As I settle into somewhat of a writing comfort zone after completing a creative writing degree, I find myself drawn to a form I never would have anticipated or thought to consider writing—the essay. Admittedly, I wasn’t aware of all the possibilities with regard to essay before I returned to school to pursue an MFA. I’d always thought of essays in the traditional sense of the formula: introduction of an idea, explanation of a claim, statement of facts or opinions to support the claim, conclusion repeating the main points and reinforcing the original claim. We all learned this formula in high school, and none of us could wait for the day we’d never have to use it again. As students, we were always so worried about adhering to the formula that we could not have cared less about the claim itself. And constructing the supporting arguments—well, that just became an exercise in creative deduction. Half of the time, even I didn’t know what I was talking about. I knew how to follow the formula, though, and that earned me a respectable grade more often than it did not.

Twenty years later I found myself in front of an audience, reading a passage to practice my oratory as part of the MFA requirement. I had chosen a five-minute excerpt from the previous semester’s nonfiction reading assignment—a piece with which I’d fallen instantly in transformative love—Jo Ann Beard’s The Fourth State of Matter. During my introduction I referred to the work as a story, not only because it featured an obvious beginning, middle, and end comprising the requisite narrative arc, but also because Beard’s piece was lyrical, character-driven, and emotionally hyper-stimulating. It was everything I thought a story should be. Barring a chronic absence of self-confidence, I would have been proud, borderline smug, to have performed my reading, having chosen from such an obviously worthy piece. As it was, I suspected (or rather hoped) the work was sufficiently acclaimed as to make it impossible for anyone, of decent intellect, to fault the choice.

The raw terror that clutched my heart during the reading loosened its hold as I returned to my seat. Lowering myself into the folding chair, I noticed a professor in front of me turn to offer what I thought would be words of comfort and/or congratulations at my having successfully read such a riveting piece of work. Still jittery from the public speaking experience, I anticipated the compliment by prematurely smiling as the words thank you formed on my lips.

“It’s an essay,” the professor said.

Descent halted, my rear end hovered an inch above the aluminum seat.

“You called it a story,” he finished, as I forced my now rigid body the rest of the way down into the chair.

Perhaps I nodded in agreement, smile still plastered to my face; tongue, having been stopped, in its part, from contributing to the words of thanks, perched lightly behind my two front teeth. By the time my confusion made its way from neurons, through synapses, and on to its facially expressed destination, the professor had already turned toward the front of the room and was actively absorbed in whatever the next student was reading.

I’ve grown to welcome these moments of discomfort in my life, but only in hindsight. I’m nowhere near the level of self-actualization it would take for me to recognize opportunity in such moments of extreme humiliation. Little did I know at the time that the comment would send me on an extended exploration of the varying styles, structures, and voices of essays.

I soon found myself plowing through works not only by Jo Ann Beard but also by George Orwell, Joan Didion, Virginia Woolf, David Sedaris, Abigail Thomas—there are too many to name. Though I now knew better, I could not stop thinking of these works in terms of story. What constitutes the difference? I obsessively wondered.

In their book Creating Nonfiction, Becky Bradway and Doug Hesse point out that narrative is “often the most important” (p. 39) organizational strategy for creative nonfiction and that “very often it (creative nonfiction) reads like a story” (p. 3). “Most creative nonfiction relies, almost inevitably, upon narrative. Narrative is story” (p. 41), Bradway and Hesse go so far as to proclaim, deepening the mystery entirely. If essays rely on story, I considered, why is the label separating the genres so important?

Determined to decipher this enigma, I attended the 2011 Association for Writers and Writing Professionals Conference, where I packed in as many sessions on essay as I could reasonably attend. During the panel presentation, “The Essayist in the 21st Century,” Robert Atwan pointed out that most people regard “essay” as “a four-letter word.” The comment struck a note in the recesses of my mind like a mallet hitting a xylophone bar. The moment he said it, I realized, so did I. Apparently, my junior-high-induced essay-equals-boring mental model had relegated essay, as an entire genre, to a dusty shelf in the back of a dark, moldy, subconscious closet where it had lived, neglected and alone, for twenty-some-odd years. Poor essay.

When I was twelve years old, I found a cat. More to the fact, a cat found me. She was black with orange spots and a checkerboard face; skinny and shy and at first appearance homely. She hung around the house until my parents were forced to acknowledge her presence in our lives. My first real pet. It didn’t matter that she had to live outside. I named her Gypsy and built her bed out of a cardboard box and a ratty old blanket—the only one my mother was willing to spare. I put the bed under a chair on the back porch where, less than a month later, Gypsy had her kittens. I watched those kittens emerge, and I sat on the porch with Gypsy on my lap as she fed those kittens every day until they went to live in different homes. The night the last of her babies were taken away, I stayed with Gypsy in the kitchen, crying desperately as she howled. The little stray cat that nobody else wanted pulled at my heart. I guess I’ve always been a sucker for the underappreciated.

With essays, I have to believe it’s a matter of semantics (and perhaps the same is true for strays). In reality, essays are diverse, entertaining, and rich with poignant potential. In the mental model remnants from early education, essays are formulaic, boring, and emotionally vacant. These are the models that pervade. I suppose, as writers, we could take the easy way out and label narrative essays as true stories. It wouldn’t be deceptive—not by definition that rings true to me—and it might bolster readership, which would be a win for everyone. But I suppose that wouldn’t be the point.

Those of us brave or curious or outright lost enough to re-enter the closet where our preconceptions lie might find ourselves dusting off the mental models, washing away the mold, and uncovering a treasure that will, forevermore, pull at our hearts. We will embrace the essays that find us, champion those that do not, and truly hope they all find homes.

Bradway, Becky, and Douglas Dean. Hesse. Creating Nonfiction: a Guide and Anthology. Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2009. Print.

Kneeling between the leaders at the front of the lines, I watched my dad struggle to restrain Little Lefty as he clutched the chain around her neck and ran from the truck to the sled, where Nick waited to hook her up with the rest of the team. The usual frenzy ensued, fraught with jumping, howling, and nerve shredding cries that seemed more ghostly that canine. I was accustomed to this routine, having ridden with Nick several times that winter, but this would be my dad’s first dog-sled ride. He and my mother had flown in to visit for the first time since Nick and I moved from Pennsylvania to Utah six months earlier in pursuit of his dog mushing dream.

Since then, Nick had discovered trails on Strawberry Ridge where he now trained the dogs twice a week. From October through March, pristine snow blanketed miles of wilderness, which ranged in elevation from 8,000 to 9,500 feet. The trail Nick most often traveled wound through the Uinta National Forest, and the trees lining that trail often parted to reveal breathtaking views of the valley below. When we didn’t cross paths with snowmobiles, the silence of the ride transported me into a wonderland reminiscent of fairy-tales.

“Haaaa—aayke!” Nick yelled, and the dogs surged forward in concentrated, now silent, effort. As the sled pulled away with my dad in the cargo basket, leaving my mother and I in the echoing wake of their departure, I closed my eyes to imagine what he must be feeling. My own experiences had felt like gliding on a cloud in heaven by way of sled-dog drawn chariot. The most fascinating part, I noticed after a few rides, was the chain of events that occurred when one of the chariot-pulling dogs relieved him or herself mid-stride. I’d witness these proceedings from my privileged perspective as a passenger in the chariot. Nick would urge the dogs to keep on running, and they’d do just that with barely a blip in the motion as the droppings from one or another bounced off the snow and disappeared behind the sled. The entire display represented a natural wonder from which my fleeting worry about the trajectory of the bounce in relation to my position barely distracted. I was gliding on a cloud in heaven with nary engine sound nor fume. The sporadic puff of fecal odor could not disturb my inner peace. I did not know if Dad would share my fascination with the dogs’ secondary talent, but I surmised he’d reach transcendence either way. The gaping grin affixed to his face as they glided into the parking area validated that prediction.

We entertained my parents through the rest of the week by treating them to an assortment of scenic attractions highlighting the glamour of Park City and rustic charm of surrounding areas, all the while touting the depth and range of our new homeland’s appeal. As we prepared dinner in the Harvest Gold kitchen of our rented mobile home the night before they were scheduled to fly back to Pennsylvania, Dad admitted that nothing matched the allure of the dog-sled ride. His words of confession, to those of us familiar with the feeling, were superfluous.

The next day, the mobile home fell silent in the absence of its guests, affording ample time to ruminate on the state of my affairs. In six months, I’d found neither cultural comfort zone nor social solidarity in Utah. This wasn’t something I had verbalized to my parents. At the age of twenty-eight, my relationship with them had yet to strike an emotionally supportive balance. Chemically induced clashes of will with my mother and note-card driven lectures by my father in response to any manner of irresponsible teenaged behavior (I tried most on for size) had driven me to silence through the better part of high school. It wasn’t until I left for college and found my confidence in academic success that we forged respectable relationship terms. This included conversation, albeit mostly intellectual. I knew they were not pleased about my choice to move with Nick, but eliciting further judgment through discussion seemed counterproductive. So I smiled while Nick and I showcased the area for my parents, and we talked about the high-desert weather that, we all agreed, seemed too perfect to be true.

That spring, Nick told me about his ideal scenario. “How great would it be to own land on Strawberry Ridge?” he’d say to me periodically. “I could build a house with a dog kennel, and run tours right out of the back yard.” Though certain the question was rhetorical, I could not stop myself from imagining such a home in a remote area of the wilderness with no one around but the dogs. The fantasy prompted me to mention once in casual conversation at work that I enjoyed the company of the sled dogs more than I did most people.

“Well, they don’t talk back,” one coworker quipped, leaving me spinning in rapid-reply impotence. Is she saying I lack tolerance for the beliefs and opinions of others because I enjoy the company of animals who can’t talk? I wondered after a moment. As the retaliation window slid shut in my stunned silence, I recalled other times I’d failed to trump someone’s jab with a clever response. My talent, to my life-long dismay, lay not in snappy comebacks, but in long-term analysis. I pondered the insults people hurled at me long after they’d hit their mark. This one, in particular, proved to be quite thought provoking.

One of Nick’s sled dogs had fallen ill earlier in the year. When I walked into the kennel on that Saturday afternoon, I saw the dog’s eyelids at half-mast and noted the way his once perky ears lay limp, now parallel to the ground. I watched his head hover at shoulder level as if his collar were loaded with lead, and I knew in an instant he was sick. He did not verbalize his feelings, but the message in his demeanor was clear. I knelt beside him, and he leaned his body into mine then gazed into my eyes. The English language would have served no better in communicating the desperation I recognized. Without words, that dog spoke to my heart, an epiphany destined to remain subconscious in the absence of my coworker’s remark.

My thought train continued on its tracks to consider the complex communication processes that took place within the canine pack. Sans human intervention, I’d seen the dogs quickly and innately find their positions to form a fully functional team. This amazing feat would not be possible without communication. As I’d never witnessed the formation or experienced the existence of a fully functional human team, it seemed to me that dogs communicated more effectively than people, “talking” notwithstanding.

Having arrived at this triumphant conclusion, I overcame the sting of my coworker’s comment. Shortly thereafter, I approached her with a graphic design idea. At the adjacent desk, I overheard Lena, another graphic designer, ask John, a member of the sales team, if he wore the “holey underwear,” and I turned my head in time to see John smirk in lieu of a reply.

“Wait a minute,” I said, abandoning one conversation to perform a hostile takeover of the other. “Why would anyone wear holey underwear?” I envisioned a one-piece cotton garment hanging in dilapidated rags off someone’s body.

“It’s a Mormon thing,” Lena replied. “John is a steak leader.” I briefly wondered what the role of “steak leader” might entail but felt the need to first attend to the holey underwear order of business. Did the Mormons consider holey underwear to be a sign of humility? I wondered. Did they have to wear the same underwear every day, until it became holey?

“But why does it have to be holey?” I continued after a thoughtful pause.

“I have no idea,” Lena said. “It’s just what they have to wear. It’s supposed to protect them I guess.”

“But how would something with holes in it protect anything?” I still didn’t get it. Lena burst into laughter.

“No, it isn’t holey! It’s holy—like blessed!” she said.

“Oh!” I forced a communal laugh rather than proceeding with questions about the steak leader position.

In time, the art of active listening, as opposed to blatant questioning, would enlighten me to the fact that the term “stake” referred to a division of the church and not, as I had surmised, a juicy slab of beef. When this information revealed itself, somewhere in the middle of a typical workday, a smile usurped my face. At the same time, I wondered if I’d ever relate to the people and customs in my new town.

This is home now, I thought, glancing at the phone on my desk. My smile faded as a lump swelled in my throat. Though I had no idea what I’d say, I felt the sudden urge to talk to my parents. Instead of picking up the receiver, I returned my gaze to the computer screen, where the clock in the menu bar displayed the time remaining in my workday. I hoped the Utah sunlight would persist long enough to afford a late afternoon visit with my surrogate family of sled dogs.

Credibility is one of the most important qualities of an effective memoir, yet sometimes the truth is, indeed, stranger than fiction. What happens when real-life events are truly unbelievable? The memoirist’s job is not only to infuse the essence of truth into those events that would otherwise be too outrageous to believe, but also to employ creative techniques that will enhance the emotional response to factual events.

One might be inclined to believe memoir has the advantage of genre in that simply labeling the work as nonfiction should imply the truth of it, but the line between fact and fiction can be tenuous. As fiction-writing techniques are often applied to create provocative and compelling nonfiction, the author of memoir must work even harder to achieve credibility, maintaining the factual elements while using creative techniques to increase the literary quality of the work.

Establishing and maintaining credibility in both the content and the narrator helps to win the reader’s trust and enhance the overall believability of the memoir, but trust is never a one-way street. In order for the work to be effective, the author must not only gain the trust of her readers, she must also express a level of trust, showing readers that she believes in their ability to enter her story and relate to the world she has re-created. In essence, the author of memoir builds the foundation of a bridge of trust by reaching out to the reader and relying on that reader to complete the bridge through personally relating to the story or otherwise participating in the interpretation of the events presented.

Some traditional and effective techniques that are often used to build trust and establish the credibility of the memoir’s narrator and content are self-reflection and commenting. An author, for example, can look back on the events she has described and reflect on their meaning or comment on their impact, a method which leaves little room for doubt or interpretation with regard to the author’s intended meaning. Through this method, the reader becomes more of a consumer than an active participant in the work. The role of the reader changes as the author of memoir employs alternative techniques to establish credibility and build trust—techniques that potentially push the limits of the nonfiction genre, while still hovering within the boundaries of truth. Such techniques include elements of the dramatic point of view, such as imbuing unspoken meaning in objective presentations of scenery, events, characters, and other descriptive details.

Objective description can allude to alternative meanings for a variety of elements, such as the mental and emotional states of characters or the emotional effects of specific events on the narrator. It is not necessary for the reader to have specific background information or other historical knowledge to interpret the implications of objective descriptions. The reader needs only her own set of personal experiences through which she may relate to the levels of possible meaning within the descriptive information presented by the author. In this way, the reader participates in the work by translating silence into meaning based on descriptive cues the author provides.

For the memoirist, objective presentation through craft elements usually associated with the dramatic point of view becomes a critical tool for character development due to the inherently limited perspective of the narrator. Using this technique, the memoirist may develop characters through dialogue and physical description, as well as through implied meaning within descriptions of events, setting, and abstract concepts. The methods different authors use to imply multiple levels of meaning vary, as I will show by examining the use of this technique in the works of five authors whose memoirs feature very different styles: Dorothy Allison, Mary Karr, David Sedaris, Abigail Thomas, and Jeannette Walls.

Regardless of style, the author’s use of implied meaning through objective presentation of details can give the reader a larger role in the emotional and intellectual interpretation of the work, thereby acting as a vehicle of trust. Crucial to the success of such a technique, however, is the foundational requirement of credibility. When examining the function and importance of credibility, we see that persona serves as a driving force that can be used to establish credibility and begin the crucial task of building the bridge of trust.

Though there are many sides to any one story, for the memoirist there is only one—that which is told from the perspective of the narrator. It is to this narrator the memoirist must remain true. In her book The Situation and the Story: The Art of Personal Narrative, Vivian Gornick defines persona as a voice inside the writer who tells the story from the appropriate perspective. Gornick states,

In nonfiction, the writer has only the singular self to work with. So it is the other in oneself that the writer must seek and find to create movement, achieve a dynamic. Inevitably, the piece builds only when the narrator is involved not in confession but in this kind of self-investigation, the kind that means to provide motion, purpose and dramatic tension. 1

Though Gornick states that the author of memoir “has only the singular self to work with,” the differences between the person living through the events of the story and the person telling the story cannot be ignored. It is, for example, quite common for a significant amount of time to pass before an author will write about traumatic or otherwise formative events through which she has lived. During that time, an essential transformation takes place. The author’s perspective shifts, allowing her to see the events of the past through a very different lens. It is through this shift that the persona is born. The persona represents a combination of the person who experienced the events and the person who, at a later point in time, recounts the events for the reader. The resulting narrator becomes a combination of these selves, providing the reader with a privileged perspective that would not otherwise be possible. Persona, essentially, provides the reader with a view of the story from two perspectives at once. The narrator of combined perspectives is able to interpret the events in a relatable way for the reader by providing privileged information about the events as they occur—information that only a person looking back on the events could know or otherwise understand.

In her memoir Safekeeping, Abigail Thomas illustrates this privileged perspective in a less traditional, while somewhat more obvious way than many other authors choose to employ. Thomas presents one view of herself in her youth and another view of herself in later years, sometimes writing in the third person as she looks back on the events of her past. The book evolves through constant comparisons of these selves, revealing a surprising disparity between the two. Of her younger self, Thomas writes, “She was afraid that there was no herself, that somehow she had gotten into this body, but she was too small for it, tiny. She was fooling people who thought she was real, and here.” 2 Looking back as a grandmother, Thomas can see what she couldn’t see when she was younger. “She was like the eye of a hurricane, high wind and water all around. She would (if she could) put her arm around the girl she’d been and try to tell her Take it easy, but the girl would not have listened. The girl had no receptors for Take it easy.” 3

Regardless of whether the memoir is written in first, second, third person, or any combination thereof, it is the persona of the narrator that drives the memoir, steering everything from style to language to tone to structure from a particular perspective. Once this perspective is established, the author is free to apply more creative elements of craft to continue building the work. But in order to stay true to the nonfiction genre, certain restrictions apply.

Though persona can transcend the boundaries of time, it remains one person’s perspective or set of perspectives, and therefore, by its very nature, it is limited. One of the first methods an author can use to establish and maintain the credibility of the narrator is to stay true to the persona of the work. When telling the events of a story as they were experienced by the narrator when she was a child, for example, as Jeannette Walls does in her memoir The Glass Castle, it is important to use simple language and a child-like voice. Walls writes, “Mom also believed in letting nature take its course. She refused to kill the flies that always filled the house; she said they were nature’s food for the birds and lizards. And the birds and lizards were food for the cats.” 4

Because a child would not know every word or description an author must use to accurately tell her story, the combined perspectives become crucial. But the author does not have to place both perspectives at the forefront, as Abigail Thomas did in the previous example. When recounting the events as they were experienced by a child, the author can use techniques that significantly minimize the presence of the older and wiser perspective, to the extent of making it seem nonexistent. The tone, style, and voice can do enough to effectively establish the appropriate persona in situations where using complex sentences that would be unlikely to emerge from the mind of a child would threaten to crack the foundation of the world the author is trying to re-create through the eyes of that child.

This technique of emphasizing one or multiple perspectives throughout the work can help the reader relate not only to the child who actually lived through the events, but also to the adult that child eventually became. This is the privileged perspective through which the reader can get to know the narrator on a deeper and more personal level. In this way, the privileged perspective offered through persona helps to build trust in the narrator as a credible storyteller.

Similarly, in presenting these views of the narrator from multiple perspectives, the author essentially bares her soul for the reader to interpret, analyze, and inevitably judge. This conscious act of exposure represents an immense gesture of trust on the author’s part—trust which also contributes to the bridge the author extends to the reader as an invitation into the story and, ultimately, into her life.

A significant challenge for the memoirist with regard to credibility involves character development. It is difficult, for example, for the memoirist to credibly enter the mind of a character other than herself. Therefore in memoir, implied meaning through the objective presentation of details becomes a useful tool in developing layered characters while still remaining true to the nonfiction genre. Memoirists, in fact, must rely on the use of this technique for character development because they cannot, to any significant extent, know the unspoken thoughts of another character. And what an author of nonfiction does not know, she cannot relate to the reader without risking the credibility of her work.

One way the memoirist can describe a character’s thoughts is by repeating things that character has said in the past. Jeannette Walls executes this technique in her memoir, The Glass Castle. Throughout the memoir, Walls’s mother freely expresses her unique thoughts on raising children. Walls writes, “She felt it was good for kids to do what they wanted because they learned a lot from their mistakes.” 5 Because Walls is telling the story from the child’s point of view, the reader naturally presumes that this assertion originated from her mother. The reader intuitively understands that a child of the narrator’s age would not have the interpretive skills necessary to deduce such a claim based only on her mother’s actions. Therefore, she must be repeating her mother’s words.

Though Walls refrains from commenting on the long-term, or even the short-term effects of such a philosophy, the reader learns some crucial information about both the mother and the narrator in this short sentence. Not only does the reader recognize the lack of a basic protective instinct in the mother, as well as the fact that the child is left to fend for herself, but she also begins to wonder about the extent of the neglect—a curiosity which compels her to continue turning the pages of the book.

In another passage, Walls recalls and repeats in the child-like perspective of the narrator, her father’s colorful language. “But he assured us that as long as he was around, we wouldn’t have to defend ourselves, because, by God, anyone who so much as laid a finger on any of Rex Walls’s children was going to get their butts kicked so hard that you could read Dad’s shoe size on their ass cheeks.” 6 Such an account, told in the child’s own version of her father’s language, maintains the credibility of persona while adding to the depth of the father’s already eccentric character.

Many authors use both detailed description and dialogue to illustrate the internal and external qualities of their main characters. Through some examples, we can see the differing effects of using only description, using only dialogue, or using a combination of both to develop characters.

When a character is presented through description of both external and internal qualities, the effect is equivalent to watching someone from afar—seeing the actions and learning about that character in a second-hand manner based on the narrator’s memories. In his memoir, Naked, David Sedaris exemplifies this effect. He writes, “My mother had always been willing to try anything. Had there been an Eskimo restaurant, she would have been happy to crawl into the igloo and eat raw seal with her bare hands. …” 7 He also paints a vivid picture of his father by describing his defining characteristics. “When arguing, it was always his tactic to deny the validity of our requests. If you wanted, say, a stack of pancakes, he would tell you not that you couldn’t have them but that you never really wanted them in the first place.” 8 Though in our minds, we can see the characters go through the actions Sedaris presents, however outrageous those actions may be, and we can practically hear some version of the conversation between Sedaris and his father, we are still watching and listening from afar. We do not yet feel like we know these characters on a personal level.

An effective descriptive technique used by Mary Karr in her memoir, The Liar’s Club is that of revealing habitual or otherwise repeated actions of a character. She says, “Pressing Mother for details of her past always led to eye-rolling and aspirin-taking and long afternoon naps.” 9 This description not only presents a vivid picture in the reader’s mind, but it also likely inspires the reader to form an opinion as to why such behavior is taking place. The mother obviously does not like to talk about her past. And her extreme reaction to any mention of it implies that something meaningful and unpleasant has likely taken place at a previous time in her life. Through this brief but poignant description, Karr piques the reader’s curiosity with the implication of her mother’s mysterious past.

In The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls uses a combination of describing her father’s actions and recalling his words. She writes, “Dad was so sure a posse of federal investigators was on our trail that he smoked his unfiltered cigarettes from the wrong end. That way, he explained, he burned up the brand name, and if the people who were tracking us looked in his ashtray, they’d find unidentifiable butts instead of Pall Malls that could be traced to him.” 10 The remembered dialogue gives the reader a little more information than the description alone, helping the reader get to know this character on more of a psychological level.

When a character is presented through direct dialogue, the reader enters the character’s mind, learning about the psychology behind that character’s behavior. The effect is more personal and feels more like a first-hand encounter. Sedaris, for example, illustrates his mother in this way through the sarcasm in her dialogue.

“I’m guessing you’re here about the head-shaking, am I right?” she’d shout. “That’s my boy, all right, no flies on him.” She suggested my teachers interpret my jerking head as a nod of agreement. “That’s what I do, and now I’ve got him washing the dishes for the next five years. I ask, he yanks his head, and it’s settled. Do me a favor, though, and just don’t hold him after five o’clock. I need him at home to straighten up and make the beds before his father gets home.” 11

After hearing her speak, we can relate to this character on a more personal level. We feel like we know her just a little bit better than we did when we watched her crawl into the igloo to eat the raw seal with her bare hands.

But the picture is not complete until a character is presented through both dialogue and description. Adding a brief dialogue to the previous description of Sedaris’s father changes the effect to provide the reader with both primary and secondary information and to help solidify her understanding of the character. “If you wanted, say, a stack of pancakes, he would tell you not that you couldn’t have them but that you never really wanted them in the first place. ‘I know what I want’ was always met with ‘No you don’t.’” 12 The reader now has a voice to go with the picture that Sedaris has presented of his father.

For the memoirist, objectivity is almost required in the combination of description and dialogue for credible character development. This style invites the reader to participate in the action of the story and draw her own conclusions about its meaning. We can see this effect in Naked when Sedaris paints a particularly vivid picture of his father during their family’s stay at a hotel for his sister’s wedding. “‘What more do you want out of a hotel?’ he shouted, stepping out onto the patio in his underpants.” 13 Sedaris has married dialogue with just enough description for the reader to latch onto and finish building the character in her own mind. Here, we can see that with a little help from the reader, the character can come to life.

Mary Karr also masters this technique in her memoir The Liar’s Club. The tenderness that the narrator’s father feels for her is masterfully revealed in one short sentence after she has hidden herself in his luggage the morning he is slated to leave his family in Colorado, seemingly forever. “‘Get outa there, Pokey,’ he said, drawing the zipper down to my belly button. ‘God sakes, you’ll break a fella’s heart.’” 14

While implied meaning through the objective presentation of details seems to be intrinsic to character development in memoir, especially through the use of dialogue, it can also be applied to many other elements of craft through the metaphorical language used to illustrate not only characters but also events, settings, and abstract concepts, to the effect of helping to engage the reader in the deeper meaning of the work.

In The Liar’s Club, Mary Karr deftly reveals her mother’s character through language that can be interpreted as a direct reflection of her unstable mental state. Karr writes, “Her cheekbones winged out, and her eyes were the flawed green of cracked marbles.” 15

For Jeannette Walls in The Glass Castle, fire represents the perils the narrator will face in her life, a life which often seems to teeter on the edge of danger. She writes,

Then he pointed to the top of the fire, where the snapping yellow flames dissolved into an invisible shimmery heat that made the desert beyond seem to waver, like a mirage. Dad told us that zone was known in physics as the boundary between turbulence and order. 16

Through this language, Walls invites the reader to make the connections between the basic states of fire and turbulence and her life as she recounts it, to the effect of engaging the reader in the interpretation of the work for its duration.

She describes the events of her childhood using the primary perspective of herself as a child growing up in the circumstances described. The understated tone reflects the child narrator’s naiveté, which slowly evolves into understanding as she matures. Walls does not self-reflect, nor does she comment on how she felt about the events of her childhood. She simply tells the story in chronological order, sticking only to those events that were formative to her development.

From the beginning, the children in this family are treated like adults with parents who never allow them to believe in Santa Claus and who always put their own needs first. Walls writes,

Mom explained that since only she and Dad could fit in the front of the U-Haul, Lori, Brian, Maureen, and I were in for a treat: We got to ride in the back. It would be fun, she said, a real adventure, but there wouldn’t be any light, so we would have to use all our resources to entertain one another. Plus we were not allowed to talk. Since it was illegal to ride in the back, anyone who heard us might call the cops. Mom told us the trip would be about fourteen hours if we took the highway, but we should tack on another couple of hours because we might make some scenic detours. 17

Though Walls never explains how this and other events made her feel, the reader certainly experiences emotions as a result of reading these passages. Suggestion practically screams throughout all the lines of this passage, but the true emotional catalyst lies in the word “scenic.” In no way could anything be considered “scenic” from the perspective of the children who are relegated to darkness in the back of a windowless U-Haul. In the voice of child-like innocence that directly contrasts with the nature of the astounding events presented, Walls clobbers the reader over the head with the reality of the situation.

It is likely that the emotions evoked as a result of reading such passages are of a similar nature to those which the author intended the reader to feel, if indeed, the author did intend to evoke particular emotions. But perhaps, in relaying the events without commenting, Walls wanted each reader to experience the personal emotions that naturally came as a result of reading the account—emotions that would be unique to the individual, based on her background, personality, experiences, and a host of other qualities that distinguish us, each from the other.

At one point, the narrator describes an event that occurred after her parents had spent the better part of a hot, desert afternoon in a bar while the children waited for them in the car. “Dad was driving and smoking with one hand and holding a brown bottle of beer with the other.” She continues, “Just then we took a sharp turn over some railroad tracks, the door flew open, and I tumbled out of the car.” 18 Each reader will experience her own set of emotions about the fact that the father was drinking and driving, and whether or not this led to the child falling out of the car, and what it all means in the grand scheme, all of which Walls seems content to let us figure out for ourselves.

Walls’s method of understated storytelling works exceptionally well for this piece, in which embellished language or further explanation might actually distract from the raw force of the events. Walls trusts the reader to form her own conclusions about the characters and events, and she trusts that those conclusions will evoke whatever emotions the reader feels, which allow her to relate to the story in her own way. She expertly uses reticence to evoke emotions, rarely ever commenting on her feelings even when the reader knows she must have been hurting, both emotionally and physically. This is apparent in a scene which takes place soon after the narrator enters a new school in the town to which her family has relocated. Walls writes,

I tried to get up, but all three girls started kicking me. I rolled away into a puddle, shouting for them to quit and hitting back at the feet coming at me from all sides. The other girls had closed in a circle around us and none of the teachers could see what was going on. There was no stopping those girls until they’d had their fill. 19

In addition to events, setting provides an effective host for layered meanings implied through the language and imagery that are used to describe it. In The Liar’s Club, for example, Mary Karr sets the scene of her hometown of Leechfield, Texas in such a way as to make the reader practically gasp for air. She writes,

The whole town sat at a semitropical latitude just spitting distance from the Gulf. It sat in a swamp, three feet below sea level at its highest point, and was crawled through by two rivers. Any hole you dug, no matter how shallow, magically filled up with brackish water. 20

Here, the term “spitting distance” implies that one might actually be inclined to spit on the town. The fact that the town “sat in a swamp,” as opposed to being built on a swamp, implies a fixed, sedentary, and generally stuck state of existence. If that wasn’t enough to describe the desperate state of affairs, the town “was crawled through by two rivers.” With the simple, past tense verb and passive voice, “was crawled,” takes the power of action away from the town and puts it in the clutches of the two intruding rivers that are taking their slow, sweet time “crawling” through the hopeless town—a town that is clearly a victim of its own location and thereby powerless to improve its situation. The reader can’t help but feel for the child narrator, whose state of existence must be reflected by the town that is practically drowning and in which she has no choice but to live.

Karr goes a step further. “I later learned that Leechfield at that time was the manufacturing site for Agent Orange, which surprised me not one bit.” 21 Somehow, the narrator retains a feeling of tenderness for the town, a feeling which the reader is inclined to believe reflects the narrator’s own feelings of self-worth as a child. “It was stuff like that that’d break your heart about Leechfield, what Daddy meant when he said the town was too ugly not to love.” 22

Similarly, Jeannette Walls buries the real meaning beneath her surface description of setting in The Glass Castle to foreshadow the impending state of her life affairs when her family moves back to her father’s hometown. She writes,

Finally, we entered hill country, climbing higher and deeper into the Appalachian Mountains, stopping from time to time to let the Oldsmobile catch its breath on the steep, twisting roads. It was November. The leaves had turned brown and were falling from the trees, and a cold mist shrouded the hillsides. There were streams and creeks everywhere, instead of the irrigation ditches you saw out west, and the air felt different. It was very still, heavier and thicker, and somehow darker. For some reason, it made us all grow quiet. 23

The immediate effect of this description of setting on the reader is a feeling of gut-sinking doom and gloom, which turns out to be a direct reflection on the world that the narrator is about to enter in the new town.

In addition to objective descriptions of setting, abstractions can serve as effective mechanisms to engage readers on a more personal level by providing concepts or ideas to which readers can assign meaning based on their own experiences. It is through this vehicle that Mary Karr reveals her most horrific revelations in The Liar’s Club. She writes, “Real suffering has a face and a smell. It lasts in its most intense form no matter what you drape over it. And it knows your name.” 24 By anthropomorphizing suffering, Karr provides a mechanism by which each reader can create her own mental picture of family members, childhood bullies, strangers or other people who caused or otherwise represent suffering to her. In this way, Karr’s abstraction provides a vehicle for the reader’s personalization.

Throughout her memoir, Karr alternates between narrative and explanatory styles, inserting reflection where it fits and using abstract concepts to evoke emotion through universal experiences, thereby adding another layer of meaning for the reader to ponder. “When the truth would be unbearable the mind often just blanks it out.” 25 Here, Karr broadens the arena for interpretation by presenting the concept of memory blocking as a basic function of the human mind. The reader can relate to Karr’s experience by associating her own experiences with this universal defense mechanism, and, in this way, can relate to Karr’s experience without having gone through the exact same set of events.

At one point, Karr writes in the second person about unfathomable episodes as if they were common events that are universally experienced by all. Though, in this case, most readers will not have experienced that which the narrator lives through, her style compels us to empathize. We empathize with this child narrator to whom such egregious injustices represent the norm.

On the night the sheriff came to our house and Mother was adjudged more or less permanently Nervous, I didn’t yet understand the word. I had only a vague tight panic in the pit of my stomach, the one you get when your parents are nowhere in sight and probably don’t even know who has a hold of you or where you’ll wind up spending the night. 26

In her memoir Safekeeping, Abigail Thomas proves to be a master of suggestion, using universal concepts about emotional growth to which many readers can relate on a personal level. The depth and breadth of meaning that Thomas succeeds in squeezing into so few words seems impossible. A single vignette can span decades, and the reader never feels like anything was left out. Thomas chooses just the right moments to highlight in ways that render the intended meaning unavoidable. Rather than steering clear of commenting, she dives right in to explain how she felt as a young woman versus how she feels now. She writes, “I’m remembering when the baby in my arms was my daughter, when it was all still to come. So many things did not go as I would have wished. There is so much I can’t undo.” 27 If the story were more narrative, this method may not be as effective, but in its current structure of vignettes that are strategically and meaningfully but not chronologically placed, the two points of view add to the complexity and depth of the work.

Writing at the heart of things, the way Thomas does in Safekeeping, depicts the times in life that stand out as snapshots of realization—past moments in which something substantial happened or changed. These are the moments Thomas captures, almost magically, in Safekeeping.

She looks out her window, uptown, at the water towers, at the squares of light in other windows. Where a man she hadn’t met back then, a man she was about to meet, a man whom she would love and hate and love again, a man with whom she would spend the next thirty years, give or take, has died. 28

By using simple, accessible language and brevity to get to the heart of complex, universal themes of love and loss and emotional growth, Thomas reaches out to the core of human nature with concepts to which all people can relate.

In Two or Three Things I Know for Sure, Dorothy Allison breaks up her memoir with brief but valuable flashes of wisdom gleaned over years of learning the hard way. She writes, “Two or three things I know for sure, and one of them is the way you can both hate and love something you are not sure you understand.” 29 These abstract statements are pregnant with unspoken meaning that the reader can interpret and to which she can relate using her own mental models, knowledge, or personal experiences.

Hidden between the lines of this memoir is much more than meets the eye. While Allison writes of the horrific abuse she endured as a child, she does not describe the events as they occurred—rather, she declares them, as if to reaffirm them for herself while telling her story to the reader. “The man raped me. It’s the truth. It’s a fact. I was five, and he was eight months married to my mother.” 30 From there, she only alludes to the fact that the abuse was ongoing. The reader must make the connections of another, deeper story, based on Allison’s style, tone, language, allusions, and explanations.

Allison’s story is largely declarative, and as such, she explicitly states that a deeper meaning lies beneath the words on the pages of her book. In doing so, she alludes to the importance of that “silent” meaning. Allison writes,

Behind the story I tell is the one I don’t. Behind the story you hear is the one I wish I could make you hear. Behind my carefully buttoned collar is my nakedness, the struggle to find clean clothes, food, meaning, and money. Behind sex is rage, behind anger is love, behind this moment is silence, years of silence. 31

Allison boldly declares the fact that significant meaning bubbles beneath the surface of her silence and, in doing so, brings to light the importance of engaging the reader by allowing her to interpret that meaning. By trusting the reader with that job, the author forges the bridge of trust and provides a mechanism by which the reader can contribute to the construction by deciphering the many layers of meaning that comprise each memoir. With readers participating in the process, the levels of meaning expand to indeterminate proportions, as each reading by each reader evokes different sets of emotions and unveils alternative emotional connections. This act of trust on the author’s part elicits the trust of all readers whose hearts are filled by the silence that seeps between the lines and fills the space behind the words on the pages of every memoir.

Notes

1. Vivian Gornick, The Situation and the Story: the Art of Personal Narrative (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002), p. 35.

2. Abigail Thomas, Safekeeping: Some True Stories from a Life (New York: Anchor, 2001), p. 64.

3. Ibid., p. 41.

4. Jeannette Walls, The Glass Castle: a Memoir (New York: Scribner, 2006), p. 64.

5. Ibid., p. 59.

6. Ibid., p. 24.

7. David Sedaris, Naked (New York: Back Bay, 1998), p. 246.

8. Ibid., p. 245.

9. Mary Karr, The Liars’ Club: a Memoir (New York: Penguin, 2005), p. 12.

10. Jeannette Walls, The Glass Castle: a Memoir (New York: Scribner, 2006), p. 19.

11. David Sedaris, Naked (New York: Back Bay, 1998), p. 16.

12. Ibid., p. 245.

13. Ibid., p. 244.

14. Mary Karr, The Liars’ Club: a Memoir (New York: Penguin, 2005), p. 193.

15. Ibid., p. 41.

16. Jeannette Walls, The Glass Castle: a Memoir (New York: Scribner, 2006), p. 61.

17. Ibid., p. 48.

18. Ibid., p. 30.

19. Ibid., p. 139.

20. Mary Karr, The Liars’ Club: a Memoir (New York: Penguin, 2005), p. 23.

21. Ibid., pp. 33-34.

22. Ibid., p. 34.

23. Jeannette Walls, The Glass Castle: a Memoir (New York: Scribner, 2006), p. 130.

24. Mary Karr, The Liars’ Club: a Memoir (New York: Penguin, 2005), p. 49.

25. Ibid., p. 9.

26. Ibid., p. 7.

27. Abigail Thomas, Safekeeping: Some True Stories from a Life (New York: Anchor, 2001), p. 175.

28. Ibid., p. 37.

29. Dorothy Allison, Two or Three Things I Know for Sure (New York: Plume, 1996), p. 7.

30. Ibid., p. 39.

31. Ibid., p. 39.

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For centuries, libraries have existed to collect, preserve, and ensure access to information, and unprecedented advances in technology over the past several decades have done nothing to change this mission, according to Mike Furlough, associate dean of research and scholarly communications for the Penn State University Libraries. The methods and models employed to accomplish those goals, however, have radically shifted.

In the early 1990s, several developments combined to create a perfect storm of information technology. Multiplying computational power and the ability to share research and information across the globe via the Internet set the stage for an ensuing explosion of information and data sharing potential that would shape the future of research.

The Human Genome Project exemplifies the outcome of this combination. Slated for completion in fifteen years, the project culminated in just thirteen due to vast technological advancements and, according to Furlough, the fact that “everyone who was working on it had agreed to share the results of their work publicly and create a big data bank of the genome.”

As computational power increased, so did the amount of data generated. “What took three years to decode the first time can be done in a matter of hours or days now in labs with a sample of DNA,” says Furlough. “The amount of genetic information that’s been created through funded research in the past decade is greater than the federal government thinks they can actually keep up with,” he adds.

Information overload

Today’s libraries face related challenges with increasing urgency. “Federal funding agencies have become very concerned about long-term access to data and research that they’re funding,” says Furlough, who believes libraries are in a unique position to contribute to solutions with regard to creating the services, tools, and spaces that help researchers store, document, and share data.

Digital collections curator Patricia Hswe co-chairs a Research Data Management team at Penn State, providing guidance and assistance to faculty and administrators on developing plans to manage data generated by their research efforts. Though these data management services came as a direct result of new requirements exclusive to those submitting research proposals to the National Science Foundation, Hswe believes this type of planning is critical for all research in the digital age.

Important up-front considerations revolve around information access and preservation, two long-term specialty areas of libraries that have been widely affected by digital formats. “Our emphasis is on service and resources,” says Hswe, adding that the goals of developing data management plans include enabling faculty to conduct research more efficiently and to reach a wider audience with their results.

Years of experience have taught Furlough that collaborating with researchers at the planning stage leads to the best preservation and organization strategies for long-term access. He began his library career at the University of Virginia as an English graduate student in the mid-1990s. As he explored the potential of the web to advance teaching and learning and to facilitate access to data, he worked on a variety of digitizing projects and became more involved with faculty and graduate students who were using available technologies in novel ways.

Several projects piqued Furlough’s interest in research, but his work with a religious studies professor examining the Salem Witch Trials stood out from the rest. The professor investigated geographic locations of the accused, among other aspects of demography with regard to those involved. “By using this technology, Furlough says, “he was able to come up with new theses that actually contradict the previously accepted theories about the dynamics of the village at that time.”

Six years into his position at Penn State, Furlough smiles when remembering his time as a graduate student. “I ran away to the library,” he says, “and I never looked back.”

Penn State and the digital age

While Furlough toiled in the research enterprise at UVA, Sue Kellerman, Judith O. Sieg Chair for Preservation, launched what would become a long-term digitizing program at Penn State. Prior to a phone call she received from the dean of libraries in 1992, Kellerman focused solely on preserving paper collections. When the dean told her of the “brand new tool for digitizing collections and making them available online,” Kellerman recalls, nobody knew how the technology would affect libraries. Penn State was one of eight institutions at the time to use the new scanning technologies in their libraries.

Though digitizing collections represented a new concept in the early 1990s, technology has enabled research for the past fifty years, according to Furlough. “The earliest GIS (geographic information systems) were created in the 60s,” he says, “primarily to help landscapers, but they were quickly being adopted into other fields during that time.”

Alluding to the intrinsic role of technology in library work, Linda Friend, head of Scholarly Communications Services at the University Libraries, notes that libraries have been creating metadata in the form of cataloguing “for a hundred years.” While computer programmers popularized the term metadata in the 1990s for purposes of their work, “it’s really just information fields,” Friend says. “It’s the title and the author. A catalogue record is metadata.”

At Penn State, technology is central to the enterprise of scholarly communications, in which Furlough sees his role quite clearly. “I help the library develop programs that help researchers and students exploit technologies to disseminate and preserve their work,” he says, adding that the broader field of scholarly communications encompasses the entire system of distributing, accessing, and preserving research. Outlets can include peer-reviewed publications as well as those less formal such as blogs or conference presentations. Libraries, according to Furlough, are uniquely positioned to examine changes in research practices and explore ways in which the system of scholarly communications may better support research and discovery.

Illustrating the impact of scholarly communications, Kellerman points to three volumes of a civil war-era diary digitized about a year ago. Since those volumes were digitized and made available online, several new projects, including transcriptions and text about the author of the diary have been produced.

Scholars from various fields including genealogy and history have shown interest, as have war reenactors, according to Kellerman. “This sat in the vaults since the 1860s. No one knew it was there. Now we have it digitized, and everyone is jumping all over this. It’s producing new scholarship.”

Evolving research methods and services

In libraries, the practice of scholarly communications once focused on digitizing efforts such as purchasing materials, scanning, and posting materials online, but current trends more closely examine the library’s role in better serving faculty and students at the individual level. “We need to broaden our conversations and really ask about the ways we can deploy our technology and our expertise to serve the interests of the students and researchers,” Furlough says.

To that end, Hswe and Friend consult with researchers to learn about their needs and offer guidance from the planning stage to future access options. With a Ph.D. in Russian language and literature, Hswe began her library experience as a researcher. Her background in Russian literature led her to the Slavic Library at the University of Illinois, where she was offered a postdoctoral fellowship and where her work “behind the scenes” in the library graced her with a fresh perspective.

“As a researcher I did not perceive librarians enough as a resource,” Hswe says, “so I’m really committed to trying to foster this kind of understanding about librarians and libraries as resources that should be mined more by faculty and students.”

Hswe appreciates advances in technology that allow for better tracking of the ways in which people are using online data. The ability to see which pages people most often visit, the links they click on those pages, and the files they access fosters more informed decisions with regard to the types of information and services people currently use and will be likely to need in the future.

In addition to creating and implementing usability testing, providing information on copyright and intellectual property laws, optimizing materials for search engines, and running analytics on digitized collections, Hswe works directly with researchers, as does Friend. “We’re really trying to figure out what kinds of things we can turn into actual services that we can put out on the web and say this is what the library can do for you,” says Friend, who admits to once balking at the idea of becoming a librarian.

A voracious reader as a child, Friend remembers her mother suggesting that she pursue library studies in college. “I was like, are you kidding me? I would never do that.” Her attitude changed when, as a teenager, she took a position in a public library. Here, the value of service provided through libraries became clear, and her mother’s intuition proved prognostic when she chose to pursue a higher degree in library studies.

Since starting her career as a reference librarian at Penn State in 1978, Friend’s role has changed both dramatically and continually. She attributes her longevity in the position to the changing nature of the work. “I was sure I’d be waltzing all over, and I would live near the ocean, for sure,” she says, adding that the word “librarian” does not effectively describe the many roles it entails. Friend has performed everything from computer programming, to service development, to project management, and advancements in technology over the past several decades have added new complexities to those roles.

Preservation from print to digital

Some challenges faced by today’s libraries involve developing the best ways to select, organize, and preserve online publications. Processes to preserve print collections, including everything from rebinding and deacidification techniques to tracking and auditing, have been developed and perfected over hundreds of years. Finding ways to preserve digital materials with the same level of quality is a current concern.

Sitting in her office chair, Kellerman reaches toward one of the many stacks of books and papers that line the floor in front of the wall-to-wall bookshelf. She picks up a thick book, the approximate size of a bible, with a faded black hardcover barely clinging to the warped and yellowed pages within. “This is a brittle book,” she says. “I used to be so concerned about books, about paper. Actually, this is becoming less and less a concern because the new digital media is more fragile.”

While the physical evidence of book and paper deterioration is visible, the fragility of digital materials manifests in less obvious ways. Servers may crash, for example, and files can corrupt. Also posing a prominent threat is the likelihood that storage formats will become obsolete (e.g. floppy disks).

Kellerman looks at these digital format concerns in relation to her roots. With a passion for preservation she attributes, in part, to her grandmother, Kellerman sought work at the University Libraries to save money for graduate school in preparation for a career in museums. Her work at the library inspired her to change directions, and she instead pursued a master’s degree in library science at the University of Pittsburgh.

Kellerman later returned to Penn State to carry out a project funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities in which she was tasked with locating, identifying, and cataloguing newspapers in Pennsylvania. As she traversed the state, visiting publishers’ offices, museums, libraries, and private collectors’ homes in search of newspapers to catalogue, the question of preserving newspapers often arose. “So that’s where the intersection of my passion for preservation and libraries joined,” Kellerman says, but it was a disaster at Pattee Library that solidified her career in preservation.

Through working at the University Libraries during a time when people still smoked in the stacks and ate food while handling collections, Kellerman, along with several colleagues, recognized the need for a preservation program. In 1993, fate would grant them their wish. “We had a water main break outside of Pattee Library and water flooded the bottom floor stacks. That disaster had a silver lining,” Kellerman remembers, “and I was made full-time preservation officer.”

After more than two decades of working with print materials, Kellerman considers today’s digital formats and the future they will necessitate. “Storing, preserving, curating, the whole life cycle of the digital asset—that’s the future that preservationists will be working in,” she says as she rolls her chair across the office to the overstuffed bookshelf and pulls out a pristine paperback titled Pennsylvania Deer and their Horns. The original publication date is 1915. “We have this project with the Penn State Press,” she says. “These are books that are coming out of our stacks that we’re going to digitize and republish.”

Technology—the unknown variable

While online publishing models provide greater opportunities for discovery of articles, research, and information, it is clear that new models come equipped with new sets of hurdles, preservation notwithstanding. Contrary to common conceptions of open access, publishers have imposed greater fees and restrictions on the use of online materials. Rather than purchasing and owning materials, libraries now often rent digital data sets at the mercy of each publisher’s unique use and access restrictions.

Friend uses the term “born digital” to describe such data and has witnessed the results of data sets purchased from commercial vendors whose access requirements were not supported by available technology. Rather than being accessible to a broad audience, the files remained on a hard drive to be used by one person at a time, voiding the open access potential of the digital format.

Another consideration prompted by technological advances, as evidenced in the Human Genome Project, is the potential for research to generate unwieldy amounts of data. Libraries have yet to determine their roles in capturing, organizing, preserving, and sharing that data. “It’s a real challenge to know how to serve a discipline like the life sciences now as it’s evolving very rapidly, and what their needs will be over the next ten years, we don’t know,” says Furlough.

Other disciplines face similar questions, as evolving formats, such as audio and video, come with growing or atypical storage requirements. A current effort at Penn State seeks to address such challenges through strategic collaboration. The University Libraries and Digital Library Technologies (DLT), a unit of Information Technology Services have teamed up to create a digital repository for the many products of Penn State research.

Building the digital repository rather than purchasing a proprietary system is intended to ensure long-term agility, to meet the unique needs of Penn State researchers, to implement Penn State-specific policies and standards, and to limit dependence on an external system that is subject to unexpected change. The Libraries’ challenge, according to Furlough, lies in determining the level and scope of service that can be provided and maintained over many years.

Libraries of the future

“It can seem overwhelming,” Furlough admits. When coaxed into predicting the future, he projects a shift toward greater institutional collaboration with regard to providing the level of support and services necessary to serve the developing needs of researchers and universities. “I think libraries and even IT organizations in universities are going to find that they cannot support the research enterprise within their institutions by themselves the way they’ve done in the past. They’re going to have to work in tandem with each other on campus but also with other IT organizations at other schools or with other libraries at other schools,” he says.

Kellerman predicts shifts in the business model of future libraries to include the elimination of duplicates and more focus on materials and collections targeted to specific curricula and communities of users. “How many Time magazines do we really need?” she says, acknowledging that the processes needed to carry out such a transition have yet to be addressed.

Several years ago, as the Penn State Digitization and Preservation unit prepared to embark on a major scanning effort, Kellerman learned of Google’s efforts to do the same. “I just had this vision of a big harvester machine coming down to every library and picking up everything they could scan,” she says. To avoid redundancy, she made the choice to concentrate on digitizing special collections and rare materials.

Since that time, other university libraries have shifted their digitization efforts in the same direction, as special collections provide unique value in each university library. “This will help to ensure libraries’ relevance in the future,” says Kellerman, noting that trust is an emerging concern with regard to relying on companies such as Google for mass digitization of materials.

While materials digitized through the University Libraries are managed, tracked, and stored under controlled measures, Google’s potential as a trusted repository remains unclear. “Are they storing files in a way that in fifty years we can access them?” Kellerman questions. Should I say if it’s digitized in Google, it’s done for the good of mankind? I don’t know that,” she says, indicating that future libraries must consider preservation of digital content not only for their own constituents, but also for humanity at large. “Collectively,” Kellerman says, “this is the library’s responsibility.”

Problem solving pioneers

The field of scholarly communications is changing, according to Furlough, but “it isn’t quite clear how it’s changing.” Further, he says “It’s not clear what’s going to be on the other side of all this change.”

Hswe notes vast differences in today’s research methods and tools than those used when she was involved in the field. “We have a dynamic set of users in faculty and students who, themselves, are always changing, and the tools that they use are always changing.” As supporters of that research, libraries are finding ways to adapt.

Kellerman addresses changes in technology by hiring for new skills in the area of digital preservation. “Every new person we hire has to bring in new skills,” she says, confident that a new generation of preservationists will find solutions to ensure that digital materials are effectively preserved.

At the same time, Friend and Hswe conduct their consultations with faculty and graduate researchers to identify services that will be of highest long-term value. Rather than fearing the unknown quality of future issues, these problem solving pioneers embrace the opportunity to think differently about the tools and services libraries have to offer.

In contemplating collections, an enduring staple of libraries, Hswe admits that her work in the digital realm has altered her perception. “It’s like a brave new world toying with the idea of a collection in an online environment,” she says, considering the application of traditional collection development practices to digitized content. “Are we at a point where it makes more sense to strategize for content rather than collections?”

With more questions on the horizon than answers, the path for libraries of the future is unclear. Furlough believes new technologies and changes in the field have allowed libraries to ask new questions and provide services in different ways. “The changes represent more of an evolution than a revolution,” he says.

At core, librarians are still concerned with organizing information, collecting and preserving data, determining how to make that data accessible to people in ways that are most useful, and guiding users to information that is reliable and valid. “That whole issue of validity of information is still going to be there, and it may keep librarians in business,” says Friend.

Not only are librarians in a unique position to guide users to the best resources and to point them to reliable and authentic information, according to Hswe, but librarians can also assist with complex copyright and intellectual property concerns that have surfaced in response to reproducing materials in digital format.

Libraries have always had to be flexible and to generalize, Furlough points out, qualities he feels place libraries in a positive position to respond to new challenges and to change in general. “We thrive on change,” Kellerman says of library professionals, and her colleagues are eager to agree.

“Working on solutions is the positive—this is the exciting part of the job,” says Hswe. “I think it’s probably one of the most stimulating professions at this point because there’s so much going on and so many opportunities.”

Traversing the nebulous space between the library of the past and the library of the future, today’s library synthesizes with the information technology storm triggered two decades ago that shows no signs of abatement. Despite the uncertainties, Friend sees more prospects than challenges. “We’ve got tremendous resources with the things we can do with technology,” she says, “but the field will be ambiguous for a long time to come.”

In considering future roles with respect to this ambiguity, one certainty emerges to the delight of these library professionals. Their jobs, it is clear, will never be boring.

I declared a red alert for puppy arrival to all my colleagues and supervisors. Tracy looked like she had swallowed a beach ball. I’d worked at the publishing company for more than a year, and historical eyewitness accounts of the owners ogling and fawning over the kittens and critters other staff brought in by the basketful assured me of their comparable respect for the significance of my first litter of puppies. This was the second position I’d held since Nick and I had moved from Pennsylvania to Utah almost two years prior in pursuit of his passion for sled-dog racing. When he called the office on a Friday afternoon to tell me Tracy was in labor and had already given birth to her third puppy, I leapt out of my chair and ran in circles repeating “The puppies are coming!” before sprinting to the time clock and yelling in the direction of the raised eyebrows behind me as I flew out the door, “I have to go! The puppies are coming!”

I arrived at the kennel as Tracy gave birth to her fifth puppy, and she showed no signs of slowing down. Nick, who had been monitoring the proceedings for several hours, relinquished his post to look for a cardboard box, so he could transport the puppies across the street. They’d live in the shelter of our garage with Tracy until they were weaned and old enough to move into the kennel. He’d purchased a plastic kiddie pool for their enclosure and lined it with blankets for warmth. The pool awaited their arrival in the garage that day as I sat before Tracy, mesmerized by the surprisingly gory show. Tracy’s instincts served her well as puppies continued to emerge. When Nick returned with the box, she was up to number eight.

“Isn’t she done yet?” he asked.

“Apparently not,” I said.

“Oh my god!” he laughed, and I realized he’d just gained an entire team of sled dogs.

“Poor Tracy,” I said. Her eyes had assumed a wild cast, desperate as she was to finish this job. With her snout saturated in blood, she struggled to clean the puppies that pushed forth with each contraction. Nick and I stared at the untouched sac beside her, trying to determine if it was a puppy or afterbirth. When she got around to working on it, the sac revealed a puppy.

“Do you think they’ll all survive?” I asked, worried for the first time since Nick had told me about the pregnancy.

“I doubt it,” Nick said. “I’ve never seen a dog have this many puppies. She probably won’t have enough nipples to feed them all.”

The words unlatched a portal to the past, and I saw myself at eight years old, standing beside my mother at the porcelain sink in our kitchen. “I’m going to have puppies instead of babies when I grow up,” I told her.

An “old soul” is how my mother sometimes referred to me, saying I knew things I shouldn’t have known at my age. It’s possible, at the time, she believed me. In the twenty years that followed, my conviction receded, pushing the prognostic declaration into the pits of my subconscious until this moment. Sitting 2,000 miles across the country from my mother, I now watched as that childhood prediction unfolded in the form of my boyfriend’s dog mushing dream come true.

“You can do it, Tracy,” I said quietly. She looked at me with a vacant gaze and continued her work. Tiny wet puppies of various colors squirmed around her. At last, she hit the magic number and was finished. We sat in silence as she stretched out to feed all ten of her offspring. They looked like piglets with their eyes sealed shut and their ears barely perceptible on their heads. They inched forward on round bellies with rubbery legs paddling toward their mother.

“Nick,” I said, craning my neck toward the puppies, “it looks like they’re all feeding.” He leaned above Tracy, and reached in to separate the puppies.

“Wow,” he said. “She’s got that crazy long torso.”

“Do you think she can do it?” I looked at him.

“We’ll have to wait and see, sweetie.” Tracy lifted her head at the sounds of our voices, her eyes now steady and clear. She shifted her gaze from Nick to me then lay her head back down with a sigh. Nick put his arm around me, and we watched his sled team continue to nurse.

My brother came screaming into this world like the womb he was living in had burst into flames. He was small and spidery with his eyes clamped shut, his mouth stretched open, and a thick shock of jet black hair projecting from his beet red head. Their first-born child was a son. My father’s pride. My mother’s pain. It would be years before he stopped screaming.

Two weeks after giving birth, my mother was preparing to host a dinner party. Before the guests arrived, she checked on her brand new son who’d been crying on and off all day. When a baby cries, it cries with its whole body. Its tiny fingers ball into fists, and its arms alternately contract and flail. Toes curl, and knees retract legs into the familiar fetal position. Those legs shoot back out with an independent vengeance, then contract again. Even the baby’s tongue gets into the action, constricting to cause those choking gasps for air. This was a real, solid cry. But that wouldn’t have worried my mother. Not in 1969. What worried my mother that day—what caused her to phone her friends and tell them the dinner party was off—was the curious way the baby’s left leg failed to move in conjunction with the rest of its contorting body. Even as both arms, the other leg, all ten fingers, and at least five toes repeatedly launched then retreated in syncopated time, his left leg lay flaccid. Curled atop his torso like a wilted stem, that leg was completely motionless.

#

Laughter in the drawing room drifted upstairs to the guest room where my mother sat at the dressing table preparing to return to the hospital to breastfeed her newborn son. She’d noticed Paul’s leg three hours before Liz and Al were due to arrive for dinner. It was supposed to be an appreciation dinner for the volunteer work Liz did in her class. Instead of showing appreciation, she thought now, she’d been squatting in her aide’s home for nearly a week. Liz and Al’s home in Williamsport was twenty minutes closer to Divine Providence hospital than she and my father’s home in Muncy. At two weeks old, Paul was on a three-hour feeding schedule. If it hadn’t been for Liz’s invitation, my mother knew she wouldn’t be getting the two-hour sleep sprints that were barely keeping her going. It was the week between Christmas and New Year’s Eve. This was the third dinner party Liz and Al had hosted since my mother and father arrived six days earlier.

Hearing ice cubes chatter inside empty glasses downstairs, my mother pictured crystal tumblers being refilled with vodka, scotch, bourbon, and gin. For a moment, she imagined being the eighty-proof liquid trapped inside one of those tumblers, rolling in languorous waves around the perimeter.

“Carol, it’s time,” said my father, materializing in the doorway and disappearing before she could be sure he’d been there. The 100-watt bulb in the Stiffel floor lamp hummed to the tune of a much higher voltage, in harmony with the electrical current of her sleep-deprived body. She grabbed her wig and, placing it on her head, tucked the unwashed strands of hair beneath it as she descended the stairs and maneuvered through the party and out the door to the car, where her husband now waited with the engine running. It was snowing again.

Liz and Al’s house perched at the pinnacle of a forty-five degree incline, and the Grand Prix typically fishtailed as my father pumped the brakes on the way down. My mother stared through the windshield beyond the kaleidoscope of swirling snow at the darkened road ahead. She remembered the time the mother of one of her Head Start students had invited she and Liz into her home for a piece of cake. The slices of cake were enormous—almost the size you’d serve an entire birthday party, they’d later agreed. Still, they both did their best to eat what they’d been served. After leaving the house to continue on their visiting rounds, Liz mentioned that she’d seen a rat, comparable in size to the cake slices they’d just consumed, run across the floor of the kitchen as they ate.

The car slowed to a stop in front of the hospital’s main entrance, and bracing herself against the snow, my mother hurried through the main doors. When she entered Paul’s room, a nurse handed her a sterile gown. There’d been another baby in the room when my brother had first been admitted, she was almost certain. She unfolded the gown, wondering if she could have been mistaken. Paul’s cry penetrated her eardrums like a high-explosive bullet, igniting every nerve ending. She pushed her arms through the openings in the front of the gown and looped the strings in back as she leaned forward, jostling the crib to reach in for her son. Paul’s cries turned to screams.

The doctors had put a cast on Paul’s damaged leg. She wasn’t sure why. Thinking the problem was cellulitis, Paul’s doctor had started him on antibiotics via shots to his rump, but his rump had since hardened to the shots. They’d had to cut an opening in his other ankle to administer the antibiotic through an IV tube. No wonder he screams, my mother thought. She wished cellulitis had been the final prognosis.

“We’ve run more tests,” the pediatrician had told my parents the previous afternoon.

“What is it?” My mother sensed the doctor’s darkened mood.

“It’s a condition called osteomyelitis. It’s an infection in his bone.”

She’d then asked, for the first time since Paul was admitted, “Will he be OK?”

“I can’t say,” the doctor had replied.

She pushed the conversation from her mind as she pulled the baby toward her chest. Careful not to disturb the IV, my mother placed her left arm under Paul’s back, supporting his head with her left hand and balancing his torso and the leg with the IV tube on top of her forearm. She reached over his flailing arms with her right hand to lift his left leg so that the cast rested on her left breast, the opposite from which she would feed. Then she moved to open the gown, but she found no opening.

Standing with her screaming baby balanced on one arm, my mother began to tremble. My father appeared as the first sob turned into another, and he placed his arms under the baby just as my mother fell, deflating like a popped balloon, into the chair beside the crib.

“I—I—I—can’t—I—can’t—” My father rocked the baby and cooed in his ear. “I can’t—do it—anymore,” my mother said, tears now soaking the front of her once sterile gown.

“What do you want to do?” my father said in the voice he was using for Paul.

“I don’t—know.” My mother’s sobs slowed. “I just know—I can’t do this anymore.”

“I have to go back to work next week,” my father said. The high school was at a shortage for substitute band directors, and he’d been fortunate to get a full week off.

“I need to go home. I need to sleep, or I’m not going to make it,” my mother said. Then she stood up, reversed her hospital gown, took her baby in her arms, and once again, performed the balancing act that would allow him to feed.

When my parents returned to Liz and Al’s that evening, the guests were seated in the dining room. A fresh batch of Al’s law practice associates lined the twelve-foot mahogany table. My mother watched through the open doorway as rosy-cheeked lawyers and bulbous-nosed businessmen filled wine glasses for their porcelain wives. Removing her coat and scarf, she turned toward the staircase.

“Carol, Flor!” Liz heard my parents shedding their winter layers and entered the foyer to usher them into the dining room. “How is Paul?” she asked.

“He’s the same,” my mother said. “The nurses are going to give him formula tonight, so I can get some sleep.”

“Oh Carol, that’s wonderful,” Liz said. “Here, have a little glass of wine. I can’t imagine what you must be going through.”

My mother watched the deep burgundy liquid fill her glass and took a long sip. Liz moved to the end of the table where she spooned steaming white rice on to each plate before Al piled it high with a vibrant casserole of rich green broccoli and roasted chicken in thick cream sauce covered with melted cheese, still bubbling from the oven, and topped with buttery breadcrumbs toasted to a golden-brown crust. My mother thought she’d never seen a more beautiful meal, and when the waft of curried chicken hit her with the passing of plates around the table, her stomach rumbled in response. She lifted her wine glass, which was somehow empty, and before she could place it back down, a hand appeared from behind with a wine bottle to fill her glass again.

As she sipped the second glass of wine, my mother’s thoughts drifted toward the concept of a full night’s sleep. Each sip carried her closer, and she’d almost grasped it when the first bite of food reeled her back to the dinner table. She pulled the fork from her mouth and closed her eyes to savor the tang of curry against hearty chicken with a burst of fresh broccoli steamed just beyond firm. The breadcrumbs added a balancing texture against the rich, creamy sauce, and melted cheese drew the flavors together into a zesty conclusion that left her wanting indeterminately more. She hadn’t realized she was so hungry.

“It’s chicken divan,” Liz whispered to my mother as she stood up to fill her water glass. “Do you like it?” My mother’s mouth was too full to answer.

Conversations merged with the clinking of silver against china, and crystal stemware chimed in harmony with highball glasses in holiday toast. My mother felt like she was watching the scene from a place outside of herself, hovering beyond the table and witnessing the events, as if in a dream. She was talking. She was telling everyone about the breast pump or, more accurately, the breast milk sucking machine. They were laughing. And she was laughing too.

The plastic funnel was designed to fit on the end of a breast, and a tube attached to the funnel led to the hand-pump which, when squeezed, was supposed to create the suction that would pull the milk from the nipple. The funnel had been cold, and her nipple had practically retracted at the tenacious pull of the contrived suction. It was repulsive, she remembered. Her milk stopped altogether after a few moments with the contraption.

Though the doctor insisted that Paul needed breast milk for nutrients, he also agreed that my mother needed sleep in order to get through whatever the next days and weeks would bring. The nurses would feed him formula overnight, the doctor conceded, since my mother would now spend full days in the hospital, breastfeeding her son as often as necessary.

Before dessert was served, my mother excused herself. She returned to the guest room and sat at the dressing table noticing that something in her reflection wasn’t right. Throughout the entire evening, my mother realized, none of the nurses, doctors, lawyers, businessmen or their wives—not even Liz had told her that her wig was on backward. Her husband, she knew, would not have noticed. She flung the wig on the dressing table and, rather than comb her limp hair, fell into bed, succumbing to the exhaustion that had consumed her week.

My parents packed their few belongings into the Grand Prix at six o’clock the next morning. Liz was already awake with her coffee, and as my mother left, pressed a folded piece of paper into her hand.

“What’s this?” my mother asked.

“You can look at it later,” Liz said. “Just a little something to take with you.”

“Thank you,” my mother said.

“No thanks are necessary,” Liz said, “and you know the invitation is open.”

My mother slid the paper into her coat pocket as she walked out the door into the frigid morning air. It would be almost a year before she found that paper again.

The next two weeks felt like two years as my parents performed the daily hospital rituals that they prayed would stack the scales of fate in their new family’s favor. Just before Paul was scheduled for surgery to drain the infected area, his pediatrician made a visit to his hospital room.

“He’s showing signs of improvement,” the pediatrician told my parents. “The infection is draining on its own.”

“Is that good?” my mother asked.

“It’s the best thing that could have happened,” the doctor said. “We’ll watch it for a few more days and then get him out of this hospital before he picks up something else in here.”

#

By the time he was released from the hospital, osteomyelitis wasn’t my brother’s only problem. I often wondered, as a young child, why photographs showed him with a belly button that rivaled Pinocchio’s nose after an obvious whopper. Paul’s navel wore a hole in all of his shirts and protruded at least an inch in perpendicular relation to his torso.

Apparently, he had cried so hard for so long in the hospital that he’d given himself two hernias. One was umbilical and the other, inguinal. The inguinal posed the larger problem. They’d have to operate, the doctor informed my parents, but not before they knew the osteomyelitis had completely cleared. This they checked by extracting blood from Paul’s jugular vein. The osteomyelitis was under control, but it would be months before my brother was completely out of danger. It would be years before my parents would fully accept that.

The following Christmas, my mother was five months pregnant with me. She grabbed her old coat on the way to a doctor’s appointment when, reaching into the pocket for her gloves, she found the folded piece of paper that Liz had pressed into her hand the year before. She opened it. And here’s what it said.

Chicken Divan
Spread 20 oz. chopped broccoli on bottom of buttered 9×13” pan.
Chop 3 cooked chicken breasts and spread over broccoli.

Mix together
2 cans cream of chicken soup
1 cup mayonnaise
1 Tbsp. curry powder
1 Tbsp. lemon juice
Spread sauce over chicken

16 oz. Velveeta cheese – sliced and placed evenly atop sauce

Combine
2 cups fresh breadcrumbs
3 Tbsp. melted butter
Sprinkle buttered breadcrumbs over cheese

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Bake for 30 minutes.

My mother made chicken divan for Christmas that year. Technically, I ate it too, since I was there in the womb, partaking from the safety of my home within a home. It’s been forty years, and there hasn’t been a Christmas without chicken divan since.

Tara is one of millions of people who deals with celiac disease as a reality of her every day life. Via this interview, Tara and I hope to educate people about what celiac disease actually is, the challenges and very real health danger it presents, and how to accommodate someone in the workplace who needs a gluten-free diet.

What is your exact condition that requires you to have a gluten-free diet and how did you find out you have it?

I have celiac disease, which is an immune system condition through which the body attacks and destroys the nutrient-absorbing villi in the small intestine when gluten is ingested. Simply put, gluten is a protein in wheat, barley, and rye, and it hides in many other processed foods as a thickening, anti-caking, and flavoring agent, to name a few hidden sources.

I had been ill, on and off, for several years. At the tail end of 2001, I contracted what doctors diagnosed as a stomach virus. The virus never went away, and I ended up in the hospital after two trips to the emergency room. I spent nine days in the hospital before doctors started to test for other conditions. A biopsy of my small intestine in February 2002 confirmed that I suffered from celiac disease.

How long have you been on the diet?

I have been on the gluten-free diet since my celiac disease diagnosis more than ten years ago.

What are some of the challenges (and benefits) of being on this diet?

It’s a complete lifestyle change. In all aspects of life, from social to professional, people come together around food. It isn’t something we think about if not prompted. This is natural, innate behavior. The social ramifications of being on a diet that prohibits the general consumption of food has been the biggest challenge for me. It is one I will never overcome. I accept it and have learned to adapt by being honest with people about why I am not eating at a social event or a work lunch or a conference buffet, etc. I often carry my own food to ensure that I am able to eat something at a food-related gathering.

Eating at restaurants or in other people’s homes is an even bigger challenge. Trace amounts of gluten can damage the intestine to an unknown extent. This means that cooking surfaces and utensils used for bread or other gluten containing foods can cross-contaminate otherwise gluten-free foods if not thoroughly washed between uses. I can’t even dip mayonnaise out of a jar at someone else’s home or use their butter due to the risk of contamination from bread particles. Most people don’t realize the risks or have full awareness of the many places gluten can hide. I read all labels very carefully. If food is not labeled as “gluten free” and has an ingredient like “natural flavoring,” or any other unidentifiable source, I can’t eat it.

The benefit, for me, is good health. All sorts of problems can develop in people with celiac disease who don’t follow a gluten-free diet including a host of other autoimmune diseases, anemia, osteoporosis, infertility, neurological disorders, and even cancer. One statistic I read estimated that 42,000 children worldwide die each year from undiagnosed celiac disease. Not following a gluten-free diet, to me, is the equivalent of going undiagnosed. Another study showed that people with undiagnosed celiac disease have a 400% higher mortality rate than those without celiac disease. This makes it worth sticking to the diet.

What are some of the social hurdles? Do you find most people are understanding?

I’ve found most people to be incredibly accepting, more so than I would have expected. When I first started working at Penn State—on my first day here, actually—I walked into my cubicle to find a welcome muffin on my desk! I had to explain to my thoughtful co-worker that I had celiac disease and could not eat muffins made with traditional wheat flour. I was somewhat embarrassed to have to start our relationship that way, but I learned that she knew more about celiac disease and the gluten-free diet than most people at the time. She took the muffin back to her cubicle and, to this day, prepares gluten-free food whenever we get together and goes out of her way to provide a gluten-free option at social events and professional gatherings if she knows I’ll be in attendance. It is above and beyond, and this level of compassion and understanding makes the condition easier to deal with.

The social hurdles are often cases in which people have the best intentions but don’t have sufficient knowledge to accommodate my needs. Gluten is hidden in so many foods, and most don’t know everything to look for when considering what it takes to prepare a gluten free meal. It isn’t as simple as eliminating overt ingredients of wheat, barley, and rye. I have to think about everything, even the brand of spices used to flavor my meal since wheat is used as an anticaking agent in some.

Any examples of someone not being very understanding, and how you handled it?

Like I said, most people are accepting and really want to help. The problem comes with lack of understanding. I’ll target our own group as an example (because I know we appreciate constructive feedback). I’ve noticed that the registration forms for various IT functions now provide an option for special dietary requests. This is an excellent step in the right direction. To be as safe as possible, I make a point to gather as much information about the food provider and their preparation methods as I can prior to the event. There have been several occasions in which I was not comfortable partaking of the “gluten free” option after learning of the preparation process. My concern is that those not as familiar or comfortable with gathering more information may eat the “gluten free” meal and become ill, as did happen in one case I’m aware of. It’s important to remember that the gluten free diet is often not a choice, like other diets may be. It is a health requirement and should be treated as stringently as a peanut or shellfish allergy would be.

Has it affected you at work? If so, what are some situations where it has?

I’m affected with every work-related function that involves food—from birthday lunches to business meetings to office pot-lucks to conferences and events—there is always some level of discomfort. This has a lot to do with my personality, I think. My biggest source of discomfort with regard to my diet is creating an uncomfortable situation for others. Here’s an example. I recently attended a conference where many of the dinners were “on your own.” One night, I ended up with a large group of people who had already chosen a restaurant. After hearing my discussion with the host, they insisted on finding a restaurant where I could eat safely. Not wanting to put everyone through the fiasco a second time (it was getting late, and everyone was quite hungry), I checked my newly installed iPhone app to locate a restaurant in the vicinity that claimed to provide gluten free options. The woman who had led us to the first restaurant saw one she recognized on the list, and off we went. The conversation at this restaurant fared even worse than the first, ending with the manager saying he could not guarantee the food would not be contaminated in the preparation process and did not recommend that I eat there. With the group already seated, it took all my powers of persuasion to convince my new friends that I was happy sipping a beverage until I returned to my hotel room, where gluten free food awaited. (It travels with me everywhere.)

What about the current trend of people choosing gluten-free diets – is that good or bad for people with celiac disease/gluten allergies (more selections at stores, people more likely to incorrectly think your condition is a choice, etc.)?

Well, the obvious bonus is that gluten free food is more widely available than ever before. I remember, when I was first diagnosed, sending a letter to a list of restaurant chains describing my dietary requirements and asking if they offered any menu items that would accommodate my gluten free diet. With the exception of one, responses came back with differing versions of “I’m sorry but we are unable to accommodate those requirements.” Today, you can count on most people in the restaurant and food industry being familiar with the term gluten-free, and many restaurants now offer gluten free menus or will highlight the gluten free options on a regular menu. It’s much easier to have that dialog with a server, host, or chef than it ever was before, and grocery shopping is also easier with more foods being labeled as gluten free. I attribute these changes, primarily, to the rise in awareness of the gluten free diet.

The caveat is that, while awareness of the gluten free diet is at an all-time high, awareness of celiac disease remains fairly low. People are not making the connection between the diet and the disease with which it is dependently linked. For some reason, people have latched on to the gluten-free diet as a health trend rather than as a treatment for celiac disease and gluten intolerance. According to what I’ve heard and read from doctors and nutritionists, the gluten free diet provides no heath benefits to people who do not suffer from either of those conditions. In and of itself, the gluten free diet is not a weight loss diet and, in fact, many gluten free foods contain more fat and calories than their gluten containing counterparts. People may be mistaking low-carbohydrate diets for gluten free—I’m not sure—but for the normal population, gluten free does not automatically mean healthy.

I think once anything reaches the level of trend or fad it runs the risk of losing credibility, and I’ve seen some examples of this in the news. There was one case in which a restaurant chef admitted on Facebook to lying about the gluten free status of food he prepared where he worked. The chef did not take gluten free requests seriously, claiming the diet was a fad. Well, I guess it is a fad, but it is also much more. This level of ignorance is devastating to people with celiac disease.

I understand you’ve written about your experiences – where can that be found?

I wrote an article titled “Celiac disease remains tough to diagnose” for the State College Celiac Support Group that appeared in the Centre Daily Times a while ago. Also, to promote education during celiac disease awareness month last May, I shared the portion of my memoir that deals with my celiac disease diagnosis. All this content can be found in the “articles” and “gluten free” sections of my website at http://taracaimi.com.

Anything else you might like to add?

As you can probably tell, I’m dedicated to steering the recent rise in awareness of the gluten free diet toward better education and understanding of celiac disease. I want to thank you for highlighting this as an important diversity topic. Because of the natural connection between food and social activities, it is easy to overlook the related challenges for those of us with dietary restrictions. It’s hard to think that food could be anything but a unifying factor, but it’s important to remember that it can be just the opposite as well.

I recommend that people talk to those they know who have dietary restrictions to learn more about their experiences and also not to take it personally when someone with a dietary restriction refrains from eating in any given situation. This is often not a choice. When hosting an event, if you’d like to include options for special diets, be sure to consult an expert on all requirements to ensure the safety of those options. Food is good. For some of us, finding safe food is just a little more complicated.

Tara Streno saw her family doctor once a month for about a year, and John Askey received aggressive treatments for a disease he may not even have had before arriving at what each feels is the correct diagnosis. From weight gain and weight loss, chronic fatigue, migraines, anemia, memory loss, joint pain, and insomnia to treatment for depression, irritable bowel syndrome, Crohn’s, and even Lyme disease, the medical symptoms and health care experiences of an undiagnosed celiac patient sound like they belong in an episode of Discovery Channel’s Mystery Diagnosis.

“I was basically told that I was crazy,” said Streno, “like I had all these symptoms, and I brought them on myself.” In truth, more than three hundred signs, symptoms, and disorders may be associated with celiac disease, according to the Celiac Sprue Association, making the detective work toward an accurate diagnosis that much more complicated.

Celiac disease is an autoimmune disorder triggered by gluten, which is found in all forms of wheat, as well as barley, rye, and to some degree, oats. When people with celiac disease ingest gluten, the small intestine is attacked and damaged by their bodies’ own immune system responses. The damage with each ingestion is cumulative and negatively affects the body’s ability to absorb nutrients. Over time, this can lead to an unfathomable variety of associated problems, including other autoimmune diseases like lupus or diabetes, osteoporosis, infertility, neurological disorders, and even cancer. The only known treatment for celiac disease is the strict elimination of gluten from the diet and lifestyle.

Adding to the complexity is the fact that gluten is found not only in cakes, cookies, breads, and other flour-based products, but is also hidden in seasonings, marinades, medications, and many other elusive places. Gluten is in more foods and products than most people would think to imagine, but Streno and Askey must think about those potential gluten sources multiple times every single day.

Over the course of the year prior to her diagnosis, Streno experienced migraines, depression, numbness in her hands, severe canker sores, and “every GI (gastric) symptom” in the book. She was diagnosed with anxiety, irritable bowel syndrome, stomach ulcers, Crohn’s disease, and “intestinal cancer was a possibility,” she said.

Despite frustration with her experiences, Streno had to admit she was lucky to get an accurate diagnosis after only one year of illness. The average time from the onset of symptoms to a celiac disease diagnosis in the U.S., according to The University of Chicago Celiac Disease Center, is four years.

Askey wasn’t so “lucky.” In summer of 2005, he began noticing a tingling sensation or, what he referred to as pinpricks on his skin. Because Askey regularly handles agricultural pesticides at work, he received blood tests accordingly, but nothing showed up in the blood work to verify any relation between the pesticides and his symptoms.

Soon after, Askey began experiencing sleep disruptions. “I didn’t sleep through the night from summer 2005 until February 2009,” he stated. “Not one night.”

Over the course of those four years, Askey would struggle with severe fatigue, headaches, memory loss, light sensitivity, dizziness, and brain fog. After countless blood tests, a sleep study, MRIs, and bone scans, Askey, in desperation, responded to an advertisement for Lyme disease treatment and began an exhaustive series of antibiotic therapy treatments that would last a full year and cost multiple thousands of dollars.

Throughout all that, Askey’s symptoms persisted. He still couldn’t sleep, had lost more than twenty pounds, and was coming to the end of his rope. “I thought I was dying,” he said without pretense. “I thought, I’m dying and nobody knows why. And I accepted the fact that I’m probably just going to die.”

It was then that Askey’s neighbor, with whom he’d briefly spoken about his symptoms, was diagnosed with celiac disease. Knowing they’d suffered from similar symptoms, Askey’s neighbor shared his story, prompting Askey to request the test as part of his regularly scheduled blood work. For the first time in almost four years of illness, Askey finally had something conclusive. His initial tests were positive for celiac disease.

Askey remembers getting the phone call with the blood test results. He’d just finished eating a piece of cake. “My heart just sank because I love to eat. And so …” Askey’s voice trailed off for a moment, “… I had another piece of cake.”

Streno, a self-proclaimed “foodie” and practiced baker, had a similar experience. “When I first went on the diet, my best friend got married, and he got all these different cakes. I fell off the wagon completely, and I really paid for it. That was the last time I ever fell off the wagon,” she said.

The same is true for Askey, who went completely gluten free after further testing led to a final, positive diagnosis in spring 2009. Though relieved to finally have a diagnosis, he knew his life would never be the same.

Both Streno and Askey describe the gluten-free diet as a complete lifestyle change, stressing the constant need for careful planning. Streno carries gluten-free snacks in her purse, packs her lunch for trips to the mall, and both wonder about the feasibility of future vacations.

At Askey’s home, the whole family has switched to gluten-free pasta. They don’t share a butter dish due to cross-contamination from crumbs or particles of gluten which may be left behind from buttering toast, and they now use squirt-bottles for all condiments.

Streno can tell by her body’s reaction when she has unknowingly ingested gluten, but, she admits, the risk of cross-contamination through food preparation is high. While she has identified a few restaurants she feels are safe, Askey is more careful. He doesn’t experience digestive upset when contamination occurs but knows that intestinal damage may result from the slightest contamination. “It only takes a little bit of gluten to undo months worth of abstinence,” he said “so it’s really imperative that you never get any.”

With more gluten-free products hitting the shelves every day, celiac disease awareness is on the rise, according to Streno. “It’s a lot easier for us now than it was twenty years ago,” she said.

Still, both Streno and Askey share a desire for better education and support. Askey stressed the need for people to participate more actively in their own health care. “We need to ask questions,” Askey said. “Sometimes we need to dig deeper on our own. I was guilty of thinking that doctors were all knowing, and that was my fault, not theirs. Sometimes it just takes persistence.”

Askey recently attended a seminar presented by Dr. Alessio Fasano, Director of the Center for Celiac Research at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. “Dr. Fasano explained that out of all the autoimmune diseases the only one they know the trigger for is celiac disease, and if you remove the trigger it gets better. It’s the only autoimmune disease that gets better,” Askey said.

Once gluten is effectively eliminated, a person with celiac disease can lead a completely healthy life without supplemental medication or medical procedures. This, however, hinges on timely and accurate diagnosis and treatment. According to the Celiac Sprue Association, untreated celiac disease increases the risk that other complications—some irreversible—will develop.

The State College Celiac Support Group has been a valuable resource, providing information and personal support for both Streno and Askey. Each has noticed health improvements and a reduction in symptoms since beginning the gluten-free diet. “The foggy brain got better,” Askey said. “I no longer feel like I’m dying.”

Streno is in the process of planning her wedding, and this time, she assures, the cake will be gluten-free.

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With drones for breeding, workers for gathering food, and a queen for reproducing, traditional honey bee colonies never had much use for a king. But the relatively recent decline in bee populations worldwide, a phenomenon commonly referred to as Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), has inspired more humans to put themselves at the top of the bee colony hierarchy in hopes of finding a solution. (Read more at Stream IT Magazine.)

Four months after moving in to the run-down mobile home, I still hadn’t gotten used to the popping pinion in the woodburner, the sinking floor underneath that woodburner, or the whistling winds that sometimes pushed the battered old trailer to the brink of impending flight. In a strange way, these things that threatened our world actually brought Nick and I closer. We were in this struggle together, I often reminded myself—the young couple starting a fresh new life. Things would get better. And our bond would be stronger for all that we’d gone through. We’d look back on these times with fond memories. The fact that were starting at the extreme bottom made it all the more romantic, I thought. The trailer was just a starting point. A decidedly unfortunate starting point.

But for all the frights, frustrations, and inconveniences that loomed over us in the makeshift living quarters, there was one paramount saving grace that even I couldn’t deny—a grace that transcended anything built by human hands. And all Nick or I had to do to access that grace was walk outside. Across the street from our less-than-regal mobile home was a majestic wilderness. In addition to having unobstructed views of the second highest peak in Utah—Mount Timpanogos—we lived on Soldier Hollow road. By that time, Soldier Hollow had already been designated as the venue for the 2002 Winter Olympic Games biathlon event. Between our trailer and the Soldier Hollow future Olympic venue was a right-hand turn that lead to the most scenic drive of my life. I can’t count the number of times that fall we drove up the road that led to Cascade Springs, continuing through the Alpine Loop Scenic Byway to witness the shock of flaming colors as we wound through the switchback crack of a road nestled in the towering folds of deciduous-blanketed Wasatch mountains. But Cascade Springs road was impassable in winter. And that made it a perfectly acceptable, though treacherously steep, sled dog training track.

The first time Nick took me on a dog-sled ride I almost chickened out before he even had all the dogs hooked up to the sled. It was ten o’clock at night. The moonlight radiated off the snow, illuminating the world around us in a mystical glow. The dogs went crazy.

Nick’s handmade wooden racing sled was approximately six feet in length, crafted with long, slender strips of White Ash that Nick had glued and clamped to the perfect specifications before securing each with hand-tied knots of the strongest fishing line he could find. With a forward thrusting brush bow that mirrored the curve of the upright drive bow, this sled was as graceful as it was sleek. In the center of the sled, sitting delicately atop the six-foot long runners, was the basket—traditionally built to hold supplies, untraditionally built to hold me. Nick had lined the sled with thick blankets, topped with a sleeping bag, which he unzipped in preparation for our quick takeoff. He would drive, standing up at the back of the sled. I would ride, all snug inside the blankets in the cargo basket.

Nick set the claw brake and, for extra security, dug the snow hook deep into the snow behind the sled before instructing me on how it was all going to happen. He would hook the two leaders up first, Drizzle and Simba. I was to stand up front with them, holding the line between them and making sure they didn’t get tangled as he hooked up the other dogs, one by one.

Got it, I thought, no problem. I took my position at the front of the lines, only then noticing how long the lines actually were. The lead dogs, I realized, would be a good twenty feet from the front of the sled. As I was considering the implications of such long lines, Nick came running toward me with a frantic Drizzle beside him. He had to hold her up by the chain so that her two front feet didn’t touch the ground. Otherwise, he would have had no chance of keeping a hold on this dog that was bred to run. Even with Nick’s restraints, Drizzle plunged forward on her hind legs in giant leaps, and I realized that if her two front feet were to make contact with the ground, that dog would be gone in a flash to anywhere. I was beginning to get nervous.

Once Drizzle was hooked up to the line, she plunged forward in a frenzy, jerking the sled off its runners behind her.

“Hold her!” Nick yelled, as he ran like crazy back to get another dog. I tried my best to hold Drizzle by the shoulders and convince her to contain her mania. Next came Simba, our gentle black giant whose only previous mission in life seemed to be that of sweetly pining for as much attention as he could get. I wasn’t worried about Simba, until I saw the look in his wildly possessed eyes. Somehow, the Simba that Nick attached to the line next to Drizzle seemed to be inhabited by the spirit of a dog I hadn’t yet met. One that I probably wouldn’t have cared to, given a choice. While Drizzle had only partially accommodated my firm directive of settling down, Simba would have none of it. The sixty-pound wad of muscle lunged forward with all his might, and out of his throat came blood-curdling sounds that didn’t seem natural. A cross between a howling bellow and an agonized wail launched with every thrusting lunge. The little wooden sled dangled on the end of the flailing lines, and my blankets went asunder in the jumble.

“HOLD HIM!” Nick shouted as he approached the next set of lines with Lefty. By that time, I was as frantic as the dogs were, yelling back at them and forcing my arms between the two leaders as they barked and screeched and yowled in my ears. The mind-numbing ruckus only got worse as more dogs took their places in line.

I have one job, I told myself, to keep the leaders untangled and steady. At one point I thought Lefty and Whitey seemed to be on the opposite sides of where they’d started. Nick must have noticed at the same time and came forward to untangle them. As I watched Nick fling little Lefty over the line and back into position, I saw Swede jump straight up in the air and land on Mufasa. Both dogs started jumping, and lines twisted everywhere. Nick continued up and down the line of dogs, fixing the tangles and adjusting positions. The dogs seemed determined to raise the dead with their heart-pumping uproar.

I have one job, I kept telling myself. My breath was now coming in short gasps. My heart felt like a hummingbird’s, ready to explode. One job, I thought.

“Come on, come on, get in the sled!” Nick shouted from the helm. I released my hold on Simba and ran like crazy, jumping into the sled and falling clumsily into the cushion of blankets just as the hook came loose.

“HAaaaa-Ayyyyke!” Nick shouted.

Whoooshhhh! We were off like an arrow into the night, and absolute silence echoed in my ears.

Shhhhhhhh, Shhhhhhhhh, Shhhhhhhhh . . . Nick’s delicate wooden sled glided over the snow like a ballerina on her stage.

“Wow,” I whispered.

“Cover up,” Nick said, reaching down to pull the sleeping bag around me. I adjusted my position after having fallen so haphazardly into the sled. I pulled my hat over my ears and snuggled down into the blankets, drinking in the silent beauty of the winter night. As the dogs slowed to pace, a light snow began to fall.

“What do you think?” Nick eventually asked. He couldn’t see the tears in my eyes.

“Unreal,” I said.

“Yeah,” he replied.

The ride lasted for about an hour. We went part of the way up Cascade Springs road before turning around for the descent. It was a hairy turnaround in the middle of the night on a narrow road, but by that time, a kind of absurd tranquility had infiltrated my body and soul and we could probably have launched right over the side of that mountain before anything shook me up again. The dogs seemed to have found their balance as well, never again fidgeting or making a sound after the initial disarray. This was a team in harmony, I realized, not caring that I had no earthly idea as to how it had all come together.

The next day I was still in a daze from the dog-sledding experience. I made us a big brunch of fried potatoes, toast, and eggs—mine over-easy and Nick’s sunny-side up, the way he liked them. We sat at the table in contented silence.

“Hey,” I said, finally shattering our morning reverie as something popped into my head from the night before. “You never said ‘Mush.’”

“Huh?” Nick looked up from dipping his toast into the sunny part of his egg.

“Mush,” I repeated. “You’re supposed to say mush when you mush dogs. You never said it.”

“Nobody says mush,” he informed me. “The dogs wouldn’t even know what to do. You may as well say banana,” he smiled.

“What?” I couldn’t believe it. “Then why is it called dog mushing?”

“I have no idea,” he said. “I’ve never heard anyone say mush in all the years I’ve run dogs. The word is completely meaningless,” he said, and he pushed his plate away, the whites of his eggs still completely intact with the indentation of a perfect round circle where the sun used to be.

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