My Most Difficult Experience in Korea

Now that I'm (finally) moved into Traditions of Mill Creek in Brentwood, TN. and have sorted through more than half of the boxes I brought with me (almost all of the big ones), I'm feeling like doing something a little more creative from time to time. I'd like to begin blogging again, this time more regularly, even though I'm not yet "organized." (Will I ever be organized?) As I was putting away some boxes of journals, I happened upon this entry from twenty years ago (dated April 2, 2000), written during the two years I spent teaching on military bases in Korea.*

Tower at the DMZ visitors' center

Although this teaching job in Korea has not been the easiest assignment I've ever had in my life, it is not the hardest, either. I've often chosen “hardship duty” for reasons that have not yet become clear to me despite several rounds of psychotherapy interspersed with other efforts to understand life and my place in it. Maybe it’s the challenge. I want to see what I can actually endure. Maybe I think that difficulty is good for the soul - just as working out is good for the body. “No pain, no gain” and all that sort of stuff. Perhaps I’m at some extreme end of the novelty-seeking character type. I have done things such as taking my comprehensive exams at the University of Michigan six weeks after giving birth, having taught in the medical histology course until the time of delivery. Or, I lived in a ghetto in Philadelphia for two years while doing post-doctoral research with a tyrannical lab chief . I could go on and on about the multiple stresses and strains I've placed upon my life. I don’t complain about things much because I realize that I've been responsible for most of my own difficulties.

Perhaps the greatest difficulty I have experienced here in Korea (NOT my doing, I believe) has been the long-distance effort to straighten out my RV sale and loan pay-off. I drove all the way to Tampa, Florida, to sell the RV to Lazy Days RV Center, one of the largest and most reputable dealers in the country, so that I wouldn’t have to worry about some snafu in the sale of the vehicle. And I also wanted to have credit toward a new RV after my return. I had some last-minute regrets about selling that RV. It had been a practically perfect vehicle for me – and such a source of pleasure and adventure! When I left the dealership in a rental car (just three days before the August 8 departure date for Asia), I was assured that everything was in order, that a check would be cut the next day, the loan from Nations Bank would be paid off, and I didn’t need to worry about it any further.

I was tipped off that there might be a problem when I received a notice last October from Bank One (forwarded from my home address by my daughter) that I could skip a payment in December by sending in the attached card. I almost threw it away, wondering why Bank One would be sending me something. Then I idly conjectured that Bank One might have merged with a bank of one of my credit cards. Bank mergers were in the air around that time. But before I tossed it, I happened to notice a figure of $388.00 in the upper left corner, and that amount looked unnervingly familiar. I decided to keep the notice and follow up on it with a phone call.

Fortunately, phone cards available to the military (and contractors) charge only 10c a minute for calls to the U.S. So I made a phone call a few nights later – after midnight, in order to be calling during U.S. business hours. The eastern U.S. is awake and doing business while I am normally sleeping here in Korea. I wasted a couple of dollars on the audio “service” message - much of it on hold listening to some ghastly, scratchy excuse for music. There are some tunes that I will never again be able to listen to without stomach cramps because I've had to hear them ad nauseum while I was holding for “service” from some company. I eventually spoke with a representative who told me that I owed them more than $15,000.00! I had paid way ahead on the loan, so I was not delinquent, nor was my credit in jeopardy. But I was in shock.

Immediately, I called Lazy Days and talked with the financial officer, Clyde Bailey, who had taken care of the transaction. For some odd reason, I had brought his card with me overseas. He assured me that the loan had been paid off and that the bank had sent title to the behicle, which had been sold ten days after I brought it into the lot. He said he would follow up on it with the bank and he would call me about the same time the next morning (night to me). I felt reasonably assured and went to bed.

The next night, he didn’t call. I waited up until almost 2:00am and then called him. He answered but said he had a customer with him and would call me back in twenty minutes. He didn’t. I didn’t sleep very well that night. The next morning (evening there), I called the salesman I had dealt with, Alex Kozlowski, because I knew he usually worked late in the evening. He was the one who had arranged the “trade-in” for my RV against credit for the new one I will purchase after my return. He was very friendly and said that the financial guy would call me back the next day, and, if necessary, they’d get the lawyers on it! The next day, Bailey did call me and said that the bank had made a mistake and would send me a letter of apology. He said that Nations Bank was bought out by (or merged with) Bank One two weeks after the transaction in question, and somehow the records had gotten mixed up. So, I stopped worrying about it for a while.

About a month or so later (in December), I thought I’d better check with the bank because I had not yet gotten a letter of clarification or apology. The “service representative” said that I owed them more than $15,000, and intertest was accruing. They had no record of my previous contacts or of any communication with Lazy Days. By now, I was becoming alarmed and called Clyde Bailey. He was annoyed that the matter had not been resolved and made scarcely audible, disparaging comments to the effect: “I talked with a supervisor, but of course, a supervisor wouldn’t keep records of anything.” He said he would follow up on it.

For the next two weeks, I was very busy with end-of-term activities – making up and grading exams, compiling and turning in grades, etc. It had been a very busy term, and I was teaching three classes, including a laboratory, which takes a lot of time. I decided to put off further efforts to deal with the matter until I returned to Charleston on December 27. When I got there, my daughter was at home and we spent most of the first four days (jet-lagged as I was) taking care of her wedding preparations. I finally called as soon as possible after January 1, 2000 (the magic date); I believe that January 3 was the first business day after that. Sure enough, the bank still claimed that I owed them money.

So, for the remainder of my week in Charleston, until January 8, I spent about an hour each day calling back and forth between the bank and Lazy Days. I eventually connected with a research person named Vonelle, who admitted that the problem had, indeed, been “researched” once before in October – not by her, just some note in the records. But she claimed that there had been no follow-up from Lazy Days, so it had been dropped. The bank finally acknowledged that they probably wouldn’t have sent the title without receiving a check, but they needed a copy of the cancelled check so they could trace what had happened to the money. Later, I wished I had asked Clyde Bailey to send me a copy of the front and back of the cancelled check as well. As the week drew to a close, both Vonelle and Clyde had each-others’ phone numbers, and I asked them to work it out, since clearly the problem was in their records or transfers. I thought that I shouldn’t have to be shepherding this thing, since I no longer had the RV and would soon leave the country again. By the time I left the U.S., the matter still had not been resolved, but I was assured that it was being tackled from both sides.

In early February, I called the bank, again from Korea in the middle of the night, to verify that, in fact, the loan had been paid off. I first tried calling Vonelle but got a voice message saying, “that number has been changed or is no longer in service.” In retrospect, it might have been an area-code change, but it felt like another gratuitous roadblock. So, I called the regular “service” number and asked about the account. Instead of reassurance, I was treated like a dead-beat by the person who checked my account because, by then, I was truly overdue, and "delinquent" in my payments. The “service person” I talked with had no record of any inquiries or negotiations concerning the account. I bullied my way to a researcher by insisting that the “service person” check to see if the title had been sent out. Finding that it had, he was willing to pass me up the line. I wondered how someone not as persistent or tenacious would be able to handle this sort of debacle. As it was, I was reaching the end of my patience and sanity about the issue. I told the new “research person” (Lolita Smith?) that it was already being researched by Vonelle, and I asked if she knew her. She said she didn’t. I gave her Vonelle’s number. Again, rounds of talks ensued between me and the bank and Lazy Days. This time I said it was time to get the lawyers involved and that if it was not resolved soon, I would get my lawyer in the states to try to track down who had skimmed the money. The researcher, Lolita, apparently dragged her feet and didn’t call Clyde Baily back when he tried to get in touch with her.

Eventually, while trying to call Lolita (not at her desk, “Can I help you?” for the third time by two different people, Lattice and Angela), I did manage to make contact with an assistant, Sabine Alice, who – after I had explained the situation again – declared, “This has been going on too long.” I said, “Yes, indeed.” She promised to get to the bottom of it right then and there. While I was on hold (eek, that awful music!), she contacted Clyde Baily AND a person in records (Karen) at Lazy Days, realized the complexity of the quagmire, and promised to call back in two days.

In fact, I did get calls in Korea from all three within the next few days. From the three stories (the women were most willing to talk), I pieced together a scenario of what may have happened. Apparently, the first check had been sent to a Nations Bank in Florida rather than the bank in North Carolina, which had handled my loan. Somehow, the check simply disappeared – didn’t get cashed and didn’t get credited to my account. Karen, the person in Records at Lazy Days, said that sort of thing happens all the time. I was incredulous. She insisted, “The banks are so big these days, they just can’t keep track of things.” There was a stamp on the check saying, “Void after 90 days,” and by that time, there was no point in trying to retrieve it. So, Clyde Baily had another check cut and sent to Vonelle. Sabine managed to contact Vonelle, who had, indeed, received the second check, She had been slow in submitting it because she wanted to make sure she was sending it to the correct place and didn’t want it to disappear down the same black hole as had the previous one. They reassured me that the matter was practically solved and promised that I would receive a letter of apology, sent to my Osan address, when it was all cleared up.

On February 24, I still had no letter, so I called the bank. The “service person” who answered (after the usual interminable exposure to that grating music) said that the account had been paid off! 

In March, I received a form letter, postmarked March 1 - sent to my home address in Charleston and forwarded by my daughter to Korea - congratulating me on my loan payoff.

No apologies.

*Several experiences from those two years spent in Korea at the turn of the century are chronicled in "Korea, Are You at Peace?" This one was not included in the book.

Season's Greetings, 2019

Season’s Greetings!

The Holidays are upon us, and I expected to be in Tennessee by now. That hasn’t happened because the long-term care facility in Nolensville is not yet finished! I’m just as happy not to be moving in the middle of winter when everything is dark and cold. The new estimate will be around the first week of March. That offers some reprieve for me to enjoy the holidays – and to continue at the slower pace I’ve adopted in my eighties. Still, I’m looking forward to being near daughter Elisabeth and her family in the spring!

Elisabeth and Trey's family tree, 2019

This has been a full, busy, and often difficult year, with ongoing efforts to whittle down possessions in preparation for the move to Tennessee. Grandson Blake came to Charleston twice this year to help me sort, toss, and move two small U-Haul loads to a storage unit in Nolensville.

Blake and Landon playing cards. Oldest and youngest "grand."

 I’ve been giving away furniture and books and bookcases, as well as some treasures collected on overseas trips. And I’ve perused boxes and boxes of mementos and thrown away most of the stuff in them. 

There are still many photo albums and a few boxes of correspondence to distill. And I’ve sorted through all my books. Those still in the house (or storage) are ones I plan to take to Traditions, the long-term care facility in Nolensville. Now I need to arrange for a moving company to haul it all there - when the place is ready.

Long-time friends have been my mainstay during this unsettled time. Women I've been getting together with monthly over dinner still offer support and friendship. Thanks especially to Ellie Setser, who arranged a birthday party for me at our November women's dinner!

Mary Joan, Carla, Darlene, and Ellie

Nonie, Skeet, Carol, Carla, Ellie, Maria, and Sandra.

Mary Johnston, an editor and very fine person, who has led a productive writers' group for the past decade, threw a good-bye party for me at the beginning of summer. Friends from church and women's groups - as well as other writers - all attended a great party at a beautiful home downtown! Thank you to all my fellow writers for encouragement and suggestions down through the years, and to other friends, many of them UUs, for helping to keep me as sane as possible - and for buying some of my books!

Mary Johnston's writers (top) and UU friends (bottom).

A good-bye party last May. (Oops, I'm still here!)

The children – and their children – are all doing pretty well. Briana has had problems with some of her joints, making work at the post-office difficult and often painful, although she’s being stoic. Blake is in his last year at Northland College in Ashland, WI, and he plans to graduate at the end of next semester!

Maria has been writing successfully. Harry is spending his junior college year at Oxford, in England. He will come home to New York for the holidays.
And Elisabeth’s family is doing well, although the younger children have been sick enough to miss some school this fall. Judson is looking forward to graduating high school next year. He will be going to college in the fall, and he plans to study physics!

It's been a very social year, including frequent get-togethers with friends, mostly women I've known for decades at the UU Church and at MUSC. 

And I had the privilege of attending my first immigration and naturalization service with the citizenship ceremony of Maryam Nadieri, Will Moredock's widow.

I’ve also had some happy/sad good-bye lunches and dinners with friends. And there have been a few funeral services, including those at the UU Church for long-time friends, Will Moredock and Dottie Klintworth - truly sad and sobering. 

In the midst of sorting and moving and saying goodbyes, writing efforts have almost stalled. However, with the help of Mary's writers’ group, the book about a 1992 summer in Siberia – and from there to western (“civilized”) Russia – is now in first draft form. Still a long way to go before that one is finished, however. And there's so much more I want to do before...

Wishing you a Wonderful Holiday Season and a Very Happy New Year!!

Jo Anne

https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B00BH3326S

Still True Today

I happened upon this journal entry a couple of weeks ago - written more than three decades ago - and was amazed at how much still applies to my life. I believe there's a pattern here...

June 28, 1985
         I realize, now that I have time for it, how much back-logged junk I have to clear out of my life.  Here it is, summer, stock-taking time, time to catch up, time to plan ahead, and everywhere I look, there are things I should do, things I want to do, things I have to do before I can do other things.  How am I going to tackle it all?  Set priorities?  Be systematic?  Do the important things first?  I tend to do whatever I stumble upon first, interrupted by whatever I get distracted by while I’m doing that.  As my graduate student said, “You sure do manage to fill up your life."

When I started writing this, I intended to make a list of all the things I needed to do and try to figure out how important each one was to my well-being (and “the future of all mankind”).  I get tired just thinking about it!

There is the personal stuff – the bills to pay, the mementos to put away or file, the papers to organize.  This has been sitting around and piling up on my desk since Christmas or before.  There are magazines to read (throw-away stuff) and books (and books and books) to read, and the library to pick up and organize.

Then, of course, there is the writing, the novels I have wanted to get to for the past year or two and haven’t been able to discipline or force myself to sit down and do them.  And there are letters to write – to friends and relatives – and visits to local friends and shut-ins.

And, of course, there is the work stuff – papers to read, old journals to peruse and clear out, micrographs to file, old slides to evaluate, not to mention papers to write and letters to colleagues and manuscripts to revise and resubmit.

If I enumerated each of the subprojects in each of those paragraphs, I would be listing all night long.  There is so much to do, I wonder how many years it would take just to get caught up, forget about taking on anything new.  Yet I feel like I must clean up my life, streamline it, take care of the most important stuff and get rid of everything else.

Details vs. essential structure:  What is the essential structure of my life?  Oddly enough, it lies partly in the complexity of it, in wanting to see and experience and record, as broadly as possible, the range of human activities and emotions.  And for that, I chronically complicate my life.

Still, I want to hone.  What is the crucial thread?  The slow, steady (fractal-like) movement toward understanding (a sort of enlightenment or salvation, for which the things and relationships of my life have been part of the path), toward which end I have tended and for which I will have to divest myself of every extraneous concern.

Here's to a Healthy and Happy New Year!

Hard-cover edition, color illustrations

Did you make New Years resolutions about exercising and eating healthy food? Why do we focus on food and exercise when we think about healthy living? Certainly, these are important, yet many other activities are also essential to keeping us healthy - in the New Year and in years to come. 

The Bewildered Patient's Whole-Body Health Guide explores the major systems of the body - how they work and how we can keep them healthy for a long and productive life. Daily choices  are crucial to long-term health!

One of the reasons we focus on food is that food is a major motivator for humans - as it is for all animals. We can't survive without consuming a constant source of nutrients, so we usually eat two or three meals every day. Unlike plants, we can't make our own nutrients. And unlike fungi, we can't soak up nutrients from the products of decay in the soil around us. We have to eat.

Obtaining food if we're hungry is probably one of the strongest human motivators. Avoiding pain is another. Securing protection and finding affection (including sex in adults) are impulses that also score high on the motivation scale.

Unlike eating, exercise isn't usually something we consciously want to do much of the time. And yet, without exercise, our muscles become weaker and weaker, and then calories from excess food are transformed into fat, which is stored throughout the body. This can become a vicious cycle.

Soft-cover edition, B&W illustrati

We make many choices in our lives that affect health and longevity. Besides exercise and nutrition, we need to avoid toxins in the environment and hazards in our daily lives. The Bewildered Patient's Whole-Body Health Guide offers tips and strategies for maintaining these aspects of health - as well as many others!

While considering the body as a whole, the book also views bodily functions on a system-by-system basis in language that lay-people can understand. Even those with no training in biology or medicine can learn how organs and cells work together to keep us healthy! This whole-body health guide also explores what may go wrong in the body's many systems and what we can do to keep those systems working well for a long and healthy lifetime!

Here's to your health in the New Year!!

HAPPY HOLIDAYS, 2018

Season’s Greetings, 2018!

Hoping you’ve had a very good year in 2018.

Wishing you an even better one in 2019!

The Saturn in the snow

This year (2018) began with a great deal of snow – more snow that I’ve seen in Charleston since moving here in 1970 – almost half a century ago! It didn’t just snow half an inch and then disappear two hours later – as usually happens here when it snows –every five years or so. No, it was a real, two-day snow that piled up at least a foot, covering the ground, making the roads impassable for a day and then hanging around as ice and sleet for several days afterwards. Grandson Blake was visiting Charleston over the holidays, and he had helped me clear out the garage and sort through a lot of stuff while he was here. His plane back to Minnesota was cancelled because of the snow. I had to drive him to Myrtle Beach, at night, on icy roads, so that he could fly back. Good thing I learned to drive in Michigan!

With Dinah, a longtime friend (since 1956)

It’s been a busy year, and I’ve generally felt better and been able to do more than in recent years. I’m taking new medication that improves the breathing and have been able to do some traveling this year to visit family and friends. In March, I visited friends and family in Florida – Sue and Ray, friends from high-school; Dinah, a friend from college years; and cousin Larry and his family. Back in Charleston, I mostly hung out with longtime UU friends.

Briana and Jeremy's wedding. Blake officiated.

Daughter Briana married Jeremy Potter in Idaho in June, and I flew out there and rented a car to attend the festivities. I mostly hung out with Briana’s aunt and uncle, Judi and Danny Lane. It was a lovely, outdoor ceremony. Later that summer, I spent a couple of days with Elisabeth and her family, who were in Hilton Head for a week.

Reunion dinner, K-college friends, class of 1958

Our Kalamazoo College class “(’58) had its sixtieth reunion in October, and I drove up to Michigan for that, stopping on the way to visit an old friend, Fran Cameron, outside of Atlanta, and my daughter, Elizabeth, and her family near Nashville. It was a lovely, memorable trip, 

Writing has taken up a lot of my time at home – so I’m not doing as much clearing and sorting as I should. A collection of short stories, Laboratory Notebook, came out in May. 

And my magnum opus, TheBewildered Patient’s Whole-Body Health Guide, was published officially on December 10! Please visit the webpage for other books you might find of interest!

Hope all is well with you – or as well as can be expected. I’ve made my peace with aches and pains and coughs – and a lot of other stuff that comes with age. Still enjoying life, though. And I just put down a deposit on an apartment in a long-term care facility under construction in Nolensville, TN, near Elisabeth and her family. I should be there for Christmas next year!

Joy to the World – and Love to Friends and Family! 

Jo (Anne Valentine Simson)

Thanksgiving Thankful

It's been a long time since I've submitted a blog post here! As often happens during the holiday season, I'm revisiting loose ends of my life and trying to catch up on activities I've allowed to languish.

This season, I'm particularly thankful that my breathing has improved with new medication, and I'm now able to travel and visit friends and family with much less fear of becoming sick, as has happened in the past few years.

Freshman class roommate, Sue Wixom (Nielson Coates) on right;

Ruth Sollitt Williamson, good friend and K-Gals organizer!

In October, I drove by car from Charleston, SC, to Kalamazoo, MI, for the 60th class reunion for students who started as freshmen at Kalamazoo College in 1954! It was a great get-together; about 40 of a graduating class of perhaps 120 were there, and we all had a wonderful time! In the motel, I even roomed with my freshman class roommate!

The campus had changed since we were there, with some buildings torn down and others added or remodeled. Still, it had the feel of the lovely quadrangle I remembered. And the "women's dorm" looked the same - on the outside, at least.

The old Mary Trowbridge Hall, where most women lived 

if they weren't married or townies. Now it's mixed, I think.

We spent the day on Saturday with friends: eating, chatting, exploring the campus. There were several activities arranged, but we spent a lot of time together just reminiscing.

At noon, we had a lovely lunch downstairs in the Hicks-Wells complex. We overflowed the table assigned to our class and populated several seats in other tables as well.

With Elizabeth Lindau, a K-College grad, who works in the 

alumni office. We had lunch once when she visited Charleston.

Afterwards, several of us browsed the college bookstore and then got together in the lobby for an informal memory fest.

Dinner at The Park Club. Sally Hunter, Gail Mullen

In the evening, we enjoyed a delicious dinner at The Park Club in downtown Kalamazoo. Ours was the largest 60th reunion group the college had ever had. At dinner, Jorge Gonzales spoke with us about his pathway to the presidency of Kalamazoo College. The following morning, we were all a bit sad to leave and go our separate ways, but glad to have been together, however briefly. It was a wonderful reunion and brought back memories of a wonderful few years in our lives!


Sunday morning, many of us gathered in the breakfast room at the motel, where we continued to share memories and info and promises to keep in touch. I passed out copies of some of the books I have written since retirement. The latest is The Bewildered Patient's Whole-Body Health Guide. It will be available to purchase on Amazon on December 10. The link is below:

The Bewildered Patient's Whole-Body Health Guide.