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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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Nature speaks about God: the feeling of God’s absence

Lynne Baab • Friday April 6 2018

Dave’s sister and her husband do not enjoy travelling, and they particularly don’t like to fly. Twenty years ago they honored us with a visit to Seattle. We knew that the flight from Ohio would be very challenging for them, and we knew that they would probably only visit Seattle once in their lives, so we wanted to maximize the visit. We suggested they come in August, when the Seattle weather is most reliably sunny.

We wanted them to see the beauty we love so much here: Puget Sound, the many lakes, the Olympic and Cascade Mountains, and of course, Mount Rainier.

They...

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