Football stadiums are full. Colleges, Big Ten, Big Twelve, and Otherwise. Pro teams large and small, Now fill their seats like Nothing can fall. But, there’s a virus in our midst. High school sports are playing, too. Parents, friends, and fans lined up to fill The buildings and gyms to the walls, Like nothing is…
Public schools Public health Public library Public defender Public market Public bathroom What does the word “public” mean to you? In nursing school, eons ago, the senior year clinical was called “Community Health.” This clinical, the culmination of three prior years of classes in liberal arts, hard and soft sciences including biology, chemistry, physiology, sociology,…
Earlier this year I wrote several posts about the pandemic and vaccination role outs. I explored the trials of getting my elderly parents their vaccines in New York State when I lived in Wisconsin. I relayed frustrations at “the system” believing our elderly could manage online searches and registrations for the vaccines. Ultimately, I was…
Dog Training We have an exuberant yellow lab who will be 2 years old at the end of June. She is still a puppy, according to people who know Labrador Retrievers. The pandemic was hard on pets as it was hard on humans. For a while, early in the pandemic, her doggie day care shut…
What have I done to celebrate the earth, I ask myself? Mostly, it’s involved informing others of the precious resources the earth provides. In the past, for celebrations of Earth Day I’ve presented to whole schools on topics such as the forest and monarch conservation. I’ve presented on the prairie as an ecosystem, and helped…
During March, my participation in the Slice of Life Story Challenge has limited my Poetry Friday entries. I miss the community of poets I’ve come to know over the last year on Poetry Friday. So, today, I wrote two posts – one very brief post of the Slice of Life Story Challenge and one for…
Yesterday, I felt different. Happier and more optimistic, for whatever reason. I don’t really know why. I do know that music can sometimes make that difference for me; the difference between being glum or being happy. I went to run a few errands early in the afternoon. I tried on Saturday but Target was so…
Mid-January, I traveled to New York with my husband to see my parents. They are in their mid-80’s, still living in their own home. The day we arrived, New York had just opened vaccinations for group 1b – those 75 and older. Much of my time there was spent trying to secure vaccine appointments for…
Sometimes, the public is hard to work with. When I started making fabric face masks, I offered them free to those in my community, primarily through local contacts on my Facebook page. There were reasons I offered them free. 1) I was just getting back into sewing and 2) I was still perfecting the masks,…
Writing every day with substance and relevance is hard. Most days, the words flow from my mind on to the computer screen with minimal effort. Some days, it is a struggle to pull them out. Today is one such day. This is the post I probably should have written yesterday. I need to take my…