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(02/14/01 8:41pm)
Some days, he walks around the hospital in a blue blazer and tie, indistinguishable from any doctor or visitor. Other days, he wears a cross around his neck. John VanderZee, a Presbyterian minister, has been a chaplain for 21 years. He has worked full-time at Bloomington Hospital for 11 years.\nThe first full-time hospital chaplain was in Massachusetts in 1924, VanderZee said. Today, he said, there are several thousand certified hospital chaplains in America.\nVanderZee had to do one year of Clinical Pastoral Education to graduate from seminary. From that point, he was "hooked," he said. He liked the hospital atmosphere and being "an odd fit for a hospital" because he deals with spiritual issues in a secular, scientific place. "The challenge excited me," he said.\nBloomington Hospital has 10 assistant chaplains who volunteer for night and weekend shifts. Henry Mann, from Cincinnati Christian Church in Green County, is one of them. He helps patients and staff with spiritual concerns, but most of his work is with patients' families. \nThe chaplains also work with social services to help patients and their families plan for when they get out of the hospital.\nDr. Lee McKinley of Bloomington Hospital said VanderZee is a resource not only for patients and families but also for physicians. \n"Physicians have spiritual needs themselves," he said.\nDr. Jerry Jesseph, a surgeon who works with VanderZee, said he is greatful to have VanderZee at Bloomington Hospital. "I appreciate his input and his perspective," he said. "He's been an integral part of taking care of patients in the hospital."\nJesseph said physicians can only support individuals' needs to a degree. VanderZee said it's hard for nurses and physicians to take the time to know patients' concerns and to help them figure out how to find strength. VanderZee spends his day helping patients deal with fear, insecurity and mental coping. \n"I claim no expertise in those areas," Jesseph said.\nReligious counseling, VanderZee said, helps patients through their trauma.\n"I think the benefits probably include a greater sense of peace, feeling they aren't forgotten by God or by a caring person," said VanderZee.\nVanderZee is available to all patients, regardless of their religious background.\n"I can't be a rabbi to someone who is Jewish, but I can be a presence for them," he said. \nHe supports and encourages them, and he contacts patients' own religious leaders.\n Along with specialists, nurses, doctors and families, VanderZee addresses critical, difficult decisions, such as turning off a loved one's life support. In interdisciplinary conferences, VanderZee helps families who feel burdened and lonely talk about their fears and feelings. \n There is a "growing interest in spirituality as a component of healing," VanderZee said. \n But because of reduced government funding, hospitals are cutting back on extraneous costs, so some are losing their chaplains. \nBloomington Hospital is accredited by the Joint Commission of Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations, which requires spiritual care in some capacity in hospitals, VanderZee said.\n"Generally, chaplaincy is growing," he said.
(01/23/01 5:38am)
Red "Celebrate Roe" stickers stuck to every sweater and jacket in the small crowd that linked arms Monday in front of Planned Parenthood, 421 S. College Ave.\nThe 28th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision has inspired both sides in the debate to take to the streets of Bloomington. About 100 pro-life advocates carried signs admonishing abortion around the Monroe County Courthouse Sunday. \nIn commemoration of the same anniversary, Planned Parenthood of Greater Indiana in Bloomington held its first annual Hug-a-Clinic. Muncie and Lafayette Planned Parenthood clinics also held Hug-a-Clinic events Monday.\nParticipants included Planned Parenthood volunteers, members of the local National Organization of Women chapter, Campus for Choice and other interested students and citizens. \nTwo policemen stationed themselves in front of the clinic in case of any problems, but the event went peacefully.\nKelly McBride, Planned Parenthood community specialist who described the organization as "active, not reactive," led the event. The participants signed a large thank-you card to the Planned Parenthood staff. After presenting the card, the advocates stood outside and linked arms in effort to hug the building.\nUrsina Hastings-Heinz of Harmony School brought part of her 7th and 8th grade classes. McBride taught the students sex education. Hastings-Heinz's class has been debating several issues recently, one of them abortion. \nKatie Liell-Kok, a 12-year-old in the class, said she was debating the pro-choice side. She said her class was mostly pro-choice, so they did not get to pick which side of the debate they had to defend. The group hugging the clinic consisted mostly of students from Harmony.\n"Roe v. Wade means choice," said Nora Leill, Katie's mother. "You don't have to choose an abortion."\nPlanned Parenthood is often the target of pro-life protests against abortion, but the clinic-huggers said there is much more to the facility than just abortions. \n"Less than 5 percent of what we do is abortion," McBride said.\nEducation and health care are main functions of the clinic, McBride said.\n"I've been coming here since the '70s, and I've never had an abortion. Now I'm coming for menopause advice," said Katy Kelly, a Bloomington resident.\nOthers said they feel Planned Parenthood is often inaccurately stigmatized.\n"It's the abortion issue that always gets talked about," said Tonia Matthew, a member of NOW and long-time Planned Parenthood supporter who has defended clinics in the past. "I write to my legislature."\nMatthew said she agrees Planned Parenthood should offer women the choice to have abortions, noting it is also "here for planning parenthood." \n"It's just a really, really important organization," she said. \nMcBride said the Bloomington Planned Parenthood serves about 5,000 patients a year, most of whom are 18 to 24 years old. \n"We do see a lot of students," she said.
(01/22/01 5:22am)
"Abortion Kills Children," "Adoption: The Loving Option" and "Stop Abortion Now" signs floated around Bloomington Square Sunday in the hands of nearly 100 marchers. \nPro-life supporters have gathered there every year since 1987 on the Sunday closest to Jan. 22 to protest the U.S. Supreme Court's decision to legalize abortion.\nPro-choice advocates are also commemorating the 28th anniversary of Roe vs. Wade with Hug-a-Clinic at 1 p.m. today at Planned Parenthood. Advocates of women's rights to choose abortion will stand in a ring around Planned Parenthood, 421 S. College Ave., "as a show of support for reproductive health care," said a Planned Parenthood press release.\nPaul Konstanski, who represented the Monroe County Right to Life, coordinated the pro-life event Sunday and said the march had two main goals. The first, he said, is to remember the unborn children. The second is to let the community know that people are concerned and that they are taking action, he said. Pro-life supporters write letters, protest at Planned Parenthood and run programs to help pregnant women consider alternatives to abortion.\nKonstanski said nearly 40 million abortions have been performed since the Roe vs. Wade decision in 1973. \nPeople were asked to bring diapers to the march as a donation for women who didn't have abortions.\nThe Monroe County Right to Life and IU Students for Life sponsored the event. At least half of the crowd was male. \nAlthough there have been counter-protests in the past, there were none this year.\nThe march was not officially affiliated with any religion, but there was a clear religious tone to the speeches, particularly from the Crisis Pregnancy Center, 223 S. Pete Ellis Drive, a Christian nonprofit organization in Bloomington. Many protesters said they heard about the event in church and came with other members of their churches.\nJim Koryta, a physical plant employee, came from Stanford Baptist Church and said it's a chance to "show the community you're concerned." This is his second year participating. \nBarbara Judah of Sherwood Oaks Christian Church marched for her 10th year. \n"I'm just hopeful for the pro-life movement," she said. \nShe said she hopes that Congress will not pass the Partial Birth Abortion Bill, a bill allowing abortions in late-term pregnancies, or that President George W. Bush will stop it.\nAfter about 25 minutes of marching, the crowd observed a moment of silence -- not only for the unborn children, but also for the women and men who have suffered because of the decisions to have abortions. The crowd said "Amen" and the speeches began. \nThe speeches were brief and asked the crowd to support the cause by doing more than just marching once a year. Jeff Houston, of the Crisis Pregnancy Center, asked the crowd for money, time, energies and effort: "We need your support and prayers"
(12/06/00 5:36am)
One man's trash is another man's jacket.\nManufacturers have been making fleece out of recycled two-liter plastic bottles since Wellman Inc., a recycling company, introduced the concept in 1993.\nClothing retailer Patagonia was the first to sell jackets of post-consumer recycled (PCR) fleece with its Synchilla fleece line of garments. \nFleece is generally made from crude oil. Three thousand and seven hundred two-liter bottles can be recycled to make 150 Synchilla garments, saving 42 gallons of oil. Using recycled bottles also eliminates the need to process the oil, thus avoiding toxic air emissions.\n"Since '93, we've diverted roughly 40 million two-liter plastic soda bottles from landfills, saving enough oil to fill the 40-gallon gas tank of the diminutive Chevy Suburban 10,000 times," according to the Patagonia Web site.\nWellman Inc. manufactures Patagonia's fleece. They smash, melt and spin plastic bottles to make thick fiber that is heated and drawn out to make thinner fiber. The fiber is crimped, cut and sent to Dyersburg Fabrics to be made into garments for Patagonia.\nLu Setnicka, director of public affairs for Patagonia, said 25 bottles make one Snap-T pullover. She said a lot of people think they are buying recycled fleece but often are not. A plastic bottle icon indicates the recycled garments. She said she thinks it is reaffirming for customers to see Patagonia recycled fleece and know that their recycling has been fruitful. \n"I think it's really interesting to our customers," Setnicka said.\nGail and Wayne Hartlich of Rising Sun, Ind., run a small business selling hand-made recycled fleece clothing. The Hartlichs buy ECO fleece directly from Dyersburg Fabrics and cut and sew their products by hand in their garage. \nThey began their business, Point Beach Outdoors, three years ago in Wisconsin and have been in Indiana about four months. When they began, their dining room was their cutting room and their living room served as sewing and packing room. Gail said their house was covered with fleece lint. \nNow they have dedicated their "mammoth" garage to the business. They have an eight-foot cutting table and industrial sewing machines.\nThe Hartlichs use ECO fleece, which is also made of recycled two-liter bottles, for their products.\nIn addition to loving the outdoors and wanting to "keep everything nice," Gail said they enjoy the ECO fleece because "it's a much nicer fabric, it's a little heavier and doesn't pill as much."\nAs environmentally friendly and warm as recycled fleece is, it is surprising that sales have not skyrocketed since its introduction in 1993. \nSetnicka and Gail agree that to use recycled fleece is more expensive. Also consumers are not educated to look for and appreciate recycled fleece.\n"Last year, we took a look at the recycled market and uncovered that it is a niche market, where outside the small percentage of consumers who look for the recycled label, others couldn't care less," Jennifer Bellantonio wrote in Fabrics, Fibers & Closures 1999.\nAn employee of JL Waters in Bloomington said of the people who buy Synchilla garments, he didn't "know many people who buy them because they are recycled." Rather, he said, customers who buy them do so "for how they look or the warmth factors."\nOutdoor clothing retailer Marmot used to carry some garments of PCR fleece but have stopped because of cost and Horny Toad, another clothing seller, has gone from carrying only recycled fleece products to the point that only 50 percent of their products are recycled fleece.
(11/15/00 5:02am)
The bushy beards, the bellies, the blue jeans and the black leather vests covered in emblem patches created an intimidating presence.\nTheir motorcycles lined the sidewalk. \nMingling with these bikers were men wearing khakis and button-down shirts, women in dresses and skirt-and-blouse ensembles. Everyone in the Rose Firebay Room of the John Waldon Arts Center that day have two things in common: They are all friends of Rich Remsberg, and they were all there to celebrate his book release.\nRemsberg, Bloomington photojournalist, neither a motorcycle rider nor a devout Christian, spent two years photographing and interviewing members of the Unchained Gang and another two years writing his book, "Riders for God: The Story of a Christian Motorcycle Gang."\nIts publication date was Oct. 16 and its release party was Sept. 11 in Bloomington. It has recently hit public libraries and has been at bookstores for several weeks. At 7:30 p.m. Thursday, there will be a slide show at Borders Books & Music, 2634 E. Third St., on the photos in the book.\nA closer look at the bikers revealed something startling -- the patches on their vests were Christian symbols and slogans. Instead of Harley Davidson slogans and images covering the backs of the vests, they were covered in huge patches reading "Servants of Jesus Christ" and "Jesus is Lord" and "Bond Slaves" and "Unchained Gang." Black T-shirts reading "Jesus Christ died for Bikers too" were under their vests. Almost every single biker had the small black "100 percent Jesus" patch with a red border and white lettering. \nPhotos from Rembsberg's book were on the walls around the book release party.\nBikers celebrating their lord. A biker with a scraggly ponytail praying over his breakfast of eggs and toast in a diner. A circled group of bowed heads and closed hands standing in front of a restaurant, praying before they entered. Hands waving and faces upturned huddled around a Harley, giving a blessing to the bikes. Hands on shoulders. The prints were on sale for $300 or $400.\nThe guests at the party included a range of people. Remsberg's wife, Lisa Nilsson, his editor, Judy McCulloh, and his book designer, Cope Cumpston were all present. Several founders of the club the Unchained Gang also came, Pastor Larry Mitchell, president of the Monroe County Chapter, and Carl Beetle.\nWill Counts, a retired photography professor, socialized and took photos. The president of the Unchained Gang, Christian Easton, made an appearance. After Remsberg's welcoming speech, he stood in a corner unnoticed by most of the chatting crowd, and blessed and prayed for a woman who was afflicted with Hepatitis C. The woman's friend stood by in tears.\nCurious about the religious imagery, Remsberg was looking for a project to do on Christianity.\nHe saw the patches on the bikers' vests around Bloomington a couple of years ago and suggested a photography project on the club to a friend. Later in 1995, a schism had developed between teens that hung out in People's Park and the police.\nThe Unchained Gang rode their bikes to the park to talk with the kids and listened to their side. Rembsberg said the gang had "a calming presence" and that he had been impressed with how dignified they had been in their action.\nRemsberg first made contact with the group when he met Duier, who then introduced him to Mitchell. Members of the club were suspicious of Remsberg when he first started going to services at the House of Prayer, he said.\nTo his surprise, they thought he was a cop. He spent three months getting to know them before shooting pictures. During the two years he spent gathering information and images from them, he sometimes saw them only a few times a week. But in some periods he found himself among them daily, even taking to the road with them in his truck.\nRemsberg said he "listened and observed their world and found it interesting and worth telling other people about." His book has a strong point of view -- his "personal view."\nHe said the work includes a number of themes, including extremism, which "run deep and run as cross currents." It is also about class division, he said. And, he said, it shows the readers two worlds they would not ordinarily see: spirit folk Christianity and the outlaw biker world.
(10/18/00 4:19am)
Screaming "Fall down and praise" into microphones, Sides of the North, a Christian hard rock band from Ohio, was the first to play at the Tau Music Fest at Whip-Poor-Will Lake near Martinsville this weekend. \nA total of 26 bands, all Christian, came to play their electric guitars and drums and to sing their songs dedicated to God. Among the more well-known bands were Disciple, Bride and Every Day Life. \nThe festival also featured tattooing, piercing, camping, drawing for prizes, a tattoo contest, band merchandise, Frisbee games, campfires and everything else one would expect at a three-day music festival, except drugs and alcohol. \nThe setting of the Tau Music Fest was ideal for any concert: the lake surrounded by trees with colorful fall leaves, blue sky, sunny, breezy, bright and temperatures in the mid-70s. A mare and her 4-week old colt live on the property and took a couple of walks during the day. Dogs ran around and children played along the lake and in the leaves.\nOrganized by Joan and Aaron Price of Martinsville, this is the first of what they hope will become an annual event. \nTau is the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet meaning "to mark," which the Prices take literally -- to tattoo. They own a tattoo and piercing shop, Tau-too, in Paragon, Ind. \nSelf-described Judeo-Christians, the Prices have chosen the symbol of the living God, a circular symbol with the Hebrew alphabet on the outside and the Star of David and the cross on the inside for their shop emblem. \nBecause the Old Testament was originally written in Hebrew, Tau-too uses Hebrew lettering in many of its tattoos. Ryan Brosman, five-year friend of the Prices and a three-year employee of the tattoo parlor, and the Prices all have Hebrew tattoos on the backs of their right hands reading "belonging to the Lord" or "sanctified unto God." \nOn first seeing Aaron Price, it might seem as if he were wearing a bandanna. But in fact his forehead is tattooed with a band of barbed wire and Hebrew lettering. Tattoos wrap his arms and hands in color and design; he also has some designs on his chest.\nAaron's friend Paul Stoner inked the tattoo on his head for him. Stoner came from Tennessee to attend the festival and to give tattoos in one of the two trailers the Tau-too shop brought to the festival.\nStoner has tattooed for 10 years and has won awards for his work. He has been a devoted Christian for five years. He also owns a tattoo shop, Second Chance Tattoo Studio, in Gallatin, Tenn. He has two "sleeves" -- tattoos covering both of his arms.\nThe Prices have traveled to Christian music festivals around the country. They said they decided to have their own festival in Indiana for people who can't or don't want to travel to other states or who don't like the huge crowds of some of the festivals.\n"It's something we wanted to do and something we felt like God wanted us to do," Joan Price said. \nPrice spoke about people who wouldn't come because of the hard music. She said it's just a matter of taste. \n"Some people listen to hard-core music all their lives, then become Christian."\nIf there is no hard-core Christian music to fill that space, she said, Christians will still want to listen to that type of music so they will only have the secular variety.\nAlso, the Prices said they wanted to show people that one doesn't "have to be a geek or a big dork" to be a Christian.\n"You can still mosh and head-bang," she said. "You can still have fun."\nJoan has friends in Colorado who organize an annual Christian music festival called Vision and helped her with "helpful hints" for the Tau-fest.\nIt usually takes a year of planning for one of these events, she said. "(But) we've only put this together in like three months."\nJoan wore Star of David earrings, two in each ear, a stud in her nose and a purple bandanna over her hair.\n"As soon as this one's done we'll start planning for next year," she said. \nThe Prices had planned on losing money on the festival. \n"That's to be expected for our first year festival… You learn along the way, it's all a learning experience."\nNow a little wiser, Joan has started a list of things she had forgotten this year to keep in mind for next year: programs and clicker counters to count the crowd, among other things.\nThe Prices met the vendors, bands and security for the concert through their shop.\n"I've probably tattooed half this crowd," Aaron said. \nAaron Price tattooed both Bill Ford and Steve Wenger from the band, Sides of the North. Between songs, singer Matt Thornburg told the audience that the band got its name from Psalm 48:1-3, which talks about God being a refugee in the northern sides of Mt. Zion. \nThe band drove three and a half hours from Urbana, Ohio, to play at the fest. At home, they play mostly at churches, Ford said.\nBut it was not just about music and tattoos. The organizers wanted the event to have religious significance as well. They said the Tau-Fest was a Sukkot celebration that started Friday after sundown and carried on through the festival weekend.\n"It is a time to draw close to God," Joan's mother, Rosalynd Greiner, said. "(A time) to forget about your worldly pressures and responsibilities"