Seeing-eye radio? IRIS is on the air

One of my favorite volunteer gigs these days is to be a reader for the Iowa Radio Information Service (IRIS). IRIS is a statewide network of volunteers who read the newspaper as part of a radio broadcast that can be picked up by specially tuned receivers. The receivers are provided at no charge to Iowans who are blind or have a visual or physical impairment that makes reading difficult.

I jokingly tell people that this is the perfect volunteer job for me because I love to hear the sound of my own voice. Actually, as a former journalist, I like the idea of remaining at least tangentially involved in the news business, and I believe that there still is news (especially local) that can't be gotten from either radio or television. I first got involved with a similar group when I lived in the Quad-Cities.

The NBC Nightly News recently focused its "Making a Difference" feature on a similar program in New Jersey. Watch this:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Here in Iowa City, IRIS operates out of a conference room at WSUI/KSUI radio. From 8:00 to 9:00 a.m. 7 days a week, 365 days a year, two volunteers take turns reading the local news, opinion, obituaries and sports from the Cedar Rapids Gazette. (Programming for the rest of the day's schedule is produced in Des Moines or by the national InTouch network.) As with all things, the best of intentions can sometimes go awry. I have had mornings when my reading partner never showed up, leaving me to stumble through the hour alone. There have been mornings when I have been the no-show. Once in a while, the radio station staff will inadvertently lock us out, or the newspaper carrier will forget to deliver our papers. Somehow, the show goes on.

Even after 15 or so years of volunteering here and in Rock Island, I'm far from a professional radio broadcaster. I have learned a lot about reading out loud, though. One of the lessons I learned early on when one of APRIS' listeners wrote in to complain politely that we were reading too slowly. It seems our natural instinct is to slow down and over-enunciate when we are reading out loud, but that listener assured us that reading at a normal pace was much more tolerable.

I've also learned from IRIS how to pronounce the names of a lot of small Iowa towns I've never been to. We have a cheat sheet of phonetic spellings for towns in our Eastern Iowa broadcast area. That's how I know it's Ne-VAY-da, not Ne-VAH-da like the state; it's Mont-i-SELL-o, not Mont-i-CHELL-o like Thomas Jefferson's home. I can tell my reading partner is not a native Iowan when they read a story from Maquoketa and pronounce it Ma-kwo-KEE-ta. Another morning, I remember my non-sports fan partner was repeatedly flummoxed by a sports story about the Iowa football team and specifically one of the Hawkeye players, Kenny Iwebema. I think she pronounced poor Kenny's name about 12 different ways before she was done with the story, but having started the story she gamely soldiered on to the end. (For the record, it's pronounced Eh-WEB-uh-muh. I think.)

Like most operations run entirely by volunteers, IRIS is always in need of a helping hand. This spring, the Iowa City operation was shut down for a couple of weeks when the Iowa River floodwaters crept uncomfortably close to the KSUI studios and damaged a transmitter. Other IRIS broadcast locations around the state were affected. As if all that wasn't enough, the upcoming transition to digital television means that IRIS will lost its ability to broadcast in some areas of Iowa unless some alternative transmission methods are found. If you'd like to make a donation or find out more about volunteering, check it out. That's also the place to go if you know someone with a visual or physical handicap who would enjoy having an IRIS receiver in their home. Where else are they going to get serious news and unintentional comedy all wrapped up in one early-morning hour? Read more!

Wrestling with a memorable year

Carver Hawkeye Arena in the midst of 16,000 screaming wrestling fans is no place for bawlers. Brawlers, sure. That's what the Iowa Hawkeyes are, and that's who was grappling on the mat Saturday night with cross-state rival Iowa State. The defending national champions (Iowa) taking on the No. 2-ranked Cyclones — for a wrestling fan, it doesn't get any better than that.

So what's with the boo-hoo hoo-ha? Well, I wasn't really crying ("there's no crying in wrestling!") but I'd be lying if I said I didn't get a little misty-eyed thinking about where I was last night, and how far I have come in the past year. It was almost a year ago to the day that I attended the first home meet of the 2007-08 season, a double dual against Cornell and Coe. It was a great time, so much so that I shrugged off the fact that just walking from the bus stop to my seat left me huffing and puffing. After all, I knew I wasn't in great shape, plus I seemed to have caught a chest cold or something. Not surprising, given the ridiculous winter weather that I was already tired of.

By Jan. 5, the day of the big Iowa-Oklahoma State dual meet, I knew it wasn't just a cold. I had been looking forward to that matchup for weeks, but on that Saturday evening I couldn't muster up the energy it would take to drive in to Iowa City and try to make my way to my seat. By that point, I was barely able to walk across the street without having to stop to catch my breath.

Missing a meet I had so looked forward to was my wake-up call. On Monday, I finally called the doctor for an appointment. By Wednesday, I was admitted to the hospital and by the following week I was recovering from open-chest surgery and coming to grips with a diagnosis of Hodgkins' lymphoma.

I'll spare you the gory details of the next 11 months. Those of you who were there already know. What matters is that I am now 5 months into remission, and last night I attended my second Iowa meet of the season. Just a year after my first inklings that I might be sick, I walked (with the aid of a cane) from the parking lot to my seat in Section LL without stopping once for a breather.

As I cheered on the Hawkeyes' win yesterday over Iowa State, I thought about the past year. Countless times during those early months of chemo and fevers and sundry complications, focusing on the Hawkeye wrestling team was a welcome distraction from possibilities I didn't want to contemplate. Last night, sitting in the midst of an all-time record crowd for a college wrestling dual meet, I thought about the little stack of wrestling season tickets that went unused last year — I found them recently when I pulled my winter coat out of the closet.

I thought about how I'd watched last January's National Duals on Iowa Public Television from my hospital bed, trying not to think about the painful bone-marrow biopsy I'd just had, or the upcoming surgery that would involve sawing my sternum in half and then wiring it back together.

I thought about waking up in the ICU a few days after my surgery and stumbling onto the Iowa-Ohio State meet on the Big Ten Network, even though I couldn't see much because I didn't know where my glasses were and the breathing tube in my throat meant I couldn't ask for them.

I thought about getting up at 2 a.m. during a second hospital stay in February and stealthily using the nurse's laptop computer in my room to check Hawkeye Nation for match-by-match results of the home dual against Michigan.

I thought about missing the first 2 days of the NCAA tournament in March because I was in the hospital again and the damn place doesn't carry ESPNU. I thought about nagging the docs to get discharged that Saturday afternoon in time to get home to watch two Hawkeyes — Brent Metcalf and Mark Perry — win individual national championships Saturday night.

I thought about all those things yesterday. And yeah, I got a little sniffly, damn it.

And then Brent Metcalf scored a takedown in the first nine seconds of his match against Mitch Mueller (on his way to a 26-10 technical fall) and I went right back to screaming my head off. Thank you, Iowa wrestlers. For all of you, and for me, the best is yet to come. It's great to be a Hawkeye! Read more!

MoochReview: Firehouse

I just finished reading Firehouse, a book by David Halberstam about a New York City firehouse where 12 of the 13 men who responded to the Sept. 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Center died. The book is beautifully written, and manages to draw a vivid picture of the powerful bonds that unite firefighters with their comrades. It's almost unbearably sad, especially when I stopped to think that for all the impact of the stories of these 13 men, they are but a tiny fraction of the lives that were lost that day.

I would strongly recommend Firehouse to anyone who is interested in a glimpse at the impact of that day on the NYFD. There is little detail about the scene at Ground Zero because little is known about what, exactly, the men of Engine 40/Ladder 35 experienced there. The one member of the firehouse who survived did so with severe injuries, including a concussion, and his memories of the day are incomplete. Most of the book examines both the individual lives of the firefighters who died and the culture of brotherhood that is the modern firehouse.

As good as the book is, though, one thing did trouble me. Although Halberstam tries to portray the firefighters realistically there is still an element of sanctification about their individual lives and stories. There are hints, mere wisps of suggestions, that some of the men may have been less than perfect (in the ways that all of us are less than perfect), but the tone quickly reverts to unstinted admiration. The book was published less than a year after the attacks, so it's understandable that Halberstam did not have the luxury of distance to more objectively draw his portraits. It would be interesting to read an updated version of the book to see where the families and comrades of the firefighters are now, but that won't ever happen given that the author Halberstam was killed a couple of years ago in a traffic accident.

So why does Halberstam's idealization of the firefighters of Engine 35/Ladder 40 bother me? Because none of us are perfect, and by writing as if these men were, Halberstam diminishes their lives. There's no question that it takes a special kind of person to be a firefighter anywhere, let alone New York City, but to pretend they were perfect is as if to say that what they were — strong,tough, proud, brave, sure, but also impatient, angry, intolerant — was not good enough. But all of us deserve to be remembered for who we are, warts and all. Anything less is like watching only half of a movie, or reading random chapters out of a book. We are the sum of our thoughts and actions and emotions, and it's in the experiencing of the full spectrum of life that we are truly alive. Read more!

I've become a mooch — BookMooch, that is

A couple of months ago, I joined BookMooch, a Web site whose motto is "Give books away. Get books you want." Members of the free service list their unwanted books for others to "mooch" for free. Mailing out claimed books from your inventory earns you points that you can use to "mooch" free books from other users. The only costs are for postage.

At the time I joined BookMooch, my intention was to pare down my library of approximately 1,200 books. (When I moved/downsized into my current 1-bedroom apartment in 2002, I had to choose whether to get rid of the books or the bed. Now my "bedroom" walls are lined with 7 bookcases and I sleep on the (very comfy) couch.) I have happily sent off 19 books to mooching readers all over the world (Germany, England, Scotland, Finland, Australia, Korea) and the U.S.

Unfortunately, all those BookMooch points were burning a hole in my Web browser, and I have mooched back 16 books (you can see a mosaic of covers of my recent Mooches over there on the left). To say that this defeats my original purpose is to belabor the obvious, so let's just agree between ourselves never to mention it, OK? Thanks!

On the plus side, all those new books (new to me, that is) give me a fresh source for material for this here web log. So if you're looking for ideas for what to read next, stay tuned for some fresh looks at books. See? I'm doing it for you! First up: Firehouse by David Halberstam. Read more!