Volume 22 Issue 14 – The CNM Chronicle

Death Masks at Montoya Campus

November 2, 2016November 3, 2016 cnmchronicleLeave a comment

Story and photos by Heather Hay

A collection of some of the masks to be on display today.

The death mask display draws a crowd of instructors in the faculty offices at Montoya campus.

Jim Johnson, Montoya campus full time instructor, offered his Death and Dying course students unique opportunities to learn about the death industry, including creating death masks which are scheduled to be unveiled today for all students to come see at a presentation on Día de los Muertos by an Albuquerque author.

The death masks, which are impressions of the face of a dead person, will be voted on at the talk given by author and CNM Program Manager Andrés Armijo about Día de los Muertos on Nov 2^nd, at 4:30 p.m. at the Montoya Campus in room J122, said Johnson.

According to Armijo, who has a master’s degree in Spanish and Southwest Hispanic Studies, Día de los Muertos has become popular in our part of Latin America for recent generations thanks to immigration that had brought a mixture of Mexican Catholic traditions with them.

To read Armijo’s full interview click here.

“In recent years the celebration of Día de los Muertos has become popular, if not commercial. I am a native New Mexican Hispanic (Nuevo Mexicanos) and a gen-x. When I was an undergraduate and graduate student, I started seeing more expressions of Día de los Muertos, although for my parent’s generation and before that Día de los Muertos was not very familiar to them,” said Armijo.

Students will be able to learn about the Día de los Muertos tradition here in New Mexico at the talk by Armijo, and they will be able to vote on the death masks that he assigned his students to make, said Johnson.

Johnson said his students really enjoy the death mask project and get an impression of their own mortality by preserving their own faces in plaster and decorating them; he even had his wife make one of his own face when he began the project eight years ago when he had a mustache.

jimsdeathmask — Jim Johnson with his own death mask.

“She put straws in my nose and wrapped my face in Vaseline and then put gauze on it and then made a mold and then poured plaster of Paris in that. And it looks pretty realistic,” he said.

Johnson said there are many famous death masks throughout history that are in Museums including Abraham Lincoln, Beethoven, Shakespeare, King Tut, John Dillinger and Mary Queen of Scotts that still has human hair on it.

He said the Summer is the best time to take the class because it allowed the students to go on field trips to a mortuary and the Office of Medical Investigator, which is where bodies from around the state are taken to be autopsied.

Johnson said he regrets that the Death and Dying class is no longer going to be available during the summer semesters, which had a longer class time by a half hour, which now makes it impossible for students to go on those special trips.

“To my knowledge, I’m the only class that did that. I would take them down there to see what the full OMI (Office of Medical Investigator) does, and they get a tour of the whole beautiful facility, it’s like a state of the art facility for the country. It’s one of the best one’s in the country, here in New Mexico,” he said.

Johnson said students really loved his class and he has a very low rate of students dropping his class.

“I tell students it is an important class because it is something you will definitely use; you are going to be burying your parents or grandparents. And if you know what the field is about, what decisions you have to make before you have to make them you’re in a much better frame of mind than having to make decisions when you are going through a grief state,” he said.

Johnson said he also learned a lot from the students’ PowerPoint presentations that included topics such as the Body Farm, the Death Forest in Japan where people go to commit suicide, bodies consumed by vultures in Tibet, and converting a cremated body into a reef or a diamond.

“For example I used to live in the Philippines and I had no idea that in some cultures in the Philippines that they have cliff burials. Where they have these poles coming out of a cliff and then they put the body in a container on the poles and then they are resting on the cliffs. I had no idea and I had lived there for five years,” he said.

In the Fall semester students do the mask assignment, and in the Spring semester the students go to the mortuary and memorial park, he said.

Johnson said students and faculty will be able to vote on the masks this week in the G building, and then they will be on display at the Montoya Library after that.

bear — “Green is best! Orks is simple and humorous. That has always appealed to me. Aesthetically I’ve always been a fan of the ugly, worn, and rough-around-the-edges.” -Bear

jeremy — “I have lived in New Mexico my whole life (36 years). I feel I have a strong connection with New Mexico’s culture.” -Jeremy Ray. The mask contains pieces from chili peppers and yucca plant.

Unlikely Place for a Growing Writers Community

November 2, 2016November 2, 2016 cnmchronicle2 Comments

Story by Edward Oelcher, Staff Reporter

Photos and Photo illustration and cutlines by Heather Hay, Design and Layout

CNM may be an unlikely place for a diverse writer’s community but that is exactly what is happening every week at Main and Montoya campuses, said English instructor Maria DeBlassie Phd.

The group meets every Monday from 2 p.m. to 3 p.m. at Montoya Campus Library and 1:30 to 2:30 in the SRC Room 201A on Main Campus.

According to DeBlassie, it is a place for not only writers, but creative souls and anyone who wants to relax and have fun writing outside the classroom.

The purpose is to bring students, community and faculty together to write; to encourage people of all majors to attend, no writing experience necessary, DeBlassie said.

The meetings allow people to work on what ever they want, she said.

People work on novels, web comics, poetry, blogs, and short stories so it is very open, DeBlassie said.

Students gain a big sense of community and support from attending, she said.

“As writers we don’t have to write in isolation to figure things out,” she said.

The writing group began five years ago on Main Campus with CNM’s full-time English instructor and published award-winning author Rebecca Aronson.

“Generally it’s really a group that focuses on generating new writing and talking about issues of a writer’s life, like publication and stuff we are reading,” Aronson said.

The Main Campus writing group usually begins with someone bringing a piece of writing to discuss, something they found interesting and also a writing prompt open to all genres, Aronson said.

“We are friendly, anyone is welcome, it’s not a class, so you don’t sign up ahead of time, I guess the most important thing is, it is fun, “ she said.

The writing group started for students and faculty to carve time out of busy lives to write, Aronson said.

For some students writing has not always been something they pursued.

CNM student biology laboratory technician Audrey Smith, who is currently pursuing an accounting degree, finds the writing group to be a godsend.

img_20161031_141735737 — Photo was taken at the Write Club’s Halloween party, when they dressed in costumes. From left center: Audrey, Nina and Madeline.

Smith attends the writing group to work on a novel, something she does in her spare time outside of biology and studying for accounting she said.

“For someone who has been so right brained for so long first with biology and then with all of this accounting stuff, it is like my left brain is exploding all of sudden,” she said.

The writing class helps with confidence, community, and support.

“We do a lot of creative exercises to get us to think differently about the craft and it leads to a lot of inspiration,” DeBlassie said.

img_20161031_141837704 — Mia and Daniel are writing a short creative piece based on the scary prompts they were given.

img_20161031_141850367 — From left: Chris, Brianna and Instructor Maria DeBlassie.

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The Walking Wounded

November 1, 2016November 1, 2016 cnmchronicleLeave a comment

Story and Photos by Wade Faast.

Over 200 students along with staff and outside personnel worked together to stage a large scale mock disaster and response at CNM’s Main Campus, Director of Simulation at CNM Richard Gentile said.

Students involved were from six programs from the School of Health, Wellness and Public Safety, he said.

Outside personnel and resources include the Albuquerque Police Department and PHI Air Medical which provided a helicopter ambulance free of charge for the exercise, he said.

The scenario played out was one of domestic violence turned into a mass shooting, he said.

Students from the Public Safety programs worked with APD officers to secure the scene, then students from the EMS program came in and tended to the simulated victims, Gentile said.

The victims of the mock shooting included both live students with fabricated injuries, and human patient simulator manikins, he said.

CNM EMS program students (left to right) Jasmine Garza, Brandon Vasco and Robbie Vigil work on a human simulation manikin in the back of a moving ambulance.

Students in the EMS program then had to triage the victims, the victims where then transported by ambulance or helicopter to a mock hospital housed in the JS building, Gentile said.

“It was challenging with the ambulance moving, but the better you keep your cool, the better you will be able to treat your patient,” EMS student Brandon Vasco said.

EMS students got a chance to work under pressure in a moving ambulance and put their learning to use on the simulator manikins which allowed them to administer medications, intubate, and insert IV’s, all with instant feedback and monitoring, Gentile said.

From the ambulance the victims were taken to a staged hospital where students from the Nursing program would determine how to treat them and send them to a simulated operating room, radiology imaging center, or intensive care unit, he said.

CNM Surgical Technician students Angela Kau (left) and Desiree Gomez conduct a mock surgery on a human simulation manikin in the CNM surgery simulation lab.

The mock disaster response was designed and implemented to bridge the gap between the class room education and real world working conditions, Gentile said.
Students had a chance to work under pressure and stressful conditions while being monitored inside a controlled setting, he said.

The human patient simulator manikins allowed a level of realism not achievable with standard dummies or even live human actors, he said.

The manikins have the ability to breath, talk, move and react to the treatments the students use, Gentile said.

One of the most important aspect of the mock exercise was communication, said CNM instructor and retired USAF Lt. Colonel Bruce Hosea.

Communicating with each other under stress, and learning how to communicate with other fields in a disaster is an extremely important skill, he said.

Moving real people was a great experience for the students as well, a manikin can be dropped or fumbled, but dropping a live person has consequences, he said.

This was the second mock disaster drill CNM’s School of Health, Wellness and Public Safety hosted, the first being a smaller drill this past spring, Gentile said.

CNM plans to continue hosting two such drills a year, one in spring semester and one in fall semester, each growing with success and lessons learned from the previous, he said.