construct it came from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, a foundation started in 1911. Previous to that time, Carnegie had personally funded the libraries.

The funding came with guidance. Carnegie was – to say the least – a sharp businessman with an eye to efficiency and fundamentally sound construction that would mesh with an economy of maintenance.

Terwilliger can verify the latter. The previous owners had lowered the ceilings in the rooms now used for offices from the original 12-foot height that is still maintained in the central entrance area. This makes the space more intimate and, of course, is less area to heat and cool. Indeed, Terwilliger says, “It heats well and it cools well,” but he gives credit to the building’s structure when he adds, “obviously (it would be) with all the mass in the walls.”

From 1903 until 1911, Carnegie’s personal secretary, James Bertram individually reviewed all the plans for each and every library built with Carnegie money. He then wrote a pamphlet that he called “Notes on the Erection of Library Buildings” and gave it to officials in each town that received a grant for a library.

Obviously, architectural firms that had experience in the design of Carnegie libraries caught the eye of towns awarded Carnegie grants, so many of the libraries did have the imprint of the same architect. In Indiana, Clifford Shopbell and Wilson B. Parker headed two firms that were often consulted, if not engaged, in the design of the library. (Whether they worked on the Carnegie Library in Kendallville is not known (by me) at this time.)

As noted above, Carnegie wanted the libraries to be efficient and sought comments from actually working librarians. He wanted one librarian to be able to oversee the entire library. To this end, Carnegie’s suggestion to architects was a one-story building without full-height interior partitions. The bookcases lined the perimeter walls and so the librarian, seated at the check-out desk in the center could see pretty much everything that was going on.

That high counter/desk is still visible at the Kendallville building, complete with the built in tall slot for the librarian’s stool. Her post was directly opposite the library clock, which remains, having ticked off thousands and thousands of “whispered” minutes.

One important change in library procedure in the Carnegie library was that patrons where able to get books off the shelves for themselves. Another change – which opened many doors to education – allowed children to participate; previously, most libraries had been “adult” affairs. Almost every Carnegie library included a children’s reading room.

Carnegie provided for good-sized basements, in which staff rooms, public meeting rooms, restrooms and the furnace were located.

Terwilliger refers to Carnegie’s guidelines and says, “He wanted natural light in the basements – just about all of them are a half level down. He liked a lot of detail in the masonry and in this particular one, with the brackets holding up the front porch, the ironwork is fabulous; you don’t see that on too many other Carnegie libraries.

“Detail was important – architecture and design were very important to Carnegie. Symmetry was very important.”

Talking of the roof, Terwilliger adds,  “The long overhang was pretty typical of the Carnegie design library – its purpose being to keep the sun from coming through (too strongly) and you don’t need window treatments.

Asked about working in the building, he answers, “It’s very comfortable; the scale of it is nice; and I just like the look of it.” He pauses and adds, “I think of all the Carnegie libraries in the area, this is one of my favorites . . . There is a lot of value in recycling these old buildings.”

Looking at Noble County today, what we see is not what the Indians saw, it is not what the explorers saw. It is, for the most part, not even what the first settlers saw. Where once were marshes, woods and bits of prairie, there is agricultural land – think corn and soybeans and barley, along with industrial development, towns and a whole lot of parking lots.

There are big parking lots at Tractor Supply Co. on the north side of U.S. 6 in Kendallville and to the south side at Rural King; they are designed so rainwater and snowmelt flow to drains. We are familiar with such things; ironically, the paving at these agriculture-focused stored is urban, but just between them – on the east side of Kammerer Road – there is an entrance to a plot of land that is not only “rural”, it is natural. It is, in a phrase, nature left to “just be”.

This particular 50-acre spot is the Detering Preserve, owned and maintained for public use by ACRES Land Trust. Jason Kimmel, Executive Director of ACRES, says that it is used quite a bit by the people in the surrounding neighborhood who come in and walk. However, he says that most of the people in Kendallville are unaware that this area, which is open to the public for hiking and nature study, is even there.
ACRES owns many of pieces of property that serve, basically, as an outdoor museum. Kissel says, “Nature is what ACRES is all about and not only does it preserve and restore areas, it provides a doorway to seeing the land in its natural state . . . It is a classroom in the history of the terrain and botanical past and a gallery of living pictures of wildflowers, trees and geographical features.”

According to Kissel, ACRES has over 4,000 acres in 14 counties, 800 of them in Noble County. Those acres are spread between a total of nine areas, five of which are open to the public from dawn to dusk – subject to usage rules set by ACRES and with the prime directive, so to speak, being: Do nothing that will disturb the property.

The Detering Preserve  – mentioned above and bordering Round Lake – was donated by Ester Detering in 1986. The acreage had been a vegetable farm and now the fields are returning to hardwood forest. A loop trail with spurs gives access to the wetland area by the lake.

Once again Kissel uses the phrase “what we are all about” as he talks about Detering. He states, “If we had not taken this land, this would have been parking lots right now, I guarantee you. Some sort of business would be here because it is surrounded (by businesses). So, really that is the idea of ACRES  – to preserve this land before it is really all gone. (Detering) is a nice example of the area being built up all around, but this (section) will never change.”

The story of ACRES is not just land returning to the way it once was; it is also a story about people. Kissel says, “We are seeing a lot that people are being so disconnected form the natural world that they don’t know where their foods come from, what trees really are. A lot of people are even scared of a natural setting. It’s really a shame; they don’t want to go into the woods.”

To help people reconnect with nature, ACRES is conducting programs to get people out into the woods and to educate them about what they are seeing once they are there. Kissel assures those unsure about venturing out: “The trails are well-worn and well-marked and people don’t have to have a fear of getting lost.” In fact, once introduced to the trails through Indiana’s natural setting, some people form groups and walk for enjoyment and fitness. Kissel says, “They are called wild walkers.” It sounds like a “cool” idea – this combination of two of today’s hot topics – the environment and health.

Speaking to the intentions of ACRES, Kissel says, “We are very serious about preserving those natural areas because they are becoming fewer and fewer – especially some of the geological ones. You can’t grow that. You find a remnant of prairie, an intact wetland that hasn’t been changed in the last 100 years and sometimes you will see the original seed banks still intact under old buildings, native prairie grasses after having been dormant for so long – those things excite us.”

ACRES has a criteria for what land they will accept into the program which Kissel summarizes, “We want to obtain a property because there is something unique there – the botanical resources or the geological resources or something that is outstanding in that property.”

As for acquiring natural areas in today’s economic era, Kissel says, “We have a lot of partners that help with costs: The State of Indiana helps kick in with license plate money (all those blue plates – your taxes at work), nature concerns, private donations, membership  . . . and we hit local groups and bigger businesses.”

ACRES also gets properties through donation and included in such agreements is the assurance to the owner/donor that it will never be sold. Kissel adds that if for some reason ACRES would dissolve, the land reverts back to the State’s nature conservancy; all of the properties would be preserved forever.

About donating, he says, “It’s a neat thing because if you give land to ACRES, you know that it is always going to be there; that is the beauty of thing because they know they can have their family’s name on that farm or piece of property forever.”

In addition to programs listed in the quarterly publication, ACRES also has a radio station program on NPR stations in Indiana called Nature Trust. Kissel says, “It’s just three-minute segments on a nature topic – entertaining and kind of sarcastic little clips”

People can become members of ACRES for  $15 for seniors and students, $25 for individuals and $40 for a family. You can also choose to pay more and be a level of patron of the organization.

Being a member has perks. This year ACRES scheduled a bus tour of Noble County, open to members first. It highlighted two or three of the preserves, and included stops at Gene Stratton-Porter and the Windmill Museum. Those on the tour dined at Fashion Farm.

As a native Hoosier from a long, long line of native Hoosiers, I expressed to Jason Kissel that, well, gee, Indiana never seemed much of a romantic, exotic, adventurous place to me. Sometimes I have thought of ancestors and visualized shaking their spirits and asking, “Why didn’t you keep going . . . to Colorado, Montana, Oregon . . . California?”

Kissel chuckled and said, “There area a lot of unique things in Indiana; we have one preserve that has 13 waterfalls and the state has more native orchid species than Hawaii . . . so it’s those neat little things if you pay attention.”

***

Detering is not the only special place that is tucked away.  Art Hammer Wetlands Nature Preserve is west of Rome City on Waldron Lake. This land (373 acres) was gifted to ACRES during the years 1986 to 2004. Acres’ largest preserve and includes wetlands, a swamp forest, a small lake and the shoreline of the Elkhart River. Two public parking areas serve the park and an access for canoes to the river is available.

Scroll down for articles relating to this introduction.

I’ve probably been writing all my life; I think I started with finding ways to choose the right words to reflect what I was experiencing before I even knew how to write. I believe I instinctively wanted to be able to remember things with vibrance and an exactitude that the English language can provide. It is a rich language and  for that I am grateful.

I wrote a lot in Cincinnati, Ohio, first as a columnist, telling people’s stories and then writing the content for a weekly supplement that addressed major developments in Cincinnati’s  philanthropic, artistic, medical, public institutions, such as museums and the zoo . . . and, actually, on and on.

I interviewed CEO’s of major corporations, including Procter & Gamble and Kroger.’s. In fact, I interviewed college deans and opera directors and all sort of  – cliché alert – movers and shakers. I once interviewed a head administrator, a priest at Xavier University, who wrote my editor to say that I was the only writer who had ever quoted him  correctly.

That’s because I always recorded the interviews. You can’t be careless with people’s words – especially when they are doing you the favor of sharing personal thoughts. And I always let them see the article before it went to print. The editors hated that; but I insisted.

When I came to Kendallville it was to be close to my parents since I am an only child and my father was in failing health. I needed to be closer to him. But I had found a real satisfaction in finding out things about people and sharing them. I always remember the fighter pilot who was shot down and spent time in a POW camp. One day when he was out working on his house, two of his neighbors came over and said they wanted to shake his hand and say thank you for what he had done.

And so I started writing little articles here – and found myself once again stumbling into stories of dedication and bravery and compassion.

I wrote of CEO types here as well; in fact, I interviewed every new president of Parkview Noble with the exception of the most recent one. I remember John Hatcher talking about working in the boiler room in a navy ship and giving it all  he had; I remember Dave Hunter talking about losing his father to a heart attack in a small community hospital and feeling drawn to help people get care and to see that patient’s families were treated with deep respect.

I have written of D-Day soldiers, the moveable Vietnam Wall – and remember being touched by the instructions sent to the local sponsors not to let the older veterans work too hard. I have written about outstanding students and children who are ill.

It is easy for a writer to slant things, just look at political ads, and I took pride in telling a fair and true story. Even if I was not writing about big city VIP’s, I still recorded everything. It wasn’t fun transcribing; it took a lot of time. But it was necessary for the nature and accuracy of the story.

It was the right thing to do, and that is something my father always drilled into me. You can make an honest mistake, but you must always try to do what you know is the right thing.

I miss the intimate stories; it was like posting pictures of nature on the internet.

I came across a batch about Kendallville on my hard drive and I’m going to share them.  Because you don’t sing a song only once.

I read a couple of crime books this week and for the most part both of the books progressed with intricate little plots and I wondered just what the answers would be. One book dismissed a subplot with an Oh, well, that was weird but it happened. The other pulled the two perpetrators out of the air in the last few pages, leaving all other suspects in the dust.

And you know what I am going to do? I am actually going to investigate questions on the Internet referring to any following books that might reveal what the unexplained weird phenomenon was. Because I am that crazy.

For decades, I had the same forks, supplemented by forks from my childhood. When I went to LaGrange when my folks were living, I had my favorite utensils and I knew just where to find them in the drawer. Some of them had a history that was passed along to me – like the tiny ice cream spoons they used when you had to make your own. And the iced tea spoons and the forks with engravings.  They were so “always there” they could have been the basis for a universal philosophy.

After living with my grandkids, I have very few forks. Where do they go? I don’t know. I gathered up a platter loaded with knives  and announced that for each knife, there should be at least two forks and two spoons. Some of the sets started out with two teaspoons and a soup spoon for every knife, as well. So what  is happening.

I don’t think this is the first time I have posted about my silverware problem. I think the spoon shortage was the first hint that something was very wrong.

I am not happy about this; how can so much silverware disappear? Who throws silverware away? Well, obviously, it is happening here. I am beginning to feel as if I should take a hint from gulag life and carry a wooden spoon in my boot.

Hey, I’m getting it over with; I’m fasting tonight and by the time I make it to the lab tomorrow to have my blood draw it will be oh, 13+ hours.  Fasting goes slowly sometimes, but at least it has started. Please, don’t let me forget and get up in the morning and in a daze eat a foldover.

Der Bingle has done a remarkable job dieting and now I am challenged to lose more weight – including the few extra pounds I regained this last month. I am inspired. The task is to stay inspired and I am toying with adopting an alternate personality to achieve this. I just need to feel out a list of characteristics and act out that personality and woo-hoo, there I am lighter, tighter and fitter. I’m certain there must be a computer app for alternate personalities.

I don’t know if it has the possibilities of plastic surgery – to go horribly wrong.  I check the wrong box and I’m a serial killer . . .

I am finally tired of putting the puzzles together in Cross Fingers. But I haven’t got a replacement obsession yet. I guess I’ll take care of that in my personality refitting app. I don’t think it will be tatting, though. I appreciate lace, but tat, tat, tat could become like Chinese water torture.

My ribs are feeling much better; the Aleve bottle is mostly empty, but that’s okay. I can climb stairs, sit down and get up, and can even pick something up from the floor without having to steel myself. I feel very lucky, since someone scooted the sofa back, which moved the dog back, which caused me to crash down  again. Fortunately, I fell on nothing except and expanse of floor – all the pressure evened out.

My house is a real example of a clutter museum; if someone wanted to straighten up things and organize, I suppose that would be all right, but I am not, nor will ever be, a housekeeper of librarian tendencies. Just think, if a volcano erupted and my house was the only one excavated in a couple of thousand years, scientists would call us the SlobPeople. Yes, one word.

Maybe I’m making the decision to fast too fast. Right there, is a tendency to express myself weirdly that can be eliminated in my alternate personality.

Ah, I have to fast soon for blood tests, but I think maybe I’ll do it Wednesday or Thursday night. I probably should sort of practice tonight.  Usually I don’t mind fasting, but the weather is cooler and fall food smells are in the air. Fortunately, I can drink as much water as I want, so I’ll fill up on that. And then I’ll probably be up half the night un-filling myself.

I see I have slacked off posting, which may indicate I’ve been reading. Ah, Summer is here; maybe that is why.