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Important anniversaries in 2020: Florence Nightingale was born in 1820

Lynne Baab • Thursday March 12 2020

When I think of Florence Nightingale, it seems like she was always there in my memory. I’ve been trying to remember when I first heard of her. Late elementary school? Junior high school? Surely I knew about her before I entered high school. I knew she was an adventurous nurse, and I associated nurses with hands-on caring for human need, something I wasn’t very good at, so she never felt like any kind of a model to me.

Later, when I began to love learning about places, I associated her with being a nurse during the Crimean War (1853-1856). I found the...

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Important anniversaries in 2020: Women got the vote 100 years ago

Lynne Baab • Friday February 28 2020

When we arrived in New Zealand in 2007, it was a rare moment when the prime minister and chief justice were both women. In addition, a few other important government offices and business leadership positions were held by women. In several discussions of this unusual pattern, Kiwis boasted to us that New Zealand gave women the right to vote before any other country, in 1893. In the United States, that date is August 18, 1920, when the 19th amendment to the constitution was ratified.

I’m honored to have lived in the country where women got the vote first, but for either the...

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What I learned from Bishop Aiden of Lindisfarne

Lynne Baab • Friday February 15 2019

I visited Lindisfarne, also called Holy Island, a few years ago. Connected to the northeast coast of England by a narrow bit of land that goes under water at high tide, it has a rich Christian history. On the island today, you can visit the ruins of a medieval priory and the ruins of a castle built in 1550, plus a chapel and other buildings still in use.

The Christian community at Lindisfarne was founded in the seventh century by Bishop Aiden of Lidisfarne. Aiden, who was born in Ireland, was a monk on the island of Iona when he was asked...

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First post in a new series: Nature speaks about God

Lynne Baab • Friday March 2 2018

I was 15 the first time nature spoke to me. We had lived in southern Virginia while I was in junior high school. My dad was stationed at Langley Air Force Base, and right before I turned 15 he retired from the air force. My parents decided we would move to the West Coast.

We traveled by way of Toronto, Michigan, Missouri, Texas and Colorado, pulling a 14 foot trailer behind our Dodge. We visited grandmothers, cousins, aunts and uncles, and family friends. For a teenager, six weeks of close intimacy with her family, while driving 8,000 miles and mourning the loss...

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