The Space Between Life and Death

To sit at the bedside of the death of a friend is to look into the gaping mouth of hell. Grief chops at you little by little as their life is slowly drawn away. Sometimes, watching every breathe is painful and you want to see the continued rise of the chest ... and you desperately want it to stop to end the suffering therein. You find yourself stroking the frail frame and speaking of the banal because you can't say all that is in your heart for there are no words... or the words and emotions behind them will not help and will only cause more hurt. So you sit quietly and listen to every breath until you find your own mind and body become the mirror image of the life ebbing away. Your breathing slows and all you can see is the simple image of life and desire intertwined. You start to feel their pain in your own body and your mind whispers the same prayer over and over and over. You don't even feel the tears running down your cheeks and barely notice that you can no longer see as your glasses are coated with the tears that have been falling over your lids for what seems like eternities. You struggle to notice the discomfort in your limbs because your own comfort has fallen behind your one need- to be present in those few moments that will soon be over and will never be repeated. In these moments, I feel my own weakness... my own inability to stop suffering or help to end it. I feel some of my beliefs crumble to ash and I am forced to face the deficits in my faith and my heart. The bone deep weariness that surrounds you feels like the new normal as everything you do brings you back to this single point... sitting in a chair next to a friend... watching the failing physical frame and murmuring to the strong soul within which will soon be released. You watch the seizures and you shake, the breathing and you mirror it, the silence that envelopes you both. For this brief periods of time, I hate death and I pray for it... I push it away as I grasp it... I welcome any positive change even if it means death has won for now. Soon, the mouth of hell will close and only love and grief will live on... but in these brief moments I feel like I learn more about what hell really is and what heaven may be than any Sunday school lesson ever taught. And I do have so much more to learn... so much more...

Self Care.... Filled with Hormones

I have been struggling this semester. I think there are a few reasons including feeling a lot less motivation with the loss of my grandpa, work health problems... the usual suspects. I tried to work on some homework but I seem to be unable to concentrate on either history nor interdisciplinary studies so I found myself roaming my shelves for something to read. I have agreed to try and take some time for self care- I'm quite terrible at it and I am working to do a little better- and I have decided that some of my self care should include stretching and fun reading. My eyes slid down the rows of books and then stopped on my nutrition textbook. I have never been willing to get rid of it because I sometimes find myself using it as a resource for trying to understand comments from my doctor better or even as a resource for a history paper. So, amusingly enough I hauled it to the couch (We can't say I picked it up because it's huge) for a bit of 'light, restful reading. I found myself quite frustrated by the reading so please take that in mind when I discuss my thoughts below... I guess it wasn't very restful reading.

I entered this chapter with little knowledge about hormones and how they affect the average person’s body, and by extension, my own. I have listened to doctors chatting about my hormones to my parents from about the age of 14 onward. In almost every doctor’s appointment that I attend as well as incidental evidence in my own life, my hormones are in control of me… and not me of them. I see menstruation and the whole process of hormones in a very negative light. As early as 18 years old I wanted to get a hysterectomy to try and end at least part of the process. The only thing that has stopped me from a hysterectomy is money... and if I was offered the opportunity to have it done tomorrow and have it paid for...I would not hesitate at all. As mentioned in the text, some of the societal and cultural ideas around menstruation are definitely alive in my mind for I too believe that I am filthier and more disgusting during the time of my menstruation and I want to avoid people and try to do anything I can to hide it. I don't talk about it much and I used to go to great lengths to hide any evidence including sanitary supplies from any one in my home- I even used to hide it from my husband when I was married... which was challenging and sure looks foolish from where I stand now. The way I think sure has changed... as evidenced that I am try to talk about it here. I found myself a bit bemused to read the words on the pages in front of me such as “One Indian phrase for menstruation is the flower growing in the house of the god of love” and “when researchers looked for positive changes in the premenstrual phase, they can find those as well." I haven't found those yet I guess.

The chapter listed a lot of research on women's health as well as hormones and sexuality. I suspect that the reason there appears to be so much research focused towards these topics is that hormonal changes are seen as an overall negative in quality of life for the majority of women. As Americans live in a fairly patriarchal society and women are not seen or treated in many cases as equal to men, focusing on the differences- and perceived negative differences- makes perfect sense. In general, if we look for the bad over the good that is what we will find. As a history buff, the discussion of women, women’s health, and sexuality have been seen in a negative light throughout many cultures and ages in time. The text also mentions that religion can also play a role in how hormonal changes, menstruation and reproductive activities are viewed and treated. It seems clear to me that many cultures and religions view the unique actions of women's bodies as problematic and use social pressure to control these actions, using members of both genders to create and reinforce this pressure. Another thing that most people who practice medicine have noticed that wasn’t mentioned in the text is that there is gender bias when it comes to many serious problems such as pain, heart attack, etc. How a person is treated when experiencing these disorders can vary widely based on the gender of the person experiencing them and that bias tends to create more negative outcomes for women than for men. What these facts and ideas say about our culture are not great. If the perspectives and biases in our culture and society tend to be more negative towards women, their health and potential in our society, it shouldn’t come as a shock that more studies are focused on the negative aspects of women and their health when research is being discussed, funded, and developed. If society sees men unconsciously as physically better and less hormonal as the male gender has no outward appearance of hormonal changes as stated in the text, then it also makes sense that research is much less likely to turn its focus toward men. Research in general tends to start with the spark of an idea on how something works, an idea of how to change something, or even how to fix a problem or perceived difficulty. If a culture in general is unable to recognize that men’s hormonal cycles exist or that they are important, no funding or time is going to be focused on that as it will be seen as waste of time and resources. I think that creates difficulty for both genders as men’s health and experience is ignored or undervalued so that problems are not recognized and potentially helped and women find that that their health and the study of their health is focused more on the negative aspects of it – or perceived negative aspects- and less on the positive traits and aspects of the health differences.

If more research was focused towards men and their health as well as hormonal cycles, I believe that we could gain knowledge that could be quite beneficial for men and the health problems that occur for them. However, it must be acknowledged that the majority of all medical research is focused on men- just not hormonal research- and it is vital to start including women in these processes. Excuses for leaving women out of health studies include the perceived 'variability' of their hormone cycle and the 'uniqueness' of the female body's functions... which feels a bit like a cope out. After all, the majority of all of our bodies- male and female- work and respond the same in similar circumstances.

I am not sure that reading this was really good self care or if I found myself distracted and worked up about something that really isn't super relevant to my life right now. But I found a few things that I was interested in researching at some point. I wonder how much of my health problems is based on some of the external influences the text mentioned. Do I feel more pain because of hormonal changes or because I feel like I ‘should’? Do I feel dirty and awful because of my sensory disorders which cause challenges with the physical sensations… or do I feel that way because I have been taught/ influenced to feel that way? Are the mental symptoms of confusion and personality ‘changes’ really a part of the hormonal changes, part of what I expect to happen, or pieces of both intertwined in the perspective and package of me? Certainly interesting questions to ponder this evening. Although the ponder must end soon as the guys are headed over. :D

What are your thoughts?

Videography as an Art Medium

In an art class that I took, I was introduced to several short art videos. I found all of them really interesting- I used to love going to museums and looking at all the 'art', but I really didn't think much about the different mediums or ways that a piece of work could be created, seen, or even changed. Even with some practice, feel like I am not very accomplished at nor do I understand much when it comes to artwork or artistic technique. I know what I like and what moves me..and I have found those reactions to many pieces of artwork created in many different mediums. I hold no illusions that when I draw, my artwork looks like the concentrated scribbling of a six year old with dinosaurs that smile like people and cats shaped like bowling pins. Artwork created with video isn't something that I have thought of as artwork, but these three videos changed my perspective on that. They really helped me to conceive new ways of seeing, technology and how mixed together they can create significantly different pieces of artwork as opposed to other mediums. So I thought I would share my thoughts on three short films with links attached.

"MUTO" - I thought this video was amazing. I found myself so drawn into the images that near the end as the 'man' is breaking open his head, I felt like I too needed to open a space into mine to understand more information. I couldn't figure out how the man swallowed the paper or found myself trying to decide how the artist came up with his different ideas for the drawing. I found my head moving to follow the 'man/spider/diamond/etc' as it moved across the screen and at one point, my cat Roccu who was sitting next to me seemed to find the images/sounds interesting as well- she stood up and moved her face close to the screen and then tried to pat it.

"The City Lights" by White Stripes- another medium that I had never considered much. For the first parts of the video, I kept trying to understand why the canvas was dripping and kept dripping liquid and that some of the image would disappear as more was created it was only near the end of the film that I realized with was a finger drawing on wet glass. I think I found that the most compelling of all the art I looked at this week because I really kept being pulled in trying to figure out the 'trick'... and even when I learned the trick it still seemed like magic to me.

"Take on Me" by Aha- I originally saw this video when I was a teenager and only now recognize how fundamentally different it was from other music videos from that era. It is hard to describe the way it felt to realize that the images created in this short video and knowing it took almost 3,000 rotoscoped images to fully create the images shown suggests a staggering amount of work- more than most music videos have ever attempted to accomplish- certainly not all... Michael Jackson's Thriller comes to mind as an example of throughout artistic design.

Do any of these videos create a strong reaction within you? What was your favorite? How do you feel about the way the artwork was created? What are your thoughts....

Research Methodologies

One of the most challenging tasks that educated adults need to undertake is to look critically at the world and media around us. Much of television and the Internet are full of vast numbers of stories on scientific research telling their audience how each of us should eat or drink, rear our children, what to purchase, what medication you must use, and other ‘needed’ information. Many of the studies cited in these shows or ads are groups of data that have been manipulated to suggest the outcome shown so it is not unusual to find ‘studies’ that directly contradict each other or doctors that play fast and loose with manipulated data to push specific product consumption. This only emphasizes the importance of a critical mindset with an understanding of research methods so that an informed decision about any question can be obtained. This short paper will look at three journal articles published in scientific journals and how different way of collecting and aggregating data were used to produce the outcomes described. This paper will focus only on the research methods used, not on the topics researched, however, I chose these three articles in particular because the subjects of race, gender, and the teaching profession were common to all three. (I am sorry that I could only link to one site with the full article- I originally printed out the articles from a library site that I no longer have access to. I can help point you in the right direction if my listings are unable to help- just let me know in the comments.)

My first article choice was published by the European Journal of Teacher Education and is titled “Race and Sex: Teacher’s Views on Who Gets Ahead in Schools”. Research for this article was completed by using a few similar methods to create three different data sources; a large scale postal survey of approximately 13,000 teachers from randomly selected schools, in-depth case studies of 18 schools chosen for the study based on specified guidelines, and several workshop discussions outside school settings that were conducted with specific interested parties. Using both qualitative and quantitative methods, the research results were able to be used to aggregate data to look for common or consistent themes in the data collected. It used questionnaires to gather answers to specific inquiry, surveys available to desired communities of interest, and unstructured interviews to gain more information on the answers and additional information on periphery connections. These authors used fairly traditional methods in their research, sticking with specific methods of collection that are scientifically recognized and more likely to pull together an accurate conclusion.

The second article chosen was published in 2000 in the journal Gender and Education and is titled “The Other Side of the Gender Gap”. Research for this article was pulled together using first, an intensive study of one selected school, and then branched out to encompass 15 schools that then used surveys/questionnaires completed by year 11 students of both genders. As an addition to this research, both a comparison of pupil and teacher expectations was completed along with analysis of GCSE results, staff interviews, and classroom observations. Using mostly quantitative methods allowed the researchers to gain information that allowed them to make fairly precise comparisons of data throughout the researched group. However, as this study only used one method of data collection, it has the problem of being fairly limited in how the data collected can be used and extrapolated. Also, for very complex subjects, this research method alone usually is not strong enough to accurately explain those issues.

The last article chosen was published in 2007 in the Cambridge Journal of Education and is titled “‘The Bar is Slightly Higher’: the Perception of Racism in Teacher Education”. As this article discusses research conducted as part of a larger study, there are a fewer research methods discussed. The methods used for this portion of the study were mostly interviews; either face to face, by telephone, or in focus group discussions that explored issues that had arisen from the questionnaire survey or issues that were not able to be addresses in the original questionnaire. For the purposes of data collection for this portion of the project, the research method used was unstructured interviews of 29 selected study participants. Some of the strengths of performing unstructured interviews include; participants can answer open ended questions in depth giving researchers a solid foundation of how the interviewee feels about the subject presented, interviewer can ask more questions or ask for clarifications to avoid misunderstandings, and these types of interviews are most flexible, giving researchers a way to change questions or focus if needed due to the answers provided by participants. However, this form of research method in terms of cost, time consumption, and not using enough participants can result in data that is hard to accurately use or provide meaningful results.

A scholar who is studying topics umbrellaed into the subject of education and sociology (or any subject really) needs to recognize the research methods that are used to collect information as well as the strengths and limitations of each one. Only one journal article that I analyzed above used a few methods that consisted of both qualitative and quantitative criteria making that particular study probably the most accurate and actionable of the three. One aspect of study research that I discovered is that searching for subjects by topic or focus will help narrow your search for relevant articles, but may inadvertently feed the researcher many sources using incomplete or inappropriate methods. It can also cause you to leave a prepared list to find ‘something new’ and as your study commences, the researcher may realize they haven’t left the prepared listing at all- I did. It is fairly valuable then to recognize research methods and be able to quickly determine through a brief reading of the abstract what research might be more pertinent to your study as well as how accurate the methods are in use. This felt like a valuable foray into the beginnings of understanding different research methods and their use.

what are your thoughts on how research is performed? What research methods seem the most accurate to you?

Grief

Someone once told me that grief hurts so much because it is love that has nowhere to go. The love you have that you want to share is trapped inside you and escapes through your tears and the shaking that those tears create in the rest of your body. Most days I am doing well. I have so many wonderful things happening and I have so much to point to with gratitude and joy. But some days, I find it harder to focus on the good things. I found myself sitting with Bug today watching different pieces of the Harry Potter films and thinking about my grandparents. I thought of my grandmother laughing, serving turkey and gravy to everyone with a dishtowel tucked into her apron. I thought of the look she would get when she would look at me- like I was an amazing treasure in her eyes. I thought of my grandfather and how just a few months ago, I was able to sit next to his hospital bed and hold his hand. I could feel the warmth and strength in it... and also the fragility. When I left to return to Maine I cried, because I was worried it was the last time I would see him alive... and it was.

I have spent much of this evening thinking of both of my grandparents who I didn't get to spend enough of my time with and lost so much time with them that I dearly wish I could have now. So sometimes, I find myself sitting quietly in the dark with the tears running so quickly down my face that everything is a blur and my glasses are too coated to afford vision. And while I sit and pray and feel desperately alone in my grief, I hear the small soft sounds of cat paws. And within a few minutes I am no longer alone. I have Mina glued to my side like coconut oil and Minion's comforting weight upon my lap. I listen to Roccu sitting on the top of the couch behind me, purring fit to burst. And for that moment, the darkness seems to ease and I no longer feel alone. No, I didn't have enough time with my grandparents and I regret that very much. But I am also grateful because I was given more time with them than I might have gotten. Grief is a process and I know I will work through it, but for tonight it holds me in its grip and I will embrace it until I am able to feel the peace enter my heart again. I know I will see them both again someday, but for now that feels like 'some day' too long.

Nothing worth having comes without some kind of fight... Got to kick at the darkness 'til it bleeds daylight - Barenaked Ladies