Blog Posts
In the middle of the night, my husband, Jay, was rushed to the ER by ambulance with a kidney stone emergency. I couldn’t go with him because at the time our kids were too young to leave them home alone. I found him the next morning in a shared room with the curtain drawn. His…
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In a quiet, remote lab in the basement of a building at the University of Minnesota, Mimi was making gluten balls—and going crazy. She had been doing the same mind-numbing task for months. Her mood darkened with the shrinking daylight hours as winter loomed. A graduate student in food science, she was lucky to have a job and…
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“Mom, I’m not taking this note to my teacher,” ten-year-old Eric protested, while Karla shoved stuff into his backpack. “But Eric, your teacher needs to know these details about your blood sugar.” He grabbed his backpack and hollered, “Don’t send anymore notes to my teacher.” The door slammed shut. Twelve-year-old Emily rushed into the kitchen…
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Kim and Tom’s retirement dreams were shattered when Tom had a stroke five months ago. Married for 35 years, they live in a small town north of Cleveland. When Kim turned 60 three months before Tom’s stroke, she retired from her career as a social worker. Tom was a heavy-equipment operator, and they planned for him…
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Overwhelmed by the throng of people whooshing past me, I drifted to the outer edge of the pond, unaware that I’d wandered onto thin ice. Suddenly, the ice gave out under me—the next thing I knew I was up to my armpits in water, clinging to the edge of broken ice. The blue sky and…
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I heard my ankle pop as my foot twisted off the final step, and I collapsed at the bottom of the stairs. Pain shot up my leg. What a day! I’d spent much of it shuttling my kids to lessons and medical appointments during a blizzard. Driving was treacherous and scary. My husband was laid…
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A zombie with a chain saw blocked our exit from the Haunted Maze which sent us screaming in the other direction. After a few more scary encounters, we made our way out of the maze with our hearts racing. A cup of hot cider calmed our nerves and warmed our toes on this cool, crisp October…
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Sister Agnes Marie greeted our class as we filed into the brand new Foods and Culture Lab. Perfect grey curls framed her face under her traditional habit. Her face was puffy with old age and her pasty lips looked like she ate a lot of Tums. A transfer student entering my sophomore year, I had…
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My attention was jolted out of my pre-speech-giving trance when the speaker ahead of me started to tell a story about taking her 86-year-old father to the grocery store. She had let him wander the aisles with his own cart because he was persnickety about his independence. After finishing her shopping, she got into the…
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“Yellow! You need yellow.” Relaxing with my friend, Astrid, in my new garden patio along with an intimate group of high-school girlfriends and their spouses, I had asked her “what other flowers should I plant?” As a novice gardener, I thought she could guide my horticultural efforts. Expecting a concrete answer about plant varieties or…
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