Kimmy’s Garden

Getting ready to cheer on a dear friend of mine and her group of running buddies while they do the Eikden relay race in Banff on the weekend of Oct 15-17, I have taken the opportunity to read up on Cheerleading.

I will prepare the Cheer group to sing cheers, of course, but finding ones - or creating ones - about running will be challenging. If you know of any running cheers, let me know.

The books that I borrowed from the NEOS Consortium and the Edmonton Public Library are as follows:

Bibligraphy of Resources on Cheerleading

Kim’s #1: The Cheerleader’s Guide to Life: everything you need to know to be a success in cheerleading and beyond by Cindy Villarreal. Harper Collins Publishing: New York, NY. 1994. Summary: A book written by a woman who had been cheerleading since grade four, and who has been dancing since the age of four, this book is really well written. About confidence, motivation, and commitment. She has even included sports rules for 5 major sports, including wrestling! to encourage cheerleaders to learn the sport so they can cheer better & at more appropriate times. Has a section on public speaking & interviews, as well as eating disorders and how young women fall into the thin trap.

Great over all book with routines & cheers too!

Kim’s #2: Cheerleading & Song Leading by Marion and Ron Humphrey. Charles E. Tuttle Co.: Rutland, UT. 1970. Summary: An oldie, but a goodie. Really what I was looking for - cheers, chants and songs to alter for running. Has sections on confidence, crowd psychology, and how to plan pep rallies.

Kim’s #3: Cheerleading in Action by John Crossingham. Crabtree Publishing: Oxford, UK. 2003. Summary: A little light. Good for basic positions and stunt ideas, cheerleading more as a sport. Not a lot of real cheering ideas and songs.

I love movies about cannibalism. I have no idea why, just a coincidence - probably not. Q: Why don’t we eat people, I have asked myself after reading A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift. A: Because its sick, ok. Have people done it, yes. From the research I have done, there seems to be several reasons why, and the circumstances have to be right.

First, two main types of cannibalism: those who eat their “Own”, and those who eat “Others”.

Second, three main reasons: a) terror - groups have eaten people from other groups to cause terror to them, in order to scare them into just giving up (Other) ; b) ritual - sometimes after death, the flesh of the person is eaten by another person in honour (Own-ie. father or Other-ie. great warrior of another group) or in victory (over Other); c) need - due to hunger & lack of resources (Own and Others).

Thirdly, there are three main arguments to prove that cannibalism has occured at the site of a certain discovered pile of bones:
1) Animals typically chew the ends of bones where they lay, or drag and carry larger meat-covered bones off into the forest or more open areas - separating the bones, spreading the bones all over. Whereas humans pile bones in either a respectful burial type of pile (cover them with stones to keep animals out later, also trying to arrange the bodies back to what ressembles a resting state); or just a “discard” pile (like you might do with chicken wings). The human piling depends on the relationship between the people involved, whether or not you liked the person.

2) Again, animals chew the ends of bones, and leave chew marks with their teeth where they removed meat from the bones. Humans use tools, sharp-edged tools, to scrape off meat. Tool and teeth marks look very different even after several hundred years. Also, humans tend to roast the big leg and arm bones, as well as skulls, and then break them in half to get at the marrow and other nutrition inside. Animals do not typically have the ability to do roasting.
3) OK, I cannot remember the third proof, but the reading was fairly interesting. And tragic.

Finally, a more detailed look at the third reason for what causes people to cannibalise: need. What sort of a state would you have to be in to decide that you should eat someone else? There are all sorts of sad stories in these books of pilgrims, and travellers who just were not able to plan for hard hard winters while crossing the Americas, or drought. Interesting story of a group of 80 people who hit a hard winter…

This is a rough summary, and I cannot quite remember the details, as it has been about 4 months since I read this … anyway… something about people travelling West in the lower states, looking for a better life & discovering. There was a rebellion due to short stock, the winter was harder than expected, and food was running horribly low: half wanted to camp and stay put, the other half wanted to continue West.

Those who travelled West had two First nations guides, who, when things got bad were sent away from the group due to lack of resources; unfortunately for these two men, somehow their path and that of the Travelling Group met up again, and the two First Nations were killed and eaten. Out of about 30-40 people who left, 18-20 made it - and all of the survivors of the Travelling Group were women.
The group that stayed also had troubles; they ran out of food as well, so they ate leather things - the covers of their wagons, the mats in front of the doors, leather shoes, then finally decided it was time to eat their dogs, and so on. The young, the old, and the men were next in that order, but they usually died of starvation or sickness first. They were “probably not” killed. Again, the majority of the survivors were women and tweens / teen-agers.
I really have to read that again, to get the details straight.

There are also stories about boat wrecks and fairly recent plane crashes. Boat wrecks, of course, you either have to decide how to further divide resources & fresh water, who gets pushed over board, or who gets eaten. So there is often some sort of straw-pulling raffle. Shortest-stick and all that. I bet you won’t be surprised when I tell you that the person who controls the raffle usually survives. But at what cost? Yikes.

Place crashes, same thing. Even if you do have bodies of people who did not survive the crash, how can you bring yourself to survive off of the flesh of others? Groups that divided labour into three groups fared best: First group - those people who are most comfortable and who bring up the idea - to cut up the bodies of the people who died during the crash. Second group - goes off to find berries, tree branches for fires and water, etc. Third group - takes the parts that have been prepared and resources that have been collected and divides everything into equal parts for those who survived.

A question of Faith - can religious people eat of another? Or is it easier for the non-believers? I am sure that cannibalism is some sort of sin, although it does not seem to be clearly mentioned in the top 10. One person commented after the crash in the Andes that G-d helped them to survive by giving them the resources and the strength that they did have in order to survive.

Ultimately, no matter what happens, and how you do it if it has to be done, I think that there has to be a lot of forgiveness.

Here’s my top 5 books on cannibalism:

Bibliography of Resources on Cannibalism

Kim’s #1: Prehistoric Cannibalism at Mancos by Timothy White. Princeton Univ Press: Princeton, NJ. 1992. Summary: Pictures & statistics on approximately 30 people found that were proven to be cannibalised in Colorado back in the 1100s. Neat pictures, and it shows you how to tell the difference between human chewing and animal chewing. Interesting, but flipped through it lightly because the stats were hard to read after 20 pages of it, and pictures of bones & skulls actually gets kind of boring after awhile.

Kim’s #2: The Cannibal Within by Lewis Petrinovich. Aldine de Gruyter: New York, NY. 2000. Summary: A great book summarizing the who eats, whom is eaten, why, when, and unusual events that leads to cannibalism. Great read due to easy language used & interesting writing.

Kim’s #3: Cannibal talk: the man-eating myth and human sacrifice in the South Seas by Gananath Obeyesekene. Univ of California Press: Berkeley, CA. 2005. Summary: Some disbelief that cannibalism actually took place in some far-away areas. Funny that when a person thinks of cannibalism, often we think of exotic far-away places, when it is happening all the time (ok, not all the time) in good old North Amemrica.

Kim’s #4: Man Corn: cannibalism and violence in the prehistoric American South West by Christy Turner. Univ of Utah Press: Salt Lake City, UT. 1999. Summary: Another interesting read about cannibalism in early North America. And look at the title - is that not the best? Man Corn. Ha.

Kim’s #5: The Anthropology of Cannibalism edited by Laurent Goldman. Bergin & Garvey: Westport, CT. 1999. Summary: Cannot remember anything specific about this book. A summary of cannibalism all over the globe as I remember. Must not have been that interesting. Check it out anyway if you’re interested …

I took a course on the evolution of culture where we discussed what culture is, how it changes, etc. ETIN 350 at the Campus Saint-Jean with Dr. Roger Parent. Really interesting content. Does the culture have a language, un-written rules, shared norms, technology, a space, what individuals are IN and who is OUT? How is culture destroyed or developed, sub-cultures within cultures.

We did activities like watching people communicate, visiting various cultural areas to observe what goes on, comparing behaviour with the self’s (my own, your own, etc.) idea of understanding … , activity on other cultures’ behaviour that I find hard to accept, and interviews with people from cultures other than my own. Very cool.

Towards the end of the course, we had two main projects - to share and interview with someone of a certain recognizable culture (as defined earlier), and to prepare a pilot project that would benefit without question a certain culture.

For the big interview I interviewed a Edmonton Police Officer - a certain group of people with established norms, language, technology, sub-cultures, etc. The interview was very interesting and revealing. I shared this with my professor and classmate, who I believe were quite impressed at the idea of Police as a culture. I was surprised myself how well it worked out. And we discussed the possibility of doing something with the Police as my pilot project. It was at the time of the “Sting” at the Overtime, and the Police were getting a pretty bad rap - but even now when there are regularly articles in the paper about Police Officers being heavy-handed. Should the Training People not consider this for making changes to the training program to avoid this sort of thing … anyway, I really do support the Police - and for every bad thing the cops are put under the microscope for, there are hundreds of Officers doing good for hundreds of others. But that is boring news … anyway, I digress …

I thought about Seniors in senior residences, it can be a fairly lonely and boring place even when you live together, you don’t necessarily take the time or effort to meet others. But they are a certain group of people, with shared norms, technology, language, etc … I thought of doing my pilot project with Seniors. By the way, here’s a great book on working with groups of Seniors:

Bibliography of Resources on Caring for Seniors

Kim’s #1: Golden Glimpses by Tia M Weaver. Wellness Plus Publishers: Lethbridge, AB. 1994. Summary: On using reminiscence and sensory stimulation as activities with Seniors. Great book. Super relavant activities. She even has included her address so you can send her ideas and comments on the activities.

Then I thought, no, I am going to do the project on women with Breast Cancer.

Why breat cancer? Well, my Grandmother was diagnosed with breast cancer before 1996, and she didn’t tell anyone until after the family reunion. And even only then did she ask me to take care of my Grandfather for a couple of days because she had to go into hospital for a couple of days and I asked her why.

At first I was sort of upset that she didn’t tell me sooner, but then I think straight, realizing what a horrible secret she carried around for how long, not being able / not wanting to talk about it . I am not sure whan she told my Grandfather. I noticed later in my Grandfather’s garage the foam left-overs from his attempts at making my Grandmother a decent fake breast out of foam with his different saws. Blue foam, beige foam, styrofoam… (G-d, how sweet is that?)
Anyway, I wanted to do something for the people, especially women, who are diagnosed with breast cancer to be able to have a means by which they can share their secret - encourage them to talk to their loved ones so that they can get the support - emotional support - that they need and deserve.

For my project, I first had to determine if they are a culture? A certain group of people, with sub-groups (young, mid, older groups; male, female); shared language, technology, etc. How could I create something that would benefit this culture? I decided to create an Healing Through Art pilot project, where groups of women, who have just been diagnosed to those who are in remission, those after operation, to those in the beginning, middle, end of their chemo cycles. Whoever! Groups of 8-10 people meeting 1ce per week for 10 weeks creating, sharing, using poetry, painting, drawing, sculpture, big pieces, little pieces, whatever. I really want to do this, like full time, but right now is not a great time in my life for that. So I am putting it on the back burner for now - until the right moment because this project is going to take a lot of energy & commitment to be done right.

I did a lot of research before I decided to approach this as an idea, and I have collected a list of resources that I thought were good reads & informative. here’s my list of Top 10 resources on Breast Cancer:

Bibliography of Resources on Breast Cancer

Kim’s #1: My Left Breast: an unusual film about Breast Cancer [video] written by Gerry Rogers. Produced by Pope Productions: St. John’s, NF. 2000. Summary: If you really want to know what a person diagnosed with breast cancer goes through, do watch this film. It’s a documentary of Gerry’s experience from 2 weeks after her chemo starts. I related, I cried, I laughed, I had hope, I felt hopeless. It was a total rollercoaster of feelings, and she is such an amazing person to have prepared this film of her and her loved ones to share and help with others. You MUST see this film.

Kim’s #2: Thanks for the Mammogram by Laura Jensen Walker. Fleming H. Revell: Grand Rapids, MI. 2000. Summary: A well written book of the journey taken by those diagnosed with breast cancer. Written humourously, and in her dedication it says “Cancer is not funny, but humour is healing.” I really enjoyed reading this book. Full of info, and brings a person back to balance during a difficult time.

Kim’s #3: The First Look by Amelia Davis. Univ of Illinois Press: Chicago, IL. 2000. Summary: This is a book of portraits and biographies of women who have had operations related to breast cancer. Another very powerful resource to answer questions you might feel that you could never ask.

Kim’s #4: Can you come here where I am? Poetry and Prose of 7 Breast Cancer Survivors prepared by the Write-Away Group. EM Press: Manassas, VA. 1998. Summary: Really well arranged. A reminder that poetry is an excellent outlet for getting thoughts out of your head, and feelings sorted out.

Kim’s #5: What you need to know about Breast Cancer: Diagniosis, Treatment and Beyond by Pat Kelly and Mark Levine. Key Porter Books: Toronto, ON. 2002. Summary: For everyone who knows someone who is, especially the person who is, diagnosed with breast cancer. People sharing stories, and communicating.

Kim’s #6: Breat Cancer Treatment Survival Handbook by Margaret Porter. Simon Schuster: New York, NY. 1997. Summary: No nonsense guide to exactly what the title suggests. Remember to journal, document, share. See Bib on Resources for Writing, Aug 8/06.

Kim’s #7: Breast Cancer by Janet Majure. Enslow Publishers Inc.: Berkeley Heights, NJ. 2000. Summary: Just like the title, very short and to the point. Goes through the process of diagnosis, surgery, and treatment.

Kim’s #8: Our Gift of Love: personal stories of Breast Cancer courage gathered by Hugh Hogle. Gibbs Smith Publishers: Salt Lake City, UT. 1996. Summary: Autonomy & independence through education, sharing with your loved ones.

Kim’s #9: Art, Rage, Us: Art and Writing by Women with Breast Cancer prepared by Chronicle Books: San Fransisco, CA. 1998. Summary: Communicating by means other than speaking about things unspeakable.

Kim’s #10: Partners in Hope: a man’s guide to Breast Cancer [video] produced by Bosom Buddies. 2001. 40 min. Summary: How to take care of your loved one diagnosed with breast cancer.

Kim’s #11: The Victoria’s Secret Catalogue Never Stops Coming by Jennie Nash. Scribner: New York, NY. 2001. Summary: Stories written by the author during her experience of breast cancer.