Death, Aging, Fear: What They Mean To Me.

1).Death:

To many people death means the ending of life. But to others like Christians, Buddhists and Hindus it means the start of a new life in some sort of heaven or new world or reincarnation. But to others it just simply means the ending of life with no new lives, second chances and no reincarnations.

But to me death is scary. To me death means that the lights go out and then nothing for the rest of eternity. I would rather die of old age and have time to prepare myself for my eventual death instead of it being unexpected and my life cut short.

 

2). Aging:

Age is an opportunity to develop Character, narrow down our preferences, and try out the things in life which we enjoy. Once we have done enough we have the opportunity to pass on what we have learnt and aim to leave a legacy behind in some way. As T S Eliot once said, it is about going back to where we first started and seeing it for the first time.

 

3). Fear:

Fear is not the absence of courage. Actually, it is most often a deliberate attempt by the brain to avoid a situation that it is not comfortable with. Imagine this. If you were asked to sing aloud on the road at gunpoint or get shot, I am sure you will not hesitate to sing. That is your brain prioritizing and picking an option that is more comfortable than the other.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Lindy Hop

The Lindy hop is an American dance that evolved in Harlem, New York City, in the 1920s and 1930s and originally evolved with the jazz music of that time. It was very popular during the Swing era of the late 1930s and early 1940s. Lindy was a fusion of many dances that preceded it or were popular during its development but is mainly based on jazz, tap, breakaway, and Charleston. It is frequently described as a jazz dance and is a member of the swing dance family.

In its development, the Lindy hop combined elements of both partnered and solo dancing by using the movements and improvisation of black dances along with the formal eight-count structure of European partner dances – most clearly illustrated in the Lindy’s basic step, the swingout. In this step’s open position, each dancer is generally connected hand-to-hand; in its closed position, leads and follows are connected as though in an embrace.

There was renewed interest in the dance in the 1980s from American, Swedish, and British dancers and the Lindy hop is now represented by dancers and loosely affiliated grass-roots organizations in North America, South America, Europe, Asia, and Oceania.

Lindy hop is sometimes referred to as a street dance, referring to its improvisational and social nature.

The Tango

Tango, a distinctive dance and the corresponding musical style of tango music, began in the working-class port neighborhoods of Buenos Aires (Argentina); and years later in Montevideo, Uruguay; the area of the Rio de la Plata.

The dance derives from the Cuban habanera, the Argentine milonga and candombe, and is said to contain elements from the African community in Buenos Aires, influenced both by ancient African rhythms and the music from Europe.

In Argentina, the word Tango seems to have first been used in the 1890s. In 1902 the Teatro Opera started to include tango in their balls.^[8] Initially tango was just one of the many available local dances, but it soon became popular throughout society, as theatres and street barrel organs spread it from the suburbs to the working-class slums, which were packed with hundreds of thousands of European immigrants. The development of Tango had influences from the cultures of several peoples that came together in these melting pots of ethnicities. For this reason Tango is often referred to as the music of the immigrants to Argentina.^[5]

During the period 1903–1910 over a third of the 1,000 gramophone records released were of tango music, and tango sheet music sold in large quantities.^[8] In 1910 the bandoneon was introduced to Buenos Aires from Germany and it became linked inextricably with tango music from then on. In 1912, Juan “Pacho” Maglio was very popular with his recorded tangos featuring the bandoneon accompanied by flute, violin and guitar. Between 1910 and 1920, tango featured on 2,500 of the 5,500 records released.^[8]

By 1912, dancers and musicians from Buenos Aires travelled to Europe and the first European tango craze took place in Paris, soon followed by London, Berlin, and other capitals. Towards the end of 1913 it hit New York in the USA, and Finland. These exported versions of Tango were modified to have less body contact (“Ballroom Tango”); however, the dance was still thought shocking by many, as had earlier been the case with dances such as the Waltz. In 1922 guidelines were first set for the “English” (international) style of ballroom tango, but it lost popularity in Europe to new dances including the Foxtrot and Samba, and as dancing as a whole declined due to the growth of cinema.

Celtic Burials and Death

Because the end of the film “Tuesdays with Morrie” ends with the eventual death of Morrie we were asked to research a culture of our choice and how they view death and their burial customs.

The culture/people I chose were the Celts.

For a warrior people the most honorable death was to die in battle. Depending on the time period and which tribe you were in, you might be buried, cremated or have your ashes buried. In pre-Christian times, many graves contained items needed for the next world, from chariots and weapons to food, wine, money and clothing.

Pre-Roman Britain
According to the poems of Homer and the accounts of Caesar, on the Continent the Celtic dead were burned on a pyre. Sheep and oxen were slain and their fat was placed on the body, their carcasses around it. Jars of honey and oil placed around the body. Beloved horses, dogs and slaves were slain, their bodies piled on top. The whole was lit on fire. The dead were addressed by name and people wailed in mourning. When the fire was extinguished with wine, the “whitened bones” were taken out and laid in a gold urn. The urn was then buried with a mound over it. There is no record of this practice in the myths of Britain or Ireland

A body was washed and wrapped in a death shirt, called an Eslene. The body was laid out with burning candles or rushes around it in the home for seven days. People would keen over the dead and/or praise him or her. Three days after the body was laid out, a feast/games was held in his/her honor. The body had a bowl placed on the chest into which people would place food and coins for the dead to use in the next life.

Roman Britain

Under Roman rule, the Britons adopted Roman burial practices. Roman graveyards were usually located outside of the city. Romans practiced inhumation (burial) rather than cremation. They set up memorial stones (kind of like our headstones) to mark the resting place of the dead, but these weren’t always done of out love; sometimes they served to warn passersby of plague or other ways they could die in a nearby town.

These memorial markers usually followed a prescribed pattern:  They always began by addressing the god of the shades/death, then talked about the life of the dead person, and ended with the name of the person to commissioned the marker. Some were very elaborate in their stories of the dead, while others were simple memorials.

Post-Roman Britain
With the fall of the Roman Empire, burial practices took on what we would come to see as a distinctly Christian tone. Cemeteries were allowed inside of cities, and became a communal meeting place, with churches springing up in their midst, as we think of today. Some churchyards had special areas in the northern corner reserved for murder victims and soldiers who died in battle, none of whom would have received last rites.

Graves were oriented west-east. West was the direction of the Otherworld and also Christians believed that this positioning allowed the dead to face Christ when he raised them on Resurrection Day. Single person burials were the norm, with the dead person’s head facing west. Sometimes a mother and child were buried together, but mass graves were not common. Grave goods were not found during this time. Bodies could have been laid in the bare earth, in a stone coffin or a hollowed out log, but coffins were rare.

Ireland
There was a very early (pre-history) practice of piling stones over the dead person’s body rather than digging a grave. Later in time, the Irish buried their dead in three types of tombs:

1. Portal tomb: A number of upright stones covered by one or two capstones and sometimes placed in a long or round mound.
2. Passage tomb: Round mounds with burial chambers in the center which were reached by a passage leading in from the edge of the mound.
3. Wedge tombs (found in area of Munster): A type of chamber tomb where the chamber narrows at one end.

These could hold either bodies or ashes from cremation. When the body was buried, the arms of the dead person could be loose at the sides or placed over the pubic area. The Irish did not use a burial shroud until around the 700s.

Scotland
Compared to other areas, there is less evidence of Pictish burial customs. There are four main types of graves:

1. Cairns – Burial mounds
2. Cists – Stone lined burial chambers
3. Barrows – Mounds of earth or stone built up over bodies
4. Platform graves – A flat, wide circular mound (sometimes surrounded by a ditch).

The Picts buried their dead in a supine position. Scottish graves have been found with scattered small white stones (quartz), believed to ease the passage to the afterlife.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ALS EVALUATION

After watching the film “Tuesdays with Morrie” our religion class was given a project to do. Its about a sports commentator who meets with his old college professor after about 20 years when he finds out he is dying of the disease ALS (Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis).

ALS or Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and the spinal cord. Motor neurons reach from the brain to the spinal cord and from the spinal cord to the muscles throughout the body. The progressive degeneration of the motor neurons in ALS eventually leads to their death. When the motor neurons  die, the ability of the brain to initiate and control muscle movement is lost. With voluntary muscle action progressively affected, patients in the later stages of the disease may become totally paralyzed.

ALS usually strikes people between the ages of 40 and 70, and approximately 20,000 Americans can have the disease at any given time.For unknown reasons, military veterans are approximately twice as likely to be diagnosed with the disease than the general public.

Notable individuals who have been diagnosed with ALS include baseball great Lou Gehrig, theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author Stephen Hawking, Hall of Fame pitcher Jim “Catfish” Hunter, Toto bassist Mike Porcaro, Senator Jacob Javits, actor David Niven, “Sesame Street” creator Jon Stone, boxing champion Ezzard Charles, NBA Hall of Fame basketball player George Yardley.