Personal Column Finalists Publication:
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
By: Paul Greenberg
Excerpt from “Suicide of a newspaper” When a city, or a state, loses its daily newspaper, something of its soul is lost with it. It’s as if ancient Athens had lost its agora, the forum at its center where scholars taught and great debates were held. Or if Jerusalem lost its Western Wall, its last standing connection with the ancient Temple where sacrifices were offered and prayers still fill the air. So imagine New Orleans, another storied locale, without the newspaper William Faulkner and Sherwood Anderson read when they were habitués of the French Quarter back in the Roaring Twenties, and had their doings chronicled in the old Times-Picayune. (Recommended reading: “Dixie Bohemia” by John Shelton Reed, dean of Southern sociologists, aka the De Tocqueville of Dixie.) Without its daily newspaper and ritual read, even the outward appearance of a place seems to change, along with its self-awareness. Its skyline, its gated courtyards and modest neighborhoods, its landmarks and unnoticed places, no longer seem to have the same reality. A daily newspaper, besides providing a chronicle of events, validates a community, testifying to its existence every day. ... It was sad to watch the Des Moines Register draw back from its state’s borders; it was like watching a whole state shrink. At least the Fort Worth Star-Telegram retained its authentic cow-town character after Amon Carter’s heyday in the last century, when aeroplanes used to drop bundles of newsprint way out on the high plains or along the dusty arroyos of West Texas to demonstrate its statewide circulation.
Publication: Lincoln Journal Star By: Cindy Lange-Kubick
Excerpt from “A son’s love for his dying mother” The son’s eyes are tired. He is fixing breakfast in the small kitchen of the apartment on G Street. Potatoes cooked soft in a skillet, spooned onto a plate. Chunks of mild cheese and pats of pale butter. Heated honey poured into a dish. Pita bread. Hot tea in a jelly jar, sweetened with two scoops of sugar. His mother is sleeping down the hall in a small bedroom with white curtains and two twin beds. Her name is Sultana, the name of a princess. His mom is like a princess, Hussein Al Khazraji says Tuesday. “She is a special mom.” And she is dying. Last night, she was in pain. That is why her son is tired. When she is awake, he is awake. Her stomach keeps her awake. So he gave her the pills. He massaged her skin to help her digest. At 3 a.m. when she closed her eyes, he went to sleep. *** Hussein came to Lincoln last year. Catholic Social Services helped the 44-year-old and his mother get this apartment on the first floor of a brick building with green trim. They gave them a table and chairs, a couch, beds. Sultana had her first seizure four days later. He took her to the hospital until they couldn’t do any more to make her well. For more than six months, she has been in Tabitha’s home hospice program. Nurses come twice a week. A home health aide comes every afternoon. Social worker Kerri Denell comes every week. “My true opinion is she is still alive because of his care.”
Publication:
Omaha World-Herald
By: Michael Kelly
Excerpt from “5 years after transplant, she now has donor’s heart” Macy Stevens, a 15-year-old Marian High sophomore, was reluctant to know much about the donor of her heart. Grateful to him and his family, definitely. But for five years since the transplant, it has bothered her that she has lived and he did not. As she explained: “I always felt, like — really, kind of guilty.” But then came a transformative journey. Macy would meet her donor’s mother, who showered her with love — and in the presence of a church congregation asked Macy for one simple favor, one last personal connection to the woman’s beloved son. And that made all the difference. Macy’s parents, Jordan and Karen Stevens, had announced this fall that the family would take a pre-Thanksgiving trip, a 16-hour drive. They would meet the mother of the boy whose heart beats in Macy’s chest. Macy didn’t want to go. She asked her mom and dad why they would schedule something like this without checking with her. But she dutifully joined them, with her two younger sisters. Along the way, according to her dad, Macy braced for the meeting and for learning more about her donor, whose name was Cameron. “People will start crying, and I don’t like people crying,” she said. “I think stories about him will make me feel worse.” On Nov. 23, a Saturday, the Stevens family pulled up to a Baptist church in Gulfport, Miss. Once inside, her dad said, Macy seemed calm and content. A woman in a colorful dress eventually rose, scanned the congregation and said, “Where’s Macy? Where is she?”
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