I Was a Teenage Optical Engineer

2021 ◽  
pp. 149-151
Author(s):  
Stephen R. Wilk

Lawrence Talbot, the Wolf Man of Universal horror films of the 1940s was played by Lon Chaney, Jr. Surprisingly, the character was an optical engineer in the original movie. He installed a telescope in the Talbot family home. In the original script, in fact, he is not even a relative of the family, but was brought in explicitly to install the telescope. Few things in a movie script are left to chance, but are either inspired by events, or else have some symbolic significance. Why did screenwriter Curt Siodmak settle upon someone in Optics for this role, when he might have used any profession as a means of inserting his character into the story?

Inclusion ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 279-292 ◽  
Author(s):  
Meghan M. Burke ◽  
Chung eun Lee ◽  
Moon Y. Chung ◽  
Kristina Rios ◽  
Catherine K. Arnold ◽  
...  

Abstract With recent policy changes and case-law decisions, there are more opportunities for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) to live independently in inclusive settings. It is necessary to identify malleable correlates of community living options to develop interventions to increase inclusive, independent living. To this end, 546 parents and siblings of adults with IDD responded to a national survey. According to parent and sibling report, adults with IDD were more likely to live outside of the family home when the family engaged in future planning, the individual had more informal supports and more functional abilities and had parents with fewer caregiving abilities. Among the 187 adults with IDD who lived outside of the family home, individuals with more problem behaviors and fewer functional abilities were more likely to live in larger group homes (versus independently with or without supports). Further, when the family engaged in more future planning activities, adults with disabilities were more likely to live in a group home (versus independently). When parents had fewer caregiving abilities, adults with disabilities were more likely to live in bigger group homes (versus independently). Implications for policymakers, practitioners, and research are discussed.


Author(s):  
Joanna Senderska ◽  
Iwona Mityk ◽  
Ewa Piotrowska-Oberda

AbstractThe article discusses the image of the family and the family home in a series of novels for young people by the popular Polish writer Małgorzata Musierowicz in the context of literary conventions and stereotypes about the family in contemporary Polish society. The novels, which cover a period of over 40 years, generally fit contemporary Polish realities; however, the didactic function of the novels results in the author creating an idealized image of the Polish intellectual family, filling the readers with optimism. The picture created by the writer, on the one hand, fits perfectly into the stereotype of the family, which is one of the values highly esteemed by Poles. On the other hand, it adapts to the conventions of novels for girls. In this article, the stereotype of the family is reconstructed on the basis of language data and surveys. We present the meanings and contexts of family as a noun and family as an adjective. We also present the results of our survey, the aim of which was to determine an essence of a stereotypical family and how the traditional family model is comprehended by respondents coming from various groups. We also present the respondents’ attitude to the patriarchal family model and the division of roles into male and female. In our opinion, the correspondence between the family picture created in the novels and the image of the family operating in social consciousness is the reason for the popularity of the series.


1985 ◽  
Vol 31 ◽  
pp. 545-569

Keith Stewartson, one of the most mathematically profound of this century’s great applied mathematicians active in the mechanics of fluids, was brought up in Billingham, County Durham , where his father was a master baker. Keith was the youngest of three children, two boys and a girl, but his sister died very young and he was not subsequently able to remember her. Later on, an eminent academic career was nearly smothered at its inception when the eleven-plus examiners failed Keith Stewartson. Fortunately, however, they put him on a reserve list, from which he was in the end selected for entry to Stockton Secondary School. After a brilliant performance in the School Certificate Keith was encouraged to enter only a year later, in 1942, for the Higher School Certificate. Immediately after his extremely distinguished examination achievement leading to a State Scholarship and Kitchener Memorial Scholarship to St Catharine’s College, Cambridge, the family home received a direct hit from a German bomb. Happily, however, the Stewartsons escaped owing to their air-raid shelter’s robust construction.


2017 ◽  
Vol 20 (5) ◽  
pp. 543-559 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean M Bruce

This article argues that the property television programme, Love It or List It (2008–), employs conventions from the classic screwball comedy to both consolidate its position within the lucrative realty TV market – especially in response to the recent (2008) recession – and negotiate modern gender dynamics within the home. Its Depression-era (1930s) financial and aesthetic resonances are not incidental. And, as with much contemporary culture, this modern iteration of the screwball comedy is not discretely contained by medium or genre of influence: Love It or List It also borrows flourishes from documentary, tabloid TV, melodrama and the gothic novel. In keeping with its reference to a kind of baseball pitching style that is difficult for hitters to anticipate, the screwball’s tendency to suddenly switch course has been identified as its central means for engaging in cultural critique. Love It or List It as an exemplar of reality TV’s recombinant style is still very much like its cinematic predecessor: it has the adeptness to say many things to many audiences. This article makes no claims for Love It or List It’s progressive politics; rather, as with some classic screwball comedies, it explores the possibility that equivocating, shifting course or otherwise abandoning narrative logic register a profound ambivalence about marriage, coupledom and the family home as sacrosanct loci of modern life.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eirik Roos ◽  
Erik Sondenaa

Abstract Background The transition process from the family home to independent living for young adults with profound intellectual disability (PID) becomes delayed. Those families face challenges that exceed those of typical families such as higher objective and subjective burden, more frequent psychological distress and lower social support. The aim of this study was to explore the collaboration process between parents and employees and identify factors that improve the transition with less burden. Methods A descriptive qualitative study was undertaken with 18 persons (9 parents and 9 employees) interviewed individually and in groups. In accordance with the municipality`s guidelines, families with a child with PID should apply for housing, when the child turns 16. The purpose is to ensure interdisciplinary collaboration, information flow and coordinated services according to family’s needs. The main question in the interviews was ‘What was your experience with cooperation in the transition process, and what would you do to improve this process?’ The interviews were analysed with a thematic approach using systematic text condensation.Results The parents experienced a lack of general information about the ‘housing waiting list’, level of services, and the plan for time of moving from the family home, and how to choose where and whom to live with. Parents described an unsustainable burden of care during the waiting period, and a family crisis caused the allocation of an apartment in a group house. Employees shared challenges to meet families’ wishes, as there were too few group homes. They experienced good collaboration with families and said they offered respite care, due to reduce parents’ burden of care. Employees experienced that PID adolescents developed skills, mastery and degrees of independence after completing a residency at the Folk High School. Conclusions To improve the transition process from family home to independent living for young adults with PID, the informants highlighted some factors to reduce the burden of care on families: 1) Systematic follow-up program for families to observe their needs at an early stage; 2) More available group houses; 3) Information about the housing priorities of the services and; 4) Educational preparation programs for families.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eirik Roos ◽  
Erik Sondenaa

Abstract BackgroundThe transition process from the family home to independent living for young adults with profound intellectual disability (PID) becomes delayed. Those families face challenges that exceed those of typical families such as higher objective and subjective burden, more frequent psychological distress and lower social support. The aim of this study was to explore the collaboration process between parents and employees and identify factors that improve the transition with less burden.MethodsA descriptive qualitative study was undertaken with 18 persons (9 parents and 9 employees) interviewed individually and in groups. In accordance with the municipality`s guidelines, families with profound intellectual disability (PID) child should apply for housing, when the child turns 16. The purpose is to ensure interdisciplinary collaboration, information flow and coordinated services according to family’s needs. The main question in the interviews was ‘What was your experience with cooperation in the transition process, and what would you do to improve this process?’ The interviews were analysed with a thematic approach using systematic text condensation.ResultsThe parents experienced a lack of general information about the ‘housing waiting list’, level of services, and the plan for time of moving from the family home, and how to choose where and whom to live with. Parents described that they had an unsustainable burden of care during the waiting period, and a family crisis caused the allocation of an apartment in a group house. Employees shared challenges to meet families’ wishes, as there were too few group homes. They experienced good collaboration with families and said they offered respite care, due to reduce parents’ burden of care. Employees experienced that PID children developed skills, mastery and degrees of independence after completing a residency at the Folk High School.ConclusionsTo improve the transition process from family home to independent living for young adults with PID, the informants highlighted some factors to reduce the burden of care to families: 1) Systematic follow-up program for families to observe their needs at an early stage 2) More available group houses 3) Information about the housing-priorities of the services and 4) Educational preparing programs to families.


2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 90-105
Author(s):  
John Singleton

This article argues that, in The Barracks, John McGahern’s literary production of the domestic familial space charts the fractures and partitions within that supposed unified space to reveal the anaemic passivity and alienating nausea that overcomes individuals within a prescriptive and totalising hegemony. It will discuss McGahern’s decision to withdraw his first novel from publication, and the reformation of the unpublished text into The Barracks. It expressly considers McGahern’s shifting of the spatial setting from the recognisable trope of the country kitchen to a Garda barracks and the impact this has on Elizabeth’s position within the family home, and therefore society. This article argues that the novel’s form addresses the dislocation of non-hegemonic or alternative family structures. McGahern’s staging of the narrative in the unfit and fractured domestic space of the barracks subverts traditional conceptions of ‘home’. This undermines the supposed impenetrable primacy of the family unit and highlights the bad faith and comely delusion of mid-century Ireland.


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