On Wednesday 24 October 2012 at Denver’s Oriental Theatre I joined 14 other speakers at Ignite Denver 12 in presenting 5 minute talks called “sparks.” These highly structured presentations require 20 slides (of one’s own making) that auto advance every 15 seconds (you can’t control them yourself; no running one slide for 23 seconds and […]
As I work on the materials for the interactive segment of future Windrum’s Dying Terms Matrix presentations, a poem emerged reflecting the many ways we now have to die: Always A petal falls, always, and all ways: A whisper; tangle; sacrament; enmeshment; float; dangle; threadbare; indefinite; a dalliance; gentle into a good night; after discarding […]
Part 1 I’m now a member of Regina Holliday’s Walking Gallery. Regina painted this image for my nifty navy blue patterned thrift store jacket. We didn’t even talk; she’d evidently read and seen enough of me to get to my message’s, and my own, core. I choked up when I first saw this, when Regina […]
A Canadian reader asked me to ruminate on something I refer to in Notes from the Waiting Room’s how to advocate section—that we can’t afford to lose the first week of a terminal hospitalization to confusion—hanging out not believing what is happening and not believing what isn’t happening. Making the world in a week’s time […]
I find the nascent emergence of end of life (EOL) discussion in American society welcome, dangerous, and alarming. Maybe it’s just me, or maybe it’s because I’ve been thinking about EOL matters so much since 2004/2005 during and since my parents’ demises, terminally hospitalized, when my work took root. Maybe I should have anticipated. [The […]
I’ve been online since before the days of CompuServe, one of the early internet discussion environments. Without claiming internet expertise, I’ve seen my share of message boards and behaviors, including involvement in occasional disagreements and flames. These days I find myself among a cohort of medical patient activists who have suffered various degrees of harm […]
The Mayo Clinic has started an annual social media in healthcare conference. This time around Mayo is offering all-expenses paid scholarships, awarded on the judging of essays that make the cut after an initial round of social media likes and comments. My essay appears below. Some of what it contains I’ve written before in this […]
Today a gift arrived via email. Sandy Booth of Crossings Care Circle , providing home funeral guidance for people in and around Austin, Texas, attended conferences in 2011 and 2012 at which I presented. She sent me some excerpts from Wendell Berry’s 2005 novel, Hanna Coulter. I’m an ok writer, but Berry is a *writer*, as these […]
I try to stay upbeat about end of life stuff because (a) I’ve figured out a lot about it, untangling and reweaving what, in my best assessment, we need to know and act on to maximize our chances of dying in peace, and (b) I believe that when my fellow citizens know also, they’ll feel […]
The Leapfrog Group’s new website scoring hospital safety has gone live. Check out hospitals nearest you in your community, in nearby communities, and around the country.
