Mom's Obsession with Oktoberfest

"There are two kinds of music: German music, and bad music," said H.L. Mencken in last week's Crypto-Quote in the Gazette. It was the last thing my mother needed to read right before Octoberfest (no, OKTOBERFEST, she'd say).

My mother is American, Iowan, and fourth-generation German. This means her great-great-great-grandparents got brave one day, one year, one century, and they found their way out of Baden Baden or Schleswig Holstein and made it to Iowa in the mid-1800s. They farmed. They ate potatoes. They raised pigs, milked cows, and hitched the plow to giant workhorses. They worked up an appetite, drank beer, ate bacon and potatoes and pie crust made of lard. They spoke German until Hitler caused people with German last names all sorts of shame and embarrassment. My mom's father spoke German and English until he was in kindergarten. To this day he says he doesn't like Germans or Germany, accordions, The Amana Colonies, or anything German--unless it's edible. He likes bratwurst and sauerkraut, pies, potato salad, pickled herring, pickled anything, and other weird things that led to Germans being known as Krauts. The point I am making here is that any German in my mother's blood is wearing thin. An ocean, a century or two, Hitler, and several generations of DNA have come between Mom and the land of the cuckoo clock, the castle and the accordion. Please note I did not mention Germany as the Land of the Nibelungenlied. Mom is obsessed with "the German Illiad" too.

Mom was raised in the 1970s in a time when people had access to record players, radios and televisions. I mention this because technology brought us music with the flick of a switch, which liberated the world from live music. These days, we think of live music as a good thing, but there was a time when the only available music came from local musicians who only know how to play accordions  fiddles or harmonicas. "Little Brown Jug" and "Turkey in the Straw" were the popular tunes of the day.  However, by the time my mother could walk and talk, nobody played those songs anymore. Not even old people in nursing homes listened to or danced polkas, Schottisches and waltzes. Most of civilization had come to hate polka music--unless it was October and they all got really drunk first. Mom, through some peculiar back-flip of the DNA, likes German music. She likes it morning, noon or night. She likes it from the beginning of October through the end of September the next calendar year. To be fair, she likes Mozart and Mahler too, but her favorite music of all is The Underdog theme song because of the accordion nobody but Mom would ever hear in that song.

If anyone thinks it's bad enough to grow up in the 21st Century with a mother who left her heart in Munich before she was even born, imagine a mother who drags her children to hear accordion music played live. This happened in Swisher, Iowa, when a Mr. and Mrs. Livermore carried their children to polka dances. Their daughter Becky caught the polka bug and started taking accordion lessons at age ten. She has since recorded ten CDs as Barefoot Becky and the Ivanhoe Dutchmen. Every year she and her band play awful songs at the Amana Colonies Oktoberfest. The worst song of all has to be "O Du Schone Schnitzelbank," and if you think the photo is bad, try clicking on the you-tube link and listening to the song!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igvuCl3udgU&feature=related

Every year, my mother lures us to the Amana Colonies with promises of parades, sugar cookies that never taste as good as they look, hamburgers that taste better than they look, and pretty pumpkin decorations. Somehow, she manages to keep us in the Amanas until she's gotten to hear that awful song. Grandpa tells me the words, as sung by Barefoot Becky, are the same words he learned, and they're stupid enough to kill brain cells on impact.

Ist das nicht ein Schnitzelbank? / Is not that a Schnitzelbank?
Ja das nicht ein Schnitzelbank. / Yes this is not a schnitzel bank.
Ist das nicht ein Haufen Mist? / Is not that a bunch of crap?
Ja das ist ein Haufen Mist. / Yes that's a bunch of crap.

Oh du schoene Schnitzelbank, / Oh you beautiful Schnitzelbank,
Oh du schoene Schnitzelbank. /Oh you beautiful Schnitzelbank.

There's no telling what damage this may have done to me on a cellular level. My children or grandchildren might enter this world with a passion for polka. My mom must have gotten it from her dad's mother, who always wished her only son would learn to play the accordion, but that was one wish he never granted her. 

If my mother had to like German "music," and I use that term very carelessly here, she could have liked real music. And the scary thing is, she does. My voice teacher wants me to learn Schubert's "Du Bist die Ruh" ("you are my peace"), and Mom just had to hear every version of it on you-tube, and just had to get hooked on a version of it  made famous by a long-dead German tenor. I'm supposed to memorize this song and perform it at a contest in November, but already I am so sick of hearing it, I wonder what my life would be like if Mom had a passion for jazz, or Brazilian samba. My brother does. Where did that come from? My dad plays classical music on the piano. He may have an Irish name, Kean, but his mom was all German and his dad was half German. Even so, my dad hates polka music as much as I do.

So what happened to my mom?

Mom's mother claims to have a little Native American on her side of the family. Supposedly, my mom's great-great-great-great grandmother, Ruby Masaqueto, was Algonquin. There is hope, then, of something better than German polka in our genes. Right?

Wrong.

Don't ever, ever ask me to blog about the CD my mom bought, full of Native American flutes, drum beats and grown men wailing. Hot, dry weather drove these people to such desperation, they sang and danced to a rain god asking for water to fall from the sky. Judging by the CD, it's no wonder the West is mostly desert. This so-called music had to have sent every last cloud to South America in search of better music.

Before the next Oktoberfest rolls around, I hope my mom will have discovered something in her ancestry that pulls her like a magnet to real music, no matter what nation, or galaxy, it comes from.

Ist das nicht ein Haufen Mist? 
Ja das ist ein Haufen Mist.

By the way, I'm still not sure what exactly a Schnitzelbank is, and I am not eager to find out. 

Meeting new people and cultures

Over the weekend, my sister came home from Iowa State University, where she is studying fashion design. She asked if she could bring along her roommate, Sarah, and a new friend. A couple times each week my sister goes to Turkish class to learn the new language and the friend she brought home for dinner was her teacher. His name is Abdul, and he is working on a PhD in mechanical engineering. My dad is an electrical engineer at Rockwell and Abdul hopes to work there after he graduates, although now is not a good time in this economy. Rockwell Collins is planning on laying off another hundred or so employees within the next month, so I am even worried about my dad losing his job.

What I found most striking about Abdul was that he had never spent time with an American family even though he has lived in the United States for more than two years now. In fact, my sister was the first American girl to initiate a conversation with him and have dinner with him. This made me a little sad that there are so many people at Iowa State University, yet most people will not even make an effort to converse with a foreign student.

I really enjoyed his company and thought it was so cool learning about another culture and religion (Abdul is Muslim). I enjoyed listening him to sing in Turkish and play his lap-drum by the bonfire. It was like nothing I had ever heard before. I also liked hearing stories about Abdul and his family back home in Turkey. His great-grandfather was a great healer of broken bones, and he actually saved a wild bobcat and kept him as a pet for fifteen years!  In the winter he found the bobcat injured and brought him into the house and set his broken leg. The bobcat slept by the fire every night. He set the cat free when it was healed, and the cat would often leave a dead animal at the doorstep, the feline thank you, in tribute to the human who'd saved his life. Every winter the cat would come back to sleep by the fireside.

I think we can all learn something from this; I know I can. We should not be afraid to talk to other people who are different from us, foreign, even if they seem scary. We should make conversation with them and be welcoming towards them. We can learn something from them and make new friends, and they can learn something as well in addition to meeting new people.

Obama's past

For all those of you who support Obama and plan on voting for him this November, please think again. I already knew I would not vote for him if I were old enough, but after seeing the new documentary about Obama's past, it only furthered my decisision. I am sure plenty of you are aware that Obama wrote a book called "Dreams From My Father", but I doubt most of you know what exactly is in it. 

If you read the book, you will see that Obama mentions a man named Frank frequently throughout the book, who he calls his mentor, but he never once mentions Frank's last name. This is for a very good and bad reason. The Frank he is referring to is actually Frank Marshall Davis, a Communist Party USA propagandist in Chicago and Hawaii. Davis was under investigation and surveillance by the FBI for nineteen years, creating a six hundred-page FBI file. He was listed under the FBI's "Security Index A", meaning he would be arrested in the event of a national emergency. 

Frank Marshall Davis was also a poet and writer, and in his columns, he blamed American capitalism for starting World War II and preached distribution of wealth and nationalization of industry and government health care, while bashing Wall Street. Obama apparently believes in all these ideas. Just take a minute to think about it. Obama seems to be ready to basically turn America into a Socialist country, while Europeans must be asking, "Why on earth are you trying to ruin America's economy and create all the problems we are having?"

President Obama speaks often in favor of "spreading the wealth" while his half-brother in Africa lives in a hut and his annual income is only twenty dollars. Twenty dollars a year! The half-brother was interviewed in the documentary I watched, 2016 Obama's America. The film is based on conservative author Dinesh D’Souza’s 2010 best-selling book The Roots Of Obama’s Rage. D’Souza grew up in India and says he just wanted people to question what an Obama second term would look like.

I can guess what it would look like: scary.

It isn't just in China that kids go hungry

"Eat it," mothers love to tell their kids. "Some hungry child is starving in China."

And your point, mothers everywhere, would be...what? If I eat lima beans, some nameless kid in some foreign country will not be hungry anymore? Sorry Mom, that line just does not do it for me.

At Sunday Mass, the missionaries come around with stories about starving people all over the globe, from Ethiopia to Guatemala. The Heifer Project reminds us to spend our Christmas funds on gifts that keep on giving--a cow that can be milked daily, a chicken that supplies eggs, rabbits that produce more rabbits--and always, these gifts go to some country that looks sunny and mountainous and exotic.

But we do not have to go that far to find hungry children.

In the Cedar Rapids Gazette on September 12, "Some kids go hungry here, too" was the editorial. Here in Cedar Rapids, there are students who get one meal a day - the cafeteria lunch. Yeah, that one. My mom stopped volunteering in the grade school lunch room because she couldn't bear to see how much food was getting thrown away every day. I could think of many reasons to avoid being in that cafeteria, Mom, but your reason never would have entered my mind.

It's hard to imagine that some kids are so hungry, they'd eat everything on the tray - at school. Karla Goettel wrote in a an editorial in the September 20 Gazette that one child who was about to be sent home sick said wait, don't make me go home before lunch, or I won't find anything to eat at home.

I've never lived in a neighborhood where kids aren't being fed, where cupboards are empty, and parents don't have money to buy groceries. I don't see these kids, but they exist, and now United Way and HACAP (Hawkeye Area Community Action Program) are raising money to help feed the hungry at our schools.

Food Banks used to cover the needs of the hungry, but they haven't been able to meet the demand lately. Instead of asking for donations of food, they're asking for money. Karla Goettel's editorial said each dollar you donate will buy 12 dollars worth of groceries from whatever source they have.

"We are raising money instead of holding a food drive," she wrote, "because HACAP can purchase food through Feeding America and stretch $1 in donations to $12 in food purchases. We also have a goal of providing only nutritious, child-friendly food. Each backpack contains 3,200 carefully selected calories, enough to sustain a young child for two days."

Operation Back Pack has been launched this month. I would like to get Kennedy High School involved. We could have a donation jar in the office, the library, maybe even in home rooms, for students to donate quarters and dollar bills they might otherwise spend at a vending machine. For about $5.50 per week per child, or $220 a year, a student can be fed nutritious food instead of going to school hungry, distracted and unable to focus. "Hungry children make poor students," Karla wrote, "and poor students make poor citizens." How badly do we need a can of soda after school or a candy bar? Think about the kid who would eat the school's greasy fish sticks and no-longer-green beans and actually wish for more. Seeing anyone that hungry would make me think twice about buying whatever granola bar or root beer might be tempting me.

School nurses and teachers will identify food-insecure children"-- students who seem to be underfed. They are not always the same kids who qualify for free or reduced-price school lunches. Volunteers are needed for packing and distribution of the food that will be sent home in backpacks with the students.

I hope Kennedy students will do their part and bring in spare change. If 220 students brought in a dollar a week, one kid would be spared going hungry all year at school. As John F. Kennedy himself said, much is expected from those who have been given much. Most of us are well fed, way too many of us are obese, and we can do more to help others who have been given less in life.

For the good our community, Karla wrote, please donate generously. Contact HACAP at P.O. Box 490, Hiawatha, IA 52333.

Kennedy students have a history of community involvement. If only I had not been home sick all five days last week, Monday through Friday, I would have met with Mr. Benedict to see if his American Government class is already at work on Operation Backpack.

More on hunger in America: www.freedomfromhunger.org/


* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 

Excerpts from the Gazette:

http://thegazette.com/2012/09/12/some-kids-go-hungry-here-too/

No loving parent or caring adult wants to see a child go hungry, without enough healthy food needed for proper physical and mental development. Sadly, it happens far too often on our planet, especially in Third World countries. But how often are children undernourished here in America, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa?

Apparently, more often than you might suspect. Representatives of United Way of East Central Iowa and the Hawkeye Area Community Action Program told us that about 1 in 4 Cedar Rapids kids in grades K-6 are “food insecure” — that is, they miss a meal at least once every five days and aren’t getting enough healthy food overall. These organizations also ask: If the only meals children eat each day are at school, what do these children do when there is no school?” such as on weekends.

It’s a “quiet crisis, and it shouldn’t be,” Karla Goettel of United Way told us Tuesday.

and

http://thegazette.com/2012/09/20/feeding-children-helps-nourish-citizens/

As a community volunteer who was very active in flood recovery, I was invited to join the United Way’s Hunger-Free Network. This consortium of food-aid agencies recognized last spring that the Back Pack Program run by HACAP — Hawkeye Area Community Action Program Inc. — needed additional funding.

I am excited to be a part of the team working to ensure that all of Cedar Rapids Community Schools’ elementary school children have access to sufficient and nutritious food on weekends and during school vacations. Other team members include Amanda Pieper, director of HACAP’s Food Reservoir, and Greg Goodell, coordinator of the Back Pack Program.

Our goal is to raise more than $100,000 to expand and sustain the program. It is available in only six of our 21 elementary schools. We are seeing rising numbers of requests in these schools. Taylor’s requests increased from 25 back packs last year to 50 this year. The participating children’s families must meet federal poverty guidelines.

We are raising money instead of holding a food drive because HACAP can purchase food through Feeding America and stretch $1 in donations to $12 in food purchases. We also have a goal of providing only nutritious, child-friendly food. Each pack back contains 3,200 carefully selected calories, enough to sustain a young child for two days.

We thank The Gazette for its support in the Sept. 12 editorial. Now I call upon all corporations, organizations and individuals in the community to make this happen. Could your church take a special offering to help? How about your office, book club, bridge club, service organization? A family might decide to support one child for a school year ($220.)

Studies have shown that proper nutrition is critical to a child’s brain development. Hungry children make poor students and poor students make poor citizens.

Former Feeding America President Vicky Escarra has said that more children are going hungry now. For the good of our children and the wellness of our community, please donate generously. Contact HACAP at P.O. Box 490, Hiawatha, IA 52233. All contributions are tax deductible.

Karla Goettel is a wife, mother, friend, singer, teacher and community volunteer. Comments: goettel@mchsi.com

A days, B days...

As I was leaving Spanish class today, a friend ran into me and asked why I was not in Concert Choir. I was utterly puzzled. Was today not an A day? Is not every Monday an A day? I guess not. After standing there talking to her, frazzled and red in the face, I got my pass to English class and left. I was determined to figure this out. I checked the schedule the counselor gave me. My schedule is very confusing because I am in Chamber Choir. I looked down at the piece of paper, utterly perplexed. As I thought, it read "Fourth hour-Spanish IV with Ms. Bruce, Room 118 on A days, with Concert Choir with Mr. Ziegler on B days". Chamber Choir is on A days during sixth hour and on B days, I have Spanish IV sixth period. This rotates every other day in order to fit Chamber Choir into my schedule. So what could have possibly gone wrong? Why would we have had Concert Choir on an A day when it is supposed to be on B days? When I arrived to AP English, I asked around and was finally told that not every Monday is an A day. Since there are five days in a week, it will always switch so that one Monday is an A day and the following Monday will be a B day. This was all unbeknownst to me until now. To make matters worse, since I thought today was an A day, I had already attended Spanish IV class. Normally this would not be a problem, since on the days I have fourth hour Spanish, I go to Chamber Choir sixth period. But since today is not an A day, there is no Chamber Choir and only Moonlight, which I did not try out for and am not in. This is a major problem. I cannot go to Moonlight and I have already gone to Spanish. So what shall I do? I have absolutely no idea. I suppose I will go and talk to Mr. Armstrong since Mr. Ziegler was not here today and let him know what happened. Then maybe he will have some ideas. If not, I suppose I could try and go to study hall for just one day even though I do not normally have one. That ought to work. Regardless, I have learned my lesson as a new student at Kennedy High School: not every Monday is an A day!

Mom. Get Over It.

Our dog Blaise died July 19, 2012, on my sister's 19th birthday. He'd been getting slower and weaker every day for two years. Toward the end, we had to boost his back legs to get him up the one step into the house. His voice turned to a whisper. But if we skyped Claire, who was in Spain all year, Blaise would sit up and woof softly at the sound of her voice. We had to leave him behind in the big dog pen with Bailey, his sister, when we drove to the airport to get Claire on July 18. We came home to find him looking dead. He lifted his head for Claire and wagged but couldn't stand and walk to her. We kept him inside all night even though he lost control of all bodily fluids, and into the next day. He couldn't do anything but swallow ice and hang on, and on, as if to say, "I'm not leaving you. I can't bark or eat or drink or get up, but so long as you are here with me, I will never die. I am your loyal Blaise. I am here for you." We  drove him to the vet...and Mom told Blaise it was okay to go. We'd somehow manage. And we did. Somehow. Even Bailey seems okay without her brother. But Mom keeps going to the animal shelter and looking at cats. She hates cats. And yet she keeps falling in love with big, gentle, calm, long-haired cats who somehow remind her of Blaise. But no one will ever replace Blaise. Yes, Mom, there are so many, many other furry creatures out there who need love and a warm lap. But we have Bobinski. Without my little kitty, it would have been so much harder for me to lose Blaise. Cats live 14 to 20 years. Blaise didn't make it to his 12th birthday. We had a lot of good years but 12 wasn't enough. Bobinksi had better live to age 20, at least. Try being happy with the cat we have, Mom, and stop going to the pound.

http://photos.petfinder.com/photos/US/IA/IA125/22856351/IA125.22856351-1-pn.jpg

New Info. on Alzheimer's disease

I just read an article in the "New Scientist" journal about Alzheimer's disease. A diet high in calories and sugar is not just bad for your body; it could also trigger dementia. The hormone insulin is known for controlling blood sugar levels, but it also plays a major role in brain signaling. Poor sensitivity to insulin is mostly associated with type two diabetes, in which liver, fat, and muscle cells fail to respond to the hormone. But a study with rats has made some researchers wonder whether Alzheimer's could sometimes be another version of diabetes-one that hits the brain. Some have even renamed it "type 3 diabetes." People who already have type 2 diabetes may be especially at risk. 35.7% of people in the United States are obese, which puts them at a higher risk for developing Alzheimer's. There are things you can to do prevent this, however. Regular exercise has been shown to decrease the risk of by as much as forty percent. Eating healthier is especially important as well. When people regularly binge on fatty, sugary foods their insulin spikes continuously until it sticks at a higher level. Muscle, liver, and fat cells stop responding to the hormone, meaning they do not mop up glucose and fat in the blood. Because of this, the pancreas has to work extremely hard to make more insulin to control the glucose and the levels of the to molecules skyrocket. Weight gain only worsens the problem. Eighty percent of people with type 2 diabetes are also overweight or obese. Because of our addiction to fast food, type 2 diabetes is always on the rise. In the United States alone, nineteen million people have already been diagnosed with the condition, and a further seventy nine million are considered "pre-diabetic", showing some early symptoms of insulin resistance. If Alzheimer's and type 2 diabetes do share similar components, levels of dementia may follow a similar pattern as we grow older. Even if a person does not develop diabetes, a poor diet may be enough to cause brain degeneration.  When you consider that obesity is a large risk factor for both diabetes and dementia, all the signs suggest that our addiction to junk food could cause trouble for our mental health in the future. On the bright side, a new nasal spray may be a possible treatment for those who already have Alzheimer's disease. This device delivers insulin deep into the nose to get to the brain more quickly. This was done in a study of one hundred four people and the glucose metabolism in their brains improved. I wish this information had been discovered while my grandma was still alive because she had Alzheimer's and this could have possibly helped her or at least have prevented it from worsening. Hopefully other people can still be helped. 

School Sysem in Spain

Today and yesterday, in Spanish IV, we were watching a video about the school system in Latin America. These kids have to take very challenging tests and end up with very bad scores. They get very nervous and worried before taking them and they also do not learn or understand very much of what they are studying or being tested over. Should we not find this to be problematic? I sure think so. After watching the video, it made me think of my sister's friend in Spain. She is studying to become a lawyer. She is the exact same age as my sister (nineteen years old), but she has been in college for a couple of years now. That's right. She has already been at a university for a while now. This girl studies for literally eighteen hours every single day! She barely eats anything at all and has no free time. She gets absolutely no exercise whatsoever. I am not kidding. When our family took her hiking at Lake MacBride, she told us that it was the first time she had exercised in over a year. What kind of life is this for a teenager? Blanca actually visited our family this summer after my sister spent a year abroad in Spain with her and Blanca told us how she prefers our school system in the United States. I can see why. The Spanish class video also made me think of the host family my sister, Claire, stayed with. Claire's little sisters in Spain wake up in the morning, go to school for long hours, stay there for after school activities, then come home. Once they are home, they do their homework all night long until dinner. Then they shower and go to bed. They also learn English on the side and the mother makes them practice every day and do homework outside of school. In fact, when my sister arrived in Spain, she wanted to practice her Spanish but, instead, the mother ordered her to speak only English with the little sisters. This is what every single day consists of for these girls. They do not get to live a normal, happy childhood where they can play and have fun. No child should miss out on these things. Amina and Mara may be more challenged and know more than a student in America, but I believe children should have enjoyable childhoods and be able to express their creativity.

Clean Shaven Men

super manly, said no one, ever

When did clean-cut men go out of style? Not in my book. Everyone today, my own brother and cousins included, somehow got the idea that real men grow beards. Trouble is, these guys cannot produce anything impressive in the way of facial hair. Their upper lips look dirty. Their chins appear to be covered with crusted spaghetti sauce (redheads) or stiff wire bristles from Mom's kitchen scrubbers.

Last week on Facebook, a cartoon made the rounds--two gossipy Victorian ladies with a caption "Wow, that guy in the skinny jeans looks super manly, said no one, ever." And that's what I say about guys today trying to grow beards. "What a gorgeous guy, and wow, love that bristly little bit of stubble on his chin," said no girl, EVER.

Weddings

As you may know, I had to miss two days of school to go to my cousin's wedding in Connecticut. Was it worth it? Yes and no. No, because I had to miss school and then do lots of make-up work and get behind on things. No, because it meant four days on the road of constant driving. No, because I got sick in the car so I could not do a lot of school work on the way. No, because my brother and sister really wanted to come, too, but they could not afford to miss any classes in college or miss work. And lastly, no, because we offered my cousin lots of money instead of going because we told them it really just wouldn't work, but they still wanted us to come. So we went, but my brother and sister did not come and are still really upset. It was worth it, on the other hand, for a few reasons. One, I got to miss school. Two, I got to spend time with my cousins and see the special wedding day. Three, I had lots of fun. But other than that? I don't think it was worth it, to be honest. I do not think someone should pressure another person to come to his/her wedding when those people are busy with school and work and flying is way to expensive and driving takes far too long (and not to mention, wastes gas and money). I think people should respect people's decisions and take no for an answer. My family offered a very generous compromise. My parents offered a lot of money instead of attending the wedding, but that was not good enough. They wanted us to come, and so we did. Would I do it again? Maybe. Maybe not.