“Where Were You?” The Problem of Evil in Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life

Both Nostalgic and Sinister Claudia Smith Chen (bio) A Different Bed Every Time Jac Jemc Dzanc Books www.dzancbooks.org 184Pages; Print, $9.99 In the language of dream, narrative moves differently. Time is elastic. Signifiers and symbols populate our dream worlds with seemingly perfect clarity. A teakettle or a dust mote might make an appearance and fill us with poignant emotion. Ten minutes after waking, the dreamer remembers a stray image or object, a sudden shift from joy to fear, and the dream unravels. The stories in Jac Jemc’s A Different Bed Every Time have the uncanny ability to capture the time and movement of dreams without waking us from her dreams. Jemc achieves this through precise, clear, often poetic imagery, a pacing that interrupts standard expectations of traditional narrative, and an uncanny grasp of motifs and archetypal characters that are easily identifiable—the passive princess, the threatening bearded lover, the heroic prince and his kiss of life-giving magic. In these stories, Jemnc works on our pre-conceived notions of these archetypes and rips into them with language that is often surprising, and always deliberate. She is a fan of the metaphor, and this book is not easy reading. Metaphor and simile that would seem overwrought out of context sears and her sentences build and work off of one another. In “A Violence” the narrator “stuns herself with gin.” As the story gains momentum, Jemc breaks into staccato and for a moment, we could be inside Raymond Chandler’s hardboiled prose. “I drank too much coffee. The city felt like a pinball table, like I might slip between the sewer grates and become lost to the game.” The stories in this collection are at times meditations on a theme: violence, desire, loss. Some, like the stand-out story “Bent Back,” take a more traditional approach to narratives and plot, yet still break with expectations. In this piece, an adolescent girl is diagnosed with scoliosis, which, she tells us with the poignant vulnerability and bravado of smart kid (or a woman remembering what it is to be a smart kid) is basically her “spine kept trying to sneak west.” The story begins as many coming-of-age stories do, capturing the ambivalence of young adulthood and the blows the young narrator does not always see coming. Rebecca is growing apart from her artistic older sister and feeling alienated from her parents. And yet, just as an ordinary dream can suddenly switch off or on and into nightmare, the story turns on us in one short paragraph. “Cecile cranked some sad song and I heard her scrape another cough out of her throat. She’d been smoking. Suddenly I knew.” Suddenly, too, the reader is thrown into a new reality; Cecile, Rebecca’s sister, chains a pigeon to a table. Cecile, from this new perspective, exploits her younger sister’s bent back and displays it for art’s sake; her new lover, a projectionist and a “real dude” who at first seems the love interest from a tender, well—written young adult novel becomes dark, sinister, a character worthy of Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw (1898). There never [End Page 19] is acceptance or release from this dark and sinister turn in perspective. It’s an unsettling, risky story, but Jemc manages to make it work on the strength of her confident voice and daring imagery. Some of the stories are fabulist, some realistic, and some operate as short-short fictions in that Jemnc plunges us into intimate detail right away, allowing her readers to fill in the blanks. How does she do it? After reading these stories, I came to the conclusion that even the seemingly more traditional stories operate, structurally, much like poems. Many of these pieces, like sonnets, are fundamentally a dialectical construct examining contrasting ideas, emotions, states of mind, by juxtaposing them against each other, revealing the tensions between the two in the final movement. The result is stunning conclusions that often led me back to the beginning and read each story with a new understanding. The unusual associations she makes with language—hard, concrete images are often associated with abstracts—are...

Recently the question of the importance of Trakl’s biography within the hermeneutical process has been raised more often. This paper highlights certain aspects that might be of consequence to find an adequate answer. First of all the essay presents what probably contributed to Trakl’s self-affirmation as a poet : personalities of the local artist milieu in Salzburg as well as the literary model Nikolaus Lenau have played an important role. From a very early stage Trakl understood “work” as poetic work. The article then draws attention to certain conflict zones of his biography and how they were introduced into his poetic imagery. This concerns his family which is in certain texts an obvious source of poetic images, whereas in others it constitutes background experiences. This also includes his birth town Salzburg where he spent most of his life. His relationship to his youngest sister, to be found in various combinations and poetic representations in his oeuvre, is a major aspect. The incest issue is discussed more thoroughly. Finally, the example of the “war” theme will demonstrate that until the end Trakl considered poetic art as an appropriate means of expression of his more and more endangered self.

Yael Bartana, one of the most famous contemporary Israeli artists, explores the topic of shaping identity within the framework of contemporary policies to preserve the memory. When referring to the present, she does not forget about the past—the cultural heritage of her nation always underpins the presented film narratives. In her film Inferno (2013), the artist presents us with an evocative image, almost Hollywood-style in its framing and montage, of the future based on the myth of the Third Temple, which is important to the identity of the Jews. In this work, an important role is played by biblical symbols, religious rituals, mystical prophecies, contemporary Israeli society; it also includes an amazing but fully justifiable element—an innovative religious enterprise, which is a building called “New Jerusalem” in Brazil. The author of Inferno creates a social experiment with the help of the film, stages the reality within it, observes what is happening and finally “documents” it. This article is an attempt to analyse the subsequent layers of Bartana’s story, in order to take a detailed look at the artistic practice of the Israeli artist. I am interested in how she uses film art to explore the relationship between memory and events, places and objects, and how religious and social rituals can, in her view, shape collective memory. She wants her viewers to ask questions and reflect upon their own identity and history, which is largely based on narratives constructed by social rituals.

Director Li Cangdong's film "Burning" stands out in the field of film art with its unique poetic imagery. Through rhetorical devices such as metaphor and symbolism, it presents life themes such as existence and nothingness, search and loss in a poetic way, constructing a philosophical and profound visual world. This article will use a combination of text analysis and film interpretation to deeply analyze the profound significance of the poetic imagery presented in 'Burning'.

ABSTRACTThis paper analyses the post-Soviet evolution of the sector of cultural organizations in Saint Petersburg, Russia. The study relies on a combination of qualitative (semi-structured interviews with employees of 34 cultural organizations of St. Petersburg) and quantitative (pile sorting) methods of data treatment, as well as synthesizes approaches from theories of organizations (organizational ecology, neo-institutionalism) and cultural studies and sociology of culture (Bourdieu, DiMaggio) to analyse the successively emerging waves of organizations. We show that the organizations can be divided into four waves, with the oldest ones existing from Soviet (and sometimes Imperial) times and the newest emerging during the economic boom of the early 2000s. The waves differ primarily in the degree of legitimacy resulting from their abstaining from or participating in a wide range of market activities. The aristocratic establishment extracting resources from ‘pure’ sources enjoys much greater prestige and, ultimately, economic security, than those who have to use less approved sources. Our general conclusion is that the ‘birth order’ is primarily responsible for the ability of an organization to occupy a desirable economic niche. Thus, the oldest wave occupies the most favourable niche, possessing the greatest legitimacy and receiving generous support from public and private foundations, while later waves had either to restrict their economic activities to prove their belonging to artistic field (second and, partially, third waves) or to combine different artistic (exhibitions, performances, and film screening), academic (lectures and seminars) and commercial (café and shops) activities within one public space, which, however, greatly undermines their legitimacy and deprives them of most sources of public funding. Ironically, the newer organizations embrace and translate the opposition between ‘pure art’ and ‘commerce’, which dooms them to suffering in a vicious circle of illegitimacy.

A lot can happen in the span of seventeen minutes: a birth, a death, a work of art, a three-and-a-half-mile trip from the city to an island nestled between the Puget Sound shipping lanes and the ancient forests of the Olympic Peninsula.Today I am in the car, with the dog, on the way to the ferry. I have just visited my friend Tia, who has recently been diagnosed with leukemia. Tia has a lovely hospital room in one of the University of Washington medical towers in Seattle, overlooking Montlake Cut, a narrow channel of water that connects Lake Union to Lake Washington. As I drive, I notice the hills and sparkling water all around, the bridges, overpasses, and arterials, welding the landscape together. The colors of the trees are changing from green to yellow to magenta. It is fall now, just barely.I brought Tia a little painting, one of my 8 by 10 abstract landscapes. Normally I like to work quickly, completing a project in twenty minutes or less, before the light (or my thoughts) change, but this one took longer. I had started it when I was on Vashon Island this summer, at the cottage I used to own with my first husband before he died, which, at the time of writing this, is fifteen years prior. Now I go there, sometimes with my new family, and often alone. The house faces west, overlooking a protected bay. We had beautiful sunsets that week and I tried to capture the blood-orange hues by mixing red with yellow and yellow with pink neon paint and painting the various color degradations in hasty lines across the paper, but then the wind shifted and the air was filled with smoke from the British Columbia wildfires. The sky turned to chalk, so I mixed silver and white together and dabbed that into the foreground, but it still didn't look right by the time I had to leave the island, so I put the art on a piece of newspaper and placed it into the back of the car along with the dog and a bag of recycling and returned home to Seattle via the ferry. I decided a long time ago that whatever happens to a painting-in-progress is up to the painting. If dog hair or bits of dirt end up on a canvas, well, those elements become part of the story.Once on board the ferry, I kept looking back at the painting, hoping it would tell me what it wanted me to do with it. The dog had done nothing to alter the shapes or colors; she was fast asleep on a different side of the seat. My car was parked on the south section of the car deck, so I stared through the passenger window, past the cracked paint and rusty steel open air portholes of the ferry, out to the water. Puget Sound had an eerie quality to it, surrounded by so much smoke and fog. You couldn't see Mount Rainier but you knew it was there. The foothills were gray-blue and the water was a bluer gray-blue and the sky was a whiter gray-blue and even the ferry, the vessel itself, a color-blocked grayish-white with a solid green-blue stripe, the way it's always been, but that day I noticed all of it, how similar all the colors were and I felt that I, sitting in my gray car with its black interior, wearing my favorite green tee, was a just a tiny speck of color inside a much larger landscape.What can I bring Tia? I thought, before it was time to go to the hospital. I grabbed a tube of light ultramarine. I didn't take off my jacket or put on my green apron, like I usually do when I'm painting, to protect my clothes. I just picked the first color that caught my eye and squeezed it onto my fingers, closed my eyes and moved my hands around a bit on the paper. It's often hard to know when something is complete. But I knew immediately this one was done as soon as I opened my eyes. Finally, with the contrast of the blue you could see the pop of the old sunset peeking through, plus the silver and the yellows and magentas and greens and the whole mess that I'd made weeks earlier, and now it seemed like it might be a little thing someone could enjoy.Tia's eyes today were the bluest blue I'd ever seen, somewhere between cerulean sky and indigo ocean. The piece was dry by the time I got to the hospital's Triangle Parking Garage, so I tucked it inside a cellophane sleeve as I walked up the garage's escalator. Tia stared at the art for a few moments before she placed it onto the hospital tray, saying there was something about it that reminded her of what was going on both inside and outside of her. I didn't know if that was a compliment or an insult or something else entirely, I don't know—there are a lot of things I feel self-conscious about, but working with paints is not one of them. She could throw it out later if she wanted to, or get it framed. It was just a little something I made, a mood. I sat in the chair next to her hospital bed. She said we couldn't touch, her immune system was compromised, so we bumped elbows instead.Tia had an IV pole next to her which she referred to as her “tree of shit,” but I said, Isn't it a tree of life? There were all kinds of translucent bags hanging from metal branches and tubes to connect to her IVs. Some had clear liquid in them; one was more the color of a pale magenta. Doxorubicin is its name, I've since learned. The nurses refer to it as “the red devil.” Tia said she was going to name her tree “Puff” for “Puff the magic dragon.” She'd been sensing dragon metaphors everywhere. Cancer evokes fighters. “See those checkmarks?” she asked, pointing at the whiteboard on the opposite wall. “Those are all the people who have donated blood for me. I wouldn't be alive without it.” I looked up and began to feel faint. I'd never told Tia about my blood phobia. I'm a fainter. Fainted all the time starting around age five. If I see blood I faint. If I think about blood, I faint. If I hear talk about blood, I faint.A large curtain separated the bed from the door, a wall of glass. Beyond the glass was the nurses’ station. Above the curtain rod I could see the door open, hear the faint click of the door handle. Tia and I locked eyes. Did she want me to stay or to go? Stay, her eyes said. But I was sitting too close to her for the nurses to get between us so I got up and walked to the other wall of windows facing the water, sat down, and put my head in my palms.“Put your head between your legs” my mother advised me when I was a kid. She never thought to question the cause. I guess I didn't either. I fainted throughout high school, college, and beyond. Several times people thought I was dead. My eyes rolled back inside my head. They thought it was weird or funny or both, but I never did. Finally, as an adult, I told a therapist about my fainting spells. With the blankest expression on her face, she asked, “What was happening when you were five?”“My sister had cancer,” I said.“There you go,” she replied.Sometimes I feel like the contours of my life are trapped inside a color wheel and all I do is make zigzag marks trying to figure things out. As I continue on my path toward the ferry through the concrete channels carved through this city, water below, mountains above, I remember all the trips to the hospital with my sister Lisa when she was diagnosed with leukemia. Same as Tia. Lisa survived. This was back when people didn't talk about cancer. Especially kids with cancer. Love your child now before she dies. Even the doctors didn't say much to my parents. And my dad was a doctor. Across the bridge we drove, along Montlake Avenue over the cut, past the stadium up the hill to the Children's Hospital. Wait at the light by the Baskin Robbins, watch the seagulls soar overhead at the landfill across the street behind the chain link fence, near the water. Later, when I moved to this neighborhood as an adult, I learned how the lake had become poisoned with a toxic sludge, the marshlands tinged with yellow and green algae. The nickname for that part of the lake was “garbage bay.” Now it's a playfield and a natural marsh area teaming with eagles and bird watchers. The university touts it as an atonement for past environmental sins. You'd never know it used to be a dump or that my sister used to have cancer, except when I run the gravel trails, I remember. You can see the oily rainbows glisten in the mud puddles after it rains.As the nurses worked on Tia and the minutes ticked by, I thought about my rush to get there, the impatience in waiting for the paint to dry. People move slowly in hospitals. It's quiet. Women sit at front desks that curve like waves. There are little signs everywhere: “Wait until you are called.” “Quiet please.” “Do not enter.” “Staff only.” “Don't re-use cups.” “This lounge is for families only.” “Please press for assistance.” I was a woman in a hurry. I should know hospitals better but I don't. There's a quietness to them I find unsettling. They are so unlike the places I normally frequent—grocery stores with the sounds of fake rain in the produce section, school hallways buzzing with noisy children, home, with its robo calls, leaf blowers blaring outside, the sharp yelps of my barking dog, the dull hum of the television, the chatter of a FaceTiming teenager, the gurgling dishwasher. As I ran from the car up the escalator and across the street in the rain, people were moving slowly and I was moving quickly and I had a piece of art in my hand and I had places to go and my body could move on my own accord. I could ask for directions. I sensed the staff noticing me. My energy was different from everyone else's. I could maneuver around wheelchairs and avoid making eye contact with people sitting in hospital gowns with bright pink plastic bracelets on their wrists. I like that the nurses, dressed in their utilitarian scrubs—magenta, teal, and dark blue—commanded authority. There's a science to it, a kind of chromaticity. So many vials and syringes, clipboards and equipment, smiling and concerned faces. Things appear differently here than in the real world. I wonder if this is what physicists mean when they talk about spectral power.Before Tia got sick, she and I used to exchange photos of dead things via text and e-mail. Bugs, butterfly wings, a squirrel so flat it looked like a slab of furry beef jerky. I knew Tia liked feathers so I responded with a dead bird series, beaks sharp as knives, sparse feathers, bones exposed, showing the truth of their anatomy. Back and forth, back and forth, we shared these photographs. Some close up, some farther away, whatever angle best showcased the carcass's architecture. We didn't talk too much about what we might do with these photos. Tia said essays, maybe. I said art, but then laughed, because who would want a framed picture of a dead squirrel on their wall?I sat with Tia from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. and the hours passed in a blink. Tia and I talked for a few more minutes about dragons and rivers and the trauma of pain and the family history of pain and how there is no beauty without pain. They go together. The pain pushes the energy forward. You must do something with the pain. It flows, up and down, carving new paths, sloshing around, cleansing.The last thing Tia told me before I headed for the ferry was that not only was her drug cocktail, Puff, going to kill the cancer but when she's done with this treatment and gets her bone-marrow transplant, she'll be a whole new person, with two sets of DNA. A chimera, she tells me. I have to look it up to see what it means.Weeks go by. Tia isn't well. No more visitors. It's always cold on the ferry. Today it is gray. The water is gray, the sky is gray, my coat is gray, the car is gray. The dog is black and white, her leash is blue. The car smells like death. The dog must have rolled in something, I don't know what, but there are dead things all over the island. I found a dead doe in the yard by one of the old and craggy apple trees. The apple tree is probably a hundred years old, as old as the house. The doe was very dead, guts exposed, fur and bones. Which was strange, because the week before when I was on the island, I didn't notice a dead doe, but it's possible I just hadn't walked to that part of the yard. There's always so much deer poop up there, I have to make sure I'm wearing boots. There's no telling what the dog got into. When it's time to go I always put on her leash so I can catch her more easily, otherwise it's a game of sticks and chase and old tennis balls she finds in the tall green grass and yellow and brown rotting leaves. Some years there are apples, tiny and hard, and some years there is nothing. Moss is the only constant. A warm green, almost the color of chartreuse, it wraps around the base of the fruit trees and larger limbs like leg warmers. Grayish-green lichen spores cling to the smaller branches. Every year I notice they spread and grow making the trees look more close the lichen like of or a of I this is what many look like a husband at the ferry in the fall of the weeks up to death, I found dead all around into the he said with a me for it was a an he like in the tiny lot near the after a long was years and gray seagulls The a clear tube and up to and then a red I didn't know if he was dead or almost dead or if they just didn't want to tell me other than to slowly to the hospital. me more It took me almost an to get there when the trip should have than twenty When the and I were into all I could see was white white white of white buzzing body in the of the room on a and eyes up at the I walked closed and knew I had to first few times I took the ferry without all I could see was yellow open, on the of blood behind head he The red The with on their faces that said and I'm not me. The of me there, my hair still it was just a and be many times I or past that before the colors turned more before the city a the from the of before signs up saying No and before the he was turned into a for fall I to the island. no for Tia so I her via the her husband has up for and don't I have to go back and to the island a lot now, because the up so and because we are a new for water I want to the since this is I might up an art It's kind of a I don't think I'm real art the ever become a But it's to think I have no I've just been around with the art I found at my house after she I tell I'm on a new I've been out photos from my in the them into them onto paper, and in the with whatever colors to My husband last in these the trails, that time was the like tree branches of of and of tiny later there is a faint on the The dog It's my She tells me their is dead. They had to put and that it to find someone with a and a with a so they could the out of the and the in their yard for the tells me all of this so I can the dog and inside and avoid the but I to out much death. I go for a run with the I see a for a I see a dead on the side of the as sharp as like he wanted to take a out of whatever but the cold of grabbed When I from my run a in the and the is hanging from a body is the color of tree when it the Every time the the a like to get and I want to rush over and the so he can run off into the remember the day my husband at the ferry I wanted to get up, off and me in car so we could get on with side of the is The gravel is and husband on a My side is with colors from to a warm similar to the of bright green that have off the of the that I just a day It like there is no other possible for other than leaves. When my husband was the was always kept he died, my took and just know what to I don't know if I'm one of those When I I a doctor. The is someone who how to see the If he were here today the would have been clear not like to go for a run and look at dead Today is dry. are to than but it still me almost an The over my has to go back into to get a for the it's the house in a long sure about the color I picked out but that it and with the I toward the after the is I see that the dead doe is still the apple have so just the are up out of the like of her is by the leaves. It My with the dead tell me that if I move the out to the the have to it up, and she no be my I'm not sure what I want to do with her but I feel I should just a before her there be so many dead things in yard that we just this as a remember the day I brought Tia here and she told me she could feel the of my dead husband in the and in the eagles I the two of us might some dead things in the yard or on the but we and I thought that was because it to me that the island, and Tia and I, are always in some of Tia on is just her and one is of her a a color with and one is of her head in with the expression is and blood are for a so I bring Tia a of made by and she me because how I know that she is always I ask Tia if I can bring art and she her head. There's to it because now she's the one all the she'll be out of the hospital but it mean she's out of the Now the real work family on the other side of the a over the and she to often for and blood Tia the hospitals her family and I don't her. The as we in Washington are home to the a Tia used to work in the I her if she thought that working there had to do with her cancer and she for a she said. things I I her about the colors and she tells me is inside metal I don't want to ask but am about the science of it, even more so after I later and the first to up is all about gets an for cancer and in I ask if I can take her to her and then to When I her up, she out to my car, but off her limbs like of tree She tells me the thing she is in her and she's not even to her is for her in her are She even We to the hospital. It's only but we around a few because she is about we is I tell her it's I want to her but she and her body don't me. I ask if I can bring her some new in smaller and she The she has now her of the she used to and if she gets through this thing she's cancer hospital is a because there are only kinds of cancer medical and cancer The cancer and The medical staff in The on their Tia and I are there for We and run out of things to talk we just sit there in There many you can have when you are separated by nothing except a so we talk about for a Tia and but she been to much because she's on so many different her is in a fog. Tia tells me about a trip she took to a writing in her home of she by her house one time and her outside, on a of dirt island with she which one of the was for which her or mother had of them had in Tia was the She has two just like me. the the or the This sounds like a I'd some of before so I knew a little about the you and say I asked, the Tia and the She told me about a different time in near when she something in a and got out of her It was a dead its of little white things and She it home via in her only to the home that the white things could be When the two weeks she used to open the up now on this history of I this is the are their the color of a done I take Tia to at a near the hospital which is for its and My is to something greens or a but Tia she's only to dead things that have had the out of so we and between house in Seattle and the tiny cottage on the island is about It about an and a to two on If the whole trip were the of a the to the ferry would be the off the and looking at signs the for the would be the in and the real would be the the the of the mixing with from the a from the and then the best the to the the and tall no you the the little signs in the windows of the in and the like a with a white in that like a next time I'm on the island, I run into an old friend who two on the ferry. to the her kids got ferry for out it's a The ferry only up medical and for an to on the other I her if she thought that would have been a the of a for a and she said it would have been much better to in a hospital. at you got some I said, to her her two you if one of your family near the my kids have been about going to the island. they I get out the board and sit at the you were a and your dad apple into your a week before he and up onto the I the who is your Back and forth, back and is a game but moving through the is The island an and so much to think about I up and the new year as I sit in the ferry the sets over the Olympic mountains and the colors go from to and then The in the look like and the in the are just of slowly rotting and I wonder if ever these because they are always here time I sit in for the you have two kids from two different it can get trying to remember which dad said what and which ferry you want to get on and the lines can be long and sometimes I want to at and get some dark for the and I remember that the first husband would have never this because was but husband two never no to and that is a of a The ferry is always just like is You never know when your is up, just like you never know your car in the ferry more trips to the island, I notice that Tia has all now that she is close to I'm not sure what this or or something in if she's one of those people who want to talk about in she dies. I have no what she like now and wonder if she like a dead thing or an alive thing and I don't I she out when she's I get The is Tia know if she'll make it but if she she'll be a with a and she's going to with the blood of a in the ferry I notice that the sky is and the water is steel gray mixed with blue and when I look south toward Mount Rainier I think I see two bright in the and up but it out they are just in waiting to we are on I ask my what game he is in the and he and I It sure like you are something and he and when I take the out of I the of over the hum of the so after a few minutes I the I used to think it was hard in your about all the time but now I wonder if it might be more to be an in a different world. My nothing. She the in which she and I both it to The and I to the of the island to get then back to the house I notice a along the long of She is in a hospital and

They Have All Gone AwayFarms, Families, and Change Paula Nelson Curtis Harnack, We Have All Gone Away. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2011 (reprint of 1973 edition). 188 pp. $19.95 (paper). Sara DeLuca, Dancing the Cows Home: A Wisconsin Girlhood. St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1996. 232 pp. $15.95 (paper). Sara DeLuca, The Crops Look Good: News from a Midwestern Family Farm. St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2015. 254 pp. $17.95 (paper). Farming was once central to American life. In 1790, ninety-six percent of the population lived in rural areas, most on farms; in 1860, eighty percent of Americans still lived on farms or in small towns. Farming was the route to independence, self-sufficiency, security, and prosperity. The work was hard, but it brought reassuring seasonal routines: the births and deaths of livestock; planting, growing, and harvesting crops; family births, maturity, aging, deaths. Farms provided an organic unity that conveyed lessons about nature and the human condition that were sometimes hard to learn. For some families, the farm became a sacred entity, standing apart from and above the family. Even in today's modern, super-mechanized agriculture, there remains great pride in having had multiple generations farm the same ground. There is regret, even grief, when the farm is sold and bulldozers erase decades of family history. Post-Civil War urbanization and industrialization, however, created new technologies, new opportunities, and new values that undermined agriculture's cultural primacy. Working set hours for pay appealed to farm children, as did chances for entertainment and the possibility of socializing [End Page 213] with people beyond family and the farm neighborhood. By the 1920s, slightly more Americans lived in cities than in rural areas. Farm mechanization and consolidation accelerated the trend: farmers made up forty-one percent of the workforce in 1900; 21.5 percent in 1930; four percent in 1970; and only 1.9 percent in 2000–2002.1 Although all farm families struggled with the vagaries of nature, low crop prices, and an over-abundance of work, they were not all the same, as the books reviewed here illustrate. Both authors describe farm families' lives and labors from the late nineteenth through late twentieth centuries, but some reveal significant dissent from the belief that farming offered the best life. By the end of each memoir, no one from these families farmed. The poignant title of Curtis Harnack's classic memoir about his extended family in Plymouth County, Iowa, We Have All Gone Away, sums up the history of midwestern agriculture. The careful planning and hard work of his grandfather John Harnack, who acquired 240 acres of northwest Iowa land in the 1880s, led to prosperity and more comforts than most farm families enjoyed. A skilled carpenter, he raised a landmark barn and other outbuildings, planted fruit trees and berry bushes, built a large house to replace the first home, a 6x10 cabin, and created a successful farm. By 1900 the family had running water and a complete bathroom in the house. They were prosperous, even during the Great Depression. Curtis Harnack grew up in an atypical family arrangement. His mother, Carrie Meyer, earned a college degree and taught school for ten years before marrying Henry Harnack in 1920. They shared the substantial farm home with Henry's brother, Jack, and his wife, Lizzie Meyer, Carrie's youngest sister. Curtis, born in 1927, was the youngest of four. When Henry Harnack died of pneumonia six months after Curtis's birth, Carrie decided to stay on the farm with Jack, Lizzie, and their three children so that her children would have a father figure in Uncle Jack. Nonetheless, she made sure that her children knew that they would leave the farm for brighter futures elsewhere. Uncle Jack had never wanted to farm, but fell into it when his father retired. Lizzie, much to her disappointment, had to leave school after eighth grade to care for her ailing stepmother and do the household work. Unhappy with their lot, Jack and Lizzie also expected their children to move up and out. Despite the wariness of the second generation of Harnacks toward farm life, Harnack's memoir...

In low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), children and families face a multitude of risk factors for mental health and well-being. These risks are even further exacerbated in humanitarian emergencies. However, access to effective mental health services in such settings is severely limited, leading to a large mental health treatment gap. Middle childhood (5-12years) is a crucial period for human development during which symptoms of emotional distress often emerge, with one in three mental disorders developing prior to age 14. However, there is little evidence of effective psychological interventions for children in this developmental stage, and suitable for implementation within LMICs and humanitarian emergencies. We conducted this evidence review to inform the development of a new intervention package based on existing best practice for this age group, drawing insights from both global and LMIC resources. Our review synthesizes the findings of 52 intervention studies from LMICs and humanitarian settings; 53 existing systematic reviews and meta-analyses covering both LMICs and high-income countries, and 15 technical guidelines. Overall, there is limited high-quality evidence from which to draw recommendations for this age group; however, some promising intervention approaches were identified for children experiencing externalizing and internalizing symptoms, traumatic stress and a combination of difficulties. Several effective interventions utilize cognitive-behavioral techniques for children, in either group or individual format, and incorporate caregiver skills training into treatment, although the findings are mixed. Most evaluated interventions use specialists as delivery agents and are lengthy, which poses challenges for scale-up in settings where financial and human resources are scarce. These findings will inform the development of new psychological interventions for children in this age group with emotional and behavioral difficulties.

Military families face many unique challenges, including frequent separations, demanding work hours, and relocations. The HealthySteps (HS) program may offset these challenges utilizing the expertise of a nonclinical child development specialist called a HS specialist who offers enhanced well-child visits (WCVs), support between visits, and connections to community resources. Our study sought to identify the impact of the military HS pilot program on the timeliness of WCVs, immunizations, routine behavioral and developmental screenings, and referrals to community resources within the first 15 months of life (MOL). We retrospectively reviewed charts of 26 HS-enrolled and 26 randomly selected age-matched non-HS-enrolled children from age 2 to 15 MOL. Demographic variables obtained include child's gender, child's birth order, mother's age, active duty parent's rank classification, and active duty parent's gender. We examined five outcomes measures aligning with the American Academy of Pediatrics health supervision, immunization, and screening recommendations and National Committee for Quality Assurance Healthcare Effectiveness Data and Information Set measures: (1) completed six or more WCVs in the first 15 MOL, (2) completed developmental screening at the 9-month WCV, (3) up to date on vaccinations at 15 MOL, (4) completed three or more postpartum depression (PPD) screens in the first 6 MOL, and (5) the total number of documented referrals to community resources within the first 15 MOL. Chi-square analysis and independent t-tests were used to compare the groups. There was no statistical significance (P > .05) between the HS-enrolled and control groups for all five demographic variables. A significantly higher percentage of children in the HS-enrolled group received PPD screening compared to the control group (96% vs. 73.1%, P = .021). The HS-enrolled group had a higher mean number of community resource referrals at 15 MOL of 2.46 (SD = 1.14) vs. the control group with a mean of 0.19 (SD = 0.49). None of the other outcomes showed a statistically significant difference between groups. The results of this study indicate the positive impacts of the military HS program on referrals to community resources and PPD screening, reflecting the HS specialist focus on the family unit. Limitations of this study include the small population size and limited demographic information resulting from the retrospective nature of the study and pilot status of the HS program. Larger prospective studies are needed to clarify the true impact of the HS program in the military health system.

Our New President—Gail A. Hecht, MD, MS

Showing Lawrence's familiarity with biblical typology from both written and visual sources, Virginia Hyde explores its many ironic and paradoxical versions in his works. She demonstrates his use of typological precursors of Christ, such as Adam and David, Moses and Aaron, and his development of a coherent cosmology centered on the cross and the Tree of Life. These features often take on radically revisionist meanings when informed by Lawrence's interests in theosophy and occult lore. Hyde fully recognized Lawrence's intensely dynamic style and examines the ways in which he works creatively with his models. Hyde sheds new light on Lawrence's leadership views, linking them to patriarchal assumptions inherent in biblical typology. She utilizes manuscripts and sketches as well as his traditional works to show that a complex form of biblical symbolism affects both his form and content in unexpected ways. His symbols are often traceable to iconographic models with typological significance. Risen Adam includes pioneering treatments of the first Quetzalcoatl, the 1923 version of Plumed Serpent, so different in part from the final novel as to form a separate creative effort. Hyde also offers provocative new readings of Rainbow, Women in Love, Aaron's Rod, The Border Line, Plumed Serpent, David, Man Who Died, Birds, Beasts and Flowers, and other works. book is illustrated with artwork by Lawrence and with examples of the medieval and other iconography he knew.

The Tree of Lifetouches on embodiment of the soul in an early sequence covering courtship, marriage and the first pregnancy of a young couple. In a delicate formal scene, Mrs O'Brien, nearing full term, treads gently along a river's edge summoning infant souls luminous in white linen. She opens a minute book of life to one of them, preparing his entry through the iron gates that open on embodied life. Presently, the infant soul rises up from his underwater home beyond the reach of conscious awareness: Mrs O'Brien gives birth to her first son, Jack. This is the boy who will eventually become a middle-aged man in crisis. Ravaged then by grief for his long-dead younger brother and his own inability to live at peace with his family or himself, his memories, visions and reflections accumulate in a way that makes him a suffering Hermes for the early twenty-first century. The initiating episode of the infant's birth complements the embodied and affective experiences of those in the audience who accept the film's sensual invitation to steep themselves in the immense scale of its gorgeous sounds and images. They then discover on the pulse that, more than the history of one Texan family, it attempts nothing less than the necessary re-creation of the godhead for the early twenty-first century. Contrary to the rigid medieval dogmas of so many orthodox religions,The Tree of Lifeassures us not of a changeless eternity but rather the sacred and ceaseless metamorphosis of numinous energy.

The evolution of Chinese cinema has witnessed the emergence of innovative narrative forms, exemplified by Bi Gan's "Kaili Blues." Released in 2015, this film captivated audiences with its rich poetic imagery and innovative storytelling techniques. This research explores the poetic narrative employed in "Kaili Blues," aiming to elucidate its artistic significance within the context of contemporary Chinese filmmaking. Through a comprehensive analysis of the film's narrative style, visual expression, and emotional resonance, this study delves into how poetic storytelling transcends traditional narrative conventions, blurring the boundaries between dreams and reality. The examination reveals that "Kaili Blues" utilizes a poetic narrative characterized by the attenuation of dramatic conflicts, the portrayal of objective phenomena in life, and the use of metaphorical spatial constructions. Moreover, the study uncovers a distinct difference in the "epic sense" between Chinese poetic narrative and European and former Soviet poetic cinema, highlighting the film's unique contribution to the global cinematic landscape. Ultimately, this research contributes to a deeper understanding of the aesthetic sensibilities of contemporary Chinese cinema and its broader implications for cinematic storytelling worldwide.

This article investigates the similarities between inherent Chinese aesthetic sensibilities and modern cinematic thought and introduces Chinese films’ exploration of oriental film aesthetics during the “seventeen-year period” (1949–1966). It serves to remind us that in seeking to understand the developmental trajectory and driving forces behind Chinese film art, it is important to examine the changes in and contexts of modern Chinese modes of thought—especially artistic thought—so as to reveal the aesthetic sensibilities of modern Chinese films; the true nature of their artistic inheritance; and their foundation and potential for modern transformations. The article makes an original Chinese contribution to the creation of a new film aesthetics for future images in the era of artificial intelligence.