Category Global health and disparities
FMM 12 2 22 Not my cup of tea
“Your sacred space is where you can find yourself again and again.” ~ Joseph Campbell. I don’t know when I started to drink coffee. In my childhood (born in England), tea was naturally the first choice. It is introduced to children in a form more milk than tea, poured into a saucer to cool faster, […]
11 18 2022 Citizen of the World
“We must become bigger than we have been: more courageous, greater in spirit, larger in outlook. We must become members of a new race, overcoming petty prejudice, owing our ultimate allegiance not to nations but to our fellow men within the human community.”~ Haile Selassie. My grandmother was born in Patagonia, Argentina. Her parents had […]
FMM 11 4 2022 The Sound of Silence
“Good timber does not grow with ease. The stronger the wind the stronger the trees.” ~ Thomas S. Monson. I traveled to Jamaica with my family in 1963, sailing on the SS Ascania. Our journey was extended by several days, as we had to observe protocol, and allow a killer to exit the Caribbean before […]
FMM 10 21 2022 Full-blooded Jamericans
“There are only two lasting bequests we can hope to give our children. One of these is roots, the other, wings.” ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. This week saw the birthday of my firstborn, and, as such things often do, sent my thoughts back to my early years in Miami, when big roads with wide […]
FMM 10 14 2022 Poets and Pragmatists
“Everywhere I go I find that a poet has been there before me.” ~ Sigmund Freud. I still own a book of poetry that was sent to me by one of my aunts when I was about 8 or 9. The title called to me, ‘The Littlest one, his book’ since I was the youngest, […]
FMM 9 30 2022 Special Gifts
“Live your life while you have it. Life is a splendid gift. There is nothing small in it.” ~ Florence Nightingale. My first nursing experience was on a gynecology ward, run by an old-fashioned ward Sister (Nurse Manager, US style). She was close to retiring and had not changed the way she ran the ward […]
FMM 9 23 2022 Bright Shiny Objects
“We are part of this universe; we are in this universe, but perhaps more important than both of those facts, is that the universe is in us.” ~ Neil deGrasse Tyson. As a church minister, my father was not one to be openly political. Ministers were supposed to be neutral, not sharing their views or […]
FMM 9 16 2022 Talking in Shorthand
“Whatever words we utter should be chosen with care for people will hear them and be influenced by them for good or ill.” ~ Buddha. One of the interesting aspects of growing up in Jamaica is that words of advice often come dressed up in amusing and sometimes confusing proverbs and parables. These proverbs may […]
FMM 9 9 2022 Holisticism
“My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together.” ~ Desmond Tutu. I greeted my two near death experiences with song. When I went into labor with my first child, the only way I could handle the pain that I thought was about to kill me, was by singing ‘Nearer […]
FMM 9 2 2022 Living History
“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” ~ Viktor E. Frankl. I often wonder what happened to Evelyn. The first school I went to in Jamaica was a private ‘Prep’ school, run by a married […]
Friday Morning Messages 