From left to right, Wanda Bridgeforth, moi, Anna Nessy Perlberg, and panel moderator Nancy Sayre, Editor/Publisher at Golden Alley Press. (Photo by Bev Miller.)

I assured the standing-room-only crowd at our Getting Your Memoir Off the Ground session at Printers Row Lit Fest Sunday morning that their wait for 95-year-old panelist Wanda Bridgeforth would be worth it. “Funny thing was, Wanda Jr. was waiting for me upstairs,” Wanda told me later. “And I was waiting for her downstairs!”

My sister Bev and an entourage of other friends were on the lookout for Wanda, too, and just as the crowd in room 4008 of Jones High School started shuffling their papers and fidgeting in their seats, Bev came in with good news. “Wanda has entered the building.”

The temperature outside was in the 90s, and Wanda entered without a sweat. The crowd cheered. After greeting her new admirers with a hearty, “I’m here!” Wanda settled into a seat at the front table next to Seeing Eye dog Whitney and me, and we were off.

Wanda was on our panel with Anna Nessy Perlberg, a fellow writer who also shares stories of life’s challenges and joys in the memoir-writing classes I lead in Chicago every week. Anna and Wanda are both featured in my new book Writing Out Loud and both of them read essays during our panel.

With her daughter’s help, Wanda Bridgeforth self-published her memoir, On The Move. Writing Out Loud and Anna Nessy Perlberg’s The House in Prague were both published by Golden Alley Press.

I shared tips on getting a memoir started, and Golden Alley Press publisher/editor Nancy Sayre spoke on the pros and cons of self-publishing, of working with a major publishing house, and of working with an independent publisher.

Our panel flew by, and friends there told me later that audience members were jotting notes down throughout. The last question during our Q&A was whether writing a memoir taught us something about ourselves that surprised us. I answered with some blah, blah, blah the way I do, and when I turned it over to Wanda, she started with, “Well, the thing I learned was…” She just couldn’t find her words, so we all held our breath in anticipation. And just like at the start of our presentation, the wait for Wanda was worth it. “I learned I could do it!” Anna responded with an exuberant, “Me, too!”

And of course I followed up by looking toward the audience and chirping, “And you can, too!”

Audience members stood in line afterwards to have us sign our books and ask nancy Sayre more questions. And I’m still receiving emails from Wanda’s new fans: they’re special-ordering copies of On the Move.

Today I’m happy to share a post by our dear friend Milton Otto. Milton lives in Urbana, Illinois. We met Milt years ago at an Urbana watering hole called the Iron Post. He was running for city council and had just come in from an evening of knocking on doors. We struck up a conversation and ended up writing a check on the spot; we became his first, if not his biggest, donor. I could do a whole post about Milt, but that’s for another day. For now, I’ll share this nugget which he wrote last week upon the passing of University of Illinois Professor Fred Kummerow, and I hope you’ll give it a read.

Fred Kummerow in his lab.

A cussedly stubborn biochemist
by Milton Otto

This morning I had an egg for breakfast and read the obituary of Fred Kummerow in the News-Gazette. He was a giant. He lived to be 102. Honestly, he died too young. Bear with me as I explain what I mean by that.

He was part of the team that identified a deficiency of niacin in the diet as the cause of pellagra. Deaths from pellagra dropped from over 2000 in 1941 to 12 in 1945.

In 1957, he published his first paper on the link between trans fats and heart disease. He then fought a stubborn battle for over 60 years to force the FDA to recognize that trans fats rather than dietary cholesterol were causing our epidemic of heart disease and stroke. It was a lonely fight as his lab struggled for funding against the united opposition of the giant food companies and their powerful allies. But, eventually Fred prevailed.

In 2007, New York City banned adding trans fats to food. There was a lot of sneering and jeering from Fox News and their ilk. But, New York City immediately saw hospital admissions for heart attack and stroke begin to decline.

https://jamanetwork.com/…/jamacard…/article-abstract/2618359

One estimate, based on New York’s experience, showed that a ban on trans fats that are added to food would save 12 lives per year per 100,000 of population.

http://cadmus.eui.eu/bitstream/…/1814/31898/MWP_2014_12.pdf…

In a country of 326 million people, halting the practice of adding trans fats to food would save 39,000 lives per year. That’s the equivalent of eliminating all deaths from traffic accidents. Would you be willing to butter your toast with real butter instead of margarine if it meant no one ever died from a traffic accident again? I would.

In 2014, on the cusp of turning 100 years old, Fred sued the FDA to force them to act and stop food companies from adding this poison to our food. In 2015, the FDA finally agreed with Fred and acted to remove this additive from our food supply by 2018.

Each and every one of us has seen uncles, aunts, parents, grandparents, siblings, and dear friends struck down too soon by stroke and heart disease. How many of those people would have led richer and fuller lives if, in 1957, those with power had listened and verified Fred Kummerow’s findings instead of attempting to silence him.

With any luck, by the time I die, Fred Kummerow’s hard work and cussed stubbornness will have saved well north of 1 million lives. Very few of those people will ever know his name.

So, that is the end of Fred Kummerow’s obituary. But, it’s not quite the end of what I learned this morning.

It turns out that Fred Kummerow was born in Berlin, Germany during World War I. His early childhood was filled with hunger and want. His mother put Fred and his brother to bed on weekends to conserve their energy because they had so little food. Eventually, relatives in America sent money so that Fred’s family could come to Milwaukee.

Fortunately, Fred’s family was welcomed. Although Fred was 8 years old, he was placed in first grade at school because he spoke not a word of English.

By the time he was in 8th grade, he had caught back up to grade level and was winning U.S. History contests at his school.

America was much poorer in 1922 than it is today. It had just survived the most catastrophic episode of organized violence that the world had ever seen in World War I. It had every reason to turn away the family of a soldier who had fought on the other side in that awful blood-letting.

But, America didn’t turn away Fred Kummerow’s family.

And because America didn’t turn away Fred Kummerow, millions of people will live who otherwise would have died.

Donald Rumsfeld, arguing that we should invade Iraq, observed, “there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don’t know we don’t know. And if one looks throughout the history of our country and other free countries, it is the latter category that tend to be the difficult ones.”

What our conservative friends sometimes forget is that Rumsfeld’s logic applies not just to evil, but also to good.

When we are kind, there are good things that we know will result. A child gets to eat.

We also know that our kindness often results in other good things which we cannot predict. That child grows up and becomes a college professor.

What we cannot lose sight of is that sometimes kindness results in good things that no one could have imagined. That child becomes a cussedly stubborn biochemist who hammers away for decades until he has saved millions of lives.

Is one of the unaccompanied minors currently in the Urbana school system the next Fred Kummerow?

I don’t know. I guess that’s an unknown unknown.

But, I’m optimistic.

Those of you who have read Writing Out Loud know that essays by the writers in the memoir classes I lead are sprinkled throughout the book. This week you have a couple of opportunities to meet some of those writers in person:

1. Bruce and Anne Hunt (Writing Out Loud readers will know them from Ch. 65, “The Hunts”)  will each read their essay from Writing Out Loud at a book-launch party The Village Chicago is throwing for us this Friday, June 9 from 2:30 to 4 pm at the Woman’s Athletic Club, 626 N. Michigan in Chicago.Blog readers in the Chicago area can still sign up, you just need to RSVP by the end of the business day today, June 7, 2017 at info@thevillagechicago.org or 773.248.8700. Admission is $12 for Village Chicago Members and $15 for non-members (book purchase separate).
2. Anna Nessy Perlberg (Writing Out Loud readers know her from Ch. 85, “Anna’s House in Prague”) and Wanda Bridgeforth will read during a panel we’re doing at Printers Row Litfest titled Getting Your Memoir Off the Ground…and Published. Wanda self-published her memoir, On the Move. A number of her essays are also excerpted in Writing Out loud, and on Sunday she’ll read from Ch. 22, “All Aboard with Wanda.”Anna will read a section from her memoir The House In Prague, which was published by Golden Alley Press last year. The panel will be moderated by Nancy Sayre, publisher/editor at Golden Alley Press. This all happens at the Printers Row Lit Fest on Sunday, June 11, 2017, at 10 a.m.in Room 4008 at Jones College Prep High School, 600 S. State Street in Chicago. Advance tickets for the event are free of charge but are sold out. A few extra tickets will become available 15 minutes before the event and they are free of charge too, available on a walk-up basis. Come on down!

PS: Whitney the Seeing Eye dog and I will also be sitting at a table in front of Sandmeyer’s Bookstore, 714 S. Dearborn, from 11 a.m. until noon on Saturday, June 10 during #prlf17 if you want to stop by and say hello. Buy a book, and Whitney the Seeing Eye dog might just add her pawtograph, too…!

No matter where I’ve lived, and no matter where I’ve traveled, I’ve noticed a commonality, and I’m not sure it’s heartening or not: It’s the love of so-good-they’re-bad punny names for certain businesses.

Not all businesses mind you, but for some reason, certain businesses just bring out the best/worst in their pun making owners.

There’s a Pepe Le Pew joke here for the taking.

Take the beauty business—hair salons, tanning joints, etc. I can riff off a dozen that I’ve seen just driving around over the years. (From Hair to Eternity is one of my favorites.) But I Googled and it’s really a thing. I mean really a thing. Take this Buzzfeed feature—there are 18 featured altogether, and if you have the nerve, by all means look at them all. Here’s a quick sampling:

Grateful Head

Combing Attractions

Scissors of Ahhhz

There’s something about grooming, because the same thing goes for pet groomers and boarders. Have any doubt? Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is go through this roll call of pun names at AtlasObscura titled A Round of Appaws for America’s Best Pet Care Plans. A few examples:

Noah’s Arf

LaundroMutt

Groomingdales

And of course, there is the porta potty business. Even the tag lines are ripe for exploit—Number 1 in the number 2 business for example. Chicago is well represented in this old but still good AdWeek piece on porta potty company names. Just a few:

LepreCAN

Wizards of Ooze

Doodie Calls

I’m thinking about opening a waxing business. I’m gonna call it Grin and Bare It.

Whitney the Seeing Eye dog and I will be signing copies of my new book Writing Out Loud from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. this Saturday, June 3, 2017 at The Bookstore, 475 N. Main in Glen Ellyn, one of Chicago’s western suburbs.

Reviews on amazon.com of my new book about the colorful cast of characters in my memoir-writing classes in Chicago (and how I manage to lead them without being able to see what I’m doing) have been positive, and one very important review came in by phone last week as well. Ninety-five-year-old Wanda Bridgeforth, one of a handful of writers featured in Writing Out Loud,, called immediately after she’d finished reading and said, “I’m so full I can’t talk.” Now, that’s sayin’ something!

That’s Jenny with the late, great Seeing Eye Dog Hanni and me at The Bookstore in Glen Ellyn.

You might remember my friend Jenny Foucré Fischer from numerous posts I’ve published here about the independent bookstore she’s been working at for decades in Glen Ellyn. Jenny and I have been friends since our teenage years in Elmhurst, Illinois, and she announced her retirement last month. That means my booksigning this Saturday just might be the last one she has set up for The Bookstore. So let’s help her go out with a bang, shall we? C’mon down!