Category Global health and disparities
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 […]
FMM 4 10 2020 A Social Conundrum
“There’s a difference between solitude and loneliness.” ~ Maggie Smith. My father was an eclectic music lover. Brought up in a Welsh chapel, he had an abiding love of hymns, especially as he grew up to be a minister of religion. In his collection of LPs (long-playing records, from the olden days!), and then later […]
FMM 4 3 2020 Challenge!
“Not in the shouts and plaudits of the throng, but in ourselves, are triumph and defeat.” ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. My father and my father-in-law were two very different men. My father descended from the mountain people of Wales, my father-in-law from the tribes of Africa. My father, although the son of a truck-driver was […]
FMM 3 27 2020 No Time for Platitudes
“A man without ethics is a wild beast loosed upon this world.” ~ Albert Camus. This week I saw a headline that said that New York women were going to have to give birth alone. It was not as stark as it sounded. It wasn’t that the poor women were going to have to squat […]
FMM 3 20 2020 These Bipolar Times
“I often think the night is more alive and more richly colored than the day.” ~ Vincent Van Gogh. One of the amazing things about the human body (and there are many) is its ability to develop immunity, over time. We have these cells who, pacman-like, chomp up invaders and then display pieces of them […]
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