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About Joanne Lewis
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Blog postI wrote my last blog on April 24th, about six weeks ago. I was on a tear for awhile, posting a lot of blessays (blog + essay). I had so many emotions that needed to come out as we waded through the coronavirus pandemic, and writing has always been my avenue for release. Fear, concern, boredom, and discomfort with the world's stage gripped me. Writing helped me search for lessons in the discomfort. Mom had been with me for six weeks at that time as I had taken her out of her nursing home when th
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Blog postIt starts with the call you hope will never come from the relative you pray will never visit, not for a day, not for an hour, not even for a minute. "I'm coming to stay with you," Aunt Corona says. Not a question, a directive. The call is unexpected. Her tone is commanding, as if she has the power to stop time. You're not prepared with an excuse, a.k.a. a plausible lie. "Um, sure, yeah, okay, but I have this thing..." You stammer. "What thing, dear?" Aunt Coro
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Blog postIt's been a over five weeks since we've been isolated and I've mostly kept it together. Working from home, writing these blog posts, exercising, reading, doing jigsaw and the NYTs crossword puzzles, trying some new recipes, and zooming with family and friends has all helped keep me sane. But that doesn't mean I haven't experienced isolation freak out. I imagine you've had at least one freak out too. I'm no expert but some mental collapse during this time seems pretty normal. Thing is, like most
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Blog postDear Boss Person, Hi. It's me, Bruno. I don't have a lot of time to write this since mama always hogs the computer but she went to retrieve the mail. Good girl! Usually it's a quick trip to get the mail, look at it, and throw out those annoying advertisements, but these days when she gets back to the apartment she spends a lot of time in the kitchen throwing out envelopes and washing her hands a gazillion times. People sure waste a lot of water washing hands. We have a much better system to sta
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Blog postToday is the five-year anniversary of the passing of our father. It's hard to believe time has flown so quickly, harder to fathom still the state of the world today. I've tried to comfort myself by rationalizing that since his death he hasn't had to experience the insane political division that has divided our country. And now, my attempt to salve the ache of missing him has been obviously modified. Good thing dad doesn't have to experience the health and economic destruction caused by Covid-19
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Blog postGuns vs. Butter. On its simplest level this economic graph represents the country's need to produce guns during wartime versus the need for butter. With a finite amount of resources, which is more important to produce? Do we sacrifice national defense in lieu of household supplies? When the model was promulgated around the time of WWI, it was one or the other. Today, face masks vs. toilet paper is the new guns vs. butter. The more masks we need, the less toilet paper on the grocery shelves
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Blog postMy Passover dinners used to be extravaganzas. Maybe that's an exaggeration but they were important and big events for me. Upwards of twenty-five guests, the dinner table would be cobbled together using three tables and a desk. Different table heights be damned! I always hoped the varying colored and styled tablecloths were viewed as eclectic and not haphazard. I had enough dishes, having inherited China from my grandmother and great aunts over the years. They didn't match either but they were c
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Blog postWhen I was young I would count the scars on the back of my mother's hands. They were less than an inch long, slightly raised, and paler in color than her skin, almost translucent. Counting them was like trying to count pennies in a closed jar. It was 1954 when nineteen-year-old Arline Leibowitz packed a bag and left her parents and three siblings behind in their Long Island home. She moved into a dorm at Brooklyn Jewish Hospital to pursue her dream. She was a beautiful woman with a radiant smil
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Blog postThe first "meal" I learned to cook was cinnamon toast. It was the late 1960s and I was five or six years old. I loved to watch a PBS program called "Zoom". I wasn't much of a "Sesame Street" kid, I liked "Electric Company", but I grooved with "Zoom". I don't recall much about the show except I enjoyed the how-to demonstrations. I would become mesmerized, intent on whatever was being taught--how-to fold clothes, how-to make your bed, how-to brush
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Blog postEach morning when mom gets up she asks, "are we still on lock down?" Sometimes she calls it "lock up" but the reference to being imprisoned is the same. I slip the vanilla flavored coffee pod into the Keurig, listen to the coffee maker slurp and gurgle, and anticipate her next question. Each morning pretty much starts the same. I get up first, mom soon follows. She asks me to put on the news. I start her coffee. The brown liquid streams into her favorite mug, the one th
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Blog postThe world is definitely coming to an end. I cleaned my apartment. Not quick swipes to get the dust bunnies to hop away, or lame wipes of counter tops, but an all out, full assault, top to bottom cleaning. I would say I'm not sure what came over me to undertake the one thing I don't like to do, but I know what is responible and its name is Covid-19. Some call it Coronavirus. Others, The Novel Coronavirus. I call it that bleepity-bleep. Glory has been cleaning my home for over two decades. She cl
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Blog postWhen I had cancer, my cancer coach Sandy gave me a plaque. It was a list of all the things cancer could not do. I've kept it tucked in the back of a bathroom cabinet and have taken it out to share with those touched by cancer, hoping to inspire and encourage as Sandy had done for me, and then tucking it back in the cabinet. I've taken it out again. Substituting Covid-19 for Cancer is a no-brainer. What Covid-19 Cannot Do Covid-19 is so limited… It cannot cripple Love It cannot shatter
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Blog postDay 1 of self-quarantine: Morning temperatures. Mom: 98.3. Me: 97.9. A fever is one indication of coronavirus, although a person can have the virus without a fever. I take mine and mom's temperatures at least once per day. Mom puts on a show like I'm annoying her but there's a twinkle in her beautiful blue eyes that tells her truth. A lot of people I know are employing this simple technique to try and get ahead of the virus. While coronavirus remains very much a mystery as to how it attack
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Blog postLast night it was announced New Zealand will be closing within the next forty-eight hours. My nephew lives there and I haven't seen him in over eighteen months. My sister and I were planning on visiting him, or perhaps meeting him and his girlfriend in the U.K., in June. Obviously that is off, which makes me sad. But somehow knowing he cannot leave NZ and no one is allowed in feels devastating. The adage "distance makes the heart grow fonder" can pound sand. Family that once were acces
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Blog postOn March 14th at 5:00 in the morning, after a sleepless night filled with a pit of foreboding in my stomach and with a fog of war creating a haze around the planet, I walked into my mother's assistant living facility. The afternoon before the governor had issued an order forbidding family members from visiting their loved ones at nursing homes for thirty days. Two days earlier I asked mom if she wanted to come home with me. She said no, she had friends there, she loved her apartment, they had a
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Blog postWhile I'm still reading about our presidents (I'm on Lincoln #16), I am taking a break from blogging about my presidents project to concentrate on this strange and surreal time in our lives. Ironically, I began my project to try and discern how the past influences the present and what we can learn from the past to better our present. Now, the answer is more obvious than ever. The Third Amendment to the United States Constitution states: No soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered i
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Blog postI remember the reporter's words distinctly. It was only a couple of weeks ago but feels much longer. This will touch all of us, he said. Before this is over, we will all know someone infected with the virus. You might get it yourself. You will know someone who knows someone who dies from it. Perhaps it will take someone you love. It started as the reality of others. In this case: the people of Wuhan, China. It traveled like a speeding train across Asia and to Europe and still felt like a n
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Blog postIt's an unprecedented time in modern history. Coronavirus has changed all of our lives. More than likely, before we are out from under its spell, we will all be personally affected and changed by the pandemic. From being infected ourselves, knowing someone infected, to just being made to change our routines, life will look different as it did after 9-11, as it did after Katrina. Daily use of antibacterial lotions will be the norm. Perhaps carrying a napkin or tissue to open doors will be t
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Blog postHow is this for pedigree? Your parents are John (#2) and Abigail Adams (FL#2). By the time you are twenty years old, you had witnessed the Battle of Bunker Hill, resided in France with your father who successfully aided the end of the Revolutionary War, Thomas Jefferson was your BFF, you lived with Benjamin Franklin, at fourteen years of age you spoke fluent Russian and went to Russia as secretary to the American minister, and in a few years you would be a Harvard graduate. Seems like a full li
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Blog postIn honor of Michelangelo's 545th birthday, and Dante and Bruno (my cats) turning 8 years old today, I am revisiting a post I did in 2012. Melodramatic, for sure, but the sentiment remains the same. I have never met Michelangelo. I have never had a conversation with him nor heard his voice. I have learned about his life from his artwork, his poetry and his letters. Yet I feel I know him better than many of my closest friends. As a writer, I yearn for creative talent to equal his. As a student o
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Blog postIn the early pages of The Last Founding Father: James Monroe and a Nation's Call to Greatness, Harlow Giles Unger writes, "Washington's three successors -- John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison-- were mere caretaker presidents who left the nation bankrupt, its people deeply divided, its borders under attack, its capital city in ashes." And then, by contrast, Unger states: "Monroe's presidency made poor men rich, turned political allies into friends, and united a divided
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Blog postGeorge Washington (#1) was born February 22, 1732. The celebration of his birthday became Presidents Day, the third Monday of February, which became a celebration of Washington and Abraham Lincoln (#16), which morphed into a celebration of all of our presidents, which--in my opinion--should actually be a celebration of the institution of the presidency and its original intent. No president was revered in his day and after as Washington was and is. He was an American hero, even if he never
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Blog postI am reading a book on each president with a few detours in order to learn more about American History and to try and decode how the past influences the present. "First Ladies of the Republic" by Jeanne E. Abrams was one such detour in my passion project. I couldn't imagine making my way from Washington (#1) through Madison (#4) and then jumping to Monroe (#5) without first learning more about Martha, Abigail and Dolley, our first first ladies. I enjoyed the book but wished
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Blog postA friend told me she does not plan on voting in November 2020. She's sick of the corruption in Washington, has lost faith in the system, and believes her vote will not count. Why should I waste my time going to the polls or mailing in a ballot, she asked. I attempted to explain why that was a really bad decision but she wasn't hearing me. Now, as I write this, I realize I wasn't hearing her either. As the adage goes, voting is a right and not a privilege. Likewise, not voting is equally a right
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Blog postChoosing which book to read on our 4th president was a bit challenging, but I settled on Richard Brookhiser's "James Madison" partially because it was only 250-pages versus the 800-page tomes I have been tackling. I opted for this "beach read" (as one reviewer called it) and I was not disappointed. There was little about Brookhister's book I did not like, including the length. I have read books by other accomplished biographers including McCullough, Isaacson, Chernow and
Titles By Joanne Lewis
Forbidden Night: Book 2 of The Forbidden Trilogy
Sep 14, 2016
by
Joanne Lewis
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Forbidden Horses: Book 3 of the Forbidden Trilogy
Sep 20, 2019
by
Joanne Lewis
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