This week, on a cold, cloudy, Mid-Western winter’s day, a group of people gathered to say their final farewell’s to Monica Wernette. A wife, sister, aunt, cousin, and friend to many (so many) around the world. If you never met her, I offer you my condolences, because, seriously, you missed…

My first book, My Unexpected Life: An International Memoir of Two Pandemics, HIV and COVID-19, was released in October 2021 as a print and eBook. To date, it’s won four awards and people seem to like it. …

One week ago Monday, on 12/12/22, I had cataract surgery on my left eye. And today, on this shortest day of the year–Winter Solstice–I’m thinking a lot about vision and what we can see in life if our eyes are working. Personally, whenever I get to that point of my…

Can there be joy with grief? Between 1995 and 2017, I worked primarily for the United Nations (UN) system as an HIV educator and program manager. During those years–decades–with UNAIDS, then UNICEF, and later the UN Department of Peace Operations, I had the good fortune to meet people all over…

To be a sentient being in August of 2022 feels like living in a perpetual state of grief. Particularly if you, like me, subject yourself to regular doses of that most toxic of necessary evils, the news. The world is on fire. Literally. And the ashy debris spirals back home…

@infinite_scream on Twitter is going to be very busy this summer. And autumn. And decade… …and voting has never been more critical. Today, as a part of the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) majority, two cisgender males — each of whom has been credibly accused of sexual assault…

Am I? I don’t mean good in the behave yourself kind of good, because, well, anyway. I mean good as in viable, stable, edible. Okay, I’m not edible, but I do seem to have outlived my use-by date. By a few decades, I might add. If I was living in…

Thank you so much for your kind words!!

I was going to write one of those clever end-of-year round-ups of all the good and bad things from 2021. And then I abandoned my draft a few paragraphs in. …