The Miller Spotlight

I just finished reading Jodi Picoult's book, The Storyteller.  As usual, Picoult has thoroughly researched her topic--in this case, the holocaust. Toward the end of the story, the main character, who is the granddaughter of a holocaust survivor, poses an important question to the federal investigator she's been working with for the express purpose of serving justice on a guilt-ridden old man who was responsible for atrocities committed toward hundreds.  The worst of the atrocities wasn't necessarily the killings, as Picoult shows, but what survivors were forced to witness happening to those they loved. Extreme violence and death, that is. So the main character asks the investigator this question in the course of them going to worship at a Jewish temple, where the non-Jew sometimes finds solace, though this secondary survivor can hardly stand to enter..... She asks how he could keep his faith while hearing of the evil he had to hear about, year after year, for decades. ...

Holistic nursing has been one of the major themes of my life. So, I was over-the-top excited to connect with four total strangers yesterday, all wearing shirts that soon had me identifying them as nurses from a local affiliate of our hospital here in Lawrence, Kansas. Mind-Body-Spirit  That's what the back of the shirts said. There I was, in a rather comical KU mascot shirt, that of the Jayhawkers--not dressed at all for the cause, but ready to kick right in to validate and get to know these ladies. Immediately, I told them how I go way back and mentioned a textbook I'd studied many years ago, same one a much younger nurse, who had also specialized early-on in psych nursing, knew well. That led into what I'm doing now.... My new book, Enlarging Boston's Spotlight, of course.   https://www.amazon.com/dp/ 1545473544 If time had permitted, I would have told them that the greatest wound for the thousands of friends and readers (both survivors and advocates) I've...

Recently I spent over a week talking with my mother,  now approaching ninety-two, about all the moves she's made in her life. She noted that the hardest have been the last few--understandably, since she's had to move several times, as seniors often must in these difficult days, to get adequate funding, safety, and good nursing care all in one package. Thinking it might help to go back to the countless times she's been forced to move in her lifetime,  I asked her how she'd managed in childhood, changing schools almost every year until she reached high school. "I always knew what to do, back then," she said. "Oh, because of school?" I asked. "No, because my dad told me what to do," she replied. "Well, what about when you became an adult and we kids had to move around, same as you did, often in the middle of the school year?  How did you manage then?" Spontaneously, she answered:  "Your Dad always told me what to do....