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She said music has been a salve, and on Aug. 14, she will release “Comes in Waves,” her first album of original songs since 2008.
“Working on the music gave shape to days that did not always have much shape. It gave me somewhere to go without having to leave the room,” she continued. “It reminded me that illness can change your life without becoming the whole of your life.”
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2026/07/27/arts/carly-simon-parkinsons/
This festival is a two-day event, which will be held on the 5th and 6th of August 2023 at the state House in Providence, Rhode Island. Over 400 dancers outfitted in colorful and folkloric costumes from Bolivia make their way to perform towards the heart of Providence. We also have many more countries that have their folkloric dances. More detailed info is coming soon, but save the date!
Saturday, the procession begins at 2 pm from St. Patrick’s Church on Smith Street.
Festival both days at the Rhode Island State House lawn
Carlos Maldonado is serving a sentence of life without the possibility of parole at a prison in Massachusetts.
Last year’s wave of suicides inside Massachusetts prisons brought renewed attention to conditions within the state prison system. An independent report commissioned by the Massachusetts Department of Correction identified a toxic combination of drugs, isolation, and lack of mental health support as likely factors in the suicide deaths of six incarcerated men last year. The report, however, failed to mention another crucial element: their sentences. Five of the six suicide victims were serving sentences of at least 25 years to life. Though these men ended their own lives, some may have already been condemned to die in prison.
For those with few prospects of leaving prison, the sense of hopelessness and despair can be overwhelming. I know, because I’m one of them. In December 2006, I fatally shot a man following an altercation. After a jury found me guilty of first-degree murder and the illegal possession of a firearm, I was given a sentence of life without the possibility of parole. I was judged as utterly irredeemable.
It’s hard to live knowing that my entire existence has been reduced to my worst decision. Yet, during my nearly two decades behind bars, I’ve improved my life. Today, I don’t have a single disciplinary infraction to my name. I’m a mentor to many, and I will graduate with a bachelor’s degree from Boston College in September. I’ve transformed myself not because my sentence requires it, but because it’s the right thing to do. I’m not the same person I was at 24 when I committed my crime. Still, my sentence renders my self-improvement irrelevant.
My experience is not uncommon. While Massachusetts boasts the lowest overall rate of incarceration in the nation, it has one of the highest percentages of people serving life sentences without possibility of parole. Add in those serving life sentences with the possibility of parole and almost one-third of the state’s prison population faces the possibility of living out their lives behind bars. Massachusetts may no longer have the death penalty, but a life sentence serves a similar purpose: a gradual death by incarceration.
To understand how the state got here we need to go back to the 1980s. In response to public tension over crime, a raging crack cocaine epidemic, and the political exploitation of Willie Horton’s crime spree while on a weekend furlough from a state prison, Massachusetts adopted a harsher approach to incarceration. The goal of imprisonment shifted from a balance between rehabilitation and punishment to mainly punishment, with little consideration for second chances. The prison population exploded as a result, and the application of extreme sentences became routine. By the early 2000s, Massachusetts had imprisoned more than 10,000 people.
Today, thanks in part to reforms in 2018 that removed mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent offenses, the number of prisoners is significantly lower. Yet the proportion of those incarcerated for life has remained constant.
In a recent editorial, the Globe urged the state to address the systemic issues that are contributing to prison suicides. “No matter the crime, prison was not meant to be a death sentence for those confined to the state’s facilities,” the Globe concluded. Unfortunately, that’s exactly what prison is for many of us — “a death sentence.”
A fellow prisoner, who is also serving life, recently shared that he has thought of death as the only solution to his troubles. Struggling with anxiety and depression, he said he once considered swallowing a “bunch of Percocets” before going to bed so that he’d die in his sleep. “They’d find me in the morning, and that would be that,” he told me. Fortunately, he has found the motivation to keep going. Yet, unless reforms to curb extreme sentences are made, we’ll both die here.
The 2024 Supreme Judicial Court ruling banning sentences of life without the possibility of parole for those who committed their crime while under the age of 21, on the grounds that imposing such sentences on emerging adults amounts to “cruel and unusual punishment,” was a much-needed step in the right direction, but more is needed.
There are several reforms that would help address the hopelessness that causes many prisoners to question whether life is worth living: providing compassionate release for sick and dying prisoners, passing “Second Look” legislation to afford reformed prisoners the chance to show their transformation to a judge, raising the emerging adult age to 25 in accordance with the latest neuroscience, and granting executive clemency on a routine basis.
Beyond all of these common-sense reforms, the six suicide deaths in Massachusetts state prisons last year should lead to a serious reexamination of life without parole and other extreme sentences. Otherwise, some people behind bars will continue to see suicide as their only hope for release.
Watching Chris Cho videos on his FB page. He is adorable amazing and I am trying everything!
Did you hear about my recent TIA? I’m at the age when you learn more about medicine ... such as a T.I.A. or “transient ischemic attack” or what I call “temporary idiotic agitation,” which recently happened to me... I am living proof of this: two-pack-a-day chain-smoker for twenty years, glass of Scotch in my hand — I thought it was what serious writers did — and I loathed calisthenics, never jogged, my idea of physical exercise was cursive writing. And here I am about to turn 84 — it’s like the pudgy kid winning the pole vault. It’s also an age when anxiety is swamped by gratitude. The plain goodness of life — the pleasure of getting out of bed and accepting the gift of one more day — I didn’t feel this when I was in my early 20s and writing Poor Me poems about a lonely alienated hero but I feel it now. The soft breathing of the sleeping woman next to me, the hike to the kitchen, the smell of coffee. Garrison Keillor Originally written in April 2026
The "tale of two nails" is a famous neuroscience and psychology concept often discussed in pain science (and featured in discussions on podcasts like Hidden Brain Media) showing that pain is a danger signal constructed by the brain rather than a direct meter of physical tissue damage. It contrasts two contrasting real-life events: [1, 2]
GORHAM, Maine - As an ER nurse, Jeff Ballard saw a lot of traumatic injuries on the job, so when he and his Army unit arrived in Afghanistan 16 years ago, he thought he was ready for anything.
But he wasn’t ready for the guy they brought into Combat Outpost Zomat near Gardez in southeastern Afghanistan.
Ballard, an Army medic, got word that an Afghan army patrol had hit an IED. He went out to wait for the wounded.
“A truck pulled up, and the driver had blood on his face,” Ballard recalled. “Someone started walking him to the aid station, and the driver motioned furiously to the truck.”
Ballard walked over to the truck, opened the back door and saw a mangled ball of flesh on the floor. At first, the figure wasn’t recognizable as a human being. Both of his legs were missing, as was most of his left arm, and the lower half of his right arm.
Ballard reached down and grabbed for what he thought was a dead man, lifting what was left of him by his body armor.
“I rolled him over, and he gasped,” Ballard said. “It was an inhale, not an exhale. Dead bodies don’t inhale.”
Ballard’s training kicked in. He started two IVs on what was left of the soldier’s right arm. Despite his efforts, the soldier died.
“I had been a paramedic back home, and an emergency department nurse, so I had done trauma,” Ballard said. “But this was different. When I was cleaning up, for the first time it hit me: that could have been me.”
Before, whenever he was out on patrol, Ballard didn’t think like that.
But there was something about the Afghan soldier that did something to Ballard’s brain, to his internal survival instinct.
He started having nightmares and flashbacks. He couldn’t sleep, and when he could, it was fitful sleep.
Back home, he went to a warrior transition unit at Fort Drum, where his physical injuries were treated, but those to his mental health were not.
Like so many of the soldiers, Marines, sailors and airmen wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan, he started self-medicating with booze, hoping he’d find some peace at the bottom of a bottle.
He was prescribed Klonapin and other medications that masked the symptoms of his invisible wounds.
He went back to work as an ER nurse.
“Every patient I took care of, it was that Afghan soldier,” he said. “I didn’t mess up. I could do my job. But I was not in a good place, at all.”
A couple of things saved him.
First, he and his future wife, Kate, found themselves suddenly, by chance, together again. They had met in 2005, when they were working at an ambulance service in Nashua. Ballard had turned to the co-worker who introduced them there and said, “I’m going to marry that woman some day.”
But Kate moved to Louisiana, and Ballard met someone else and got married, hoping to get over Kate.
By 2018, his marriage was over, and he moved to Maine, hoping for a fresh start. By chance, Kate, a physician’s assistant, had moved to the same area and they came into the same orbit.
They reconnected in 2019 and married in 2021.
Kate noticed her husband didn’t want to go places where there were a lot of people. He was hyper vigilant, his head always on a swivel. And he had nightmares and migraines. Therapy at the VA in Portland could only do so much.
Then, five years ago, as with the random luck of reuniting with Kate, Ballard got lucky again when he was in St. Augustine, visiting his in-laws.
He bumped into a group of trainers from an organization called K9s For Warriors. He was impressed by the trainers as they explained their ethos. Not only were they determined to lower the average of 20 veterans who kill themselves every day, they wanted to save some of the 1,000 dogs that are euthanized every day.
“They said they want to save lives at both ends of the leash,” Ballard said. “That really resonated with me.”
So did Eddie, the 85-pound chocolate lab who was paired with Ballard two years ago.
When they met, Eddie raced over and jumped on Ballard, knocking his glasses off.
It was love at first set of broken glasses.
“Training was hard,” Ballard said. “The hardest thing I’ve ever done.”
But, two years on, he and Eddie are inseparable, and Jeff Ballard is more like the Jeff Ballard before he went to war. He’s more present for Kate and their son, Matthew. He went back to running and other things that brought him joy.
As a service dog, Eddie is a disciplined protector, putting himself between Ballard and others who get too close too fast, bringing Ballard comfort when he’s in a crowded place such as Fenway Park, where Ballard goes regularly as a hardcore Red Sox fan.
The two of them were at Fenway on Saturday to participate in the annual Run to Home Base, to benefit Home Base, the program started by the Red Sox and Massachusetts General Hospital that treats the invisible wounds of war.
And on Monday, Ballard and Eddie will be back at Fenway for a celebration of the 15th anniversary of K9s For Warriors, which has helped more than 1,300 vets and saved more than 2,500 dogs destined to be put down.
Eddie is now 4 years old, a couple of months older than Ballard’s son Matthew, whom he nuzzles when he’s not on duty.
Eddie’s a real sweetie, with a cold nose and a warm heart.
He gave a veteran and his family something priceless: a new leash on life.
Kevin Cullen is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at kevin.cullen@globe.com.
https://gfs.com/en-us/ideas/recipe/collard-green-kimchi/
My mom used to make kimchi from 200 heads of cabbage! This was kimjang kimchi, made with her friends at the beginning of winter, and meant to last until the spring. 3 to 4 of her friends would come over and help her chop vegetables and most importantly, spread the paste on the leaves. This always needs to be done by hand. They would bring their own rubber gloves, and spend the day talking and laughing, and always had pollock stew or beef radish soup for lunch. They had a lot of fun!
At the end of the day they would take some kimchi home with them, but my mom would get all the rest, which lasted my whole family through the winter. And when my mom’s friends needed to make their winter kimchi, my mom brought her gloves over to their houses and helped them, like they did for her.
Kimchi pancake recipe https://www.maangchi.com/recipe/kimchijeon
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkYvAsohBhc
"Lonesome 7-7203"~ Hawkshaw Hawkins (1962) King #45-5712 - The flip side of, "Everything Has Changed" - Recorded at the end of 1962 and released on March 2, 1963. LONESOME-77203 was composed by Justin Tubb. Hawkshaw Hawkins was born Harold Franklin Hawkins on December 22, 1921 in Huntington, West Virginia and on died March 5, 1963 in same the airplane accident that claimed the lives of Cowboy Copas and Patsy Cline. His wife was female C&W singer, Jean Shepard, who was pregnant with their child at the time of the crash. His "Lonesome 7-7203" became a hit record, but Hawkins never knew it. Lonesome 7-7203 LONESOME 7-7203 ~ Hawkshaw Hawkins (1962)
The Tragic Story of Jean Shepard & Hawkshaw Hawkins – The Widow Who Survived the Opry Crash
