Skip to main content

A Call for Submissions

 



Friends, I have been trying to act as though everything is going along normally over here but, it isn’t. Someone near and dear to me took a bad fall last Friday night and suffered a pretty serious break to their humerus. A trip to the orthopedist today will let us know how bad.

What this means is that I am now living away from home and sleeping on a pull out couch - - one ear always on alert for the sound of the little bell sitting on a bedside table across the hall.

This makes blogging a challenge.

I am not complaining. Honestly, I am scared out of my mind but I am not complaining.

True to form, I’m going to respond to this challenge by putting you to work. 

I’m looking for helpful information about home care, what Medicare will pay for, how to organize friendly, helpful neighbors in a way that respects them but is, first and foremost, helpful to the patient.

Is there a Maryland help hotline for people like me who are new to being caregivers? And, just to make you laugh, is there an easy concierge service that organizes everything and everyone? Writing and all things creative are my strong suits. Organization? Not so much.

I want to keep writing because it is a (proven) way for me to stay connected and stay on an even keel, mental-health-wise. If I can get some moments of respite in place I’ll keep showing up here. Even if you don’t have any expert advice I’d appreciate what my Unitarian mother used to call “good thoughts.”

Whatever you call them, they help.


Village Green/Town² Comments


Comments

  1. Please do not submit comments here. This function will be disabled shortly. Use the link above instead. Thanks!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Teacher Gifts

Today is the last day of school before the Winter Break. It’s a good time to remember the far-reaching nature of our public school system. You may not have children. You may have sent your children to independent schools. It matters not. You will be impacted one way or another. Yesterday I read a long thread on Facebook about several waves of illness in the schools right now. There’s influenza A and norovirus, I believe. And of course there’s COVID. Apparently in some individual schools the rate of illness is high enough for school admin to notify parents.  When I was little the acceptable holiday gift for a teacher was one of those lovely floral handkerchief squares. (I don’t know what it was for male teachers. They were rare in my elementary years.) These days the range of teacher gifts is wider and I have fond memories of Target gift cards which I have written about before. I think it’s safe to say that giving one’s teacher Influenza, norovirus, or COVID is not the ideal holiday...

They Can Wait

This is not a typical Saturday post. That’s because, in my community, it’s not a typical Saturday.  Oakland Mills High School, after years of deferred repair, needs massive renovation. It’s pretty simple: when you don’t fix a problem it gets bigger. The school system itself said the the OMHS school building was  "no longer conducive to learning" back in 2018.  2018 .  But Thursday the Boad of Education voted to push it out of the lineup of important projects which will be given the go-ahead to proceed soonest.  In my opinion it’s a terrible decision and sets a dangerous precedent. To explain, here’s the advocacy letter I sent in support of Oakland Mills High School. I was rather proud of it. I am writing to ask you to proceed with needed renovation at Oakland Mills High School in the most timely and comprehensive manner humanly possible. I have read the letter sent to you by the Oakland Mills Community Association and I am in complete agreement. You are extremel...

Separate and Unequal

  Remember “Separate but equal”? Remember how that really meant that Black schools languished in  broken-down buildings without adequate heat or toilet facilities, with cast-off, ragged learning materials, underfunded and largely ignored? The Supreme Court struck that down in 1954. The evidence was clear that separate was not equal. Plessy v Ferguson had led to - - no, endorsed - - deeply unequal schooling and opportunities. We tend to think of Brown v Board as being purely about racial integration. It was not.  It was about the logical consequences of segregation. And they were not, not, not equal. The ruling in 1954 didn’t transform public education for non-whites into a land of milk and honey by any means. But it articulated some essential truths in a way that made including everyone a legal precedent which could be relied upon and built upon. It was better than what came before it but it rested upon unsteady ground. It did not necessarily change the hearts or minds ...