Note: Due to a glitch in the system, I don't think this went out yesterday (Friday) when I originally posted it, so I am resending it. If you're actually receiving it a second time, my apologies. Please don't feel obligated to read it again. However, I think it's important enough that you may want to! I was planning on writing what would have been a mildly humorous blog today, but then I got an email from Tom Kephart, a friend who’s also an Emergency Room [...]
Not long ago, my book club read A Gentleman in Moscow, a novel about a man who was put under house arrest by the Bolsheviks in 1922, and ordered to spend the rest of his life in the elegant hotel he had been living in for several years. He was warned that if he set foot outside the hotel, he would be shot. I’m starting to understand how he felt. Not about getting shot if I step outside, of course, and certainly not the “elegant [...]
“My head understands it, but it was hard on my heart.” I heard that last night from a woman in British Columbia. I was attending a special “Pandemic Presentations” Toastmasters meeting via Zoom, and the person giving the speech – who is single and lives alone in her apartment – was talking about the feelings of isolation she was experiencing while social distancing during the coronavirus pandemic. At one point, she talked about how she feels when she goes outside for a walk and some [...]
My blog this week is a plea for help, one that will benefit people in desperate circumstances in one of the poorest countries in the world. Yet it has to do with the medical crisis that is affecting us all – here in the United States and around the world, including the Nakivale Refugee Settlement in Southwest Uganda. Those who have been regular readers of my column and blog know about my work in Uganda with Pathways to Hope Africa, including several trips to the [...]
“Creative Coping” was the theme of our Toastmasters meeting the other night. I think that’s a good description of all of our lives right now. (Our meetings, by the way, are held online via Zoom for the time being, which is how we are creatively coping with stay-at-home orders and guidelines.) Day by day and week by week, we’re all finding and implementing new ways to cope with the restrictions meant to keep us safe and to slow the spread of the coronavirus. Along the [...]
Have you ever watched a movie or TV show in which someone is temporarily blinded or paralyzed, or loses their hearing due to an accident, explosion, or shoot-out? There’s always a dramatic scene as the bandages are removed, and everyone watches, holding their breath, to find out if the patient will be able to see, hear, or walk again. I’ll never forget an episode of the TV show M*A*S*H in which Hawkeye, the main character and head surgeon, is blinded by an exploding water heater. [...]
A tradition is, by definition, something that is repeated year after year. Even so, traditions change over time. Kids grow up and go off on their own, families that used to live within a few miles of each other are now spread out across the country, and lifestyles of days gone by simply don’t fit our way of life anymore. Easter, like Christmas, has both sacred and secular traditions, and I now find myself thinking about all the Easter traditions I have taken part in [...]
One of the speaking programs I used to do was titled, “Where Do Diamonds Come From? A Lump of Coal and a Lot of Pressure.” The inspiration for the title of the program came from an old television series, The Adventures of Superman, that ran in the 1950s. People of a certain age – meaning my age or older – will remember the many episodes in which Superman took a piece of coal, squeezed it, and opened his hand to reveal a sparkly diamond. The [...]
How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you were? That question comes up every so often, and I’ll be the first to admit there are times when I feel much older than my actual age. But there are times when I feel younger, too, so I guess it evens out. I thought of the question recently in relation to a friend who sent me an email after reading one of my blog posts a few weeks ago. He said that over [...]