The Future...or not

By Mary Reiman

May. A time for graduations. A time for celebrations. A rite of passage to the future. 

268 students graduated from the University of Minnesota School of Public Health last week. 248 received their Masters’ and 20 received PhDs. Our friend’s PhD is in Epidemiology. By definition, epidemiology is the study (scientific, systematic, and data-driven) of the distribution (frequency, pattern) and determinants (causes, risk factors) of health-related states and events (not just diseases) in specified populations (neighborhood, school, city, state, country, global).  

The commencement address was given by Dr. Nathan Chomilo, Medical Director for the State of Minnesota’s Medicaid and MinnesotaCare Programs. He asked the students, “What is your reason?” As he gave a brief overview of his own story, he then suggested they base their life’s journey on these concepts:

• Be Curious
• Be Courageous
• Build Community
• Be a Citizen
• Be Intentional
• Be Uncomfortable

I went into that auditorium with trepidation. Not concerned about my health since we were given masks as we entered. It was, after all, the School of Public Health. Sometimes the weariness of the pandemic seems to settle into my soul. There is still an unease in the air. However, on that evening, watching the faces of those 268 graduate students, hearing their names as they walked across the stage, gave me a window into the brightness of the future. The School of Public Health advocates for health equity by researching the challenges in public health regarding structural racism, infectious disease outbreaks, gun violence, and expanding aging population, and a changing climate. Their motto is “Health is a Human Right.” This is the group who will analyze the data and give us recommendations on how to best address the growing concerns of our society. They are excited to begin. Their future. Our future.

3,032 names will be read this weekend as students graduate from Lincoln Public Schools. 3,032 students looking to the future. Several of those graduating are family and friends. Their career choices are nursing, electrical & pneumatics, architectural engineering, and one with a dual major in economics and Spanish. They will receive their diplomas, celebrate, and go in different pathways. All important pathways. They are excited to begin. Their future. Our future.

Isn’t that what we hope for as we watch those graduates walk across the stage? It is hard to know how many times and ways we can say congratulations, good luck and best wishes. Whether we ask them to be curious or courageous or intentional or uncomfortable, I believe they will do all of those things. And they will make our world better. They have seen our country at some of our low points. Many of them have already fought for the right to read, the right to control their own bodies, and for gun control. Already fighting for their future. Our future.

It is also important to remember 19 names being read this week for a different reason. Alexandria. Amerie. Tess. Jose. Miranda. Maite. Makenna. Xavier. Eliana. Layla. Eliahana. Alithia. Jackie. Annabelle. Jailah. Jayce. Uziyah. Nevaeh. Rojelio. 19 children in this country who will never graduate. 19 more children dead from gun violence. More gun violence statistics to be studied and analyzed by the School of Public Health. 

Here is the link to our elected officials. https://www.usa.gov/elected-officials  Yes, it is time to call or email them so they can explain why they have not passed gun control legislation.

Contacting them is 4 clicks away.  It takes about 10 seconds. 

1. https://www.usa.gov/elected-officials  
2. Select who you want to contact (senator, representative, governor, state legislator)
3. Select your state 
4. Click on “contact” when the webpage appears. You can determine whether you want to call or email.

I am calling to hear their voices explain their political stance on gun control legislation. I don’t want a form letter they have written to their constituents. I want to hear them justify why nothing is being done to control the use of AR-15 rifles and other assault weapons in this country.

If not now, when?

Today’s graduates deserve better from all of us. 

The future...or not. 

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Women ... choosing their battles

By JoAnne Young

 

More than a dozen years ago my daughter had a choice.

 

After a surgery to remove uterine fibroids that produced some scary results, she was advised by her doctor to consider a hysterectomy to prevent any future complications. She was barely in her 30s and knew she wanted kids. She chose not to lose the option of someday having a baby. 

 

The doctor continued to present the option. She continued to say no. 

 

Several years later she got married. She and her husband decided to try that dream she had of being a mother, even though she was operating with just one ovary. She lost one pregnancy but then was successful on the next. OK, she had a daughter, she could consider that hysterectomy. Again, she chose to stay the course. 

 

She got pregnant again and had a boy. Still unwilling to have the surgery, she had another daughter two years later. This pregnancy was even more perilous because of the reduction of blood supply to her uterus from the original fibroid surgery. The fetus was not growing properly, the result of a condition called intrauterine growth restriction. Both mom and baby were at risk of serious problems before, during and after birth. 

 

Elizabeth and Adam now have three healthy children. 

 

A different take on “Her body. Her choice.” 

 

With the country focused on Roe v. Wade this spring, pro and con, the center of attention is embryos/fetuses/babies and whether or not women should be forced to bring that being nesting in her body to delivery. 

 

We rarely talk about the effects and risks of pregnancy and delivery to a woman. There’s a lot that must be considered, a lot that can go wrong. 

 

Nobody else should be able to make the choices we must make as women when it comes to the substantial risk we take when pregnancy results from a sexual encounter. 

 

I had three babies. Two of them carried obvious danger to me: pre-eclampsia and post-delivery bleeding. But all pregnancies are consumed with degrees of risk that range from minor to major, from discomfort to life threatening. From the high blood pressure of pre-eclampsia and eclampsia to diabetes particular to pregnancy; a fertilized egg that attaches dangerously outside the uterus; a liver condition that causes intense itching for weeks or months; depression; anemia and infections, to name a few.

 

What science tells us but doctors and educators don’t is that pregnancy is by nature a battle between the embryo/fetus/baby and the mother’s body from the get-go. I had no idea about this until last year when I listened to an episode of Radiolab, in which reporters Heather Radke, Becca Bressler and Molly Webster interviewed Dr. Harvey Kliman, a Yale University scientist who studies placentas. 

 

Pregnancy isn’t a peaceful, gentle kind of miracle, but more like a knock-down, drag out struggle between a foreign invader and a body system trying to keep this pregnant person alive, the reporters learned. 

 

Without the protection of the placenta, which starts out as an invisibility cloak for the cells working to become an embryo, the mother’s immune system would gather a brigade of white blood cells to find the developing embryo, shred it and kill it. 

 

After the hiding, the placenta goes on the hunt for food for the embryo, “to suck as much nutrients out of the mother as possible.” It latches on with long thin claws, trying to get through the uterus and into the mother’s blood supply, while the uterus fights to deter its success. 

 

Around week 7, the placenta creates a diversion and busts through to the blood source, sucking in more and more of the blood supply until the third trimester by which time it’s rerouting about a quarter of the mom’s blood to the placenta. 

 

If the baby isn’t getting what it wants, the placenta can force an increase by raising the mom’s blood pressure, potentially causing a condition known as pre-eclampsia, which can be life threatening to the mother, and in fact, one of the leading causes of maternal death. 

 

If the battle is a draw, the result after about nine months is birth. 

 

My daughter, my Baby No. 2, must have put up the biggest fight. She had to be delivered three weeks early because of pre-eclampsia. My sons, No.’s 1 and 3, waged a more efficient battle, although No. 3 left behind a treacherous blood leak. 

 

All of this is to say that a woman must be the one to decide what risks she is willing to take, which ones she will forego or delay. And when. 

 

Many, many women choose to take those risks, to allow the foreign invader to set up its fortress and claim squatters’ rights. They even pat that swelling fortress lovingly, plan a future, consider themselves the lucky ones.  

 

Above all, the choice must be theirs. For better or worse. For richer or poorer. For all the considerations and complications and questions hanging heavy over their heads ... and in spite of all the battles going on  in state legislatures, in the courts, in churches and in the streets. 

I Am in Awe

 

by Marilyn Moore

I am in awe.  Along with many others, I’ve been gazing at the lunar eclipse tonight, as the moon is covered by shadow, and to these earthly viewers it appears red, the blood moon.  My phone photo doesn’t begin to capture it….I’m grateful to the really good photographers, with really good cameras, who share their work.  But while my phone doesn’t capture the details, the photo reminds me of the awesomeness of the experience, and I am so in need of being reminded of awe.  

Another heavenly awesome finding from this week was the image of the giant black hole in the center of the Milky Way galaxy.  At 27,000 light years away from planet Earth, the black hole swallows nearby gas and light, pulling them into a seemingly bottomless pit.  I can’t really comprehend the enormity of any of that statement….but it is awesome.  And it confirms decades of theoretical work, consistent with Einstein’s theory of general relativity. The image itself is the result of five years of work by more than 300 researchers from eighty institutions working with eight radio telescopes around the globe.  Can you imagine working with that many people for that long to get one clear image?  It’s described by the California Institute of Technology researchers as like capturing a photo of a grain of salt in New York City using a camera in Los Angeles.  That image, and my barest understanding of what it portrays and how it was created, is awesomeness beyond words to describe…and I am so in need of awe.  

And as if a lunar eclipse and an image of the black hole, the gentle giant in the center of the galaxy, as Feryal Ozel, professor at the University of Arizona describes it, weren’t enough awesomeness, there was the news story this week that seeds have sprouted and plants are being grown in soil returned to Earth from the moon…that same moon we’re all adoring this evening.  Think of that…soil from the moon, growing plants on Earth.  Which means lunar soil can support growth of plants at that time in the future when courageous folks with vision establish a village on the moon.  The stuff of which science fiction was at one time made…now in the realms of reality.  Awesome it is…and I am so in need of awe.

It’s been a whiplash of months, from the Covid surge in the early part of this year, to the Russian invasion of Ukraine in early March, to the furor over the likely Supreme Court decision regarding Roe v. Wade, to the prairie fire that destroyed so much in southwestern Nebraska, including much of the farm where I grew up and where my family still lives, to the bloody, exhausting primary election in Nebraska, just concluded earlier this week.  I can’t watch the news, I can’t not watch the news.  I’m torn between wanting to jump in and speak up and march in protests…and just close the door, pick up a good book, and wait it all out.  Moments of awesomeness have been few and far between. 

But this night, this eclipse, this image of the black hole, this sign of life in lunar soil, sings the song I need to hear…the universe is vast, the universe is pulsing with energy and vitality, the universe is filled with possibility, and the universe is awesome.  And every once in a while, we get to glimpse it. While there are a million and one messes that need attention, and we’re all called to clean up duty, there are also those scientists and poets among us who take the much longer view, both in time and distance, and serve up reminders of awesomeness just when I need them most.

Most awesome, still, is the human spirit, the human potential.  National Science Foundation Director Sethuraman Panchanathan said it best, in describing the work of the researchers who created the image of the black hole.  “This image is a testament to what we can accomplish, when as a global research community, we bring our brightest minds together to make the seemingly impossible, possible.  Language, continents, and even the galaxy can’t stand in the way of what humanity can accomplish when we come together for the greater good of all.” 

Read that last sentence again....language, continents, and even the galaxy can't stand in the way of what humanity can accomplish when we come together for the greater good of all.  That is awesome.  And I am so in need of awe....

Crawling out from under my bed … with a little help from my kids

By Mary Kay Roth

My son, Josh, works in a high-poverty school district in Kansas City where a dedicated group of educators have long dreamed of opening a brand-new high school.  Friday, they broke ground on that new school, blessed the land and tucked their dreams into a time vault that will be buried on the site.

I was blessed to be there – through the speeches, the pride, the tears.  And I was struck with what they did not talk about that day.  They did not speak about the gloomy world right now, nor of feeling hopeless, helpless or disheartened.  Instead, they spoke with fire and faith about the children they have served – and about the children who are waiting for the new school doors to open.

They talked of embracing challenges – not kneeling to challenges. They spoke of making a difference in this rough and tough world … of making a difference, one child at a time.

Personally, I needed that groundbreaking. I needed to be reminded of what we can accomplish right now – not what we cannot.  I needed to remember the power of simply showing up and standing up. 

The American Psychological Association reports more than 80 percent of Americans are feeling stressed and uneasy amidst a collective trauma of pandemic fatigue, unexpected war, a vicious political landscape.  In fact, almost everyone around me says they feel powerless right now, ready to howl and rage at the moon. 

I’ve never had any certainty about how the concept of good and evil plays out in our lives.  But if there are indeed forces of evil, I am absolutely sure they would relish the sense that people are feeling useless, exhausted and apathetic.

And yet  … I know a woman who gathered with friends outside a mosque in Omaha last month to hand out candy to those leaving the final worship service for their holy month – wishing everyone Blessed Eid.

And yet … each year, a friend of mine collects and delivers clothes for women who need a second chance – another friend is part of a support system for a freshly-arrived Afghan family – and yet another friend has taken a leap of faith to join a local political campaign.

In a recent conversation with Dan Lambe, the new leader of the Arbor Day Foundation, he acknowledged frustration about ongoing climate change.  But what you can do, he said with conviction, is to continue fighting the good fight.  And plant trees … one tree at a time.

There’s a five-minute speech from Michigan State Sen. Mallory McMorrow – that has gone viral – as she ardently defends herself against a completely unfounded allegation: "I know that hate will only win if people like me stand by and let it happen … I know who I am. I know what faith and service means, and what it calls for in this moment. We will not let hate win." 

It’s not an accident McMorrow has become a national sensation, because I think she reminds us of something we all know, deep down: This is exactly the wrong time to throw in the towel, fold the cards, surrender.

The Nebraska governor’s campaign, for instance, seems to be a Republican race to the lowest common denominator – with a bull-semen baron and serial groper … alongside a guy who totes a fierce gun. But we are not helpless here, folks.  The primary election is Tuesday:  Go to the polls and vote.  

One tree at a time.  One child at a time.  It’s a tough gig to do good works in this world right now – when I mostly want to crawl underneath my bed.  

Witnessing horrific scenes from Ukraine, I may not be able to take out Vladimir Putin, but I can welcome and support new immigrants to our community and perhaps someday, new Ukrainians.

I cannot single-handedly stop global warming, but I can rise up and protest a proposal to take away more green space from our beloved Woods Park (Woods Park: Keep it Green). 

Yes, I felt helpless watching potential prison reform dissolve into absurd debate in the Nebraska Legislature this past session, but my daughter Anna keeps showing up for work, every day, a nurse practitioner helping inmates deal with mental health issues.

And though I grieve the fate of our landmark Roe v. Wade decision, I can continue escorting women who come to Planned Parenthood and are bullied and harassed. 

The glorious young poet, Amanda Gorman, wrote something for New Year’s 2022 called, “New Day’s Lyric,” in which she shared these words:

“May this be the day
We come together…

Hope is our door, our portal.”

Today is Mother’s Day, and perhaps motherhood – fatherhood, grandparenthood, guardianship – is one of the most courageous, hopeful portals you can go through in life …. having the audacity to believe you can create good humans.  Every single day, the two humans I helped raise – Josh and Anna – inspire me to crawl out from underneath my bed and remember: We make a difference by showing up, standing up and never losing faith.

At Friday’s high school groundbreaking ceremony, my son explained the item he had chosen to put inside the time vault: a photograph of his foster grandson, Legacy.  In the end, he said, the new high school does not belong to educators – it belongs to students who will find a future there. 

One child at a time.

****************

The full text of Amanda Gorman’s “New Day’s Lyric”

May this be the day
We come together.
Mourning, we come to mend,
Withered, we come to weather,
Torn, we come to tend,
Battered, we come to better.
Tethered by this year of yearning,
We are learning
That though we weren't ready for this,
We have been readied by it.
We steadily vow that no matter
How we are weighed down,
We must always pave a way forward.

This hope is our door, our portal.
Even if we never get back to normal,
Someday we can venture beyond it,
To leave the known and take the first steps.
So let us not return to what was normal,
But reach toward what is next.

What was cursed, we will cure.
What was plagued, we will prove pure.
Where we tend to argue, we will try to agree,
Those fortunes we forswore, now the future we foresee,
Where we weren't aware, we're now awake;
Those moments we missed
Are now these moments we make,
The moments we meet,
And our hearts, once altogether beaten,
Now all together beat.

Come, look up with kindness yet,
For even solace can be sourced from sorrow.
We remember, not just for the sake of yesterday,
But to take on tomorrow.

We heed this old spirit,
In a new day's lyric,
In our hearts, we hear it:
For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne.
Be bold, sang Time this year,
Be bold, sang Time,
For when you honor yesterday,
Tomorrow ye will find.
Know what we've fought
Need not be forgot nor for none.
It defines us, binds us as one,
Come over, join this day just begun.
For wherever we come together,
We will forever overcome.