Category Global health and disparities
FMM 7 10 2020 It’s an Illusion
“The ignorant mind, with its infinite afflictions, passions, and evils, is rooted in the three poisons. Greed, anger, and delusion.” ~ Bodhidharma. In my youth I was an avid reader. From the simple fairy tales of childhood, through girl detective stories to historical romances, I read them all. Short stories were special treats, you […]
FMM 7 3 2020 Raw Soul
“To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker.” ~ Frederick Douglass. Upstate New York is an idyllic place, a place of woods and hills and dappled light. There are place names that reveal the original owners of the land, along with […]
FMM 6 26 2020 Stay Curious
“Loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted is the most terrible poverty.” ~ Mother Teresa. I am not sure when it is that we begin to be curious about our parents’ lives before we were born. Perhaps it is when we hit our rebellious teenage years, sure we have all the answers and our parents […]
FMM 6 19 2020 Downpressor Man
“To hold a people in oppression you have to convince them first that they are supposed to be oppressed.” ~ John Henrik Clarke’ We keep saying these are strange times. But are they? Over ten years ago I was getting ready to travel to Jamaica for a week of high school reunion activities. I had […]
FMM 6 12 2020 All the Rage
“Retribution haunts everyone, but catches up only the few.”~ Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach. I admit I was naïve. I blame Jamaica. I had grown up as a white girl surrounded by a population whose motto is ‘Out of many, one people.’ The majority of Jamaicans are descended from the enslaved Africans who were brought to the […]
FMM 6 5 2020 Two Americas
“You can’t separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom.” ~ Malcolm X. “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” When you want to be a writer, or even an author, you aspire to create a killer first line, an opening sentence […]
FMM 5 15 2020 Surface Tension
“We who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive.” ~ Martin Luther King, Jr. My parents were both pacifists. My father’s brothers were also pacifists and as young men in 1939, at the start of World War II, […]
FMM 5 1 2020 The Evolution will not be Televised
“What you do speaks so loud that I cannot hear what you say.” ~ C. L. Stuart. When I was about seventeen, I was itching to learn to drive. This was in Jamaica, back in the days when stick shifts were standard, automatics were rare. I was the youngest child, and only one still at […]
FMM 4 24 2020 The Ties that Bond
“The essence of philosophy is that a man should so live that his happiness shall depend as little as possible on external things.” ~ Epictetus. We are living through an amazing time. There are eras in your life that are special. When I started in nursing school in England in the 70s, I knew absolutely […]
FMM 4 17 2020 Like a Rock
“Sometimes you can find peace of mind by transferring yourself to different situations. They’re just reminders to stay… calm.” ~ Yves Behar. My father always claimed to be a late developer, not in the physical sense, but in the academic sense. He did not do well in his ‘common entrance’ an exam given to 11 […]
