Roanoke Research blogger has been on sick leave — caring for my only sibling for almost 12 months. Multiple in and out of hospitals, rehabs and nursing homes, this has been a cycle I would wish on none. Each trip to the hospital seems like she is on the brink, but true to our family history — we linger. We pull back from ‘that brink’ and go on to eat another quart of ice cream and live to prove the physicians premature in their dire predictions. Proof of the pudding: our father was diagnosed with lung cancer (yes, he had been a smoker) and given a ‘six month to live’ warning. Twelve years (12) later he succumbed, not to the tumor in his lungs, but to a heart attack at age seventy-nine (79)! My sibling seems to be following in the family tradition.
Now, I find time to return to our search for erudite writings of scholars, researchers, journalists and on-line thinkers. In the time of COVID 19, of country-wide turmoil over the killing of George Floyd and other citizens of color, I find it difficult to return to the topic of diversity without first addressing the current world state. I will return to the current state, but with a personal look at where we are as a nation and what has happened in my little corner of the world — a tiny and historic island among the barrier islands on the coast of North Carolina. NC is one of those states with an uptick in COVID 19 cases in the four weeks after the location (OBX) opened to 800,000 visitors — the usual summer crowd in an unusual time.
As a scholar, I grimace at ‘the personal’ in my writing–the use of ‘I”. But, now with life topsy turvy and shockingly upsetting, all my world outlook is different.
But for our first post of 2020: A most interesting and almost comical finding about research participants and gender came from The Scientist this week of June 10: Females Gain Ground as Biomedical Research Subjects
roanokeresearch.com 