Our greatest challenges often bring out our greatest strengths.
Positively Purging-I welcome your feedbacks in the comments and your likes and passing the real life wisdom on to others as I embark on this new venture of “positively purging“, as I know each of these pieces represents something…
I am the type of person-if I want something, I’m just going to go and get it. I don’t know how I’m going to find it, but I’m going to learn. I didn’t know how to be visible to the people who mattered in the fashion industry. I’m a college dropout. I don’t have a blueprint for how you’re supposed to become a big fashion label or how you’re supposed to become a designer. I was just winging it an figuring it out on my own. So I did a lot of research I reached out to as many people as I could, and even tough some didn’t respond, I kept pushing, and I kept doing what I had to do. And that’s why I started an initiative to help emerging designers. I teach them basically everything that I learned – because I know how difficulty it is to come up in this industry, especially as a Black designer, a Black woman. The resources just aren’t really available. -Anifa Mvuemba
As an experienced emergency-medicine physician, I believe we should do everything we can to avoid deaths filled with suffering and fear. For those terminally ill patients who can qualify, our state’s Death with Dignity law allows them the option to face death on their own terms.
But the law’s 15-day waiting period does nothing for the 40% to 50% of terminally ill patients who have just a few weeks to live. These patients are forced to die in pain. Even with palliative and hospice care present, some emotional and physical agony is too great to manage.
Many terminally ill patients want to exhaust every life-extending treatment available, but when those treatments fail and there is no hope for cure, the person deserves an option for a death that is aligned with their personal, family and spiritual values. They should not be punished for being unable to survive the waiting period.
That’s why I support HB 1141, now before the Washington Senate, which would shorten the Death with Dignity waiting period to 72 hours. Our state should join Oregon and New Mexico in allowing dying adults of sound minds to have the shorter time requirement to access end-of-life medication.
Q: The mature Japanese maple in my yard was just starting to leaf out when the April freeze hit. At that time, it dropped about half its leaves, and they do not appear to be re-budding.
Previously, it has appeared very healthy and had a nice thick canopy. I water it about once a month during the summer, and watered especially deeply and more frequently during last year’s heat dome. I do notice that the tree has a fair amount of lichen growing on it. It also has a lot of dead twigs on the branches that lost leaves. The main small branches are green under the bark though.
Is the tree in danger of dying? Should we fertilize it this spring or summer to help compensate for the missing photosynthetic ability? If so, what should we use and how much?
A: There are at least two possibilities to explain why your maple has defoliation. One is the late, unexpected freeze, just as foliage was emerging. The foliage won’t be replaced this year.
A second, more serious possibility would be a soil disease called verticillium wilt, a fungus that causes defoliation. It is not treatable and is always fatal to the tree. This can be diagnosed only in a lab by examining a branch and soil testing.
It’s your call whether to do testing now or wait to see if the tree loses more leaves, giving it another year and hoping for a warmer spring.
