Banana Mania Yellow

Thank you Crayola! Remember the Crayola Big Box (with the built in sharpener on the back *gasp*) that had a whopping 96 colors?! You could color for hours with that bad boy, especially if you were a lucky enough kid to have the Crayola Metallic Crayons AND Scented Crayon Scent (which of course I was ;) ). Well folks, I have some sad news. Our generations most magical and precious treasures are no more. Instead the coloring book collectors and aspiring young artists of today get the 150ct. Telescoping Crayon Tower. Not only does it come with a built-in sharpener (for convenience), but the sucker is 3-tiered and has 54 more color choices! I bet kids these days can't even color in the lines, what a waste!

Totally not what I intended this blog to be about, so back to Banana Mania Yellow. The color I have decided best represents the color of all my MCAT study books. Why two different companies chose yellow, I do not know. Maybe because of yellow's neutral, gender friendly, peaceful connotation? Helps to remind all of us who are studying for the MCAT's what the sun looks like, because they surely ain't seeing it for the next two months!

Oh MCAT, the "Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad"-ly deemed acronym for the Medical College Admission Test. The test that if failed can shatter all your dreams, but if passed can shatter your social life. And I have to take it in 83 days... (Insert prayer for me and/or praise to God for yourself that you aren't in my shoes. ya thanks a lot)

Along with obtaining an adequate/exceptional MCAT score (depending on the school you apply to) there is the med school application which consists of a personal statement of some sort. This statement must explain why you want to go to medical school, what your best qualities are, why you are better than that 2000+ others that are applying, and how amazing their school is. In short, you B.S. them in 5,000 characters or less.

So why have I finally decided to go to medical school? From animal science to public health to now med school, from compassion for animals to compassion to humans. At least I have kept my interests in the same scientific Class (Class Mammalia represent!).

- Animal science = sticking your arm up cows, pardon my french, ass and sitting behind girls whose computer screen saver consists of hundreds of pictures of them and their horse (no offense to all you out there who fit this description, it was just not for me)

- Public Health = can be the most vague, ADD and oftentimes abused profession on the planet. I don't want to go in to the details. Basically in order to accomplish anything public health related you inevitably need MDs or PHDs.

Don't worry my reasons for wanting to become a doctor are not really this cynical. I really do have a compassion for human medicine and the hard science behind the public health message.

Public Health feeds the masses, but Medicine is what nourishes the individual. Public Health plants the seed, but medicine provides the water and sunlight necessary for growth. Modern medicine lacks racism, hate, and discrimination in a world filled with assortments of all. It is our best friend and it is our worst enemy, but either way, when used correctly, medicine does not lie. It is the individualism of medicine that attracts me, the idea that each life is unique and non-universal. Every individual comes from an unparalleled past, dwells in an ever-changing present, and, is solely responsible for creating their future. Making each person a puzzle cut into hundreds of different pieces that doctors have to fit together in order to make a person whole again.

I love puzzles :)

Pen mark red

Being the professional graduate student that I am,instead of studying for my two finals coming up tomorrow and Tuesday, I am doing this instead. (Not as bad as the 3 hours I just spent making benne wafers, they are supposedly "good luck" anyways, at least according the Gullah people and the Nigerians :) )

Anyways...

In the spirit of my swiftly approaching finals I dedicate the color red to today and the next couple of days. By red I refer to the red inked maker that teachers stereotypically used in grade school to either write a large, beautiful, triumphant "A" or 100 on the top of you assignment, or mark corrections and errors all over the page so that when you got it back your assignment no longer resemble the piece of mastery you handed in but a battlefield of bloody defeat. (As you can tell I took grades very seriously as a child)

Sometimes teachers liked to change it up a bit and use green or blue, or maybe even pencil *gasp.* But, nothing was as daunting as that red. That red that could either represent success or failure. If you think about it the color red often plays the good and the bad guy. A red lipsticked

kiss represents a southern sweatheart on an admirers cheek, or a husband stealing sex-retary on the collar of a button up shirt. Red represents passion but within that passion it can represent love and it can mean hate. Rosy cheeks symbolize health and liveliness, but too much red on those cheeks can mean your embarrassment or a severe illness.

My mother never played the motherly role in matters most mothers would harp on. She let me do as I wanted and go as a I pleased (from my comments on grades above you can probably guess I was no problem child or anything). So, I remember vividly the moments my mother actually decided to put her foot down about something. One such moment was over the color red and a prom dress. Not any particular prom dress, just one in general. I was NOT allowed to wear a red prom dress. Don't ask me why or why mother cared what color prom dress I wore, but in her eyes red was just not acceptable. Don't worry, I didn't decide to become rebellious over a prom dress, I wore green and then highlighter orange my Senior year of high school. (But you know I tried on all of those red dresses just to spite her :) )

If red symbolizes success AND failure, how do we distinguish between the two without that obvious "A" or 100 written on the top of a page? An Emily Dickinson poem I recently read defines success in the eyes of those whom are defeated:

Success is counted sweetest

By those who ne'er succeed.

To comprehend a nectar

Requires sorest need.

Not one of all the purple Host

Who took the Flag today

Can tell the definition

So clear of Victory

As he defeated--dying--

On whose forbidden ear

The distant strains of triumph

burst agonized and clear!

Once we get a taste of our success, our "nectar," we lose appreciation of that success and of the path we took to get there. It is only when we are defeated that we can look back and appreciate the success we had. Love can not tolerate hate, but hate can respect love. Good triumphs over evil, but evil was once good. I do not think we should never be successful, but we must learn to enjoy the Earth before we reach for the stars.

So as I go into my exams this week I must paint my path red for the success I could have and for the things I have learned even if I am defeated.

Mud Brown

My color for the week.

The color brown gets a bad rep, who ever says brown is their favorite color? It is so often associated with "unpleasant" things, like rotting bananas, 70s interior design (brown and orange and pea green, gross), dying leaves, your child or dog on your clean white carpet/furniture, and you know what that comes out of you know where. Are these things truly unpleasant or are we just molded to think that way? Brown is natural and raw, it represents the end of biological cycles, of death that will be followed by life, and of freedom and youth.

Why doesn't anyone say brown is their favorite color, why is it so often under-appreciated?

"I cannot pretend to feel impartial about colors. I rejoice with the brilliant ones and am genuinely sorry for the poor browns." --Winston Churchill

Without brown how can you appreciate all the other colors we love so much. Would the green leave of the trees and plants *pop* as much in the Spring without the brown tree trunks and the brown soils beneath? Would we be able to acknowledge the brightness of these greens, pinks, reds, and purples without the "dullness" and contrast of the brown?

I chose mud brown as my color for the week because of the homesickness I have been feeling for Charleston and Awendaw and the familiar scents and scenes that I experienced for so many years of my life. Someone told me the cure to homesickness is to not have a home. Well I haven't called Charleston my "home" for a couple of years now, but it is still the place I can go back to and remember where I came from and how I got to where I am now.

Mud brown is the color of the Pluffmud (marsh mud for you unfortunate un-lowcountry people) that surrounds my dock and gives the Wando River its mirky color. It smells, and goo's, and oozes with life and biodiversity. Not a smell one would call pleasant in the sense of florals or freshly baked cookies, but a smell that is pleasant in its familiarity and its associated memories. A smell I would think compares to automobile exhaust for a cityboy/girl.

But back to it's color...Without it's brown, literally shit looking color, the green marsh grass and golden reeds would blend into the other colors of the scene. There would be no depth in the the marshy expanse along the river and there would be no distinction between sky and ground. The blues, and the greens, and the goldens would blend together like a Monet painting, beautiful and vibrant yes, but also blurry and unfocused.

My favorite characteristic of Pluffmud's color is the way the sky reflects on the little pools of water left in the creeks at low tide, as if the mud traps pieces of the sky on Earth. Early morning you have bold fresh blues, like the sky is brand new and the color hasn't faded in time.Mid day the sun reflects to form glowing pockets along the mud, and evening brings the reds and oranges and greens of the sunset.

http://www.sensationalcolor.com/color-messages-meanings/color-meaning-symbolism-psychology/all-about-the-color-brown.html

kevorkiampossible

Yesterday, Kenneth Minor was found guilty of the murder of Jeffery Locker. In case you haven't been keeping up with New York murder cases let me give you a little summary. Basically, Jeffrey Locker, a former motivational speaker, decided he did not want to live anymore after the economy went to shit (pardon my French) in 2009. Committing suicide would have forfeited insurance money for his family so he decided to hire someone to help "do a Kevorkian." Apparently he was good at his job, because he motivated Minor to help him (and by motivate I mean bribe). So... Minor held a knife against the steering wheel of Locker's car and Locker threw himself upon the knife, attempting to make it look like a mugging.

Seems like a win-win situation right? Locker dies and his family gets millions in life insurance and impoverished Minor gets to finally bring home some decent money for his family.

WRONG!

When you find someone uneducated enough to actually agree to an "assisted suicide," such as the one in this case, then you have probably found someone who doesn't know NOT to use your ATM card. Now Minor will be spending 20 years in jail on murder in the second degree charges, which is defined as "a killing caused by dangerous conduct and the offender's obvious lack of concern for human life." Does this count when that human is not concerned about their own life?

This was a bizarre "assisted suicide" case, most debate in the United States has involved "physician assisted suicide" or PAS. PAS usually involves a prescribed euthanasia drug of some sort.

FYI: Dr. Kevorkian served eight years in prison for assisting over 130 patients die. While his methods were questionable and some of his patients did not fit this definition, kevorkianism has become a term referring to the assisted suicide of terminally ill people. These are people who are dying, will die soon, but want to stop making their families suffer, or stop being a financial burden, or are just tired of being in pain. These are people who have lived long lives, or substantial lives, and are mature enough to decide when they want to stop living. Some of these are people whose families will get needed life insurance money if they wait it out, but will not if they take their own life. Some just want to end their suffering. Either way PAS or kevorkianism is illegal in the United States, except in Oregon, Washington, and Montana.

The United States is run on a certain set of values, primarily Christian based values. While I do consider myself Christian by faith, I have a hard time supporting political decisions based on some of these values because there is too much contradiction.

We live in a country that values LIFE so much that we blow up abortion clinics; we judge & reject suicide attempts and condemn those who succeed to hell; we defame stem-cell researchers and science that uses embryos, while hundreds of women pump their bodies with fertility drugs to produce multiple embryo's only to have one child; we make laws that prevent a person from deciding their own death, leading to their suffering at the cost of their family and the healthcare system; and we elect congressmen/women who spend more time arguing over abortion than solving issues like unemployment, childhood obesity, failing education, and increasing national debt.

Meanwhile, we have the death penalty that knowingly takes the lives of men and women. Last time I checked JC was not so keen on capital punishment:

"Do not repay anyone for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all. If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceable with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God; for it is written, "Vengeance is mine, I will repaym says the Lord."' (Romans 12:17-19)

"Do not repay evil for evil or abuse for abuse; but, on the contrary, repay with a blessing. It is for this that you were called - that you might inherit blessing." (1 Peter 3:9)

If we are living based on Christian values who are we to judge one's crimes punishable by death or not? Who are we to decide that another human beings life should end, if we are not allowed to decide our own? Who is the government to decide how a person can or can not die? Since when was dying such an awful thing, especially for Christians?

I am not saying I am in favor or disfavor of PAS, death penalty, abortion, etc. But if we as a nation are going to base our decisions and our politics on a set of values, lets make sure they line up first.

"In the end, Mr.Locker is where he wanted to be - can't take that back now," Minor said. "But I ain't no animal."