Browsing by Subject "Death"
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Item The Dead Can’t Dance(University Of Virginia, 2003-12-12) Pekarske, NicoleItem Dead Wood: Growing, Wasting, and Harvesting Baltimore's Urban Forest(2020-01-20) shcheglovitova, Mariya; Biehler, Dawn; Lansing, David; Geography and Environmental Systems; Geography and Environmental SystemsUS cities are ?going green,? evoking utopian images of tree lined streets, lush parks, and swimmable waterways. But as a practice, ?going green? is messy. When sustainability advocates attempt to green cities they inevitably build upon histories and politics of land use in ways that can perpetuate injustices. Yet greening and sustainability continue to serve as buzzwords for city planners with the assumption that these conceptual approaches will guide better urban futures. In this dissertations I critically address these claims by exploring how greening initiatives are transforming Baltimore, MD, USA. I study greening initiatives from an unlikely perspective: death and loss. I investigate the emergence of a new urban forestry that promotes planting trees and harvesting houses in Baltimore'sBlack majority neighborhoods. I specifically focus on a pilot project being implemented by the United States Forest Service (USFS) in Baltimore to bring USFS expertise of timber harvest and land restoration into the city. Through interviews with forestry and sustainability professionals, neighborhood residents, artists, and housing activists, I investigate the uneven geographies and ecologies of dead and decaying trees and neighborhoods and the current and historical processes of care, disinvestment, representation, and governance that lead to these conditions. By focusing on federal interventions in tree death in the context of community abandonment, this dissertations explores the uneven power dynamics and slow violence that can underpin sustainability programs that are portrayed as always already having overcome inequality.Item DEATH, TAKE MY HAND: ENDING LIFE WITH DIGNITY, COMPASSION AND COURAGE(2017-07-06) Ramsey-Jevne, Juanita; Hylton, Wil S.; Orange, Michelle; MFA in Creative NonfictionDeath, Take My Hand is a memoir about witnessing death in many forms, told without pathos, and with a surprising degree of beauty and joy. The main thread traces first my mother-in-law in 2014, then my husband in 2017, as they each used Washington State’s Death with Dignity law (RCW 70.245) to meet their respective deaths. Part One follows my 91 year-old mother-in-law in her unrelenting—and at times humorous—attempt to age well, leaving no mess behind her, until cancer finally became the winning ticket that allowed her to exit a life that was complete. Part Two is the story of the last months of my husband’s decades long battle against his Vietnam Agent Orange-caused prostate cancer and his determination—and our sometimes wild adventures— as he tried to wring every last drop of juice from life. And in both sections, is the story of me, the witness, the caregiver, the midwife, learning as fast as I could to face the fear, speak the hard words, welcome Death into the room, and, most important of all, resist the urge to save lives past saving. Note posted on fridge: DO NOT CALL 911. Death, Take My Hand also explores the many faces of death in the lives of myself, my husband, and my mother-in-law. It shares the terrible casualties of my husband’s platoon members in Vietnam through the letters he wrote home; the tragic loss of my mother-in-law’s husband to Alzheimer’s told through her emails to her pen-pal; and my somewhat mystical path to reconciliation with my formerly abusive, mentally ill mother in the last days before she died. Death, Take My Hand is a story of will in many forms: the will to live; the will to die; personal will; political will; the will to fulfill commitments; the will to subjugate one’s personal desires to serve others; the will to forgive; the will to transform. It is a story of relationships—between husbands, wives, children, parents, grandparents, in-laws, friends, doctors, patients, medications, side effects and human bodies. Most important of all, it is a story of how consciously embracing death opens hearts to life, and love.Item A Self Prospective(2017-05-10) Staples, Tracy; Burns, Laura; Worteck, Edward; Wells, Juliette; Center for Art and Media - Art; Bachelor's DegreeOne woman's reflections on her childhood, traumas, struggles, and successes.Item The City Of The Dead For Colored People: Baltimore's Mount Auburn Cemetery, 1807-2012(2013) Fletcher, Kami; Newman-Ham, Debra Newman; History and Geography; Doctor of PhilosophyThe City of the Dead for Colored People: The Creation of Mount Auburn Cemetery explores the common theme of African American history-the struggle for freedom and autonomy-via the African American cemetery. This study first focuses on how African Americans in Baltimore, MD agitated and succeeded in establishing African American burial rights. Secondly, it argues that these burial rights led to African Americans obtaining freedom and autonomy. This study is specifically situated on Mount Auburn Cemetery, located in South Baltimore, and examines the numerous social and historical factors that shaped, transformed, and ultimately led to a small African American burial ground becoming a thirty-four acre cemetery, a social institution, and a business. Starting in 1807, seven African Americans bought two and one-fourth acres of land giving African Americans, free and enslaved, a right to freedom through death. African Americans could not control their enslaved and marginalized lives, but they could control their deaths. Post emancipation, the cemetery strategized a moved to South Baltimore, bought more land, and created a symbiotic relationship with a newly formed African American community by the name of Hullsville. The cemetery professionalized and became a business paving the way for independent African American morticians. It is important to note that this dissertation is not a narrow history of some obscure cemetery that fell into disarray. Instead, it places Mount Auburn Cemetery as a unit of analysis in order to do the following: a) illustrate the historical significance of Mount Auburn Cemetery to the African American community; b) study nineteenth century and twentieth century race relations between Blacks and Whites, especially the relationship involved within the origins of the cemetery; c) understand the significance of African American cultural norms and the interconnectedness of death and funerary practices within the Black community.Item To hold and be held: engaging with suffering at end of life through a consideration of personal writing(Routledge, 2017) Hanrahan, Kelsey B.; Towson University. Department of Geography & Environmental Planning