Happy Nurses Week 2025 5/7/25

It is Nurses’ Week once again.

Funny how that happens.

This is the week that nurses and nursing are being celebrated.

If 2020 was the Year of the Nurse and Midwife that marked 200 years since Florence Nightingale’s birth, then simple math makes this 205th year. You see what I did there.

There have been other notable nurses besides Florence Nightingale. Many, many, many. The nursing theorists whose work guide us. The original nurses who worked to provide us with structure.

Clara Barton and her work on the Civil War battlefield come to mind. As does her star achievement of the American Red Cross.

Dorothea Dix was a contemporary of Clara (can I call her that?) and advocated for mental healthcare of soldiers. She also was concerned with the mentally ill poor people and helped established mental hospitals.

Margaret Sanger who worked as a nurse in the tenements of New York and founded Planned Parenthood. She was also instrumental in the birth control pill development. She, too, was probably sick of women dying in childbirth.

Mary Seacole was a Jamaican-British nurse who was a contemporary of Florence (can I call her that?). She was the first Black woman who authored and published an autobiography in England.

Lilian Wald was a nurse whose passion was for safer living conditions for the poor in New York City. She also started community nursing and was an advocate of nurses in public schools.

Harriet Tubman was a nurse whose concern was for the Black soldiers of the Civil War and the newly freed slaves. She is best known for being a conductor on the Underground Railroad.

This is not a complete list. In fact, this is a living list and being added to constantly.

Giants all of them. Today’s nurses stand on their shoulders and fight many of the same battles. Hygiene might be better. There are better medications and treatments but at the heart, nurses remain the same.

Our reason for professional being are the people who need us. Not just the patients, but the doctors and surgeons and people on the street as well.

I have been a nurse for 24 years and I wouldn’t do anything else.

After all, I have big shoes to fill. My mom, the nurse I want to be when I grow up, is still working after 52 years.

International Womens Day March 8th

Much like declining to wish people a “Happy Veterans Day”, I will also be declining to wish women a “Happy International Women’s Day”. This is for many of the same reasons.

There is nothing happy about this.

Google and Apple took it off of their calendars.

In an obvious sop to more than half of the country, Google did incorporate 5 images into its search page. An atom, a double helix strand of DNA, an Erlenmeyer flask, a dinosaur skull, and an astronaut in full gear.

And that’s it.

It is up to us to decipher which scientist or woman matches up with each image.

The atom is a bit of a head thumper to start us off. I imagine that it is supposed to represent Marie Curie. I guess. One of her TWO Nobel prizes is in physics.

The double helix of DNA is much easier to parse. Rosalind Franklin was the woman who took Photo 51, the first x-ray picture that clearly showed the double strands. Her work was stolen by the heralded discoverers of DNA, without her permission. She was robbed of the Nobel prize when the two men who had taken her data did not credit her. Worse, they tried to cover up this fact by saying that she couldn’t grasp the concept of DNA.

Bitch, please.

The Erlenmeyer flask is meant to be the contributions of all women in chemistry? I guess. It’s not really clear. There have been a lot of women in chemistry, after all.

The dinosaur skull could represent Dorothy Garrod. She was the one who first explained that the First Mesozoic era encompassed the history of man. Or perhaps it is representing the first woman archeologist, Margaret Murray, who worked in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. There have also been a lot of women in archeology.

The astronaut could be any number of women. The first woman in space was Valentina Tereshkova. She orbited the Earth for 3 days in June 1963.

If you click through the Google doodle, it is just a celebration of women in STEM. No woman is named specifically by name.

But we know or can guess at the inspiration for each doodle image.

Women in science and STEM is an international effort.

One that we have to give all respect for and homage to.

But it isn’t enough. What other woman has had her data stolen or was forced to give her work to a man for recognition? There remains a lot of work to do.

One thing that must be acknowledged is the contributions that are not STEM related. Because the entire world and all of its discoveries are not solely STEM related. To act as if it is devalues the woman writers and thinkers and philosophers who have fought and bled and died and were forgotten for their contribution to the current world.

Despite the men. Not because of them.

But we still have to recognize that all these women were once girls. And these girls had books.

Tuesday Top of Mind 11/5/24- your vote is private

Over the last two weeks, I have heard many, many, many, many, many attacks on women. Men are interested in how learning a woman, any woman, THEIR woman voted.

Ladies and gentlemen, you don’t owe anyone an answer to this.

It is none of their business HOW you voted.

It is none of their business IF you voted. Although, I wish you would.

Some men even equated not voting in lockstep with their vote to cheating. Cough, cough, jesse watters.

Um.

Take several steps back, sir.

In fact, check yourself. I realize that you think having an outie sex organ entitles you to all the things. But it doesn’t.

A woman in her EIGHTIES voted for the first time because her husband, who had decreed that it is not important that she vote, died last year.

There are so many stories about men and others but mostly men, putting pressure on women to vote the way that the man does. Or even stopping women from voting. Where do you think you live, sir? Iran or Afghanistan. The woman’s right to vote is enshrined in the 19th Amendment and we will not be denied.

Of course, there is a lot of chatter “joking” that the 19th Amendment has to be repealed. Yeah, I’ve seen your jokes. There is always a kernel or even a whole ear of corn of truth.

You and what army?

There are stories of breakups over a woman not telling a man who they voted for. Of men looming over their partners in the voting area in an intimidating manner. BTW, this is not allowed. Men who gave their wives the silent treatment because the wives dared to 1) vote and 2) not to tell them how they voted.

If I was confronted and someone demanded I tell them how I voted, I would tell the truth. I voted straight blue ticket. Yes, all of them, even the ballots that don’t have party affiliations on them. I can research and read up on the people I am voting for before I go to the early voting site.

But not all women are like me. And that’s okay.

This is your permission slip to lie. This isn’t something I would do, but you have to live your life.

No one has the right to know who you voted for.

Dispatch July 4, 2024-not so happy here on the front lines

I know many other people, liberals and conservatives alike, who have a pit in their stomach like me when it comes to celebrating the fourth. One of my favorite authors who I KNOW is a Republican because she has talked about it and is also sounding the alarm.

Some of us are actively sitting out on celebrations.

Because we don’t feel so merry.

Some would call us out as non-patriotic.

The United States we are living in is and always has been a grand experiment. It always has been. It is meant to be a living, breathing thing, not mired in the past as some would have us be.

We are patriotic enough to be fearful of the overreach by the Supreme Court, egged on by the dark money and not-so-dark money that has been flowing their way. Easier now that they ruled that bribes can happen AFTER verdicts. Handy, that.

We are patriotic enough to embrace change.

We are patriotic enough to cheer on those who are scrabbling, desperate for that change.

What we have to ask those who cleave so hard to the past what they are afraid of?

Because this smacks of fear to me. Afraid of the not like us, afraid of the other religions, even though this country was founded on religious freedoms. Afraid of the different. Afraid of things they don’t understand.

What they don’t know is that we would teach them not to be afraid.

Because they are hurting us with every law declaring the president can basically rule as a king as long as he is acting within official presidential duties. And what are official duties? Whatever they tell us or the president regards them. No matter if it is to deny a free and fair election and try to subvert the will of the people. Apparently, insurrection is within official duties.

Walt Kelly and his comic strip “Pogo” said it best.

We have met the enemy and he is us. I know it was a strip about littering and pollution and I could write about that too.

Speak up when they are against you and making it harder for you to vote.

Call out instances of cheating and stacking the courts.

Call a lie a lie.

Call an insurrection an attempted coup.

Fight like hell against those who want to drag the country back, kicking and screaming to a time they deem to be original.

Original to who?

The white men who owned other people and called them slaves.

Or the white men who fought to free themselves from tyranny just to foist it on the slaves.

Or the white men who left the faraway country and came to America to escape religious persecution.

By their court, women have been stripped of dominion over their own bodies.

By their court, what is feared can be ruled and legislated against. Even if it is the torture of babies who are not meant to live outside the womb. Ask a parent who has had to watch the minutes-long “life” their child endured before nature took over. Was that a peaceful death? Or did it look tortuous? More to the point, did their child die in pain?

By their court, the president has the powers of a king.

Please vote.

I am a patriot. Not only because I signed and swore my oath as an Air Force Reserve cadet at age 18.

I believe in this country and its people.

Even if it is hard at this particular moment.

This has been a dispatch from the healthcare front,

Kate

Tuesday Top of Mind 5/7/24- Everything old is new again

History has much to teach us.

How to survive a pandemic. Such as the so-called Spanish Flu from 1918. Even though at best guess it started in Kansas.

Nope, never mind. Some people never learned about masking and taking steps to ensure that OTHER people are kept safe.

What’s next?

Students protesting against what they see as an unjust war. And them being fired upon by the Ohio National Guard. What they were protesting was the expansion from Vietnam into Cambodia. May 4th, Ohio National Guard fired upon the protestors, killing 4.

Oh, lookie, students are protesting again against what they see as the unfair treatment of the Palestinians in Gaza at the rockets of the Israelis. Yes, Hamas (the ruling party of Gaza) did kill 1269 Israelis without mercy on October 7, 2024, and kidnapped 240 people. Israel defended itself (their words) and have killed over 30,000 Palestinians in retaliation. They are searching for the Hamas leaders and killing women and children. And choking off much-needed humanitarian aid at ports and crossings and killing an aid convoy from World Central Kitchen. This is why the students are protesting. Last weekend police were violently (at times) dispersing the student encampments on multiple universities. You know, destroying the student’s First Amendment rights. Nothing to see here.

Another thing history tried to teach us, that no one is listening to. No students have died in the current times so perhaps those with guns learned their lesson. Probably not.

The Supreme Court showed its thumb firmly on the scale for the former president. But then it has never been apolitical.

What’s next?

Fifty years ago women were granted the right to privacy, outlined in the 14th Amendment. This was the Roe v Wade decision and was universally hated by those who wanted to control women and didn’t give a fig about their privacy. But I’ve written about that. A lot. And I am still incandescent with rage, nearly 2 years later as women’s rights are dripped down the drain, women die and some unborn are tortured. But that will be another Dispatch.

The same Supreme Court also ruled against privacy rights, which was what Roe v Wade was about, and handed abortion to the states. Who have all but danced around Roe’s body in response and finally get the chance to control women. Again, that will be another Dispatch. Or read the ones I’ve already written.

George Santanaya, a philosopher, wrote in 1905 “Those who don’t cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Winston Churchill also said “Those who fail to learn from history, are doomed to repeat it” in 1948. Take of that what you will.

History repeats itself because we do not listen. We are forced to relearn lessons that history has already tried to teach us.