Therese Zink 10/12/23 Therese Zink 10/12/23

Memories and Prayers for the Ukraine

In June 1999, I had the privilege of visiting the Ukraine as part of a community collaborative training exchange. Watching the horrifying images on the news sent me to the back of my closet to search through my journals, trying to remember where I was. (I've kept them since Mr. Hemmert's creative writing class, sophomore year of high school.) We visited Lviv…

8/22/21 8/22/21

Play it again

Twenty years ago, I was sitting on the concrete stairs outside the Shoulder to Shoulder apartments in Santa Lucia, Honduras, when I heard the announcer on a colleague’s short wave radio say that US troops were moving into Afghanistan. My compatriots (physicians, nurses, residents and medical students) on the medical mission out of the University of Cincinnati…

6/26/21 6/26/21

Let in the light

The challenges of our times are hard to escape. Here in the US: collapsing buildings likely related to climate change with encroaching oceans and poorly maintained infrastructure, sweltering temperatures in the Northwest, and reportedly appalling conditions in the detention centers where asylum seekers are housed on our southern border. Elsewhere the horrors of COVID and the delta variant continue as wealthy nations' slowly respond to…

5/31/21 5/31/21

The Art of Improvisation

We are watching Ken Burn's Jazz Series on PBS. I enjoy music, but am not a musician and don't have much of an ear. My singing should be only in the shower. What has struck me about the series is the ongoing improvisation that is Jazz. It started with Louie Armstrong in New Orleans, Duke Ellington in NYC, and Count Basie and eventually Charlie Parker in Kansas City. It is a story of race--the creative and improvising black musicians inspiring the whites and then the black artists…

5/13/21 5/13/21

Palestine and more . . .

And then there is Palestine and Israel. As I watch the news I struggle with how to respond. What could I do or say? A year and a half ago, I had met Izeldine on the steps of the Damascus gate in Jerusalem to start our food tour in the Old City. Sacred Cuisine --a sampling of local foods with stories about Palestinian heritage. A few years earlier I'd walked through the gate at dusk…

4/14/21 4/14/21

Remembering Dr. Patrick Chege--Family Medicine Kenya

Dr. Patrick Chege, age 63 years, died from COVID this past week. He was one of the first Family Medicine trained physicians in Kenya, finishing in 2008. He founded the Family Kenya Association of Family Physicians (KAFP) and began serving as the Head of the Family Medicine Department at Moi University…

3/14/21 3/14/21

Gratitude and Bearing Witness

Now 11% of the US adult population is fully vaccinated and over 22% have at least one dose. My own family has done well thanks to their essential worker status (teachers and doctors) and being long term care residents. We’ve had our trauma with COVID, 2 members infected and recovered, and others on the front lines of bringing children back to school and in clinical care. But nevertheless we are privileged. Despite the chaos of President #45, the US…