Reckonings: a journal of justice, hope and history

2 photos bridging five years of taking pictures

I'm posting two phographs:The first is one of the very earliest I made when I returned to the craft in early 2004. I remember vividly that spring day as I slowly bicycled around Concord, New Hampshire. The presence of lilacs, like that of peonies, has a special place in my heart. In this picture, they seemed to offer a kind of floral vessel of welcome.

The second is a picture of Villa Prinz Carl, home of the Forskningsinstituttet (Research Institute) at Modum Bad Psychiatric Center in Vikersund, Norway. My wife Leigh is the Institute's director, and I consult. I took the picture this past spring, clearly with more attention to the apple blossoms, which were in their full glory.

You may click on either one to see it full-size.

Lilacs, Concord, New Hampshire (2004)

Apple blossoms and Villa Prinz Carl, Modum Bad, Vikersund, Norway (2009)

Garrison Keillor - Our Mark Twain?

What would we do without Garrison Keillor? I think he may be as close to our time's Mark Twain as we are going to get. Though I'm open to other nominations. See his "In Praise of Ordinariness" in The New York Times today, July 16.

Dying well - the first of a series

How We Die: Reflections on Life's Final Chapter (1993) is Sherwin Nuland's important book on a subject rarely treated with such a graceful blend of candor, medical soundness and poetic sensitivity. "Dying with dignity," he concludes, is a tough act. "The dignity that we seek in dying must be found in the dignity with which we have lived our lives. The art of dying is the art of living." That thought is a good one to keep in mind in reading a series of articles on the end of life currently running in The New York Times. I include a link here to one that confirms, illustrates and raises interesting questions about Nuland's point, "Sisters Face Death with Dignity and Reverence." I am intrigued particularly by a comment of Sister Mary Lou Mitchell, the congregation president: “We approach our living and our dying in the same way, with discernment.”

I want to add the comment of a hospice nurse who also worked in hospital ICUs. "As a retired hospice nurse, i can validate the beauty and effectiveness of palliative care. both the patient and the family get the kind of individualized support and care that makes the end of life a time of peaceful letting go in the serenity of a calm, well-supported family. as an ex-icu nurse, i can tell you that we not only waste incredible amounts of money on futile care, we torture our dying patients."

More to come.