Outreach for the Cemetery · Hannah Suzanna · MFA, Digital + Media 2021

For Prairie Creek Conservation Cemetery (PCCC), I called hospital chaplains and hospice organizations in Alachua County to see if they would be interested in a staff presentation about PCCC and different body disposition options that many people are unaware of. The cemetery is in an interesting place where more people are tuning into their presence, both due to rising awareness of environmental death practices and due to an increase of death planning as a result of COVID-19. This is leading to them getting more reservations for burial plots at the cemetery, but not the same rate of increase of burials (although burial rate has gone up as well). If the reservation rate stays high, particularly for people who will be alive for 30-50 more years, the cemetery will cease to be a resource for at-need burials. This would be unfortunate because, in addition to being environmentally supportive, PCCC offers the most affordable burial option in the area — only $2000 for the plot and burial. Even with funeral home expenses, someone can have a burial for easily less than $4000 which, while in my opinion should be covered by social programs for everyone, is still strikingly lower than the national average $8000–$10,000.

Because of this, the cemetery wants to reach local end of life organizations who are working with individuals and families who are likely to have a death soon. However, cold calling for a staff presentation was ineffective. In talking with one of the cemetery’s board members, who also is a lead nurse in a local hospital, she explained that medical workers are being asked to manage their usual tasks as well as new COVID-19 protocols. Scheduling an additional meeting for staff is unrealistic. However, through doing the outreach more organizations became at least passingly familiar with Prairie Creek Conservation Cemetery, which will hopefully translate to more of their clients becoming informed about the cemetery and make it easier for the cemetery to connect in the future.

The most effective form of outreach was inviting people who had already expressed interest in the cemetery to one-off presentations, virtually hosted by PCCC itself. Those invited included funeral home workers, cemetery volunteers who also work in medicine, board members, university students researching conservation burials, and community members. At the end of the presentations we expressed interest in presenting for more groups, and received leads for future outreach. If I had had more time there I would have worked with them on adapting this presentation for continuing education units required to maintain medical licenses such as nursing. This would have required adding a layer of granularity regarding where different body disposition options were available locally, as well as more precision around pricing and environmental impacts for lesser known options (such as donating to a forensic body farm or liquid cremation). 

Recentering an Abolitionist Framework – Satya Varghese Mac, BFA Sculpture, 2020

Since the second week of August I’ve been able to work in person twice per week on certain work that cannot leave the SRLP office. Since staff are on a staggered schedule, I have been able to take safety measures including working in a private separately ventilated room. 

Though it absolutely changes the relationship to my work and the scope of my involvement, working in person while adhering to important safety measures to prevent the transmission of COVID-19 limits my ability to build connections with my supervisors, other staff, and community members. This work is so community and consensus based that this has been a challenging aspect of our reality for the entire organization. 

My supervisors have graciously offered me numerous professional development resources including sending me to the Groundswell Fund’s Grassroots Organizing Institute virtual convening where I took part in workshops about digital organizing, mutual aid, updates from movement organizations around the country, and training on direct action.

As a part of the Shelter Organizing Team’s Campaign for Safe Shelter, I have been working on our correspondence with stakeholders to follow up on demands for improving the conditions for trans and gendernonconforming (TGNC) people in shelter. As with any organizing strategy, at some point you must take a step back and reassess the efficacy of your action. Moving past one year of correspondence with city agencies, the Shelter Organizing Team is reassessing and noticing that staying at the table and keeping a passive engagement is not bringing the results that we need to end the systematic harm perpetuated against TGNC people.

My involvement has continued on the report based on the work and experiences of the Prisoner Advisory Committee, and  I have been able to contribute in a writing capacity by helping to re-evaluate and re-write the policy recommendations to make them align better with SRLP’s abolitionist and non-compromising agenda. 

With all of this work, I find that my perspective and training as an artist with a RISD education has served me most in my eye and intuition for narrative. We are working with the very personal realities of trauma, resilience, and lived experience, and it can be difficult to hold the individual and their narrative experience when trying to reach policymakers and potential allies. Although the realities may be incommunicable, it is my responsibility as a storyteller to begin to bring these realities out of the abstract.

“Interwoven Journey” -Valeria Ramirez Ensastiga MA NCSS ‘21

This is the final week of my internship with THP – Mexico. I have had learnings in all senses: from working completely online for the first time to knowing how to talk about the preservation of traditional knowledge without idealizing its fossilization. I am definitely grateful to the RISD Maharam Fellowship, which has allowed me to live this extraordinary experience even in the midst of the pandemic.

Although the recommendation when writing nonfiction for children is to avoid mixing with fiction, we decided that it was important to respond to the indigenuos ‘oraliteratura’ (which is the fact that orality and the use of storytelling is the natural mode of transmission of knowledge among indigenous and rural communities). Thus, the final product is a tale that explains different aspects of sustainable development, coupled with some activities specifically designed to invite the children and their families to reflect about how to achieve a more ecological life.

The story narrates the encounter between Zazil, a girl who lives in a rural community in the jungle, and a jaguar with her cub with the aim of  showing the interconnection between humans, other species and their natural environment. In each of its 12 sections, one different topic is reviewed, explaining the current situation and the necessity to achieve a local sustainable development. Some of the topics are: water, waste reduction, indigenous languages ​​and non-discrimination, traditional food and health, among others.

After several reviews by both, the THP team in Mexico City and some of the youth community leaders (catalysts), the result was two booklets. The children’s booklet contains Zazil’s story, and the catalyst booklet includes the tale plus 4 other sections. The first of these sections contains suggested activities to help children reflect more on the topic covered in each chapter. The second section is a table with data on the topic at the individual, community and global levels. The third section suggests an exercise of deep reflection for the child (and her/his family) to diagnose her (their) own current situation and thus, create a beginning in visualizing changes at the individual and family level that can be carried out to contribute to a sustainable development.  Finally, the fourth section is a list of tips that people can easily follow and share with others in their community. The THP-Mexico team also plans to use the illustrations in this last section to spread the tips through WhatsApp with the other adults that the organization works with.

The illustrations are simple shapes and the selected colors allow the image to be easily understood even though they are printed in black and white, because I figured that some of the young leaders would do the physical distribution within their communities and, for now at least, they will pay the cost of printing, making black and white printing a better option for them. The THP team is looking into funding other alliances to translate the material to some indigenous languages and to do a good quality printing of the material when the pandemic is over. 

This last week I’ve been dedicated to finishing the illustrations and polishing some editorial details that the THP team has observed. Maybe after testing it in the field THP, will need to make some adaptations according to the feedback they get. For now, I am very happy with the results that were obtained because I believe that these will help the catalysts to appropriate the content; transmit it to the children and; also, to spread it within the families of these little ones.

Week 10 & 11: Finishing Transient Stillness and Choreography of Light – Yunni Cho, BRDD 21′

<Transient Stillness>

Transient Stillness is focused on the poetic and abstract nature of daylight and its beauty. It started with my own personal observation of the sky in my neighborhood due to the physical restrictions I faced with the current pandemic. The project was realized by simply trying many different methods to document what I saw and how I felt in response to each and every moment I had with daylight. The result of those experimentations is this book.

Rather than focusing on the objective information or the universal truth, my project communicates a very personal – in fact, quite narrow – point of view towards daylight. By sharing my own perception in this way, I hope to share my appreciation and passion for natural light with others. The use of different techniques attempts to recreate the four visual properties of daylight, analyzing each layer separately. In real life, all four properties occur almost simultaneously to create our vision, which often makes us forget the value of a single property on its own. Through the separation of the properties, I wanted to show the beauty that is unique to each property, allowing the viewers to rethink and evaluate their own perception of light in a similar manner.

This project is about sharing my personal thoughts and experiences. But it can also serve as a guide to follow. For each technique I used, I included a few reference pictures of the daylight conditions I depicted in order to show the whole process of my analysis. I hope these pictures make the drawings more approachable and accessible to understand how they were produced, as they show a snapshot of what I saw at that particular moment. 

We see daylight almost everyday, and yet we rarely find time in our busy lives to appreciate its power and beauty. As this project shows, our natural light constantly changes its form, color, position in space, and movement. In other words, every moment of our daylight is unique and special. 

My ultimate goal for Transient Stillness is to allow one to find more beauty and appreciation in their daily interactions with light. Along with my drawings and pictures, I also included a few quotes from other architects, interior designers, and lighting professionals to provide a wider platform and range of  perspectives to discuss natural light. This project has not ended yet. Indeed, this is just a beginning to start a longer discussion about daylight by inviting others to reflect and share their versions of daylight. Transient Stillness will change and evolve as much as daylight itself.

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<Choreography of Light>

In my research, I came across essays on public narrative written by Marshall Ganz in 2008 for Harvard Kennedy School. In this article, Ganz talks about how to effectively create a shared story through a story of self, us, and now. He states that through the narrative story of ‘self’ and ‘us’, one can build a sense of community. Similarly, through the story of ‘us’ and ‘now’, urgency gets formed and ‘purpose’ arises from the story of ‘self’ and ‘now’. I think his logic on public narrative is a perfect fit for the Choreography of Light. 

A story of self emerges from our lighting – what has shaped ‘me’ – as it reflects one’s individual perception of their surroundings. The chapters on lighting design for architectural spaces shape a story of ‘us’ – about our shared values and experience – forming the connection between lighting and spatial experience, shaping the community of place. The chapters on the excessive use of artificial light in a city and the problem of light pollution is the story of ‘now’ – about strategies  and actions – asking for a solution to urgency. 

By borrowing Ganz’s method to organize different chapters, I wanted to achieve simplicity. I organized each chapter in the same order using the same medium. Every chapter starts with a source picture, which is then digitally analyzed to show different layers of lighting, followed by an essay about a broader theme, and ends with citations and notes from my research process. Through this straightforward organization, my aim was to present relatable and accessible content for a wide audience from diverse backgrounds. Sharing stories about light from many different vantages, this project attempts to engage in ongoing collaborative research about our usage of light in various environments through non-academic pedagogies.

In creating this project, I received immense help from Ulrike Brandi, a well-known lighting designer and a professional based in Hamburg, Germany and Luca Salas Bassani Antivari, an architectural designer and lighting specialist from Mexico City. Despite our time differences and working schedules, we were in constant contact with each other through video calls and messaging. I would like to thank them for their contributions and generous support.

<Virtual presentation / meeting Notes>

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B1-Sensing the Senses: Design for Sensory Overload Mitigation in Public Spaces- Chetan Dusane- MID ’21

!t was a FaMily of 5ive; mother, fat#er, two preTeen daughters, and a younger s0n. The park was over_full and lined with medDling, loud hawkers, and auto-rickshaw drivers, as us<ual. The parents whisked the Children around to find the perfect spot, or rather, just some sp0t to sit. After squeezing through the crOwd to settle down on a patch of grAss, it was time to get some snacks from the bAYing and moBBed hawkers. StriVing hard to order the snacK and harder t_o get it, the father then finds the faMily to see the wife struGgling to rein in the childr:en. The stru?Gle continues to ward oFf the stra/y dogs and l@@k after the chiLdren who are scu{rying around to get in [ong, disorderly queues for the merry-go-rounds. The h<nking vehicles outside, clam@uring people, inap#ropriate lights and stray animals, make the place aberrantly ten$e. The husba/^d sco[ds the meek wife for something, with the argument ending with a slAp across the eldest daughter’s f@ce for no apparent fault of hers. The family )eaves in a huff, )eaving be%ind the unfinisheb snack$, only for the stRays to $camper around with another groUp trying to shOO them aw_ay and ‘grab’ the spot, and the hu$$tle continues…

(imagine having constantly scrambled experiences in daily life just as the words in the paragraph above!)

This was when it struck me! The irony of our experiences as urban Indians with most of our public spaces. The very spaces meant for the facilitation of services and life in general, turning into arenas of sensory abuse.

I could not help but wonder about our daily experiences as the citizens of the world’s most densely populated city, Mumbai and retrace a typical day in it. The harried ticket vendors in packed public buses, frigid auto-rickshaw drivers with blaring music, flustered traffic police personnel in the perpetually noisy and suffocating traffic jams; fazed, overburdened, indifferent public officials; the often scurrying and disorderly citizens, catching a suburban train running six times its capacity or frustratedly waiting at the same traffic light multiple times as queues outrun the green light or hustling daily to get a bite at an overcrowded roadside shack or the perpetual competition even to fulfil basic necessities, compelled me to study the effects of such constant distraction and sensory abuse of an average citizen.

Such overstimulation of the bodily senses due to stimuli present in the urban environment can lead to Sensory Overload (SO). It has been linked to stress, anxiety, bouts of anger, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), etc., among the urban populations. It can have adverse effects on the performance of individuals in urban settings. Most importantly, it made me wonder whether it makes us desensitized and unempathetic as people. This pervasive phenomenon, I feel, eventually affects the very ethos of the community. This disquiet towards the phenomenon of SO proved to the genesis of this project.

The local government bodies in India responsible for public spaces, like the Panvel Municipal Corporation (or PMC, the collaborating agency in this work) do not have an active mechanism to identify, link and tackle the various factors within an urban setting which cause SO. An enquiry into the matter revealed that PMC and other local governments, in general, deal with SO grievances only through actions like installing signs or imposing fines and not by understanding its root causes. This modus-operandi generally leads to non-standardized methods of problem identification, establishment and solving. The solutions drawn from such processes are reactive, non-replicable and non-optimal, without a robust framework.

The plan is to develop a deeper understanding of the SO, to establish its underlying causes in urban environments. I aim to build a problem identification and establishment framework, as a tool to comprehend SO, its multi-dimensional attributes and their interrelations, in select public space(s) in the rapidly developing and densely populated city of Panvel in the state of Maharashtra. A city, which now falls under the bustling Mumbai Metropolitan Region, with the saturated crowds from the neighbouring Mumbai city escaping here for some relative respite. This work will be an attempt at introducing Design/Systems Thinking in the corporation’s process of developing overload mitigation measures and policies for public spaces across the city.

Currently, my work involves studying the human senses and their interactions with the built environment. The Indian context, however, presents challenging but exciting opportunities in this regard owing to the additional layers of complexity due to cultural, traditional, lingual, financial, and environmental diversity of the region. Initial conversations with the people there, provide a sense of their unawareness regarding their exposure to SO. Only through diligently framed and vetted (as unbiased as possible) questionnaires, do they recognize some of its effects like exhaustion, stress, irritability, disinterest in professional and personal life etc. I expect these interactions to lead to the identification and establishment of the various factors responsible for SO and the most affected public spaces in the context of Panvel. Further, efforts are underway to find out the overload limits of various senses. Through this study, the elements of the built environment that contribute to SO will be analyzed, contextualized and effort will be made to visualize their hierarchy.

One of the significant learning until now is the fact that SO is a highly contextual and personal phenomenon, quite dynamic in nature depending on various psychological, anthropological and environmental factors. It calls for a holistic approach to investigation. Secondly, I have realized a need for due consideration and thought to define an overload of a particular sense, the urbanness of a region and the ways senses interact with one another, and the environment.

The inability to be physically present on the field to record practical experiences and the hectic schedule of PMC because of the COVID-19 crisis management works are the hindrances to the data collection process. Moreover, there is a shortage of data in the Indian context to help quantify the sensory stimuli. Nevertheless, I continue to review the available literature and collect data through online questionnaires as an alternative to field study and in-person interviews. My next steps would be to try and connect with PMC as much as possible and find connections and patterns within the data generated from various resources. The progress is sluggish given the circumstances, but I remain positive and motivated.

WEEK 8 & 9: Now is the time for strategic planning and execution – Yunni Cho, BRDD 21’

As discussed in my previous blog, I had spent some time reflecting on my progress and testing different methods for presentation. The previous two weeks were about finalizing deliverables and presentation methods. I first finished making time lapse videos of making the ‘color’, ‘position in space’, and ‘movement’ sections for Transient Stillness in addition to the previous section on the ‘form’. I am very satisfied with the format of a video for showing the process of how each drawing and picture was created. The time-lapse technique allows me to tell a somewhat long and complicated history of making in a shortened period of time, which could be a very effective tool for communication. 

In addition to this time-lapse video, I included ‘body’ pages to the ‘Transient Stillness’ book design, which are five selected drawings from each section alongside with the source picture of the sky. I photoshopped all the pictures to be black and white for the section on ‘form’ and ‘position in space’ to match the style of the drawings. And for the section on the ‘movement’, I included three screenshots from the original time-lapse videos that were used to create three divided sections for each of the images.

Similarly, for the Choreography of Light, I wanted to find a way to organize all the contents and unite the chapters in a cohesive manner. Choreography of Light started with an intention to create an open, accessible, and friendly forum to understand and analyze light around the world. More specifically, this project is focused on understanding  the coexistence of natural light and artificial light. Each photo chosen for a chapter serves as a starting point to discuss important issues around the use and power of light. And through a collection of photo-analysis of different urban light conditions, the project aims to find the right amount and balance of bright and darkness needed in our cities and beyond. 

Last week, I came across a literature on public narrative written by a professor. Marshall Ganz in 2008 for Harvard Kennedy School. In this article, he talks about how to effectively create a shared story through a story of self, us, and now. He states that through the story of ‘self’ and ‘us’, one can build a sense of community. Similarly, through the story of ‘us’ and ‘now’, urgency forms and ‘purpose’ arises from the story of ‘self’ and ‘now’. And I thought his logic on public narrative could be perfectly applied to the Choreography of Light. 

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So far, I have five chapters in total – four chapters on exploring lighting usage in a house, office, museum, and an urban night-scape, through which I discuss the problem of light pollution and the power of light in an architectural design. I also have a chapter on light and perception, questioning how different light intensities and angles could alter our vision. Light and perception shows a story of self – what has shaped ‘me’ – as it reflects one’s individual perception of their surroundings. The chapters on lighting design for a house, office, and museum form a story of us – shared values and experience – as it talks about the connection between lighting and spatial experience, shaping the community of place. The chapter on the excessive usage of artificial light in a city and the problem of light pollution is the story of now – strategy and action – as it asks for a solution to urgency. As my chapters could follow Ganz’s structure of an effective public narrative, I would like to try organizing my chapters with the same strategy by telling the story of self, us, and now. 

As we are approaching the final month of the fellowship, we created a sharable remote server between my laptop and the office in Hamburg, Germany. Through the VPN connection and the Microsoft desktop software, I now have access to all the files from Germany and can easily share and save my documents on Ulrike’s computer. This remote connection allows us to work more efficiently and take advantage of our time difference by using the same computer in different time zones. 

In our previous group zoom meetings between South Korea, Germany, and Mexico, we proposed that dusk and dawn periods have different colors and durations depending on the latitude and longitude. Both Ulrike and Luca shared time-lapse videos they took in their countries, and I combined them with mine to create this short video to start the comparison to test our theory. It is just a beginning to an ongoing research project, but we are already noticing apparent differences just by looking at the videos.

Before I end this blog, I wanted to share my notes from an exhibition I visited on July 25th, Watching Together hosted by Jeju Museum of Art. The presentation aimed to explore and contemplate the future of Korean art through a display of various multidimensional art. Every single artist from the show made a very careful use of light in their work, and many different light sources were installed in various colors, intensities, and scales. Although these works were very different to my projects in terms of their style and format, I found some commonalities between some of the works and my projects in the language of light. And the exhibition was very moving and inspiring.

Wrapping up, and reflecting on my time at the farm, Eli Kauffman, BFA Painting 21′

I have just completed my last few days down at the Green Phoenix Farm, and am following though on a few last minute elements of the project that need finishing touches. In the past two weeks I have spent less time working on the murals, and much more time editing the virtual tour video. Though it is now completed, Wasatch Community Gardens has yet to post the video, because we are still evaluating the best context to show it in. The intended impact is on potential donors and volunteers who show an active interest in learning more about the farm, but there is possibility for the virtual tour to have a larger impact. Overall I am pleased with the film and feel that it depicts the lively energy of the farm as best it can. James, Julie, and Cher did a wonderful job speaking on camera, and their personalities showed through even in the shorter clips.

Over the past week many members of the team including Cher and Julie have had to miss work for personal reasons, so unfortunately only a few members of Wasatch Community Gardens have seen the final film so far. Though it was well received by them, I am still hoping to show the rest of the team at some point and see what they think. Because so much of the team was absent from the farm recently, it has been a quiet end to my time here. Though it hasn’t been the ending I expected, reflecting on the past 9 weeks I can proudly say that in collaboration with Wasatch Community Gardens, I have been able to accomplish all of the goals set out in our proposal.

Compared to when I started the fellowship, I now know so much more about what it means to make public art and work with a community to create visuals that are significant to them. The murals I have been able to do on the farm are nothing like the paintings that I make in my personal practice, but learning that those can be separate has been a positive. I have also learned so much more about planting, harvesting, and plant identification. These new skills will affect my artistic and personal growth more than I even expected initially.

Though I will still be able to occasionally go volunteer or visit the farm, my time there will be much more limited. I am still looking forward to the possibility of working on more public art on Wasatch Community Gardens’ educational campus in the future, but that wouldn’t happen until construction is finished a while from now. After having gotten to know the Green Phoenix Farm so well, I am still amazed at their impact and how many people from different areas of the city they are able to feed. I have so much admiration for the work that they do and their consistent dedication to it. I can only hope that my artistic contribution will help to better reflect their mission and personality to visitors of the farm in the future.

 

Virtual Arrival at the Cemetery · Hannah Suzanna · MFA, Digital + Media 2021

Imagine you’re in north-central Florida. It feels like it has been over 100ºF out for weeks. It’s humid. It’s tick season. Someone you love was just admitted to hospice. All of a sudden you are navigating death planning, which… said mildly, can be challenging—a perfect concoction of tricky-to-figure-out logistics piled generously on top of all-the-emotions-at-once. However, if you are in the southeast of the United States there is a body disposition option available that is not easily found everywhere—conservation burials.

Conservation burials go beyond the standards of natural burial—no vaults, no embalming, only biodegradable burial materials—by promising to forever protect the land where burials take place. Prairie Creek Conservation Cemetery (PCCC) is a non-profit community cemetery that borders Paynes Prairie Preserve State Park. The 93 acres that sit between Micanopy, Rochelle, and Gainesville, Florida, look nothing like a standard U.S. cemetery.

Walking down PCCC’s Kathy Cantwell Trail you would think you were in a state park—that is, until you noticed mounds of recently turned soil cocooned in pine needles, some of which are covered in carefully laid flowers. In partnerships with Alachua Conservation Trust and Alachua County, Prairie Creek Conservation Cemetery restores land by removing invasive or overly-hearty species to preserve legacy species such as live oaks and hickory trees. Unlike standard contemporary cemeteries, PCCC is a place where wildlife and humans abound. There are deer spotted on graves, gators in cypress ponds, people walking through the meadow or seeking shade in the woods, and community members who come to help staff dig graves. 

Of course, that description is representative of the cemetery before COVID-19. The cemetery seems to be operating as usual for the most part—with fewer people allowed on-site, fewer attendees permitted at funerals, and only staff allowed at burials if the deceased died from coronavirus. There are still eagles flying and large banana spiders making equally large webs. My summer looks markedly different than what I imagined. Instead of being in Florida helping to dig graves, maintain the land, and doing in-person outreach to organizations, I am in Providence. 

I started work at PCCC three weeks ago and was nervous because my plan to be in Gainesville, FL in person this summer had been swiftly eradicated by COVID-19. I wasn’t going to meet my supervisor Freddie, the executive director, or the other staff members, Sarah and Carlos, in person. How would I connect with them? Would the experience “work” without me being physically present to dig graves and assist with burials? I worried I would get stuck in an eddy of administrative tasks and lose my link to the stories of people being naturally buried close to ponds filled with cypress and gators; to the story of my dad hoping (to the point of expecting) that he’ll die on the path between the family’s Quonset hut and the rocky shore of the Pacific. For the first five days, I had a spike in anxiety—the kind that clouds my day, leaving me overwhelmed by the uncertainty of new situations, and putting me right to sleep. This was not the beginning I had wanted. However, through the staff members’ graciousness, I have become grounded—even if my soil is made from zoom meetings and phone calls instead of clay, nurse logs, and earthworms.

I am now conducting virtual outreach for PCCC. We are trying to figure out how, in the middle of a pandemic, to reach out to end-of-life organizations. We want people to know that there are affordable, sustainable burial practices that offer the ceremony of their choice. However, our primary goal is to provide details on each option so families can make the best choice for whatever their situation may be. 

That’s when I think of my dad. 

When I told my dad about PCCC, he asked if he could get buried there before quickly backtracking—wanting instead to naturally decompose on our property. Many people who hear about Prairie Creek Conservation Cemetery wish they had known about the cemetery when a loved one of theirs died. If you haven’t researched your end of life wishes, it is easy in our country to believe that embalming is legally required and expensive caskets are the only option. However there are many body disposition options, of which the nine conservation cemeteries in the U.S. are just one— body composting, alkaline hydrolysis, and donation to forensic anthropology sites are a few alternatives.

I am hopeful that this summer I will find effective avenues of outreach for PCCC, so people can choose body disposition options in alignment with their values. I am optimistic that I will continue to learn more about different ways to take care of dead bodies and the environmental, social, and financial implications of each. I’m curious about how being more open to different death practices will impact my thinking around what I want for my own body and what will happen to my family’s bodies. Where’s the form to make the small canyon, below my dad’s house, where the vultures feed, a conservation cemetery? That’s where my dad wants his body. I wish it was that easy.

I keep seeing myself as the third point in a triangle, opposite to two places I have not gone this summer—my dad’s house, Raven’s Roost, in Humboldt County, California and the cemetery in Alachua County, Florida (although I’m still holding out hope for a site visit at the end of August). There’s this thread that I can’t quite grasp yet, that is spun from bodies lovingly decomposing into the earth and blackberry brambles and soul-deep humidity, that connects the three locations. This summer will also be an attempt to expose these connections by looking at COVID-19 cases in all three locations, interviewing people in Florida and at home, and collecting colors from each place and examining the stories those hues tell. Maybe the overlap in color will reveal the relationships I am searching for.

Project Links:
Prairie Creek Conservation Cemetery
My General Research
Color Analysis Spreadsheet
Color prototype No. 1

Additional Death Positive Links:
End Well Live with Ladybird Morgan, RN, MSW, Executive Director of Humane Prison Hospice Project
#RadDeathReads

When is a crisis when it has no beginning or end? – Satya Varghese Mac, BFA Sculpture 2020

With the confluence of the COVID-19 Pandemic and the recent Black Lives Matter Uprising in response to the onslaught of police killings of Black and Black trans people, the beginning of my time at SRLP has been illuminating about the work of collective organization in a time of crisis. The reality is that these crises that the nation is reckoning with are only outer layers to the perpetual crisis of transgender, gender non-conforming, and intersex (TGNCI) peoples’ daily survival and self determination, specifically when their identities intersect with blackness, and/or the realities lived by indigenous people, people of color, people with disabilities, and low income people.

My work with SRLP is co-supervised by SRLP’s Director of Membership, Sasha, and Director of Outreach and Community Engagement, Kimberly.

With Sasha, I have had the opportunity to interact directly with SRLP members engaging in the community organizing and leadership development opportunities provided by the Movement Building Team and the Shelter Organizing Team (online for now).

Currently, the Movement Building Team is focused on developing the leadership of SRLP’s membership through member-led panel discussions. Based on the group’s interest and experience we began planning two panels: Disability Justice for TGNCI People, and Ending Violence Against Black Trans Women.

Meanwhile, the Shelter Organizing Team is working to change the conditions for TGNC people in shelter and experiencing housing insecurity – a task that is directly affected by the pandemic. In a meeting with NYC’s Department of Homeless Services, I learned that there is a deep disconnection between the city office and the on-the-ground experiences of unhoused people. In a meeting with the Legal Aid Society of NY I was able to hear more about the history of the right to shelter in NYC, and the urgent need for reform to make shelter conditions livable, and to make shelters accessible to TGNCI people.

With Kimberly I am working on projects related to the Prisoner Advisory Committee (PAC) and a forthcoming report on the lives and experiences of TGNCI people in NY state prisons. The PAC is a group of SRLP members who are incarcerated and advise the organization of the needs and experiences of incarcerated TGNCI people. This link with these incarcerated members is crucial in making sure SRLP’s work is done with not for the people it serves. 

Through this work with the forthcoming report I have been doing my own research on the current prison reform and abolition efforts in NYC and nationwide including the HALT Solitary Act which refers to the Mandela rule asserting that prolonged use of solitary confinement is torture, and the Sepulveda Bill which aims to amend correctional law to allow for the early release of certain people in order to lower the impact of COVID-19 on prison populations. I am also researching SRLP’s past initiatives and actions to put together an understanding of the collective’s strategies and message.

The work has fallen into a rhythm that I hope will pick up as I begin the process of relocating to NYC to transition from fully remote to partially in person work. I am hoping that being in a place where my expressed purpose is to dive into the work with SRLP will accelerate things.

Adaptations in uncertain times. -Valeria Ramirez Ensastiga MA NCSS ‘21

In these times, when we feel the world is changing constantly and there is a lot of uncertainty, our professional projects also suffer modifications frequently. After one month in my internship, I needed to re-adapt the shape of the educational material about sustainable development for rural children that I originally planned for.  The initial plan was to create some material for the rural schools, and I was considering that there was going to be a teacher who explains the information to the children and organizes the proposed activities. However, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, some of the rural schools will remain closed for the foreseeable future and the kids won’t have the opportunity to be guided by their teachers. 

To understand the situation, it is necessary to say that it’s virtually impossible for these children to have online classes, because most of their homes don’t have internet nor computers. Only some of the parents have satellite internet in their cell phones. The THP-Mexico team let me know that surprisingly, Whatsapp is a common app in the communities because they use it to communicate with the neighboring communities and other relatives who have migrated to the city, and after talking with the team and some of the youth leaders in these communities, we think that this app can become a possible channel to deliver our informative material. Besides, we need to be careful because unfortunately, this app is the main source of misinformation about COVID-19 and other issues. 

With this in mind, we decided to replace the tale with a booklet containing many colorful illustrations that will be sent to the rural schools together with a handbook that will be distributed among the youth leaders looking to provide them with information and specific activities to help them direct the conversation about sustainability with the children and families. 

My main labour during the last 2 weeks has been to write all the content. I was lucky to participate in a writing workshop with Ana Garralón, critique of children’s and youth literature, specialized in non-fiction books, to polish my draft for this internship. Her comments were enlightening and supportive. She mainly helped me to feel confident about my work and reinforced my idea that it is not necessary to explain and define all the concepts in the text and that it is important to value the kid’s previous knowledge. At the time, I learnt how important it is to be very clear in a children’s text and have patience in finding the correct sentence.

Since sustainable development is such a broad topic, usually related to uncomfortable situations such as poverty, lack of services and job opportunities, and gender inequality, among others,  one of the biggest challenges is to find the appropriate phrase to talk about those issues and possible solutions, but being careful to avoid stigmatization and not to hurt the children’s feelings.

During the writing process, I have been working more closely with the THP team to verify the text was responsive to the environmental and cultural context in the attended communities and to the children’s necessities . One of the dilemmas that arose was about interculturality: At the beginning of the writing, I mentioned some illustrative examples from some geographically distant regions but some colleagues often insisted that all the examples needed to be more ‘local’. They argued that by showing local examples where the children could mirror their own experiences, we could show them the magnitude of their daily actions, but, in my opinion, the inclusion of distant histories can create awareness into the child about the real dimensions of those small actions in cases such as desertification, global warming and plastic contamination in the oceans. After discussing, we have managed to find a suitable proportion (almost all local references, and a few examples from distant regions).  Also, the constant feedback from the THP team has helped me to align the text completely with the organization’s core values such as gender equality and the recovery of traditional knowledge.

Albert Einstein once said: “If you can’t explain it to a six year old, you don’t understand it yourself.” This internship has been a long learning journey where I have found the challenge of ‘translating’ all my academic reviews and class discussions to deliver the same information to an extremely different segment of the  population but that effort has been very satisfying.