WIBC Interview 090728
Today I was given a surprise phone call by producer Dan at the 93.1 FM WIBC,
asking if Terri and Joe of the morning team could have me on this morning for a brief interview/ check-in. It has been three weeks since I was on the program and I have had a lot of people asking about why I wasn’t on the radio. I told them I don’t think it is “news”, but it is fascinating. So when I received the phone call, I readily agreed. Plus I just love Terri Lynn Stacey and Big Joe Stayzniak. They are two of my favorite people.
Here is the interview: 09-0728-WIBC-no07-sm
Basically they recapped a bit for those who had never heard me speak on the radio before and also talked a bit about the brown recluse spider bite I received recently. The funniest part of the interview was the very beginnning before I was even put on live with them. Joe was frantically trying to put back together Terri’s microphone which had a missing screw. I was cracking up!! Terri had a screw loose. Imagine?!
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Wow today I saw Antonio and I didn’t know who he was. I had often wondered about him. He left such an impression as a junior high student. He was cooler than cool, fathered a child while in Jr. High and probably consider himself as super stud.
I never really could reach Antonio. He was just too cool, too occupied with his teen celebrity status. He did show up, every once in a while to class, to learn about character issues. I never really felt that I had his attention. He must have dropped out of school. He dropped out of sight but never out of mind.
One day in his prime, I saw Antonio. He was high as a kite, hanging out around Post Road. He didn’t even know who I was, the one trying to be his mentor time and time again. When I got his attention, it was funny to him. Enjoy your high, Antonio, I thought. This is the thanks I get for trying to help.
Months progressed and a new school year developed. One day, the kids told me that Antonio got shot late one night on the streets. He is paralyzed, they said. You can’t take gossip too seriously but the kids never really lie concerning things of this nature. Again Antonio was out of sight but not out of mind.
Yesterday, I was downtown at the City County Building, the county seat of Indianapolis. To see all of my brothers in various stages of desperation is quite a sight. Perhaps this is where the terminology “hot mess” is derived. It’s one thing to be on probation and parole with business inside the government seat…It’s quite another thing to go before the judge or the criminal justice system with your pants on backwards or half down your butt.
And then I leave and head to my car. I see this fellow in a wheelchair. I thought that he was going to beg for money. I steered clear. But then I got a glimpse. There was something noticeable. It bothered me. As the distance that was once short grew longer, the Lord gave me a revelation. That was Antonio. His legs looked like toothpicks. Of course, that had to have been him. The kids said he had been paralyzed. He looked much darker in complexion and beyond helpless. All of a sudden, life just didn’t seem fair. He never had a chance.
How is it that the Senator of Indiana could have a wife receiving one million dollars simply for sitting on the board of Wellpoint while individuals like Antonio suffer at such a terrible rate? I don’t know where to begin to bridge this gulf. We worry about the education of our children but if they work their whole life away for an organization like Wellpoint, a million dollars may never be granted. Something has got to give. To redistribute the wealth, one gets called a socialist. Yet is turns out that the wealthy just lied and cheated their way to wealth while getting corporate bailout as a reward for bankrupting their companies.
Space Crazy
As the world celebrates today as the 4oth Anniversary of Apollo 11’s first man to land on the moon, I have slipped into
some nostalgic thoughts. July 20, 1969: I was 7 years old and my parents took us on our summer vacation to a provincial park in Canada where we stayed in the first cabin camping that I can remember.
On the night of the lunar landing, we kids looked up at the moon like we would be able to see the astronauts that everyone said were circling the moon and going to land on it. The thought of a man landing on the moon in the sky is hard for a little seven year old to comprehend.
We kids were sound asleep when my father came into our bedroom and carried us in our PJs to the main lodge house to watch the landing on a little black and white TV. For us young one’s any occasion that let us be awake in the middle of the night was memorable. Dad hauled us to the TV so that we could watch history happen. It was so cool.
Along with the actual event itself, was the dawning of an Apollo era of memories. Most memorable of them was the introduction of Tang as the Space Drink and there were the famous Space Food Sticks (I preferred the peanut butter flavor). Here is a link to that Space Food Sticks.
There was also a series of rather attractive glasses that we collected by filling up the car at the local filling station. Mom collected all the set of Apollo glasses. : ) Wow, what memories. What do you remember?
Sounds Like?— a Lot of Work
Today was a special day for me; I officially began speech therapy. It has been two months exactly since my speaking voice has changed from my normal Midwest farmer’s daughter dialect to one that sounds clearly like that of a foreigner trying to speak English.
Though I had my initial analysis with the speech therapy department on May 20th, they had only the original neurologist’s diagnosis of “disarthria,” which is just an official word for “slurred speech” often caused by a neurological problem in mechanically producing the sounds. However, my speech is not really slurred as much as “accented”.
My therapist today said that we will focus on identifying which sounds I am getting wrong and then correcting those sounds. She told me that I seemed to be doing a fairly good job of “catching myself” producing the incorrect sounds. There are just so very many sound combinations that are not coming out properly in my everyday speech that it is a LOT of work.
One of the sounds that I know I have a great deal of trouble with is the “TH” sound. The words “there or their”, “mother or father” are mispronounced as “Dar, mudder, and fadder.” That TH is a killer for me. When I try to slow down and really make my mouth form the sound it causes my tongue to tickle my lower teeth and lips together. It feels like when we used to make that kazoo sound by using a comb and a piece of paper OR when we took a very thick blade of grass held just-so in our cupped hands and blowing to produce that incredible buzzing sound like a kazoo.
Though I have spent the last two months working on putting the long A’s into words like table and baby. Now, the real work begins as I carry around a notebook and notate as many mispronounced words as I can. This phonetic journal should help me identify some of the biggest problems that I am having in accented speech. It is just that there are so very many accented words in my normal speech, that I get a bit discouraged as I wonder if I’ll be able to work my way back to my regular voice.
I got excited when my speech therapist said that she had worked with a lot of people with foreign accents… I suddenly felt like this was something I was not so alone in. However, then she corrected my thinking. These foreign speakers were actually from that other country, not like me. Unlike the Japanese lady that my therapist was able to help with r’s and l’s; my dialect is not from any one language so we don’t have the typical pointers like if you are from Sweden then you have very strong UU’s or French has a very nasal and broad A. My accent is literally “all over the map”.
So. . . where to begin? One word at a time. I remember two months ago when I first came out of the hospital I couldn’t say “yesterday,” without hitting hard brick walls between each syllable. Now, it is still somewhat slower that my old voice, but I have gotten that word to come out more naturally. One little victory with hopefully many more to come.
No Interview on 7-7
I was asked by several different people why I didn’t talk on WIBC radio this week. I told them that there was just too much happening in the world for me to even fit in the normal Tuesday morning time slot. Blessed boss of WIBC Tom Sevarino lost his battle with cancer. The “gloved one” Michael Jackson’s memorial service planned in California had all of the police and media in a tizzy. How could a small town gal with a rare disorder that is unknown by even much of the medical community compete with that? LOL. Nah, the radio producer even was kind enough to call to apologize, but I totally understand. News was happening.
It was funny, because one of my friends tweeted me fearing that she had missed the time slot of the report. She usually is driving into work at that time and finds the topics we discuss interesting. It has been eye-opening to see how very many people are familiar with Eastside Ellen’s foreign accent syndrome story. They all tell me that it is fascinating, which it is. I’ve run into people at the grocery store, church, the bank and recently the hospital who ask if I am Eastide Ellen. All of them smile!! Yes! They are also so kind as to show true empathy. These people are not just listening into a report, but are identifying with it. What would they do if this happened to them? That’s part of what I love about growing up and living in central Indiana; people really care about their neighbors.
At this point I am unsure as to whether I will continue to report at WIBC on Tuesday mornings. Perhaps the story is no longer newsworthy. I don’t know how programming decisions are made. All I do know is that I am going through something that is so very rare that even mainstream medical doctors don’t know how to handle it. There is an opportunity for pioneering medical research to be made, and I am the kind of person that will share it all. I totally believe that God remains in control of every detail. I trust that there is an ultimate good that will be realized as a result of this trial and the events that are happening even now. I derive great joy in knowing that there are people who are standing beside me in both “good thoughts” and prayers, who are as perplexed as I am. and who are as fascinated and dumbfounded as even the local medical community. We may not know the answers yet, but it is comforting to know that Hoosiers join together in an attempt to help each other.
It is for just such a reason that being on WIBC 93.1 FM “the News and Talk of Indiana” has been a great source of comfort, inspiration, intrigue and humor in a time that otherwise could threaten to undo a person. I am so very proud to call myself a Hoosier — albeit one that sounds like some kind of foreigner. I am still a farmer’s daughter, even though my voice may stand out a bit more when calling in the cows : D
Reconnecting
I have been enjoying one of the great benefits of social media lately. That is, reconnecting. I have rediscovered old high school classmates and neighbors. Once I find one, then they have a couple more that they have to suggest and the “friends” list grows.
This demonstrates to me not only the power of today’s social media and the world wide web, but also how much of an impact just one person can have. As my friends list continues to grow I am not out to place additional names on some list for the sake of numbers. Rather, I am amazed at the number of people who have touched my life or shared my life with me in some way.
It is not just the world wide web that connects us… No… it was far before computers were even invented that we were connected. God the Father intended for us to go out into the world and share our lives with one another. We make an impact where we are and with whom we are surrounded. That is why I like to think of myself as a “Walmart Missionary”… I will use the opportunity of standing in a shopping line to say hello to a total stranger and share a piece of life with them. Oh how marvelous it is when we are talking about the joys of living and walking in the ways of the Lord!