If you have a question or topic you’d like me to address on the blog, please email me at cheryl@nunsunveiled.co

SEPTEMBER 1, 2010

14 Years

Today is my 14th wedding anniversary. It's been an absolutely fascinating adventure, one that began on faith and love and perhaps naiveté, believing that, somehow, whatever life would throw at us, we'd conquer. Fourteen years ago I was a woman leaving her youth, marrying a widower with two children. There were many doubters. My husband was much older than me. It was my first marriage. The kids were dealing with a lot of emotions surrounding their mother's death. But, somehow I believed that love could overcome all those obstacles. And it did. Not magically. Not overnight. But we've been happy together all these years. I've been told by others that we make a good team, we work well together and our temperaments are compatible. I yang when he yings and vice versa. We're passionate people who have similar beliefs.

My attitude about marriage wasn't always so positive. I had grown up looking askance at the institution. I was a bit scarred by my parents' failed marriage. Many of the married women I knew were unhappy and unfulfilled. They gave up their ambitions; some said they were forced to do so by their husbands. It didn't seem like something I wanted to try. But I did. And I told Greg upfront all my reservations.

He wanted me to pursue my career as a journalist and writer. He didn't try to hold me back. When I was researching Unveiled, I spent weeks on the road, staying at various convents. Later, when I was writing the book, I spent months at writers' colonies. He took it all in stride. He missed me. But he wasn't going to hold me back. He edited the book, spending late nights and weekends offering suggestions. The book is dedicated to Greg, as the person "who always believed." He's been my biggest supporter, touting me to others, handing out book postcards to strangers, talking up my achievements to friends and colleagues. I feel very very fortunate.

I don't take all that for granted. We've invested in each other, making time for each other. We established date nights when the kids were at home. We share common interests. When we're not working, we're together. We make time for friends — often entertaining friends in our home — but we balance that with our time together. And each year at our anniversary, we try to take a vacation together. In recent years, we've come to enjoy buying a piece of art or garden ornaments to celebrate our anniversary. This year we chose a cherub fountain. We set it up in the garden outside my studio so that while I write I can watch the finches taking a bath or be mesmerized by the falling water.

It's the simple things. Last night, while we were burning wood and toasting to a hard day of work in the garden, I thought how lucky we were to have found each other. It's a mushy sentiment. But it's true. I tell you all this because there's so much out there about marriages falling apart, couples cheating on each other, falling out of love. I just want to say there are people who are happily married, who feel they've found their soul mates, their partners in life. If you've found that person, then you already know how I feel.

Lucky.

AUGUST 22, 2010

AN ARGUMENT FOR DISMISSING CAUTION

We are living in the age of fear. It's not the government who stops us from saying what we are thinking; it is our fear of offending, our fear of being fired, our fear of not saying the politically correct phrase that causes us to be our own censors. But it goes beyond what we say. Some people are so afraid of change that they live in miserable situations because the unhappiness they know seems like a better bet than gambling all that misery for something that may be worse. This seems to be epidemic among middle-aged people. Living cautiously can be contagious. And soon all areas of their lives are bland and analyzed and predictable and boring because they don't want to upset the status of what they've achieved.

I have encountered so many people in the last few weeks who are completely immobilized by fear. These same people who are incredibly unhappy and what I would call "stuck by choice" often advise others to be just as cautious. We're living in a cautious time. The recession has caused employers and consumers to be cautious.

I'm on the verge of a major decision in my life and it seems these kind of miserable, cautious people are the only ones who want to offer advice. I've been weighing my options for some time. And like Saint Augustine, I've lived for awhile as though I'd made one decision and then lived for awhile as if I'd made another. I've tried to analyze and rationalize my decision. But ulitimately my decision is not for the faint of heart. It's risky. On paper it makes no sense, or little sense. But I know in my gut, that ultimately it is the right decision.

Usually when someone cautions others to be more sensible, in most cases they mean that you should be ruled by the what-ifs. Life itself is a gamble. A total crap shoot. Just by virtue of your parents, something you cannot control, most of your life determined. You can't argue that being born in rural India by impoverished parents versus being born to parents who are heirs to a computer fortune are the same or would offer the same life. But yet, we often try to act as though if we do nothing, or if we stand still, that we can control the outcome. We control nothing. The best we can do is be happy and not hurt others while doing it.

 

 

AUGUST 15, 2010

Defining Happiness

For the last few weeks, I've been watching a series of videos from PBS called "This Emotional Life." My husband calls it "The Depressing Show." It's actually not depressing but offers answers about what makes people depressed and alternately, happy. The options for summer television viewing are slim and this series, narrated by a Harvard psychiatrist, is engaging. You can order the series off Netflix. This past week, for example, the series dealt with defining happiness and examined studies that have tried to scientifically measure what makes people happy.

I'll give you the gist: money and social networks. What about marriage? Not always. What about children? People with children are actually slightly less happy than people without. I began debating the conclusions for several days. One night, after I'd arrived home from a night class, I began offering my argument to my husband. "You want to talk about this, now, really?" He wasn't bothered by what the program had delivered. But for me it was troubling. How could happiness come from money? Are we all that shallow? Are you happier the richer you are? I started to list off all the evidence of people in my life who I saw as contrary to the PBS findings.

I certainly knew people who were much happier after they'd downsized, quit their high-paying jobs and traded a big title for something much less demanding. As I considered doing the same thing, I didn't want to believe that downsizing to have more time to write would actually make me unhappy. I knew people who were happy as parents. I knew people who were happily married. So the conclusions didn't seem so convincing. But then I received a call from my dad who wanted to come visit this weekend and then my husband got a call from an old friend who wanted to stop by for a visit as well, and this is after two previous weekends filled with friends and parties. And I started to see a connection in my own life.

As much as I hate to admit it, having money does make my life easier. I work hard for that money and, like most people, always wish there was more. But it does give me pleasure. And as for social networks, I like to think of myself as a hermit, sometimes, retreating out to my farmhouse on weekends. But the people I love, well, they find me. No one is an island. We are all connected, even when we like to see ourselves as independent people. I do enjoy my time alone. It is essential to my well-being. But feeling like I am connected to others, to something greater than myself, is really the results of a solid inner life.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

AUG. 8, 2010

LOLLAPALOOZA

It's the third day of Chicago's biggest music festival and it's raining. My son, Nick, and I are listening to music in my kitchen trying to figure out when we should venture out. We've already spent two full days at Grant Park listening to bands old and new. The highlight for him was Lady Gaga. I've enjoyed hearing bands that I haven't previously known about and also hearing some old favorites, like Green Day, who put on a fabulous show last night. My son does a weekly podcast on music called the Free Sushi Podcast that reviews new music from indie bands. One of the things my son and I share is a love of music and discovering new bands.

This is our second year going to Lollapalooza together and my third year at the festival. My first year, I went with an old high school friend, now an eye doctor. You're never too old to appreciate rock. But attending all three days will test your physical endurance. For me, there's the side benefit of spending time with my son. While he loved watching Lady Gaga's performance, I thought she was overly whiney: "Nobody loved me in high school. I was an outcast." Yeah, as are most artists. You're 23 Lady and rich. At least you benefited!! There was one number where she came on stage dressed as a nun, well at least she was wearing a veil but not much else. She did have a bleeding Jesus statue on the stage and she kept screaming: Jesus loves everyone! So even Lady Gaga has a nun connection.

Being in Grant Park makes me proud of living in such a beautiful city. Judge for yourself. This year the festival grew from 80 some acres to 115. There were certainly many more people Friday and Saturday than I'd ever seen in previous years.For me, music is inspiring and freeing. I think that's why it speaks to young people so much. It's a way of equalizing everything. The message of most songs is that you can do anything you want. You're not limited by age, wealth or place. Music is much like writing; it's about creating and opening yourself up to new experiences and new people. This year I saw the most mixed demographics at the festival. Not as many people of color but many more older people. I was standing next to a couple in their 60s rocking out at the Lady Gaga concert. Music is ageless. There were shirts that said: If the music is too loud, you're too old. That's what I tell people who ride in my convertible.

This year the bands, I enjoyed the most were the Dirty Projectors, which I had never heard previously, and Spoon and The XX, which both gave great afternoon concerts. Green Day's Billy Joe certainly entertained the crowd with fireworks and a bit of exhibitionism. Good thing the Chicago cops are so forgiving. The Green Day concert was one of my favorites, probably because they are an old band and I knew most of the songs. But Nick and I didn't want to be complacent. So we left that concert early to catch the Empire of the Sun band, a group of musicians who are also stage performers. The back drop of the Sears Tower — oh excuse me the Willis Building — made for an interesting light show. Tonight we're looking forward to Yeasayer, MGMT, and Arcade Fire.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

AUG. 2, 2010

MORE PHOTOS OF MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

AUG. 1, 2010

Midsummer Night's Dream

Last night, my husband and I attended the summer party of Richard Driehaus. It was the third year in a row that we had attended. For those of you who do not know, Richard Driehaus is one of Chicago's richest men, a generous Catholic and a philanthropist. Each year in July, he hosts a huge party and invites 2,000 to 3,000 people to his Lake Geneva estate. The invitations themselves are keepsakes. One year, we received a replica of a 1966 Corvette. It still sits in my office.

This year's theme was stolen from the Shakespeare play "Midsummer Night's Dream." There were fairies and moving statuaries and human fountains and elves and minstrels on the grounds. It was all very Elizabethan. Whereas in past years, the party has been in celebration of Richard's birthday, this year the party was a celebration of his new bride, Inese. Richard, at age 68, married again last week. There was some speculation as to how many times Richard had been married and how he was able to wed in a Catholic church. The newlyweds arrived at the party by horse-drawn carriage and were announced by trumpets.Throughout the party, a team of photographers and videographers captured photos and video that were then displayed on a large circular screen in the main dinner tent. After dinner, fireworks were set off from boats in the lake while symphony music was broadcast over the water to synchronize with the fireworks. Afterwards, a large band played dance tunes until the wee hours.

I'm posting the pictures of the party here because words don't do it justice. Some of the dignitaries at the party: Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn and State's Attorney Lisa Madigan. Pat gave me a hug and told my husband that I was "a good writer." Thanks Pat.

It's a strange feeling standing on the lawn of someone so wealthy, peering into his daughters' playhouses, strolling his gardens. You can't help but wonder what it must be like to be King Richard or what it must be like to be married to King Richard. From all that I've seen of the man, he appreciates beauty and understands the value of giving back. He's a stalwart supporter of many causes. So I don't begrudge him his money. But you can't help wonder what it would be like to wake up every day in his world. It makes you wonder whether that much money delivers that much more happiness. I don't suppose I'll ever know. But I'm betting not. Studies have shown that money makes a difference in someone's life up to a certain point, when their needs are addressed and many of their wants. Beyond that, the extra doesn't make that much difference.

If I had that much money, though I think I'd be driven by guilt. I've seen too much poverty as a journalist. On the way to the party, as Greg and I wheeled around in my convertible with the sun in our hair, I remember feeling so lucky, so fortunate to have found someone so wonderful to share my life with and to have had such an interesting life so far. And if Richard is able to find that kind of love and joy in his new wife, then I'm sure he will be as fortunate.

 

JULY 26, 2010

LONELINESS DEPICTED BY FORMER NUNS

A few weeks back, a former nun, Marie Therese Gass, sent me her book, "UnCONVENTional Women: 73 Ex-Nuns Tell Their Stories". It's a big, thoughtful book, nearly 500 pages, that outlines the experiences of those women who entered the convent starting in1933. The last nun in the book leaves in 1985. Marie has done a thorough job of documenting how these 73 women felt about convent life and the reasons that contributed to their leaving. And, no, they weren't all lesbians. (I always get that from audiences.) Seven of the women said they were, the rest weren't. That didn't mean that the women weren't attracted to other women while they were in the convent. The picture painted is that of an institution that has taken the place of family— many of these women were quite young when they entered and Marie takes to calling them "girls." Only one woman in the book was old enough to live by herself when she entered the convent.

The women largely describe a lonely existence inside the convent walls, a struggle to establish their own identities and exert some control over their lives. They also detail some heavy duty guilt trips from superiors who used God to justify whatever they wanted the women to do.

I mention Marie's book, not because I am against convent life, but because it represents the other side of the story. While my book focused on the women who stayed in the convent, hers explores all the reasons women leave. She also wants to make other ex-nuns feel less shame for having left.

There's hardly a week that goes by in which young women who are considering becoming a nun don't write me about this order or that. I tell them what I can. But for the most part they all have in their minds this ideal that they are searching for, some magical place that fulfills all their expectations. I remember the nuns often comparing convents to husbands. "You gotta take the good with the bad,"I heard more than once. It's an apt metaphor and I make a similar comparison in my own book.

I don't disbelieve any of the stories in Marie's book. I, too, felt a certain institutional loneliness when I visited some convents. They were largely those who followed rote rules and were ruled by stern mother superiors. Yet, there were others, the Trappistines in Virginia come to mind, that followed a strict way of life but seemed to do so in a loving way. I truly enjoyed those women.

So, I offer up Marie's book for all those nuns who have left and want to explore what other women have to say. Some orders are now publishing their own similar books of women who were in the order and left. I think this is a healthy way of dealing with the past. I also offer up Marie's book for those young women who think they want to join a traditional convent with traditional rules and a top-down structure. Reading it might save me them several years of heartache.

JULY 18, 2010

WHEN CAUGHT, BLAME THE WOMAN

I was stunned Friday when I learned that the Vatican had finally revised (somewhat) its abuse process by suggesting that, when required by law, Church officials should report priest pedophilia to the authorities. It's nice that the Church recommends priests observe state and federal laws. I've always wondered why some aggressive state's attorney didn't bring local church officials up on charges for failing to report abuse, particularly in regions where child abuse and church coverup was so egregious.

But that in itself wasn't what shocked me. In its statement issued last week regarding the revision, the Vatican declared that ordaining women as priests was just as bad as priests abusing children. According to the New York Times, "the decision to link the issues appears to reflect the determination of embattled Vatican leaders to resist any suggestion that pedophilia within the priesthood can be addressed by ending the celibacy requirement or by allowing women to become priests."

Basically, the Vatican had to admit some failure in its policies regarding priestly abuse of children, but they weren't going to accept any blame without condemning women who are trying to fill the void by becoming priests. I wanted to e-mail my many nun friends who are staunch supporters of women's ordination, but I knew what they would say and I didn't want to get them in trouble by quoting them here. It also pains me to hear the voices of embattled sisters who are the heart of the Church but feel so beleaguered by all its male politics.

Following its archaic edicts, the Church listed ordaining women on its lists of "more grave delicts" or offenses. This ruling is just another example of how out of touch Rome really is to the American Catholic Church. Seventy-five women have been ordained in the United States. For two decades, American Catholics have strongly favored allowing married men and women to be ordained. But Church officials argue that ordination is deemed for celibate men only and shouldn't be changed to conform with modern times. The problem with that argument is that the Church rule that called for the ordination of celibate men wasn't put in place until the 11th Century and was in direct response to problems of that era: married priests were passing church property to their heirs. The requirement was changed then and it could be changed now.

With these continual attacks against religious women, I wonder if it's even possible to be a feminist Catholic these days. Your thought, readers?

 

NEW WEBSITE AND MAGAZINE:

For all of you who are interested in medicine and science, particularly if you'd like to read about the latest advances in the treatment of cancer, check out the latest edition of the magazine I edit, Medicine on the Midway at the University of Chicago. This is a nifty turn-page online magazine but it takes a minute to load.

JULY 11, 2011

ACTS OF RELIGIOUS PEOPLE

I'm always amazed at the disconnect between what people do and what they claim to be. One of the main reasons I am not affiliated with any specific church is largely because of the hypocricy that I've witnessed by people who claim to be religious. I'll watch people get dressed up and go to church on Sunday morning and then snub their neighbors when they return. Is that what it means to be a good Christian? A neighbor in Indiana, who can't stand Chicagoans, told me that if my house burned down he'd bring marshmellows to roast on the embers. He's supposedly a good Catholic. It reminded me of the time when I was a teenager doing vacation Bible school outreach to a poor, black area in Mississippi, and one of the elders of the white church that was hosting us told me: we had a black family come to our church once. The next week their house burnt down. That's piety for you.

I suppose for me, the place I feel most at peace and contented, the place I feel I can connect with God, a higher power, my consciousness, is in nature, often my garden. I'm not sure that everyone appreciates the importance of green space until they don't have it. I'm convinced that gang members in Chicago who are killing each other should be forced to till soil and move mulch and watch something they've planted grow. Maybe then they'd believe in something other than turfdom. Maybe they'd connect to something larger than themselves. And, yes, I know it's far more complicated than that. But that's my wish.

Lately I've been challenged for my determination to stand up for injustices when I see them, be it in my own life or for others. For me, this is my religion: to speak up when something is wrong, to ask that injustices be made right. It's as moral as being a Good Samaritan. There are times when I feel that maybe I shouldn't say anything, that I should just keep quiet. But every time I think this way I think of the nuns and what they would do, and how many of them are unpopularily protesting a war and, amid threats of excommunication, protesting against unjust policies within the Church. And then I reach for my coffee cup in the morning and I am reminded of sage advice: "Quiet, reserved women seldom make history."

JULY 5, 2010

TRIQUARTERLY GOES LIVE!

Those of you who are readers, please check out the literary magazine I edit: http://triquarterly.org. It went live today. This is its first digital edition.

 

 

 

 

 

JULY 4, 2010

INDEPENDENCE DAY

Today is the Fourth of July and the end of a week's vacation. It's been a wonderful few days in the country at our farmhouse we call Green Acres. On the first day of our vacation, my husband, Greg, and I made a list of all the things we wanted and needed to do. We managed to do all of them, including a day touring vineyards in Southwest Michigan where we sampled wines at seven different vineyards. Our neighbor in Chicago asked if we really thought coming out here was a "vacation" since we spend nearly every weekend here. To her a vacation was more like getting on a plane and going to Jamaica or Vegas. The thought of getting on a plane makes me cringe. Actually I'd rather be here than anywhere else in the summer. It's where my writing studio is, where I spend time gardening and entertaining friends.

Last night we hosted some Chicago friends who also have a second home in Indiana. We sipped wine on the patio, watched the sunset over the soybean fields, cooked our dinner over a fire and observed several firework shows going off in the distance. It was a beautiful evening. And now I'm contemplating returning to my day job in two days. It's hard, having tasted freedom for a few days, to know it is only temporary.

My stepdaughter used to lament: "Why can't every day be like it is on vacation?" I wish that were possible. When people speculate that they wouldn't know what to do with themselves if they didn't have a job to go to, that they'd be at a complete loss at structuring their day, I always feel sorry for them. The most important part of my life is what I do when I'm not at work. Yes, work is important, but it's not my life.

The one thing I miss the most, now that I have a rigid work schedule is the time I used to spend contemplating. I suppose some people would say it is a complete waste of time just to sit and stare out over the gardens or watch the sun descend in the sky or watch a hummingbird draw nectar out of a coneflower. I know that the contemplative nuns understand, but even many of them complained to me that they found it hard to have enough time to contemplate on their own in between all the scheduled group prayers. So I know there's no panacea, no place in life that offers a complete balance, even the convent.

Our guests last night asked how Greg and I entertain guests out here. They found it difficult to find much to offer friends to do. Greg and I entertain often out here. We offer them relaxation. We cook, drink nice wine, watch the flowers grow, the sun set and the embers of backyard fires burn. I find my contemplation time here a needed respite, a way to connect to myself and to nature. It is my independence from deadlines and demands, which seem constant these days.

When I left work more than a week ago, I turned off my Blackberry. In less than 36 hours, I'll have to turn it back on. And then I'll be counting the hours until I can be back here again. I hope you, readers, have a place you can go to revitalize your soul. Here are a few pictures of my gardens to offer you some peaceful moments.

 

 

 

 

 

JUNE 20, 2010

FATHERS' DAY; AND ALL THAT NUNSENSE

 

Today is Fathers' Day and I am reminded both about what it means to be a good father and how lucky I am to have a father who cares about me and a husband who is so caring about his own children. Our kids are grown now and no longer at home, but I've been delighted to see my husband, Greg, showing the same sorts of endearments toward our dog, Graycie, as he did when the kids were smaller.

This morning Nick's hand-made Fathers' Day card — he's an artist — depicted Nick as a naked baby at the lake holding his father's hand as they walked in the water. It was a loving portrait and based off a real photo. I'm sure that's the way Nick still thinks of his dad. I'm often touched by the way I see Graycie running alongside Greg as he works in the yard. They are virtually inseparable. Graycie takes naps on the couch when Greg does. Graycie sits in the front seat like a little Buddha when she rides with Greg in the car. When I'm at the wheel, she's in her caged area in the back of the car. But dads are like, bending the rules, offering ice cream instead of Brussel sprouts. They like to have fun with their kids. So, on Fathers' Day, I pay tribute to my husband, a truly wonderful father who has taught me a great deal about patience and understanding when it comes to kids and dogs and also life in general.

NUNSENSE

The New York Times ran an interesting story on Friday about the creator of “Nunsense,” the off-Broadway sequels that, though predictable and silly, have been far more profitable than just about any other offering theatres have had. "Nunsense" and its six sequels have been produced 8,000 times worldwide and grossed more than $500 million. The article goes on to say that from "The Flying Nun" to "Sister Act," women in habits have been lively pop culture fodder. I found this characterization a little peculiar. But I also thought it was strange that the artistic director at an off-Broadway playhouse had selected “Nunsense” for this summer’s offering because “people need levity and humor.”

I have often heard sisters complain about the stereotype that persists of them as simple-minded and silly. The truth is most nuns these days are highly educated women, with the majority having achieved at least a master’s degree. I admit that I’ve partaken of a few of these plays and enjoyed them. They are campy and fun. But I’m not sure that most people who go to these plays even know the difference between what’s up on stage and the real image in convents.

A couple months ago I did a signing at the Royal George Theatre in Lincoln Park. They were staging the popular nun play, “Late Nite Catechism.” I always thought it would be a great venue in which to sell books. When I go to see a play, which is often, I appreciate when the theater offers books for sale that are connected with the play. But at the Royal George that night, no one was really particularly interested in talking about nuns. There were mostly large groups of middle aged women who were looking for a good time. It was an odd juxtaposition and I felt a little sad for the women and the playwright, Vicki Quade, who was with me. I had expected these particular types of theatre goers to be curious about habited women. But few of them even stopped at our table to inquire what it was all about. I don't think they were so much interested in finding out what nuns were really like, which is what my book jacket purports to do (and does), but were more interested in laughing at goofy Medieval outfits worn by juvenile women. It made me a little sad.

JUNE 13, 2010

AT PRINTERS ROW IN CHICAGO

It was raining like crazy on Saturday with the wind blowing, but us dedicated authors and readers were downtown in the old Printers Row district on Saturday at the beginning of Chicago's Lit Fest. It was great to see so many readers out in inclement weather. I managed to sell and sign several books while readers were dodging the pouring rain. I also met several interesting readers -- all women. Not a single man bought my book! Women have always been my biggest readers. I also met a couple of women who had already read my book and were bringing other women to buy it, too.

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REGRET AND LOSS

I've been thinking a lot about my blog a couple weeks past regarding "The Rule of Two out of Three." That blog in particular resonated with several of you who wrote to tell me your personal stories. Some of you had struggled with careers, others wrote to tell me that having children was often a "mixed blessing," as one woman, a former nun wrote. You worry about them all the time. Everyone seemed to agree that achieving success in all three major areas of a woman's life was nearly impossible. Thanks for writing.

Along those lines, I'd direct you to a piece in today's Sunday Chicago Tribune. As a former editorial page editor, I can tell you that editorials are not normally where a reader can find contemplative philosophy about life. But there it was, quoting Shaquille O'Neal, of all people, about regret. It's a wonderful piece with this little nugget: Most people don't regret the things they did in life; they regret the thing they didn't do. When I look back over my life, I can honestly say that there is little regret about what I didn't do. Mostly I regret how I did them.

Another piece in the paper this morning made me cringe. It's another example why women should be leading the church. A Catholic grade school in Massachusetts had withdrawn its acceptance of an 8-year-old transfer student after school officials learned that his parents were lesbians. Still another school in Boulder, Colorado, is not allowing a preschooler and kindergartner to re-enroll next year because their parents are lesbians. The reason given in both cases was similar: Homosexual conduct violates church teachings. A column published in the newspaper of the Archdiocese of Boston argued that there was "a real danger" that the children of gay parents would bring pornography into the classroom.

This is where the nuns I know, or most of them, would have said: Enough. Thankfully Chicago Catholic Schools aren't into such backward thinking, at least when it comes to this issue. The superintendent of Chicago Catholic schools, Sister Mary Paul McCaughey (A NUN) said that Chicago Catholic schools are "open to everyone."

JUNE 6, 2010

Beauty

By popular demand, I'm posting pictures of Green Acres and the gardens around my writing studio. It's been a beautiful sunny day with periods of light rain, always tempting me to be outside instead of inside writing. The great aspect of my writing studio, though, is that I can feel like I am in nature while I'm writing.

As some of you know, I'm the managing editor of TriQuarterly Online and we are about to launch our digital version. It's been a real challenge for me as I do have a full-time job as a managing editor of several publications at the University of Chicago Medical Center. But I'm very excited about the short stories, poetry, essays and drama that we'll be featuring. The launch is July 7 at www.triquarterly.org. There are several interviews and book reviews there now.

Next Saturday I'll be at Chicago's Printers' Row at the booth of the Society of Midland Authors signing books in the morning from 10 a.m. to noon. The booth is located at Tent B, spot 3. That seems to be somewhere near the second tent from the north end of the festival, just south of the corner of Harrison and Dearborn. Please stop by and see me.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

MAY 31, 2010

THE RULE OF TWO OUT OF THREE IN LIFE



It's Memorial Day and my husband and I are cleaning up our farmhouse and garden, getting ready for guests to arrive soon. It's been a beautiful weekend of sunsets and visiting with friends and weeding and reading. A good life is like that, a collection of interests and occupations. These weekends are so energizing that I find myself tempted to just move out of the city and live out in the country full time. It's a romantic idea: An idyllic pastoral life where I could devote my time to writing and reading and gardening, all my passions. But life intervenes... We can't just live on chocolate, I'm reminded.

I suppose everyone has his or her secret fantasy life, the life they imagine they'd be living if they didn't have to work. Some people will say that they are living that life, that their day job is their dream job. I never like those people, mostly because I don't believe them.

There's the ideal in all our heads; the ideal job, the ideal family, the ideal spouse. Rarely does life measure up. But sometimes reality surprises us. I see young people, and I was one once, aspiring to that ideal life in their heads. I tell young women, you get two out of three in life. They look at me quizzically and I explain: you can succeed in either family, career or spouse, but not all three and never at the same time. It's very rare that you meet someone who has attained the ideal in all three areas.

The rule of two out of three is one I made up after observing a lot of people, mostly women. I would watch successful, poised women at work and then be horrified when they took me to their homes and I watched the drama played out or when they confided their deep disappointment with their children, their spouse. Sometimes they even confided

about affairs. Still, so many women aspire to that Christmas card picture of smiling, beautiful children, a loving spouse and the successful job that completes the picture. This is when the record scratches. The women who try to play this tune are always disappointed.

That doesn't mean that the two out of three are always static. Sometimes it's the job and the kids who carry you through rough patches of a marriage. Sometimes it's the home life that makes you get up and go to a job that you hate. Nevertheless, my belief is that the two sources of happiness in life can shift, but rarely can anyone give enough energy and attention to achieve bliss in all three areas of his or her life at one time, or for very long.

So, I suppose right now you're adding it up, counting what has given you sustained happiness. Perhaps you don't believe me. That's fine. It's my theory and it's certainly been true in my life. So then you're asking, well what's your two out of three? For me, my career as a writer has been a source of satisfaction and it's not always the day job, but the writing and editing. My marriage has probably been the greatest source of my happiness. I know few people who can say that. I've been blessed. We've also worked very hard to achieve what we have and we don't take it for granted.

The loss in my life, the third area that has always been a struggle, is the children. At 44, I'll probably never have children of my own. It's a loss I feel more keenly at different times. I often think of the nuns I've interviewed, women who I asked how they dealt with never being able to have children of their own. I was a younger woman then ; and I wanted to know because I intended to have children and couldn't fathom how any woman could give that up. Now, several years later, I know painfully well how those women felt. I remember one nun telling me that it's an ache that never really goes away. And I believe that. The feeling of loss comes and goes. When I see couples i know with their young children, I'm envious. But then I just imagine all the waking and crying in the middle of the night and the piercing screams of a baby and that envy dissipates...for awhile. I can intellectualize about the loss: I never could have achieved what I have in my professional life if I'd had my own children, my marriage certainly wouldn't be as strong if I'd had to divide my attentions. (That was certainly the argument of Joyce Carol Oates who always said that she and her husband decided against having children because they seemed to ruin the marriages of their friends.) But knowing something in your head and feeling it in your body are two different things. And so, I take some comfort that I helped raise my two stepchildren. I enjoy my dog, Graycie, whom my husband and I treat like our baby. And I tell myself that I'm very lucky: I have achieved two out of three.

 

MAY 23, 2010

MUSINGS AT SUNSET; THOUGHTS ON A WOMAN'S PATIENCE

I've been thinking about patience lately, how to have it, when it matters and when it should be abandoned. By nature, I am not a patient person. I'm always in awe of those women who can wait, who can simmer without exploding, those long-suffering women who seem to eventually get what they wanted, I suppose. I never know if in the end they do get what they want because I usually lose interest and stop watching.

Last night I did watch the documentary The September Issue about the fashion magazine Vogue and how the staff pulls together the largest issue every year. What was amazing was not the revelations regarding "The Ice Queen" Anna Wintour — who knew she could be so endearing to her daughter or so generous to young designers — but the poise exhibited by her second in command, a fiery redhead named Grace, the magazine's creative director. Perhaps the cutting room floor holds some confrontation between the women, but the movie doesn't even hint that there might be a chance for Grace to challenge her boss. As Wintour dismisses beautiful photo shoots that Grace had supervised, I couldn't help but feel for the woman. "That's $50,000 down the drain," she says to the camera.

Judging by the reviews, most audiences saw Grace as the warm, creative force of the magazine versus the domineering, discouraging voice of Wintour, also known as "the Pope" in the magazine offices. I wanted to know how Grace, a 68-year-old former model, could calmly sit in her office, conceding that she has to feel that she's done something worthy in her job. I wondered how many nights she went home stewing, contemplating a riff with the famous Queen. I wanted to know how she and other women live with such disappointment on a continual basis and how that doesn't tear at the basic fabric of their being.

In this morning's Chicago Tribune, there was the obituary of a woman who'd run out of time. Janine Denomme was a Catholic woman who'd recently been ordained by Roman Catholic Women priests, a group of excommunicated bishops and female priests who are trying to get the church to open clergy ranks to women and married people. Denomme waited as long as she could for the church to change. Finally days before she died of colon cancer at age 45, she was ordained by the rogue group. I know a lot of nuns who are sympathetic to this cause. I'm in awe of how patient they are, believing that at some point the church will change. I wonder how they decide when they've reached the breaking point and how others remain determined to change an institution from the inside. And then I wonder which is more effective?

 

MAY 16, 2010

THE COUPLE WHO SWEATS TOGETHER, STAYS TOGETHER

As I write this, my husband is pulling weeds behind my writing studio. He's been working in the yard all day, the kind of work that leaves him covered in sweat and mud. Yesterday the two of us spent the day digging huge holes for new trees at our weekend farmhouse. Sweat was dripping from my nose. The holes were four feet in diameter and about three feet deep. I found new appreciation for old-fashioned gravediggers. Most weekends, Greg and I spend at least part of a day, if not the whole weekend, doing manual labor at the place we affectionately call "Green Acres." In the past couple of years, we've planted more than 70 trees, hundreds of plants and bulbs and weeded and added loads and loads of dirt and mulch. It's a peculiar kind of pasttime, I admit.

I write this not to win your admiration— or disgust— but to make a point about something that I strongly believe: couples who share the same interests have a better chance building a life together, and more pointedly, couples who build something together, whether it's a backyard garden or a business, can take pride in what what their partnership has accomplished. Perhaps that's how some couples look back on the families they've raised.

I've been thinking about this a lot lately because I seem to be surrounded by young people on the verge of marriage. Last weekend, my 22-year-old stepdaughter announced she was getting married to a man she's been dating eight months. "What's the rush?" my husband asked.

My grandmother didn't seem alarmed. "Well, I got married at 18," she said.

Yes, different era.

The problem is that I know a handful of people who got married young and are still together. (They are my aunts and uncles.) Come to think of it, I don't know that many people who have been married for a long time who are all that happy together.

Finding the secret to a happy marriage is big business. Just this week Tara Parker-Pope, a columnist at the New York Times, wrote about a mutated gene that scientists believe make men more likely to cheat. Parker-Pope, incidentally, is hawking her own book on the secrets of a good marriage. There are many, many books out there willing to take your $25 to distill some gospel that worked for the author and his clients. The thing is that there is no one formula that works for everyone.

That doesn't stop young people from asking. So here's what has worked in my 14-year marriage: love each other, for starters, but also love being with each other; make time for each other; have dates, especially if there are children in the house; argue; don't harbor harsh feelings; say you are sorry and mean it; be best friends; talk; forgive; know that every relationship has growing pains; be patient; and if, possible, build something together —roll up your sleeves and get dirty, plant a tree and watch it grow, marking your years together.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

MAY 9, 2010

A TRIBUTE TO CHILDLESS MOTHERS

It's Mothers Day, and everyone is paying tribute to his or her mother. I've called mine and sent her flowers. I've received cards and gifts from my own step-children. Even my dog, Graycie, penned a card. But here I'd like to pay tribute to all the childless women out there — and there are so many — who have engendered the creative talents in other women, including myself.

Throughout my life, there have been many women who have encouraged me, some of whom had children and others who didn't. They were always older women who seemed to disregard expected behavior, who motivated me to try new things, to look at life in a different way. Some of them behaved oddly, others made me laugh and a few made me question my beliefs about life and the roles of women.  I often wondered what it would have been like had one of these women been my real mother. Would I have appreciated her uniqueness or would I have wanted her to be like all the other mothers?

As a young reporter I remember being assigned to interview an old woman. Well, she was old to me then. She was probably in her late sixties. She'd been a reporter much of her life and in her later years followed city council and governmental affairs as a hobby. I remember entering her house and seeing the neat stacks of books and the newspaper clippings beside her typewriter. I immediately felt intrigued. This woman, though she didn't have a husband or children, had a full life. When she started to detail for me the various publications she wrote for and the various organizations she was involved in, I saw her not an old woman, but as someone who was fully engaged with life. That brief encounter has always inspired me. Often I've thought about that woman and how I would like to spend my later life equally as engaged.

Older women have always been my friends and mentors. They are my role models. Most are artists of one kind or another; many are writers. They are supportive of my work and my life goals. I'm sure most don't even know how much they have inspired me, how much I have looked up to them, tried to emulate them. How often I have grown fond of a woman and then would meet her children who I found unappreciative. These adult children were undeserving to have a mother who approached life differently or who was so accepting of her children’s choices, or so I thought.

During my years with the nuns, there were several who were especially endearing. These women were wise. They asked questions about my own life, but didn't judge. They offered me suggestions when I struggled with my faith. They shared with me stories about their own difficult periods. I was attracted to these women because of their intelligence and the strength of their personalities.

The irony is that often the people who have the greatest impact on our lives are not related to us at all. Sometimes the people who foster the greatest change or who prompt courage in our lives are only with us briefly. They may never know how much they meant to us or how much their faith encouraged our endeavors. So, for all those women —and we all have them in our lives —who have inspired us, take a few minutes this week to thank them for believing in you, for stirring our own creativity, instilling confidence. Their unexpected faith is indeed a true gift because it is not required.

 

MAY 3, 2010

LESSONS OF A LONG LIFE; THE REALITY OF WOMEN'S CHOICES

My husband's favorite photograph is one that my mother had taken when I was in the first-grade. He keeps a worn copy in his wallet, and when anyone asks to see a picture of his wife, he flips open his wallet. For those who don't know my husband, he is several years my senior, so my first-grade picture is a bit of a shock, giving rise to the cliche: cradle robber...or worse.

I suspect the reason my husband keeps that worn picture in his wallet, instead of our wedding photograph, is that he sees what I see when I look at that young girl so full of confidence she hasn't yet earned: hope for the future. I often wonder what she expected life would bring her. She was a precocious young kid who knew exactly what she wanted to be when she grew up: a writer. Problem was she knew this before she even knew the alphabet. No one knows where I got the idea. Perhaps there is a bit of someone else's soul reincarnated in all of us. If that's the case, mine belonged to a journalist/writer.

I bring this up because yesterday was my birthday. It doesn't matter what number. But it's one in which the second number and the first are the same. You do the math. I always get nostalgic around this time. Have I accomplished all that that little girl in the photo dreamed I'd achieved? Have I sold out by having a day job instead of spending my day writing manuscripts? Did I fulfill all the choices I had?

The problem is that young girls of my generation were told we could have it all: a career and a family. We were told we had options. We could choose to work. We could have a career. We could stay home with our children, if that's what we chose. I'm a feminist, so this is no treatise against the trail-blazing women who fought for equal rights, but it is a polemic of sorts on what those women endowed in us and the chasm that exists between those sales pitches and the reality of our lives.

Most women I know cannot choose to stay home with their children. Most women I know are not fulfilled by their jobs. And somehow they are shocked to learn that no matter what they do, no matter how hard or how many hours they work, their jobs do not love them back.

The men I know do not have the same expectations of their jobs. For them, they are jobs, a means to an end. I've rarely ever heard a man talk about his career. God forbid. Men are not raised that way; they are not raised to believe they have choices, that they can choose to stay home with their children. They know from early childhood, they will be expected to work.

And that's what a job is: it's work. Sometimes it's rewarding, and often it is tedious, drudgery. I say this even though I can't imagine doing anything other than writing and editing. But showing up day after day, year after year, gets old. It doesn't feel like the warm and fuzzy career that we were sold as girls. It feels like a job.

I say all this because these are somewhat recent conclusions. And I have made my peace— somewhat— with them. But I constantly encounter younger women who are disappointed and disillusioned that their hard work is not reflected in appreciation from the institutions where they work. I tell these women not to expect their jobs to love them. Work is not a career. It is not something that will hug and hold you and cherish you.

So, you say, what's my point? My point is just that: women need to lighten up on their expectations of themselves. And they need to stop lying to the next generation. They need to be telling their daughters: You need to educate yourself for a lifetime of work. It's not a choice.

APRIL 25, 2010

In the Humor of Spring

It’s raining out at Green Acres. That’s what my husband and I call our place out in the country where we go to get away from the noise and busyness of the city. It’s been raining all weekend, which means that I’ve been freed from my usual spring gardening chores, like planting and mulching and weeding and pruning. Mostly I’ve been stuck in my studio all weekend, writing. That’s not such a bad thing. With the push of Unveiled and all the events surrounding the readings and the publicity, my writing has taken a back seat, to borrow a bad cliché.

A few weeks ago, I decided to go through my new manuscript and chart out how many more chapters I needed before I was “done.” Done is always a state of being since I have a complete manuscript; it’s really the rewriting that I’m engaged in. To my surprise, what I considered the “first half” of the book, turned out to be 339 pages. If a novel manuscript is 400 pages, I’m nearly done. But, the arc of this book, isn’t. I believe it’s a good story, though, and one that will keep people reading for a long while. There’s a lot of my life in this book, a lot of my philosophy. So with all this rain, it feels good to spend an afternoon writing, to soak the story in, to live it for awhile. It feels like a luxury.

There are so many times when I wish this were my life, writing in the country, writing all day without interruptions. It’s a romantic vision of life. Some people are able to achieve it. Others live it in their mind until they are confronted with the hours of being alone that intense writing requires. If you only write in snagged time, bits and pieces stolen from other parts of your life—an hour at lunch, a few minutes in bed, while waiting for your husband to arrive from work—you may not realize what writing alone for hours, days entails. You may not know the agony of looking at a screen for hours when the words just aren’t there.

I’ve been there. I’ve had my days of solitude while I was writing Unveiled. At first it seemed idyllic. But then the days stretched to weeks and then to months. I began to crave the conversations of others, the small interruptions that working in an office entails. I began to make my own interruptions, create my own distractions. It’s hard to concentrate for so long, so intensely. Some would say maintaining that kind of alone intensity is unnatural, that being cloistered in a room by yourself all day sets you up for depression. Too much contemplation and you may want distractions from all that you have to think about.

The truth is I enjoy work. I enjoy the balance of editing, working with others and then retreating into my own corner. It’s just that lately with so much going on, there’s not been so much retreating. And so when I got a lazy Sunday afternoon, the words came pouring out, like the rain outside my studio windows.

So thank you, rain. The gray skies are a bit melancholy, but holing up in my studio writing is what I needed. We all need our times of retreat.

APRIL 17, 2010

SURROUNDED BY NUN-AFICIONADOS

On Saturday night, I got a refresher course in sisterhood. I was signing and selling books at the Royal George Theatre before that evening's performances of Saints & Sinners and Late Nite Catechism.  After her performance, actress Kathleen Puls Andrade let me into her classroom/stage wielding a ruler, a key prop in her one-woman performance.

Turns out Kathleen is putting on a one-woman show called Journey to the Center of the Uterus: Adventures Infertility! (So, apparently, Kathleen doesn’t live out the celibacy part of her stage vows.) Kathleen's play premiered in Chicago last fall and now she's bringing it to Chicago again (details to come.)

Playwright Vicki Quade was also at the theatre Saturday night and kept my husband and me entertained between shows with stories of how she first conceived Late Nite Catechism. Apparently she was asked, along with several friends, to write a play about the saints, but when they got together they mostly ate fudge and swapped stories about growing up Catholic. Vicki quickly saw the comedy in all those anecdotes.

Vicki requires all her actresses who perform in her plays to be or to have been Catholic. She says she instructs them not to play a character they think of as a nun but to channel the nun inside each of them. I thought that was a great line. Perhaps every woman has a bit of nun in her.

APRIL 11, 2010

Let those who have no sins throw the first stone

For the past couple of weeks, news reports have carried various stories of priest pedophilia scandals and how they have reached all the way to the Vatican. First it was Pope Benedict’s 86-year-old brother, Georg Ratzinger, who ran the choir at a school in Germany where allegations have emerged that some of the boys had been physically and sexually abused. Then this past week it was revealed that Pope Benedict had refused to defrock a priest accused of molesting children because he was concerned about the priest’s age at the time — 38 years old — and was concerned about “the good of the universal church.” The priest had been sentenced to three years’ probation for tying up and molesting two young boys in the San Francisco Bay area church rectory.

It seems hard to believe that a Church so insistent on celibacy — so staunchly refusing to give up the 12th century edict that requires celibacy in priests even when the majority of its members would prefer if their priests could marry — could then coddle and protect those who not only violate their vows but do it in such a perverse way. Every time I read about another scandal, I can’t help but think about Sister Margaret Traxler who ran a homeless shelter for women on Chicago's South Side who told me that her life as a rebellious nun began after she reported a priest who had been molesting high school girls at her school and nothing was done.

“I had done what I thought I should do,” she told me. “I thought: You go to the provincial and you told it all,” she laughed cynically. “Now what I would do is tell the state troopers. Who know what it did to those young girls? That changed my attitude towards priests and towards men, towards leadership, failure of leadership.”

Margaret died several years ago, but if she were alive today to see the current sex scandal reaching Rome, she’d say that it was a long time coming. Church leadership needs to explain how they have looked the other way for so long, protecting pedophiles while the innocent were molested.

All this comes at a time when the Vatican has launched an investigation into U.S. women religious communities. Many sisters see this as an effort to contain women’s religious communities, many of whom have supported sisters and women who have been ordained by certain bishops as priests.

Earlier this month, a list of those religious women’s communities that are going to receive an on-site investigation was posted. In Chicago, it is the Benedictine Sisters. Our concerns are with these women.

 

APRIL 4, 2010

The Art of Doing Nothing; The Happiness of Art and Animals

Today is Easter. It's been a beautiful, warm, sunny day outside. For Easter dinner, my husband and I feasted on turkey stuffed with dressing and potatoes and carrots, along with a gravy that has become legendary in my family. Afterwards, we sat outside, basking in the sunlight, drinking wine and playing with our Weimaraner, Graycie, pictured here. Graycie was born last year around Easter time. I suppose we could have called her Easter, but Graycie fits fine. As I enjoyed the rays, I felt guilty for doing nothing. My life is so full of doing, it's hard for me, like a lot of people, to just stop. Sure there's a pile of things that need attention, but for Easter I wanted to take a break and just enjoy, enjoy the warm breezes and the sun and being out in nature.

And for a few minutes, that's what I did.

Later, I pulled out a magazine article I had read previously but had forgotten its findings. Perhaps you remember the piece entitled "What Makes Us Happy." It appeared in the June 2009 issue of the Atlantic Monthly. The piece detailed the 70 years of a longitudinal study of Harvard students begun in 1937. While the writer went on a tangent and focused mostly on psychoanalyzing the director of the study, the findings were basically that achieving happiness is about having close relationships. Beyond that, the factors that influenced happiness and wellness the most were: education, stable marriage, not smoking, not abusing alcohol, some exercise and having a healthy weight.

As I read the article, my husband was snoring soft whistles in the chair beside me. Earlier today he left a small card in the kitchen, wishing me a happy Easter and a happy Spring, a welcome event at our weekend farmhouse where Spring means planting and gardening. It was a small card, no bigger than my palm, but it was full of heart-felt sentiments my husband is so good at writing. Though we are in our 13th year of marriage, it never seems old. I guess I always feel lucky, blessed.

Last night we watched a documentary called "Herb and Dorothy," about an old couple in New York of modest means who have spent their married lives together befriending artists and collecting art. Herb was a postal worker and Dorothy was a reference librarian in the Brooklyn Public Library. Their one-room apartment in Manhattan was piled to the ceiling with pieces of art they had collected over nearly five decades together. It's a charming, wonderful story. Both are hunched over at this point, barely able to walk, but they still hold hands when they amble down the street.

One of the most interesting things in the movie was when Herb described his love or art as similar to his love of animals. Their apartment is swarming with cats and, even amid the art, Herb has giant aquariums full of turtles. People in the documentary questioned what he meant and afterwards my husband and I debated it as well. All of this is circular, as you might have by now realized. Because art is the beauty and passion in life that enriches us, just like our animals, just like our dog, Graycie.

So on this Easter as Graycie is pressing her nose into my fingers as I write this, know that if you are unhappy or sad, it's not about the job or the money or the house. It's about who you love and who loves you back. Sometimes, it's just a smelly old dog who wants to be petted.

MARCH 28, 2010

READING; JULIA KELLER REVIEW IN THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE

We had a great reading yesterday and a nice turnout at Barnes and Noble in Lincoln Park. It was great to see so many old friends. And there were a lot of interesting questions posed. If you didn't catch the Julia Keller's Lit Corner in today's Chicago Tribune Arts section, here's her review/interview about the book.

MARCH 25, 2010

WGN TV INTERVIEW

In case you missed the live broadcast today, check out the video.

MARCH 21, 2010

Remembering Another Era of Readers and Sisters who Made a Difference

It's a week before my reading at Barnes and Noble in Lincoln Park on Saturday, the unofficial launch date of the new edition. I'm somewhat nervous. I've done a couple of media interviews and sent out postcards to two hundred of my author colleagues in Chicago. But who knows who will show up?

The anxiety surrounding a literary reading is much like that before a birthday party. You wonder if anyone will come. My publicist has warned that book readings aren't what they used to be. Few people get out to book stores anymore. It's not like they can't learn about their favorite authors on the Web or even converse with them through email. But attending a reading is an invigorating event. It makes you proud to be an author and proud to be a reader, to be engaged in a larger conversation with hundreds of other people who have discovered the same book.

The readings I did during my first book tour in 2004 were exhilarating experiences. Most were packed with standing room only. On that book tour, I traveled around to many of the cities where I'd spent time with religious sisters. The sisters came with their families. My own friends and family, scattered across the country, showed up. And then there were the new faces, the people who told me their stories between signings. It was really one of the best experiences about publishing a book. For so many years, I had labored all alone, believing that someone would want to read about sisters, even though many of the orders were dying out, that people would be willing to fork over money for a book about religious women.

That said, I hope some of you will catch my interview on WGN on Thurday at 11:35 p.m. or so and maybe a few of you will come out to the reading at 3 p.m. on Saturday at the Barnes & Noble at 1441 W. Webster Ave. in Chicago. The question and answer portion of the reading tends to be quite dynamic and I'm looking forward to meeting some new faces and learning the stories of some new readers.

This week I've received quite a few interesting emails from readers, even one from as far away as Romania. My favorite was from a Benedictine who wrote that she found Unveiled confirming in several aspects. The first, she wrote, was that if you know one nun, you don't know them all, which is so true. Keep your emails coming and if you don't mind me posting, I will.

It was refreshing this week to see the front-page story in the New York Times on Tuesday about Rose Ann Fleming, a 77-year-old nun who is the academic advisor at Xavier, a Jesuit university in Cincinnati, Ohio. Sister Rose takes it upon herself to keep the Xavier men's backetball players on track to graduate. Since she became Xavier's academic advisor in 1985, every men's basketball player who has played as a senior has left with a diploma. It's a great story.

I was saddened to learn that Janice Wedl, 81, a Benedictine sister at the monastery in St. Joseph, Minn., died on Tuesday. Janice was the first Benedictine sister I had ever met. She was running a weekend retreat at the monastery during my first visit in 1998. I'll never forget how I arrived as naive and expectant as a college freshman with all my notions of nuns in long dark habits and then I met Janice in her blue slacks and sensible shoes. The first thing she did was throw her arms around me and laugh. It made me feel at home right away.

Sister Jancie was buried yesterday. The oldest of six children, Janice entered St. Benedict's in 1946. She had been a sister for nearly 64 years. Like most sisters at St. Benedict's, Janice was highly educated. She had a master's degree in Education Administration from Marquette University. Janice served as a teacher, administrator and pastoral minister. I know she will be greatly missed at St. Benedict's Monastery.

MARCH 14, 2010

After a Week at Home; Interview on WGN

It's been a busy week back in Chicago. Re-entry is always tough and this one proved to be just as difficult as other times I've returned from intense experiences in foreign countries. I've spent a lot of time thinking about Haiti, writing about Haiti and talking about Haiti this week. And, apparently, I'm also doing a lot of dreaming about Haiti. My husband tells me that I've begun talking in my sleep, in an agitated voice. The first few days back were the hardest. It's like I had to get all those images and stories out of my system. I feel I've got to keep talking to draw interest back to Haiti.

Yesterday, I was interviewed on WGN radio about my experiences in Haiti. You can hear that interview here. The interview was surreal in that the host, Alex Quigley, and I were talking in the glass WGN studio that faces Michigan Avenue. At the same time as we were talking about dead bodies in Haiti, drunken revelers were hamming it up outside the studio windows. Saturday was the day the city of Chicago celebrated St. Patrick's Day and dyed the Chicago River green. It was a wet and rainy day but that didn't seem to dampen people's spirits as they converged on Michigan Avenue wearing Mardi Gras beads and green outfits.

Alex wanted me to talk about my blog and photos on the Web site I wrote for Chicago Now. You can view those photos at "A Chicagoan in Haiti" blog. It's worth checking out.

This past week there was also a great story about Sister Jane Meyer (in photo above) in The Wall Street Journal. Sister Jane is the principal at St. Agnes Academy in Houston and a Dominican sister for more than 50 years. She agreed to jump out of a plane if her students raised $25,000 by Ash Wednesday. Her students far surpassed that goal. It's a fascinating story. In the same piece, the article reports that in the six weeks since the Haiti earthquake, Americans gave $877 million to Haiti. That outpaces Americans' giving after other international disasters. The Asian tsunami in 2004 generated $597 million in charity.

Yesterday Alex Quigley asked me where people should donate. He said he had given to the Red Cross, but after listening to my stories, he's not sure his donation is making any difference. I understand how he feels. I, too, donated to two major charities before I went to Haiti. Being there doesn't make me think Haitians need the money less. If anything, they need more money. It's just hard to know which charities seem to be making the most progress. Maybe it's just a matter of time before the supplies are dispersed. I'd like to think so.

MARCH 4, 2010

Home, with Stories I Can't Forget

I’ve slept in my own bed two nights since arriving home from Haiti. Minutes after stepping through the door on Tuesday night, I drank cold water, sipped a glass of wine with my husband and took a really long, hot shower. They were simple pleasures, small comforts of life, but aspects that I really missed in Haiti. Looking back now it all seems like a surreal dream, perhaps a nightmare even, where so many people are pleading for help and there’s no easy solution.

I still remember the anger in the eyes of the young man who begged me to give him and his friends money. “We’re starving in this country. You have money. Give it to us.” He wasn’t threatening me per se, but his aggressiveness was threatening. I’d learned this lesson in India a few years ago.  You can’t just whip out your wallet and start handing out dollar bills. There are more people who will line up than you have dollar bills in your wallet.

I felt a similar frustration while walking around the National Soccer Stadium as half a dozen little kids trailed me, clutching at my clothes, while educated, well-meaning men circled above them to ask how they could get funds for the make-shift school they are running at the stadium. Had they talked to anyone at the United Nations or made requests through official channels or charities? That takes too long, they said. “We need supplies now. We need benches and books.”

The problem is that other people need food and shelter. A report released this week criticized the United Nations’ humanitarian efforts, saying the organization lacked coordination with local organizations in delivering aid and establishing security. Walk around Port-au-Prince and you don’t need a report to tell you that: Dead bodies in crowded streets, the mass of residents living under sheets and tarps, children climbing mountains of rubble to gather rocks to sleep on.

On the flight from Port-au-Prince to Miami, I sat next to a Haitian-American business man named Gerald who was leaving the country for the first time since the earthquake. He was going to join his wife and children in San Francisco where he’d sent them to stay with relatives after the disaster. One of his warehouses was destroyed in the earthquake and what supplies he had left he’d sold to the UN. He said he’d barely slept in the last six weeks; he’d been working constantly to try to get supplies into the country. The day before he’d had two cargo containers full of flour stolen at the port. One of his truck drivers was kidnapped and later released after the thieves had stolen his truck and all its contents.

“Things are going to get a lot worse before they get better,” Gerald said. “The Haitian people are not patient. They want everything now. A lot of people are getting very desperate.”

When I asked him why he continued to live in Haiti when as an American he could live anywhere, he said: “This is my home. These are my people.” He plans to return in two weeks to continue helping his country rebuild, he said.

I haven’t yet sorted out what this experience meant. I think for a lot of us we have mixed emotions. We want to believe the country will get better, that somehow all the money pumped into the Red Cross and the Bush/Clinton fund and the United Nations will be able to build a better Haiti. But we see that the needs are so great, and we wonder if they can ever be truly met.

Gerald told me that he does have hope. But it’s hard, he said, when so many people have lost everything, including their families, their homes and, in many cases, their limbs.

“What kind of job will someone with an amputated leg be able to get in Haiti?” he asked.

These are the kinds of questions that gnaw at me. When people ask me how my trip was, they want to hear a nicely packaged story about how well the country is rebuilding. When I tell them the real conditions, I see their eyes glaze over. This is more than they can handle.

“Don’t you feel like you did a good deed by going over there?” my neighbor asked.

“No. I didn’t do anything but listen to stories.”

And now I can’t forget them.

MARCH 1, 2010

Under a Full Moon in Haiti

It’s my last night in Haiti and I’m sitting quietly in my tent, feeling the breeze and admiring a full moon hanging over the mountains. It has been an emotionally exhausting day, the end of an equally exhausting week. I spent the day following Gillian Morantz, of Montreal, Quebec, a young doctor charged with overseeing the unaccompanied minors in the Fond Parisien field hospital, a role she takes seriously.

That day Gillian introduced me to Magana, a 16-year-old girl, whose right leg had been amputated below the knee and whose left leg was also injured, but intact. Magana had been working as a domestic in Port-au-Prince and was washing the dinner dishes when the earthquake struck. When she tried to run out the door, a wall fell on her legs. A water tower on top of the apartment had fallen over and Magana was trapped in a rising pool of water and soon would drown.

Two men heard her crying and were able to pry the cement chunks off her legs. That’s when Magana could see the bones in her legs sticking out. Her legs were bleeding and the water had turned red.

The men carried her only so far. From there, desperate to get away from her apartment building, Magana crawled on her back. The ground was still shaking. When she reached a tree, she prayed: “God, I’m going to stay here until you save me.” Eventually someone took her to the street and flagged down a car that drove her to the hospital. There, someone tied cloths around her legs to stop the bleeding. She recalled at one point early on “white doctors” changed her wounds and gave her an IV. After that, she laid in the hospital for four days without any further attention. Patients who had relatives to advocate for them got help, she said. But Magana was alone.

On the fifth day, she was flown to the Italian hospital ship where part of her right leg was amputated. Eventually she was transported to the field hospital in Fond Parisien where Chris Sullivan, an orthopedic surgeon at the University of Chicago, put a rod in her left leg to heal the broken bones. Her wounds were healing and she was wheeling herself around camp. She’d even celebrated her 16th birthday in camp. But still she had no family, no one to help take care of her.

Gillian wanted to contact Magana’s family, who live in a country village unaffected by the earthquake, and let them know Magana was alive. Magana is the youngest sibling of eight girls and two boys.

But Magana wasn’t interested.

“They aren’t going to come for me,” she told Gillian. “They don’t care about me.”

“But where are you going to live?” Gillian pleaded.

“I’ll live with you,” Magana said.

Gillian turned away to wipe her eyes. “I wasn’t expecting that one,” she said to me.

It’s not an unfamiliar fantasy. I’d had children in the camp ask me if I could take them home. And it’s not just the Haitians who wish to go America. Many of us wish we could take them with us. One of the nurses introduced me to a 7-year-old girl, Samanthina, and her mother, Evana. “If I could get papers for her, I’d take her home now,” the nurse said. The little girl’s mother said she, too, wishes her daughter could go to America. “I’m afraid for her future,” she said.

Even if the country manages to reconstruct, the options for the children of Haiti are limited. As if to underscore that point, a 14-year-old boy named Michelet later than evening told me that when his doctor returns to America, he’s certain he’ll take him with him. Michelet told me he doesn’t know where his parents are: “They didn’t come out of the house after the earthquake,” he said. “I guess you’d say they are missing.”

FEBRUARY 27, 2010

Ground Zero in Port-au-Prince: Dead Bodies and Desperation

I have lost my voice in Haiti. I can barely speak and end up in coughing fits when I’m with patients. One patient told me today she would pray for me to get better. Humbling…

It’s cloudy tonight and at moments it’s spitting rain. The rain makes me worry about the people I met yesterday in Port-au-Prince living in shanties constructed of pieces of metal, scrapes of paneling, pieces of tarp, shards of cardboard. My driver, Juma, and I walked through the tent cities, constructed much like an old Moorish city with narrow pathways and maze-like twists and turns.

I expected people to shy away, particularly at the tent city across from the Presidential Palace, which only weeks ago was featured nightly on CNN and other media outlets. But the bright lights are gone and the people who live there want the world to see how they are living. One after another, they came up to me begging me to take a look at how they were forced to live: in a damp spot on the ground, often nothing but a sheet to separate them from the next person, a space no bigger than a twin bed that they shared with their children and their relatives.

“We need tents!” each one pleaded. I suppose I looked official with my notepad and my camera. But what can I do? It’s so frustrating. It’s hard to believe that the mass of Haiti is homeless and yet there are no tents to be found. We’ve even run out of tents at the Fond Parisien field hospital where I am documenting the work of doctors, nurses and physical therapists from the University of Chicago.

Haitians are concerned that when the rainy season comes they won’t have any protection from the elements. It starts seriously raining in about six weeks. Some people are worried that they will end up wet and sick if they can’t get a tent or pieces of metal to keep out the rain. Little boys near the city were gathering cement bricks from the rubble of the Ministry of Interior Defense and loading them in buckets. They lay these on the ground to make a foundation, and then they lay their clothes or bedding on top to make a bed. A bed of rocks.

One man, Sylva Louis, 47, was selling moonshine he’d made out of various fruits outside his metal shack. Sylva spoke excellent English and he lifted his shirt to show me the breast-to-bellybutton scar where he said he’d been shot. He killed the other guy in self-defense, he said, but it didn’t matter; he was deported in 2007. He said he spent 37 years in the United States, mostly working as a cook in Miami and New York.

“I cooked for all the best restaurants and five star hotels,” he said, listing names I didn’t recognize.

He said his shack at first was just sheets but slowly he’s been adding scraps of metal. “When we saw that the government wasn’t going to do anything, then we knew we had to make our own shelter.”

He had two car batteries that were rigged up like a generator that ran a fan and a radio. Nearby he had a line running to a street light where someone had tapped into the electricity.

When Sylva learned I was from Chicago he asked me to call an old girlfriend he had there. He had her number memorized. He wanted me to let her know he was still alive.

Afterwards the driver took me to the nearby Holiday Inn Plaza so we could get something to eat. He ordered rice and chicken. I wanted nothing with rice. Probably ever. I ordered the hamburger. There’s a scattering of people, perhaps some journalists. Juma, who drove for CNN and CBS after the earthquake, said the room used to be packed with journalists. Barbara Streisand is singing on the television, people are tapping into the hotel wifi and ordering cokes. People outside tell me they are starving.

There’s a fine mist of dust everywhere in downtown Port-au-Prince. It is as if we are walking in a fog, a fog of cement and asbestos.  I imagine it’s something like being at Ground Zero right after the attack on September 11. The air is filmy and thick. By the end of the day, I feel like I’ve inhaled nothing but dust and diesel smog. People walk around wearing masks, some of them medical, many of them rags they’ve twisted around their mouths.

When we first arrived in Port-au-Prince in the morning, Juma took me to the downtown area where most of the devastation occurred. I’d had a brief tour of the area two days earlier. This time, though, we walked the streets, taking in the piles and piles of crumbled and mashed cement, some towering three and four stories. It’s hard to convey in words the impact of such a sight. Gray sewage collected in the streets and the smell was of active decay. Personal items were strewn in the street: someone’s handbag, a shoe.

As we walked, a man came up and grabbed Juma’s arm and said in Creole that they had just found two dead bodies up ahead. He offered to show us. I thought perhaps two bodies had been pulled from the rubble, but soon we came upon UN white jeeps and various military men encircling the bodies of two boys who had been beaten to death. Their pants had been torn down to humiliate them and armies of flies had collected around their multiple wounds.

A Canadian military officer told me that they’d discovered the bodies two hours earlier but they didn’t know what had happened. A Haitian police chimed in: “No one in Haiti sees anything. They are too afraid.”

Somehow I thought that would be the worst thing I would see. But then we went to the National Soccer Stadium where the entire Astroturf is populated with sheet and tarp shanties. Walking into the stadium there is a strong, suffocating order of sewage, and once inside I couldn’t help making the comparison to Hurricane Katrina when so many survivors sought refuge at the stadium, which turned out to be nothing like a refuge. As soon as I stepped down onto the field, half a dozen little kids came up and grabbed my pants, checking my pockets. Despite finding nothing, they held onto me the entire time, petting my arm, seeking attention.

During our foray into the shanty maze, we found entire extended families sitting underneath tarps. Someone would summon us, lift up the tarp to their “home” and there would be half a dozen people or more sitting or lying in the heat. One woman insisted I take a picture of her month-old baby. She was born at the stadium.

When we were about to leave, two boys, one 15 years old and the other 11, came up to me and begged me to take them to the orphanage.

“We have no mother or father. We have no tent.” 

FEBRUARY 25, 2010

A View inside a Tent Hospital

I’m in my tent, hoping it doesn’t blow away tonight with the wind. One side has already partially collapsed. In the hills, a Haitian woman is singing what I believe are gospel songs in a squeaky, high-pitch voiced accompanied by a steel guitar. A preacher cuts in occasionally. Most of the time he yells. I wonder what he is saying, if he is happy we are here. His preaching, amplified nightly for all the neighborhood to hear, goes on for hours. We lay in our tents at night waiting for the quiet.

I just had dinner, prepared by Chef Lucky, a Haitian, who prepares 1,000 meals every day with no refrigeration, and until recently, no electric stoves. Breakfast is usually some kind of grits. I avoid this meal and opt for a granola bar. Lunch, served at 2 p.m. is rice sprinkled with a few beans. Every day. Rice and beans. They mound the plate with rice and I always think there’s no way I’m going to eat all that. But I do. It’s the only hot meal we have. Dinner is usually cereal with warm milk. Everything in Haiti is warm. Tonight dinner was warm pudding.

The truth is I feel a little shallow just mentioning my discomforts here. There’s three patients and their families to a tent. The field hospital has run out of tents. A little boy, 11 years old, hobbled into the triage tent tonight and begged to be allowed to sleep in one of the cots in the post-op. He said there were 11 people sleeping in his tent. Dr. Keegan Checkett grimaced and gave him some suckers and told him there wasn’t anywhere else for him to sleep but his tent. He hobbled away on his crutches, looking as if he were about to cry.

The tents are so hot that most patients lay partially naked during the day to stay cool. Those who are ambulatory — and I say ambulatory instead of walk because most of them are not “walking” but in wheelchairs or on crutches or walkers or even have someone carry them — gather under tarps set up for shade or lay on mattresses on the ground under trees. Everyday the hospital absorbs more patients. A nearby hospital in Jimini, Dominican Republic, is closing and sending its patients here.  It seems like there aren’t enough doctors and nurses, especially nurses.

Today I followed around the physical therapists and nurses from the University of Chicago Medical Center. The temperature in the tents was so hot that Melanie Plumley, RN, a pediatric emergency nurse, was caring for patients outside. She cut off a man’s cast in the space of 24 inches in between two tents.

“There’s never enough people. There’s always something to do. I can’t do enough,” Melanie said.

The physical therapists Catherine Kennedy and Megan McDonald urged patients to exercise their injured body parts, especially those with stumps whose muscles need to be stretched. Some patients’ fingers have curled under and Dr. Chris Sullivan had to stretch them out. It’s painful and they don’t want to do it.

Then there are the sick in the surrounding community who have heard about the clinic and believe it can work magic. People do practice voodoo here and our medicine is a bit like that to them. A woman with a young baby wandered into the triage asking someone to help her baby who was nearly a year old and couldn’t sit up. The physical therapists and doctors told the mother that they had to stop coddling the baby and let her sit up. The woman insisted on getting medicine for the baby. “Why won’t you help my baby?” she demanded. The staff told her that what the baby needed was for her to let her baby sit up and stand on its own. They showed her simple exercises to do with the baby. But the mother left dissatisfied. “They think we can perform magic,” one of the triage doctors said. The baby appeared “delayed” and may have some mental disabilities.

Another woman came in with her baby who had a rash over most of her body. It was highly malnourished and eventually had to be rushed to a hospital in Port-au-Prince where it could be incubated.

I spent the afternoon wandering between tents. Through a Haitian interpreter I interviewed several people who had their arms and limbs amputated. They told harrowing stories of being dragged into the streets and left for days before anyone would pick them up.

One of the saddest cases was a young mother, Louphine Demorcy, 31, who has three children. She told me that she is a vendor and at 5 p.m. she was getting ready to go home and was talking to three friends when suddenly the place they were standing opened up.

She said she called out: “Jesus, Jesus, help me.” She was thrown into the street where a store wall fell onto her arm and another wall fell onto her leg. She said that most of the people around her were dead. A man on the street saw her and pulled her out of the rubble. It wasn’t until the next day that someone found her and took her to the hospital, but during the three days there she never saw a doctor. Eventually, she was transported by an ambulance to the Dominican Republic where a doctor told her that he would have to amputate most of her arm and leg because they were affected.

“I didn’t have a hope after I lost my arm and leg,” she said.  “Then I told myself that most people died and Jesus is going to help me.”

Louphine said she does not feel fortunate to have survived, but she feels that it by the grace of God she is alive.

What is apparent from meeting these people is how much of their emotional wounds will have to be addressed in the future. “This is going to be a stump generation,” Melanie told me. “A generation who don’t have arms, legs, whole limbs, fingers.”

FEBRUARY 24, 2010

A Day in Port-au-Prince

I just returned from a day in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Almost any adjective I would give this devastated city would sound trite and overused at this point. And now I sit here in our field hospital listening to people who have amputated arms and legs sing gospel songs.

This is a country of paradox. I found people living in tents pitched on the street because there wasn’t even room on their property to set up a tarp, and they are afraid of more tremors toppling what’s left onto them. And yet they were going about their life as best they could — playing scrabble on a table set up beside their tent. Tall buildings were turned to rubble while other buildings next door remained untouched.

(I apologize in advance: I’m weak and have a sore throat and flu-like symptoms. So if this post is incoherent, that’s why.)

It is true that as we drove into wealthier neighborhoods, places with older estates not unlike mansions in Kenwood, there were fewer ruins. Entire blocks, neighborhoods were spared.  Then a turn down the street revealed a block of rubble, residents living under tarps strung up in the street.

I tagged along with the director of the University of Chicago’s mission, Christian Theodosius, MD, MPH. The purpose of our visit wasn’t to ogle the destruction but to seek approval from the Haiti Health Minister for the Medical Center’s application for a $5 million grant from the United Nations that would keep our field hospital in Fond Parisien running for a year. We just learned that we tentatively have been approved.

The field hospital is about 15 miles outside of Port-au-Prince and is the largest field hospital in all of Haiti. It is a unique collaboration between Harvard University, the University of Chicago and other medical institutions and some NGOs, like Operation Smile. After much waiting outside what could only be called a stone castle built into the hillside — with homeless Haitians living in tents on the front lawn — we were granted a meeting with the attaché to the minister who gave us his conditional approval.

Christian was ecstatic, but our high spirits were tempered when we drove through the most devastated areas, including the downtown where the Presidential Palace —essentially the equivalent of the U.S. White House — was toppled by the earthquake and a settlement of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of tarp shanties and makeshift tents sprouted up on the grass outside the Palace. It would be the equivalent of a tent city on our National Mall. The Supreme Court, a towering structure architecturally similar to our Supreme Court, also had imploded. Still across from the demolished Presidential Palace and in front of his shack home, a child was flying a “kite” made out of a garbage bag, sticks and scrap string.

 

What I didn’t see much of was physically injured people. A few Haitians hobbled around on crutches, but there was nothing like the number of amputees or survivors with external fixators like we have in our field hospital.  Amazingly, our patients maneuver their wheelchairs over gravel to get to the bathroom. Even children with complicated pins and metal rods coming out of their legs and arms saunter through the dirt and dead grass on crutches and walkers.

The most surprising finding was how “normal” some parts of the city seemed to be operating. Venders set up their wares on the street like any other day — offering aavegetables, water, live chickens, car parts — next to piles of rubble on the street. Perhaps the most vivid image today was a man whose barber shop was completely filled with gravel, yet he was digging it out, one shovel at a time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

FEBRUARY 22, 2010

Finally, in Haiti

I'm writing from a small tent in Haiti near the border of the Dominican Republic. Our team of nine from the University of Chicago Medical Center left Santo Domingo this morning a little before 10 a.m. in a small bus carrying 20 bags of medical supplies. Two hours later, we were stopped at the town of Jaquimeyes, about two hours from the border of Haiti. Villagers had lain tree limbs over the road and set them on fire. Little boys on scooters were tooling around setting off firecrackers and a long line of traffic came to a standstill, unable to pass. Apparently the entire town had issued the strike in hopes that by interrupting traffic on a major road to Haiti so that they could get the attention of the government to fix their road.

When our mission leader, Chrissy Babcock, MD, negotiated with some of the strike leaders, they seemed accommodating, but then other drivers were angry that we seemed to were being given preferential treatment. At one point some boys offered to take us on a back road around town, but our driver abandoned that plan almost immediately feeling unsure where the boys might take us.

After an hour of waiting and much back and forth, our bus turned around and we drove the back roads, which were rough and unpaved in many places, until we were able to get back on the main path. We passed through the border about 5 p.m. and eventually arrived at the Love a Child orphanage in Fond Parisien. The founders of the orphanage have been at the camp since 1971. It is an evangelical Christian mission. The owners were kind enough to move their school of 600 so that the field hospital could be set up on their property.

The tents from the crew we are replacing were missing, so Babcock and assistant camp leader Christian Theodosius, MD, MPH, had to have a crew of camp workers set up four more tents for us. After we were finally set up in our tents, we got our first lesson in how to eat an MRE (Meals Ready to Eat). They come in pouches with a packet that when you add water heats up the main meal in tinfoil. My meal was chicken and dumplings and I have to say it wasn’t bad. Others had enchiladas and pasta. We ate in the dark, sitting on the ground or on red buckets that we were given to wash in.

Divided in nine sections, the tent hospital is organized so that the most vulnerable patients are closest to the main area of camp. Patients walk with walkers or wheelchairs over course and dry ground. There’s a triage where several pregnant patients are tonight.

The area is really stunningly beautiful. The forested mountains surround us and a lake is nearby. When we passed the border into Haiti, water from the lake lapped at the road. Apparently it has been rising in recent years and is slowly eroding everything in its path. Soon there will be no more border crossing at Jimini.

At the camp, new bathrooms have been set up to segregate the men from the women. There are still no doors on the bathroom. In fear of the rats, I’ve surrounded the interior of our tent with moth balls. My tent buddy is Karen Arndt, RN, has worked at the Medical Center for nearly 24 years, mostly on the helicopter transport teams. She’s a real trooper. We tied up our food to the roof so the rats and the ants can’t get to them.

FEBRUARY 20, 2010

GOING TO HAITI!

On Wednesday afternoon, I finally got the word that the University of Chicago Medical Center, where I work, was definitely sending a team to Haiti this weekend. It's been a scramble, but I got my shots, am taking my anti-malaria pills and am about to get on a plane. It will take two days to arrive in Fond Parisien where our medical team has set up a tent hospital along with some other U.S. teaching hospitals.

I got to say, I'm a little nervous.

Sure, I've traveled a great deal in my life — Europe, Eastern Europe, Africa, Russia, Turkey, Mongolia, Siberia, China, India — but Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. The stories I'm hearing from those who have come back have been inspiring on one level and frightening on another. One of our pharmacists who just returned from setting up the first pharmacist in Haiti at the tent hospital told me to be careful of the rats at night scurrying around the tents. I'm told to take fly paper to attract the hordes of mosquitoes and flies. They say there are bugs as big as your hand...I'm also told to not expect to take a shower while I'm there and to get over the need for any privacy since there's no such thing as a real bathroom. I'm also told I should pack some alcohol— it makes the nights go easier.

Despite those anxieties, which compared to the Haititans' tragedies seems petty actually, I'm very excited about going and documenting what our doctors and nurses are doing in Haiti. This is really important work and at time when medical care is crucial as Haiti begins its wet season when malaria is the most dangerous.

So, I hope you'll follow my journey here and the journeys of the Haitian people whom I encounter. I also plan to post extensive photos at my Chicago Now blog site. My blog is called "A Chicagoan in Haiti."

FEBRUARY 13, 2010

New Edition Arrives!

This week I received my early copy of Unveiled, the new second edition with the new cover. It looks beautiful!

(The new edition is in the center of the photo and the hardcover is on the left and the paperback is on the right).

I think the cover conveys a more modern image of nuns as women. The designer did a wonderful job as did my editor at Penguin, Denise Silvestro, in selecting review quotes and blurbs. In this time of uncertainty in the publishing industry, I’m really grateful that my book still lives and that there are so many readers curious about the hidden life.

Someone asked me this week how many years I had worked on the book and I was stunned to realize that I’m going into my 13th year since I began my initial research. As the first chapter of Unveiled reveals, I was looking forward to a St. Patrick’s Day party at the house of my good friend Margaret Nelson, a woman who holds dual passports from Ireland and the United States, when a sister from St. Benedict’s in Joseph, Minnesota called me and asked if I’d like to join them for the weekend.

That was March 17, 1998.

And here I am 12 years later still talking and writing about sisters and how much they have affected my life. It’s been a wonderful journey. I’m looking forward to celebrating the new edition launch and soon I’ll be posting reading dates around Chicago where I hope to see some of you. And if you have an idea for an event, or if your book group would like to have me come talk, please send me an email. And don’t forget the book goes on sale March 2!

FEBRUARY 7, 2010

Super Bowl Sunday: Nuns pick winners

It’s that time of the year when football fans who don’t have much faith in anything — let alone religion — turn to nuns who have a propensity to pick winners. In Chicago, we have our own local celebrity nun, Sister Jean Kenny, also called the “Psychic Nun,” who every year picks the winner of football’s biggest game. This year, Sister Jean, a former arts and gym teacher at a now-closed elementary school on the Northwest Side, is predicting a Colts win over the Saints, 31 to 22.

Sister Jean is a media darling and has appeared on CNN, as well as, Jay Leno and Conan O’Brien. What sets Sister Jean apart is that she issues her prediction in rhyme and verse. She also has correctly predicted the winner of the Super Bowl 18 times in the last 24 years. A Providence Sister from the Sisters of Providence of Saint Mary-of-the-Woods in Indiana, Kenny is normally with the saints, she says. The foundress of her order, St. Mother Theodora Guerin, was the eighth American saint.  But this year, Sister Kenny writes in her poem that “the saddened Saints fall from grace and are sore and lame.”

Sister Kenny’s tradition of picking the Super Bowl winners started in 1986 when the Bears were playing. Sister Kenny entered a poem-writing contest for a Chicago radio station. Then she wrote a poem about Bears’ player William “The Refrigerator” Perry that made her one of the contest winners.

This year’s poem is entitled  “Manning’s Miami Masterpiece.”

Welcome back fans to the Sunshine State,
see the galloping Colts sprint out of the gate;
Sean Payton’s “Who Dat” team is dealt their bridesmaid fate,
while the BLUE Dat
winners go on to celebrate.

The penalty prone Saints are confused and slow,
Drew Brees experiences a knock-out blow.
Gentleman Jim Irsay’s team is focused and ready to go.
Coach Caldwell’s game plan unfolds well at the NFL’s biggest show.

Freeney shows “Hoosier Hospitality” as he inflicts some pain.
The saddened Saints fall from grace and are sore and lame.
They played hard but could not live up to their name.
The Colts Stampede In Miami again and win the big game!

 

Sister Kenny isn’t the only nun who predicts the winners. Sister Martha Carpenter, a die-hard Green Bay Packers fan, also predicts the big game winners. Sister Martha runs St. Peter’s Indian Mission School south of Phoenix, Arizona (Chapter Nine of Unveiled) and is frequently featured on the Fox affiliate in Phoenix predicting the winners of various games.

Sister Martha’s office is covered with Green Bay Packer and Phoenix Cardinals pennants, decals and signed photographs of football players. Football is not a matter of life and death: It’s much more important, touted a bumper sticker tacked to her wall.
“I’m a born cheese head, but a born-again Cardinals fan,” Martha told me as she placed her Packers cheese wedge over her veil.

Martha, whose conversations are peppered with arcane sports dates and history, grew up in Green Bay, Wisconsin, within walking distance of Lambeau Field. Her mother’s three brothers played for the Packers, an NFL record, Martha proudly noted.

A Franciscan Sister of Christian Charity, Martha’s order is based in Manitowoc, Wisconsin. They are an order composed of teachers who run Catholic schools in the northern Midwest and the Southwest. Martha has spent her entire teaching career on Indian missions in Wisconsin and Arizona.

Her work at the desert school attracted Cardinal owner Bill Bidwill who has donated much time and money to the school. Martha attends games with Bidwill and has led prayers for a few team events. At one point, her sports dedication garnered the attention of a Fox network producer who asked Martha to predict the winners of several football games one weekend. When she got most of them right, the producer offered her a full-time gig, but Martha declined.

Still, nearly every Super Bowl Sister Martha is asked to make a prediction. Last year, she erroneously predicted the Cardinals would win. Let’s hope Sister Jean has better luck this year.

 

 

JANUARY 31, 2010

Peace Corps, Sisters' Corps: Engaging in Social Justice in our Everyday Lives is Tough

This week I volunteered to go to Haiti. Several doctors and nurses from my hospital were going and I offered to accompany them and document, in words and pictures, their care of injured Haitians. So far, they haven’t taken me up on my offer. It’s too dangerous, they said. Having worked as a journalist for two decades — a job that often placed me in harm’s way covering prisoners, gangs, prostitutes, serial murderers — I found their answer a bit conservative.

Since leaving daily journalism exactly two years ago, I’ve struggled with feeling that my daily work isn’t exactly fulfilling a higher good. True, as an editor and writer, I’m trumpeting scientific and medical breakthroughs that save lives, but those efforts pale in comparison to the doctors who are actually saving the lives. The stories I write and edit these days are longer and more complex than just about anything I did at the newspaper. That’s one of the drawbacks of daily journalism: It has to be short, to the point and often simplistic.

I don’t miss much about newspapers these days. The stories are even shorter and most of the ink goes to covering prosaic politics and the lives of celebrities. What I do miss about my former ink-stained days is the social justice component that working at a daily newspaper offered.  Much of what I did as a reporter was uncovering stories of people wronged and needing a champion for their cause. I admit I’m a sucker for the underdog.

This week when I thought about going to Haiti, it reawakened that activism drive within me. I was excited by the prospect of being in the thick of helping people, being a witness to lives changed. The truth is it’s hard to feel that every day we’re making the world a better place, helping people who don’t have advocates, who don’t have power. It’s the aspect that’s hardest to achieve in our daily lives.

My assistant editor, a young woman who has traveled throughout many third world countries, told me she often feels she should apologize for having joined the Peace Corps. People tell her she was naïve for having taken off a couple of years to go hang out in poor countries. I was stunned that anyone would make her feel anything but proud for having responded to the needs of others.

I never joined the Peace Corps. I always toyed with the idea. I had a husband and kids. In a way, I felt traveling the country and hanging out with sisters who were active in caring for the poor, homeless, the undocumented, taught me the value of giving, taught me the deep rewards for having lived among those who don’t have so much. When you are in constant contact with people who have so little, who don’t know how they are going to eat or where they are going to sleep, it puts your own meager troubles in perspective.

That's how Lupe made me feel. I'd only just arrived at the Franciscan Sisters' birthing clinic on the border of Texas and Mexico, when the sisters paired me up with Lupe. She didn't speak English and I didn't speak Spanish. But I held her hand for nearly 24 hours until she bore her seventh child. Knowing Lupe made me feel humble. She lived in a shack that leaked when it rained. She had no running water or toilet. But she survived. Somehow, I had far fewer needs when I was hanging out with the sisters than I do now and I make a lot more money now.

I miss those adventures in my normal life. I miss seeing and experiencing all the ministries of the sisters, even if they were simply protesting or delivering bread or holding the hand of a young woman giving birth. Nuns have a rich and vibrant life and I feel fortunate for having lived vicariously through them, if only for a few years. In a way, I was in the Sisters Corps.

JANUARY 24, 2010

Wanted: Seven women, between the ages of 20 and 40 who want to spend the rest of their lives at church camp — or something like it.

Today a unique monastery set in innercity Minneapolis is launching a campaign to double its size. With seven sisters, the monastery wants to attract seven more sisters in the next three years. The women are specifically targeting young women between the ages of 20 and 40 years old. This monastery has garnered a great deal of outside interest over the years as it experimented with various kind of monastic commitments, including allowing married couples and single men and women to live among the sisters but without taking the same vows.

This time, though, the sisters are looking for women who want to sign up for the rest of their lives.

The Visitation Monastery (Chapter Two of Unveiled) has always been one of my favorite places. Their monastery feels a lot like church camp to me: lots of praying and singing, informal meals, group activities, trips, impromptu get-togethers, assorted people dropping by, ice cream and sprinklers out back in the summer and late-night giggling. Though the sisters are contemplative and place a high value on prayer, they live in two old houses in a poor section of town and intertwine their lives with those of the community.

When they first moved in twenty years ago, the Visitation Sisters thought they would simply be "a presence" in the midst of the chaotic atmosphere of an underserved part of town. But the sisters quickly learned that weaving their lives with their neighbors would require more. A drug dealer was shot dead outside their back stairs and Sister Katherine Mullin held the man in her arms during his last few minutes on earth. Over the past two decades, the sisters have become an integral part of the neighborhood, hosting play times for kids and taking them to camp, providing counseling to adults and becoming advocates for those who often don't have a voice.

"Our ministry of presence on the North Side is boundless," said Sister Katherine (shown in the photo above with some of the neighborhood kids.) "We want to expand our monastery so more sisters can be there for our neighbors."

One night while I stayed with Visitation sisters, Sister Katherine and I sat up late drinking beer and eating popcorn. Yeah, even sisters drink beer. That's what I thought was so wonderful about these sisters. They might be singing and praying at all hours of the day and anyone could walk in and join them.

So, today, the feast day of the Visitation Order founder St. Francis de Sales, the sisters kick off their campaign. As part of that outreach, the sisters have created a new Web site. They plan to target churches and young adult groups. They'll host discernment evenings to help women figure out if their special kind of life is of interest. The sisters also say they'll be making a public relations push, using advertising and blogging and social media. Like I said, this is a group of women with modern ideas.

Check out their Web site at www.visitationmonasteryminneapolis.org and by all means, if you know a young woman who hasn't quite found the right community, tell her about these sisters. If I wasn't married, this might be the place I'd join...

JANUARY 16, 2010

What would you do if you’d worked 50 years and then realized the culmination of your cause wasn’t going to happen in your lifetime? Like most people, you’d probably give up or, at the very least, become discouraged.

But Sister Linda Kulzer, a Benedictine from St. Joseph, Minnesota, refuses to quit. At 80 years old, she has been a witness for nearly half a century to the women’s movement within the Catholic Church, specifically the push to ordain women as priests.

“I was in my early thirties when Vatican II (1962 – 1965) took place,” she said. “Almost right away we saw the great strides that were being made by women in the church — being lectors and Eucharistic ministers. Occasionally women were being asked to preach. Young girls were able to be altar servers. We began to believe that ordination for women was not far off.”

On Thanksgiving, 1975, Sister Linda and 1,200 other sisters and several bishops gathered in Detroit for the first Women’s Ordination Conference. About 125 women indicated they wanted to become priests. When she returned home, a priest from the nearby Abbey inquired about the conference and when Linda explained what had happened, he seemed impressed. Then he asked her when she thought the Church would allow women to be ordained. “I told him by 1990.”

Well, it’s 20 years later and Sister Linda is still waiting.

There have been multiple setbacks along the way; the biggest was in 1994 when a papal edict forbade Catholics from even discussing women’s ordination.

“Can you imagine telling the people of God that they are forbidden to even discuss a matter of doctrine?” Sister Linda said. “This order was impossible to obey — it was like asking a person to stop thinking.”

Gradually it began to dawn on Sister Linda and others that there was little likelihood that the Catholic hierarchy or the Pope had any intention of ordaining women. That’s when women decided they would have to ordain themselves, without authorization from the Church. On June 29, 2002, seven women were ordained by a bishop from Argentina on the banks of Danube River. Within weeks, all seven women were excommunicated by the Church.

Since then at least 10 more ordination ceremonies have taken place. At least 25 women from the U.S. and Canada have been ordained as priests and 12 to 14 have been ordained as deacons. None of these women have been excommunicated. Sister Linda and others see this as real progress.

You might wonder why ordaining women is so important. I think you have to realize that many Protestant churches allow — albeit encourage — women to be ordained. The Orthodox Church has always allowed married priests to be ordained. In this day and age, it just seems sexist to insist that men lead. There’s a huge priest shortage and 65 percent of the laity say they would like to see women become priests (something like 75 percent believe priests should be allowed to marry.)

When people try to justify institutionalized prejudice against women under the auspices of “religion,” I always argue that if church law declared only a white man could be ordained, would there be any argument that the rule was obviously passed during a time of certain cultural oppression and shouldn’t be upheld?

In 2006, Sister Linda attended an ordination of women. “It was an unusually profound experience for me,” she said. When she saw a woman she knew standing in full chasuble and priestly robes begin the Mass, Sister Linda began to weep.

“I had likely attended at least 18,000 Masses in my lifetime,” Sister Linda said. “Every one of those 18,000 Masses in the past was presided over by a man.”

I always thought it strange after spending days in a monastery without seeing a man to then walk into the chapel and have a man presiding at the altar. It seemed so unfair that the sisters had managed to form a community all of their own, outside the Church, supporting themselves, and yet they still were required to have a man come in to lead Mass, the most important ritual of their spiritual lives.

Sister Linda says she is heartened by these recent rebel ordinations. I’m inspired by Sister’s Linda’s tenacity. I don’t think it’s likely that the Catholic Church will reverse course soon. But these women are doing what the early female saints did: listening to their faith, even at great cost.

JANUARY 10, 2010

I was saddened this week when I learned that a former colleague of mine and another colleague of my husband's were both laid off at newspapers in Minnesota. It’s a tough time for everyone, especially those in the media. Over the last two years, I've watched many talented journalists laid off from jobs in which they treated more like a vocation. Sadly, it’s the tragedies of others that often remind us how grateful we are of our own circumstances.

At the same time, some good news has come out of a monastery in Minnesota. I heard from one of my dear Benedictine friends this week, a sister who is eighty years old and still passionate about her beliefs. An author, the sister is active in the movement to ordain women in the Catholic Church. She sent me a talk she gave recently about the modern movement to ordain women priests in the Church. (Perhaps in a later blog, with her permission, I can talk more in-depth about her convictions.) She has been active in the Women's Ordination Conference since its inception in 1974, and yet she hasn't given up, despite the strong papal reaction. (In 1994, a papal edict forbade Catholics from discussing women's ordination.) My friend's steadfast belief and determination inspires me. She's truly a gutsy woman and we could all learn a great deal from women like her who are willling to stake everything on their beliefs.

Speaking of strong women, I heard from a couple of HBO documentary filmmakers who are searching for young women currently discerning whether they should become sisters. There's something compelling about religious life when contemporary media are intrigued by mysteries of the call. These young filmmakers — one whose own mother was a nun — are determined to show the interior struggle that a woman must go through before she commits to an order. If you know of such a woman or an order that is attracting such young women — I've mentioned several in my book including the Franciscan Sisters of the Martyrs of St. George in Alton, Illinois —feel free to send me an email.

This week we've had two feet of snow at the farmhouse. Greg and I arrived Saturday morning to a driveway that was up to our waists in snow. I personally find the snow incredibly beautiful, especially the quiet as it blankets the woods and the ground. It's truly breath-taking.

 

JANUARY 2, 2010

It's the winter's first major snow storm at our farmhouse in Indiana. We already have about a foot of snow and meteorologists have promised another. The snow is blowing sideways and I'm snuggled up in my studio. A roaring fire is burning in the wood stove and snow is blowing around outside.

I find that this is a good time of year to retreat and consider the year past and the year ahead, what I hope to achieve and how I failed to succeed at certain goals in the previous year. My resolutions are not rules, per se, but I view them as guidelines as to what I hope to accomplish in the new year. Some resolutions appear every year — exercise more, read more books, write more — but sometimes it's just a formal way of reminding myself what my life's mission statement is for the coming year.

The nuns call this discernment, a period when a person seriously reflects on a decision, praying and meditating about that decision before committing. Others might simply call it a time of reflection. Whatever you call it, I hope you make space to listen to your inner voices that tell you what's most important. And I wish you all success and happiness in this new year.

DECEMBER 22, 2009

Welcome to my new blog at nunsunveiled.com. I imagine this space as a vehicle for me to gather my thoughts about writing, religion, women’s issues and larger philosophical questions. This is not a blog limited to a discussion about nuns or sisters or religious women, but I’m hoping to use those subjects as jumping off points for further discussions and ruminations. Suffice it to say, if you are interested in the book Unveiled and the topics explored within — feminism, women’s religious orders, the search for a meaningful life, community, faith, peace, fighting for social justices, writing, meditation, having a voice, etc. — then you should be interested in the topics I explore here.

For starters, let me explain why we have revamped the Unveiled Web site. After years of continued interest in the book, the publisher, Berkley at Penguin/Putnam, decided to reissue the book in a new format this coming spring. Over the years, interest in nuns has come from varying and disparate audiences and there seems to be no shortage of interest from the media, either. Just this fall, I have been contacted by writers and producers from National Public Radio and the Wall Street Journal and film makers who routinely produces documentaries/movies for HBO.

I know what it’s like to be in those writers and producers shoes. When I first became interested in learning more and writing about religious sisters, I scoured libraries and the Internet for books that would help my research about contemporary religious women. I found virtually none. Most were historical texts. There were a few from established authors, but those were also historical in nature and usually only delved into the lives of one order. I was interested in the vast dichotomy of the orders I was beginning to experience.

That’s why, ten years after I first began my pursuit into women’s religious orders, Unveiled remains a relevant and informative narrative about today’s Catholic nuns and sisters. The research spanned more than five years and included interviews with more than 300 sisters from 50 different religious orders. I continue to hear from many of the women in the book. Some have died, others have chosen not to remain in a religious order, most continue to their lives just as committed as when I first interviewed them. This blog, perhaps, can update and supplement the stories and narratives contained in the book.

For now, I’m hard at work writing a novel that has nothing to do with religious sisters. But those topics that inspired me to travel inside the unknown territories of religious communities still inspire me to think about all the mentioned issues. I hope to continue to explore those topics here and I hope you’ll join me. Feel free to send me messages at cheryl@nunsunveiled.com or offer topics of discussion. With your permission, I’ll post those who care to share their own views.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

- Cheryl