“A Year Filled with Sunshine” on Happiness Between Tails | Dawn Pisturino’s Blog

“A Year Filled with Sunshine” on Happiness Between Tails

 on December 28, 2024

(Graphic created on Canva by Dawn Pisturino)

I hope all of you are experiencing a joyful holiday season! 2025 is just around the corner. I said I would post if something important came up, and it did. Da-AL, of Happiness Between Tails, published my article, “A Year Filled with Sunshine,” on December 26th. Thank you so much, Da-AL, for publishing it!

When I sat down to compose my fourth poetry book, Sun Haiku: 365 Days of Sunshine, I had two intentions in mind: to honor my brother, Mark, who died of melanoma shy of his 40th birthday, and to celebrate the sun, which is the sustaining force for all life on earth.

I lived in California for 24 years, where the sun is practically worshipped as a god. The Beach Boys glorified surfing, beachcombing, and girls running around in bikinis. . .

~

Please click HERE to read the rest of the article. Thank you!

Source: “A Year Filled with Sunshine” on Happiness Between Tails | Dawn Pisturino’s Blog

Cancer vaccine should spare next generation from ordeals like my wife’s – Los Angeles Times

…I’m sharing this story now, more than eight years after her diagnosis, because a notorious vaccine skeptic may soon lead the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. President-elect Donald Trump’s choice for that job, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has previously sued the maker of the HPV vaccine Gardasil, calling it “dangerous and defective” and saying it had caused “severe and life-changing injuries.”

Plenty of scientists and other journalists have fact-checked the widely circulated claims against Gardasil and found them to be exaggerated or outright false; I won’t duplicate their work here. What I do want to convey is some of the “severe and life-changing injuries” from treating one kind of HPV cancer that vaccination can prevent.

My wife was diagnosed in June 2016. Our twins had recently turned 4, and our youngest was 9 months old. Though survival rates for HPV-related throat cancer are relatively high, hearing your children’s mother has a roughly 1 in 7 chance of dying within five years focuses you on one thing at the expense of all others: survival.

Doctors warned my wife that her treatment would be brutal: Her five weekly radiation doses over two months would burn her skin, probably make swallowing food and water intolerable and potentially damage her salivary glands for years or even the rest of her life. All of this turned out to be true. My wife desperately wanted to eat and drink, but sores in her mouth and throat made it impossible.

Imagine that: Starving even though food is easily available, you want to eat that food, and everyone is begging you to eat that food, as if it’s a matter of will power and not the constant burning sensation in your mouth and throat.

She’s healthy now, but every sore throat or enlarged gland — both features of colds and COVID-19 — sparks worry of the Big C’s return. She lives checkup-to-checkup, alternating between relief from the most recent “all clear” to bubbling anxiety as the next appointment approaches. She lives with constant dry mouth and all-too-frequent (and frightening) choking spells…

Source: Cancer vaccine should spare next generation from ordeals like my wife’s – Los Angeles Times

Mexico to Launch ‘Panic Button’ for Migrants in US – Havana Times

President Sheinbaum with Foreign Affairs Minister Juan Ramon de la Fuente at her daily press conference on Friday December 27th.

The Mexican government announced on Friday that it is working to develop a “panic button” for migrants in the United States who think they might soon be detained by U.S. immigration authorities.

The effort involves a cellphone app created in response to U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s warnings that he will carry out mass deportations upon taking office on Jan. 20, 2025.

Speaking at President Sheinbaum’s daily press conference on Friday, Foreign Affairs Minister Juan Ramón de la Fuente said the app will allow users to press a button that immediately sends a notification to previously selected relatives and the nearest Mexican consulate.

Describing the device as a sort of “panic button” for Mexicans in the United States, De la Fuente said small-scale testing has proven that the app “appears to be working very well.”

Source: Mexico to Launch ‘Panic Button’ for Migrants in US – Havana Times

Songs I Like (99) ‹ beetleypete ‹ Reader — WordPress.com

A song that I featured on this blog a long time ago popped into my mind yesterday. So I thought I would give it another mention today. Released in 1998, this is the only song I ever heard from the New Radicals.

I looked them up, and they were still working in 2024. This ‘one-hit wonder’ will remain their one claim to fame as far as I am concerned.

Twenty-six years later I still think it sounds great, and the positive message makes me happy.

The lyrics are on the video.

Source: Songs I Like (99) ‹ beetleypete ‹ Reader — WordPress.com