Category comfort
FMM 1 20 2023 Words for Life
“Whatever words we utter should be chosen with care for people will hear them and be influenced by them for good or ill.” ~ Buddha. Last month I participated in a daily challenge. The challenge was daily, my participation was more sporadic. We were given a prompt to write a poem. One day the prompt […]
FMM 12 9 2022 The Prism of Poetry
“Poetry is a deal of joy and pain and wonder, with a dash of the dictionary.” ~ Khalil Gibran. I remember writing stories as a child, whether it was school assigned or spontaneous I don’t recall. It was not until I was in my thirties that I decided I wanted to write, and went out […]
FMM 8 13 2021 Our patchwork life
“Art, in itself, is an attempt to bring order out of chaos.” ~ Stephen Sondheim. My grandfather (whom I never met since he died some years before I was born) was a truck driver. He left school at the age of twelve, and his first job was to stand outside a grocery store (where there […]
FMM 5 21 2021 Comfort over Fashion
“The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.” ~ Aristotle. I don’t remember being very fussy about clothes as a child. As the youngest I inherited most of my ‘gently worn’ outfits. I remember one dress in particular. It had not been handed down from my […]
FMM 3 5 2021 Threats and Opportunities
“An awareness of one’s mortality can lead you to wake up and live an authentic, meaningful life.” ~ Bernie Siegel. I can’t say that I loved Physics when I was in high school. I was amused by one of our teachers who demonstrated the movement of molecules and how it changed as they got heated […]
FMM 3 13 20 Virus Ignoramus
“Vows made in storms are forgotten in calm.” ~ Thomas Fuller. I have one very clear memory of nursing during the early days of the AIDS epidemic. A young man had developed a collapsed lung, which required the insertion of a tube into his chest wall to suck the air out of the pleural space […]
FMM 12 27 19 Home Stretch
“You can be still and still moving. Content even in your discontent.” ~ Ram Dass. There was a time when I would unwind after a hectic night shift by sitting at my dining table reading the Miami Herald, cup of coffee at my side, kids on or off my lap. Sundays were particularly special – […]
FMM 6 14 19 Sing out Loud!
“As long as poverty, injustice and gross inequality persist in our world, none of us can truly rest.” ~ Nelson Mandela. There is nothing like waking up before dawn in the cool hills of Jamaica; there is peace and quiet before the roosters start to crow, and the dogs start their chorus. Once the daylight […]
FMM 5 24 19 Brass Bands and Parenting
O Joy that seekest me through pain, I cannot close my heart to thee; I trace the rainbow through the rain, And feel the promise is not vain, That morn shall tearless be. ~George Matheson. I am not sure why I love the sound of a good brass band. They are a particularly English phenomenon, […]