Catholic Herald

Easter is about hope and life’s triumph over despair and death. It helps us recall death-unto-life experiences that, while not literal, can be just as  powerful. Many of us can recall a time when we did eventually emerge from a figurative tomb, aided by an angel or two, whether human or spiritual. Here is my true story of a death-to-resurrection experience. See how many angels you can find. They are there!

Fourteen-year olds are cheeky. I knew this when I joined busloads of Rice Lake eighth-graders on a big school trip in June 2010.  My son was one of them. We agreed to avoid each other on the trip because, well … you know … moms aren’t cool to hang around with when you’re 14.

We hit Washington, D.C. and New York City. I especially wanted to see Ellis Island, but mixed feelings dogged me.

Fourteen was an unkind age. I have mostly noxious memories of that time about my appearance, emotional tempests and others’ rude remarks. What lunacy drove me to risk such a cold sweat again by going on this  trip?

In D.C. we zoomed through monuments, memorials, the National Archives, the Capitol, a photo op outside the White House … and a trip to the Holocaust Museum.

I didn’t want to go there. Adolf Hitler’s platoons included my Austro-Hungarian great-uncle Louis. I’d seen a swastika on his sleeve in an old photo he’d shown me 20 years earlier when I visited his Austrian village near the Hungarian border. I learned German in college so I could converse with relatives there.
Five years after that, I visited an Anne Frank traveling exhibit in St. Louis. Afterward, I wept, alone, in a restroom stall. Shudders rippled through me at the thought of what atrocities Onkel Louis might, or might not, have committed. I knew nothing more about that part of his life. And I hadn’t asked, other than to question that it indeed was him in the photo and, Ja, it was a Nazi infantryman’s uniform.

“I was drafted!” Onkel Louis protested loudly in German, when he saw my widened eyes. I knew Hitler was born  in Austria, but it had never really hit home for me before that the quaint, lovely little farm town my relatives inhabited had once been torn and stained by the evil of the Third Reich.

Back in the restroom of the synagogue where the Anne Frank exhibit sat, I cried to myself. Fluorescent light gleamed off the yellow tiles. It wasn’t seeing horrors that wrenched me like this: It was the sight of Frank’s family photos at the exhibit’s end — all smiles and neat, combed hair.

Back in D.C., 2010, I gulped and revealed this to four Rice Lake 14-year old boys and their chaperone while we ate lunch in a noisy food court. In about an hour we’d visit the museum. All but one of the boys were strangers to me.

The one boy I knew was Ethan (not his real name). We’d known each other two years through a bowling league he and my son played in.

In those days, Ethan was an ebullient, brainy kid who preferred conversation with adults. (He’s since become a more taciturn 16-year-old.)

He’d chatted me up over the years and seemed to seek me out at games. One time he mentioned he had some Jewish relatives.

At lunch he sat quietly and munched on a sandwich. His new purple D.C. baseball cap nearly obscured his eyes.

“Anyone in your family affected by the Holocaust?” I asked him.
He shrugged: “I don’t know.”

“Ask your mom sometime,” I said.

He pulled out a cell phone and keyed a text message. Within minutes he interrupted my conversation with the others and flatly stated, “She said yes. Some cousins were killed.”

I stopped and looked at him. I remembered the restroom at the Anne Frank exhibit. Would the Holocaust Museum do that to him? Why did he wear sunglasses outdoors that day when he usually didn’t? Why was he not his usual chatty self today?

“Have you been to this museum before?” I asked.

“No.”

I noticed my heart beat faster than usual. Finally, I mustered the nerve to say, “Ethan, I’m scared of that place. Will you go with me?”

He brightened and said, “Sure!”

Inside the museum’s dim chambers he and I split off from our group, divergent family baggage in tow.

Docents handed us cards containing a bio of a person whom the Holocaust affected. Mine was Juliana Nemeth, a Hungarian shopkeeper deported to a labor camp in east Austria. SS soldiers shot her days before U.S. forces arrived.

Ethan ’s relatives were Poles named Levy. We sought that very common Jewish name anywhere we could find it. Like a deft sponge with legs Ethan darted from exhibit to exhibit, yet read far more explanations than I could.

I translated and explained the great lie of “Arbeit macht frei” at Poland’s Auschwitz for him as I did with other German posters.

Like a combo platter of absolution and blessing, Ethan’s thirst for knowledge nourished me through the excursion. So did his smile. I doubt he knew that.

Our awareness of time vanished. One of the teacher/chaperones found Ethan and me, gazing upward, inside an exhibit of victims’ family photos — hundreds of them inside a chimney-like structure that rose above the building. Again, we did not speak. Diffused sunlight from a window at the top bathed our faces.
Charged with rushing a boy who was a cousin of those victims and a great-niece of a Nazi soldier, the woman shepherded us out to the buses with utmost tact. We were the last ones.

Three days later the bus left our group at Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue for a few hours of shopping. Outside the doors of toy purveyor FAO Schwarz, we huddled like football players and strategized: Meet at Rockefeller Center in an hour. Three boys and chaperone left to find video games. Ethan and I beamed at each other and both said, “Puppets!” He’d wanted a marionette since day one of the trip. From Señor Wences’ puppet Johnny, a childlike face drawn on Wences’ hand, to ventriloquist Paul Winchell and sidekick Jerry Mahoney, puppets and dummies endeared themselves to me long ago. They are the ultimate free pass to say whatever the hell you want … via puppet, of course.

We searched three floors and found the selection ho-hum. Same things you could get in Rice Lake.
“Can I help you?” a saleswoman asked.

“We want puppets, but there’s nothing we like,” I groused.

“Have you tried the Whatnot Shop?”

She led us to an overlooked corner. There, Oz loomed — the Muppet Whatnot Shop. Dozens of zany extras used in Muppet productions gazed kindly upon us. Two real Muppeteers stood ready, happy to build us custom-designed Muppets. Cost? About 135 bucks each.

Ethan  called his mom. He beseeched her to wire him the extra $20 he needed.

“She said no,” he told me afterward, barely audible.

“I’ll loan you that,” I said. “She can pay me when we return. Call her. Ask if it’s OK.”

Like a nervous stockbroker Ethan  called and paced. His face strained under the stress of this delicate negotiation. He returned with a smile and thumbs up.

Twenty minutes later we emerged to scurry along Fifth Avenue, late again.

“Where’s Rockefeller Plaza?” I asked a pedestrian.

Her loveliness stunned me, but she wore a Manhattan poker face. At the sight of us and our cargo, she halted, smiled and gave us directions in eastern European accented English.

We trotted away. Sunbeams illuminated our clear backpacks that contained one orange and one green Muppet — mine female, Ethan ’s male. Both wore glasses. Ethan  hadn’t worn sunglasses since D.C.

My return to 14 left no cold sweat. It left a power surge tingle like all the bright neon in Times Square.

Editor’s note: Frank Oz (born Oznowicz in Hereford, England) created and has performed as many of the original Muppets, including Miss Piggy, Cookie Monster, Bert, Grover and Yoda. Oz’s father was a Polish Jew, his mother a Flemish  Catholic. Both  puppeteers, they fled to England after fighting the Nazis with the Dutch Brigades.

My name is Julie, and I’m a Facebook addict.

There. I’ve said it. This is not news to many people who know me, especially those who have seen my myriad postings on the ubiquitous social media site.

About a year ago, someone I know who seldom uses Facebook posted a funny yet telling picture about the nature of the many-tentacled social media giant. His post featured an anthropomorphized book with a scowling, demonic face on its cover. The caption read: “Facebook: It wants your soul.” Surprisingly, a teenager posted it. He is wise beyond his years … in some ways.

Indeed, Facebook has infiltrated every corner of life; in my case, far too much of it. It started when I had to move to Delaware in the summer of 2010 from northwest Wisconsin. For a whole year I was mostly unemployed, didn’t know a soul, and felt adrift in a county whose population density is about 2,500 people per square mile. It was like being stuck on a desert island except with a million strangers around me … and I was all but invisible to most of them.

So, like many lonely people, I turned to Facebook and other social media sites for solace. Like many addictions, this one found its germinating seeds in loneliness, boredom and psychic pain. Before then, I’d never had any problem with a behavior I felt I couldn’t control, but after a while, I couldn’t go one hour without checking to see if someone had messaged me or to check the status posts of people I missed most. I programmed my smart phone to notify me when I got Facebook messages.

It got worse. When Facebook could no longer give me the information hit I needed, I turned to Googling the names of people I missed most. Sometimes I stayed up until the wee hours simply reading about others’ lives – people whom I believed had lives while I did not.

Thankfully, I eventually moved back to Wisconsin and  figured all that “stalking lite” would naturally stop once I got back to people I knew. It didn’t. A bad habit had taken root, and   intervention was needed.

So, for Lent, I deactivated my Facebook account. That means I basically put it into suspended animation and into storage. For all intents and purposes, I’ve disappeared from Facebook. Doing this, however, can have unintended, bothersome social consequences: Now, if a friend seeks me on Facebook, I’m not there … anywhere. The same thing happens when one “blocks” someone on Facebook; therefore sometimes when one deactivates, friends think you’ve abandoned them or are upset with them when that’s not the case.  I did post an announcement on my page before I “went dark” but not everyone saw that, and I got a handful of emails from people saying, “Julie, where did you go? Is something wrong?”

No, nothing is wrong, I assured them. In fact, something is right: I’m trying to experience my friends and family in 3D instead of 2D online.

To be sure, I’ve gamed the system. For example, technically, Sundays in Lent aren’t considered Lent, so I’ve reactivated and peeked at my Facebook account then.

That’s when God’s grace intervened.

I’ve discovered a sneaky thing Facebook does to “punish” you if you deactivate too often, which is what I did for a few Sundays. Facebook doesn’t advertise it, but if one deactivates too often, Facebook makes that user wait 24 hours before being allowed to log in again. At first I thought, “Ouch. That’s not fair.” But then I realized that by the time 24 hours had passed, it would no longer be Sunday; I’d have to go back to my Lenten sacrifice and wait yet another week to log on. Interesting. No, it’s more than interesting; it’s awesome. What Facebook’s handlers conceived as punishment has worked out to be helpful for kicking the Facebook habit.

Wow. God is even greater than Facebook. Thanks be to God!

For many Catholic adults of a certain age, their memories of Catholic education include a stern nun rapping her students’ knuckles for singing their alleluias incorrectly. Fortunately, the Catholic schools I attended never presented me with such a stereotypical teacher.

During this year’s Catholic Schools Week, I fondly recall and send kudos out to the most significant teachers I remember from Catholic schools all those years ago.

To Mrs. Flavin, my kindergarten teacher at Ursuline Academy in St. Louis, Mo.: My best memory of you is your enduring my insistence on wearing a blond plastic wig all day when we were allowed to bring one of our Christmas gifts for show and tell.

Mrs. Berkel, my first grade teacher at Our Lady of Providence School in Crestwood, Mo.: You are the first person I remember specifically teaching us to “love our neighbor,” and your pitch pipe started my lifelong fascination with the harmonica.

Sr. Teresa Ann, my third grade teacher at St. Cecilia School in St. Louis: She gave fine lectures on how it would be better to give our spare candy money to the poor.

Sr. James, my fourth grade teacher at St. Joseph School in Kalamazoo, Mich.: Sr. James was a rabid Detroit Tigers fan, and she liked me, even though I was the new kid in class that fall, and I was from St. Louis, and the Tigers and Cardinals played against each other in the World Series that fall. (Cardinals lost.)

Mr. Elso, my fifth grade teacher at St. Joe’s: From him I learned the beginnings of the differences between Democrats and Republicans. Without being partisan, yet being utterly faithful to Catholic church social teachings, Mr. Elso instilled in me a growing passion for understanding politics and current events and the importance of voting. He planted the seeds that would eventually turn me into a news junkie.

Br. John Lemker, a Marianist at Hackett Catholic Central High School in Kalamazoo: His utter joy, passion and enthusiasm for the mysteries of earth science — geology, weather, plate tectonics, etc. — prompted me to want to bring home nothing but a sack of rocks as souvenirs when I visited Iceland 10 years later.

Finally, Mrs. Anne Heilmann and her substitute, Mrs. Oakleaf, my journalism teachers at Hackett. Their encouragement lit the spark in me that eventually turned me into the journalist I am today.

God truly blessed me.

Julie Kelemen
Managing editor

When I tell people I lived in  Africa as a kid, they usually ask, “Were your parents missionaries?”

No, in the late 1960s, Dad taught electrical engineering at a college in what was then Nigeria’s second largest city, Ibadan. The U.S. government sent Dad and other professors there to teach the locals technical and business skills. America’s generosity probably had something to do with Nigeria’s massive reserves of oil.

I was 7; my brother, Vince, was a preschooler.

The first December we lived there, Mom took us to visit Father Christmas — as the British call Santa Claus — at Kingsway department store downtown. This wasn’t like popping into Penney’s. First, Mom had to maneuver our VW through traffic slowed by hucksters, livestock, dogs, broken-down cars, children, cyclists and beggars.

Next, after parking, we ran a gauntlet at Kingsway’s doors, where locals mobbed us. Some peddled wares, but most, especially children, had hands outstretched to beg.

Mom told us to ignore them, and we knew the routine. Ex-patriate veterans advised, “If you give to one they all want something. It can get really bad.”

I ignored the beggars, even when a barefoot, bony child reached into my face. Malnutrition had distended his belly as it had those of countless other kids. I pretended not to see those who hobbled toward us on crutches or whose amputated legs forced them to use wooden blocks to help them move.

This act never got easy. Such experiences rightly seared themselves in my memory. Some kids just wanted to touch us, to see if white skin felt different from black.

We entered the cool, modern, western-style department store, and guards kept the mob outside. Months earlier, a bloody military coup had replaced one general with another. Civil war brewed in Biafra 350 miles away. I didn’t know these things then but learned them later.

We anticipated lining up behind other kids as we’d done in the States. On an upper floor, a modest North Pole scene awaited, complete with a child sized train to ride round a track that encircled Father Christmas’s hallowed hall.

A nice woman greeted us and shepherded us to the train. We rode, smiling, no other kids on the train. We disembarked, and the nice lady escorted Vince and me into a dark little tunnel dimly lit with stars.

There was no line. There were no other children.

We entered Father Christmas’s chamber and clambered into his lap. The dim little room featured black walls painted with white Christmas trees. He welcomed and enfolded us like a down comforter. Unlike Santa in the U.S.A., Father Christmas had dark skin. We thought nothing of it. Of course Santa would be black in Africa.

We got down to business and recited our wish lists. Father Christmas gave us each a wrapped gift and a sweet. Someone snapped a photo. We waved good-bye and left that alternate universe for the brightness outside.

In the photo Vince and I look happy. Not so Father Christmas, whose eyes seem stern and prophetic. Minutes earlier he’d gently smiled with us, but he showed a different face for the camera and posterity.

My years in Nigeria were a blessing that has carried with it a responsibility to learn and remember Africa’s challenges. My problems don’t amount to a hill of beans compared to those of people in many parts of the world. I saw what most American kids never see but should — some of it ugly and not festive at all but instead heart-rending. That, too, is a gift.

To this day I hate to see food wasted. I get impatient when someone complains about their food. I desire few material things because I’ve lived among people who’ve cheerfully managed to live with so little. I shop thrift stores even if I can afford better. I feel my discretionary dollars belong elsewhere. The feeling is like survivor guilt and constantly prods me.

Maybe it was only indigestion, but Father Christmas’s penetrating eyes in the photo humble me. They remind me to respect Africa’s people, its descendants whose ancestors came here as slaves, and the continent’s positive influences on our culture, especially our music. Those eyes compel me to learn what the man might have struggled with long after Kingsway folded up the North Pole.

I haven’t returned since we left the country in the late ‘60s. Nigeria is still a wild west sort of place not for the faint of heart. But heart is what Nigeria’s people gave me. And that’s one dandy of a Christmas gift.

Julie Kelemen
Managing Editor

Over a year ago my pastor and I had a brief, glum chat about the saggy economy. This was within a year of when investment kingpin Bernie Madoff pleaded guilty to 11 federal felonies and was sentenced to 150 years in jail. His sin bilked innocent investors out of billions of dollars.

Some of those investors included the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer — more commonly known as the Redemptorist order of priests and brothers – in the Baltimore area. Years ago, Midwest Redemptorists had employed me for five years at Liguori Publications.

I told Father: “People talk about the economy like it’s a passing bad weather condition we can’t control. Like we have to just wait it out. It’s not! It’s a moral crisis. It’s selfishness.”

“I know,” Father said. He  shook his head. Then at the same time, we both said, “It’s greed!”

So many of us wring our hands and passively tremble in the safe cellars of our souls waiting for this “storm” to pass. But are our nation’s economic woes really, totally beyond our control? Does feeling powerless, and therefore doing nothing (or blaming others), just add to the problem? Is this really something “happening to us” or is there anything each of us can do, no matter how small, to make it better for one other?

Right now, in parishes across our diocese, the annual Diocesan Services Appeal is under way. I’ve heard participation rates were down last year. Some of that is likely due to population declines, higher than normal unemployment and other recession woes. But I also have occasionally heard some Catholics in my area, many counties distant from Superior, say, “Why should I give my money to ‘Superior’ when my parish really needs it?”

If you, or someone you know, thinks that, recall three things:

First, money a parish collects that goes above the amount assessed by the diocese goes directly back to the parish.

Second, we are one, holy, Catholic and apostolic church.” We aren’t just our local parish but part of a broader network of Catholics that includes our brothers and sisters in all 16 counties of our diocese. And our diocese is just one of five in our state, our state is one of 50, most with multiple dioceses, and so forth all the way to Rome and the world. The word “catholic” itself means “universal.” Anyone who wants all donations to stay in the parish really wants a congregational church — one that stands on its own without being accountable or available to a broader body of like-minded churches.

Finally, when a person or charity wants donations to “stay in our area” — a common desire — I feel frustrated and sad, much like my pastor and I did the day we commiserated about the lousy economy. I wonder if they’ve not hunkered down and allowed fear, not God, to influence their decisions.

Often, fear’s fruit is sin — behavior born of an “Everyone for themselves” attitude. Greed and playing it safe rule. We convince ourselves that risks and reaching out to others seem silly, impractical or unrealistic. Faith in God and others moves down the priority list, especially if we think something might get taken from us. The circle of those we trust can shrink and, in extreme situations, fear makes us see others with thoughts of only “What can this person do for me?” That might leave us physically and economically safe, but very alone … and still fearful.

Christ has something to say about that. He doesn’t want us to worry. He wants us to have faith. He knows worry and fear hurt us and make us actively or passively hurt others. He said, “So do not be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows,” (Mt 10:31). And on the night before he died, knowing full well what was coming, Jesus told his disciples: “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give it to you. Do not let your hearts be troubled or afraid” (Jn 14:27).

If we live Christ’s words about fear we will be better prepared to let it go. Risk donating a bit, or a bit more; pay a bit more for things sold by companies that treat workers well; hire someone, even if it’s just to fix something at home. Choose an act of faith over fear. Seize courage. Leap. Only then can the Holy Spirit’s wings catch you and help you fly.

Julie Kelemen
Managing editor

Years ago as a freshman at Hackett Catholic Central High School in Kalamazoo, Mich., I slogged through a world history class as most freshmen still must do. I hated the class. The textbook was dry, boring, no color pictures. The classroom was too hot, too cold, too crowded. The teacher, Mr. Martin, seemed to drone on about ancient people and events that had absolutely no relevance to my life. But a part of one of Mr. Martin’s lectures has remained with me decades later. As he explained how Buddhism got started, he said the Buddha taught that change is a constant — that “The only thing in life that does not change is the fact that things change.”

That nugget of wisdom, taught at a Catholic school to boot, contains truth so profound that it seared itself in my mind. I’m glad it did. It has made many of my difficult life experiences more tolerable.

So many of us dislike and resist change, so when I learned that the version of the Roman Missal we’ve been using at Mass since my childhood was getting language changes, I thought, “Harrumph. What’s wrong with the old words? They’re clear. I’ve got them memorized. Why must they fix things that aren’t broken?” Those memorized words have allowed me to cruise through Mass on autopilot for quite some time.

So far I’ve resisted saying, “Bah. Humbug,” but the changes will be implemented around the first Sunday of Advent, so that might come down the pike yet.
Not wanting to become a cranky old lady prematurely, I’ve decided not to complain. With this in mind, I ask readers to read and consider the two articles in this edition that detail what the changes are and why they’re being implemented. They’re right over there on page 5.

It’s very human to think that the things we grew up with were or are “good enough” or “the best” and that things and people since then have gone to hell in a handbasket. We all do it to varying degrees. I’ve decided that if I find myself feeling that way, I’ll remind myself that at first I didn’t like sushi or Jimi Hendrix or the art of Salvador Dali. But I like them all now. Some things are an acquired taste.

Try to keep this in mind as we all experience and learn the changes in the new Roman Missal. True, some would “rather fight than switch” but those words come from old television ads for cigarettes — something else we no longer see. And if all else fails, do what I do when faced with unanticipated change: Turn to the wisdom found in Reinhold Niebuhr’s Serenity Prayer: “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.”

I wish you peace and enlightened reading. I also thank the Marianist brothers of the Dayton, Ohio province who ran my high school.

Julie Kelemen
Managing Editor

Dear Readers,

In the closing scene of “The Wizard of Oz” Dorothy repeats, “There’s no place like home” to transport herself back to Kansas. Even though she’s been on fantastic adventures, all along she simply wants to go home. She stops at nothing to get there.

I am your new editor of the Superior Catholic Herald. Like Dorothy, I have wanted nothing more than to move back to northern Wisconsin for the past year. Unlike her, I am not originally from here. Born in St. Louis, Mo., I’ve lived most of my life there, off and on. But what a long, strange trip it has been to call Rice Lake my adopted home.

I have lived in, take a deep breath: St. Louis, Massachusetts, Nigeria, (yes, Nigeria), Michigan,  Rice Lake, and most recently, Delaware.

In 2003, spouse took a position in Barron County. I was ready for a change, so we schlepped the three of us from St. Louis to this land of woods, water, cows and cornfields. And I fell in love … with the town of Rice Lake.

I tell friends and family elsewhere that Rice Lake is like Mayberry but with lumberjacks and snowmobiles. After living there seven years I’d grown to like being greeted by the postal clerk by first name because we knew each other from curling; the lady in the grocery store being my son’s piano teacher; the boys at youth bowling being the radio announcer’s kids; my son’s doctor doing double duty as son’s friend’s dad.

We lived there from ’03 to ’10. Son attended school there from grades 2-8. But in late ’09, storm clouds gathered. My spouse was in danger of losing his job. I only worked part-time as a proofreader. A position in another state appeared for him, he grabbed it, and within months, a tornado called The Lousy Economy had dropped us in Newark, Del. The town lies along I-95—that vast swath of teeming urbanity that stretches from Boston to Washington D.C.

Newark did not agree with me. High population density there means everywhere you go there’s a line — in traffic, at the grocer, post office, doctor’s office. And if you’re not in a physical line, you’re in a virtual one on the phone — navigating voicemail jail that feels like a surreal slot machine where if you press just the right combination of buttons you can hit the jackpot of a real person. I sought employment in my field of journalism. With Baltimore and Philadelphia within commuting distance, there are plenty of media jobs in the area. Problem is, I quickly learned, there also scads of other people competing for those jobs. Six months passed and still I was unemployed.

“Enough!” I cried out to God. Long story short, spouse spotted an online listing for the Catholic Herald editor’s position, and here I am. It truly seems God wants me here, back on my adopted home turf.

So son will be back at Rice Lake High school as a 10th grader, and we are back home, reestablishing roots. It is not easy, but it’s necessary and seems divinely prompted.

Words cannot fully express how delighted I am to editor of the Superior Catholic Herald. I am  back among friends and familiar places and real people who answer real phones … and return calls! I look forward to eventually traveling to each county of the Diocese to attend Mass there so I can get to know more folks outside Barron County. Sixteen counties is a lot. I hope you will be patient. I’m sure some of you will have an earful for me, but I’ll take that any day to the invisibility and anonymity of being a stranger in a strange land. God willing, we’ll all be patient with one another.

That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it. The only folks I haven’t met during my life adventures are a tin man, scarecrow and lion. And there are no lions or tigers in the woods here. But there are bears. I’ve seen them in my own Rice Lake neighborhood.

Julie Kelemen
Managing Editor