The idea of a story about a person with dementia is one that I have toyed with over the past few months. One obvious reason for this would be because my grandfather lived with a form of dementia for the last four years of his life, making this a very personal experience for me, especially watching the way my grandparent’s relationship changed and was challenged. What struck me then was that they continued to love each other but I could see that my grandmother was exhausted physically and emotionally, especially towards the end. In fact in 3rd year at uni I wrote and co-produced a radio drama based on this experience- very amateur and not something I’ll be publishing here!

I suppose I’m also drawn to this as a story because of my interest in memory and relationships. There is something powerful in the way that memory, space and time are muddled and confused for people with dementia, which is so difficult for loved ones to cope with.

Erica Heilman has produced a beautiful documentary exploring one family’s experience of dealing with dementia is available for podcast at transom.org. She also wrote an article about the process of putting together an emotional and personal story in a way that is “meditative”. I certainly could relate to the challenges she faced, especially when she was given advice to seek “conflict”. Her article is well worth a read though I think I was hoping for more reflection about the particular challenges of these kinds of stories.

Yes, my first ever radio feature/documentary has been taken up by ABC’s AWAYE! program. After what seems like YEARS ( but not quite!) the pieces seem to be finally falling into place.

Regulars may remember the planning stages of this project, working with Koorie community members as well as the  Jewish community which last year resulted in a short 12,000 words looking at alternative practices of documentary production.

The project has certainly moved on in the last few months with extra interviews from William Cooper’s grandson, Uncle Boydie Turner, and great-grandson, Kevin Russell. We jump onboard as these two men journey back to Cummerganja (means “Our Home” in Yorta Yorta language) to revisit the gravesite of William Cooper, an activist campaigning for Aboriginal Rights around the 1930s. Along the way we learn about his work to protest against Jewish persecution and hear about the Jewish community’s response.

Listen out for the program which is likely to be broadcast on ABC Radio National later this year.

Ironically, this cute Disney mash-up about copyright is right at home on you tube!

It was with mixed feelings that I recieved the news of the Khmer Rouge Trial beginning last week. Justice is value to which humanity must aspire but perhaps not without it’s own sense of pain of memory, trauma and loss of the irreplaceable.

In 2004 I spent quite a bit of time in the region and at the time wrote in an article published in the local paper, “It was Cambodia that stole my heart”. I remember being struck by the harmony of the place, mixed with a strong wiff of memory and dysfuntion. One day I spent hours playing with a group of gorgeous kids in a village after a day on the back of a motorbike. My driver invited me back to his home and before long there was a collection of dark curious eyes following me, playing cat and mouse behind my back before we tumbled into games of soccer, piggy back and shoulder rides, and crude lessons in photography with my camera. I sat for a breather for a cup of tea and a chat when the conversation lightly turned to the family members missing due to the genocide. It seemed to me that these facts were repeated tranfered in this manner with the many others who I spent time with along the way. These people were emotionally spent.

I also remember the feeling of vomit rising in my throat at the killing fields and Tuol Seng in particular.

Perhaps Cambodia was my entre to a need to explore the ghosts of trauma among survivors, how we heal and what aids the healing process. War crimes trial may be one way, Truth and Reconciliation Tribunals, Apologies, compensation, therapy. I don’t have answers to such questions, except what people have told me: speaking, being heard, being acknowledged, being supported, sharing pain and having a future.

These episodes move survivor groups to vow, “never again” but horrifically, as a global community we seem to watch the same story line replayed over and over again only with different characters, different locations. To this again all I can say is that I have no answer and that like everyone else, my eternal question is simply “why”.

Also read responses from Khmer people, News reports and a resource from Yale University

I feel I can’t write without some mention of the awful tragedy which has befallen my state of Victoria. Everyone knows someone who has been affected and in that respect we have all been affected. But even as I sit here to write I feel there are very few words to say.

At work we have struggled to find a way to describe the way we all feel: flat was the closest we came. But all week there have been snippets of news coming in. Some of it throws us back into sadness and depression; the loss of a home, a friend’s family. Other stories form the lifeblood that keeps us living and growing together as a community; the way a foster carer I know has spent her days and nights serving tea, coffee and snacks, colleuges who are volunteering through giving grief counselling to victims and families, not to mention the CFA.

And the question on all our lips, “How could this happen?” What would move someone to cause such devastation and how could such an illness go unnoticed and untreated? How could we be so poorly prepared after two hundred years of living on this country? What should we learn from this, or from our Indigenous brothers and sisters who have a level of sophisication in their knowledge of this kind of management that I can’t begin to grasp? What in the world can we do about it now.

It seems bad taste to think about what could have been done but I did hear an interesting interview on the radio which promoted the use of dug-outs which is attributed to saving many lives in the 1939 Black Friday fires. Certainly I would suggest it sounds like a far smarter idea than the fire-corridors suggested by Brumby. If there is one thing I believe strongly in it’s that we as inhabitants of this land must learn how to adapt to nature, not try to shape nature to fit in with us. Nature will always win that battle.

I’m pleased to report that I survived the grueling conclusion to my Honours year. After taking the liberty of a wonderful summer break I’m back, blogging again and producing again.

I’m picking up after Honours finished in late 2008 with the Cooper tale- interviews planned this week. The story has certainly grown some legs though with The Age reporting the story Nov ‘08, followed by a hugely successful event at Parliament House (Melbourne) on December 2nd to commemorate William Cooper. I managed to collect some real gems from the night from a number of William Cooper’s descendants who had really interesting things to say so I’m really excited about cutting those together and seeing where it leads.

A half-hour documentary was produced and assessed for  Honours and, happily, it was well received  by the examiners. The goal for the coming weeks is to seel the deal with an hour program for radio and online.

Way across the other side of the world another historic apology has taken place. Reading through the comments its amazing to see the same sentiments being raised in response to a governmental apology to Aboriginal peoples for past injustices sanctioned by government policy. It shouldn’t have come as a surprise I suppose the similarities were quite startling for me to read. Even though of course I was very aware of similar kinds of histories elsewhere in the world, I found myself thinking, surely no one could have botched things up as much as we did, surely ours was a once off mistake?

In a way it would be comforting to think that Australia is the only nation struggling to grapple with the ugly elements of our past but of course we are just one of many.

Most people’s brains turn off when they are sleeping. Unfortunately mine doesn’t.

I’ve tried many things to help, I’ve changed my bed, I’ve started going to the gym, gone to bed earlier, gone to bed later, but still I continue to work at my day problems during my sleep, then wake up to find that the essay I wrote/feature I edited/training I ran for the past 6 hours had no material form and disappears before my open eyes. Its very annoying, not only becasue it disappears but because I wake up exhausted and faced with the challenge of writing/editing/running it again.

Last night I dreamt quite a nice metaphor though; I was in a place crossed between The Kimberly and Nepal and was part of a scientific group who arrived at a beautiful secluded pond. The biologists wanted to know what life lived in on the water bed so they took a little piece of a log from the bottom of the pond and examined the little organisms living on it. They were saying it was just a little piece which would give a good idea of the rest of the pond and since they didn’t have the time to comb the whole waterbed it would have to do, but they stressed it was important to remember that they could never downplay the complexity of what existed in the rest of the pond, that they little piece of log was just one fragment which might be similar to the whole, or could be comepletly different. 

I dreamt about representation.

From then on things got weird- Libby was there, Jon H was there, Jon got angry at me when I fell asleep in a landmark mock court which had some of Australia’s most famous judges presiding over it, and it was an outdoor setup that we had arrived to in a small early-model light plane. I think we flew from the Kimberly to the court in Nepal. 

Now that I’m awake, its probably time to get some useful work done.     

Blogger Raja Petra goes to jail for Altantuya « * SUSAN LOONE’s blog *

Krystyn Media blogs in support of “Native Americans & First Peoples as Artists & Filmmakers. Promoting ARTS ADVOCACY. Film | TV | Theater | Radio ~USA ~Canada ~Australia”

Many interesting links including this rich post.