The Art Prize starts today in Grand Rapids. The painting is by Kacey Cornwell.
It is on display at the first floor of The Fifth Third Bank in Grand Rapids.
Meet the artist Kacey Cornwell.
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Copyright (c) 2014 Emma Blogs LLC
The evaluation of the cataracts
By Emma Palova
EW Emma’s Writings
Note: This is the second part in the mini-series about Emma Palova’s journey from near blindness to new eyes with 20/20 vision. It is a story about cataracts that cause blurred vision.
The first part “Eyes set on Dr. Verdier” was published on EW Emma’s Writings http://emmapalova.com on Sept. 6.
The evaluation
Grand Rapids, MI – I was in at the Verdier Eye Center for an evaluation of the cataracts on July 11.
“Sweet,” said Dr. Nate Schlotthauer as he examined my right eye after dilating it with eye drops.
He called in a technician to look at the “perfect” cataract that plagues younger people than 60. Hereditary factors play a role in the fast-moving cataracts, as well as exposure to the sun, and birthdays, according to Schlotthauer.
I could not read the chart with rows of letters during the examination.
“It’s like looking through a foggy window that gets foggier as more layers are added,” said Schlotthauer. “Only a surgery can fix that. If you live long enough, you will eventually develop a cataract.”
I looked around me in the dark room with the expensive optical equipment and I wondered where the surgery will take place.
“Dr. Verdier will come now to see you,” said Schlotthauer.
Smiling Verdier with curly blonde hair walked in fast. I slightly remembered him from the story interview almost 10 years ago. Little did I know that I would be needing his eye care.
“I can’t drive. I can’t write and I can’t see myself in the mirror,” I described the fast progression of the cataract in the right eye. I have trouble seeing you doctor.”
Verdier examined the cataract nodding his head.
“We’ll fix you up. We’re going to do the right eye first,” he said. “Don’t worry. But remember, you still might need eyeglasses. Look at me.”
A technician flooded my right eye and performed measurements of the eyeball for the future lens implant that will replace the natural lens with the cataract. She also made me an appointment with the family doctor to make sure that I was fit for a surgery.”
“Okay, you’re all set for July 22,” she said.
The Verdier Eye Care office center is located on the main floor of the 1000 E. Paris building. It is a network of hallways, examining and waiting rooms, almost like a glass house labyrinth. Technicians in Cherokee blue uniforms were running around.
Boards with blinking lights showed which rooms were occupied. Clearly there was a system and an order underlying the chaos.
I got my Patient Information booklet about the upcoming surgery. My husband picked up the prescribed Polytrim ad Prednisolone eye drops for me. I was all set.
About the featured photo; This is what objects seem like with a cataract.
For more information on eye surgeries go to http://www.verdiereyecenter.com
To be continued with “The surgery”
Copyright © 2014 story by Emma Palova
Eyes set on Dr. Verdier
By EMMA PALOVA
EW Emma’s Writings
Lowell, MI- On May 16th, my world dipped into a blur. The white fuzzy ball in my right eye turned into fog that surrounded me.
As I turned on the computer in the morning I couldn’t see the Google logo on the screen. I panicked. I drove to the eye doctor in town, but I couldn’t see the signs on the road.
“What brings you here on a Friday morning?” asked Dr. Holzer.
“I can’t see,” I said with tears in my eyes.
After the exam, Dr. Holzer said, “I see why you can’t see. You have cataracts in both eyes.”
I was diagnosed with a fast-moving cataract in my right eye two years ago. Unlike the cataracts that most elderly people eventually develop, this one strikes younger people at a fast pace.
“You will need a surgery in two years,” said the doctor exactly. “I cannot correct your vision to 20/20. This is worse than I expected.”
I cried that fall as I walked to the newspaper office. I could barely see the sidewalk.
The new eyeglasses helped somewhat, but the right eye was useless. I started using the left eye straining it further. Now, the fuzzy ball was also in the left eye.
I couldn’t see from the treadmill my beautiful garden. Everything became a chore. I had to use the magnifying glass on top of the eyeglasses, and still the letters were dancing in front of me somewhere in deep 3D. I had to guess where everything was or used to be.
So, here I was two years later sitting across from Dr. Holzer by the optical equipment in the dark.
“You’re going to need a surgery in both eyes,” he said.
“I want Dr. Verdier to operate on my eyes,” I said.
“You know Dr. Verdier?”
I did know Dr. David Verdier from a story for the Grand Rapids Magazine and Advance Newspapers about his surgeries aboard the Orbis airplane in China. Orbis is a well-known organization among eye specialists, and Dr. Verdier is a renowned eye specialist.
I was well aware of Verdier’s specialization both in corneal disease and cataracts, and about his practice. Verdier Eye Center, located at 1000 E. Paris Avenue in Grand Rapids. That’s where we did the interview for several stories.
“You’re going to have to wait, but Dr. Verdier is worth waiting for,” said Holzer. “He can also correct your vision during the surgery so you won’t need eye glasses.”
The initial consultation was scheduled for Sept. 22 to evaluate how far along the cataracts were.
In the meantime, my eyesight was getting worse by the minute. On the night of the first Summer Sizzlin’ concert, I was blinded by the setting sun as I walked out of the Sneaker’s Restaurant. That was at the beginning of July.
When I was shooting the Riverwalk parade on July 12, I could not see the floats or candidate Lynn Mason marching in the parade. I was shooting into the fog. My son was standing by my side with baby Josephine and I could hardly make out their contours.
On Monday, when I walked to the Franciscan Sisters I couldn’t see my neighbors doing wood on the other side of the gravel road.
“Hey Emma, we’re here,” Karen shouted.
At the Sisters, I couldn’t see the nearby school from their Canticle House on the hill.
Finally, I couldn’t see myself in the mirror. I picked up the phone.
“I have to have the surgery as soon as possible,” I cried. “I can’t write, I can’t drive. Tell Dr. Verdier that I know him.”
To be continued
Copyright © 2014 story and photos by Emma Palova
Hi to all,
I will soon be opening a brand new virtual storefront on all Emma Blogs. I will feature Czech-inspired products such as the Palinka (r) line of canned products.
The products such as the sweet and sour dill pickles are all home-made from an old family pickling recipe. The secret recipe has been handed down from generation to generation.
My mother Ella Konecny pictured in the featured photo started canning in the USA during her second immigration in the late 1970s. She didn’t like the sour taste of American pickles or the color.
She would stand up and imitate our grandpa Joseph making a grimace from the sour taste.
“See they twist your mouth,” she said. “We have to start making our own.”
Ella most likely learned how to can from her own mother Anna.
Mom and dad still grow their own cucumbers for pickling. But the weather hasn’t been great for pickles. Ella is also the woman behind the brand name “Palinka.”
My husband Ludek and I are the third generation canning these goodies in our outdoors kitchen.designed for this purpose. Because as the Czech saying goes, “Be prepared to answer when winter asks you what you did in the summer.”
We use only fresh pickling cucumbers sorted by size and cut to the favorite spears, slices or whole. We can other vegetables like red beets and gardiniera mix.
We also make salsa and marinara sauces with either Merlot and basil or Cabernet-Sauvignon with garlic, as well as barrel-aged sauerkraut.
We plan to add more products in the future.
I will also present my blog design and writing services in an app Emma Blogs format coming soon.
Let me know what you would like to see in this big marketplace by emailing me at emmapalova@yahoo.com
Or you can comment on any of the sites of Emma Blogs. These are:
http://farmcountryblog.wordpress.com
http://etravelandfood.wordpress.com
http://placeathome.wordpress.com
http://eheatlhandbeauty.wordpress.com
http://greatoutdoorsandgolf.wordpress.com
http://editionemma.wordpress.com
http://cjkarmaskova.wordpress.com
I am looking forward to this new venture.
Sincerely,
Emma Palova
http:// emmapalova.com
.
Summer is in full swing, don’t miss out on anything
The Kris Hitchock and Small Town Son country rock band played on the opening night of the Riverwalk Festival Friday.
For full schedule go to http://www.lowellchamber.org
see Sarah Harmon’s story on local events page
Saint Patrick establishes traditions
By Emma Palova
EW Emma’s Writings
Parnell, MI- I love this Irish unincorporated settlement in the middle of nowhere. I got hooked on it almost 20 years ago, when we were looking for a place to build a house. We found it right here in northeast Kent County, Michigan, some 6,000 miles away from home in former Czechoslovakia.
“I am going to like it here,” I said to my husband Ludek as we drove past the white country church and the old general store.
I can easily list all the establishments in Parnell. There are the Saint Patrick’s Church and school, the cemetery and the Parnell Grocery store.
The parish with its parishioners cement Parnell as they have for the last 170 years. The annual Saint Patrick Festival is the biggest event of the year in the community. It always takes place at the end of June far from the actual feast of Saint Patrick on March 17. But, the weather is better, although unpredictable.
Over the years, the festival weather has been from jacket cold to bikini hot.
We found out about the Irish festival early on through channels in Lowell. We’re not Irish by any means, but we lived in Montreal which has a big Irish heritage. We went to the Saint Patrick’s parade there which was complete with bagpipers in skirts.
Saint Patrick festival has become a family tradition, a homecoming when we all get together. My daughter Emma Palova-Chavent usually flies in for Saint Patrick Festival from France.
Dave Simmonds’ bluegrass band Easy Idle that played on Friday festival nights inspired her wedding music and dance back in 2009.
This year, the Conklin Ceili Band played on Friday night. Even without closing my eyes, I could see Michael Flatley and his troop dancing to the Irish band.
I can’t dance the jig, but I can certainly appreciate it.
The Las Vegas night, preceded by the auction, takes place on Saturday nights. I tried my luck a few times and I’ve always lost.
The big get together day is Sunday. After the mass, it’s time for the popular chicken dinners. My parents Ella and Vaclav Konecny always come from Big Rapids to share this special time.
I am not a chicken lover, but the grilled chicken with mashed potatoes, corn, cole slaw and apple sauce is delicious. And the desserts baked by the parishioner women are awesome.
“I don’t have to cook,” mom said victoriously.
Moreover, Saint Patrick parish festivals started popping up around Michigan, according to mom.
“We had one last week in Big Rapids and it raised $18,000,” Ella said.
Much like back in 1850 when the chicken dinners started, I introduced my future daughter-in-law Maranda Lynn Ruegsegger to the tradition.
“I always had to work,” she said. “I am excited.”
Longtime parishioner Ed Donahue said the chicken dinners evolved into the three-day festival. Donahue has been in charge of the dinners.
“It’s a lot more than a fundraiser,” Donahue said.
It is more than a fundraiser. Freelance writer Maryalene LaPonsie received the Dorothy Award after the 5K run Friday for enduring hardship. LaPonsie has been raising five children as a single parent after her husband Tom passed away last year.
“I think the festival weekend may have breathed some new life into me,” LaPonsie wrote on Facebook. “I feel better than I have in a while. Hopefully that will carry over to tomorrow when the alarm goes off.”
LaPonsie wrote that she was honored to get the award.
“The only reason I can persevere is because of you my friends,” LaPonsie wrote. “You who pick me up when I fall, you who cheer me on when I despair, you who rush in when I falter.”
Saint Patrick parish festival is definitely more than a fundraiser for the church and the school. It is bonding time for families like ours and Irish descendants far away from home.
Copyright © 2014 story and photos by Emma Palova
EW blog enters new phase on the daily Ionia Sentinel-Standard site
By Emma Palova
EW Emma’s Writings
Lowell, MI- I am very excited today because my blog EW Emma’s Writings is now also live on the Ionia Sentinel-Standard daily newspaper site at http://www.sentinel-standard.com/section/blogs01?taxid=2414
“It will increase traffic to the blog a lot,” said editor Lori Kilchermann. “I will do some promos in the coming days and weeks.”
This has been my goal for a long time. I finally feel like I have stepped into the future. I worked for the Sentinel from 1998 to 2003, and I received several awards for community and mental health reporting. Internet was still a baby at the time and so were RSS feeds, content writing and social media.
The EW Emma’s Writings blog on the WordPress platform features a mix of local and international stories in support of the publication of my memoir Greenwich Meridian where East meets west. The memoir is about our family immigration saga now spanning three generations. I will dedicate the memoir to my mother Ella Konecny who suffered the most with immigration.
I established the blog in January of 2013 to increase exposure on the Internet. It has been steadily growing both in audience and content. The page About People is just like its title suggests about interesting people from the area such as Connie Elsasser with her carriage rides, the Ionia Community Mental Health director Bob Lathers or the Kropf apple legend.
I update the blog twice a week and use my photography. Other users of WordPress include CNN, Bangor Daily, TechCrunch, Oprah Winfrey and Martha Stewart.
I use WordPress themes 2014, Skylark, Hemingway re-written, Splendio and more.
I also started to write and design blogs for other people. Blogs are dynamic, fast and versatile. Search engines like them and they drive traffic to sites. If you want me to design and write your blog e-mail me at emmapalova@yahoo.com for a quote. I can also teach you how to blog to drive traffic to your business and websites.
I love blogging because of the great feedback I get my readers.
I hope you will enjoy my writings and photography also on http://emmapalova.com and editionemma.wordpress.com
Watch for my stories from the Mississippi River. I now accomplished 127 posts on WordPress. I am looking forward to the next 100.
Copyright © 2014 story and photos by Emma Palova
Watch for my stories from the Old Man River Mississippi on http://emmapalova.com
Pictured in the selfie are Ludek and Emma in McGregor, Iowa on the banks of the big river.
It was a trip into the past at its best. I rediscovered treasures like Paper Moon for my cover photo and the magnificent river.
Father, the founder of immigration
By Emma Palova
EW Emma’s Writings
Lowell, MI- As we ready to head out west for the Rendezvous in Prairie du Chien, I can’t help but think about my father Vaclav Konecny. Mom Ella calls him the founder of immigration.
“Without him we’d be back home,” she said.
I never know if mom is sarcastic when she says this.
Once my father sets his mind on something, he goes and pursues it until he gets it. It doesn’t matter what it is. It can be a math problem, a new shower or toilet.
“He’s a perfectionist,” mom says about dad.
Dad, former math professor at Ferris State University in Big Rapids, still calculates math problems for journals. He will be 80 this July. He has always been fascinated by Fermat’s Last Theorem and sought to solve it. Originally, a physicist, dad loves Einstein’s relativity theory and makes endless jokes about it.
He has proposed many math problems himself.
“That can sometimes be harder than solving them,” dad says.
Math is still the anchor of his life to which he turns when times are good or bad.
“In my mind, I can travel anywhere,” he said.
His co-anchors are languages. At 60, he learned Spanish motivated by a trip to Mexico and Spain. At 75, dad started studying French motivated by my daughter Emma’s wedding in France.
Dad now reads novels in Spanish and French.
He relentlessly pursues perfection in all its forms, whether intellectual or physical. Dad has always been on a strict diet, never gaining an extra pound.
“He gets his discipline from the seminary,” Ella says.
Both dad and his brother Tony went to the seminary in Kromeriz.
But, paternal grandpa and grandma too requested 100 percent obedience. I found that out the hard way when we went back to Czechoslovakia in 1973 from the USA. We lived in their house under strict rules.
The ruling nature of grandparents has never transferred on my dad.
“He never yells,” says mom, “he’s forever patient.”
Dad can patiently wait for hours at the airport for a delayed plane. His quest for perfection has rubbed off to a certain point on me; that is in my creative work. But, I lack both his discipline and obedience.
Only once, dad yelled at mom, when he was teaching her how to drive in Africa.
Dad taught me how to drive in 1990 in Big Rapids.
“The car is a weapon,” he said, “be careful with it.”
Unlike my mom, dad has always been encouraging and positive about everything.
“You have to pursue things,” he says.
A great educator and a lifelong student, dad continues to pursue things with the same energy he had, when he emigrated some 50 years ago.
Happy Father’s Day, dad
Emma
Copyright (c) 2014 story and photos by Emma Palova
Rendezvous in Prairie II
By Emma Palova
Lowell, MI- I still have souvenirs from those 19 months of life from 2007 to 2009 when I lived alone in our house, while husband Ludek was working in Prairie.
These include trapper’s fur sacs, collector metal signs and the transporter bag for food and snacks.
But, what I find precious about the time on the Mississippi is that we made good friends. Brian and Sheryl Groen took us for a ride on the river that I will never forget.
We discovered a sunken ship that we called the Mississippi Titanic, and went under a bridge that was fixed with clamps.
Even though Prairie is isolated, the area around the river is hauntingly beautiful especially at night. It’s a wildlife paradise with eagles nesting and turtles in the river.
Ludek changed his lodgings quite a bit as he moved across the river to McGregor in Iowa.
I like McGregor a lot as it reminds me of European spa towns. There were some great finds in McGregor as well. I discovered a store with costumes owned by a gentleman who makes costumes for Hollywood.
He also built a Bed & Bath complete with a salon downstairs.
The Rendezvous, one of its kind in North America, takes place on the Feriole Island in Prairie on Father’s Day weekend.
I find it very authentic with trappers in teepees and real Indian food. There are plenty of treasures to purchase.
“It was a consolation for what happened to us,” I always say.
To be continued
Copyright © 2014 story and photos by Emma Palova
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