A Little After Sunrise

Ever since being introduced to Nancy Drew and her blue roadster, I’ve been hooked by mystery novels, especially those with memorable characters such as Nancy, Bess and George, Miss Marple (Agatha Christie), Kinsey Milhone (Sue Grafton’s A is for Alibi series), and most recently, Armand Gamache of Three Pines, Quebec (Louise Penny). When Penny’s most recent book, “Glass Houses,” became available, I wasn’t waiting for my name to reach the top of the “hold” list at the library. Instead, I purchased a hardcover copy of my own, eager to read the next volume in the series Maureen Corrigan describes as “deep and grand and altogether extraordinary.”  

In “Glass Houses,” Penny introduces the concept of a cobrador del frac, a historic figure who follows debtors and shames them into paying their debts. Gamache sets the stage when he testifies of the cobrador: “I knew there was something wrong when the figure in the black robe appeared on the village green.” Indeed, as the story unfolds, we meet Penny’s invention, a black-garbed cobrador who becomes a conscience to those without one. The mystery revolves around the death of the cobrador, intertwined with a dark, compelling drama rooted in the opioid epidemic.

Writing for STAT, a national publication focused on finding and telling compelling stories about health, medicine, and scientific discovery, Max Blau notes: “Deaths from opioids have been rising sharply for years, and drug overdoses already kill more Americans under age fifty than anything else. There are now nearly one hundred deaths a day from opioids, a swath of destruction that runs from tony New England suburbs to the farm country of California, from the beach tons of Florida to the Appalachian foothills.” And, special or not, the deadly reach of opioid addiction has struck Ashland County, Ohio as well.

Mayoral candidate Sandra Tunnell hears about it on a regular basis: “As I am out and about talking to people, the number one issue I hear them being concerned about is our drug epidemic. What can we do to protect our friends and families and turn this around?” Her opponent on the November ballot, Matt Miller, shares her concern: “It’s easy to point fingers, but it’s time to start addressing the problems and saving lives. We all have a role.” 

Recently, the Cincinnati Enquirer sent reporters into the field for seven days, and the ensuing series was heartbreaking in its ordinariness and scope. Those caught in this epidemic’s suffocating web aren’t mobsters or hardened criminals, just ordinary people. Eighteen deaths, at least 180 overdoses, fifteen newborns with heroin-related medical problems – in one week. With fewer people here, our numbers are smaller, but are still too many.

So what do we do? Ohio’s Senator Sherrod Brown understands the approach is many-faceted as he discussed with NPR’s “On Point:” “It’s prevention; it’s education; it’s medication-assisted therapy; it’s trying to keep some of these drugs out of the country – although you can never arrest your way out of this . . . When you talk about addiction, somebody always has a story to tell. Tears come to eyes. People tell the story of an addicted sister they have, or a child . . . It breaks people’s hearts, and it’s the biggest public health crisis of our lives in this state and in this country.”

The fictional black-masked cobrador of Three Pines stood silent, accusing. Something is wrong. Yet finger-pointing and darkness, silence and shame do not bring healing from an epidemic. Instead, along with prevention, treatment, and law enforcement, the less measurable elements of light and voice play a role. When the opioid epidemic is only numbers, it is beyond us, not our problem. But when voices are lifted and faces unveiled, numbers become brothers, sisters, parents, children. This is us.

Paraphrasing the Enquirer’s opening line, “It’s a little after sunrise on the first day of another week, and Ashland is waking up again with a heroin problem.” The cobrador of death and overdose bears witness to that truth on our village green. There may be “no one story or one way out,” as Ruth Stender understands, but together, our shared stories and pain will help us find our way to the light.

Pigs, Horses, and Cows, O My

“When’s the fair, Nana?” The lovely Madelyn Simone raised that question at least a dozen times this summer, and on Sunday, I could finally answer, “Today!” With the delightful, determined Elizabeth Holiday in and out of the stroller, our family wandered through the fair, checking out the home improvement booths, cheering on Madelyn as she pedaled mightily at the kiddie tractor pull, sampling the grease-laden fair food, and even dodging an escaped pig.

After patiently visiting the animals, Madelyn was ready for action: “Can we go on the rides now?” I dutifully paid for the wristband, and Madelyn led the way to the site where the dragon roller coaster has traditionally stood, only to discover a bare patch of ground where the entrance was supposed to be. Her favorite fair experience was MIA. How could it be? Too short to be admitted to the thrill-seeking rides and even the slide (unless accompanied by her unwilling grandmother), the kid’s roller coaster had been just right. The kiddie ride alternatives were lacking in the thrill factor, and our seven-year-old was not pleased. I sure hope the roller coaster returns next year.

One of my favorite fair activities isn’t on the schedule, but its art form occurs throughout the fairgrounds: people-watching. You never know what – or who – you’re going to see at the fair. I saw some great t-shirts, with my favorite, “It’s a sheep thing: ewe wouldn’t understand.” I also recognized many faces, and got a good number of hugs as a result. But I also spent time looking at the faces of those I didn’t know, wondering what their stories might be. Some were savoring their yearly funnel cake, while others looked as though their last meal had been sour grapes. I listened for the stories etched between the lines on elderly faces, and cringed when harsh words were spoken to little children. I also wondered as to what might have transpired in the lives of fairgoers since the last time they strolled the fairgrounds.

And so? Two thoughts come to mind. First, our faces do speak. “He had the look of one who had drunk the cup of life and found a dead beetle at the bottom,” wrote P. G. Wodehouse, while Carson McCullers suggests, “In his face there came to be a brooding peace that is seen most often in the faces of the very sorrowful or the very wise.” As my eyes scanned the folks passing by, I saw a few signs of beetles and bitterness, but also glimpses of peace and joy.

My stream-of-consciousness musing about faces brings me to the United Way’s theme for this year, “Faces of Change.” Kicked off during fair week, our local United Way helps to facilitate positive change among the residents of Ashland County, reminding us of our ability and responsibility to make a difference in our own community.

I couldn’t identify them individually, but the law of averages tells me I saw faces ravaged by the opiate epidemic. I saw hungry faces. I saw faces weighed down by mental health concerns. I saw faces whose bodies have no permanent homes. Yet I also know that the partner agencies of United Way are in business to rebuild these same scarred faces, not with plastic surgery but with proven methods that open doors and windows for change, infusing hope rather than Botox.

My second aha! moment at the fair began in the cow barn, as two-year-old Elizabeth pointed and exclaimed, “cow.” In the horse barn, the same. In the pig barn, she continued to insist, “cow,” even though we corrected her, “no, that’s a pig.” She was adamant; those big animals were all cows. Perhaps her little eyes simply identified them as gigantic, four-legged creatures, more like each other than different. By next year’s fair, she’ll be able to differentiate between the cows, pigs and horses, doing so by color, size, and even markings. But for now, they are alike rather than different. Maya Angelou said it best: “We can learn to see each other and see ourselves in each other and recognize that human beings are more alike than we are unalike.” Just like cows, horses, and pigs!

Burn It Down

I’ve been enamored with story for as long as I can remember. Whether through oral tradition, book, or film, the telling of a story grabs my attention in ways that border on addiction. If I give myself permission, I can watch Law and Order reruns endlessly, captured by the opening tease and the “so-do” of its haunting theme music. 

I’m often on the lookout for stories with historical content or personal connections to place or person. When we first moved into our house, I had great hopes of discovering a diary or journal under the eaves of the attic in the hundred-year home, as I knew its walls had great stories to tell. But alas, no literary discovery has been made.

My friend Judy (best known as the Dr. Judy of Kroc Center fame), is in possession of pages from a nineteenth-century diary that she shared with our writing group. The writer detailed her days on the farm, and as Judy read, I jotted down my favorite phrase: “Today, I basted my corset.” I’m glad that’s not on my to-do list for this week.

Often, the words scribbled on the pages of our daily lives are just as ordinary as the corset-construction, little different from social media posts detailing meals prepared and trips taken. So when my friend Pete handed me a paint-splattered folder, filled with onion-skin pages of typing and penciled words in cursive handwriting, I wondered if I’d find any corsets between its covers. Instead, as I created a Word document to preserve the pages of his mother’s writing and to print a few copies for his family and friends, I found a wonderful combination of history, adventure, and philosophy woven throughout the true account of a young family’s attempt at a “Green Acres” type of life, absent the television-watching pig, Arnold Ziffel.

If the plot line of “Green Acres” is a bit hazy, it told of Oliver Wendell Douglas (Eddie Albert), a New York lawyer, and his wife, Lisa (Eva Gabor), who, sight unseen, bought a rundown farm in Hooterville. It’s hard now to believe the popular network comedy debuted more than fifty years ago, as I can still sing along with the theme song. “Green Acres is the place to be, farm living is the life for me . . .”

Almost twenty years before the Douglas family decided to move to Hooterville to follow Oliver’s dreams, Larry and Alice Twitchell forged their own path from the city to Mifflin, Ohio. Had Alice’s account of their experience on a run-down farm not languished in that folder since the mid-fifties, I might have thought their small farm had inspired the popular comedy show, as they had nearly as many misadventures as did Oliver and Lisa.

Their only vehicle was a surplus army truck that served as tractor and family car. A middle-of-the-night ceiling collapse, the cantankerous oil stove, (evil smelling varmint that it was), the vagrant bovine Josephine, and brandy-fed chickens all give a glimpse of humor alongside the back-breaking work of life on a farm with no running water, no electricity, and a land so worn out that “even the weeds look tired and weak.”

Like Oliver, they too hoped for a new life, even as they were urged to abandon their dream. “No matter what you do to this,” said Larry’s brother Jack, “it’ll never be any better than its worst. All of his work will be just thrown away. If it were mine, I’d burn it down.” Larry responded to Alice, “If you can stand this discouraging place, we’ll do our best to make it work.”

And that they did. The young carpenter and his artist-wife created “the frame in which we shall dwell,” a simple home, an adequate livelihood, and a childhood remembered with joy and adventure rather than deprivation.

In recording her experiences and her philosophical observations, Alice Twitchell collected “fragments out of life” that she was afraid might “die away when the telling is done.” Fortunately, hers is a story whose telling is not yet done, as “the essence of new dreams richly blend with the old” in her book, “Burn It Down,” now available at Local Roots and amazon.com.

 https://www.createspace.com/7379175