Back to School

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I teach in a suburban high school. Our town decided to go with the Hybrid Model, but did not commit to the decision until mid-August, which left little time to...

I Am a Nurse

Long before the pandemic hit, the World Health Organization (WHO) had declared 2020 The Year of the Nurse,  and now, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, it seems especially...

PL Recommends #5

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The Rallying Cry of Street Art During Coronavirus  (3 min) Mashable Watch and listen to two artists (Los Angeles and Barcelona) leveraging their talents to spread public health messages, inspire...

Social Asphyxia

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People have different ways of looking at the world, and these views influence their perceptions of risks, benefits and costs and shape how they act. We’ve seen this in alarming...

A Great Nation Shattered

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A nation exhausted by eight months of bungled, intentionally ineffective attempts to fight a pandemic, devastated by nearly a quarter of a million preventable deaths, and ripped apart by a...

The Power of a Tiny Light

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(This post refers to works by my late husband, Bill Oakes, a visionary, educator, and prolific painter.) Halloween has come and gone but I’m still pondering how much scarier this...

Pre-Election Sunday

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I'm struggling to get through these pre-election days and turning to music for solace and engagement. So, this morning, two days before the upcoming monumental event, I composed this piece...

Clarity and Hope

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These days, botanical photography has become my escape hatch—a brief respite from the toxic miasma that's seeping into every nook and cranny of our lives. I'm fortunate in many ways,...

Take Five: Elements

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During the early stages of the pandemic, people seemed to experience a period of numbness, almost disbelief, that this was actually happening, followed by a period of dawning reality that...

No Ordinary Halloween

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Every year at Halloween the houses on a street nearby host a series of creative decorations, mostly featuring life-sized plastic skeletons. It's a well-known local phenomenon, a must-see event attracting...