Hygiene and Mental Health

mental health hygiene
Today’s guest blog post was written by Kathleen Corcoran.

Mental health and cognitive decline can have a serious impact on a person’s ability to maintain regular hygiene and grooming routines. At the same time, changes or lack of regular hygiene and grooming routines can seriously impact a person’s mental health. Today is World Mental Health Day, a good day to consider how hygiene and mental health are woven together.

You’ve probably heard the saying “cleanliness is next to godliness” at some point. Many people subconsciously apply this moral judgement to the personal hygiene of those around them. As society’s standards of hygiene and grooming have changed over the centuries, so have the judgements on those who do not meet those standards.

This can have deleterious impacts on people already struggling with mental health or cognitive ability. Social stigma can deter people from reaching out for help, whether to mention their struggle to a therapist or ask for physical assistance. Self-consciousness about grooming standards may then contribute to isolation and loneliness.

“Unfortunately, at both ends of the spectrum, a lack of personal hygiene or an obsession with personal hygiene create additional stress and anxiety for the sufferer,” says Carla Manly, PhD, a clinical psychologist and author.

mental health hygiene
When mental health issues get in the way of regular showering or bathing, many people turn to alternative methods of maintaining hygiene.

Depression

Maybe chicken flavored toothpaste makes oral hygiene easier?

The fatigue and lack of motivation that often characterize depression make otherwise routine tasks monumentally impossible. Executive dysfunction can be paralyzing in the face of all the minor steps needed to shower or bathe.

Additionally, depression sometimes causes sensory issues that make bathing physically painful. The temperature changes, scents, or lights can be overwhelming for someone with severe depression.

Instead of traditional bathing practices, those with mental health challenges might turn to alternative methods of hygiene. Dry shampoo, mouthwash, and wipes can enable someone with depression to stay clean when everything is difficult.

Alzheimers and Dementia

People with cognitive decline issues, such as Alzheimer’s and dementia, often have trouble maintaining regular bathing and grooming routines. They may bathe repeatedly, forgetting that they have already done so. Or they may forget to bathe entirely. Alternatively, they may have physical issues that prevent them from bathing. Issues with regular bathing can lead to health complications, such as skin infections or gum disease.

People who can live alone may be able to address this by setting alarms or writing reminders. Maintaining a routine for daily grooming and hygiene can help it become automatic rather than something to remember. Adjustments like hose attachments and rubber mats can remove some of the physical impediments to routine bathing.

mental health hygiene
People in advanced stages of dementia may require help from caregivers to perform regular bathing and grooming.

Nurses, caregivers, and health aides can help patients who need more assistance with bathing. Keeping up habits established over the course of a lifetime can make assisted bathing easier. Bathing at the same time, using the same products or scents, might make a patient less agitated. Focusing on hygiene rather than grooming can help eliminate stress.

Ablutophobia

mental health hygiene
Humans with ablutophobia are not alone in the animal kingdom.

Many young children fear taking a bath or shower, but they generally grow out of it as they become more familiar with the routine or associate the bath with pleasant sensations. However, some people develop ablutophobia, an extreme fear of bathing or washing. This may be due to a sensory processing disorder, a traumatic experience, changes in brain function, or an underlying anxiety disorder.

When people with ablutophobia try to perform routine hygiene or grooming rituals, they may experience the symptoms of a panic attack or dissociation.

In the short term, people with ablutophobia can use alternative forms of cleaning, such as wipes or dry shampoo. However, treating ablutophobia will ultimately require psychotherapy or medication, which may allow a patient to uncover and address an underlying cause.

PTSD and Anxiety Disorders

Both post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and anxiety disorders can cause difficulties with regular standards of cleanliness. These mental health challenges can cause people to go to either extreme of hygiene and grooming. Sometimes people avoid bathing entirely because it triggers traumatic memories or causes a spike in anxiety. At other times, people fixate on removing dirt, performing ritualized grooming behaviors, controlling elements of their environment, or perfecting their outward appearance.

At either extreme, a person will likely feel an increased sense of social stigma and isolation, compounding the pain from mental illness.

Some people may prefer to take dust baths rather than water baths.

Short-term solutions may include changing the method of bathing, such as cleaning body parts individually to limit vulnerability, or switching from baths to showers. Changes to the bathing environment may also help, such as removing or installing locks on doors, turning down the temperature of the water heater in the home, or removing harsh scrubbers.

“The ultimate goals with such behaviors are to reduce a sense of being violated and ‘dirty’ and to increase a sense of safety,” says Carla Manly.

Schizophrenia

People struggling with schizophrenia often have difficulty maintaining regular routines and lose interest in daily activities. This includes habits like showering, brushing teeth, or changing into clean clothes.

Additionally, many medications to treat schizophrenia have side effects that contribute to problems with hygiene or grooming. Antipsychotic drugs often cause dry mouth, which can lead to gum disease, cavities, and halitosis. These medicines may also cause incontinence, which makes maintaining hygiene very difficult.

Some people find written reminders or alarms helpful to encourage regular hygiene or grooming rituals. Adjusting medications or dosages may help with side effects. Chewing gum and drinking lots of water can help with dry mouth, improving oral hygiene.

Bottom Line: Hygiene and grooming serve two different functions in our lives. When mental health issues make everything more difficult, focus on hygiene rather than grooming.

Adventures in Vietnam(ese)

Today’s guest blog was written by Kathleen Corcoran.
speaking Vietnamese
Why does Duolingo think I need to know how to say this?

Back in December 2022, my sister-in-law and brother asked if I’d like to go with them and their friend to Vietnam. After figuring out financing for airfare and updating my passport, the most important concern for me was speaking Vietnamese.

I’ve studied several other languages in my life, but speaking Vietnamese was particularly difficult for me. The US State Department Foreign Language Institute classifies Vietnamese as a “Category III” language, the second most difficult language for English-speakers to learn. They estimate it would take someone approximately 1,100 class hours to reach a working proficiency in Vietnamese. I think they were being optimistic.

Singing Vietnamese

In addition to availing myself of a textbook, a language learning program on my phone, multiple audiobooks and podcasts, and all the questions I could pester my sister-in-law with, I took Vietnamese classes at the local Buddhist temple. Our teacher made us practice singing phrases to each other to wrap our heads around the idea of tones in daily speech.

speaking Vietnamese
Vietnamese has 6 vocal tones and 11 distinct vowels.

I still tend to move my hands or my chin up and down when I’m trying to make my voice distinguish between a sắc (upwards) and huyền (downwards) tone. As you can imagine, I look a bit silly when speaking Vietnamese. However, I sound even sillier when I don’t pronounce the tones correctly.

Essentially, I’m saying, “Gwide meernong!” instead of “Good morning!” when I use the wrong tones. And then I wonder why people can’t understand me…

Speaking Child(ese)

“Don’t try to suffocate your sister in her poncho.”

My sister-in-law and her friend caught up with friends and family they haven’t seen in years. We spent a lot of time with children of those friends and family members, and those children often spoke only a little English.

I quickly learned a lot of Vietnamese for specific situations that never arose in my textbooks or language apps. “Hold my hand!” “Do you need to go potty?” “What a pretty dolly!”

I also, for reasons I could never quite figure out, stood out as a foreigner every place I went. It must have been my shoes. My obvious alien-ness seemed to translate into being American somehow. (A Danish woman I met at a hotel told me everyone also assumed she was American.) Any time I went out in public, children would run up to me to say, “Hello! What is your name? Good morning! How are you? I am fine, thank you!” and then run off, giggling madly.

speaking Vietnamese

A similar thing happened when I worked as an English teacher in another country. I’ve gotten pretty good at holding conversations in very slow, carefully enunciated English, following the dialogue patterns that show up most often in beginner English textbooks. And then I learned how to respond in multiple languages to the proud parents inevitably standing nearby. “Your child is very smart/ handsome/ clever/ good!”

Animal(ese)

Dragon!

When I went through the lesson on animals on the language learning program, I thought, “Why am I bothering with this? When are ducks and dragons ever going to come up in conversation?” I turned out to be quite wrong.

For some reason, those words stuck in my brain more than any others. Any time I saw an animal, the Vietnamese word flashed up in my brain and popped out of my mouth. Cat! Cow! Chicken!

The kids always found this highly amusing. The adults around me thought I was maybe a bit strange.

This came in quite handy when trying to order food. The words for living animals and types of meat are the same in Vietnamese, differentiated by a classifier. Con heo (pig) becomes thịt heo (pork). I was reading Vietnamese, even if I wasn’t quite speaking Vietnamese.

The Most Important Vietnamese

Very often, I tried speaking Vietnamese to order food and then had no idea what I was eating. I never had anything less than delicious, but I often couldn’t quite identify it.

I never figured out what I ate at this conveyor belt restaurant; I picked plates by color.
What combination of words resulted in kidney beans in my iced tea?

I learned key phrases to look out for, like “spicy” and “alcohol.” I never wound up in tears from fiery pepper sauce or accidentally drunk on something I hadn’t realized was alcoholic. I did find myself eating lots of combinations I wouldn’t have thought of and things I’d never have considered putting on a plate. Morning glories, sauteed with garlic, make a delicious addition to salad. Jackfruit, smothered in peanut sauce, tastes like chicken!

One time, I accidentally swapped the vowels in coconut and found myself drinking strawberry tea. I’m still not sure what I asked for when I received a bowl of flan, peanuts, and coffee.

Technology(ese)

speaking Vietnamese
It should be “Human Rights in Vietnamese Society.”

The last time I found myself immersed in a new language, I had very limited internet access and relied on pocket dictionaries to bridge the gap when my vocabulary fell short. I admit to being something of a Luddite still, and one of the first things I bought in Vietnam was a dual-language dictionary. However, people around me happily embraced the new tools available. Results varied.

My brother could take a picture of a menu or a shop sign in Vietnamese and read an English translation on his phone screen. According to his phone, the menu then offered him “delightful hot” and “pig bubbles.”

speaking Vietnamese
The peanuts are those little brown lumps at the bottom.

In Huế, a friend’s family offered to show us how to harvest peanuts! No one in the group who took us to the peanut field spoke English, so we did our best to follow the pantomime. (All I could do was to repeatedly point out the water buffalo in the next field.) Suddenly, we heard British woman’s voice behind us, telling us to “Follow the farmer’s instructions.” One of the cousins had opened a translation app on his phone and used it to speak to us.

Different Dialect(ese)

People in Vietnam speak a wide range of dialects and even entirely different languages. Most translation software, language learning programs, and textbooks focus on the northern dialect, spoken in Hanoi. When people in southern Vietnam tried to use my brother’s spoken translation app, the program spit out gibberish.

Huế sits about mid-way between the northern and southern borders of Vietnam. The dialect people speak there sounds quite different to the dialect people speak in Sóc Trăng, where my sister-in-law’s family lives. In Huế, my sister-in-law could only understand people speaking Vietnamese if they spoke slowly and enunciated.

The vocabulary, word usage, pronunciation, and even the vocal tones varied so widely from place to place that I found myself relying on written Vietnamese, which is the same in every region. In Sóc Trăng, way down south, I could almost understand people when they spoke. In Hội An and Da Nang, further north, people could almost understand me when I spoke.

My Future in Vietnam(ese)

Piles of pineapples!

I’ve decided (my husband doesn’t know this yet) that I’m going to retire to Vietnam at some point in the future. I’ll rent a house, offer English lessons, and eat all the mangoes and coconuts I can get my hands on.

Before I do that, I’ll have to up my skills quite a bit. According to a 2022 study by the Stockholm School of Economics, Vietnamese students outperform students in countries like Britain and Canada. Vietnamese teachers are among the best in the world, and they receive frequent training and support from the government and the Education Ministry.

For now, I’m going back to the temple for more Vietnamese lessons. Maybe I’ll be speaking Vietnamese properly by the time I turn 80!

This is my new retirement plan!

“Just Friends”?

Today’s blog post was written by Kathleen Corcoran

The term “just friends” makes me grit my teeth every time I hear it. It implies that romantic and sexual relationships are somehow worth more than platonic friends. Friendship is relegated to a consolation prize or afterthought.

An Irish Gaelic word, anamchara, captures the importance of intimate friends in our lives. It means both friend and soul mate. In the Martyrology of Oengus, Brigid of Kildare said, “Anyone without a soul friend is like a body without a head.”

The ancient Greeks agreed. Aristotle defined friends as “A single soul dwelling in two bodies.”

So if friends are the other parts of our souls, why does society (and the media) refer to intimate companions as “just friends”?

Humans are a Friendly Species

The Friendship Cure
The Friendship Cure by Kate Leaver

Since the days of wandering tribes of hunter/ gatherers, homo sapiens have needed to rely on the strength of the community for individual survival.

  • The benefits start in childhood. People who spent more time with friends as a child are likely to have a lower body mass index and blood pressure as adults.
  • Being around friends causes humans’ brains to release dopamine, norepinephrin, vassopresin, oxytocin, and serotonin, making people happier, calmer, less stressed, and more likely to survive and recover from difficult situations.
  • Having intimate friends decreases your chances of developing dementia.
  • When in proximity to friends or other loved ones, a person’s brain releases fewer stress hormones in response to threats.
  • People with close friends have lower rates of cardiac disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, and excessive abdominal fat. If they have a heart attack, people who report not feeling lonely are much more likely to survive.
  • Even the perception of having the emotional and practical support of friends improves the likelihood of a good outcome when a person goes through hard times.
  • Having friends is even good for your career! According to a Harvard Business Review study, women with strong friendship circles, particularly when those friendship circles are primarily other women, advance more in their careers and earn 2.5 times higher pay.

“Just friends” keep us alive and healthy!

We Need Friends More Than Family or Romance

As Dr. Marisa Franco wrote in Platonic: How the Science of Attachment Can Help You Make-and Keep- Friends, intimate friendships provide people with unique benefits that other relationships cannot. Friends provide emotional support without getting bogged down in decisions about retirement and childcare. Platonic friends have all the intimacy of romantic relationships without the obligation to provide sexual gratification.

  • Katherine Wu divides love into lust, attraction, and attachment. Intimate friends combine the attraction (dopamine, norepinephrin, and serotonin) of romantic relationships with the attachment (oxytocin and vasopressin) of family relationships without the libido involvement (estrogen and testosterone) of lustful relationships.
Friends provide all sorts of support!
  • A study by William J. Chopik found that people with strong relationships with friends and with family experience better health and happiness overall. However, at advanced ages, people with intimate friendships have better health even than those with strong family ties. This might be because friendships that last into old age have already withstood the test of time.
  • Many women experience more intimacy with same-sex friends than they do with romantic partners.
  • Close friends (and family and romantic partners) develop similar brain-wave patterns when they are together. However, when they part, friends keep those similar patterns longer than they do with familial or romantic intimates.

That’s a lot of brain chemistry and health benefits from people who are “just friends.”

Things Weren’t Always This Way

Gilgamesh and Enkidu shared what might now be called a “romantic friendship.”

Until recently, most people married for reasons of politics, progeny, or property. According to Stephanie Coontz, author of Marriage, a History: How Love Conquered Marriage, the understanding of marriage as an emotional institution did not arise until the 19th century.

Before then, people much more commonly turned to friends for emotional intimacy and affection. Friends kissed and cuddled each other, slept together, and provided the kind of support that, today, society only condones in romantic relationships.

  • When his friend Enkidu dies, Gilgamesh mourns him, saying, “My friend Enkidu, whom I loved so dear, who with me went through every danger, the doom of mortals overtook him.”
  • In the Bible, King David said of his friend Jonathon, “Your love was wonderful to me, passing the love of women.”
  • When he lived in Springfield, Illinois, Abraham Lincoln had a very close friend named Joshua Fry Speed, with whom he shared a bed and had pillow fights in his pyjamas.

With the rise of women’s suffrage came more female-only spaces, such as women’s colleges, where intimate friendships developed into new traditions and forms of expression.

When a Vassar girl takes a shine to another, she straightway enters upon a regular course of bouquet sendings, interspersed with tinted notes, mysterious packages of “Ridley’s Mixed Candies,” locks of hair perhaps, and many other tender tokens, until at last the object of her attentions is captured, the two women become inseparable, and the aggressor is considered by her circle of acquaintances as — smashed.

Yale student newspaper, 1873

The Lord of Montaigne, a Renaissance-era French philosopher even claimed that friendship was so intense and intimate that women could not understand it.

Seeing (to speake truly) that the ordinary sufficiency of women cannot answer this conference and communication, the nurse of this sacred bond: nor seem their minds strong enough to endure the pulling of a knot so hard, so fast, and durable.

Michel Eyquem, Sieur de Montaigne
John Laurens and Alexander Hamilton
detail from The Surrender of Lord Cornwallis by John Trunbull

Letters to friends frequently included language that modern writers would reserve for romantic or sexual partners.

  • In 1779, Alexander Hamilton wrote to his friend John Laurens, “Cold in my professions, warm in [my] friendships, I wish, my Dear Laurens, it m[ight] be in my power, by action rather than words, [to] convince you that I love you.”
  • Ralph Waldo Emerson said of his friends, “What is so delicious as a just and firm encounter of two, in a thought, in a feeling?”

So how did people move from intimate companions, romantic friendship, and soul mates to … “just friends”?

Blame Technology

Well, sort of. For most of our history as a species, humans have lived in small communities with strong social networks. During the Industrial Revolution, people moved to cities in droves, where those strong social networks were more difficult to maintain. Instead, people turned for intimacy (as well as child-rearing and basic survival) to romantic partners and connections within the nuclear family.

Friends work together to pull heavy loads.

Until the 1800s, the word “loneliness” did not exist. The closest word in English, “oneliness,” simply meant being without other people, without any negative connotations. A growing consumer economy, research in psychiatry, and a spreading understanding of evolutionary biology emphasized the importance of the individual alone rather than as a member of the community.

The closed doors and relative anonymity of living in a crowd also changed people’s understanding of sexual orientation and intimacy. Victorian ideals of male and female behavior as being opposite and complementary meant that people restricted their opposite-sex friendships for fear of signalling romantic attraction.

At the same time, people restricted their friendships with those of the same sex due to new fears of perceived homosexuality. As Dr. Marisa Franco wrote in Platonic: How the Science of Attachment Can Help You Make-and Keep- Friends, “Our discomfort with affection in friendships coincides with the rise of homophobia as it is expressed today.”

Psychiatrists like Sigmund Freud and Richard von Kraft-Ebbing characterized romance among people of the same gender as a sexual disorder, creating the concept of sexual identity. As historian Lilian Faderman writes in Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers, the turn of the 20th century “was also the beginning of a lengthy period of general closing off of most affectional possibilities between women. The precious intimacies that adult females had been allowed to enjoy with each other earlier — sleeping in the same bed, holding hands, exchanging vows of eternal love, writing letters in the language of romance — became increasingly self-conscious and then rare.”

Homohysteria, the fear of being perceived as being homosexual, drastically curtailed people’s demonstrations of affection and intimacy among their friends. Before the 19th century, society stigmatized people for non-cormforming sexual acts but not for attraction or for non-sexual behaviors. Freud and Kraft-Ebbing, among others, created the modern definitions of sexual identity, which included homophobia.

Today, people are lonelier than ever. People shy away from expressions of intimacy and love with friends lest they be perceived as declarations of romantic or sexual attraction.

Social media technology, despite filling our screens with the activities of friends, can actually make us lonelier. When people use social media platforms to facilitate face-to-face interactions, they report less loneliness and stronger relationships. However, when they replace face-to-face interactions with activity on social media platforms, they report weaker relationships and stronger feelings of isolation. Research tells us that there is no replacement for communicating with or spending time with intimate friends.

Today, on St. Valentine’s Day, I’d like to celebrate all the friendly people reading this. Friends make us happier and less stressed. Friends help us in our careers. Friends keep us healthy and sometimes even keep us alive. Friends make our lives better in innumerable ways. Friends are so much more than “just friends.”

Who’s Telling the Story?

Guest blog by Kathleen Corcoran

Unless the author uses an omniscient point of view to tell a story, the narrator’s voice will affect the reader’s understanding of events. Dr. Watson helps the reader to understand the habits and reasoning of Sherlock Holmes. Harry Potter serves as the reader’s guide to all the strangeness of Hogwarts as he experiences it for the first time. Ursula K. LeGuin and Terry Pratchett both wrote stories from the point of view of trees, with a tree’s perspective and understanding of the world.

There are loads of books out there with varied, interesting narrators’ voices that add to the tone and understanding of the story. Here are a few of my favorites.

First Person Narrators

Writing a story from the point of view of a single character creates a relationship between the audience and the narrator, especially when the author uses first person point of view. When the narrator has a limited or distorted understanding of events, the audience must fill in the blanks.

Elizabeth is Missing by Emma Healey
Maude, the narrator, has dementia. The reader must piece together the events surrounding a possible murder through Maude’s disjointed and confused understanding.

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Miss Blaine’s Prefect and the Golden Samovar by Olga Wojtas
Shona McMonagle has an absolute certainty in her superior intelligence and understanding of human nature. When she is sent back in time to fulfill a vague mission in 19th century Russia, she jumps to every conclusion possible and misreads every other character’s intentions. This juxtaposition of the narrator’s understanding of what is happening with the reader’s understanding of what is happening is the source of much of the comedy in the book.

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Room by Emma Donaghue
Jack, a five-year-old who has lived his entire short life imprisoned with his mother in a small shed, has a limited understanding of the world and of things happening around him. The vocabulary and language of the novel reflect the narrator’s voice.

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Hollow Kingdom by Kira Jane Buxton
S.T., a domesticated crow, describes the collapse of human society during the zombie apocalypse. He applies a crow’s logic to other characters’ motivations and physical symptoms. This book also answered a question I’ve had for a while: when the humans turn into zombies, who feeds their pets?

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Multiple Narrators

Sometimes, the author can best tell the story by employing multiple narrators’ voices. Each narrator’s voice and style tells a different aspect of the story. Varied and sometimes conflicting points of view provide the reader with a more rounded understanding of what is happening and why.

My Name is Red by Orham Pamuk
Every chapter has a different narrator, sometimes characters in the story, sometimes animals, sometimes abstract concepts. While ostensibly solving a mystery in 16th century Istanbul, the various narrators discuss philosophy and the nature and purpose of art.

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The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
Each of the narrators Faulkner used is unreliable in a different way. When they describe the same episode, the reader gets a fuller understanding of events and significance, with the contradictions and tone shifts each employs.

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World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks
Brooks wrote the novel as a series of interviews with various people, each describing the events leading up to and during a zombie apocalypse. The unnamed interviewer has very little to say, but each character interviewed has a different cultural perspective and explanation of motivations. Descriptions of events vary wildly in what’s emphasized and what’s left entirely unmentioned.

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Developing Narrators

Writing teachers talk a lot about character development, and with good reason. A character that does not change over the course of a story becomes boring. When the narrator’s voice develops and changes over the course of a story, the reader’s understanding of the world in the story changes as well.

Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
As the narrator undergoes an experimental medical treatment, the language used to keep a journal becomes increasingly complex. The narrator’s voice reflects the mental changes experienced by the test subject, with a drastically changing understanding of the world. When the treatment wears off in the second part of the book, the language and understanding becomes more limited again.

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A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
As the young man of the title grows, so does his style and understanding of the world. The language becomes more complex, and the narrator’s voice develops from that of a child to that of an adult.

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Hunger by Knut Hamsen
The narrator’s voice is Knut Hamsen, as this story is autobiographical. The author used stream-of-consciousness writing to describe the physical and psychological hunger he experienced during his struggles as a writer. As the narrator became increasingly alienated and self-destructive, his writing style reflected his changing obsessions and eroding mental stability.

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There are many more books out there with unique and interesting narrators, but there’s not enough blog space in the world to list every book I’ve read and loved. For example, the narrator in The Murder of Roger Akroyd by Agatha Christie contributes a great deal to the reader’s understanding of what occured. I can’t go into much detail without spoiling the plot entirely, so you’ll just have to read it for yourself to see what I mean. You might even have to read it again immediately, like I did!

Behavioral Analysis for Authors

Guest blog by Kathleen Corcoran

There are lots of ways to determine how a fictional character will react in any given situation. Generally, an author has some idea of how the main characters will behave during the major plot points. However, one of the keys to making a story believable is writing actions and reactions that make sense.

To get details of a very different system of understanding motivations, I talked with Angela Johns, BCBA, LBA, about her work as a Behavior Analyst.

Four Primary Functions

When a person (or animal) performs an action, that action fulfills one of four basic functions. A behavioral analysis therapist works to change behavior patterns by identifying the function and substituting the unwanted behavior with a more acceptable behavior that meets the same function.

Attention
from Portland Center Stage

When the Bennets attend the Netherfield Ball, Mary Bennet wants attention and praise, so she takes over the piano and embarrasses her family by playing and singing rather obnoxiously. Mary gets negative attention and lukewarm praise, but her original need for attention has still been met. (Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen)

Access to Tangible Rewards

Santiago, having finally caught a fish, would quite like to keep that fish. The story is filled with metaphor and lovely language, but Santiago ultimately holds on to the fishing line because he wants to reel in and keep the marlin that he caught. (The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway)

Sensory or Automatic

Dr. Polyakov initially takes morphine to relieve pain in his stomach. Later, he takes morphine to alleviate the despair and heartache of his life. As the addiction becomes worse, he takes morphine because he becomes unable to function without it. (“Morphine” by Mikhail Bulgakov)

Escape or Avoidance

While waiting for Odysseus to return to Ithaca, Penelope delayed giving in to any of the suitors badgering her by claiming she had to weave a burial shroud for her father-in-law, Laertes. Every night, she unwove the portion she’d woven during the day. She managed to avoid either giving in to any of the suitors or giving any of them a pretense for starting a war. (The Odyssey by Homer)

“We Work Ourselves Out of a Job”

A behavioral analysis expert will work with a patient (and caregivers) to adjust behaviors by identifying which function an unwanted behavior fulfills and substituting another behavior that meets the same function. For example, raising a hand for attention from a teacher rather than shouting in class.

As Johns put it, “The whole point of us [behavioral analysts] is to work ourselves out of a job.”

They do this by observing the behavior (often in a patient’s home), looking at the antecedents, defining the consequences, and determining the function. Experts work with patients to reduce harmful behaviors, establish beneficial habits, focus at school, improve communications, and a variety of other goals.

Behavioral analysis experts primarily work with autistic patients, but applied behavioral analysis also serves a role in everything from fitness training to consumer spending research.

Fictional Behavioral Analysis
Sometimes behavioral antecedents are easily identified.

An author can use a similar technique to create believable motivations for a character’s actions. Identify which behavior is needed to advance the plot or set up a situation, then create circumstances that will trigger that behavior. Rather than identifying antecedents, an author has the luxury of creating antecedents.

  • If the clue to identifying a murderer is in the kitchen, make the character hungry so they’ll go in search of food.
  • If a character needs to go to jail for theft, that character first needs a reason for the theft, even if that reason is kleptomania or greed.
  • Perhaps a character spills their soul to a new acquaintance because they are looking for attention.
  • Maybe someone lights a cigarette so they don’t have to answer uncomfortable questions.

Stories don’t make much sense (and aren’t much fun to read) if characters do things for no reason.

This is, of course, a major oversimplification of the years of training and work a behavioral analyst does. For more information, check out the Kennedy Krieger Institute or The IRIS Center.

How Optimized is Too Optimized?

Optimus Prime

Guest blog by Kathleen Corcoran

Optimal Optimus Prime

Among other services, WordPress offers SEO (Search Engine Optimization) analysis and optimization. These are, essentially, writing guidelines to draw readers to a webpage and then to make that webpage easier to read.

When every website bristles with ads (or is itself an ad), the primary goal of any author must be to drive traffic to a website, whatever that traffic may be. Disseminating information, discussing ideas, arguing viewpoints, and every other method of communication becomes monetized. Some might argue that this is why so much of online content today looks the same.

Yoast SEO

When a reader types a question or phrase into the search bar of Google, Bing, Duckduckgo, or any other search engine, the algorithms of that search engine sort possible results based on how likely they are to provide the answer.

Title

“Clickbait” is the phenomenon of ambiguously or misleadingly titling an article for the sole purpose of convincing readers to visit a webpage. Social media accounts have popped up just to point out the silliness of these titles, often with hilarious results.

Search Engine Optimization begins with the title of a webpage. Ideally, the title of a website should be six to ten words, with 10% uncommon words and at least one “power word.”

Emotionally triggering headlines drive more traffic to a website. The more strongly emotional a headline is, the more effectively it brings readers to a page.

Even within the headline, word percentages come into play. Analysts have sat down and worked out the figures for how many uncommon words, how many common words, how many positive and negative and neutral words are most likely to convince a web searcher to click on a link.

  • Titles By the Numbers
    • 6-10 words
    • First 3 words are most important
    • 10-15% emotional words
    • 20-30% common words
    • 10-15% uncommon words
    • At least one power word
    • Sentiment positive or negative, never neutral
    • Lists and how-to articles are the most effective

Keywords

My Favorite Key Words!

The other method search engines use to determine how well a webpage fits a query is to look for keywords. In order to reach the most viewers, writers are encouraged to create and use particular key words and phrases throughout the text.

This is similar to an essay’s thesis or an operatic motif. Of course, there are numbers for optimization of keywords.

Readability

Optimus Primal

Humans process information differently when reading on a screen than when reading on a page. Scrolling text creates different memory maps than turning pages. Serif fonts register more easily in print; sans serif fonts register more easily on a screen.

Beyond the physical, readability optimization focuses on how easily a reader can absorb the information presented on a website. Online, readers tend to skim information and look for particular words or phrases rather than reading thoroughly.

The readability is calculated by the Kincaid-Flesch reading score, originally developed for military use. 

Text Formatting

Rudolph Flesch and Robert Kincaid developed a system for evaluating reading ease and relative grade level, summarized in the table here:

ScoreSchool level (US)Notes
100.00–90.005th gradeVery easy to read. Easily understood by an average 11-year-old student.
90.0–80.06th gradeEasy to read. Conversational English for consumers.
80.0–70.07th gradeFairly easy to read.
70.0–60.08th & 9th gradePlain English. Easily understood by 13- to 15-year-old students.
60.0–50.010th to 12th gradeFairly difficult to read.
50.0–30.0CollegeDifficult to read.
30.0–10.0College graduateVery difficult to read. Best understood by university graduates.
10.0–0.0ProfessionalExtremely difficult to read. Best understood by university graduates.

They based the scores on a formula derived from the number of words in a sentence and the number of syllables in each word.

Once again, everything is reduced to numerical value.  Breaking up blocks of text into smaller paragraphs or adding pictures makes it easier for a person reading a screen to glance through a text and pick out information. However, none of this information actually measures the quality of writing.

  • Text By the Numbers
    • Breaking text up with sub-headings, calculated per 300 words
    • Readability score, calculated by average number of words per sentence and syllables per word, recommended between 60-70
    • Paragraphs less than 150 words
    • Sentence length calculated as a percentage of sentences with more than 20 words
    • Text length between 300-900 words

Writing Style

Once a reader has ventured beyond the title and the keywords, they must confront the actual writing on the page. Again, SEO has all the answers! Some of this is common writing advice, such as varying sentence structure and avoiding passive voice. 

What’s the Point?

When everyone writes by the numbers, driven by selling, I have to wonder how much the actual writing quality and style suffer. News outlets and health information present information formulated to drive in visitors rather than to educate. Bloggers deliberately trigger emotional responses for the sake of increasing ad revenue. How much real skill and work goes into crafting articles, stories, arguments, or any other accumulation of words when everything can be decided by formula and reduced to the lowest common denominator (or at least to 13-15 year olds)?

Today’s blog entry was written by Kathleen Corcoran, a local harpist, writer, editor, ESL teacher, luthier, favorite auntie, turtle lover, canine servant, and rapidly developing curmudgeon.

Un-Optimized Optimus Prime

Just for the sake of playing with this page’s readability score, I present to you the beginning of “In Search of Lost Time” by Marcel Proust. This sentence has a Fleisch-Kincaide readability score of -515.1.

“But I had seen first one and then another of the rooms in which I had slept during my life, and in the end I would revisit them all in the long course of my waking dream: rooms in winter, where on going to bed I would at once bury my head in a nest, built up out of the most diverse materials, the corner of my pillow, the top of my blankets, a piece of a shawl, the edge of my bed, and a copy of an evening paper, all of which things I would contrive, with the infinite patience of birds building their nests, to cement into one whole; rooms where, in a keen frost, I would feel the satisfaction of being shut in from the outer world (like the sea-swallow which builds at the end of a dark tunnel and is kept warm by the surrounding earth), and where, the fire keeping in all night, I would sleep wrapped up, as it were, in a great cloak of snug and savoury air, shot with the glow of the logs which would break out again in flame: in a sort of alcove without walls, a cave of warmth dug out of the heart of the room itself, a zone of heat whose boundaries were constantly shifting and altering in temperature as gusts of air ran across them to strike freshly upon my face, from the corners of the room, or from parts near the window or far from the fireplace which had therefore remained cold—or rooms in summer, where I would delight to feel myself a part of the warm evening, where the moonlight striking upon the half-opened shutters would throw down to the foot of my bed its enchanted ladder; where I would fall asleep, as it might be in the open air, like a titmouse which the breeze keeps poised in the focus of a sunbeam—or sometimes the Louis XVI room, so cheerful that I could never feel really unhappy, even on my first night in it: that room where the slender columns which lightly supported its ceiling would part, ever so gracefully, to indicate where the bed was and to keep it separate; sometimes again that little room with the high ceiling, hollowed in the form of a pyramid out of two separate storeys, and partly walled with mahogany, in which from the first moment my mind was drugged by the unfamiliar scent of flowering grasses, convinced of the hostility of the violet curtains and of the insolent indifference of a clock that chattered on at the top of its voice as though I were not there; while a strange and pitiless mirror with square feet, which stood across one corner of the room, cleared for itself a site I had not looked to find tenanted in the quiet surroundings of my normal field of vision: that room in which my mind, forcing itself for hours on end to leave its moorings, to elongate itself upwards so as to take on the exact shape of the room, and to reach to the summit of that monstrous funnel, had passed so many anxious nights while my body lay stretched out in bed, my eyes staring upwards, my ears straining, my nostrils sniffing uneasily, and my heart beating; until custom had changed the colour of the curtains, made the clock keep quiet, brought an expression of pity to the cruel, slanting face of the glass, disguised or even completely dispelled the scent of flowering grasses, and distinctly reduced the apparent loftiness of the ceiling.”

Marcel Proust, “In Search of Lost Time” (1922)

Behind the Silver Screen

from The Muppet Movie

Today’s blog entry was written by Kathleen Corcoran, a local harpist, writer, editor, ESL teacher, luthier, favorite auntie, turtle lover, canine servant, and cinephile.

If you’re like me, reading a book is like watching a film inside your head. Casting is entirely up to your imagination, there’s no need for stunt doubles, and the special effects budget is unlimited. It even comes in Smell-O-Vision, which is not always fun.

To learn more about how a writer’s mental movie is translated into a box office hit, I spoke with Sean Williams, a film producer, director, actor, and writer. Williams recently graduated George Mason University, where he directed No Endings, winner of the 2022 Mason Film Festival award for Best Horror/Thriller Film.

Sight and Sound

Alfred Hitchcock said, “A lot of writers think they’re filling the page with words, but they’re filling the screen with images.”

Every writing teacher’s favorite bit of advice seems to be “Show, Don’t Tell.” That is even more true on film than in prose. A film writer must convey everything to the audience entirely through visual or audio input. The sense of dread, nauseating smells, motion sickness, feeling hungry, nostalgia, and every other part of the story must be either seen or heard.

Star Wars: A New Hope provides exposition through the use of an opening title.

Screenwriters have lots of techniques they can use to provide background information. Voice-over narration, overheard radio or television broadcasts, shots of newspaper headlines, letters, text messages all provide exposition.

Here are some great examples of exposition written into the screen play:

Diegetic Media: Text messages are displayed on screen in BBC’s Sherlock, letting the audience know what off-screen characters are doing.
  • The audience learns about flying broomsticks and magical racing by overhearing a group of children exclaiming about “the new Nimbus 2000; it’s the fastest broom ever!” in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.
  • The narrator’s voiceover in A Christmas Story explains why he hates his gift of fuzzy rabbit pajamas so much: “I knew that for at least two years, I would have to wear them every time Aunt Clara visited us. I just hoped that Flick would never spot them, as word of this humiliation could easily make life at Warren G Harding School a veritable hell.”
  • Characters in The Office and Deadpool frequently “break the fourth wall” by directly addressing the audience to explain their motivations or provide further information.

Sir Terry Pratchett included lots of footnotes in his novels, often providing extra jokes or humorous observations. In the screen adaptation of Wyrd Sisters, this footnote is shifted to a dialogue between two characters.

Writers for the screen use a variety of techniques give the audience necessary information without background essays. Writers of short stories, novels, memoirs, etc. can make use of some of these techniques to “show, not tell” the story.

Simplification

When moving from page to screen (or stage). writers must keep in mind the attention span of the viewer. A reader who forgets the details of military supply trains in War and Peace can just flip back a few pages, but it’s a bit more difficult for a film or TV audience.

Simplified Plot

Even without Tom Bombadil, the film adaptation of Fellowship of the Rings was nearly three hours long.

Remember the Mafia in Jaws? How about the romance between Idgie and Ruth in Fried Green Tomatoes? The controversy around Project 100,000 in the Vietnam War as experienced by Forrest Gump?

There are lots of reasons to cut subplots from a film adaptation. The running time might not allow for it. Corporate or government sponsors might require controversial themes to be removed. It might just be a case of special effects or budget constraints.

Simplified Characters

Many film adaptations don’t include all the characters in the source material. They might clutter the screen, they might be too difficult to film, they might simply be another name and face that the audience would have to remember.

Screen writers might shift a cut character’s dialogue to another character, or they might remove it altogether.

Often, screen writers will combine similar characters for the sake of clarity. Michael Green’s adaptation of Death on the Nile has many such changes. Apart from the murderers, the murdered, and Hercules Poirot, nearly every character from the original Agatha Christie novel is combined with another character or removed altogether.

Glinda, Ruler of the Quadling Country and Tattypoo, Good Witch of the North, merged into one character in the 1939 MGM Wizard of Oz film.

One could argue that the same principles apply when writing any sort of fiction. Short stories certainly have a finite number of characters and sub-plots they can include before they are no longer “short.” At what point does including or omitting details in a non-fiction work change it to a work of fiction? The question of whether to include or cut, develop or combine characters and themes is ultimately down to the writer.

Beyond Words

Film editors, CGI artists, composers, costume designers, set designers, directors, actors, and hosts of others contribute to the final creation of a film that an audience sees. The screenplay is only one component of the finished product.

Editing

Consider the moment in The Wizard of Oz when Dorothy first arrives in Munchkinland. There is no dialogue. The editor created a transition shot showing the change from the sepia-toned farmhouse to the full-color world of Oz.

Costumes

Amy Westcott, costume designer for the 2010 film Black Swan, dressed the main character all in white and pink during choreography and classroom scenes. This illustrates the character’s naivety as well as drawing the audience’s immediate focus. Character development is reflected in the gradual darkening of the costume, demonstrating internal conflict without a single word being spoken.

Music

The score composer(s) are responsible for a huge part of an audience’s emotional involvement in a film. The ominous Jaws theme by John Williams (no relation), the Moonlight score that “splits the difference between classical and codeine” by Nicholas Britell, the iconic music establishing time periods in Forrest Gump all tell a huge part of the story beyond the visual.

Other unspoken storytelling devices Sean Williams suggests

The opening scenes of Up illustrate the main character’s relationship, career, heartbreak, and slide into depression entirely without dialogue.
  • The camera panning along a series of family photographs with fewer and fewer people, showing a character’s increasing isolation
  • Focus on a clock face, burned down candle stubs, or an overflowing ashtray to demonstrate the passage of time
  • Camera angles above or below eye level to demonstrate the relative importance, ego, or intimidation of a character
  • Distorting and muffling background sounds to reflect a character’s disorientation
  • Changing color palettes to take advantage of humans’ hard-wired responses to red (danger), blue (calm), etc.
  • Adjusting camera focus to draw audience attention to foreground, background, or in between

Ultimately, this must come from the directors, editors, actors, composers, lighting specialists, sound editors, etc., etc., etc…. The screenplay is really just the beginning.

Prose writers may not be able to include fantastic music or ambient colors, but there are other tools available. Point of view shifts, chapter divisions, physical descriptions, and sensory details (beyond sight and sound) can all be used to direct a reader’s attention.

Sean Williams gave me a lot more information about writing for the screen, but I’m afraid I’d need about four years to learn what he covered over the course of his degree. For more details, check out George Mason University or The Los Angeles Film School.

Challenge Accepted!

Today’s blog entry was written by Kathleen Corcoran, a local harpist, writer, editor, ESL teacher, favorite auntie, turtle lover, canine servant, and chronically addicted reader.

Ever notice that the same titles and authors keep showing up when you look for your next favorite book? Literary prize winners, Oprah or Reese’s Book Club, Books to Read Before You Die, or endless variations of “Recommended for you because you liked…”

Try this one!

Part of this is because such lists are often curated or sponsored by publishers. Part of this is because search algorithms almost inevitably lead to echo chambers. (For a bizarre and frightening illustration of this, check out this article on how fake social media accounts “learn” to push misinformation and conspiracy theories.)

So how to bump yourself out of your reading rut? Take a reading challenge! There are all kinds of reading challenges you can join, not to mention the book clubs, library groups, and reading forums online or in person. I’ve included a few here, but these are just the very tiniest tips of the iceberg available. And, of course, nothing can compare to the miraculous powers of a curious librarian!

Year-Long Challenges

I am greatly indebted to girlxoxo for directing me to most of these challenges. For more, check out their 2022 Master List of Reading Challenges.

Read voraciously!
  • Backlist Reading Challenges – Ease yourself into the world of challenges by joining Austin Decker‘s challenge to clear out some of that pile of books you keep meaning to read but never quite get around to it.
  • 52 Books in 52 Weeks – Just as the name suggests, the 52 Book Club challenges you to read a book every week in a year, following a different prompt every week.
  • Monthly Book Award Reading Challenge – Literary awards are announced every month of the year, and this challenge if to read a book that was awarded a prize (during any year) in that month. 
  • Read 52 Books in 52 Weeks – Not related to the 52 Book Club, this challenge has a similar goal: follow the various suggestions and prompts to read a book every week this year.
  • Monthly Motif Reading Challengegirloxoxo will prompt you with a theme or motif every month, and your goal is to read a book with that motif.
  • Beyond the Bookends – Twelve prompts over the course of the year (“adapted for the screen” or “set at or about a circus or carnival”) will nudge you to expand your horizons a bit.
  • Mount TBR – Blogger MyReadersBlock has a challenge to help you work through some of those books you already own (digital or hardcopy) but haven’t quite made your way through yet.
  • The Nerdy Bookworm 50 Books a Year Reading Challenge – You can follow the prompts, but it might be more fun to fill out Emily the Book Nerd‘s BINGO cards as you read.

Genre Challenges

One of the great things about challenging yourself is that you can read what you like. No teachers grading you or tests you don’t want to take. The Story Graph has a pretty amazing database of reading challenges, which you can search by genre, author, awards, or even geographic location.

Library Travel

Seriously, don’t mess with librarians.

Real-life travel can be tricky, especially with the ever-changing restrictions to stem the flow of Covid. It’s so much easier to go somewhere else by reading about it, especially

Stretch Your Brain

As I mentioned earlier, once of the most fun things to do with a reading challenge is to challenge yourself. Read something you don’t normally read. Pick up a book from the opposite end of the Dewey Decimal System. Find an author with a different point of view. Hear someone else’s story in their OwnVoice.

  • Books in Translation – I’m a language nerd, so this one speaks to my nerdy soul. The idea is to read a book that’s been translated from any language into a language you can read. (This is extra helpful for those trying to learn another language.)
  • Book Riot’s Read Harder Challenge – The Book Riot community has 24 prompts to nudge readers out of comfortable ruts they may have fallen into. Some of these prompts are purely for fun, and some might be more of a challenge.
  • Diversify Your Reading Challenge – There are prompts in twelve genres, one for each month, encouraging readers to look beyond those “more of what you love” ads.
  • Diversity Reading ChallengeGothicVampirestein has a range of categories and keywords to encourage readers to look at the world through someone else’s eyes.
  • Mirrors, Windows, and Sliding Glass Doors – Though not a specific reading challenge, this essay from Rudine Sims Bishop gives very helpful suggestions for expanding your worldview and reading empathetically.

And if that’s still not enough to break you out of a rut (or at least widen the rut a bit), try this 52 Weekly Challenge list from BookRiot. It includes suggestions like dusting and cleaning your real-life bookshelves, making a recipe from a cookbook, going to a community theater production, and asking a librarian a question – fun ways to remind yourself of how vast the world of books is.

My good friend Vivian Lawry has challenged herself to add a Nobel Prize winner’s work to her genre reading every month this year. So what are you going to read in 2022?

Daughter of Another Mother

My moms have always been such bastions of dignity and deportment.

Today’s blog entry was written by Kathleen Corcoran, a local harpist, writer, editor, ESL teacher, luthier, favorite auntie, cookie maker, canine servant, and fortunate daughter of multiple mothers.

Tomorrow is my mom’s birthday, and she won’t be here to celebrate. Like many people, I was raised by a crowd of mother figures. My siblings and I only called two of them “mom.” One of them died last year.

Mom Cheryl and my biological mom were best friends since before I was born. Though they looked nothing alike, they called each other sister.

If anyone was fool enough to question their biology, my moms would reply, “She looks like momma; I take after daddy.”

They met when Mom Cheryl was directing a summer day program at the playground near my house. Biological Mom was a health and PE teacher at a local girls’ high school. As extremely intelligent, exceptionally tall women more interested in sports than makeup, they sort of inevitably became friends.

One played field hockey and watched football; the other played rugby and watched basketball. Both were the loudest cheerleaders for whatever activity my siblings and I did.

My two moms did everything together. They cooked together, handing spoons and spices back and forth without looking, like relay racers with a baton. They maintained order on a field of fifty excited kids with their finely-tuned gym teacher voices.

They were always together for holidays, birthdays, vacations, and funerals. My biological mother’s extended family eventually included Mom Cheryl automatically when planning weddings or baptisms.

Whenever Mom Cheryl was cooking, we all knew to be careful. Instead of following a recipe, Mom Cheryl added whatever looked good at the time. Her end results were always very tasty, but she liked things hot!

My siblings were not the only beneficiaries of Mom Cheryl’s bottomless well of love. Everyone in the neighborhood knew that “Miz Cheryl” could always help with science homework, jump shots, sewing, giving insulin shots, and haircuts.

It was universally agreed that Miz Cheryl’s hugs were the best hugs.

During a hurricane, she climbed out the window of a flooded bus to rescue a nearby driver. Mom Cheryl pulled the lady out the window of her car and lifted her up into the bus just before the woman’s car was swept away.

One of the things I miss the most about Mom Cheryl is the way we could sit and be quiet together. When a chaotic family dinner or crowded wedding party was too overwhelming, Mom Cheryl would step out for a smoke break. Eventually, I noticed that she never actually lit her cigarettes, just held one in her hand so no one would question her. She was a bad influence: I started joining her to “smoke” when I was about twelve.

But then the whole world stopped making sense and Mom Cheryl was gone. This wonderful lady, this pioneer for women’s sports, this unstoppable Amazon of hugs and quiet spaces won’t be here to celebrate her birthday tomorrow.

Ladybug can have the steak. I’ll have the beer.

When Mom Cheryl died, her dog Ladybug came to live with me. Maybe tomorrow we’ll have a beer and a steak in our absent mom’s memory.

The Domino Effect

Today’s blog entry was written by Kathleen Corcoran, a local harpist, writer, editor, ESL teacher, luthier, favorite auntie, turtle lover, canine servant, and female of the species.

In honor of Women’s History Month, I’d like to tell you a story of how one woman sparked a series of interactions that led to rock stars! And none of these interactions would have been possible without women pioneers making history.

Alice Chalifoux, the “godmother to the Harp World” was the principle harpist with the Cleveland Symphony Orchestra from 1931 to 1974. For decades, she was the only woman in the Orchestra. Because she couldn’t share the dressing room with her male colleagues, she used to shut herself in her harp’s traveling case to change into concert dress.

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Way back in the 1990s, there was a little girl who took harp lessons at her local middle school. She rented a small harp over the summer and brought it home to practice.

Deborah Hansen-Conant, “the Jimi Hendrix of the harp,” is an amazingly unorthodox harpist, the only person I’ve ever seen able to sing, dance, and play her harp all at the same time. She worked with the CAMAC Harp Company to design and create her signature 11lb, carbon-fiber, electric harp.

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That little girl was my neighbor and a few years older than me. She was the absolute coolest person I knew (as all the Big Girls were). Not only did she let me listen to her practice, she let me play a few notes!

Mary Jane D’Arville, in addition to teaching harp in public schools, founded the Virginia Harp Center. With locations up and down the East Coast now, the Harp Centers provide rental harps for students who could not otherwise afford them. Not content with being a superhero to every harpist with a bent stand or broken string from Boston to Miami, she also composes and arranges music for harp and harp ensembles, teaches privately, performs, and organizes music festivals.

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Obviously, the best way to be as cool as The Big Girls is to copy what they do. As soon as I was able, I joined the same harp program through our school system.

The Harp in Our Public Schools Project recently released a DVD of their performance of “Dona Nobis Pace.”

Talented, determined women (and a few men) have created harp programs in public school systems all over the country. Velma Froude in Detroit, Anne Williams and Jackie Pates in Richmond VA, Robbin Gordon-Cartier in East Orange NJ, and Lou Anne Neill in Los Angeles CA are just a few of the ladies who have made the harp available to kids who never would have seen one otherwise.

Playing the harp was so much fun that I decided to keep it up in college. The only problem with the college I’d chosen was that there was no harp program and no harp teacher.

In addition to chairing the School of Music and conducting the orchestra where I studied, Dr. Oeida Hatcher is a leading researcher in methods of joining computer science and music education. She is a guest conductor and lecturer, presenting her findings all over the world.

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Fortunately, the Chair of School of Music where I studied liked the idea of a harp program at school. She found a qualified harp teacher in the area, convinced her to drive an hour to the college to teach me, and then informed me that I would be declaring my major as Music Performance.

Edna Philips was the first female principal musician in a major American Symphony, specifically the Philadelphia Philharmonic. You may recognize her silhouette from Disney’s Fantasia.

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I was the best student in the harp program! I was also the worst student in the harp program. As far as I know, I am still the only student to have been in the harp program! My new teacher was from Los Angeles, and her style was unlike anything I’d ever played. She taught me to play whole new genres of music as well as the business of being a musician. (For example, if you’re driving down the LA Freeway with your harp in the passenger seat of your convertible, make sure to buckle it in securely.)

Dorothy Ashby was one of the first musicians to see the potential of the harp as more than a background, classical instrument. She was possibly the most influential jazz harpists of all time, establishing the possibilities of the harp in bebop, jazz, jazz improv, and blues.

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My glamorous Hollywood harp teacher had lots of glamorous Hollywood friends, one of whom worked for a sound engineering firm. Her job was to connect filmmakers with people who create music for films. Without music, movies are surprisingly boring. Without that 2 note foreboding theme in the background, “Jaws” is just a big fish with extra pointy bits.

Ruth Brown earned the titles “Miss Rhythm” and “Queen of R&B” as one of the best-selling singers and songwriters of the century. She leveraged her fame to force the recording industry to acknowledge the rights of musicians in negotiating royalties. She created the Rhythm and Blues Foundation to assist other musicians who were in need of assistance in negotiations.

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This woman who knew everyone involved in making music in Hollywood came to visit my harp teacher one day. The woman in charge of all music at my college invited her to present a lecture on the business of music in film.

Germaine Tailleferre, a French musician, is believed to be the first woman to compose a score for film. In 1931, she wrote “Chiens” a piano piece to accompany the silent documentary film Pastorale Inca. Ninety years later, 94 percent of composers for major films are men.

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It was a fascinating lecture. The presenter talked about how directors and producers choose the composer for a film, how music is played and recorded for films, how editors match musical timing to visual timing, and how sound engineers adjust the soundtrack, dialogue, sound effects, and background noise so that each scene creates the desired aural effect.

Rachel Portman was the first woman to win an Academy Award for Best Film Score (Emma, 1996). In 2014, the Alliance for Women Film Composers was created to provide opportunities and visibility for female musicians who are still woefully underrepresented in cinema.

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After the lecture, a student hung around to talk to the presenter. She was a computer science student, and she was interested in the possibilities of sound engineering, particularly for live shows. They exchanged business cards and contact information.

Rozenn Nicol is a sound research engineer specializing in spatial audio. She has been instrumental in developing the technology used in binaural recordings, WFS, and ambisonics. And she plays the harp!

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My glamorous Hollywood harp teacher later told me that the computer science student who came to that lecture had gone to Los Angeles. She was interning with a sound design company, learning how to create the perfect sound in huge concert venues for rock stars.

Virginia Schweninger has been instrumental in the field of music therapy, researching the physical effects of harp string and soundboard vibration on the human body. She is also the creator of Harp Camp Virginia, a sleep-away summer camp for harpists that I can’t wait to attend!

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Bottom Line: An amazing chain of events can be set in motion by the simplest things, such as a little girl practicing on a rented harp.

110 Women Composers
How many do you recognize?