“Views from Atop My Bedpan” is set to release on April 1, 2023. The cover picture is of author Alan O’Hashi as if he aged 10 years.
Views from Atop My Bedpan, a memoir by Alan O’Hashi, is scheduled to be released on April 1, 2023. The book is a memoir about the author’s experiences with the American healthcare industrial complex spanning seven decades.
During his journey, Alan learned about the Emergency Department bottleneck when he was nearly dead for six weeks. His road to recovery was a long one through alternative treatments. As he grew younger, his contact with the healthcare system was much simpler.
The book moves back in time starting his healthcare in a Boulder, Colorado senior cohousing community. Read about his acupuncture torture and drunken raisin arthritis remedy until he was kicked out of his retirement home for being too healthy and young.
The book recounts Alan’s medical-related experiences in the working world, including a small town hospital merger and an emergency CPR RESCUE.
The story tracks his time in college, then traces his life through high school, sex education as an adolescence and his bad eyes and teeth in grade school.
Is life ends as a twinkle in his parents’ eyes.
Some content may not be suitable from some readers.
There’s a paradox. Public and private healthcare providers are dedicated to keeping people alive and free of disease, but, at the same time, they must financially profit to maintain themselves.
At the same time, the industry keeps its heart thumping and pumping based on continually expanding the number of patients who consume the latest pharmaceuticals, visit doctors, and are diagnosed by the newest machines. It’s better that people stay a little sick rather than be cured from a profit-and-loss standpoint.
At last check, according to the Social Security Administration actuary chart, the author has 10.4 years to go. He conjectures his death at 79. He’s had a flirt with death every 20 years or so, most recently, surviving an exotic lung disease in 2013.
“We all have unique experiences as we move through life. Being at the top of my game has been hard work. I prefer to have positive influences on others I meet.” Alan O’Hashi
“The Covered Wagon” is a 1923 silent film. BCM and the Boulder Symphony are collaborating on a new soundtrack that retells the stereotypical cowboys and Indians movie with a tribal perspective featuring the Northern Arapaho Eagle Drum and Singers.
Boulder Community Media (BCM) had great success in 2022 and wants to keep it up through 2023. BCM was awarded a highly competitive $10,000 National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) grant for “The Arapaho Covered Wagon Redux,” four years in the making.
BCM is seeking matching funds to record a contemporary soundtrack for the 1923 epic “Covered Wagon” silent film. The original score compiled by Anne Guzzo will be performed by the Boulder Symphony led by Devin Hughes in remembrance of the 160th anniversary of the Sand Creek Massacre. Most of the funds will pay musicians and the Northern Arapaho Eagle Drum. For information, watch the trailer.
When “The Covered Wagon” screened, tribal members appeared before the audience while casting directors Ed Farlow and Tim McCoy provided information about why they hired 500 Native Americans, mostly Northern Arapaho to perform in the film. Ironically, the realism they wanted to purvey added to tribal stereotypes.
Your tax deductible contribution will make an impact by undoing old stereotypes whether you donate $5 or $500. Every little bit helps. Thank you for your support. We previously raised $500 for the project.
BCM is a 501c3 production company dedicated to make media in all their forms accessible to all.
If you’re a facebook user, BCM has a year-end fundraiser happening through the end of 2022.
Boulder High School digital arts instructor Dave Blessing and student mentor Paul Mealey assist students with the virtual reality project editing
Boulder Community Media (BCM) partnered with the Reality Garage and Boulder High School (BHS) to integrate virtual reality digital programming into the traditional arts.
The acronym, STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math), is commonly associated non-artistic endeavors.
There is a new iteration that moves STEM into creative industries called STEAM with the “A” representing “arts”.
The digital age added a new dimension to traditional analog art media – paintings, written pages, sculpted forms, animated digital books, 3D movies, and stories told in video game environments.
What if the the otherwise non-artistic skill of virtual reality is integrated into the arts?
A grant was received from the Best Buy Foundation to develop a VR curriculum and camera operation manual.
The Boulder Virtual Reality (BVR) project was recently completed and does just that, thanks to a small grant from the Best Buy Foundation.
The grant enabled implementation of Phase II of a three Phase project.
During the fall 2018 – 2019 semester at BHS, 19 students were taught about virtual reality by teacher Dave Blessing and Reality Garage owners Bob Ottinger and Brenda Lee.
Reality Garage is a Boulder-based virtual reality technology development company.
Bob Ottinger from the Reality Garage answers a student’s question.
Students learned hands-on job skills in the classroom work and also in the field where they operated a couple types of cameras.
They then learned how to manipulate the photos and videos into completed “stories.”
The Wind River VR Pilot Project introduced virtual reality as a new medium to tell traditional Northern Arapaho stories in a more relevant way to tribal youth.
BCM collaborated with Makerspace 307 in Fort Washakie, Wyoming who recruited four tribal youth to participate.
VR trainer, Glenn Reese, worked with the students in basic camera operation.
Northern Arapaho artist Robert Martines talks about tribal tradition.
Northern Arapaho artist Robert Martinez discussed with the students the importance of passing tribal traditions to future generations.
Robert worked with the youth as they drew pictures illustrating an Arapaho folk tale, “The Fox and the Wood Tick,” as told by tribal elder Merle Haas.
Alison Sage is a singer member of the Northern Arapaho Eagle Society. He explained how tribal stories and experiences are preserved through song and drumming and worked with the students with expressing themselves through music.
The Wyoming Arts Council funded Phase I
The crew then traveled to the nearby Arapaho Ranch to integrate flat art and original music with virtual reality.
A virtual reality camera was set up and students displayed their art work. An original music soundtrack was improvised on the grand piano in the ranch house.
Arapaho elder Gary Collins, BCM VR trainer Glenn Reese and Alan O’Hashi pose with Arapaho storyteller Merle Haas.
Merle Haas read The Fox and the Wood Tick in the Arapaho language. The virtual reality footage of the students with their art work was set to the Arapaho language narration and the student-composed music.
Over time, classrooms will be moving away from “learning” a subject to “feeling” the content through immersion.
To this end, the BVR Phase III project is underway. A third small grant was received from the city of Boulder Arts Commission.
A marker designates the Fort Chambers site.
That project adds virtual reality to telling the story of a Fort Chambers, which was constructed on the outskirts of Boulder.
The sod fort no longer stands, but was the training facility for the 3rd Volunteer Cavalry who killed Arapaho and Cheyenne tribal members at the infamous Sand Creek Massacre.
The BAC funded the Phase III Fort Chambers VR project.
Students will be creating a virtual Fort Chambers that the viewer and walk through, to the narration of Arapaho tribal members who recount the stories told of the massacre by their ancestors.
The BVR is an engagement tool that in Phase III will teach students the use of a software called Tilt Brush and a program called Unity which will allow a student to explore, experience or be involved as if they are actually present in that environment or place.
A Boulder, CO shaker and mover named David Nichols in 1864 recruited 100 local volunteer militiamen to train at Fort Chambers located just east of town to kill Indians at Sand Creek.
Flash forward to 2018 when the city of Boulder government purchased the fort location as open space and a group of citizens called Right Relationship Boulder (RRB) is working to repatriate that land, in some form, back to the Arapaho people.
This is a story about a chapter in Boulder’s cultural history told from the perspectives of the Arapaho people. Arapaho cultural traditions are oral ones.
Documenting Arapaho voices preserves tribal members’ Sand Creek Massacre experiences that have been orally passed down from generation-to-generation.
RRB is a group of Native and non-Native Boulder-area residents who work with local governments and organizations to help all residents learn about the Native peoples who lived here historically, and who live here today.
RRB is also the lead organizer of Boulder Indigenous People’s Day that happens in October.
The city of Boulder purchased the Chambers property east of Boulder.
The Chambers property includes a home and pasture land along Boulder Creek at Valmont and 61st east of town.
Stay tuned, for project updates. BCM is also seeking contributions of any amount towards the project to match the Boulder Arts Commission grant.
Contributors will be included in the movie credits.
Wyoming Community Media’s Alan O’Hashi and Glenn Reese teamed up with the Maker Space 307 to teach students about virtual reality.
The Northern Arapaho Tribe has a tribal priority to reintroduce and preserve the Arapaho language.
Even though the language is taught in school, students spend the majority of their time at home or in the community interacting with family and friends where there is inconsistent reinforcement of cultural cues learned in the classroom.
How can a traditionally oral language be made relevant to young people who are digitally connected to games, and other mass media screens?
Glenn Reese sets the Vuze camera at the historic Arapaho Ranch mansion.
To answer this question, Wyoming Community Media and it’s producers Alan O’Hashi and Glenn Reese teamed up with Lorre Hoffman and the Maker Space 307 summer youth service learning program, based in Fort Washakie on the Wind River Reservation.
Four students participated during the three-day class and production project.
Arapaho Gary Collins and Arapaho story teller Merle Haas pose with Alan and Glenn after she read the Fox and Woodtick in Arapaho
Northern Arapaho elder and story teller Merle Haas wrote down a short story passed down to her from her great grandfather, Chief Yellow Calf.
“The Fox and the Woodtick” teaches a lesson about “thinking outside the box.”
Northern Arapaho Eagle Drum Society singer and drummer Alison Sage spoke about the traditional importance and healing properties of making music.
Artist Robert Martinez gives a workshop about tribal art and how it is still a story telling medium.
Artist Robert Martinez gave a presentation about how tribal artwork has evolved over the years and continues to be an important means of storytelling.
Eagle Drum Society member Allison Sage demonstrates his original songs.
We worked closely with Bob Ottinger and the Reality Garage in Boulder, Colorado who loaned us a Vuze virtual reality camera, a Samsung 360 camera and a high speed computer.
The Reality Garage in Boulder, Colorado loaned the project the Vuze camera and a high speed lap top.
When it was all said and done, the youth combined their self-composed music and original art to tell Merle’s folk tale in two dimensions and 360 degree virtual reality on location at the historic Arapaho Ranch Mansion north of Thermopolis, Wyoming.
This is a pilot project that demonstrates an efficient way for tribes to present traditional language and cultural preservation efforts in a not-so-traditional format to tribal and non-tribal cultures.
