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Archive for September, 2007

In the Sept. 24th issue of the New Yorker, Oliver Sacks tells the tale of Clive Wearing. In his forties, Wearing suffered herpes encephalitis and as a result, has a memory of only seconds. Sacks is fascinated by Wearing’s retained musical skills and his love for his wife Deborah. It’s a long article – fascinating as Sacks always is– and at the end of it is this golden nugget:

“As Deborah recently wrote to me, “Clive’s at-homeness in music and in his love for me are where he transcends amnesia and finds continuum—not the linear fusion of moment after moment, nor based on any framework of autobiographical information, but where Clive, and any of us, are finally, where we are who we are.”

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learned some new things…

I went to the StoryCorps booth at the Milwaukee Public Library today with my dad. He was a little antsy, wondering what kind of questions I’d ask him. When the facilitator held up her hand to signal 5 minutes left in the 40 minute session – we were both surprised. Because Dad’s an only child, I didn’t grow up with lots of uncles, aunts, or cousins sharing stories about Dad’s childhood (like I did with my mom). So I always felt a veil of mystery about my Dad’s childhood. He told some great stories, and asked me for stories of my visits with his parents as well. It felt refreshing to be able to distinguish memories from photographs. I told him I remembered the bumpy textured taupe colored chair my grandpa used to sit in (right in front of the tv), and their collection of swizzle sticks in the pantry. I’d forgotten that I remembered those… He told of his days working as a window dresser at Schuster’s Department Store in high school, something I didn’t know he’d done. He also told me he was the broadcaster at Bayview High School’s football games and for the morning announcements every day at school. You never know until you ask–and of course until to you really listen.

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A. R. Luria gave us “S” in the Mind of a Mnemonist. “S” could remember extensive, random sequences of numbers years after he’d seen them. Yet, he was nearly socially illiterate. Now there is Gordon Bell and life logging. Bell endeavors to record every bit of data in his life (literally everything he sees and does and has seen and done) as an experiment in software development for people who might want to do the same. But do we really WANT to remember everything? Daniel Schacter reminds us that we’ve evolved to forget things for good reason…

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Way back in the spring of 2001, I saw a production in New York by one of my very favorite theater groups in the WORLD, Theatre de Complicite (they also did an amazing Broadway version of Ionesco’s Chairs) The play was called Mnemonic. Here is a line from the opening monologue…

“But what I am getting at is that re-membering is essentially not only an act of retrieval, but a creative thing, it happens in the moment, it’s an act, an act…of the imagination.” 4 (Mnemonic, Methuen, 1999)

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Memory Bridge has a lovely new website and a new documentary film that dares to step into the world of late stage dementia and hope for connection. It’s tricky territory – many caregivers see only a void of hope and meaning. The film profiles the Memory Bridge curriculum, which partners middle and high school students with a buddy with dementia. Hosted by poet laureate Robert Pinsky, the film also profiles Naomi Feil’s validation therapy approach. The interviews with family are particularly powerful, revealing a complex soup of sorrow, stiff upper lips, and true emotional connection.

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I came across this website/effort today– Changing Minds. The Royal College of Psychiatrists in the UK and the Republic of Ireland are tackling the problem of stigmatization of people with mental illness. The effort addresses Anxiety, Depression, Schizophrenia, Dementia, Alcohol and Drug Addiction, and Eating Disorders. Seems like a good idea for a project in this country…

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The NYT’s Science section had a great article on older adults and polypharmacy today. It paints a picture of a world in which pills are given for every ill; where doctors (specialists) don’t talk to each other; where drugs are tested on the young and little is known about their effects on the old; and where older people pay the price – financially and physically. Jane Brody’s article suggested that polypharmacy could be counted as the 5th leading cause of death in this country. And that it is the cause of 28% of all hospitalizations. Here’s a question: how much dementia is caused by polypharmacy? Or a milder question…how are cognitive challenges made worse by drug interactions?

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I’ve admired David Greenberger’s work since I first encountered it in 1994. Greenberger has a way of posing a question that deflates any pretense and invites expertise (or at least some serious sass) from the respondent. This February, Greenberger will be in residence at the Center on Age & Community in Milwaukee to interview people with dementia and work with local legend Paul Cebar to set those interviews to music.

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Away From Her (2007), the latest film to tackle the issue of Alzheimer’s, is now available on dvd (as of Sept. 11th). Filmmaker Sarah Polley accomplishes something that others haven’t been able to do before…make a film about Alzheimer’s that’s about something more than Alzheimer’s. The film has rich poetic imagery that calls the nature of memory into question, and wrestles with the challenges of marriages long lived and loved. The film’s website is worth a visit – it equates memories with snowflakes. No two are the same. And they are ephemeral – dissolving the moment they are touched.

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Katerina Seda noticed her grandmother (77) was starting to withdraw from friends and family. So she enticed her back into community by having her draw every tool she could think of from the hardware store where she worked for over 30 years. The exhibition of over 600 drawings will be at the Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago January 6th through Feb 10th, 2007. Katerina Seda, It Doesn't Matter, 2003

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