The End of a Chapter

It's the end of a chapter. On Friday 28th October my last course at RMSP was rounded off with a graduation ceremony, so I'm no longer a student at RMSP but one of many alumni who have spent time in Missoula learning about photography - and about themselves. It's been an amazing summer, though once in a while, when there were project deadlines looming for example, it didn't seem like that.

Unlike the majority of students I also had the opportunity to observe the life and language of another country - one of the benefits of being here as an "alien". I also had an unexpected opportunity to explore more of the USA than I'd hoped for so I've extended my stay to the end of November when my visa expires.

The USA is a beautiful country - a huge one at that. I recently spoke to a Brit who lives in Tucson and works for a photographic printing lab there. He said the only way he could relate to the size and diversity in the USA was to imagine it as if it were Europe - with each state as a different country but with everyone speaking the same language. That description works for me too.

The great advantage of being here for a longer period of time is that I get to live in the country as opposed to simply visiting it as a tourist. I'm so used to traffic driving on the right along very wide, straight roads that I'm expecting my first day or so back in Blighty to be a bit of a culture shock.

Since leaving RMSP I've had the opportunity to see some of the natural wonders of the USA. I visited Yellowstone and saw Old Faithful and several other of the amazing features there. I visited some of the national and state parks in Utah to see huge natural archways eroded in stone, rivers winding in deep horseshoe shaped valleys, and looked up to (and down from) huge mesas. Later, in Arizona I saw the amazing landscape around Sedona, and made a brief visit to the Grand Canyon, seeing it at dusk and at dawn. As magnificent as the landforms are in the USA it is the size that impressed me most. Coming from a country where you are never more than 70 miles from the coast and the drive from Land's End to John O'Groats (i.e. top to bottom of the UK mainland) is around 840 miles it is quite something to drive for days and days through various types of desert scenery.

If the scenery has amazed me, the language and way of life have in turn amused and saddened me. But we all speak English, right? Well... we can all understand each other but some of the words and ways of saying them are so very different. I've had many happy conversations about language differences with my landlady - thank you Carol for being such a wonderful host. For the record, any artist visiting here from the UK should be sure to ask for an eraser if they want something to correct their pencil drawings. And any American lady visiting the UK should refer to those convenient belt pouches as bum bags.

The saddest part of being in the USA has been what I've observed about health. The US diet is probably very tasty but it is not at all healthy, and while the spending per person on health care here is greater than any other nation, this is not reflected in the health of the nation. Some figures from the internet: The World Health Organization in 2000 ranked the US health care system as the highest in cost and 72nd in terms of overall health. In 2006 the US was top in terms of health care spending but 39th in infant mortality, 43rd for adult female mortality, 42nd for adult male mortality, and 36th for life expectancy. I still find it hard to understand how a country so rich in resources can have over 16.7% (over 50 million) of its residents uninsured for health.

Much harder to understand is how doctors and nutritionists in the US who have discovered cures (yes cures) for cancers that use changes in diet and lifestyle and avoid destructive surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation are forced to practice in Mexico or lose their license to practice since their treatments - essentially a healthy diet - are banned at home. Treatment using a healthy diet and lifestyle has also had great success in curing many people suffering from degenerative diseases such as type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and MS - sometimes in spite of attempts by US authorities to limit the work or restrict supplemental resources.

On a more positive note I'm finding the benefits of a wiser way of eating. I never realised how tasty salads can be... and I'm not talking a tomato and a couple of slices of iceberg lettuce. There's a vegetarian restaurant in Tucson that has such an amazing variety of VERY tasty veggie food.... hmmm!  And the results of this change of diet? Much more energy and a lot less waistline.

I'm excited to get back home and start in earnest on the next stage of my photography. I'll miss the many friends I've made.

And I'll be back sometime for sure!