For a non-morning person and non-sophisticated coffee drinker in general, it’s a little funny how often your editor’s been called upon to be the creator and bearer of the a.m. java jolt. When I was 10, it was my job to boil water and make instant coffee (remember that?) with milk and sugar, walk it upstairs and wake my dad for work, five days a week. Not until I left for college was it somebody else’s turn.
These days, my wife need only push thePhoto by Sandra Bianco | Camden Caporin, son of two Hopkins psych nurses, makes for an adorable hood ornament. Read about the Caporin family’s photographic adventures here.button on the already prepared coffee maker for a brew that, if I do say so myself, is way too good for me. It’s been this way for 20-plus years because the arrangement works for us both. For her, the coffee is good, hot, and fresh. And the one small act of giving centers me each morning more than the coffee ever could. (When we visit my in-laws, control over the coffee pot reverts to me, naturally.) Mom the RN always said that doing for others was the best thing you could ever do for yourself. Our hope is that such wisdom—too easy to forget sometimes—flows through the stimulating mix that follows this page.Take our profile of July grad Rasha Kafi, whose mother’s sacrifice saved her children from the perils of a Sudanese civil war (“A World Away”). There’s the Susan D. Flynn Oncology Fellows program, launched by a widower determined to enable more of the skilled, compassionate care that his wife received (“Every Step Along the Way”). We celebrate Professor Nancy Glass’s multiple marathons to raise money to help women in the Congo (“Perspire to Inspire”) and share a student’s wonder at the trust patients and families willingly place in their caregivers (“Live from 525”).
There’s plain old fun in here, too, evidenced by the married psych nurses who make documenting their non-work life a big adventure (“A Family History”) and the story of an alumnus who long ago followed a thirst for adventure and a love for midwifery to the Alaskan frontier (“The Indomitable Snow Woman”).
And there’s so much more in the Summer 2015 issue of Johns Hopkins Nursing for you to discover on your own. Why not grab a cup of coffee, find a nice, cool spot, and give it a read?
Steve St. Angelo