SHARE THIS SHOW:
RELATED CONVERSATIONS:
RECENTLY ON TOL:
TOL Our Town
- A tumblr site dedicated to the people and places that make up Oregon and Southwest Washington.
TAGS:
Peter Richardson doesn't shy away from contentious subjects; he runs straight towards them. For his first feature documentary, Clear Cut: The Story of Philomath, Oregon, Richardson focused on the culture wars surrounding a high school scholarship that had divided his home town. (You can hear our conversation with him about Clear Cut here.)
His new film, How To Die In Oregon, looks at the state's first-in-the-nation Death With Dignity law:
How To Die In Oregon is an unflinching and intimate portrait of people dealing with their own impending deaths. It starts with a man ending his life, and ends in a similar way. But along the way we're brought into the doctor's offices, bedrooms, and lives of people who both celebrate and lament Oregon's law, and who approach the issue with honestly and nuance.
How To Die In Oregon is having its Oregon premiere at the Portland International Film Festival. And it just won the best documentary award at Sundance. (Here's a video of Richardson's acceptance speech.)
We'll talk to Richardson about why he made How To Die, what he hopes to accomplish with it, and what the process was like for him. What questions do you have for Richardson — about his new film, or about Clear Cut, or about his future plans?
Tagged as: death with dignity · film · hospice
Photo credit: Clearcut Productions
-
Yeah, Tom, what an ironic juxtaposition of topics!
Incidentally, didn't the author of "Final Exit" (a book about death with dignity) and the founder of the Hemlock Society (don't remember if they are one and the same) live (and die) in Oregon? (Am I remembering this correctly?)
-
TOM you are a very clever fellow .. and if Penny was heterosexual i would say she wants to be your valentine>>i think u two would make a cute couple
-
Finally, DFUND, you have said ONE thing I can agree with -- Tom does post clever, well-reasoned comments. But I have to tell you that I already have a partner and love her with all my heart, just as she loves me with all her heart.
-
DFUND
I have great respect for Penny, we both have fun posting comments here about what we "Think Out Loud", and I respect Penneys' relationship, so your imagined couple is only in your own mind.
And I am glad that you found and used your "Caps Lock" key, it helps make your comment read as "civil". I encourage you to keep using it.
-
I guarantee, all that is living will die.
The question is When and How.
And most people hope there will not be an inquest or a coroner. And hopefully you will not leave a mess for someone to clean up--pickin' up brains.
We tend to have a 'DEATH PHOBIA' which is irrational since there is no effective antidote. Tens of thousands of Americans die everyday. Generations of our family have gone away. Thousands of our ancestors have died. There are more dead than living humans.
Ideally we would die in bed at a ripe age. Some go out with a bang and some a whimper, but everyone takes the plunge. Others look forward to their 72 Virgins.
But assisted suicide and self inflicting weapons gives us the power of WHEN and HOW. I tend to think Death will Come When it will Come.
-
Ideally we would die in bed at a ripe age. Some go out with a bang and some a whimper, but everyone takes the plunge. -- jacob — Tue Feb. 15th 4:03p.m.
I am reminded of an old (and admittedly somewhat tasteless) joke: When my time comes, I hope I go peacefully in my sleep, like my grandpa -- not screaming in terror like the three passengers in his Buick! (Yes, I know -- somewhat tasteless.)
-
since you give the warning, it is a very pointed statement disguised as a joke - good one!
-
I am very supportive of Oregon's Death with Dignity Act that allows terminally ill patients to end their own life with medication prescribed by their doctors, but what I want to know is why euthanasia (allowing people who are not sick to end their own life) is illegal? Why don't we give adults who are not terminally ill the same options as those who are?
I think many people who commit suicide in private would be less likely to do it if they had a public process (aside from hotlines) to actually carry it out. How surreal would it be to think "Hey, two weeks from now on March 1, 2011 I have an appointment to kill myself. Am I really sure about this?" ?
An open approach seems better than a repressive one that doesn't deal with the issue of death until it already happens.
-
Assisted Suicide Rate in Oregon generally averages under 100 per year.........More people die of blood clots.
There are 5 times more Self Inflicted Fatal Gunshot Wounds than Medically Assisted Suicides.
IF a firearm is involved in a Fatal Shooting, in 70% it involves suicide of the gun owner, homicide of a family member or a combination murder-suicide.
Owning a handgun is being more than halfway to your grave. And people want this power?
-
To answer your last question: Absolutely!
I have quickly searched and if you have no objection and if it would be not to much trouble, would you be so kind as to post the source for your statistic?
Thank You.
D
-
Guns involved the fatal shootings of humans are a special subset of firearms. They are confiscated by law officers as evidence of state---YES AN ABSOLUTE VIOLATION OF THE 2ND AMMENDMENT! But they also are a major source of data.
Source is the Center for Disease Control, 2010 National Survey. Suicide is the majority cause of violent death in America and two times more common than homicide. Yes, depression, illicit drug and alcohol abuse are common and widespread.
Very worthwhile read-- hope you like statistics. I would hope every gunowner would read this, instead of spending a few hours cleaning his barrel.
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/pdf/ss/ss5904.pdf
-
"And people want this power?" Some of us like the responsibility that comes with this particular freedom.
-
some may like the feeling they have, having this 'responsibility', as if it were a possession; but how many of them exercise their 'responsibility' responsibly?
shooting harmless animals? shooting each other? leaving lead in the lakes which poisons the geese they take home and eat, thereby themselves, and their children, ingesting lead too - et cetera?
carrying around guns as if that in itself made them right and worth listening to?
the statistics just aren't on your side, even if the paranoia is right behind you
boo!
"boom"
oh s**t, honey! why'd you sneak up on me like that - by the way, you look terrible layin' there like that
-
It's easy to transfer our own shortcomings onto others, but I'd ask you to consider that the responsibility I have to my fellow humans and society not to use a firearm irresponsibly is the same that keeps me from taking a high-speed left-turn into the Saturday market crowd with my F350, keeps me from flying a private plane into the side of a hospital and keeps me from using some of the more interesting things I learned in Chemistry and Biology (luv that viral engineering class) in a highly inappropriate manner.
We can make fun about it all we want, but in the end it's about people and how responsible we are with things and ideas... perhaps something that we as a society need to work on.
-
how to die in Oregon?
... step out in front of traffic on a narrow and shrubbery shrouded street and expect the driver has the reflexes of ... i dunno, superman
my feeling is that pedestrian injuries and deaths are really under-reported here -
is that because no one cares about the pedestrians, as the pedestrians think, or because the body is bounced into a ditch and just not discovered?
or is pedestrianism the chosen form of death-with-dignity here?
probably not -but nowhere else have i ever seen such disregard by pedestrians for something which weighs as much as a car or truck, coming straight at them- especially when they have a baby-carriage which they seem to use as a bettering ram or a shield, putting it between themselves and the vehicle rather than the other way around
the way the drivers go about it though, it does seem like a sure thing
-well that 's probably not the question you really had in mind -
with your probable question in mind, i, seriously, would say,
-either in your imagination or in reality, take a long hike into the woods, along a mountain, along a beach, to some spot in nature where you can feel whole and as having been a part of it, find a spot pleasant to you, sit for awhile and dream, and then let go- if you cannot go out, have an opening to the outdoors where you can see, for your spirit, while still with you, to feel it has a way back to where it came to you from - perhaps someone who would not be harmed by being with you could accompany you - i would also say, do not be frightened, and better too late than too soon
all that you think is you will still exist, like a bright beam of light would were it pointed to the sky, forever; and all that you are will still be here, ready to become something else again, just as what you are now was once waiting to become you
it is the life cycle; a life is only a part of the larger whole
-
That photo at the top of the page is interestingly cross-like. In the religious sense. The exit sign being the head, the light at the top of the doors the arms and the light between the doors the body.
"Entering the Twilight Zone."
-
I know this topic is specific to a terminally ill person taking their own life, but I'd wager that there are a lot more of us who have signed the legal doc's ("living will") that give us the responsibility to end another persons life (under specific conditions) when they are no longer able to express themselves... this is also a death with dignity, no?
Knowing that I might have to "pull the plug" on my parents always gives me strongly mixed emotions when I try to imagine it... knowing that I'm taking their life while at the same time knowing they'd thank me for it... gonna be a strange time for me if that ever happens.
-
I would have to agree, rethomas, that executing a Living Will to give my partner the guidance to make end-of-life decisions about me, should I be unable, would constitute death with dignity. I would hope that when the time came, she would have the emotional strength to do what was best, even if that meant my passing.
-
Some statements (yes, even on this page) surrounding death seem to be at odds, we have proposed that we should not be frightened by death, that it is a normal cycle, and perhaps we have a death phobia, but go on to suggest that we should accept this cycle or embrace it. Well, yes, death seems to be part of the natural cycle, but whoever said nature was an expert on all things? Or that nature always gets it right? Or ever gets it right? And if you think nature does ‘get things right’, then I kind of think you can’t avoid the notion that nature must have some higher goal/power or purpose or fate. What is right about nature? Isn’t this notion at odds with evolution? And if death is a part of nature, then what has to be ‘right’ about it? Why all the traffic safety measures? Why all the medicine? Why all these intellectual interferences to keep us alive? Many members of our species have decided they did not like the lot they have been given, they want to live longer, and they are going to find ways to do so. They of course have a right to do this, as much as others have a right to end life, when it is no longer worth living. I remember my grandmother barely alive, screaming from the hospice bed during fleeting moments of consciousness, “I don’t want to die, don’t let me die”---I can’t say that I disagree with her.
-
I've lived in the Philomath area for 13 years, during the Clemens Grant controversy. I had experience with the school's superintentant, and I read odd letters to the editor by one of the Clemens Grant overseer. I thought that after watching Peter Richardson's documentary on this subject, I would come away on one side or the other. It was so objectively presented, showing quirks on both sides, that I am still ambivulant. I was very impressed by that project and I look forward to seeing this new project. Is it coming to Corvallis?
-
In 1997 when my mother was in the last months of her life, she chose to come here to Oregon to die. I'd been living in Oregon for a while and while she never said it explicitly, it was clear to me she wanted to have the options open to her under the Death With Dignity law. Her disease progressed faster than she or her doctors expected and she never excercised her right under the law, but she took comfort in the fact that she did not have to face a lingering, excruciating death.
-
This is a very interesting guest.
I am glad that he realized that being the photographer takes him out of the experience, I think that too many people lose out on experiencing whatever event they are at by taking photos. I quit taking ski photos for that reason and went back to experiencing the skiing itself.
-
Comments are now closed.
There is something funny about following "Live from Salem" with "How to Die in Oregon".
Hmm, I remind my self that "correlation is not the same as causation".
Henh.