SHIFT WORK OR THE SICK SHIFT

George Brainard, neurologist at the University of Pennsylvania, says, “if light exposure at night is a risk factor for woman to develop breast cancer or for a man to develop prostate cancer, if that’s true, then we really need to know how much light and what quality of light and often and at what time of night it is most problematic”

With shift workers they are exposed to light at a time their body needs darkness in order to produce the rightful amount of melatonin, and without the needed intake of darkness and melatonin their bodies can have very harmful reactions. Brainard makes a good suggestion to find out just how much light is too much? If there could be artificial supplements to make up for loss of melatonin it could also help. Brainard is looking for solutions to this problem. It seems that the majority of the women in these cases were nurses, maybe it is the florescent lighting, and maybe it is the strenuous activity, compared to someone who sits at a desk all night? Does it effect taxi cab drivers or police officers who patrol at night?

In the Danish government they have compensated women in their community who have gotten breast cancer due to overnight shifts. We need to find a solution to this problem rather it be shorter shifts with less interaction with the light during night time hours. Does it help if you sleep in complete darkness during the day? Is their ways to get the correct amount of melatonin in your body without the sleep at night? How will they do these studies? People are going to be more scared to work night shifts I know I am. What difference does it make on someone young compared to some one middle aged if any? This is going to take lots of research and I do not see a solution near in the future unless said supplement is possible, because the amount of research on this topic is going to be of abundance and it will be hard to test all different test with different light different exposure time to the light age differential and sex and race. It is said to be majority of Asian and Caucasian women. What does the race change?

The risks of working overnight are high in numbers from metabolism problems, weight, back, brain responsiveness, and cancer.

Only Hurting Ourselves?

Kuhn is quoted from “city dark”, “seeing the universe around us tells us about our own part of the universe, and to close that door … would change the character of humankind entirely”.

In saying that I believe it means we’re already in a state where we think we’re the only ones who matter. Leaving nature almost completely out of some lives living in the “concrete jungle” they have replaced trees with sky scrapers and stars with the many lights that fill these towering buildings.

 When doing so we alienate ourselves from nature and were are nothing in comparison to the galaxy and the infinite space and it is as if we almost feel its irrelevant and by living with that mind frame we change as people and it is and will continue to affect us and more harshly for sure if we don’t put a stop to this. With the amount of pollution and reflecting skylights it is almost impossible to see the stars, animals cannot tell the difference from the moon and stars to the building lights. The animals are a being hurt by this but the human race do not understand the harm it is doing to us not just physically but as a people and I think that is what he is trying to say.

At one time we were people of our land, the land decided what we ate when we ate and how we ate, we have alienated our land and it is returning with vengeance with the amount of pollution in the air we have increased global warning increasing the amount of natural disasters due to record high and low temperatures the need to manufacture has over ridden the need to breath almost. I leave from Baytown to the country for a couple of hours and can smell my home long before my arrival the air is so foggy with pollution our Baytown slogan “where water and oil really do mix”

 and it does we have ships dropping all sorts of stuff in the ship channel and have a local “beach” where you can bathe in it. We keep putting ourselves in the danger of seriously being hurt by this change in the world. What will it take for the world to see what we are doing to our own home. We must work and clean it up it might take a miracle but we have to try and if not we are doomed.

A Different Point of View

It is love, uncontrollable love, and sometimes lust.

 In Variation on the Word Sleep the narrator depicts the love she feels towards this man, her lover.  She wishes to be inside of him and his dreams; she wants to watch him at his most vulnerable state. She is in love.

In A Monorhyme for the Shower a man is watching his wife shower and he is reminiscing on their relationship, he studies her body in a very sexual but sensual way. He is not gawking but staring in amazement.

In both of these poems Variation on the Word Sleep and A Monorhyme for the Shower the narrators explain their love and desire for the other person. In Variation of the Word Sleep she wants to protect him from the bad and evil you could say. She is willing to follow him into his darkest fear and face it and pull him through. She is accepting of her love and it seems she just wants it to be known, wants to be needed “I would like to be the air that inhabits you for a moment only. I would like to be that unnoticed and necessary” (Atwood 103). It’s as if she doesn’t care to have her love acknowledged its perfect as is. In a Monorhyme for a Shower he’s and she are both aware of the love the history between the two. He sees the ware and tare the years and relationship have had on her body and he admires it and sees the beauty. He is looking at her and explaining her body and how he still has boyish feelings and wants to do things with her and maybe to her.

In both poems there are two narrators who are expressing their love and in very different ways, one in just pure love and admiration but still coming from a genuine place. Being able to explain her in the shower and explain desires and not come off as a pig is hard and he did it. The other narrator under a spell completely taken by another human’s existence. She explains her love in soft words and dual meaning words makes you think about all sorts of meanings. She uses the nature to show her love is something that comes completely natural to her and she embraces it.

By reading both poems by man and woman you see different point of views on the admiration of their significant others and the way they love one another. How they express it and how it makes them feel. Both seem to get a since of gratitude from the love they have for their companions. Something that humbles them and makes them aware of someone else’s being meaning so much to their being.

The Russian Greatcoat

Theodore Deppe's poem "The Russian Greatcoat" portrays a family man reliving his past. I can assume that the "mystery woman" as she is never named, is an old lover. Deepe is a seemingly good man "At first I evade the question when my wife asks, as if just thinking of you were an act of betrayal". I would draw from the passage that "mystery woman" is a beautiful woman, a somewhat bossy woman. Deppe seems as if he would do anything for this woman. I am brought to the question as to why he must only think of her, why didn't the relationship assuming there even was one, work? Love lost is the topic, even while married with children he can still think of "mystery woman". Was she the one who got away? Deppe seems somewhat hear broken "sometimes i can go weeks without remembering". What was so great? Why is she a reoccurring thought through his head? Leading me to believe she is the one who ended it. Is he happy in his marriage? Deppe focus's on those moments, maybe because that can tell us all we need to know. They were not together no longer, and he would do something so irrelevant just because. That maybe their relationship was not a good one, maybe she was controlling. But why would he still reminisce on old times? What was the reason for the ending of the relationship? I want to know! Why can he not get her out of his head? Does his wife know about her, is that why she might become angered by the idea of her?

Stitches

                In the first images we’re introduced to David he’s drawing a rabbit. We eventually find out on page 56 the significance of the drawing. David “…had fallen in love with Alice” 56 he wants to be her, he even puts a blanket or towel on his head to resemble her long blonde hair.

 He runs through the streets and is looked at like a mad child “ other mothers pulled their children indoors when they saw me coming” showing he knew how crazy it was for a young child to do that but at the time making perfect sense to hang on the monkey bars speaking to someone who isn’t there. When the neighborhood children saw his make believe play time they weren’t amused it was weird for a boy to run around with a towel over his head. The kids called David names as he ran home embarrassed it seems so even then as a child he knew it wasn’t normal but it was his only normal. 

 It’s not just the body of Alice it’s the hope that he too can fall into a rabbit hole, into another more interesting world.

                David Small uses his drawing and dreams of Alice as a scape to his ordinary life, which consists of a mother hidden within herself scorned by her being. A father who thinks the cure of sinuses is radiation therapy, who barriers himself in his work to blind his eyes to the unhappiness of his wife and himself. David needs Alice to remain sane and calm to relieve himself of his problems including his cancer caused by the radiation his father gave him, his seemingly crazy mother, and absolutely crazy grandmother.

                When first reading this I thought his fascination with Alice was his child like ways, but on page 250 we're shown David sitting with a rabbit which was supposed to be his therapist.

 He was fifteen at the time in my eyes old enough to not lean on a made up cartoon, but it’s not just that David seeks compassion from the rabbit and he receives it and allows the reader or at least myself to see his reasoning for Alice isn’t crazy it’s a reason of sanity. Alice is the only reason David figuratively speaking didn’t follow the path his mother was clearing for him in his dream.

A begining to an ending

                When I was nine my life was pretty great my parents were always there, and made sure my two older sisters and I had anything we wanted and needed. One night my parents called us in the living room after dinner, I thought I was getting in trouble for falling asleep in class. My mom was crying and my dad looked annoyed, my dad just blurted out,

“We’ve decided to get a divorce” before he could go on my mom stops him “I didn’t decide anything”.

Immediately my eyes swell up and I just feel the cold wet tears run down my flushed face. My dad goes on to say he’s got an apartment and he’ll be moving out in a couple days. My mom’s face made me sick to my stomach I’d never seen her cry like that.  From that night on laid a new platform for “parenting”. My mother would yell at my dad every time we went to his new apartment, and when we were with her she’d just yell about him. Trips to the mall were often after they separated new clothes and a new movie every weekend, all on dad’s credit card.  They began to argue about when we got to see each other, on birthdays my mom would give us clothes and my dad would show up with a bike or new electronic device.

When it was happening it was great all the presents and money, but I had never seen my parents like this. How could two adults be happy all the time and then not love one another anymore? At the time I didn’t know that when they sent us to our rooms that they were arguing, and fighting. I turned ten when their divorce was final. I knew everything that had gone on in their relationship the problems and the love. I knew too much.

I now know the struggle my mom went through trying to remain sane in front of three little girls. But from then on I looked at them differently. Two children fighting over toys is what they acted like, throwing mean thoughtless jabs at each other’s ego. They told us all the time if you have nothing nice to say don’t say anything at all. Well needless to say they did not practice what they preached. My parents are better now they’re actually still best friends on holidays and birthdays they both come together not just for us but because they care. No matter how they are now I remember the years where they were ripping at each other’s throat to get a rise from the other how stupid and selfish they looked in my eyes.

Their ending allowed me to begin seeing these people in a light I didn’t turn on.

the foggy water

In my neighborhood in Laporte our streets flooded with even the slightest of storms. school days when it flooded me at the time five with a late birthday not yet in school and my mom would leave early to pick my older sisters, Desiree eight and Brittany seven from the school. We would drive down our street the seamingly fast my mom's truck would seperate the water just for us to pass through. We were always asked to go outside and play on those days, and always denied. Our mother who at the time seamed like a dictator for not letting her three little girls go play in the dirty muddy water. We always demanded reasoning for her ludacris decission and she always said because that water is nasty and we could really get hurt and sick and its not the same as the pool. The next time it flooded my mom was at work, working compressed weekends at the hospital. My dad was steady trying to keep us entertained, but all we wanted to do was go play and if not, just watch from the living room window. As we watched the kids ride their bikes and play in the river of our neighborhood, our dad came in with our rubber boots and a box of heavy duty trash bags. Confused he put them on us and made a head hole and two arm holes. With our "ponchos" and rubber boots we went outside and emerged into the cold icy greenish water. Our friends were  almost as shocked as we were to be out. We played for what seamed to be forever my sisters rode their bikes around and pulled me through the beach in our front yard. When it started to rain again  we all went back inside before the lightening came. My dad threw us into the shower before my mom made it home. When she did get home she almost immediately knew mostly because of our rubber boots at the front door.She yelled at my dad for a while then told us i'm glad y'all had fun but this is going to be the last time. i did not care i had so much fun and honestly thought we would be able to do it again. But soon after that last storm we had a bad flood that reached rhe garrage. After that the city did construction on our street and drainage system, and it never really flooded again. But on that day we got to be like all the other kids on the block and pretend for that day that we did not have an over-bearing mother but the coolest dad.