Reading Jackie OrrI have just heard a performance by Jackie Orr from Syracuse University.
She is exploring the manufacture and encouragement of "Panic" in post war North America. She is an academic and a feminist who has looked at issues related to "hysteria" and "panic" in a very holistic way. She actually included herself in a drug study for a medication for panic disorder and studied the researchers.
Her work draws heavily from the kind of information that I was spoon fed as a child. She reads through recordings from my childhood that were constantly reminding us to "duck and cover". There was one recording with cartoon like music that I remember very clearly telling a child what to do if they were alone when the nuclear bomb went off.
She has compared the manufacture of panic by the American government at that time to the ridiculous panic encouraged after 9-11.
I have lived through both times. I was born into the "Cold War" and spent my young childhood learning safe routes out of the prairie city I lived in.
My school regularily sent us scrambling home to the sound of air-raid sirens. My mother had emergency bags packed at all times and nearly everyone with a new house built a bomb shelter.
Worse yet...nuclear bombs were tested in Nevada and the "nuclear winds" blew over our city a day or so later. We were warned to stay indoors and not to eat the snow! We are refered to as "downwinders" and many have contracted cancer including me.
No bomb ever came except from the American nuclear testing.
Jackie Orr has documented and analysed this time in the most complete and sensitive way. Her book is Panic Diaries:A Genealogy of Panic Disorders Durham, NC Duke University Press. Feb 2006.
No wonder I burn things when making my textiles.
She is exploring the manufacture and encouragement of "Panic" in post war North America. She is an academic and a feminist who has looked at issues related to "hysteria" and "panic" in a very holistic way. She actually included herself in a drug study for a medication for panic disorder and studied the researchers.
Her work draws heavily from the kind of information that I was spoon fed as a child. She reads through recordings from my childhood that were constantly reminding us to "duck and cover". There was one recording with cartoon like music that I remember very clearly telling a child what to do if they were alone when the nuclear bomb went off.
She has compared the manufacture of panic by the American government at that time to the ridiculous panic encouraged after 9-11.
I have lived through both times. I was born into the "Cold War" and spent my young childhood learning safe routes out of the prairie city I lived in.
My school regularily sent us scrambling home to the sound of air-raid sirens. My mother had emergency bags packed at all times and nearly everyone with a new house built a bomb shelter.
Worse yet...nuclear bombs were tested in Nevada and the "nuclear winds" blew over our city a day or so later. We were warned to stay indoors and not to eat the snow! We are refered to as "downwinders" and many have contracted cancer including me.
No bomb ever came except from the American nuclear testing.
Jackie Orr has documented and analysed this time in the most complete and sensitive way. Her book is Panic Diaries:A Genealogy of Panic Disorders Durham, NC Duke University Press. Feb 2006.
No wonder I burn things when making my textiles.
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