Play it again
Twenty years ago, I was sitting on the concrete stairs outside the Shoulder to Shoulder apartments in Santa Lucia, Honduras, when I heard the announcer on a colleague’s short wave radio say that US troops were moving into Afghanistan. My compatriots (physicians, nurses, residents and medical students) on the medical mission out of the University of Cincinnati…
Let in the light
The challenges of our times are hard to escape. Here in the US: collapsing buildings likely related to climate change with encroaching oceans and poorly maintained infrastructure, sweltering temperatures in the Northwest, and reportedly appalling conditions in the detention centers where asylum seekers are housed on our southern border. Elsewhere the horrors of COVID and the delta variant continue as wealthy nations' slowly respond to…
The Art of Improvisation
We are watching Ken Burn's Jazz Series on PBS. I enjoy music, but am not a musician and don't have much of an ear. My singing should be only in the shower. What has struck me about the series is the ongoing improvisation that is Jazz. It started with Louie Armstrong in New Orleans, Duke Ellington in NYC, and Count Basie and eventually Charlie Parker in Kansas City. It is a story of race--the creative and improvising black musicians inspiring the whites and then the black artists…
Palestine and more . . .
And then there is Palestine and Israel. As I watch the news I struggle with how to respond. What could I do or say? A year and a half ago, I had met Izeldine on the steps of the Damascus gate in Jerusalem to start our food tour in the Old City. Sacred Cuisine --a sampling of local foods with stories about Palestinian heritage. A few years earlier I'd walked through the gate at dusk…
Remembering Dr. Patrick Chege--Family Medicine Kenya
Dr. Patrick Chege, age 63 years, died from COVID this past week. He was one of the first Family Medicine trained physicians in Kenya, finishing in 2008. He founded the Family Kenya Association of Family Physicians (KAFP) and began serving as the Head of the Family Medicine Department at Moi University…
Ugliness begets beauty
Skunk cabbage smells like its name, but has a deep purple spotted leaf-like flower and gives rise to something that looks like Romaine lettuce--some of the first greens of the spring in damp areas. Spring is here.
Seeking hope
You can’t miss the anniversary discussions about a year of COVID: the lockdown, the losses, the old life still yearned for, but the new routines becoming more familiar.
This week, both COVID immunized, Reed and I took a trip to watch an ancient spring event in northern Indiana: the migration of the Sandhill cranes toward their nesting sites in Wisconsin, Minnesota and further north. We were seeking a change of pace and the magic of taping into nature’s majesty…
Gratitude and Bearing Witness
Now 11% of the US adult population is fully vaccinated and over 22% have at least one dose. My own family has done well thanks to their essential worker status (teachers and doctors) and being long term care residents. We’ve had our trauma with COVID, 2 members infected and recovered, and others on the front lines of bringing children back to school and in clinical care. But nevertheless we are privileged. Despite the chaos of President #45, the US…
Ground Hog Day
Remember the movie—Bill Murray trapped in an endless loop. February 2nd has come and gone and I can never remember if winter continues, or if spring will come sooner if the groundhog sees its shadow. Regardless, the Covid winter is here to stay.
There are reports of the four vaccine breakthrough cases in Oregon, and in New Zealand, which has been a model country in managing the pandemic, shows a rise in cases. The growing mutations of Covid-19 are worrisome, as is the current thought that the vaccine’s protection fade…