The day the U.S. Centers for Disease Control announced that persons fully vaccinated against COVID-19 could go back to pre-pandemic behaviors, my family was driving up to Flagstaff with a box of American-made, FDA-approved surgical masks to give guests at our son’s wedding. The announcement was both cause for celebration and confusion. Celebration because more …
Once, we all believed doctors ….
Brutal honesty: A side effect of this pandemic has been an increase in my distrust of other people. I hate this. And yet how can I trust someone who thinks that the more than 500,000 U.S. citizens who've died from Covid didn't actually die from Covid? According to these deniers, hospitals coded all deaths beginning …
Public worship versus public health
Last weekend for Easter, some of my family ventured inside a church for the first time since COVID-19 hit Arizona. I remained home, huddled up with a headache and chills, courtesy of my Good Friday dose of the Pfizer vaccine. As my husband reached the front doors, a woman in front of him paused to …
Traumatic brain injury and me
In a nano-second on an otherwise lovely Sunday afternoon, I sustained a traumatic brain injury. There are currently 45,000 Arizonans living with TBIs, according to the Brain Injury Alliance of Arizona, and prior to the accident which caused mine, I never thought about any of them. Now, I think about them every day when I …
Bored awaiting your vaccine? Try these time-killers
Were you excited last month listening to President Biden’s inaugural address, full of hope and relief like I was? Were you thinking, "Yay! Everything will be better - or at least more stable - now?" Me, too. Then February came and I realized I wasn't just waiting this past year for a change of president. …
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British TV can save your life
The Brits have saved my sanity during the pandemic, from the meditation app where a calm, lilting voice calms me down to the encouraging couple on my exercise videos exclaiming, “Blimey!” But the highlight has been British television, and it isn't just because those fabulous accents make even the tersest dialogue sound soothing. Nope, it's …
As we start new future, we must agree on facts
Condensed from my original column published Sunday, Jan. 17, in the Arizona Daily Star, which you can find here. I’d originally planned this week to pen a column about how British TV can save your mental health while you endure pandemic isolation as local officials write memos about how they’re trying to launch a mass …
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If COVID affected something other than lungs
My Sunday column in the Arizona Daily Star this week touched a tiny bit of a nerve, if my in-box is accurate. Most readers thought the column - which wondered aloud about a new virus that made a certain percentage of men permanently incontinent and impotent - was spot-on. Yes, those emails said, if COVID …
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COVID and politics got you filled with hate? Me, too.
... but I hope there's a better way. I know it is almost impossible to listen to someone who is spouting falsehoods, but in my most recent column for the Arizona Daily Star, I examine how hatred of the other is destroying me and how I want to find a better way. Part of that …
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College and COVID
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently said young adults might be driving the increase in U.S. COVID-19 cases. The response of anyone who’s been paying even the slightest attention to the pandemic has to be: “Ya think?” Probably accompanied by a slapping of the forehead or eating an entire quart of ice cream. …
Renee Wrote This 