Articles

A selection by Nell Lake. Clicking on a title will take you to the piece.

Cognoscenti | WBUR

A FEW WEEKS AGO, my friend Robin stood halfway down my driveway, wearing her blue hospital scrubs. I perched on my front step, a good 16 feet away, clutching a box of N-95 masks I’d discovered in my basement… 

New England Public Radio

THE HISTORICAL contributions of men fill most major museums and archives. Women are usually sidelined. One collector from western Massachusetts, Lisa Unger Baskin, has spent a lifetime addressing the imbalance. 

The Boston Globe

SIX YEARS AGO, my neighbor Karen had a stroke. Paralyzed on her left side, Karen can’t walk, cook for herself, or use the bathroom. “I have to depend on somebody to do everything for me,” she says. Yet Karen, 61, … has managed to stay in her home — thanks to daily care from Mary, an immigrant from Ghana…

IN MAY 2003 came the joyous birth of Prairie Cummings Resch, first child of Zoe Cummings Resch ’92. All had gone according to plan: Resch lay down on a surgical table. An anesthesiologist inserted an analgesic into her spine, and she became impervious to pain below her waist.…

CommonHealth/WBUR

ONE SUNNY DAY in the spring of 2012, Kathleen Klein sat in a car by the California coastline with her 84-year-old mother, Jackie Wilton. The two women had been quietly gazing at the view, watching seagulls along the shore. “I’m ready to go,” Klein recalls her mother saying. “Not go home…Go.”

CommonHealth/WBUR

For Eileen, who is disabled and reliant on a wheelchair to get around, life in her nursing home isn’t easy. Particularly when it comes to the other residents. “There’s this guy,” she says. “He makes advances to me all the time…” 

CommonHealth/WBUR

Are we over-treating the elderly with psychiatric drugs? That’s the natural question arising from a recent report that found adults over 65 are receiving psychotropic medications at twice the rate of younger adults.

Southwest (Airlines) Spirit

IN THE half-finished basement of his parents’ home in the Boston suburb of Lexington, Massachusetts, 21-year-old Michael Easton hunches over a long table, sweat on his brow. He thrusts a putty knife under the surface of a strange object lying on the table. It is an object like no other in the world: an innovative new blade meant to form part of a six-foot-tall residential wind turbine. Easton designed it. . .
ONE SUNNY fall day two friends and I sat in our sprawling local park, feeding snacks to our four-year-olds and watching our seven-year-olds bike along dirt paths. The three older boys pedaled up beside us, and Jasper, Mary’s son, announced, “We’re going to ride around the whole park!” They’d never done this. It’s a big park, with cars. . .

CommonHealth/WBUR

OVER THE YEARS, I’ve watched my cousin Deborah Haber struggle with several chronic, painful medical conditions, including fibromyalgia and a rare incurable disorder called Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, a connective tissue disease that causes profuse sweating, a high heart rate and insomnia, among its many symptoms.

Largely housebound, and managing the life of her 11-year-old daughter, Deborah faces social isolation and persistent pain…

CommonHealth/WBUR

After her stroke, a 95-year-old woman in New York State found that she could no longer taste her food. She was also unable to feel hunger, so she didn’t know when she was supposed to eat. As a result, the woman began losing weight, grew weak and wasn’t getting the nutrients she needed…

CommonHealth/WBUR

CONSIDER a hypothetical 70-year-old woman; she could be your mother, your sister, your wife. Call her Margaret. She’s becoming ever-more forgetful; one day she gets lost on her way home from the grocery store. A neurologist diagnoses Alzheimer’s…

Shambhala Sun magazine

AT THE ice cream stand, a bored teenaged girl awaited customers, peering out through the window at a nearly empty parking lot. Her blond hair was pulled back into a ponytail and she was perched on a stool, chewing gum. Behind her, steel machines gleamed…

Mindful Magazine

Mary Jessup had great difficulty remembering plans, who’d called earlier, even whether she’d eaten lunch. For five years, Mary—who was living with vascular dementia—stayed in her daughter Penny’s home. Every weekday, while Penny worked, Mary sat on a worn, green couch and watched TV. 

Mindful Magazine

Many of us find ourselves caring for loved ones braving old age, decline, and dying. Caregiving is demanding—at times overwhelming. Yet it can also cultivate intimacy, wisdom, and insight…
LEST YOU take these English words for granted, consider this: when the United States was founded, only 40 percent of the people living within its boundaries spoke English as their first language. . .