Last week on Wednesday, there was talk that the English department puts on to showcase a professor from that department. The department choose Professor Rudacille, my English 383 (Science Writing), to present her different projects she is taking on and how they all relate to one another. So far she is writing a play that is loosely based off of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in 1911, she is writing a piece on the mountaintop removal issue in West Virginia, and she is finishing up doing interviews of individuals of the Catholic Faith in regards more radical ideas outside of the church. It was interesting to see how all these vastly different things relate to the idea of healing.

So what does healing have to do with the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, mountaintop removal, and religion? The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire happened because of poor working conditions both physically and environmentally. A fire engulfed the building and they were locked inside due to common inspection procedure prior to work. After the fire, there riots and demonstrations to get better working conditions. This worked which created a 40-hour work week, and safety codes to foster a better work environment. It is better here but elsewhere the working conditions are deplorable. Two years ago a factory in Bangladesh was on fire and some of the workers there were trapped died. So have we really help the globe or put people more in trouble. Mountaintop removal goes on in West Virginia because of the coal industry. My professor discussed one of the guys who stands against Mountaintop removal and how his town is against him because coal mining provides jobs. But it is also making people sick because the blast blows particles everywhere and the coal sludge gets in the drinking
supply. There needs to be a great change and Prof. Rudacille is trying to bring awareness by writing about it and seeing if a publisher bites. Prof. Rudacille was raised in a Catholic family and went to Catholic school. She had a very strict upbringing so when she got older she started to distant herself from Catholicism for a bit for its stringent nature. Today, she is going to mass more now she realized that the congregants are more inline with accepting LGBT rights and birth control. She wants to write a piece about religion and how it may be evolving at the congregant level.

All these things are problems in the world that bringing awareness to them can slowly start to heal communities. As I was listening Prof. Rudacille’s proposal, I couldn’t help but think about the bodies involved in each situation and those bodies effect other bodies locally, transnationally, and globally. Seeing the dead bodies of women in 1911 changed the working environment for America but in 2012 in Bangladesh they were easily forgotten given the country they are in. The bodies of those people who are against mountaintop removal in opposition of those who support it because it their livelihoods in the coal industry. The bodies of the practicing Catholics and how the strict nature can remove them from the church but now the church seems to be moving into a more liberal route. It seems to me that you must heal the body before you heal yourself.