December Memories

I went home to St. Petersburg, FL a couple of weeks this summer.

I visited a friend from high school and he introduced me to the work of Michel Gondry.

http://www.michelgondry.com/

Michel Gondry is a French director--ie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind; a director of music videos by Bjork.

Michel Gondry is genious!

Discussions with Gretchen

May 1, 2009

Today, Gretchen (my boss, PhD anthro) gave me a ton of great advice...

-Connect with Domenic Vitiello

-RE: AUNI Evaluation

   - Quantity (number of schools AUNI operates in) vs Quality (making firm connections in a limited       number of schools); how well are you serving your students? 

   - Systemic Inequality (of opportunities)

   - Michael Appel 

   - AUNI is limited by organizational capacity: permission from school, staffing, resources (

-Neoliberalism: 

   - David Harvey 

   - critiques of neoliberalism? 

   - 

-Privatizing Education

   - look at outsourcing of nutrition education in Philadelphia

   - 

-Goode & Maskovsky

   - ethnography of power, poverty, politics

-Empowerment 

   - is it 1) meaningful? 

   - is it 2) couched in neoliberalism: 

       -does it put change in hands of individual?

       -does it make meaning and change part of the discussion? 

   - does it just give info and say, bea agents of change

   - or does it do something to help change the system to be agents of change; help people use             their knowledge

   - there is this disconnect between theory and process! 

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Disussion with Corey (in context of organizational capacity)

-Distributive Leadership (impossible without principal as a leader)

-Learning to Learn 

-A good survey, Garret Morgan, Images of Organization

Fling Weekend

April 19, 2009
Fling Weekend @ UPenn

Oh, how I despise fling at Penn.
A weekend that starts Wednesday night.
Drinking, drinking, drinking, and drugs.
Drinking in the open.
Stumbling around, tripping over curbs, hanging on the shoulders of blearly eyed friends.

Sirens blaring as ambulances come to help those students intoxicated beyond the point of blackouts and into sheer unconsciousness.
Why can't we all just acknowledge our limits? Why can't we take the advice my roomate has disseminated--"Tipsy, not trashed!"? What happened to the natural high of being among friends, under the beaming sun, surrounded by cherry blossoms, music, and daffodils, and tulips. This true beauty surrounds us, why must it be hindered by a blanket of intoxication?

I chose to run away from fling this year. I spent Friday night, instead of swaying to Akon in the weedy fumes of Franklin Field, among great friends dancing to salsa, bachata, merengue, and reggaeton downtown. And I enjoyed it! I learned more about my friends' aspirations, their limits, and their everyday life. It made me feel good. Really good, and not the good that comes with a temporary high or buzz.

I like spring, but I don't think you need to enjoy it with a beer in one hand, a rum and coke in the other. I choose to enjoy in running in the sun, down the river; walking to the market; walking in the night without a heavy wool coat.

So, this year, I decided to avoid fling and I don't regret it at all!

25 March 2009_Marcia Ochoa

March 25, 2009

Marcia Ochoa, assistant professor @ UC Santa Cruz, gave a talk today titled: “La moda nace en Paris y muere en Caracas ”: Fashion, Beauty and Consumption on the (Trans) National."

Her talk mostly communicated the content and argument in her upcoming book of the same title.

Some points that I appreciated and terms that I would like to investigate more:

-variegation (variegated sovereignty)

-"capitalize on heretogeneity"

-modernity, center, and periphery

Nancy Scheper Hughes

Thursday, April 9, 2009

Today, medical anthropologist Nancy Scheper Hughes came to campus to speak about organ trafficking. I was familiar with Scheper-Hughes through reading Death Without Weeping, an ethnographic account of maternal-child relationships in Brazil.

Nancy Scheper Hughes is director of Organ Watch, a group that monitors and makes an effort to document organ trafficking.

Some points she brought up that I would like to further explore include...

RELATING TO ORGAN TRAFFICKING

• invisible sacrifice
• donors as "biodisposables"
• "fresh organs" (from living donors)
• Ethical Transplant Committee
• Bellagio Taskforce (http://www.icrc.org/Web/Eng/siteeng0.nsf/iwpList302/87DC95FCA3C3D63EC1256B66005B3F6C)
• Israel as a special case because of political/cultural attitude (brain death is not death) -->Zaki Shapira -->http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/334/7601/973
• -->Israel formally outsourced kidney transplants (but it is contentious to report on this because of "blood libel" and tension towards Israel)
• Argentina's Colonia Montes de Oca
• India
• -->bio-availability
• -->bio sociality
• -->emergence of cyclosporine as key
• -->Lawrence Cohen's scholarship (http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1134/is_n8_v107/ai_21191220/)
• -->medical citizenship
• -->economic involvement
• Surgical medical diplomacy
• GLOBAL VALUES
• -->how do values travel?
• -->attitudes towards market solutions
• -->body as commodity
• -->human dignity and human freedom
• -->lethal injection as medicalized; mix of medicine and criminal justice
• -->ex] China didn't understand what's wrong with using executed prisoner population for transplants
• -->transparency as a Western value
• -->neoliberal defense of organ sales
• -->Anthropological Defense against organ trafficking
• ----->global social justice
• ----->equity
• ----->solidarity
• ----->values at stake
• Neoliberal versus anthropological values
• -->humanitarianism vs utilitarianism
• Lancet article about kidney transplants
• Kidney as a commodity
• -->circulation follows flow of capital in many ways!
• Good article--> "This Little Kidney Went to Market"
• "scars on geopolitical"
• "neocannibalism"
• "kidney half life"

RELATING TO PRACTICING ANTHROPOLOGY

• "scholarship with commitment"
• ethics of anthropology-->criminology & undercover

FURTHER SCHOLARSHIP

• Francois Rabelais (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fran%C3%A7ois_Rabelais)
• Jean Comaeroff (http://anthropology.uchicago.edu/faculty/faculty_comaroff_jean.shtml)

My Questions--Answered

• Do sellers see their contribution as a gift of life?
• -->not the sense of "transplant altruism" that we typically perceive
• what is coercion?
• -->could just be montary incentive
• Should there be regulation?
• -->big question, maybe a watchgroup is enough ?!?!
• -->it seems countries have set their own legal precedents

Making a shark ejaculate

Weds., April 8, 2009

Today in bio lab we dissected dogfish shark.
My team had a male--we could tell because of the claspers surrounding his cloaca.
After eviscerating the digestive tract, we moved on to the reproductive system. I was following the path of sperm from the testes, through the seminal vesicles down to the seminiferous tubules near the cloaca. Trying to identify where the sperm are ejected from the cloaca, I gave it a little pressure and---squirt.
Like a volcanic eruption, preserved white semen ejected from a hole under the claspers of the cloaca.

Hot, huh?

At least I can please sharks! :)

To Read

N Engl J Med. 2008 Nov 6;359(19):1977-81.
Saying no isn't NICE - the travails of Britain's National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence.Steinbrook R.

Thoughts on Campus Commentary

Some thoughts I have from different speakers who have come to campus this semester...
-->Mohammad Yunis and sustainability
-->Philanthrocapitalism: can it really work?

JOB STRESSES AND HEALTH
-->job security and health
-->Read: Greenhouse's The Big Squeeze
-->comparison of US financial crisis to Japan's lost decade
-->Japanese exposure to stock market
-->Tasks towards resolving inequality
-->look into Employee Free Choice Act
-->Reduce discrimination towards part-time workers
-->improve work/life balance
-->compare us to Sweden!

GUATEMALA
-->Babette Zemel's scholarship on nutrition and growth
-->Fetal programming hypothesis (CV)
-->SES composite indices (list of variables w/ FJ; Population Studies Center; Gere Berham; demographers)
-->SV
-->mother's intake depending on number of times
-->3 day recalls
-->what cook with?
-->growth during pregnancy: dietary reference intake? body range? body weight? for normal growth!
-->24 hour recalls
-->mypyramid.gov: analyze diet (Minnesota database?)--energy, protein, fats, minerals

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07 April 2009
This evening I heard the president of the American Medical Association, Dr. Nancy Nielsen speak about the health care revolution. Topics that came up included: single payer system (never going to work!), defensive medicine, rationing beginning of life and end of life care, end of life care (our culture really differs from others, that consider family essential to end of life care!)

Spring Break

3.14.09 (Pi Day)

Spring break--time to relax, unwind, wind up, and let loose. 

What did I do? 

First weekend--work, putting together proposal for research in Guatemala this summer. Intimidating, yes. What do I say? Of course I say what I want to do--study nutrition in Guatemala, but how do I say it to sound convincing enough? Stress, stress, stress. Frustration. 

Monday through Thursday--Washington, DC

I visited my third cousin, really my grandfather's cousin. About 50 years my senior, she is also an inspiration. Daughter of surgeon general (some 40 years ago), we discussed health policy, the financial crisis, international travels, and family history. 

During the day, I walked the streets of Georgetown, U Street, Dupont Circle. I walked Dupont Circle to the Mall, appreciated the current exhibits at the Hirshhorn. I even met up with a friend who had graduated from Ballroom. My last night, I went with my cousin to see a documentary profiling PhD students at Columbia pursuing their theses in biochemistry. 

Friday through Saturday--

I am enjoying my time in NYC with Karen, a friend I graduated with from high school. She has introduced me to so many people--great people, I am happy that she has formed such important relationships here in NYC. Last night, she showed me a view of NYC from the roof of the international studies building on campus. It was an adventure getting there and thoroughly unforgettable. 

Thanks to Karen, I am updating my blog, procuring twitter,and hoping to update more often to keep those dear to me informed. 

With love and happiness, 

Hayley 

Culpabilidad

I feel awful!
Yesterday upon waking up, I realized that someone from PLBD had sent out an e mail reminding us to update the officers blog. So, trying to be the people pleaser that I am, I went to work on responding to the questions he had posed. I also answered some questions that others had asked on the same e mail.
Then, later that night, to my dismay the Team Captain approached me with a serious face. It turns out he had sent out a separate e mail informing us not to post material that the former person and I had posted. I just wanted to cry. How can people pleasing take me to such the wrong places?
I had just gotten through a day in which I was happy because I hadn't been making too many mistakes. I single-handedly organized a speaking event for Casa, I had successfully organized all privates for the week, and I thought I had helped out the board earlier that morning.
I also felt bad because I ignored something another PLBD board member had shared with us about the purpose of the blog. And it was her birthday they day before, so my ignorance was clearly unjustified.
How can I be such a bad human being. An ignorant sac of people pleasing toadiness?

Soledad

February 16--
Why do waves of loneliness drown me?
Why do waves of loneliness drown me?
Why do my eyes feel tired from crying when I have not shed a tear?
Why do I only shallowly complete my tasks?
Why do waves of loneliness drown me?

Goals for 2009

02 January 2009

Goals for 2009:

• Get certified to teach Yoga (power or Vinyasa flow)!
• Find a stable and dependable dance partner
• Keep updating this blog!
  

Volviendo a la realidad

02 January 2009

I have resolved for this year to continue the strong relationships that I have built so far in my life. To do so, I captured the advice of several key friends and following them, I believe a blog seems most accessible and encouraging to maintaining these links.

So, after spending the first day of the New Year in an airport bringing me back to reality--academics, research, and friends in Philadelphia, I am trying to link my multiple realities--my homes. Leaving Florida, my home for 18 years and 2 weeks this winter, I felt conflicting emotions. Had I really accomplished everything that I had set out to do?
Before returning to my former reality, refastening the loose ties on old relationships really frightened me. How much have I changed as a person? How much have I matured into a fresh self, the self that will likely stay with me for years to come.
But, I stuck my toes in my past, like beginning to immerse myself in the cool waters of an ocean. And I quickly warmed up. I saw friends who struggled with me throughout high school, friends I had known since I was 12 but neglected to dependently fasten to. I saw those friends to whom I never revealed my most trying vulnerabilities, friends who've seen me superficially, and friends who've known me since my very first breaths.

And what have I learned? Take advantage of every second you have with those you love. Rise early and fill your days with adventures and situations that foster a mutual dependence. I am starting that officially today. My Florida home is something I know that I can always return to, and my Philadelphia home is something that I am starting to build. Both are pivotal to my life now and in the future.

So, thank you to all of my dear friends who have so willingly welcomed me back. Thank you for recognizing my new drives and motivations. And thank you for helping me add on to them.