Monday, June 25, 2007
Sibling Memory
It's great to have siblings. They help jog family memory. I talked to one of my brothers last night and he helped me to recall something I had completely forgotten. One of my goals in life is to write a song. It doesn't necessarily have to be the greatest song in the world, mind you. I simply want to figure out how to put words to music. My brother reminded me that I have already been involved with songwriting. He and I co-wrote a song called "Runaway" as kids, which we performed for our parents. My brother said they laughed at us. Gee, I wonder why I have an issue with my musicality. Very cool about the song, though, and once he mentioned it, I do vaguely recall having worked on it. I know we repeated the word 'runaway' in the chorus, but that's all I've got.
Labels: brother, memory, music, parents, runaway, songs
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
Memories
I watched 60 Minutes Sunday night. It appeared to be a repeat. One of the stories was about a drug that helps to erase memory. According to the report, memories stick best when accompanied by adrenaline. That's what makes stressful situations stick with us; the adrenaline locks them in place. One of the women interviewed had been raped by her doctor when she was 12 years old. This horrifying memory haunted her, affected her functioning for over 30 years, until she was given this drug (called propranolol), which shut off the physical after-effects of the memory. It wasn't that she didn't remember the rape; it's just that the drug gave her enough distance from it so that it didn't continue to rule her life.
Also on the program was an ethicist who worried that giving people a memory-erasing drug would cause them to lose a formative part of themselves. He also worried that doctors would start prescribing it for stupid stuff, like when someone drinks to much at a party and wants to forget the foolish way he acted. While it is true that stressful events help to shape us, I think that after a certain point, the emotions from them get in the way of true living, as they did for the woman who was raped. Thirty years! That's an awful amount of time to have to spend reliving a rape. If we're worried about whether a stressful situation has had a formative enough effect on a person, perhaps there could be a waiting period - a year or so, as long as the person isn't suicidal or homicidal from the event. As for the idea that doctors might overprescribe the drug, frankly, we deal with that with every other drug on the market. That's not the drug's fault. That's the fault of doctors and society.
See this link for more about propranolol and the memory-erasing discussion.
Also on the program was an ethicist who worried that giving people a memory-erasing drug would cause them to lose a formative part of themselves. He also worried that doctors would start prescribing it for stupid stuff, like when someone drinks to much at a party and wants to forget the foolish way he acted. While it is true that stressful events help to shape us, I think that after a certain point, the emotions from them get in the way of true living, as they did for the woman who was raped. Thirty years! That's an awful amount of time to have to spend reliving a rape. If we're worried about whether a stressful situation has had a formative enough effect on a person, perhaps there could be a waiting period - a year or so, as long as the person isn't suicidal or homicidal from the event. As for the idea that doctors might overprescribe the drug, frankly, we deal with that with every other drug on the market. That's not the drug's fault. That's the fault of doctors and society.
See this link for more about propranolol and the memory-erasing discussion.
Labels: 60 minutes, adrenaline, drugs, medical ethics, memory, propranolol
Saturday, April 07, 2007
More on Favorite Books
My post on favorite books, based on an MPR program, had two takers. Kim at Knit Whimsies and Joanne at Poppy Seed Heart both posted about their favorite literature. Kim did it with a twist, choosing to highlight her favorite authors. Joanne gave a nice summary of why each book was her favorite. This is a difficult little exercise. While my list is pretty firm - only two are ones that I could switch out for something else (My Lord Bag of Rice and Fahrenheit 451), the rest are definite - I have many other favorite writers. (Just figure that I pretty much enjoy all the other works of the writers on the first list.) I decided that my other favorite writers should get their due as well, so here goes:
Michael Crichton - The guy really knows how to tell a story, always with a scientific bent, which I really like.
Edgar Allan Poe - The original master of horror. My absolute favorite of his is the poem "The Raven." Nothing beats reading this aloud.
J.K. Rowling - Imaginative, able to write about a gazillion characters and somehow readers manage to keep them all straight. I've only read books 1-4, so I have some catching up to do.
Amulya Malladi - I have loved both of the books I've read of hers - "The Mango Season" and "Serving Crazy with Curry." I think perhaps I've been reincarnated from India. I have always had an affinity for the country. Maybe it's just because I read and loved Frances Hodgson Burnett's books as a kid ("The Secret Garden" and "A Little Princess").
Stephen King - For as prolific as this guy is, I've only read two of his books - "On Writing" and "The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon." Both are fabulous. I shy away from his horror because I'm not a horror fan, except for Poe, of course.
Margaret Atwood - She's an excellent writer, and she's here for that reason. The endings of her stories are dark and leave me very unsettled, which is why they didn't make my very best list.
Kate DiCamillo - "Because of Winn Dixie" and "The Tale of Despereaux" are simply wonderful children's stories. They hooked me.
Growing up, I was a huge mystery reader. Agatha Christie, the Nancy Drew series, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and Alfred Hitchcock's compilations of short stories were the thing. I'm a big fan of Dr. Seuss, but more so as an adult than I was as a kid. My all-time favorite children's book was a Little Golden Book called "The Saggy Baggy Elephant." One-two-three, kick! One-two-three, kick! He danced through the forest, and then someone made fun of him and he hid in a cave. Eventually, he is told by other elephants that he is beautiful and he is happy again.
This list and my previous one barely scratch the surface of all the reading I've done in my life. There's nothing in here that's nonfiction, for one. My other problem is that I've read many marvelous books over the years, but they don't stick with me. In order to keep track (which helped me with today's post), I've been recording the books I read in a small notebook since 2003. It's annotated, which jogs my memory. It also shows me that I've spent a lot of time reading. Yeah!
Michael Crichton - The guy really knows how to tell a story, always with a scientific bent, which I really like.
Edgar Allan Poe - The original master of horror. My absolute favorite of his is the poem "The Raven." Nothing beats reading this aloud.
J.K. Rowling - Imaginative, able to write about a gazillion characters and somehow readers manage to keep them all straight. I've only read books 1-4, so I have some catching up to do.
Amulya Malladi - I have loved both of the books I've read of hers - "The Mango Season" and "Serving Crazy with Curry." I think perhaps I've been reincarnated from India. I have always had an affinity for the country. Maybe it's just because I read and loved Frances Hodgson Burnett's books as a kid ("The Secret Garden" and "A Little Princess").
Stephen King - For as prolific as this guy is, I've only read two of his books - "On Writing" and "The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon." Both are fabulous. I shy away from his horror because I'm not a horror fan, except for Poe, of course.
Margaret Atwood - She's an excellent writer, and she's here for that reason. The endings of her stories are dark and leave me very unsettled, which is why they didn't make my very best list.
Kate DiCamillo - "Because of Winn Dixie" and "The Tale of Despereaux" are simply wonderful children's stories. They hooked me.
Growing up, I was a huge mystery reader. Agatha Christie, the Nancy Drew series, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and Alfred Hitchcock's compilations of short stories were the thing. I'm a big fan of Dr. Seuss, but more so as an adult than I was as a kid. My all-time favorite children's book was a Little Golden Book called "The Saggy Baggy Elephant." One-two-three, kick! One-two-three, kick! He danced through the forest, and then someone made fun of him and he hid in a cave. Eventually, he is told by other elephants that he is beautiful and he is happy again.
This list and my previous one barely scratch the surface of all the reading I've done in my life. There's nothing in here that's nonfiction, for one. My other problem is that I've read many marvelous books over the years, but they don't stick with me. In order to keep track (which helped me with today's post), I've been recording the books I read in a small notebook since 2003. It's annotated, which jogs my memory. It also shows me that I've spent a lot of time reading. Yeah!
Labels: authors, blog, books, children, fiction, knit whimsies, memory, mpr, nonfiction, poppy seed heart, reading, writers
