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The public library: a first responder for all time.
September is National Literacy Month, an annual opportunity to draw attention to the state of literacy in the United States. In Maricopa County, Arizona, where I used to live, one in four adults cannot read these words. One in four adults cannot, therefore, cannot search the internet for news or bargains or jobs. One in four adults cannot fill out a form or sign their name on a receipt or write a message on a birthday card. Globally, a staggering 773 million youth and adults still cannot read and write and 250 million children are failing to acquire basic literacy skills – and basic literacy skills are no longer confined…
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BC Action, Breast Cancer Advocacy, Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Pinkwashing, Susan G Komen Foundation
Pink Ribbons & Forever Chemicals.
I can already feel it, the encroachment of October, breast cancer awareness industry month. It’s been ten years since since a doctor diagnosed me with invasive breast cancer and told me I was simply one of the eight women who will develop invasive breast cancer over the course of her lifetime, ten years since I started paying attention to the epidemic that will kill about 43,600 women in the United States this year, ten years since I learned that men get breast cancer too – in fact, about 2,650 new cases of invasive breast cancer are expected to be diagnosed in men in 2021. This year, we anticipate 281,550 new diagnoses…
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a poem for ireland, a poem for the world . . .
Where I have been living since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, there is no mailman, but I still check the letterbox in the front door every day. To send or receive a letter, I drive about a mile to a shop on the carraterra between here and the lovely little village which has begun to return to a kind of normal after 18 months of on-again-off-again lockdowns, mask mandates, social distancing protocols, new vaccines, new variants, and head-turning debate about all of these. It’s not officially over. The virus itself will always be around, and even as variants wreak havoc in many places, in others it appears to be…
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After death of a spouse, Aging, Being a Widow, Bellaghy, Castledawson, Death and dying, Dennis O'Driscoll, Derry, Dispatch from the Diaspora, FInal wishes, Funeral, Grieving, Keeping Going, Loss, Love, Memoir, Milestones, Mourning, Northern Ireland, Northern Ireland Culture, Postscript, Rituals, Seamus Heaney
Walking on air . . . for your birthday
The girl with her head in the clouds should never have doubted the man who kept her feet on the ground too. Not for a second. All that's left of him now is love - to give away. I am walking on air.
