It's Bad News Week/Month/Year

 

Yes, I'm Curious Pam. I'm curious about the world and lots of things in it. Particularly when I was teaching, I tried to stay abreast of the news because my students would often ask me questions about current events and I wanted to be informed about them.

 

Now, I'm Irritated Pam. I no longer watch the television news because it's too depressing. Yes, occasionally there might be a 'soft' good news story, usually involving an animal, just before the weather. Once a week, The Project runs a segment of good news stories, and ABC News has a 'good news' section also. But people around the world are doing life affirming, brilliant things; we just don't get to hear about them, because apparently most of the news networks seem to think that we want to be fed a diet of disaster, violence, tragedy and crime. The same can be said for the tabloid newspapers.

 

I'm not asking for unicorns and rainbows every day. I have friends who are journalists (and some former students, too) and I know that they work damn hard to do their absolute best to deliver news that is ethical, informed and balanced. It seems that someone higher up the chain makes editorial decisions that result in the fodder that is delivered to us daily.

 

I checked the ABC news headlines as I was waiting for the ads to finish at the movies today, and this is what I saw:



 

Apparently the only tragedy among these stories is a yacht having to retire from the Sydney to Hobart race. Yes, tragedy is in inverted commas, presumably because it's a quotation from someone associated with Wild Oats XI. (By the time I got home and checked the story, it had been updated and 'tragedy' was no longer in the story. Perhaps someone saw sense?) But this was a hydraulic problem which affected the keel and presumably the steering of the yacht (I am an old sailor from way back, but that's another story.) A tweet from Wild Oats XI was quick to point out that the 'crew on board are safe', and fair enough. Many of us remember the real tragedy of the 1998 race when six lives were lost in an enormous storm that engulfed the race.

Please don't think I'm picking on the sailors who are much braver than me and take on this race. It's just that I couldn't help but think that missing people, dying people, people blinded by a shooting, and drowning people (can you see a trend here?) are probably more 'tragic' than the yacht story. Couldn't the headline have been different? Couldn't there have been more stories like the one about George Michael?

Perhaps I'm getting cranky in my old age. I've certainly had an opportunity to reassess my world view since my surgery. There are good things happening in the world, and the ABC does report them. To finish, here's a good news story worth sharing:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-05-30/campbell-project-365-sees-teddy-bears-made-for-charity/7458530

Rant over. For now.

Music, Alzheimer's and Glen Campbell

Glenn Campbell on his Farewell Tour in 2012
 

Glen Campbell walks onto the stage to a standing ovation and greets his audience. He launches into the first song of the set. He is 76 years old and has Alzheimer's Disease.

I've just finished watching I'll Be Me on Netflix. It's a documentary that he and his family authorised in order to raise awareness about this awful disease. It is heartbreaking, inspiring and at the same time it raises questions about the mysteries of that amazing organ, the human brain.

For my younger readers, Glen Campbell has sold 45 million records over 50 years. While country music isn't my favourite genre, some of his songs are just so much a part of the soundtrack of my life that I love to hear them. "Galveston" and "Wichita Lineman", and the later "Rhinestone Cowboy" just make me sing along- loudly. I have downloaded them onto my iPhone. So, I was interested to watch this documentary.

 

What I kept wondering was: how is it that he can't remember the names of his wife and children, yet he still sings just as well as he used to (with the aid of a teleprompter for the lyrics). And how the hell can he play those amazing guitar riffs. In what part of his brain is that music tucked away?

Glen and his daughter Ashley play Duelling Banjos

 

My Dad passed away from Alzheimer's Disease just over a year ago, so I have seen first hand how this form of dementia ravages even the most brilliant of brains, yet it leaves little pockets that sometimes empty themselves at the most unexpected moments. One day I was taking Dad on our regular Saturday drive, in the hope that it would stimulate his brain and some conversation. As we drove along Gold Creek Road at Brookfield, he started to sing. I didn't recognize the song, and the words were unintelligible, but there was a melody and rhythm that made it clear that this was a song that he remembered. I was flabbergasted.

 

A couple of weeks later, Mum and I visited Dad on the day that there was a concert for the residents at the nursing home. A small, neatly dressed man was brought in and came over to where Dad's recliner chair was parked. He spoke to me but I couldn't understand what he was saying, until his carer asked if we could move Dad's chair a little so the man could get to the piano. I obliged, and the man sat on the piano stool, placed his hands on the keys, and launched into the most amazing classical piece, played from memory. When he was finished, we all applauded, and he was led back to the secure dementia wing. He had been a concert pianist in Europe.

 

I couldn't help thinking about these incidents as I watched the documentary, and the decline of Glen Campbell. One of the lovely aspects of the concert footage was the presence of three of his children performing on stage with him, gently prompting him, improvising and loving him. When he forgot the words, the audience sang them and he picked up and continued. After 120 performances, it became clear to the family that it was time to stop.

Glen and his sons perform together in 2012

I will leave it to you to Google Glen's status today. He leaves a legacy of music that has become a part of the American, if not the world's, song book. He lobbied Congress to raise awareness about Alzheimer's, and every performance of his farewell tour did likewise. But it still leaves the question: how does the brain retain music, yet lose just about everything else? Perhaps one day we will have an answer. Perhaps one day, Alzheimer's Disease will be something that we only read about in text books.

Jodie Picoult and an ugly Australian

I've been in hospital recently, and because it was difficult for me to focus my eyes for a while, I listened to podcasts and audiobooks. I hadn't read a Jodie Picoult novel for a while, so I chose Small Great Things as one of the audiobooks. The title is a nod to a quote from Martin Luther King.

In the author's afterword she said how she had wanted to write a novel about race for some time, but had felt inadequate to the task. Ultimately she completed the research that was needed and the result is this fantastic book. It revolves around an African American labour and delivery nurse called Ruth Jefferson, and is set in the recent past. The white supremacist parents of a newborn child refuse to have to Ruth touch their child, in spite of the fact that she is a nurse with twenty years' experience and a nursing degree from Yale. I won't spoil the plot line for you by saying any more!

You don't need to be Einstein to work out that along with race, prejudice is a key theme of the novel. We would like to think that 'that sort of thing' doesn't happen, but it does, and it happens in our own backyard.

In a bitter irony, I witnessed it myself when I was a patient in the ICU following my surgery. Many of the nurses were Asian, some from the Philippines, and I especially remember a beautiful Buddhist RN called Jackie who was the gentlest of souls and who had a knack for getting me to stop crying and focus on putting my energy into relaxing and getting better. Bless you, Jackie.