Category Global health and disparities
FMM 12 14 18 True Confessions
“Art is always and everywhere the secret confession, and at the same time the immortal movement of its time.” ~ Karl Marx. I was taught how to be a Jamaican housewife by my Jamaican husband. It was a bone of contention for quite a while. For some reason it seemed implausible to him that I […]
FMM 11 30 18 Take the long way home
“A thousand ages in Thy sight Are like an evening gone” ~ Isaac Watts. I lived in England for a year when I was around 14. That was the year the first man set foot on the moon (unless the conspiracy theorists are correct!). But there were other more mundane discoveries. Don’t ask me how, […]
FMM 11 23 18 Sparking
“At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us.” ~ Albert Schweitzer. I did not know what a shower looked like until I was almost 8 years old. Homes […]
FMM 11 2 18 Calm Energy
“Good words cool more than cold water.” ~ John Ray. In high school my classmates and I were lucky enough to have the same ‘form teacher’ (I guess in the US he would be called our home-room teacher) for five years. I say lucky, because he was one of those rare teachers, a man who […]
FMM 10 26 18 Suspending Disbelief
“Soul is about authenticity. Soul is about finding the things in your life that are real and pure.” ~ John Legend. I remember as a child learning to be polite, to appear interested even when bored. Being a ‘parson’s kid’ meant not saying the first thing that popped into your head but instead admiring that […]
FMM 10 12 18 Who am I?
“Be thine own palace, or the world’s thy jail.” ~ John Donne. When I left Jamaica in the mid 70’s, I hadn’t heard the word ‘Soca’ used to describe the music we associated with those small islands of the Caribbean. It was Calypso music back then, and we mostly heard it in a 5-minute block […]
FMM 10 5 18 Greatest Good
“The countenance of one man brighteneth another; Iron sharpeneth iron” ~ Joseph Hill, Culture. I have never doubted the power of the mind. My mother was a strong believer in mind over matter. It mostly had to do with you ignoring all of those things you wanted to use as excuses not to get a […]
FMM 9 28 18 Sipple out there
“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” ~ Maya Angelou. Jamaicans (and maybe many other people), tend to blame many of their symptoms on gas. Shoulder pain? Gas. Chest pain? Gas. Of course, the obvious ones like bloating and cramping, also gas. In England the term for passing gas (flatulence, […]
FMM 9 21 18 Do your Thing
“Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.” ~ Berthold Auerbach. One of the challenges of writing a message every Friday morning, is trying to knit together the variety of threads that catch my interest during the week. Some weeks random items come together in a harmonious message, eventually; at other times […]
FMM 9 7 18 Raising the Bar
“I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.” ~ Nelson Mandela. My father-in-law was a character. He was well known in the village where he lived, for he was loud, he did […]
myfmm.blog 