Wanda Nell Carroll

The phone rang.  I saw who it was. Oh no!  I knew before I answered.  "She's gone," he said gently.   It was Scott on the phone.  I wept.  CJ wept.  The three of us wept softly together.  Wanda Nell Carroll's funeral will be Tuesday, Nov 8 at 1:00pm at the Totsch House located in the Lady Bird Johnson Municipal Park in Fredericksburg, TX.  

I remember the day I met Wanda Nell.  

In those days when I arose in the mornings I did a decontamination shower, washed my hands again, sanitized a work area, prepared a bag of nutrition, mounted it on the pole and turned the valve.  I mounted a fresh bag of hydration as well and set up the morning medications to begin their drip.  I gave my wife her injections, a hug, a kiss, gobbled the egg I had fried for me, and reported the night time and morning readings to the nurse who would visit later in the day, did another decontamination shower, slipped on my dress clothes, blew another kiss and ran to the office where I did the necessary paper work, the morning appointments, took a list of tasks for the afternoon, and ran back home to decontaminate again, mount still more hydration and do what ever needed doing.  There were many many times when more than twenty minutes of sleep at a time was not on the menu for the day.  Was I a nurse?  No!  Yes! 

There were some people around my life at that time who later told me that their impression of me was that I was lazy.  If any of you still think that - that shows me what you understand about intensive care giving - up your nose with a rubber hose.

One day when I came home, Carole said "I have a surprise for you," whereupon she told me how she had seen an advertisement in the newspaper, made a call, and  had arranged for me to go to such and such address where I would find a small shop and ask for Wanda Nell. 

There are stories behind why Carole would have thought to do this, but perhaps those are stories I will relate to you another time.  I went.  

After introducing herself and leading me to a small chamber, Wanda Nell said "I'll be back in a minute.  Shuck'em, get under the sheet and wait for me."  I shucked'em and got under the sheet.  When she returned, Wanda Nell proceeded to massage my back, my neck, my legs and my arms.  There were knots on top of the knots in my muscles.  Wanda Nell somehow took all that away and relieved the pain from the tension and stress of day and night care giving.  Carole had indeed found a wonderful gift to give me and I was better able to be helper for her then too.

From then on, after every trip to the hospital where I often slept in chair sitting up for days, Carole sent me to Wanda Nell for a massage.  Sometimes when we stayed out of the hospital for a while, Carole sent me anyway to get the knots worked out of my back.  More than once when Wanda pulled the sheet off my back to work on it, she would begin "Now this afternoon when Carole and I were talking, she said ... " and the conversation would begin.

Eventually Wanda Nell and Scott had their own place set up in their house.  I got to meet Scott and we became good friends.  Scott and I have shared a vocation, only he had training I've never had and his expertise helped me help others.   On top of all that, the man plays a mean guitar and sings.  So did Wanda Nell.  The two of them can get a crowd to sing "Father Abraham" along with them in flash.  

Bless her heart, when CJ came into my life, she became friends with my friends too.  CJ and Wanda Nell did not get to spend long together as friends, but they were friends indeed. I could see every day when CJ and Wanda Nell exchanged pleasantries and I saw that CJ would encourage and cheer Wanda Nell.  Wanda Nell told me privately one day:  "You had quite a lady there ..."  Yup, and it was good to hear that from my old friend too.

Yesterday was not a good day.  I awoke with the phone ringing and the news that Ana Štefok was gone.  At nearly the close of the day the phone rang with the news that Wanda Nell Carroll was gone.  CJ and I wept some yesterday and stayed close to each other and coped, just coped, what else was there to do?

do sljedeći put, blagoslov - until next time, blessings,

Canovals a.k.a. Slavonac
5 studenog 2011

Jugoslavija?

CJ, Clary, Cider, and Guinness, and Theodore and Teddy all remembered my birthday in a special way this year.  I liked that.  The youngest daughter did too.  I liked that too. So did a lot of my old classmates from high school years ago.  Marijan and Marina and Tatanja and Andrej and Gregor and a bunch of others from Home came by to say for sretan rodjendan too.  Altogether there may have been a hundred or so well wishers for my sixty-fifth birthday. Nice. Mucho dobro.  

My parent's daughter sent a card in which she commented on the photo I was using for whatever reason as my Facebook profile at the time.  She said "I see you have been fishing."  Yup.  Mmmm hmmm, I was impressed.  She wanted me to believe she was keeping abreast of my life.  She had been there three years ago Gospodin M. and I had stopped in for a few days with Tata before we wandered off to the Sabine pass where a boat was waiting for us.  A few weeks later a hurricane had struck the area we passed through.  No more little coastal fishing towns, no more boat.  

After the hurricane, all that remained of that little expedition were the memories, some memories of what came next (about which you already may have read in my last blog) and that blooming photograph of me and that fish.  I did not even have my beard back yet in that photo.  I was clean shaven at that time which in my clan means I was "available."  I am fully bearded now.    

Now look what I have done.  I wandered off the trail out into the forest somewhere so let's get us back on the trail.  The youngest daughter married with a really fine fellow.  He only had one flaw that I could find.  Sometimes he would poke my ribs a little about me being Croatian.  His family were Austrian, you see, the master race, at least the masters of Croatia in the Hapsburg days.  There was only thing, he said, that he could not understand.  He knew his family had come from a town in Austria with a seaport, but as far as he could tell, Austria is landlocked.  How could his family have come from an Austrian seaport town when there are not any.  I asked him what is name of their city.  He responded, "Split."  Mystery solved.  I showed him where on the map is Split. Of course, its right there in plain view on the map - on the Jadrana in Croatia. 

When his family had arrived in Texas, their passport showed that they were from the Österreichisch-ungarisches Reich - or simply Austria on Texicaneese.  That's a language I haven't mentioned before - its the english that Teksikanski speak when they are not speaking on teksikanski jezik.  Until after World War I, most Croats arriving in Texas came on papers from the Austro-Hungarian Empire and so they were often just called Austrians.

After World War I, things changed.  Their paper work said these new immigrants were from "Yugoslavia."  It didn't do anyone any good to try to say "I am Croatian."  The average Teksikan looked at the map and there was no Croatia anywhere to be found.  He might however however find "Yugoslavia."  Please understand that most Texans can find the nearest Walmart and that is about the extent of their geographical knowledge. 


I graded papers for a professor at Concordia University, Austin.  There was one question always on his final examinations - "The capitol of the Roman Empire was
a. Berlin 
b. Moscow
c. Philadelphia
d. Rome 
e. none of the above,
please circle the correct answer." 
The vast majority of his students chose anything but "Rome" for the capitol of the Roman Empire.  So where was a Croatian from?  Even if someone said "I am Croatian," behind his back people said "he's from somewhere in Yugoslavia.  Most Croatians who arrived in North America just shrugged their shoulders and said "we are from "Yugoslavia."

How did Croatians come to be submerged in "Yugoslavia?"  Before the fall of Austria, Hungary, or Germany, the Croatian Sabor or Parliament met in Zagreb on October 29, 1918, to declare "the Kingdom of Croatia, Slavonia and Dalmatia" to be a free and independent state. The Hapsburg Crown recognized Croatia and transferred the fleet to the Croatian government on October 31st 1918.  At 18:44 the following day the Royal Italian Navy sank the Croatian dreadnaught Viribus Unitis.  Almost at once the Italian, French and French African forces invaded from the west and Serbian troops invaded from the east.  On the first of December 1918, Serbian Prince Alexander announced the formation of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes ruled from Belgrade.  For the first time in at least thirteen centuries, the traditional Croatian institutions of Ban and Sabor were swept away by foreign armies bent on making Croatia and Croatians disappear from the face of the earth.

The American delegation to the Paris Peace talks in 1919 commented on the revision of Wilson's famous Fourteen Points noting that "An internal problem arises out of the refusal of the Croats to accept the domination of the Serbs of the Serbian Kingdom...The United States is clearly committed to the programme of national unity and independence. It must stipulate, however, for the protection of national minorities...it supports a programme aiming at a Confederation of Southeastern Europe."  In other words, to protect the Croatian nation it was necessary to destroy it. There was no vote of the Croatian people about their future.   

Milan Sufflay was murdered by King Alexander's secret police.  Albert Einstein and Heinrich Mann joined in the international chorus of condemnation of the regime. The New York Times of May 6, 1931 quotes them:  "The facts show that cruelty and brutality practiced upon the Croatians only increase... Murder as a political weapon must not be tolerated and political Serbian murderers must not be made national heroes."  Just two years before Stjepan Radic had been publicly murdered by a deputy of the Serbian parliament and Alexander had outlawed political parties and begun the persecution of the Jews and Roma in the lands he controlled.   By August 1942, the Serbian government would proudly announce that Belgrade was the first city in the New Order to be Judenfrei or "free of Jews." Only 1,115 of Belgrade's twelve thousand Jews would survive.

After the communists left in the 1990s, mass graves were uncovered in Slovenia and in Croatia.  Hundreds of thousands had been butchered and their bodies hidden.  Neither the Russians nor the British nor the Americans wanted these graves found but the voice of the truth welled up from the caverns in the midst of the earth.  So then, who are the "Yugoslavs?"  I suppose they are the mythical denizens of a mythical land somewhere in Thackeray's "Rose and the Ring."

Jugoslavia isn't.  Croatia is.  Its that simple.

do sljedeći put, blagoslov - until next time, blessings,

Canovals a.k.a. Slavonac

13 Rujan 2011

Nikada ne zaboravimo

Nikada, nikada, ne zaboravimo.  Nikada.  Never, never, we do not forget.  Never.  How can we forget?  How can I forget?

In early August was "Encuentro".  What a Croatian American was doing at a Lutheran Church Missouri Synod Hispanic Pastor's Conference in Orlando Florida is perhaps one of those stories for another day.  Being with old friends from all over North America was fun.  Carole, my wife, was with me.  We hadn't had a vacation in five years so we plotted to take advantage of the few hours we were scheduled to have alone.  She had bought new clothes for Encuentro.  Hehe, she had bought new little black things too.  We even took a few  "cheese cake" photos.  Nothing you couldn't let your mother see, but cute.  Carole had the cutest one blown up to poster size and had it framed to hang in my home office.  It was on my wall for years.  

That picture is in a cardboard tube and went for "safekeeping" afterward with my parents daughter.  She won't give it back now.  I probably don't need it back, but [expletive deleted] its not hers.  It was private.  May the gnats from ten thousand donkeys behinds bite that obstinate evil woman's nose for eternity. 

Word came on 25 August.  Lorraine died.  Lorraine was Roy's wife and she had been my friend.  Lorraine told me that she would rattle chains any time I tried to sleep if I ever left my post.  We were scheduled to use Lorriane and Roy's condo on Otok Jug Otac starting that very day.  We couldn't do it.  As things turned out, we never stayed in their condo by the beach again.  I tried to spend a few days there later, but ,,, sigh ...

Labor Day came.  Mother was fading.  We ran like bats out of hell down the highway only to find that the San Bernard River was above flood stage.  So was Dance's Bayou and the Linville Bayou.
The road into the farm was impassable.  I could not get to my mother but in a manner of speaking she came to me.  Mother had always wanted to ride in an "army truck."  Her final ride from the "farm" was on an army truck with eight foot wheels which could traverse the flood waters.  Her funeral was early the next week.

Tuesday the following week it was almost time for me to leave for the office.  Carole called to me with panic in her voice.  She just pointed at the TV.  Something had happened.  They ran it again.  It was awful.  


Today is that day plus ten years.  We had prayers about all this at church this morning.  CJ found some footage neither of us had seen before.  It's still just plain awful.  


The following week in 2001 a barge filled with gasoline ran into the San Isabella causeway in the night.  Cars plummeted from the road into the dark dark water and people died. I knew some of them.   Friends were stranded on the Island for weeks.

The following week Carole was diagnosed with terminal cancer.  They said she had three days to live.  Five years later she died.  

I noticed last night that all my Muslim YouTube friends had disappeared.  Was it because they discovered my vocation?  Perhaps it because Muslims figured out that the tenth anniversary of 9/11 was not a good time to be around in public. Some of them had wanted to talk religion with me, but see, that's my job, my vocation,  but on YouTube for the most part I'm an entertainer, so I avoided any conflictual conversations.  As a matter of fact, most of my videos would even pass the the tenets of the Sharia, so I don't know what the matter is with these fellows.  I don't know.  Perhaps I will never know.  

Most of these fellows are Bosnians.  You know, our neighbors, our brothers, our kind. Its like they are Croats only Muslim. Yeah yeah yeah, someone is going to yell they have a lot of Turkish blood flowing in their veins. Sure, you bet.  The Turks came and took away half of Bosnia once upon a time and settled them in Anatolia.  The Turkish army that returned was largely Bosnian, so you mix Bosnian Muslims with Muslim Bosnians you get Bosnians not Turks - got it?  

The second of May 2011 is a date we should also not forget.  The day Bin Ladin finally met his date with death.  Seventy-nine days later at 8:24 Am,  up on the Fruška Gora at Krušedol (Крушедол Село) Goran Hadžić the butcher of Dalj, Erdut, Lovas, Stajićevo, Begejci, Tovarnik, Sremska Mitrovica, and Vukovar was finally securely in the hands of law enforcement. 

We will never forget.  We do not forget Szigetvár.  We do not forget  Goliad and the massacre of our Polish brothers there.  We do not forget Bleiburg.  We do not forget Vukovar.  We do not forget the Twin Towers.  Never we will forget.  We will live.  We will put on our underwear one leg at a time and then our socks.  We will keep on going but we will never forget.   Nikada ne zaboravimo.  Nikada nikada nikada. 

What follows is not my video.  It was shown on HRT in Croatia and I cannot get the recording for myself  but peugeot255 has it along with a large number of other outstanding selections.

Stoj Grad


Stoji grad
Pod kišom čelika ognja i smrti
Gdje paklena sila svoj zadnji ples vrti
Stoji grad


Stoji grad
Vječan k'o narod ponosno stoji
I posljednje dane dušmanu broji
Vukovar, Vukovar


Iz majčinog krika sloboda se rađa
I uskoro bijela zaplovit će lađa
Do Sunca


Iz krvi i bola niknut će cvijeće
I nikada narod zaboravit neće
Vukovar
Stoji grad


Standing City

The American may wish to sing "New York" where the song has "Vukovar."  In both cases monsters plotted their destruction.  In both cases there was a "rain of steel and fire death."  In both cases "the forces of hell his last dance spins."  In both cases the monsters underestimated the moral fiber of the people.  Both cities stand.  I chose this song today as a testament to the strength of the people in both cities.

standing city
 Under the rain of steel and fire death
 Where the forces of hell his last dance spins
 standing city


 standing city
 Everlasting like the people standing proudly
 The last days of the enemies has
 Vukovar, Vukovar


 From the mother's scream freedom is born
 and will soon set sail white ship
 till the Sun


 From the blood and the pain will sprout flowers
 and let never forget the people never forget
 Vukovar
 standing city

do sljedeći put, blagoslov - until next time, blessings,

Canovals a.k.a. Slavonac

11 Rujan 2011