Thursday, January 1, 2009

Tattoo Art and Design or Last Rights

Tattoo Art and Design

Author: Victionary

Tattoos are sexy, fashionable, and creative. This compendium features over 480 designs by the world's leading young graphic artists for tattoos that are new, different, and edgy.Little has appeared that explores fresh designs for tattoos by contemporary graphic artists and designers. Tattoo Art & Design corrects this with designs by over 60 of today's up-and-coming designers. They draw inspiration from diverse cultures and media, and bridge the highly graphic world of skin art and the exploding creativity in graphic design communities worldwide. Among the featured designers are Kinpro, Klaus Haapaniemi, Marcus Oakley, Rex Koo, Rinzen, Musa Collective, and Stapelberg & Fritz. The designs featured here shatter the conventional notion of the tattoo. Gone are hearts inscribed with names, anchors, Celtic harps, or tribal bands. Instead, the tattoo designs are based on Japanese animé characters, abstract art, hip-hop culture, and Day-Glo pop art in a palette of vibrant colors and elaborate shapes. These fun and playful designs will inspire a new breed of tattoo artist as well as the next generation of graphic designers.



Books about: Healing States or Bodies In Treatment

Last Rights: Rescuing the End of Life from the Medical System

Author: Stephen P Kiernan

“Gripping…A superb resource for boomers dealing with their parents' final days…as well as for health-care professionals who need to hear this story from the other side.”

--Kirkus Reviews

With advances in medicine, technology, and daily diet and exercise practices, Americans are living longer than ever before.  We have an unprecedented opportunity for meaningful closure – free of pain, among loved ones, with our affairs in order and spiritual calm attained. Instead, most of us discover that our doctor has minimal training in providing end-of-life care, and will seek to extend life no matter how painful, expensive and futile that effort might be.

In Last Rights, award-winning journalist Stephen P. Kiernan shows how patients and families can regain control of the dying process, creating familial intimacy like never before.  Bolstered by both scientific research and intimate portraits of people from all walks of life, Last Rights offers a hopeful, profound vision for patients, doctors, and families: a way to honor people during their greatest vulnerability, a chance for families to reconnect, an opportunity for the medical system to treat patients with ultimate respect, a time to give comfort and compassion to those we most love. 

Library Journal

Most people find it difficult to face their own mortality and that of their loved ones. This book compassionately and skillfully addresses this difficult, emotional issue. Kiernan, a journalist with the Burlington Free Press (VT), discusses the disconnect between how people want to spend their last days and how they actually end up doing so. While most desire to feel no pain, functioning mentally and physically and surrounded by family, the reality is that the majority of us will actually die in hospitals, where extreme medical interventions are undertaken at immense costs and with little regard to pain, human comfort, or the stated wishes of the dying and their families. Kiernan argues that most physicians and other healthcare professionals do not know how to deal with death because textbooks and medical schools fail to address the issue adequately. His final chapters present a broad agenda to improve end-of-life care at both the societal and the individual levels. This well-written and thoughtful book, filled with surveys, interviews, and personal portraits, is highly recommended for all public libraries and consumer health collections.-Ross Mullner, Sch. of Public Health, Univ. of Illinois, Chicago Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

An impassioned appeal for a kinder, gentler death. George Polk Award-winner Kiernan, a reporter for the Burlington Free Press (Vermont), argues that last-ditch efforts to prolong life are leading causes of bankruptcy that also deprive the dying and their families of their dignity and peace of mind. He cautions that medical directives, which many assume will protect them from unwanted interventions, are routinely ignored by hospitals. Further, those who seek refuge in a hospice may be left out in the cold: A physician must attest that a candidate has six months to live, yet doctors are notoriously bad at estimating endpoints. Fewer Americans die of sudden illnesses or accidents, Kiernan notes. The majority linger with chronic illnesses like Alzheimer's or cancer, yet our medical system isn't equipped to handle those whose prognosis falls somewhere between "really sick" and "almost gone," nor to deal with their families, whose primary need may be respite care. The author sees some progress as hospitals begin to offer palliative measures designed to make final days more comfortable. He considers the benefits of a gradual death, which include greater intimacy with family members and time to plan for a conscious ending or to sum up a life. Kiernan tells how he and his siblings dealt with their mother's inoperable cancer, then turns the lessons they learned into a well-considered prescription for the entire population. He urges patients to fight for their right to die naturally; medical schools to devote more attention in their curriculum to the dying process; and policymakers to start making it easier for dying patients to receive adequate pain control. Gripping first-person stories andinterviews with exceptional caregivers make the human case for national reform. A superb resource for boomers dealing with their parents' final days and anxious to exert more control over their own rites of passage, as well as for health-care professionals who need to hear this story from the other side.



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