Music, Arts, Radio

Conversations is a program Community Network volunteers have envisioned to inspire, collect and share the conversations that make creative expression a dynamic component of a stable, nurturing community. The program has targeted teens in the South and West Santa Rosa community to learn film techniques and the elements of drama and story telling through the process of analyzing selected films then filming and creating their own play.

Further development of the program includes working with teens in interviewing family members about their history and lives, exploring ethnic arts and music and incorporating their own art, music and interviews into a documentary. This would provide teens with the means to become aware that their lives have value, that they possess talents and stories to tell about themselves and their community, and that they can develop important life skills as well as professional, marketable skills.

My fiber work focuses on the universal issues of age and mortality. By honoring the framework of aging and seeing death as a natural part of life, my figurative images lift the invisibility that surrounds these subjects. This work starts a dialogue that is essential to our times.

Growth House Radio is entertainment with a mission: to improve the quality of compassionate care for people who are dying. They offer several different channels with music and easy-listening education features on end-of-life care. You can listen to Growth House Radio while you continue to surf the web.

A series of three, hour-long audio documentaries designed for national radio broadcast. Distributed by PRI, Public Radio International.

This series looks at the care given by doctors, hospitals, clergy, family and friends to people at the end of life. It examines the barriers to good care that arise from cultural misunderstanding, from fear over the use of morphine and other drugs, from lack of funding to pay for good programs. It provides ideas, examples and inspiration for those who are searching for a good path on the journey to death.

Originally created as three, hour-long audio documentaries for national radio broadcast, this wonderful education resource is now available on CD. It will make a great training tool for hospice volunteers, health care professionals, and anyone else who wants to learn about key issues in end-of-life care in an entertaining, easy-to-absorb format.

The series draws from over 80 hours of tape and includes remarkable moments with people who are facing death, their families and those who are helping them along the journey. While the stories are personal, the themes are universal as we all struggle to come to terms with the passing of friends, family members, and ultimately, ourselves. It examines the barriers to good care that arise from cultural misunderstanding, from fear over the use of morphine and other drugs, and from lack of funding to pay for good programs. It provides ideas, examples and inspiration for those who are searching for a good path on the journey to death.

Hold Your Breath - A Journey into Cross-Cultural Medicine
Film Directed by Maren Grainger-Monsen, MD Check PBS for local broadcasting times in your region. Northern CA KQED and KRCB broadcasting in April, 2007. A lovely and moving meditation on the clash between religion, culture and modern medicine. Produced by Stanford Center for BioMedical Ethics, Program in Bioethics and Film

Dr. Monsen is the film maker who also produced: Vanishing Line about her journey with a hospice chaplain caring for the dying; and Grave Words a entertaining film about use of resusciation for training medical students and others.

Prior to the 20th century, most Americans prepared their dead for burial with the help of family and friends, but today most funerals are part of a multimillion-dollar industry run by professionals. "A Family Undertaking" explores the growing home-funeral movement by following several families in their most intimate moments as they reclaim the end of life, forgoing a typical mortuary funeral to care for their loved ones at home.

A project on viewing death and dying in interdisciplinary perspective

A full-service image library providing real-time digital delivery of emotive moments under general and medical categories. A resource for hard-to-find images, and a place to reflect on the face of hope, misfortune, faith, and the miracle we call love.