I write profiles, alumni news, service features for parents and volunteers, B2B health whitepapers and stories focused on aging and volunteerism. I’ve also written annual reports and CEO speeches.
All aboard the Photo Ark
Joel Sartore (Eagle Class of 1977) is an overachiever. Like most concerned citizens, he wants to save the whales and the giant pandas. But he also wants to save the Florida grasshopper sparrow. And the Colombian spider monkey. And the hellbender. And even the homely Sunda pangolin, which looks like a dinosaur that didn’t get the memo about extinction.
Flu fighters: How flu vaccines and workplace hygiene can benefit you and your workers
Are you a comfort giver or a flu giver? That’s the question the UK’s South West Yorkshire Partnership NHS Foundation Trust recently posed in a series of advertisements targeting its employees. In one advert, an elderly woman reaches out to a nurse, who shares a smile — and perhaps the flu virus. In another, a boy tightly hugs the neck of a caregiver who may well be infected even though she shows no symptoms.
A place for all
Pastor Larry Stoess and his wife, Kathie, create community one meal at a time.
Addressing loss on social media
When Carla Sofka’s mother died just before Thanksgiving 2017, Sofka didn’t immediately post the news on social media. She was busy planning the funeral, making travel arrangements and getting an obituary ready for the weekly newspaper in her mother’s community.
A painful puzzle: How to treat chronic pain without feeding addiction
While opioid abuse is not as large an issue outside the U.S., it could easily become a major problem without the right guardrails in place.
What can we learn from the U.S. pain addiction epidemic and the crisis response measures being implemented? And what preventative measures, and checks and balances are in place in countries around the world to help avoid a repeat of the crisis?
World’s Best: international Scouters enhance BSA
Tens of thousands of Scouts and Scouters from around the globe will attend this summer’s World Scout Jamboree at the Summit Bechtel Reserve in West Virginia.
But international Scouts and Scouters have been coming to America since the BSA’s earliest days, bringing with them ideas and traditions that have made the BSA better.
Bee local: Costco’s regional honey program is all the buzz
Pick up a bottle of the new Kirkland Signature™ Local Raw Unfiltered Honey, and
you’ll see just one ingredient on the label. (Honey, of course.) But there’s more inside that bottle. Depending on where you live, you’ll also find a taste of your own backyard.
Cast in bronze: an artist's legacy
The ongoing debate over whether to remove Confederate statues in the South (and beyond) demonstrates how public art highlights what a society finds significant. By that measure, Ed Hamilton was pretty insignificant when he was growing up black in the 1950s and 1960s.
Could a smarter home help you age in place?
In the heart of Louisville’s Innovation District sits the Thrive Center, a 7,500-square-foot space dedicated to showing how technology can enhance the lives of older adults. And in the center of the center is the prototype of a smart home — including kitchen, living room, bedroom and bathroom — that demonstrates how technology can help older adults age in place and allow their caregivers and loved ones to keep a virtual eye on them.
What to know about the latest in prostate cancer treatment
Prostate cancer grows so slowly in some men that doctors often recommend active surveillance or watchful waiting instead of more aggressive treatment. In fact, one study from the Johns Hopkins Active Surveillance Program found that less than 1% of men with low-risk prostate cancer developed metastatic disease after 15 years of active surveillance. But if prostate cancer grows slowly, the same can’t be said for research into the disease.
A delay in getting hearing aids can mean more than hearing trouble
A few years ago, researchers at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine gave us yet another reason to worry about getting Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias: They demonstrated an association between hearing loss and cognitive decline. But that’s not the only problem people with hearing loss face.
Why is sleep so important to general and mental health?
In 2007, two years after founding the Huffington Post Media Group, Arianna Huffington awoke in a pool of blood, her worried daughter hovering at her side. The hard-driving executive had worked herself into a state of exhaustion that led her to fall asleep at her desk and break her cheekbone. Save for her injury, Huffington’s situation wasn’t unusual; in 2008, the Sleep Foundation’s Sleep in America poll found that 29 percent of people had either fallen asleep or become very sleepy at work.
All the right moves
In 1977, their first season, the Toronto Blue Jays were the worst team in Major League Baseball. They had won 54 games and lost 107--45 1/2 games behind the New York Yankees, the division rivals who won their 21st World Series Championship that October. But the Blue Jays were about to unleash their secret weapon.
Will you miss my bitcoins when I'm gone?
Digital security has never been so important or perhaps so easy. You can unlock your phone with your fingerprint or your face. You can use a password manager to store all your login credentials behind a single master password. And you can secure many online accounts with two-factor authentication (where a website sends a one-time code to your phone).
Courageous conversations at the Human Library
You can’t judge a book by its cover, but most people do exactly that with humans.
“We so frequently do judge people by their appearances or their identity or their religion or gender — you name it,” says librarian Susan Lauricella of the Wilton Library in Wilton, Conn. “There are all these assumptions instantly made whether you want to acknowledge it or not.” There are also sincere questions you might want to ask but can’t.