Posts Tagged ‘Peace House’
Stay Healthy
from Peace House Community A Place to Belong... By MARTI MALTBY I recently spent five days in the Hennepin County Medical Center, starting out in the Surgery Intensive Care Unit before moving to a regular patient bed. My experience reinforced one simple idea: take care of yourself and protect your health, because hospitals are lousy places to get healthy. This isn’t a criticism of HCMC. The staff were uniformly professional and caring, doing their best to make sure I knew what was happening and what to expect next. If you’re going to have a significant health crisis, HCMC is a pretty good place to wind up. The problem was simply that you can do most “healthy” activities in a hospital. All the advice on how to take care of your body and mind goes out the window when you are recovering in a hospital bed. For example: Get eight hours of sleep a night – This is almost impossible. Depending on what brought you to the hospital, the staff may be required to wake you [...]
Silence, Please
Marti Maltby By MARTI MALTBY I’ve recently been reminded of the value of silence, or at least having a break from all the noise that assaults us each day. With so much negativity in the air, it can be difficult not to get infected, not to become judgmental, not to lash out or over-react, not to get overwhelmed, and not to break down. Silence, having the space to think and regroup and nurture oneself, is an antidote to everything that comes at us. I use the word “antidote” because the hostile attitudes that are becoming more common pass from person to person and infect each individual, causing damage that is sometimes irreversible. We don’t just need a break, we need something that can heal the infection and inoculate us against it in the future. I rediscovered silence by accident. I was driving home from work and couldn’t find anything on the radio I liked, so I turned the noise off. When I arrived home and found I was calmer than I had been for several days, I [...]
Peace House Community: To the Unsung Heroes
Marti Maltby. Photo: Courtesy the author. By MARTI MALTBY Today I attended the Minnesota Council of Nonprofits’ annual conference, and I got to see four people receive Unsung Heroes awards for work they have done to improve their communities. As you would guess, these individuals go about their volunteering quietly, but their dedication and concern has inspired others. I love the idea of unsung hero awards, because so much recognition goes to people who are already well known, or whose work is plain for all to see. With few exceptions, Nobel prizes, academy awards, and many other awards go to well-known individuals, while few “everyday people” are recognized or rewarded for what they do. I think that’s a shame, because so many people work so hard to maintain sanity and stability for themselves and those around them, without the advantages that the big names have. Yes, it would be fabulous if a scientist found the cure for cancer, but they would do that only if they [...]
