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Memory vs. Journal: another look at how I ended up working in prisons

                I have been a journal writer, off and on, for a good part of my life, though frequently more off than on.   Now that I am retired, I thought about looking through them and finally got started.   Many of them are no more than statements of goals and attempts to organize and balance my life a bit.   But I hit one this morning that surprised me.   It contained a story I have told many times over the years, and written about before in the How I Ended Up Spending Twenty Years in Prison blog.   It seems there is part of the story I didn’t remember at all, though I wrote it down in some detail.   There is a striking difference between the story as I remember it and the journal entry, because the story as I wrote it in my journal is about experiencing God in my life for the first time!                 I’m ...
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Chapter 2: Bridgeville: The house, the practice: getting going.

    Chapter 2.                 When my grandparents and I walked into the house, the phone was ringing.   It was someone wanting to know if I would be hiring a secretary.   There were several letters in the mail asking the same thing, and two women who stopped to welcome me and bring cake, who wanted to know too.   I never did advertise the position.   I interviewed 6 women, and I hired Pam, who would become one of my best friends.   She was the only one who didn’t already have a job.   She had been out of the work force raising children for 10 years.   She lived 9 doors down the street.   She had proven she could make me laugh and she said she could ask for money, the piece of private practice I didn’t think I’d be very good at.                   The previous doctor had left the house...
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Bridgeville: the House and the Practice. Chapter 1.

                                                                                                                         They tore down the house yesterday.  (April 17th, 2015) My friend, Ellen, sent me a message on Facebook.  She had driven past the house yesterday morning on the way to the vet’s and all that was still standing was the living room and the stairway.  She says the town bought it, maybe for taxes?  She doesn’t know what they are planning to do with the property.                 I first saw the house 35 years ago, in 1980.   It was raining and my first thought ...
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Being Sick

                                                          Being Sick                                To talk about my illness, I have to first talk about Nerissa, so please bear with me.  Nerissa is my second adopted daughter.  I picked her up at Mary and Gerry Burke’s (her foster parents) house on May 20, 1993 to bring her home.  Nerissa was 20 months old.  She had been born 15 weeks premature and weighed 1 lb 11 oz at birth.  Mary and Gerry had taken her home from the hospital at 4 months of age, with a weight of 4 lbs.  At 20 months she weighed 18 lbs, not great but a giant compared to Diane, my older daughter, who had weighed 13 lbs when she came from India at 23 mo...
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