Day 99, Thursday June 13, 2024: Rochester, Indiana to Angola, Indiana
- Mark Carl Rom
- 5 days ago
- 6 min read
Carnegie libraries visited: Akron, Roann, Warsaw, Pierceton, Garrett, Waterloo, and Angola, Indiana
Days sober: 357
I’m distracted and finding it hard to write today. When I arrived at the Prairie Edge Nature Park in Rochester last evening, my phone was buzzing with urgent messages about Ace. He was having an “event” – his blood oxygen level and blood pressure were shockingly low, he was gasping, he had blood in his urine, and according to my brother Curt he was ashen gray. He was treated at the Bungalows because he refused to go to the hospital. His condition has stabilized today, yet even so Curt sent his siblings the text “If things take a dramatic downturn I will call you individually so you could say goodbye.”
I believe that the last words my mother heard were mine. When we got the call from Curt to come home now when she was dying, Gretchen and I scampered to DCA to find a flight. The technology was more backward then (2009), so we went from airline to airline to get seats. Bereavement fares were not available – those being bereaved must already be cold – so we probably paid a fortune for the last minute tickets. Our fastest route took us through Minneapolis, where with our good fortune my sister Cristine also would be traveling so we were able to meet up. Curt called us, put the phone up to Mom’s ear, and Cristine, Gretchen, and I told her how much we loved her. During my turn, Curt interrupted to say that she had died. It is a comfort to me to think that she heard me at her passing.
When we were offered a chance to view her body, my sisters accepted and I declined. I don’t really know why. After Kitt died, I wanted to look at his beautiful face forever. I do remember that it was hard for me to mourn Mom, because it was so hard for me to be around her during the final decades of her life. She had serious mental illnesses and was often angry and hostile. She responded well to medication and, understandably, whenever she felt better she stopped taking it, spiraling her back down. She insisted that the rest of the world, not her, was crazy. My family finally decided to seek medical guardianship over her, in effect allowing us to forcibly medicate her.
It was painful for me to watch Mom’s deterioration, and I had it easy compared to my siblings, who were much more involved with her. When I asked my Dad “How can you live like this?” he replied that his marriage vows included the works “in sickness and in health” and “until death do us part,” and he was a man of his word. I remember the last time I took Chris and Kitt to see Mom, who was in a hospital at the time. Our visits were usually brief, as I wanted to get in and out before Mom’s wheels came off, and I was so relieved that my sons will not have to remember her as anything other than loving.
I’m learning about the hotel parking lot subculture. As you might guess, most guests park their cars and haul their luggage inside. Not tradesmen and their pickups. Like me, they tend to park in the corners at the back of the lot behind the hotel. Like me, they spend little time inside. These guys tend to hang outside by their trucks until late in the evening, shooting the shit and maybe drinking a beer or smoking a joint. Last night the guys at trucks parked on either side of me were still going at 11 pm. I wanted to hit the hay and didn’t want to do it in front of them by opening the hatch and crawling in the back. Why I was too shy to do this, witnessed only by stoned or buzzed guys I would never see again, says something about my modesty, I guess. To drive off I would have to get out and move my backpack, groceries, and other stuff out of the driver’s seat (I move those things there nightly so that I can watch Netflix from the passenger's seat, which is more comfortable than the driver’s). So it seemed less embarrassing to squirm from the front of Goldfinger to the back, which I did with ease that surprised me. Memories! I hadn’t done this since the first night of my trip.
Ace has stabilized. Curt has told him that he must move – temporarily – to the Willard Walker Hospice Home. He resisted and Curt pretty much insisted, as he can get much better care there. Dad doesn’t want to die, not yet, and so he agreed.
The Garrett library is comfortable and quiet, except for the guy who was listening to Fox News on his phone on the couch behind me. (Solution: Don’t be annoyed, Mark, just put on your headphones.) Almost no one is here. It’s summer, just not yet hot enough to drive people to an airconditioned place that is free for all. Americans do love their libraries, however. A 2015 Pew Research Center report found that two-thirds of those (scientifically) polled believed that closing their library would have a major (negative) impact on their community, while the rest said the impact would be minor or nonexistent. Yet only one-third of those polled said that their library’s closing would have a major impact on them personally. Higher percentages of Hispanics, women, parents with children, and those over the age of 50 claimed that library closings would damage their communities, with these same groups plus low-income individuals having concerns that the closings would harm them personally.
Majorities of women, younger Americans (ages 16-29), lower- to middle-income Americans (with household incomes between $30K and $50K), and college graduates had visited a library in the past year. Parents of minors were most likely to have visited a library. There were no real differences in library visits between whites and Blacks (Hispanics visit at lower rates, although those who do visit libraries do so more often) or between those living in rural, suburban, or urban settings. Library computers and internet access were especially important for African Americans, Hispanics, and those in low income families.
It’s not just that closing libraries is often seen as harming communities, it’s that libraries are widely seen as helping them. The Pew Research report does not list all the options it gave on how libraries might be helpful; it does find that the public views libraries as helpful sources for seeking health information, learning about new technologies and community events and resources, deciding what information they can trust, finding out about volunteer activities, and finding jobs or pursuing job training. Plus: bathrooms, air conditioning and heating, and other services like tax preparation and blood pressure exams.
Carnegie libraries were designed befitting a 1900 understanding of what a library should look like, the marriage of a temple to a bank, as I noted earlier. The additions since then have taken forms based both on the era of the renovation and the vision of the community. Some small share of the libraries are in their original footprint, with the modernizations mainly being electrical upgrades. Given that almost all the libraries were built with an entrance at the top of a staircase, these libraries are not compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), which requires wheelchair access in any public building. The ADA was enacted in 1990 and phased in over that decade. All Carnegie libraries that have had additions built since the ADA have entrances accessible by those in wheelchairs. Where the original entrances remain intact, they are now usually emergency exits only. The worst additions I have seen converted art into ugly. The better additions retain the original character of the building and either replicate the look or make it distinctly different, like the glass box added to the library in Northfield, Minnesota. The library in Angola, Indiana, where I write this has taken a different approach. The original building still exists; it’s just not visible from the outside, as it has been entirely enclosed within the newer building.
Writing in the late afternoon inside the Angola library, I’m anxious, wondering whether Curt will call.
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