Sophia, this is kind of tangential, but an acquaintance of mine who works in a costume shop at my former place of employment has a blog you might find interesting: [link] Lots of detailed info on the rigs she makes, and hats, and safety, and reducing the water needed for dying, and all kinds of things. She teaches MFA students, among other things.

I found most fascinating the dynamics between the author and the family. It was a nice change from the "white person swoops in and saves the black people" narrative.

Absolutely. And the deep suspicion the family had about Skloot herself. And the insane duration of the relationship. So much of it is riveting.

Also, David, thank you for the nice comment on my "mastery". I have been feeling more and more that what I have to learn now has more to do with sharing what I know and how I do that than learning new skills, although there are certainly skills that I lack. But as a broad-based costume person, I know at least a little bit about how to do a lot of things. And if I just keep doing those things and don't share them, I am doing my students a disservice.

Sophia, this is kind of tangential, but an acquaintance of mine who works in a costume shop at my former place of employment has a blog you might find interesting: [link] Lots of detailed info on the rigs she makes, and hats, and safety, and reducing the water needed for dying, and all kinds of things. She teaches MFA students, among other things.

Thank you! I will check it out! It looks really nteresting.

Is HaNa is first two initials of first and last name, ita?

Yup. His login ID is first name and two initials of his last name, so it's not much of a stretch.

I think I have a chocolate addiction.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is fantastic. My favorite part of the book was Skloot's relationship with the family. I also highly recommend The Emperor of All Maladies for a fascinating history of cancer treatment.

And the storm damage continues. Got woken up at 11:30 by a cute dude banging on my door informing me I'm about to lose power. Now I can't sleep as they cut the tree down from my line and keeping hearing thumps from the street that sound like they're right outside my door as the tree hits ground piece by piece.

I also highly recommend The Emperor of All Maladies for a fascinating history of cancer treatment.

This is on my TBR list. I keep picking it up at the store. I should just put it on reserve at the library. I love nonfiction!

I want to go read sophias thing but not on my phone.

At yoga, my teacher was talking about the fact that her friend went to Deepak Chopra's We Care which, with a regiment of juice fasts and daily colonics, people cure cancer or at least prolongs terminal cancer patient's lives. My yoga teacher was deeply skeptical of that claim and said her friend went because she wanted to lose another 25 lbs. I mean, cures cancer AND encourages anorexia!

OMG, this is the thing that bugs me most about some of the teachers at my yoga--like, no, I don't believe that breathing is somehow removing toxins, nor do I think that a sip of water at the wrong moment is going to ruin the benefits and not "activate my thyroid". Or whatever.

A couple of decades ago at my media monitoring job, I had the "joy" of listening to nationally broadcast talk radio. I heard Rush Limbaugh's first shows! (I always think, "I could have stopped him somehow, before he got too powerful." Kind of like killing Hitler as a child.)

I was listening to Dr. Atkins' show, with him touting his mega-supplements and chelation therapies. He got a call from a woman who was in the actual cancer ward where her husband was dying. Sobbing, she wanted to know why all the vitamin therapies and everything hadn't helped. Dr. Atkins calmly told her that if the cancer had already begun growing, then starting the therapies would make it worse. "You mean--I did this to him?" she said, crying even harder. "Yes, you may have," that paragon of bedside manner told her, before starting a spiel telling people they should start these treatments anyway, just in case.

It's hard to do your job when you're nauseous with fury.