Iowa Life Episode 208

[Nebbe] Coming up on this episode of Iowa Life, we'll meet an Iowa City author whose latest work has been made into a feature film.

Literally maybe two weeks after it sold, I started talking to producers who were interested in optioning it.

[Nebbe] We'll learn about training dogs to assist people with disabilities.

So, our hearing dogs are those dogs that can keep playing the game. They can come alert you and take you to the sound and that's really reinforcing to them. Like hey, I heard it, I'm going to come get you. I'm going to take you to it.

[Nebbe] We'll meet an Amish family that raises chickens near Kalona.

My children help us on the farm here gathering eggs.

[Nebbe] And we'll take a trip back in time to remember the early years of RAGBRAI.

We had this daydream to bike across Iowa and we were going to bike across Iowa and invited a few close friends.

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[Nebbe] It's all coming up next on Iowa Life.

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Funding for Iowa Life is provided by --

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The Pella Rolscreen Foundation is a proud supporter of Iowa PBS. Pella Windows and Doors strives to better our communities and build a better tomorrow.

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And by, the Lainie Grimm Fund for inclusive programming at the Iowa PBS Foundation.

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[Nebbe] Hi, I'm Charity Nebbe and this is Iowa Life. I am in the non-fiction writing house at the University of Iowa where Rachel Yoder is an Assistant Professor. Rachel is also a best-selling writer who grew up in a Mennonite community. I had the chance to sit down with her and talk about how her experiences led to a darkly funny novel compelling enough for the big screen.

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[Nebbe] How would you describe the environment you grew up in?

[Rachel Yoder] This was an intentional Mennonite community of sort of leftover hippies. It was on a land trust, so many, many acres all adjacent. Everyone built their own houses. Everyone gardened. You know, there was like a swimming hole. It was actually really idyllic in a lot of ways.

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[Rachel Yoder] I was so ready and so confident and wanted to get out in the world. I was sort of like, I can do anything. I'll take on anything. I had this moxy that I don't know where it came from.

[Nebbe] When did you first think that you wanted to be a writer?

[Rachel Yoder] I grew up in the library. My mom was a librarian. So, it was always something that had been with me. And it wasn't until I met my writing mentor in Arizona. And she said, you know, there's grad programs and people teach and people can be writers. Not until that moment when I really thought oh, I could maybe do something with writing.

[Nebbe] I want to talk about Nightbitch.

[Rachel Yoder] Sure.

[Nebbe] It is a novel that kind of defies genre. I feel like I've seen it referred to as horror, comedy, speculative fiction. How do you describe it?

[Rachel Yoder] It's about a one-time artist turned ambivalent stay-at-home mom who thinks she might be turning into a dog. Nightbitch.

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[Nebbe] Where did this idea come from?

[Rachel Yoder] It came, you know, it came from a joke my husband and I had when I became sort of feral at night and would maybe snarl when awoken. And so, it was something we joked around about. And then, as I was getting back into writing after having stopped once my son was born, I thought wow, it would be a really bad idea to write a book that literalizes this nightbitch joke that we've been making. But it seemed really fun. It seemed like a fun challenge. It seemed ridiculous. And so, I dove into it.

He's super cute!

Do you just love getting to be home with him all the time?

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Yeah, I do, I love it.

[Rachel Yoder] So, right after I sold the book in January of 2020, literally maybe two weeks after it sold, I started talking to producers who were interested in optioning it, which had not even been on my radar. I didn't understand how they got the manuscript. It was very confusing. But we wound up striking a deal with Annapurna, which is a production company, and the film actually for films got made very quickly.

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Mama fuzzy.

(boy laughs)

I'm not fuzzy.

I just feel off. Look at my teeth. See how sharp they are?

It's a little bit weird.

Motherhood, it changes you and connects you to some primal urges.

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Marielle Heller, the director, came on the next year and the film was really wrapped by 2022. So that's two years. The stars just really aligned. Even the producers on the film would say to me, I don't know how this is getting made. And I'm, I don't either. It was produced by six women, which is also not the norm. I only really worked with women on this film, which was an incredible experience.

[Nebbe] Now, you got to be at the premieres, different premieres of the film. But there was an Iowa City premiere at the Refocus Film Festival at the Englert Theatre and you were there and got to be part of the conversation afterward. What was that experience like?

[Rachel Yoder] That was such a dream because I have lived here for 15 years. These are my people. This is my community. The book really grew out of very literally this community. There are identifiable locations in the book that people can kind of map onto Iowa City. So, being able to share that with everyone, it really felt like the movie is not mine to a certain extent, the book is not mine either and being able to say we all sort of own this, you know, felt incredible. And what a long way I've come to feeling so isolated, so alone in early motherhood and now to have this incredible community is really, really touching.

[Nebbe] In writing about motherhood in that way, how did your own experiences influence the characterization?

[Rachel Yoder] Yeah, I definitely relate with this feeling of isolation and loneliness and not really knowing where to find my group, my pack of support. And I think that's really one of the main engines that drove the book was if there were a book I could have read when I was in that loneliness what would it be? What would it sound like?

[Nebbe] And you hear from a lot of moms who say, I identify with this. What do you want women in particular who read this book to take away from it?

[Rachel Yoder] I mean, I think that. I think if moms, women feel less lonely, feel seen, feel witnessed, that is one thing about Nightbitch is that she has no one to sort of witness her story. She doesn't really show up. None of her experience is tracked really by anyone. And there's something about that. Inside of that you sort of feel like you're disappearing. You can feel like you're disappearing in motherhood. And so, when I hear from women and they say, you see me. I understand how powerful that can be.

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[Nebbe] In Rachel Yoder's novel, dogs represent our animal instincts. But dogs' natural instincts can also help people engage more fully with the human world. Service dogs can protect their people by detecting medical emergencies, alerting them to dangers or providing emotional support in stressful situations. Deafinitely Dogs in Cedar Rapids provides meticulously trained service dogs and therapy dogs to help institutions and individuals.

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[Dog Trainer] I want you to practice now on saying no because sometimes, you've got to think about it, the people that we serve, they may not be able to hear a person ask if they can pet their dog or we might have someone with PTSD who really doesn't want anybody touching their dog. And so, we want the dogs to be able to have somebody approach them and say hey, can I pet your dog? And you are like, no thank you, not right now. Or you can just say no and keep walking.

[Nebbe] Support animals such as service dogs are becoming increasingly common. Trained with specialized skills, service dogs are frequently employed to help with disability support for issues such as mobility or PTSD. But, that's only the beginning of what they're capable of.

[Lorette Vanourny] We're Deafinitely Dogs, obviously, D-e-a-f for Deafinitely. We started out in the hearing dog world. But their technology is so good, it has just gotten better and better and better. So, we don't get as many requests for hearing dogs as we do for PTSD.

[Sherry Steine-Ross] Yes, there's cochlear implants, there's hearing aids, but you take all that out at night and you can no longer hear. Think about how scary that is. Someone could be banging down your door and you wouldn't hear it. So, you have the dog to alert you to your sounds again.

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[Lorette Vanourny] So, our hearing dogs are those dogs that can keep playing the game, they can come alert you and take you to the sound and that is really reinforcing to them. Like hey, I heard it, I'm going to come get you. I'm going to take you to it.

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[Bridget] Oh, good boy!

[Bridget Eischeid] Rudy is my hearing alert service dog. I actually have what is called reverse slope hearing loss. It's where I hear high pitches really well, but low tones like men's voices or something are more difficult for me to hear. He will use his nose to nudge me and let me know that that sound is happening. And there's certain sounds, like my first name, that I can even say show me and he would go to the person that is saying the name. He definitely is my best friend. He's my soul dog. I've loved every dog that has ever been in my life, but Rudy is just very, very special.

[Nebbe] Rudy is a Deafinitely Dogs graduate. Raised and trained in Cedar Rapids, Rudy now lives with Bridget, a Kansas City area teacher and track coach originally from northwestern Iowa. While not as common, hearing alert service dogs like Rudy are still out there keeping their handlers safe and alerting them to sounds that might be missed.

[Bridget Eischeid] So, actually I was just scrolling through social media and something popped up about a hearing alert service dog. And I literally was like, what? That's a thing? And then I came across Deafinitely Dogs on the Internet and I contacted them. And I went to Cedar Rapids and that is when I met Rudy. And honestly, it was love at first sight I think for both of us.

[Sherry Steine-Ross] So, the idea of a service dog is to enable you, not enable your disability. So, we want the dogs to be able to enhance their lives and give them more independence, not make them more dependent for things that they can already do for themselves.

[Bridget Eischeid] And I think that's one of the important parts is he gives me back my independence. He's been to Arrowhead Stadium, he's been to Royals games, he's been to a Snoop Dogg concert. I guess that is the one tradeoff for having a disability, that's the advantage is I get to have this awesome best friend with me to help me through my day.

[Lorette Vanourny] Over here we're going to go through the TSA type training that we did. So, this is our fake TSA.

[Sherry Steine-Ross] Service dogs, first of all, they take two to two and a half full years to train. All of our dogs get to grow up and tell us what they love to do and enjoy doing for work and then they also get to pick their human. That is one thing that we excel at, at Deafinitely Dogs, is we want to make sure that our dogs are happy, healthy working dogs and that they want to be with the person that they're going to spend the next, their entire lives with 24/7.

[Nebbe] While Deafinitely Dogs started with hearing alert service dogs, the highest ambition of its dog training is that of the PTSD service dog matched with a veteran. In more than a decade of training dogs, only the dogs with the best health, behavior and temperaments have achieved this goal.

[William Henk] I was kind of referred here through the VA going through a bit of a rough patch in my life. One of them just suggested looking into service dogs. I told them that I had always wanted a dog for a long time and they kind of pointed me towards a service dog organization. But coming here and being able to train my own service dog, which I did with Dory, and kind of build up a good relationship with her, for the past five years I think the longest we've ever been separated is about two days. So, she is with me constantly with I go to work, when I got to sleep, when I wake up. It really did wonders, I suppose.

[Lorette Vanourny] They've got a great job, they get to be with their person all the time, every day. Every dog wishes they could do that almost. But when that cape comes off, I want you to turn into a dog. I want you to dig holes. I want you to roll in the grass. Be a dog.

[Bridget Eischeid] We're together all of the time. I absolutely love him. And I know it's mutual. He tells me all of the time. Even here at school there will be days where the bell will ring and the kids will be dismissed. Teachers will come through the door and they'll be like, I'm not here for you, I just need to see Rudy for a second. I mean, Rudy might be an animal, but he's also like my best friend. He just makes me happier. He just makes every day better.

[Sherry Steine-Ross] I always just say how blessed I am to be able to have a moment in the life with these amazing people, both our veterans and our applicants who put in the work to get a dog. They are just amazing people who deserve the right to live an independent life. And the fact that I can be part of that, it's a gift.

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[Nebbe] Iowa is the number one egg-producing state in the nation, over a billion eggs every month. While the Amish may not contribute heavily to this massive commercial egg output, they do add to the state's agricultural diversity and maintain a tie to traditional farming practices.

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In Iowa, we're really good at producing food.

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We produce a lot of pork, a lot of grain.

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[Ryan Miller] We're the number one egg-producing state by far. We obviously don't have a giant population. As a state, we're exporting food all over the country and all over the world. But we're doing it on small family farms. The birds can go outside. We feel like we're doing it the way the consumer is thinking about how their eggs are produced and how they want their eggs produced. And the interest in the organic or more natural foods, we can produce them here in Iowa.

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[Ryan Miller] Our producers are 60% Amish and the rest are Mennonite.

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[Ryan Miller] A lot of our farms are right close by.

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[Ryan Bontrager] I am a farmer and that's what I do for a living. I do chickens, gather eggs, crop farming, organic crop farming here north of Kalona with my family and enjoy every minute of it.

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[Ryan Bontrager] I live here with my wife, Lisa and our oldest son Weston and our daughter Tanisha and Tiffany, Karen and our youngest son is Merle.

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[Ryan Bontrager] New Order Amish, we wouldn't have vehicles. Mennonites would have vehicles. We would drive horse and buggy. We wouldn't have all the technology some of the others would have. We would do more physical work, lots of hard work, labor.

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[Ryan Miller] We only produce specialty eggs here.

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[Ryan Miller] Specialty eggs are non-caged birds, cage free, organic and pasture-raised all fit into that specialty spectrum. With a large concentration of farms right here, it takes a lot of market to utilize all of those eggs. In order to sell all of the eggs, we have to market the eggs all across the country. It's way more of an egg flow than like an individual farmer could sell directly. You generally need one chicken per person. So, like one of our farmers can service more than all of the people who live in Kalona if every person in Kalona bought eggs only at that farm. And we have 30 some farms here.

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[Ryan Miller] Farmers want to be able to farm and produce the products. They don't have the time and the resources to do all of the sales and marketing that it requires.

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[Ryan Bontrager] My children help us on the farm here, daily chores, gathering eggs.

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[Ryan Bontrager] Our regular day would be wake up at five o'clock in the morning and usually we eat breakfast together and then we'll go to the chicken house.

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You can carry the bucket.

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[Ryan Bontrager] Ours are organic, free range and so they would get out into pasture and I like that for myself. I like to see the chickens out in the green grass. I just think it's better for the chicken. Usually I have two of my children, as the belt goes and the eggs come in through, I'll have two of the children there picking out the bad ones that we don't want to send to Farmer's Hen House. I'll stack it on the pallet and they'll help me gather then as we go.

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[Ryan Bontrager] They're children. Sometimes -- most times they're in it, but you know how children are. They've got to have fun too. So, once in a while they need some coaching. But they do good.

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[Ryan Bontrager] We have 16,000 chickens, produce around 15,000 eggs a day.

(chickens clucking)

[Ryan Miller] In the same footprint that we put let's say 20,000 hens, if you have cages you could fit 100,000 hens in that exact same building footprint. We feel like that's a big difference in how the birds are taken care of. The scale at which you need to do cage production just would not work for our farmers. They couldn't produce at that scale. That's the other reason we do organic and free range and pasture-raised is it's a market that our farmers can participate in.

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[Ryan Miller] For a lot of our farmers, even if they were grading their own eggs, the kind of equipment we need requires a lot of technology, a lot of electricity, it's expensive.

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[Ryan Bontrager] You know, there's days I wake up and I wonder, if I wouldn't have a place to sell my eggs, how would I support my family?

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[Ryan Bontrager] I have a good relationship with Farmer's Hen House and I really appreciate them giving us small farmers the opportunity to have our own chickens here at home where we can be here with the family and they do really good in serving the community in that way.

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[Nebbe] Before we go, we are going to reach back into the Iowa PBS archives to remember the early days of RAGBRAI. The year is 1976 and bicyclists are setting out for their great adventure across the state for the fourth time. Founders John Karras and Donald Kaul reflect on how a simple idea became a massive annual phenomenon.

It's an insanity. It's called the Register's Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa.

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It combines the best elements of biking in Iowa. You can hardly beat that.

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The Missouri River water that we guaranteed you would be here is over by the light pole on the other side of the sheriff's car. For the bikers, I'll tell you what I've told you in previous years, take no prisoners.

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It was an accident. We didn't really start this. It just happened.

No, we discovered it, we discovered it. It was out there waiting to happen and we're archaeologists of the future.

It was an accident.

Well, we were biking together long before the first across Iowa ride. In fact, that's one of the ways it started. We had this daydream to bike across Iowa and we were going to bike across Iowa and invited a few close friends. Here we are with a few close friends biking across Iowa.

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I read about it in Sports Illustrated last year and then a friend of mine from Avoca saw the local newspaper and talked about the bike ride coming through Avoca. So, we said, well let's go.

I follow this every year in the paper, I cut all the clippings out and send them to my son who lives out in California. I think it's lovely. I'm enjoying it very much.

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I'm having more fun this year than I've ever had before.

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This year I have the feeling that for the first time really that we're doing this thing right. Before in previous years, there was this tremendous apprehension, tremendous apprehension and this year that's not around. I don't feel that at all. I'm relaxed about the ride. I'm relaxed about the organization.

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There's no good way to explain the success of it. The chemistry is exactly right.

We welcome you to Jefferson, Iowa.

Jefferson is a very community-minded town for the simple reason is they're proud of their community and they like to show it off. Oh, they love to show it off to strangers.

It's an adventure. It's an adventure for people who lack adventure in their lives.

We love it!

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Iowa valley, I am coming home to you.

That's one of the incredible things about the ride, I would guess that 60% to 80% of these people have never ridden more than 20 miles at one time. And they think somehow by magic their legs are going to get strong and they're going to ride 430 without hurting. It's very strange.

They hurt, but they make it.

 

I like when they complain to me. I always tell them this and it irritates them, especially the kids. I always tell them, you have to remember that out of adversity comes strength and character.

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And when they complain to me, I tell them no one invited you.

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If you don't like it, go away.

You can't plan a bicycle ride and say boy, if the suns shines and it doesn't rain and there's no wind, I'm going to have a good time. You say, man, I'm going to have a good time no matter what happens. And that's what this is about.

Iowa valley, I am coming home to you.

Iowa valley --

The rear end's a little sore, but that's to be expected.

It's the first time I've ever done anything like this. It's a little hard work for seven days and it's a little let down at this point.

I enjoy having done it more than I enjoy doing it, as a matter of fact. When it's over I say, oh that was a good thing, I'm glad I did it.

You haven't had a chance to get in shape this year, that's all.

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Iowa valley, I am on my way home.

[Nebbe] That's all for this week. Thank you for joining me as we explore our connections to animals and each other. I'm Charity Nebbe. See you next time for more Iowa Life.

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Funding for Iowa Life is provided by --

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The Pella Rolscreen Foundation is a proud supporter of Iowa PBS. Pella Windows and Doors strives to better our communities and build a better tomorrow.

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And by, the Lainie Grimm Fund for inclusive programming at the Iowa PBS Foundation.