Circus Blood

A fellow nursing student posted this piece from last week's San Francisco Chronicle. It's actually a review of Michael Chabon's new collection of essays, Maps & Legends, but the review takes notice of the ever-great nurse novel genre, one we know well thanks to the previously mentioned Tiny Pineapple. Long-time columnist Jon Carroll who wrote the article also happens to be father of the wonderfully talented Shana Carroll of Les 7 Doigts de la Main, a fabulous and wildly successful, self-made circus troupe. Here is a Hearing Voices interview where Jon talks to Shana about her decision to become an aerialist. It is a part of a larger, 54 minute radio documentary called Circus Blood.

Where Do You Stand?

Yesterday marked the end of week one for MEPN. We celebrated with team-building activities in Golden Gate Park. One of the more fascinating exercises was that in which an imaginary world map was drawn on the surface of the field -- with China stage left, Europe stage right*. The leader of the group from UCSF's own outdoor program represented Alaska, as a point of reference. The idea was for each student to place him/herself in his or her hometown/city of birth.

I stood alone up in Montana with two Oregonians, and a lone Iowan. No Washington, Idaho or Dakotas. No Wyoming. The middle of the United States was completely unrepresented. The south was sparse. We had a sort of sad international representation, still better than what was going on in the middle. But the coasts -- the coasts. I won't say too much here about my interpretation - talk to some of your sociologist and anthropologist friends for criticality - but it was an interesting exercise in the reality of American education and social (im)mobility.

* You may be asking yourself, "Where was Russia?" No Russians, no Russia, apparently.

Share the Magic

I have just one minute of downtime to share some magic. According to the The New Scientist feedback (June 11, 2008) there are magic spells out there to be had for merely a few hundred bucks. Some I've been eyeing? Telekinesis and liquidation. Let's put some of this patho to work! Or perhaps the immortality spell*?

* "This does NOT cover unnatural deaths." $349.00

Gumby on the Moon

MEPN started this week and I've hardly had the chance to breathe. I've kind of felt like this.

Justine Kurland

I have a deep fondness for the work of Justine Kurland, so I thought I'd share this nicely packaged website that exhibits her recent work. I'm still favoring her older photos, stage right.

I was pleasantly surprised a few years back when Kurland's work illustrated the book Old Joy by Jonathan Raymond. The book was later made into a film featuring the inimitable Will Oldham. That's a lot of good stuff in one place.

The book is hard to find, but the movie is not.

Love, YouTube II

Huddie Ledbetter, Take This Hammer 1945

Ovid Debut

These photographs appeared in this week's issue of The New Scientist. Some sort of marsupial? Nope. It's a miraculous, accidental appearance of a human egg. While performing a hysterectomy, Dr. Jacques Donnez of Catholic University of Louvain, Brussels, managed to capture human ovulation on camera. Ovulation has been thought of as an event in which the egg sort of erupts from the ovary. Not so. The egg in these photographs took about fifteen minutes to be expelled. The findings and photographs will be published in the next issue of Fertility and Sterility.

~Postscript: Argh. I am sorry about the lack of open-source material in academia. If you want the F&S article, email me.

Superkid

The Kid graduates from the 3rd grade today.
My hero.

Pratfalls & Rising Stars

The previously mentioned showcase of the Circus Center's professional aerialists begins tonight.
Here is a sneak preview.



Emma ~ cloud swing, Jodie & Sandia ~ static trapeze and Shersten ~ straps.
All will all be performing Friday through Sunday. (Photos again by friend of the circus, Seth Golub.)

This final picture is a blast from the past - Elena Panova, director of the aerial program, performing her famous swinging trapeze act. Here is a bit about her from her Circus Center bio:

Elena created a groundbreaking swinging trapeze act that has redefined swinging trapeze as it is performed today all over the world. Elena won the Gold Medal and at Paris’ Festival Mondial du Cirque de Demain in 1987, and the Gold Medal at the 1988 All-Union Circus Artists Competition of the USSR. For twenty years, she has performed in major circuses and variety shows on four continents, including the Moscow Circus, Circus Knie, Paris’ Cirque d’Hiver-Bouglione, and the Big Apple Circus. Elena moved to the United States in 1991. She started teaching at Circus Center in 2004.

This is her show.
Catch it if you can.

Rocking chairs, sheet knots & elephant hair

It's Friday the 13th! A folkloric day, if ever there was one.
For your enjoyment, circus and nursing superstitions.



Circus Superstitions:
• Circus bands play John Phillip Sousa's "Stars and Stripes Forever" in emergency situations only. The march is played as a warning signal to circus workers that something is wrong.

• Never count the audience.

• Accidents always happen in threes*.

• Always enter the ring with your right foot first.

• Never whistle in the dressing room.

• Boots, shoes and slippers should never be seen in a trunk tray or on a dressing table.

• Never sleep inside the Big Top. (This belief comes from the days when the raised ring was made of dirt and people were afraid it might collapse on them.)

• In pictures, elephants must always have their trunks up.

• Hair from the tail of an elephant is good luck.

• Never eat peanuts in the dressing room.

• Never look back during the circus parade.

• Never move a wardrobe trunk once it has been put into place; moving it means that the performer (owner of that trunk) will be leaving the show.

• Never sit on the circus ring facing out.

• Peacock feathers are bad luck. (This is also a theater superstition, wherein peacock feathers can never be used in costumes)


Nursing Superstitions:
• Women go into labor more often when it's raining because their water breaks with the storm.

• If a patient is perspiring profusely (and is already on antibiotics and antipyretics) place a pan of water under the bed to stop the fever.

• A penny above the door of a patient in ICU ensures good luck.

• There seems to be a "full moon effect" whereby one experiences increased workload, stress and general chaos.

• Codes, deaths and births happen in threes*.

• Certain rooms are unlucky.

• Never say the "Q" word. If it's been a quiet shift, don't say so or, it is told, the dam will break. (This is, hands down, the most popular nursing superstition I have come across.)

• Never say the name of a frequent visiting patient aloud or s/he will miraculously appear.

• If one has turned down the bedding for an expected admission and the admission is canceled, pulling the linen back up will ensure an immediate unexpected admission.

• If a patient may code, place the crash cart outside the door of the patient's room to prevent the code.

• Have a lucky pen? You're not alone. Apparently it ensures patients' well-being and a good shift.

• Place a penny above the door of a patient in ICU for good luck.

• If a knot is tied in the sheet of a dying patient during the night shift, that patient will not die until morning.

Circus superstitions collected from The Museum of Science and Industry and Nursing superstitions compiled from the following sources: Nurse Connect and The American Journal of Nursing.

* The superstition of threes is well documented in folklore. Dundes has something to say about it in The Number Three in American Culture which is reviewed at The Book of Threes. This is the second time I've mentioned the good professor in a week. I wonder...

Gwangi

This is the perfect movie for a nine-year-old boy. Or for anyone who wants to see a stop-motion animated eohippus. Or cowboys fighting dinosaurs. Or for lovers of great dialogue.
"So, Lope tells me you're an anthropologist."
"Close. I'm a paleontologist. We dig deeper."

Love, YouTube

Harry Smith, 1991

Wetlands

This book is garnering a lot of attention. Based upon the scatological component, it is of no great surprise that Germans* have become fascinated by it. In any event, for some odd reason, it’s being billed as a seminal literary moment for modern feminism. In Monday’s NYT, the book and its author, Charlotte Roche, received front page billing, calling Wetlands a “cri de coeur against the oppression of a waxed, shaved, douched and otherwise sanitized women’s world.”

Perhaps the most striking notion about the book and its candid detail of the 18 year-old heroine’s sexuality, is that the graphic discussion of overt - and apparently, in this case, unhygienic sex practices - is being incorporated into the modern playbook of feminist principles. (A comparable example of this "frankness" being the box office success of Sex in the City.) Apparently Feuchtgebiete includes discussions of douching - or not - hemorrhoids, anal sex, and avocado pits as a tool of female gratification.

It's troubling, the lack of consideration of the largely vacuous nature of these pieces being sold as empowering to women -- and the potential consequence of such characterizations. But at least The Times article looks to German writer and feminist Ingrid Kolb to sum up the intense interest in the book: “When a woman breaks a taboo, it is automatically incorporated into the feminism debate, whether it really belongs there or not.” Touché.

*Don’t blame me for that stereotype; blame that late, great Alan Dundes, or at least thank him for documenting it.

Dartmouth Atlas of Health Care

It's not a surprise that public health and policy researchers have found a wide disparity of health care provision in this country; what's a bit more of an eye opener is that the disparity is not only by race, but also by region.

The Dartmouth Atlas of Health Care is a twenty-year-old project researching and documenting the distribution of medical resources in the United States. This is a great public access site, which not only has complied and made available all of the Atlas reports of the past 20 years, but also allows for interactive searches and analyses by region.

Lie Down in the Light

Will Oldham’s new album has been out for a whole MONTH and I somehow let that pass without a word. For shame. This one is under the Bonnie 'Prince' Billy moniker. Critics seem to like it, as usual. Drag City even made it available through Amazon so that you can have a listen.

Student Nurse

Having never before paid much attention, it is now great entertainment to see how many nurses there are in popular culture. My favorite batch as if late?



These covers all come from a totally amazing and extensive collection of dimestore paperbacks (nurse specific and awarded internet museum honors) collected at Tiny Pineapple. They have a message, each and every one. For example, this is my take away for the day: