A star on local cable TV!! OK, a tiny star!!

You all know how much I love living in my small town. It is beautiful this time and year and we all just enjoy sharing dinners, poetry, ping pong nights and recording commercials.

My neighbor and friend across the street is a cartoonist, writer and a crafter of repairing old houses.

He restored mine back to the original a couple of years ago and painted it lavender! He has restored my old weight-driven windows, redone ceilings, fixed old plumbing, lighting, etc.

Anyway, here is a commercial we recorded the night before I left for China. It is fun to watch, enjoy!! 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_M0-r87tJQ

Photos from Today's Walk...

Tax Day and Record Highs in my small town....

Today is tax day and in all my confused life, I did not get mine done. I just called my accountant in Fort Wayne. She had been wondering about me. She said she would file an extention and I gave her the information that she needed. She wanted to know why I was late in one word. The was so simple, I just said, "China."

"Enough said," she replied and went on to tell me not to worry, just get them done and in to her.

It is interesting to note that my trip to China was going to add another storytelling program to my list. In my storyteller's mind I was going to call it, The Storyteller's Journey on the Silken Road. Sounds great, yes. Except I never got to the Silken Road. I am not sure what to call this STORY that everyone wants, if you have any great ideas, please share them with me! I also want to thank you all for your good wishes and comments.

Today in Indiana it is spectacular. Warm and sunny and all the spring flowers and early flowering trees in full bloom. I will do a photo shoot later with pictures to tell the stories! The one great thing about walking slowly is that I have to walk alot and not up to speed so I notice everything...from the cracks in the sidewalks to the fallen spring petals. I commented on my walk yesterday that it was like walking through a fairy garden in some places.

42nd Annual International Night at Trine University

Trine Students Performing at International Night

Last night was the 42nd annual International Night at Trine University, just three blocks away from my lovely old house. I have been involved in International Night for many years and this year was no exception! I had to cancel many storytelling, performing events, but I knew I could handle this one!

I had a small booth with Mengting where she wrote out the names of folks who stopped by in Chinese, while I tended my slide show of China and included a few artifacts from my short journey! I had some money, a wonderful book, leftover tigers and children's toys from Chinese New Year and my passport with the beautiful Visa from China. Folks stopped by to hear my story and most exclaimed over the Visa and were surprised that it was needed to travel to China. Indeed it is needed and cost $200.00!

The entire foyer of the student union building was decked out for the evening with foods from all the cultures, hands on activities and a program to follow at 7:00. I gave the opening address which I wove with my China experience and the earthquake in Haiti. It was followed by a moving video of the Haitian earthquake and Trine's acapella choir.

The rest of the entertainment was of the international students showing their culture through dance and music.

It was a wonderful evening and I was so glad to be able to be a part of it!

Sassafras Walking Stick

Learning to walk properly, quickly, smoothly is my biggest challenge at this point. I try to take four walks per day each one a little further, longer, quicker.

Philip, of course, has been taking my arm, but I decided it was time to take charge of this walk myself (as long as he is still by my side.)

My choices of independence include a regular walker, a four prong aluminum cane or a wooden cane. For some reason all of the above just could not work for me. Then I remembered that years ago while at a conference in Little Rock, Arkansas, I found a wonderful sassafras cane with a rawhide loop at the top for hanging. I immediately bought it and brought it home on the airplane.

I hung it in my kitchen just for the beauty of it. It is tall and crooked and full of character. I took it off the hook in my kitchen and it has now become my constant companion.

I already have heard the rumors and stories or sightings of me and my old cane walking the streets of my town.

Last night as we walked through the cold and mist the only sound was the tapping of my sassafras cane.

So, shall I become the eccentric old woman who lives in the purple house walking by moonlight with her sassafras cane?

Or shall I remain the eccentric storyteller/writer always looking for a good story? Or...both?

The China Trip

The following story appeared in the Herald Republican newspaper in Angola, Indiana on Saturday, April 3. It is my trip summed up in the familiar 750 word style of columnists. Enjoy!

April sunshine fills my living room as I awake from a dreamlike state not knowing where I am or maybe even who I am. Maybe I feel a little like Rip Van Winkle knowing that the world has gone on and I have missed the flavor or the color or the taste of it.



My trip to China…so long awaited, so long planned for, so many stories to collect and bring home became a different sort of story. I boarded the plane with a bag of medications for a low back pain problem. Nothing too serious that I felt could stop me, just enough to know to medicate every few hours to take off the edge.


I couldn’t have been more wrong.


The flight was long. I read. I did yoga in the back. I watched the monitor in front of my seat of the journey of our flight…across the U.S., through Canada, tipping through the edge of Russia. We landed in Tokyo with a couple of hours to spare and then three more hours to Beijing. Most of the folks wanted to walk off the flight, but I took my place on the floor of the airport to rest.


By the time we reached Beijing, I was not able to keep up with the group in the airport, but there is always the possibility of a good night’s sleep. Our first day was the long tour day…Tiananmen Square, The Summer Palace, the Outdoor Markets, Peking Duck Dinner. Each one deserves its own story. By noon I knew my trip my over. I hired a wheel chair driver for the afternoon that sped me around the Forbidden City continually tucking my scarf around my shoulder and taking my photo against the ancient sites of China.


It was obvious by nightfall that I needed major medical attention. But where to go? What to do? One day in Beijing and I was reduced to a weeping, medicated, disappointed beyond belief American. It took three tries at three different hospitals to admit me. One hospital offered ancient Chinese medication of liniment and heating pads, another forbid me to enter as I was an American, the third was the Beijing United Family Hospital where I was admitted and where I called home for the next eight days. One of the tour guides, Katie, stayed with me, and the rest of the group moved on to Shanghai and to their schools.



The biggest problem now was how to get me back home to the United States. I couldn’t sit through the flight; I would have to come back as a medical patient. It was a combination of my friend Philip in the United States, the tour company, the Embassy in Beijing and Katie. After eight days I was on my way home in a first class pod seat which turned into a bed, my nursemaid Katie and a very nervous pilot who told me ahead of time that I had to make the flight once I began as we could not stop in Outer Mongolia or Russia. Philip and Karen met me in Chicago, a night spent in Chicago and a long ride home to my lavender house with the white picket gardens. The week was amass of MRI’s and X-rays and wheelchairs as by now I could not walk a single step. I had been sent home with this same information from China but most was unreadable in our American hospitals.


The ordeal is over, or mostly I should say. Surgery has taken care of the herniated disc and other problems. I walked into my lovely old house yesterday with the help of a walker and the medications which once filled bushel baskets has been reduced to just a few tablets. My caregiver, Philip, is with me every step of the way, and my humor and zest for life is returning minute by minute.


But before I go, I need you to know a few stories. I could write a book on my experiences in Beijing. I could fill hours of telling you how the Chinese nurses cared for me, how they sat with me at night holding my hand while I wept, how they told me their stories in the English that they knew. I would tell you how I had a guard outside my door each moment that I was in the hospital. And I will tell you that walking on American soil, in all our problems, is my home sweet home.

Back to the U.S. and blogging.

Going to China was simply going to be the highlight of this year for me. So many preparations and work went into this project. But as we all know, plans are made to be changed.

For the past couple of months, I have had a strained back. Ahhh...so much to think about that I really let it go. I did extra stretches in the morning, longer time in the gym and double the work on the weights. I noticed the week before the trip that it was difficult to get out of bed in the morning, but still too much to do to think about such things. I did go to Urgent Care, let them know my situation and got a muscle relaxer and pain pills, I mean we are talking about the Great Wall here.

The long flight was disastrous for me. I could hardly stand it, then on the very first morning I fell. That probably was the end of a disc that was going to give me grief. By afternoon I hired a wheel chair driver who spun me all around the Forbidden City of Beijing. I saw everything first as no one could keep up with him. I paid him cash at the end of the day. By now I was becoming aware that my trip to China would be just one day. Tomorrow I will share with you the first two hospital visiits!

Lou Ann