Art & Gender class assignment

This is a wreath I felted from raw wool and decorated by sewing on jewelry. Most of the jewelry I have had for many, many years. You see my Grandmother’s broaches and earrings, my Mother’s earrings and the blue beads from a necklace of hers that broke, Aunt Mary Jo’s watch she gave me forty years ago, some of my jewelry from the 70s and 80s. The hearts on the hanging down chain are engraved “Robin + Dinah.” Bought for me at a carnival booth when Robin still loved me. Kept by me all these years as evidence of that fact? He left when the baby was four months old, so kept for seventeen years as what – proof?

I think this wreath defines the gender of several generations of women in my family as conformists to social stereotypical roles of femininity. Housewives in dresses and high heels, earrings and broaches. Carnival trinkets kept for sentimental reasons. Jewelry that will never be worn again kept year after year. To me these are female gender attributes. Yet it is important to me to keep these symbols of my biological history. Pressing the wreath on the glass to scan added a swirling attribute to the jewelry on the wreath, as if the jewelry spins around and will blend together and funnel down a whirlpool in the middle of the wreath.

Things I should have blogged about:

People who don’t cover their coughs and sneezes! Did these people not go to Kindergarten? Have they never been inside a health clinic or doctor’s office and seen the signs about covering coughs and sneezes? The signs even have pictures! People who spread their skanky germs are thoughtless, inconsiderate, rude, illiterate, what else?

Ringo not accepting fan mail any longer. I always meant to send him a letter or card, and now I can’t. I’ve heard he’s relaxed his original threat to throw all fan mail in the trash, but there really is no assurance if I send him a card that he will read it. Wondered why he was suddenly so busy. I know I had thirty years to send him a card, and I should have, but maybe I was really busy. In case he reads this blog all I really want to say to him is: Ringo I love you!!!

The difference between myspace and facebook.

How breast cancer pink really pisses me off. (I was diagnosed with breast cancer this past year so I can say this.) I never felt like the whole cancer thing was a battle, and I don’t feel like a survivor. You go through your treatment, recover for six months or so, and keep going on with your life. Hopefully. Okay, there’s always that. Hopefully. But still going through treatment is what you do to get better just like with any other disease or illness. Any person would do the same.

Americans dying on the overpass in New Orleans in 100 degree heat after Hurricane Katrina while waiting five days for the calvary to arrive. I am still so furious over this atrocity.

Chris Brown belongs in prison. Rhianna needs one courageous person in her life who can break through her delusional smoke screen of fantasy. I wish I were her mother so I could be that person.

More on the cancer subject. Chemotherapy was bad, but they give you good medications to manage the symptoms. Don’t be afraid of a diagnosis; it really is doable.

Lauren Kilroy - Worst Art History Professor In the World

I would never take another class with this professor. After receiving all ‘As’ for the last eighteen months at the U of O I changed this class to ‘Pass-No Pass’ after receiving a 65% on my mid-term. I have never received less than a ‘B’ in any class, and this includes science classes. I received an A- in Professor Hurwitt’s class that began this series of western art history. Hurwitt’s class was tough, especially for someone like me with no art history background, but Hurwitt’s class was fair, relevant, and organized, and his style was consistent and understandable. The astonishing difference between Professor Hurwitt’s class and Kilroy’s leaves me wondering: What does that tell you about Kilroy’s class and method of teaching?

I can tell you that Kilroy’s method was ‘throw it out and move on;’ ‘throw it out and move on.’ Confusion reigned as she jumped around from one time period and region to another. Instead of focusing on a few choice examples Kilroy would show five or six examples of the same style of piece, four of which we would be required to memorize for tests. Kilroy skipped over better known sites such as the Pisa complex and Notre Dame saying hopefully we would get a chance to visit some day. As if that was even a remote possibility. So I still know nothing about these sites other than what I have been able to learn on my own.

Any complaints were met with: “This is art history. Get used to it!” She said this more than once. Usually after relating some story about how tough she had it in art history during college and how she didn’t have a monument list to work from. Oh, yeah, her monument list. The first list had nineteen definitions we were suppose to memorize! We were responsible for 130 images for midterm which is roughly 26 per week for the first five weeks prior to midterm, or nine per class - this in addition to voluminous weekly readings and a weekly paper on the readings. While interesting, the papers were costly to print and read. For example, the paper for the seventh week was put in Blackboard with a wide black edge around it which would have made printing extremely expensive. The paper was unavailable elsewhere online (JSTOR, library book, etc.), and the poor quality of the Blackboard copy made it impossible to copy and paste only the text portions. By the seventh week of this class I had given up anyway. I stopped wasting my time attending Kilroy’s jumbled lectures. With a Pass-No Pass at least she can’t screw up my GPA.

I won’t be taking the next in this art history series because she is teaching. In fact I plan on finishing western art history at Lane Community College, and I do expect to receive an A. I hope someone in the art history department takes a serious look at Kilroy’s teaching methods and that changes are made. Kilroy should be made to sit through a complete series of Professor Hurwitt teaching Art History. Yes, Kilroy, we do cover the highlights from the period so students will know they are the highlights!! We don’t overburden students with copious pictures of the same sort of image because one or two choice samples will suffice. You organize lectures to flow in a comprehensive manner rather than throwing out multiple examples… Ah, I give up.

But I have to say this was the second worst class I have ever taken, and I have been trying to obtain my degree for over twenty years. I am an older returning student who went through treatment for breast cancer this past year including surgery, chemotherapy and radiation. I lost all my hair and it is finally starting to grow back. Believe me when I say I know what is important and not important, and I have the maturity to know a good and a bad professor, and Kilroy is the worst, absolute worst waste of time I have ever dealt with in college. Thanks for ruining my entire scholastic plans this year, Kilroy. With the set back of having art history knocked out of my schedule this term and next, which totally screwed up my graduation plan, I have decided to transfer to Marylhurst University beginning Fall 2009.

Johnny Cash: He Walked His Own Line

I finally watched the movie Walk the Line about the life of Johnny Cash. I’m almost always a couple of years behind release dates when it comes to watching new movies. The movie rekindled my interest in Johnny Cash. I still have my original Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison album - I am from Texas, after all.

I recently read three books about Johnny Cash. Anchored in Love by John Carter Cash is a thoughtful, honest account of his parent’s union. The book especially addresses the Christian faith of Johnny and June Carter Cash. John Carter said about June:

“She said sometimes people would question how she could claim to be a Christian when she had two failed marriages, two divorces behind her. Her answer came quickly: she had surrounded herself with the forgiving grace of her Creator, the love and promises of Jesus, she would say, and she knew she was a beloved child of God. Case closed” (55).

Johnny Cash: The Biography by Michael Streissguth is a well researched account of Johnny’s life. Johnny Cash wrote three autobiographies about his own life, but Streissguth noted how each of these books had a slightly different slant on events – not far from the truth, but definitely written with an agenda. I would judge all other books about Johnny Cash against Streissguth’s account.

The book I took exception to was I Walked the Line written by (surprise, surprise) Johnny Cash’s ex-wife, Vivian Cash, with Ann Sharpsteen. Almost the entire book consists of the letters Johnny wrote to Vivian during the three years he was overseas in the Air Force. The letters date from September 4, 1951 to June 17, 1954. The book is 323 pages long – 249 (!) pages are Johnny’s letters to Vivian, and 74 pages are Vivian’s version of events. The letters are probably no different than any lonely serviceman wrote home – I received letters in a similar vein from a boy in Vietnam – so I’m not sure what Vivian thought she would prove by publishing these personal, sometimes silly letters written by a very young Johnny Cash. The miracle was that Johnny came home and married Vivian. He only knew her for three weeks before heading overseas for military duty.

In what I can only guess is an effort to suggest an intimate relationship with Johnny, Vivian in my opinion crossed the line of decency when discussing the naming of their first daughter. “Our baby would be called simply Rosanne – a combination of Rose and Ann, the two names Johnny had playfully given my breasts” (277). I found this statement revolting. To me this revelation falls in the taboo area of discussing the physical anatomy or lovemaking techniques of a partner. Is nothing sacred?

Vivian’s book is a vicious attack on June Carter Cash, whom Vivian describes with fantastic assumptions and wild misperceptions as to June’s character. Vivian claims June “. . . would eventually contribute to Johnny’s addiction, pursue him relentlessly, and destroy our marriage” (291). Vivian’s most outrageous claim is that Ring of Fire was written by Johnny, and not by June Carter and Merle Kilgore. Despite all evidence to the contrary! After stating Johnny told her he “gave June half credit on a song I just wrote” because he felt sorry for her and she needed the money, Vivian launches another vicious attack on June: “She didn’t write that song [Ring of Fire] any more than I did. The truth is, Johnny wrote that song, while pilled up and drunk, about a certain private female body part. All those years of her claiming she wrote it herself, and she probably never knew what the song was really about. But I was the bigger fool” (294). Indeed. June Carter and Merle Kilgore, who was best man at June and Johnny’s wedding in 1968, wrote Ring of Fire. Johnny recorded the song in 1963; however, the song was recorded and released first by June’s sister, Anita. Johnny heard Anita singing the song and had a dream about the song with mariachi horns. To my knowledge Johnny never claimed that he wrote Ring of Fire. Neither of the other two books I read directly addresses how Ring of Fire came to be written, so the facts in this paragraph are gleaned from SongFacts at songfacts.com.

If she were still alive I would tell Vivian to get a grip on reality; to let go of the past. There was one great love in Johnny Cash’s life and it wasn’t you. Deal with it.

Vivian’s attitude about Johnny’s success was “Johnny now had superstar status – just my luck. He was bigger than ever, and everywhere to be seen, with June always smiling by his side” (310). Vivian claims she still loves Johnny (thirty-six years after she remarried and thirty-five years after Johnny married June). “I never did stop loving Johnny” (14). I wonder how such a statement made her husband of thirty-six years feel. Poor guy. About seeing June on television discussing all the children she and Johnny had between them, Vivian writes “I wished a big hook would come down and drag her off the stage each time she started in” (311).

Vivian tries to insert herself in the Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison album hoopla. Or, to be charitable, perhaps she was just mistaken about dates and facts and such. Vivian acknowledges she went with Johnny on “his first free performance at a prison” (285), but this was not the performance that was to be “recorded for a record” (285) as Vivian claims. That performance occurred on a subsequent visit to Folsom Prison by Johnny in 1968 which was recorded and released that same year as Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison. Vivian filed for divorce in 1967, so I doubt very much that she was there at Folsom Prison with Johnny when Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison was recorded in 1968. I just found her language in describing her visit to Folsom misleading, and anyone not more familiar with the dates would probably think she was present during the recording of the famous album.

For me Vivian lost all credibility as a believable writer early in the book. Vivian’s book was published in 2007, after Vivian’s death May 24, 2005. I’m not sure what other writing credits the co-writer, Ann Sharpsteen has, but I hold her accountable for some of the gross viciousness and the whining self-righteous tone of Vivian’s book. Don’t they have editors at Scribner (the publishing firm)? Johnny Cash was a successful, intelligent, grown man who made his own choices in life. I do not believe it was possible or probable that June Carter Cash controlled Johnny’s life and decisions for over 35 years as Vivian repeatedly claims.

The most repugnant claim of Vivian Cash comes at the end of the book. Johnny was, of course, at June’s bedside when June was in a coma in the hospital in the days before she passed. Vivian was receiving updates from her daughters at the hospital about June’s condition, and about how Johnny was holding up during his vigil. Vivian fantastically claims to have interjected herself in June’s death!! Remembering how Johnny gave his Mother permission to die (“Mama, you can go. We’re all going to be fine” (315).), Vivian claims to have told “one of the girls to pass along the suggestion to Johnny to do the same. ‘Tell him she might be waiting for him to say it’s okay for her to leave,’ I said. Later I learned Johnny had done just that. She died two days later” (315).

Two months after June’s death Vivian visited Johnny and had photos taken that she used in her book. How convenient a photographer was there!! Knowing that her planned book would be “upsetting to Johnny’s second wife, June,” Vivian described June’s passing as a “devastating blow to Johnny and to our girls” (6). Along with “understandable sadness” at June’s passing, Vivian “experienced a sense of liberation that I would be freer to say the things I have to say” (6). Claiming Johnny gave his “encouragement and active support” (7) to her writing the book, Vivian felt that “too many things were lining up and falling into perfect place, clearing the way” for her to finally write her book (8). The tone of this paragraph was the equivalent of Vivian dancing a jig on June’s grave. Offensive, loathsome, and nauseating. This book disgusted me in so many ways I felt compelled to write this blog. (I felt compelled to finish reading the book so I could write this blog.) I’m just glad it was a library book and not a piece of garbage I paid money for. I sure will be glad to return this book and get it out of my house.

Bibliography

Cash, John Carter. Anchored In Love. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2007.

Cash, Vivian. I Walked the Line. New York: Scribner, 2007.

Streissguth, Michael. Johnny Cash: The Biography. New York: Thomson Gale, 2006.

Requesting clarification - Christina Applegate interview

The second cancer story I want to comment on is the recent ABC Good Morning America interview with Christina Applegate (August 19, 2008). I believe if Applegate is going to be a spokesperson for cancer that she needs to make it clear that her decision to undergo a double mastectomy was a personal decision made with great care after consultation with her doctors. Given her BRCA1 gene diagnosis, and her mother’s medical history of also undergoing a double mastectomy for breast cancer, I believe Applegate should emphasize that undergoing a double mastectomy was the best decision for her individual case, and not standard procedure or the best decision for everyone with her diagnosis.

In the ABC interview Applegate stated: “I didn’t want to go back to the doctors every four months for testing and squishing and everything. I just wanted to kind of get rid of this whole thing for me. This was the choice that I made and it was a tough one.” Of course it was. I believe people who read the story about Applegate and her treatment decision might think a double mastectomy after a diagnosis for BRCA1 gene is standard procedure. While there is a “reported 87% to 97% reduction in relative risk for development of breast cancer in patients who have had prophylactic [double] mastectomy, not all breast cancers can be avoided in women who undergo prophylactic mastectomy because some will develop breast cancer in residual tissue left on the chest wall” (John Petrek, MD, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY.) After a cancer diagnosis it is not possible to “get rid of this whole thing.” Diligent follow up will continue to be necessary for the rest of a diagnosed person’s life.

While I wish Applegate all the best and a speedy recovery, I would like her to use her platform as a cancer spokesperson to educate the public. What is a BRCA1 gene? (It’s one of 600 identified breast cancer genes. BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes are “associated with hereditary breast cancer, as well as ovarian cancer, prostate cancer, and colon cancer.") I would like her to state that you are not guaranteed to be cancer free just because you have a double mastectomy. Standard treatment following a double mastectomy would include chemotherapy and hormone blocking drug therapy, but probably not radiation. I sincerely hope Applegate does return to her oncologist frequently for “testing and squishing and everything.” It is misleading to state that a double mastectomy left her “100% cancer free.” How does she know? How can she be so sure? Cancer cells do travel to other parts of the body – that’s why most patients undergo chemotherapy following surgical treatment, and are closely monitored thereafter.

This blog is not criticism against Applegate or her choice of treatment for her breast cancer, rather it is a request for clarification and inclusion of other treatment methods in any statements Applegate makes as a spokesperson for cancer. [For more information about my own breast cancer, see my blog immediately preceding this.]

In Support of Elizabeth Edwards

I want to comment on a couple of recent cancer-related stories. My interest in cancer? I was diagnosed with Stage I breast cancer April 2008, and had surgery to remove the tumor which tested as Grade 3 (aggressive). I completed three months of chemotherapy, and started radiation last week. I’ll have six weeks of radiation treatment then begin five years of hormone-blocking drug therapy. How do I feel? I’m tired, the side affects of chemotherapy were manageable with drugs, and I think my hair is starting to grow back. The only long-lasting symptom I have is pain in my legs. Hey, it only hurts when I move! From my online research I think the leg pain is Neuropathy, but I have to check with my doctor to be sure.

I want to comment on the John and Elizabeth Edwards story. Elizabeth was originally diagnosed with breast cancer November 3, 2004, followed by surgery, chemotherapy and radiation. I don’t know what the Stage or Grade was for Elizabeth’s initial diagnosis. March 2007 the Edwards announced that Elizabeth’s cancer had returned and spread to her bones, and would best be treated with anti-hormone drug therapy. October 2007 the National Enquirer broke the story of John Edwards’ affair with Rielle Hunter. February 2008 Hunter gave birth to a daughter and left the father’s name off the birth certificate. John Edwards claimed the affair was of brief duration in 2006 yet he was ‘caught’ (again reported by the National Enquirer) on July 22, 2008 – last month!! – visiting Hunter and her baby in a motel in the middle of the night. Edwards denies he’s the father of Hunter’s daughter (a story no one believes).

When I go for my cancer treatments I see that almost all patients have a partner with them for support. I sometimes feel conspicuous being alone. I thought a lot of Elizabeth Edwards during the height of the stories about her husband’s affair. I thought about how Elizabeth had to deal not only with the return of her cancer - her health concerns and symptoms – but also with small children, a teenager, the loss of thirty years of a trusting marriage, scrutiny by the press, and a husband underfoot who humiliated and shamed her and her family. Hey, I’m glad I’m single! My heart goes out to Elizabeth. I wonder if she also had to worry about getting tested for AIDS and STDs. I would have. Rielle Hunter is skanky, dirty and unclean looking. What was John Edwards thinking? Hunter was quoted saying she only met Elizabeth once and that Elizabeth “does not give off good energy. She didn’t make eye contact with me.” Hey, that’s because Elizabeth Edwards is fifty times more intelligent that you, Skank, and Elizabeth no doubt knew that you were sleeping with her husband and was furious. That’s why you were fired a few weeks after that meeting. What a lot to have to deal with.

I wish Elizabeth Edwards and her children all the best.

Criticism of Toni Morrison's "Beloved"

The portion in the novel I take exception to is where Morrison has Sethe stating over and over that the nephews "took" the breast milk she was "saving" for her baby girl who had gone ahead.

Further, it is possible that with Morrison having her own sons in the early 1960s, that she never personally breastfed. Breastfeeding in the 1950s and 1960s was out of favor as old-fashioned and unsanitary. In any case, whether Morrison had personal knowledge of breastfeeding or not, she should have researched this topic, as it is one of the main points of contention she makes in her book.

Breastfeeding is a 'supply and demand' process. The more you nurse, the more milk you produce. The behavior of the two nephews and the schoolmaster aside, they did not drain Sethe dry once and for all of milk she intended for her baby. There would be more milk produced almost immediately.

It is not possible to 'save' breast milk in the breast. If you are breastfeeding and suddenly stop, your milk production will continue. You will in short time become engorged, and may even develop mastitis - an extremely painful breast infection of the milk ducts that are no longer being emptied on schedule.

I have breastfed four babies, and my reaction when reading Morrison's statements about the 'taking' and the 'saving' her milk struck me as ludicrous. I usually rolled my eyes because these statements make no sense. Morrison lost credibility with me as an writer over her poorly researched topic. Use the topic, but in such a way it actually sounds realistic, or as if it could have happened. Make it mesh with the rest of her fine book.