“Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality.” ~ Edgar Allan Poe. I always thought I had a pretty good vocabulary. Until I went back to school in my fifties. As the youngest of the family, I listened and learned from those older than me. I had access […]
“Life beats down and crushes the soul and art reminds you that you have one.” ~ Stella Adler. The power of the poet is their ability to crystallize and synthesize diverse situations into a few lines that leave a lasting impression. I don’t remember when it was that I learned about a couple of English […]
“It is never too late to be what you might have been.” ~ George Eliot. I was born in a cold and rainy city, in a cold December month. At that time in England, the most common heating source in the houses was a coal fire-place. Coal was dirty, full of dust, brought deep out […]
“Like a welcome summer rain, humor may suddenly cleanse and cool the earth, the air and you.” ~ Langston Hughes. When I relocated from the UK to Jamaica at the age of almost eight, one of my first friends who lived close by had the added bonus of a having a houseful of younger siblings. […]
“My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together.” ~ Desmond Tutu. I grew up hearing African freedom songs. In my early years as a child in Jamaica, there was no television. My parents had brought their eclectic record collection and a record player, and in the evening my father […]
“But I’d rather be a free man in my grave, than living as a puppet or a slave.” ~ James Chambers aka Jimmy Cliff. When you grow up in the country, (especially in Jamaica) the facts of life and in particular, death, are hard to avoid. You can hear the sounds of a hog squealing […]
“Guilt can stop us from taking healthy care of ourselves.” ~ Melody Beattie. This week I found myself in a familiar role, one that is not mentioned in my job description, and probably is outside of my scope of practice also. Nurses have a whole section of state statutes covering our practice (the Nurse Practice […]
“People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them.” ~ James Baldwin. My father was a minister (parson, preacher) by education and vocation, but became a teacher when we moved to Jamaica. He had two jobs, his charge of three churches, and to be chaplain and parttime Bible Knowledge teacher at the high […]
“Where destruction is the motive, unity is dangerous.” ~ Ravi Zacharias. I may be prejudiced, but there is something special about Jamaica the country and Jamaica the people. When my mother was in the last decade of her life, after she had lost her life partner (married for 66 years, engaged for 3 years before […]
“The secret of freedom lies in educating people, whereas the secret of tyranny is in keeping them ignorant.” ~ Maximilien Robespierre. I must have been in my forties when I learned something about my family I had never known before. I learned it around the same time as the rest of my siblings, although I […]
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