Showing 1 - 10 of 30 annotations contributed by Dittrich, Lisa

Morphinomaniac

Grasset, Eugene-Samuel

Last Updated: Apr-26-2012
Annotated by:
Dittrich, Lisa

Primary Category: Visual Arts / Painting/Drawing

Genre: Color lithograph

Summary:

This striking painting seems to embody the "mania" of the morphine addict--the wild hair (particularly the unnatural upward curve of several strands); the brilliant color; the reckless glimpse of stocking; and the mixed sense of urgency and pain in the face of the young woman as she injects the drug into her thigh. The painting is a "close-up" of this desperate figure--the viewer is not offered any safe distance from her image.

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Miracles

Cecil, Richard

Last Updated: Dec-11-2006
Annotated by:
Dittrich, Lisa

Primary Category: Literature / Poetry

Genre: Poem

Summary:

Miracles describes the speaker's Catholic school training and how he moved from an unquestioning faith in the possibility of miracles to disbelief, and the mixed feelings of relief, guilt, and a sense of exile that accompanied this shift.

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Dialogues with Madwomen

Light, Allie

Last Updated: Aug-17-2006
Annotated by:
Dittrich, Lisa

Primary Category: Performing Arts / Film, TV, Video

Genre: Film

Summary:

This documentary presents a pastiche of illness narratives, the stories of seven women (including the filmmaker and the associate producer) who have struggled with mental illness, including depression, bipolar disorder, and multiple personality disorder. Intercut with the interviews are reenactments of key events in the women? lives; vivid depictions of sometimes frightening, sometimes exhilarating mental states experienced by the women; films and still photographs from the womens' childhoods, and archival film footage. In the process of exploring their illnesses and recoveries, the women discuss experiences that hurt them (rape, misdiagnoses, racism) as well as those that helped them heal (creativity, caring, therapists, and spirituality).

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Abstinence

Cecil, Richard

Last Updated: Jun-28-2006
Annotated by:
Dittrich, Lisa

Primary Category: Literature / Poetry

Genre: Poem

Summary:

The poem describes how drinking skewed the speaker’s perspective on life (blurring night and day distinctions, etc.) and isolated him from others. The poem goes on to illuminate the speaker’s recovery, the result not of an Alcoholics Anonymous-type "higher power" but of the speaker’s own dark epiphany: "I recognized the night as night and chose it."

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Losing My Mind: An Intimate Look at Life with Alzheimer's

DeBaggio, Thomas

Last Updated: Aug-31-2002
Annotated by:
Dittrich, Lisa

Primary Category: Literature / Nonfiction

Genre: Memoir

Summary:

This memoir is DeBaggio's first-person account of his early experience of Alzheimer's disease and its effect on his life and the life of his family. The book is a collection, in loosely narrative form, of the author's diagnosis of early-onset Alzheimer's; brief excerpts from his journal; excerpts from the medical literature on the disease; and memories from his past that he wants to commit to paper before he can no longer recall them. He documents his struggle simply to write the book, as it becomes more and more difficult to sustain thoughts or find the words to express what he wants to say.

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Safe

Haynes, Todd; Berkeley, Xander; Friedman, Peter; Moore, Julianne

Last Updated: Feb-11-2002
Annotated by:
Dittrich, Lisa

Primary Category: Performing Arts / Film, TV, Video

Genre: Film

Summary:

Carol White (Julianne Moore), an upper-middle-class Los Angeles housewife, is stricken with a mysterious illness that her doctor cannot diagnose or explain. He believes her illness to be psychosomatic, but Carol, through contact with a support group, realizes she has "environmental illness," an immune disorder that causes her to physically overreact to common chemicals, fumes, and environmental pollutants. The film follows her journey to a clinic in New Mexico in search of relief from her increasingly debilitating symptoms.

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Manhattan, When I Was Young

Cantwell, Mary

Last Updated: Aug-17-2001
Annotated by:
Dittrich, Lisa

Primary Category: Literature / Nonfiction

Genre: Memoir

Summary:

In the second volume of her trilogy of memoirs (which begins with American Girl and ends with Speaking with Strangers), Mary Cantwell, a former fashion magazine editor and writer, describes her marriage, the birth of her two daughters, her career advancements, and her divorce, with Manhattan in the 1950s as the backdrop.

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Soft Fruit

Dykstra, Russell; Andreef, Christina; Haft, Linal; Lemon, Genevieve

Last Updated: Jun-11-2001
Annotated by:
Dittrich, Lisa

Primary Category: Performing Arts / Film, TV, Video

Genre: Film

Summary:

Patsy (Genevieve Lemon), a middle-aged wife and mother of three grown daughters and a son (Russell Dykstra), is dying of cancer. Her children return home to spend time with and care for their mother in her final days. Each family member and Patsy's sometimes charming, sometimes abusive husband, Vic (Linal Haft), must face conflicts past and present as well as reconcile themselves to their mother's dying.

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Vaccination

Rivera, Diego

Last Updated: Feb-16-2000
Annotated by:
Dittrich, Lisa

Primary Category: Visual Arts / Painting/Drawing

Genre: Charcoal

Summary:

This sketch is teeming with images: in what appears to be a science lab, two researchers stand in the background, surrounded by gray lab equipment; one peers into a microscope. In the bottom of the frame a horse and cow flank three sheep. At the center stands a muscular baby, loosely draped in a white cloth and held up by a nurse in a white apron and cap. To his left stands a rather grim looking doctor, who holds the baby's arm with one hand and injects a vaccine with the other.

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The Attentive Nurse

Chardin, Jean Baptiste Siméon

Last Updated: Feb-16-2000
Annotated by:
Dittrich, Lisa

Primary Category: Visual Arts / Painting/Drawing

Genre: Oil on canvas

Summary:

A woman in apron, cap, and long skirts stands at a small table, the long handle of a pot resting on her left arm. She appears to be shelling an egg for, presumably, an invalid. On the table before her is a plate with another egg on it, a loaf of bread, and a pitcher and goblet. The background is dark, and the image of the nurse and the table seem to glow warmly in contrast. The woman is intent on her task and appears unhurried.

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