For Dad: Remembering Rod

(floating treasures for Dad in the Wellington Harbor)

(little creation for Dad)

(Julia dropped me off at the beach, and stood alongside me, noting the rhythm of the tide)

The conference was most seminal in my life. It is something I never dreamed possible, present semi-respectable research to very respectable researchers.

On top of this worry of not being smart enough, the subject matter is some of the most difficult for any researcher of human behavior to disentangle. It is hard to believe that humans inside a community of other humans can succumb to a state where life no longer seems livable, and against the communities wishes take on the task of killing themselves as the solution to their (and everyone else’s) problems. It took all of me and then some to place myself outside the matter of suicide- to make it an intellectual challenge rather than something that happened to me, my family my community, MORE THAN ONCE. We always want to play victim, because it’s such an easy role with many rewards.

I strongly believe that if suicide is to be “understood” and dealt with in the intensions of carrying suicide throughout the awful winters of our life it must become an issue of the masses, not a personal matter. Strangely, it feels good to know that there are patterns to depression- this means prevention is possible.

In the end we will always consider our personal issues as difficult, but in reality we all experience difficult TOGETHER, no matter what it is that seems irreparable- life is constantly going. Ecclesiastes has been much on my mind for the last month.

As if an immoveable stone has been rolled away I can now think of my Father outside the terminology of mental ill, and see him as he was and is, my Father of almost 16 years. It is a true testament- a challenge of the mind to will itself into separating the two, my Father and I, while simultaneously acknowledging we are one. There are many unhealthy habits my Father picked up through out life that I must turn away from, but my Father loved me very much. I know this. And this is what I shall remember above all.

After the conference I relaxed and created something beautiful for Dad, he would have liked that and I like creating beautiful things for the people I love. I wrote a letter to him and threw all my “treasures” I’ve collected over the past few months back into the ocean, where not too long ago a young girl took her own life. Acknowledging can be painful, but it is also a celebration.

What my Dad’s brain and the young girl’s brain refused to remember is that humanity goes on, the world keeps going, and sometimes we forget the good and bad things that people did who do not live anymore. We just know something large and irreplaceable is missing. Life is cyclical, sometimes things are bad, very bad, good, neutral, or very good. Winters happen, but then so do summers. People cannot be replaced.

There are things that only a Father can say to his daughter that I wish I could have heard. Sometimes I think it is the saddest thing- Fathers who cannot talk to their daughters, or daughters who refuse to acknowledge their Fathers while they are still alive. It’s a relationship I’ll never have the privilege of experiencing in my adult life. I know my Dad, if he were still alive, would share his every story of outrageous let downs, failed dates, untimely break ups and hearts won over- he would have sat at my beside when I was sad, made fun of the boys who attempted to date me, and explore alongside my most favorite part of humanity- curiosity for the way the in which the world is constructed- celebrating each day the odd ways humans, though selfish and wild, relate to one another without even knowing it. We need each other.

Posted against my office are poems that keep me going.

W.W. preface to Leaves of Grass captures my heart, today in particular:

“This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone who asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off you hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or any book, dismiss whatever insults you own soul, and you very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashed of your eyes in every motion and joint of your body.”

The Presentation

(room I presented in was the old city council building of Christchurch)

(a few hours before my presentation, jarring carpet- eh?)

(a break between presentations)

Christchurch was a success! Here is my presentation word for word. This is the core of my research, if you read this you are up to date on my findings and efforts as an intellectual:

e-mail me for the PowerPoint: anne.marie.snider@gmail.com

SLIDE 1: It may be insufficient to confine the interpretation of SWB to the attributes of young people, whom most adults would agree, can often be moody and unpredictable. In the social and physical context from the neighborhood through to the city itself- may have measurable influences on youth life satisfaction.

At the beginning of my research I asked: are their environmental correlates of youth happiness? But as I started to explore my data set I became increasingly interested in what is making youth so unhappy and dissatisfied with life in general.

Perhaps for the sake of an argument, the antithesis of happiness or life satisfaction is depression- a sadness that is difficult to control. Keeping in mind that sadness can be out of our control, and sometimes take over our lives, one could then claim that chronic, manic sadness can be fatal in form of self-murder.

I argue that the act of suicide can be thought of as the endpoint of our subjective well-being (SWB).

So why focus on Youth Life Satisfaction in New Zealand? New Zealand used to have one of the highest youth suicide rates in the world, second only to Finland for males 15-24 and Japan for females 15-24. Things are getting better, New Zealand no longer holds a position in the top 3 highest youth suicide rates (within the latest OECD report), but the numbers are still usually high for an OECD country.

The story of suicide might be intimately linked with SWB measurements:

We don’t know the exact source of depression, but we do know that happiness has something to do with our environment, and who we are surround by. The story of happiness is the lack of negative effect and attunement with others.

The story of depression has yet to be written in New Zealand.

SLIDE 2: According to this graph done through studies by the University of Otago from 1988-1999 the West Coast suffered some of the highest suicide rates in the history of New Zealand. Surely New Zealanders are upset, but not terribly surprised by these numbers. That might be because you know the terrain, and you know the people.

With this graph in mind- Epidemiologist Richard Wilkinson recently stated in an interview on Radio NZ that suicide is one of the contributing factors to social breakdown. The American Association of Suicidology estimated that for each of the 32,000 Americans who kill themselves annually there are six survivors. By a suicide survivor I mean the remaining family members and loved ones. Suicide is deadly to communities- it devastates surviving loved ones unlike other fatalities, the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders rank surviving suicide as catastrophic- equivalent to that of a concentration camp experience.

SLIDE 3: Suicide has long been a health problem in New Zealand. From 2001-2006 307 people died by assault, “assault mortality” or murder. In 2006 alone 524 people in New Zealand took their own lives, multiply that by 6 and that is 3,000 plus people who are suffering from a traumatic stressful experience- JUST IN 2006.

Now I know that the stats are very upsetting, BUT they did happen, and regardless of their statistical differences- they are important marker for the progress of society.

SLIDE 4: Typically our lowest point of life happiness occurs around mid-age, when there are teenagers in the house…

This is a graph of the “U-shaped life cycle of Happiness” from studies done (by Blanchflower & Oslwald) on a UK labour force. The peak of the unhappiness can be seen around 44, where the probability of being depressed is the greatest. There are many international studies on life satisfaction and age that report similar findings such as these,

SLIDE 5: This is a graph of life satisfaction in New Zealand. Now I know it’s not terribly obvious but from this graph we can conclude that Youth are more likely to report low life satisfaction than the Mid Aged and Older cohorts.

SLIDE 6: We can see this more clearly in the table- YOUTH APPEAR TO BE LESS HAPPIER RELATIVE TO MIDDLE AGE THAN THE INTERNATIONAL EVIDENCE SUGGESTS. THE GAP BETWEEN YOUTH AND MIDDLE AGE WE SUSPECT IS NARROWER IN NZ

There is something about our common knowledge of a place tell us that the clustering of suicide rates in history, high and low levels life satisfaction, and happiness do not occur randomly. I want to know if the same things that are causing low SWB, possibly contributing to suicide rates?

SLIDE 7: So what do we know about the causes of suicide?

1. It is not a personal failure

2. Depression and Suicide are highly correlated

4. Suicidal thoughts are induced somewhat by chemical imbalances of serotonin in the synaptic gap

3. And From Durkheim’s famous sociological studies we know that suicide has something to do with the community/society, BUT the exact source of what causes BEING suicidal is unknown (Human volition quote & Durkheim image)

To test if suicide has anything to do with the community, we can use geography to detect a fundamental shift in the breaking of social bonds.

SLIDE 8: Editor of the Journal of Happiness Studies, Ruut Veenhoven has tabulated that average happiness peaks in Iceland and drops in India, lending to the idea that happiness differs from place to place. Within New Zealand SWB also varies we can test this using New Zealand’s Quality of life Survey. These are the 12 cities we use, These are my age groups.

By using the quality of life survey we can look at places with low self-reported SWB and test possible reasons for low life satisfaction in Youth.

SLIDE 9: One possible reason could be social capital- how connected we are to the communities we live in.

We know that Porirua and Outside the 12 Cities report low SWB.

When asked, “do you feel a sense of community your neighborhood” Youth in Porirua are much less likely to reply that they agree to feeling a sense of community at a significant level. They also are more likely to feel neutral about the issue of community. Porirua is known for it’s international community and high levels of deprivations. There are significantly large gaps of wealth in Porirua, this is well documented in 2001 Maps of Deprivation, this might have something to do with lower levels of social capital.

In 2006 New Zealand extended their collection of surveys to include 1,400 surveys Outside of the 12 Cities. When youth were asked outside the 12 cities if they feel a sense of community they overwhelmingly disagreed, we can see this by comparing the total population of people who disagreed (9.73%), with the Younger percentage of people who disagreed (16.32%). Youth are also less likely to agree that they feel a sense of community Outside the 12 Cities.

Our community involvement might be the key to understanding what causes low SWB in certain places, and possibly why suicide might occur more in certain areas over others.

SLIDE 10: But the breaking of bonds in society might best be determined by trust levels.

Research around the importance of trust is extensive, Johns Hopkins University Professor Fukuyama, Sanford Political Scientist Robert Putnum and Social Capital theorist David Halpern, have all found trust to be highly correlated with SWB,

Looking at these percentages it is apparent that youth in NZ are less likely say others can be trusted.

If trust is a key component of keeping relationships together, this should also be true for societies. Without trust it is hard progress. Why are youth less trusting than other age groups in New Zealand, and specifically in certain parts of the country? What life experiences have taught them, and lead them to believe that people usually cannot be trusted? And why do trust levels differ from place to place? This is where my research is heading.

SLIDE 11: In conclusion we know youth are an slightly more unhappier bunch, not just because of their teenage angst. We can see that there might be environmental place and social factors involved.

There is a Spatial Difference in Youth SWB

Therefore we can safely suspect that trust and social capital are somewhat determine by

GEOGRAPHY where you live and who you live by

We can use differences between places to understand what falls apart in society by measuring

•Social Capital- community connection, social isolation

•Trust-extent to which people believe others can usually be trusted

There seems to be a two-way relationship between the community involvement and suicide levels

Looking further into the measurements of social capital and trust might give us some clues onto how to predict and prevent suicide in New Zealand.

Thank you.

Morning at the Marae

These pictures were taken at 7:45 am!

Day Walks at the Marae

Amazing revamped paddocks, more beautiful little walks in the countryside. Learned more about the beauty of the South Island as the days wore on at the Marae. Perhaps Indigenous Mapping is learning to value the land as the people who belong to place do. Throughout the week I wondered: why do white people and indigenous people fail to value the same things? How can we learn to value what is always changing?

Everything is and isn't about money.

Surf on the South Island

(opening of a lake, the surf creation)

(driving right up the break)

(waiting)

(powerful!)

For the first couple of nights on my South Island conference experience I went to an indigenous mapping workshop at a Marae about an hour south of Christchurch. A Marae is a Maori meeting house, where all the guests sleep together in the same room, eat together and sit on the floor for long winded discussions on land use rights.

During our days the Marae we experienced top notch weather. So I spent much of my days outside on walks to the beach, or to near by paddocks.

I really couldn't believe people were out on the water, but there they were in the MIDDLE OF WINTER. The surf was huge, the biggest they've had all year. The spit from the lake creates a huge surge and from the sand bar. The opening is man made because the lake needs to drain, and WOW it was stunning. Many families were out together enjoying the misty morning by the fire, watching the surf, going in and out as the pleased.

Christchurch II

(possum fur!)

(my friend Janice and her sister Vanessa)

(Christchurch Art Gallery)

(in front of the art gallery)

(Christchurch common folk hanging about the square)

While meandering through Christchurch I ran into my friend Janice and her younger sister, Vanessa- so we spent the day hanging about. Janice is a chemistry PhD candidate at Victoria, and fellow church goer. This is one of the better sister stories I have heard- Janice and her sister unknowing bought the same jacket in different colors at different times. Oh sisters, how I love them!

The art meusem is free, so I frequented it about four times over the course of a week. In an effort to sort through the contents of my backpack I unpacked Ranier Maria Rilke's Letter to a Young Poet...one of the workers was absolutely delighted to see I was reading this and throughout the week dropped little bits and pieces of information on his favorite literary works. It was an encouraging relationship! How random and lovely life can be if we unpack in front of others.

Christchurch I

(hogwarts- arts center)

(downtown Christchurch)

(very bushy eyebrows- outside the arts center)

(sweet glasses, watched lots of young people pick his nose)

(seagull)

Before coming out to NZ Shea Parton told me Christchurch is the "Overrated Oxnard of New Zealand". That's a bit harsh, and Oxnard is a terrible name once you think about it. Anyway, Christchurch actually has an amazing arts scene, as well as a lot of hardy prostitutes. Prostitution is legal so don't be too offended.

Walking around Christchurch is quite a throw back, it is the most English town in New Zealand. Did they film Harry Potter here?

Aro in Winter

(it is cold, this is what I wear inside at my "home office", I have a not water bottle under my shirt)

(not too cold for lilies, iris and jasmine!)

(birds eating lard)

(cookies!)

(bad kitty!)

And so it is the middle of winter. The birds are hungry and fight over the lard hanging outside just for them. While sitting on the porch this sunny Sunday, guitar in hand, I counted 6 on the feeder at one time. Even in the coldest of months things are green in NZ, noticeably the birds. All the deciduous trees look downright naked next to the ever flourishing tree ferns.

Drum roll! I am pleased to announce that I plan on living in New Zealand for the next four years- at least that is my intention as of late. Although Aro Valley is the one of the coldest and dampest places in New Zealand I love it here. Don’t know if I can stay another winter in Aro Valley, hopefully my next move will be somewhere near the ocean. There’s plenty of coast around here so I’m not too worried about staking out a spot. I miss walking on the beach, and being with rhythm of the tides. It would be nice to be able to hear the ocean at night, and tui's in the morning.

While presenting at the New Zealand Geographers Conference in Christchurch on the South Island my heart got sick for Wellington. I missed my colorful room, cooking, picking flowers, my computer/typing, eating Julia’s meals, lasagna, moreporks calling to each other at night, observing random invasive species, greenness, Aro, my office mates, and lastly, church.

All of a sudden Wellington, New Zealand is home.

Now it won’t be long until we see each other- someone is bound meet their love and need to get married asap. Oh dear.

Breathe easy, you are all off the hook. Don’t feel bad about not being able to visit, save up for the next three years and make the trek across the planet!

Santa Barbara will always be my final destination. As for now my life is unraveling and settling down in this place I’ve found new life- good good people, a career (in counter fit epidemiology!), growth as an artist, in faith and the general human experience! Cheers!

See you soon!