If you can’t see the video, click here to open it on YouTube.

Second in a series of posts as I approach Medicare in February. Part 1 was here.

Thanks immensely to long-ago co-worker Harry Zane, now an experienced Medicare participant, for this 15 minutes of standup comedy. I didn’t just laugh out loud; I hooted.:-)

The “comic” is Fritz Coleman, who (it says) is an icon in LA broadcasting – longtime weather person. Say hi to him on Twitter at @FritzNBCLA.

They did some odd editing in random places, inserting pictures of conference participants on top of the video, with no connection to what he was saying. Don’t let it throw you – enjoy. (My favorite was the smiling young nun whose face appeared as he was describing his 95 year old mother!)

After a year of work in partnership with the University of Minnesota School of Nursing, I’m thrilled to announce that my first commercial, professional continuing education course is live:

Patient Engagement
in Health Information

An online C.N.E. course
at the University of Minnesota
School of Nursing

Register here.

From the course web page:

Target Audience:
Healthcare team members interested in learning to plan for and implement supportive actions for patient engagement and activation through the use of health information technology (IT).

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Updated a year later with different video link.
Today I turn 64.  So let me introduce to you the act you’ve known for all these years: Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, performing “When I’m 64”:

Notes about the song:

• When the song finishes, the rest of the album will play – stop it if you wish. See also the playlist, at bottom.

• If you don’t know the song’s history, you must read it on Wikipedia. Did you know Paul started it as a teen, and the song features a clarinet trio?

Happy birthday(?)

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I have such conflicted feelings about this. Another brother’s death, as the circle of life continues. It. Just. Feels. Wrong.

Having survived my own near-death seven years ago, I celebrate being alive whenever I can. So it hit me like bricks last May when my younger brother Steve died, and again in December when my best friend Dorron died. These were the first unexpected deaths I’ve ever experienced close to me.

And they were both eight years younger than me. Incomprehensible. It just doesn’t make sense, a life ending with eight years less experience??

And then two days ago I learned that another brother, Ken, age 62, has died unexpectedly. So now our six siblings are down to four.

I just freakin’ don’t know how to process this. I don’t like it, I’m not rational, of course it’s not rational, it grabs the brain at a far more primitive level than logic can ever address.  I’m rereading my post about Steve’s death, and boy is it on target. Death has been around a lot longer than human thought has, and it’s apparent to me that we as social creatures are constituted to not like it, and get upset when one of our tribe disappears.

Ken, like Steve, smoked and drank. Nothing like having some public health statistics step up and kick you in the face.

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