Let's write about Ron Turcotte: A memorial tribute

Over the years, I have had the honor to write a lot about Ron Turcotte because of his French-Canadian heritage.  Sadly, I am sharing his obitury here published in Blood Horse, by Byron King. My husband and I met Ron Turcotte several years ago when he spoke to a group in Waterville Maine.  When I wrote about him, I could actually call his home and his lovely wife "Gae" would answer the phone, she was a wealth of information.💗😇  

L'Heureux photo:  Ron Turcotte (b.1941-d.2025 ✝️RIP)  in Waterville Maine 😰

Reported in Blood Horse, by Byron King:

Retired famous jockey Ron Turcotte, remembered for riding Secretariat to win the 1973, Triple Crown during a Hall of Fame career that ended prematurely in 1978, due to a tragic racing injury, died of natural causes Aug. 22, in his Drummond home outside Grand Falls, New Brunswick, in Canada. He was 84. Turcotte's family formally announced his death through Leonard Lusky, his longtime friend and business representative.
"Ron was a great jockey and an inspiration to so many, both within and outside the racing world. While he reached the pinnacle of success in his vocation, it was his abundance of faith, courage, and kindness that was the true measure of his greatness," Lusky said.

Born in French speaking Canada, as the third oldest of 12 children in 1941, in Grand Falls, Turcotte initially supported his family as a teenager as a lumberjack before finding his calling at the racetrack. In the late 1950s, Turcotte connected with E. P. Taylor, the legendary Canadian owner and breeder. Turcotte went to Taylor's farm, hotwalking Thoroughbreds.
Slight in stature, he proved well suited to becoming a jockey and rode his first winner at Fort Erie Racetrack in Ontario in 1962. By the end of the year, he was the leading rider in Canada with 180 wins. In 1963, he again earned riding honors in Canada with 216 wins before leaving in September to ride in Maryland and later New York and Delaware. He would go on to massive success in the United States.

Besides riding Meadow Stable's Hall of Famer Secretariat, Turcotte also was the primary jockey for Meadow Stable champion and Hall of Famer Riva Ridge, winner of the 1972 Kentucky Derby and Belmont Stakes. Lucien Laurin trained both colts.
When Turcotte won the 1973 Derby with Secretariat, he became the first jockey since Jimmy Winkfield in 1902, to win consecutive editions of the race. Turcotte was North America's leading stakes-winning jockey in 1972 and 1973. He was honored with the George Woolf Memorial Jockey Award in 1973. Only Laffit Pincay Jr. earned more money than Turcotte in 1973, among North American jockeys.

Turcotte also would ride Hall of Famers Arts and Letters, Dahlia, Damascus, Dark Mirage, Fort Marcy, Northern Dancer, and Shuvee in addition to the Meadow Stable stars. He captured his first Triple Crown race with Tom Rolfe in the 1965 Preakness Stakes and won 3,032 races overall.

Ron Turcotte statue in Grand Falls, New Brunswick Canada

Turcotte's riding career was cut short on July 13, 1978, when he was unseated from his mount, Flag of Leyte Gulf, in his final race of the afternoon at Belmont Park. His horse clipped heels and stumbled, tossing Turcotte. The rider broke his neck in the fall and was paralyzed from the waist down.

That year, he was awarded a Sovereign Award as Man of the Year. At the time, the only other men to receive Man of the Year honors were E.P. Taylor and Jack Diamond.

Other honors for Turcotte included Canadian Thoroughbred horse racing's 1978 Avelino Gomez Memorial Award and the Turf Publicists of America's 1978 Big Sport of Turfdom Award. In 1974, Turcotte was inducted into the Order of Canada, the country's highest civilian honor.

Following his retirement from the saddle, Turcotte made appearances at racetracks to raise money and awareness on behalf of the Permanently Disabled Jockeys Fund.
Turcotte married his childhood sweetheart, Gaetane, in 1964. The couple has four daughters: Tina, Ann, Lynn, and Tammy. After his riding career ended, he returned to Drummond to live on his farm.

"The world may remember Ron as the famous jockey of Secretariat, but to us he was a wonderful husband, a loving father, grandfather, and a great horseman," the Turcotte family said in a statement distributed by Lusky.

Turcotte recovered from setbacks during his retirement, including breaking both legs in a driving accident in 2015 when his van flipped after hitting a snowbank in New Brunswick.

Turcotte was the last surviving member of the individuals most closely associated with Secretariat's racing career. Owner Penny Chenery died in 2017, at age 95. Laurin died in 2000.
Secretariat died in 1989, euthanized after developing laminitis.
Secretariat's Triple Crown campaign and Turcotte's association with the Meadow Stable champion were depicted in the 2010 blockbuster film "Secretariat." Turcotte was further the subject of the award-winning documentary "Secretariat's Jockey: Ron Turcotte," as well as several books, including his 1992 biography "The Will to Win" by Bill Heller.

The family requests privacy while plans are formalized for a private funeral. In lieu of flowers, the family suggests contributions be made to the PDJF.

Tributes to Turcotte
"Ron Turcotte was a true Canadian icon whose impact on horse racing is immeasurable. From his incredible journey aboard Secretariat to his lifelong commitment to the sport, Ron carried himself with humility, strength, and dignity. His legacy in racing, both here at Woodbine and around the world, will live forever. We mourn his loss and celebrate a life that inspired many."—Jim Lawson, executive chair of Woodbine Entertainment

"The board of directors of the Permanently Disabled Jockeys Fund and its recipients mourn the passing of one of our greatest champions and ambassadors. Ron's tireless advocacy and efforts on behalf of his fellow fallen rider is beyond measure.

Although he is appropriately recognized as a member of the Racing Hall of Fame for his accomplishments in the saddle, his contributions to the PDJF established him as a giant in the hearts of all associated with this organization. His memory and his impact will live on forever. Our thoughts and prayers are with Gaetane, their daughters, and his family and friends at this difficult time."—William J. Punk Jr., PDJF chairman


"The National Horsemen's Benevolent and Protective Association joins the entire racing community in mourning the passing of Ron Turcotte, one of the sport's most celebrated and beloved jockeys. Best remembered as the rider of Secretariat during the unforgettable 1973 Triple Crown, Ron's place in racing history is secure. Yet beyond the record-breaking victories, he was admired for his humility, courage, and lifelong dedication to Thoroughbred racing. His legacy will forever be intertwined with the greatness of our sport. 

On behalf of horsemen and horsewomen across the country, we extend our deepest condolences to Ron's family, friends, and all who were touched by his remarkable life."—The National Horsemen's Benevolent and Protective Association

"Ron Turcotte was an icon and will forever be fondly remembered as the trusted partner of legendary Kentucky Derby and Triple Crown winner Secretariat, arguably the most popular Thoroughbred in history. As a two-time Kentucky Derby winner, Ron's many accomplishments on the racetrack and his deep passion for horse racing brought countless fans to the sport. He will be greatly missed. We extend our deepest condolences to his family, friends, and fans all over the world."—Churchill Downs racetrack president Mike Anderson

"Ron Turcotte will be forever remembered for guiding Secretariat to Triple Crown glory in 1973. While his courage as a jockey was on full display to a nation of adoring fans during that electrifying time, it was after he faced a life-altering injury that we learned about the true character of Ron Turcotte. By devoting himself to supporting fellow jockeys struggling through similar injuries, Ron Turcotte built a legacy defined by kindness and compassion. NYRA extends our sympathies to Ron Turcotte's family and friends, and we join the horse racing community in mourning his loss."—David O'Rourke, president and CEO of the New York Racing Association

Let's write about Adolf Hitler

“Führer”: An archived echo report published in The New Yorker magazine:

Adolf Hitler (1889-1945)

Janet Flanner’s job was never easy, exactly, but for the first decade it wasn’t all that morally freighted. Beginning in October of 1925, using the pseudonym Genêt, she mailed her editors at this magazine a fizzy bimonthly column under the rubric Letter from Paris. Instead of telling readers what they needed to know—that was what newspapers were for—she focussed on what they might want to know: the new fad of backless dresses in the cabarets, the rising cost of champagne. “She thought of herself as a high-class gossip columnist,” Brenda Wineapple writes in her biography “Genêt.” Striving for an “unflappable, ever-ironic” style, “she did not predict outcomes, take sides, or search for causes. Obviously, this itself was a side, but Janet was not yet willing to admit that.”

The New Yorker was inventing its voice, and Flanner was in the clique of tinkerers. “Lunched with D. Parker,” she wrote to Harold Ross, the founding editor, from her rented fourth-floor room on Rue Bonaparte. “How dare you say Thurber uses more parenthesis than I? . . . I’ll stop, (if I can.)” When Flanner first arrived in Europe, as an expat from Indianapolis, she was still married, technically, to a man; but they soon divorced and she lived openly (in both senses) with her female partner, the poet Solita Solano. They were chummy with everyone who was anyone: Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Djuna Barnes. Flanner roamed the Continent, filing occasional reports from London and Berlin. “I think a Brussels Letter a good idea,” she wrote to Ross. “I’m passing by there anyhow.” She filed pieces on Edith Wharton and Igor Stravinsky, and a subtly undermining story about her frenemy Gertrude Stein, and a write-around Profile of the Queen of England. In time, she became more than a gossip columnist; she became one of the great journalists of her generation.

In early 1936, she published her weightiest piece yet—a three-part Profile of Adolf Hitler. This one, too, was a write-around: unlike Dorothy Thompson, an American journalist who had interviewed Hitler for Cosmopolitan (and whose unflattering portrayal got her kicked out of Germany), Flanner never secured an interview with the Führer, and it’s not clear how hard she pushed for one. She was neither an antifascist, like her friend Dorothy Parker, nor a Fascist, like her friend Ezra Pound; she was against crude bigotry, but she was not the world’s greatest philo-Semite. (In a letter to her mother, she once denigrated the writer Rebecca West as “a little Jewish.”) “Dictator of a nation devoted to splendid sausages, cigars, beer, and babies, Adolf Hitler is a vegetarian, teetotaller, nonsmoker, and celibate,” the first sentence of the Profile read. She had him pegged as a strange little man, teeming with contradictions—true, but hardly the most salient of his known flaws, even then.

In the first installment of the Profile, we learn about the Führer’s taste in movies, his “second-rate tailor,” and his preferred recipe for South German porridge. Readers would have to wait until the following week for a mention of the Nazi Party’s increasingly visible repression of German Jews, which Flanner dispatched in a single paragraph (“The Jewish problem Hitler has raised is a vast one in emotional importance . . . numerically, from the German point of view, it is a small one”). A few lines later, she was on to a night-club comedian who told sly Hitler jokes. (“No one knows why he isn’t in a concentration camp.”) There were a few intimations of violence, but in the mode of pointing out Hitler’s personal inconsistencies: “He becomes sick if he sees blood, yet he is unafraid of being killed or killing.”

The piece was ambiguous, and it had a mixed reception. “I was in Hollywood yesterday and the Jewish film gentlemen candidly said they thought my Hitler article was not unfriendly enough!” Flanner wrote in a letter. “No pleasing everybody.” Still, for the rest of her life she never included the Hitler Profile among her collected pieces. For a writer who wants to seem sophisticated and all-knowing, it may feel intolerably risky to pick sides in a grubby political fight, or to make falsifiable predictions about the future. But refusing to take sides can also be a way to miss the story. 

As Flanner wrote in a Letter from Budapest in 1938, “History looks queer when you’re standing close to it.” ♦

Let's Write about the silent film hit "Evangeline" starring Dolores Del Rio

Somehow or other, I honestly cannot recall how, but I have a copy of a press release daated January 3, 1929, published in the Santa Cruz, California County Sentinel, about "Evangeline Scenes to be Filmed Here: Dolores Del Rio in Lead". 

Evangeline, the fictional heroine created by Henry Wadsworth Longfellos, played by the Mexican born actress Dolores Del Rio (1904-1983), in the silent film produced and directed by Edwin Carewe in 1929. 

Evangeline the poem: At 178 years old, published in 1847, a legacy continues to resonate today.

Although she is a fictional heroine, Evangeline’s epic story symbolizes the agony caused by forced mass deportations and family separations.

"Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow tells the sad  story about Evangeline Bellefontaine, a young Acadian woman, and her beloved Gabriel Lajeunesse, whose lives are tragically disrupted in 1755, by the British expulsion of the Acadians from Nova Scotia (Acadie).

Evangeline’s character is a myth who created a lasting legend to bring international attention to the cruel Acadian expulsion. Longfellow’s epic poem may fit the cliché about how history can repeat itself, while Americans are witnessing immigrant deportations and family separations in real time on nearly all main stream media.

In 1929, the poem was produced into a popular silent film starring the Mexican born actress Dolores Del Rio (1904-1983). Somehow, found among my collection of Evangeline memorabilia, I happen to have a press release about the film, in a news article published in the Santa Cruz Evening News, on January 3, 1929.

Here is the content in the press release:

SANTA CRUZ, CA-  Twoenty-four members of the Edwin Carewe unit of United Artists Pictures arrived in Santa Cruz this morning (January 3), at 6:45 o'clock on a special rain from Los Angeles. They were stopping t the Hotel St. Gerge and intend to stay in this city today and tomorrow to work in the Big Basin and at the Minnehaha Falls in Blackburn gulch.  This evening, six more of the film company, including Miss Dolores Del Rio, will arrive.

The play to be produced with be Longfellow's "Evangeline".  Exterior scenes, the forest primeval in the Big Basin and love scenes at Minnehaha Falls will be shot.  The company plans to leave for Carmel on Saturday where an Arcadian villae has been erected on Point Lobos.  (Maine Writer's note- I suspec the reporter did not understand the set was to be an "Acadian Village" as in Grand Pre, the village where the epic poem begins, as in the nararative, "forest primeval".)

Miss Del Rio will have the feminine lead as Evangeline. She will be supported by an all star cast including Roland Drew as Gabriel, one of the masculine leads; Donald Reed as Batiste, as the other masculine lead; Alec Francis as Father Felician; James Marcus, Paul McAllister, George Marion and Bobby Mack.

The (silent) picture (movie) is being personally directed by Edwin Carewe.  Santa Cruz area is the firts port of call for the filming of the picture.

The film company plans to spend three weeks in Caramel in filming the Arcadian (aka "Acadian") atmosphere before taking up the story of the travel to Louisiana which will be made elsewhere. During the filming of the Acadian deportation scenes, the company plans to employ several hundred people for many days.

"Evangeline" will take four months to film and is planned for one of the United Artiss big hits for the 1929, season.  

Let's Write about our human spiritual minds improving mental health

 Connections Between Spirituality and Mental Health

Echo essay by Arianna Huffington published in TIME
Today, there are between 10,000 and 20,000 mental health apps.

In the U.S. alone, there are 1.2 million mental health providers. 

And Mental Health Awareness Month began 75 years ago. 

It’s safe to say, we’ve never been more aware of mental health. And yet, some fear that as awareness of mental health has gone up, the state of our mental health has gone down.

A 2023, study found that one out of every two people in the world will develop a mental health disorder in their lifetime. The situation with young people is even worse. “The youth mental health crisis is very real,” Dr. Harold Koplewicz, founding President and Medical Director of the Child Mind Institute, tells me. “The most common disorders of childhood and adolescence are not infectious diseases but mental health disorders. Every 30 seconds a child or adolescent with suicidal ideation or an attempt comes to an ER.”

These are particularly challenging times: Natural disasters are intensifying, chronic diseases continue to climb, and AI (artificial intelligence) is driving fear and anxiety about all aspects of life. 

People are afraid they will lose their jobs to AI, that their kids will be negatively impacted by AI, and that AI’s constantly accelerating development will evolve beyond human control.

But beyond the circumstances of the times we’re living in lies a more complicated existential crisis.

As the French priest and philosopher Teilhard de Chardin once said, “we are spiritual beings having a human experience.” When we give up on the spiritual part of human nature, we also give up on a supportive framework which can help us handle the anxieties of this historic moment of disruption.

Many answer this need for spirituality through organized religion, but as Columbia psychology professor Lisa Miller explains, there are many ways for people to embrace their spirituality. “The moments of intense spiritual awareness were biologically identical whether or not they were explicitly religious, physiologically the same whether the experience occurred in a house of worship or on a forest hike in the ‘cathedral of nature,’” she writes. “Every single one of us has a spiritual part of the brain that we can engage anywhere, at any time.”

The exact practices we engage in that lead to spiritual states of mystery, awe, grace, and wonder doesn’t matter. What does matter is that we don’t amputate them from our lives.

The famed psychologist Abraham Maslow placed self-actualization at the top of his hierarchy of needs—above physiological needs, safety, and belonging. 

But, in the last years of his life, he realized that self-actualization did not fully encompass what it means to be human and added “transcendence” to the top of the pyramid.

As Maslow put it, “The spiritual life is part of the human essence. It is a defining characteristic of human nature, without which human nature is not fully human.” It’s this drive for spirituality that takes us beyond self-centeredness and allows us to resist despair and meaninglessness. This ability to find meaning in our struggles has helped humans navigate times of stress, turmoil, and crisis throughout history—and it is now validated by the latest science.

“When it comes to finding ways to help people deal with issues surrounding birth and death, morality and meaning, grief and loss, it would be strange if thousands of years of religious thought didn’t have something to offer,” writes David DeSteno, author of How God Works: The Science Behind the Benefits of Religion.

Spirituality can help us not just weather times of crisis but even emerge stronger than before. A 2024, study on frontline healthcare workers in Poland during the pandemic found that higher levels of spirituality were connected to positive psychological change as the result of struggling with life challenges, known as post-traumatic growth.

According to Andrew Newberg, a neuroscientist at Thomas Jefferson University, the focused attention which occurs during spiritual practices like meditation and prayer can increase frontal lobe function, which governs executive control, and down-regulates the limbic system, which is linked to fear and the fight-or-flight response. “When it comes to broader aspects of health, the improvements in brain function associated with spiritual practices that lead to reduced stress and anxiety ultimately can lead to benefits in physical health as well,” Newberg says.

“The practice of religion, as opposed to its theological underpinnings, offers an impressive, time-tested array of psychological technologies that augment our biology,” writes DeSteno. “To ignore that body of knowledge is to slow the progress of science itself and limit its potential benefit to humanity.”

He describes religion first as working similar to how a vaccine works, “boosting the body’s and the mind’s resilience so that they can better confront whatever health challenges come their way.” And second, he uses the metaphor of medicine, healing the body and mind when sickness does hit. He cites a Mayo Clinic review of hundreds of studies in which a clear pattern emerged: “people who regularly took part in religious activities were objectively healthier.”

Even more evidence has been provided by Miller through her work on MRI scans. “The high-spiritual brain was healthier and more robust than the low-spiritual brain,” she writes. 

“For spiritually aware people across faith traditions, the brain appeared able to protect itself from the long-standing neurological structures of depression.”

In what Miller calls our “achieving awareness,” we’re focused on organizing our lives, thinking about what we want and how to get it. This is how we build careers and get things done. But a life solely defined by achieving is an unbalanced life. In our spiritual or “awakened awareness,” our perception expands. We see ourselves not just as individual achievers but as connected to others. We seek and experience meaning and purpose. This is really the distinction between Maslow’s self-actualization and self-transcendence.

In today’s culture, many see therapy as the only answer to the mental and emotional struggles of modern life.

As psychiatrist Dr. Samantha Boardman writes: “I am not anti-therapy. I am anti-therapy culture. I believe therapy works best when it is targeted and purposeful.” She is echoed by Dr. Richard Friedman, a psychiatrist at Weill Cornell Medicine, who wrote that “excessive self-focus… can increase your anxiety, especially when it substitutes for tangible actions.” Excessive self-focus is exactly the sort of thing that can be mitigated in spiritual experiences connecting to something larger than ourselves.

The everyday behaviors Boardman cites that improve our mental well-being include practicing spirituality, spending time in nature, volunteering, and helping others.

A spiritual element, and an emphasis on helping others, have proven essential to the success of Alcoholics Anonymous. In co-founder Bill Wilson’s book, Alcoholics Anonymous, published in 1939, he wrote that “deep down in every man, woman, and child, is the fundamental idea of God. It may be obscured by calamity, by pomp, by worship of other things, but in some form or other it is there.”

Today, many people are hungry for a sense of spirituality. While religious affiliation has been dropping for decades, the spiritual impulse hasn’t. A recent U.S. Gallup poll found that 82% consider themselves religious, spiritual, or both.

People have had valid reasons for leaving organized religion, but when we reject our innate predisposition for spirituality along with that, we deny ourselves the full, expansive possibilities of our humanity—as well as the tools to navigate the labyrinths of our lives.

Donald Trump and maga Republicans big ugly tax cuts for the rich are causing at least a dozen hospital closures

Echo report by Alan Condon, published in Becker's Hospital Review:

(Maine Writer opinion:  Although some of the hospitals in this report were operating on the edge of bankruptcy for a long time, the budget projections caused by cuts to Medicaid accelerated the inevitable.  The big problem is, some of these hospitals could have endured for a while, but the fiscal projections, given the reality of the reimbursement cuts, hastened their closure decisions.)

A growing number of health systems across the U.S. are making the difficult decision to close hospitals, driven by unsustainable financial pressures, declining patient volumes and widespread reimbursement challenges.

Below are 12 health systems that have closed or announced plans to close hospitals this year, with some pivoting to outpatient care, others consolidating services and many citing the economic realities that make traditional acute care models increasingly unviable:

1. St. Luke’s Des Peres Hospital in St. Louis closed Aug. 1. The hospital cited low patient volumes and mounting financial challenges that make it unsustainable to continue operating St. Luke’s as an acute care facility. St. Luke’s Medical Group practices in the Des Peres medical office buildings will remain open.

2. Rockford, Ill.-based Javon Bea Hospital-Rockton closed after Mercyhealth filed a “temporary suspension of services” with the state, a spokesperson for the health system confirmed to Becker’s. The hospital building closed at 6 a.m. on July 1, according to NBC affiliate WREX.com. The physician clinic adjacent to the hospital campus will remain open.

3. Heritage Valley Health System closed Heritage Valley Kennedy Hospital in Kennedy Township, Pa., on June 30, citing declining patient volumes and reduced reimbursement rates. The health system acquired the hospital in 2019. Following the closure, emergency care, outpatient surgery, and diagnostic services were redirected to the health system’s two other hospital locations in Sewickley and Beaver, Pa.

4. Waterville, Maine-based Northern Light Inland Hospital closed on May 27, marking the end of operations for the facility that has been gradually winding down since the closure was announced earlier this year. Northern Light Health’s decision to close the hospital was made due to “immense pressure of higher operational costs, unsustainably low reimbursement rates and a tight labor market,” the health system said in a news release shared with Becker’s.

5. Moulton, Ala.-based Lawrence Medical Center, an affiliate of Huntsville Hospital Health System, permanently closed its emergency department on May 23. The 98-bed hospital stopped providing inpatient services earlier this year and had been operating as a freestanding emergency department. The closure is part of a strategic shift to convert the hospital into an outpatient-only facility. The move comes ahead of a 40-year lease agreement that will give Huntsville Hospital Health full operational and financial control of Lawrence Medical Center. The longtime affiliates have operated financially independently until now.

6. Upland, Pa.-based Crozer Health wound down operations and closed its two remaining hospitals and other care facilities. The health system, which was owned and operated by Los Angeles-based Prospect Medical Systems, closed Crozer-Chester Medical Center in Upland on May 2. Taylor Hospital in Ridley Park, Pa., closed April 26. Nearly 2,700 employees were laid off as a result of the closures.

7. Mid Coast Medical Center Trinity (Texas) closed April 25. El Campo, Texas-based Mid Coast Health System, which operated the hospital, pointed to “significant financial challenges experienced by hundreds of rural hospitals” that have been made worse by “delays in establishing Medicare and Medicaid billing with commercial health insurance” for the closure,

8. Flint, Mich.-based Insight Health System closed Insight Hospital and Medical Center Trumbull and Hillside Rehabilitation Hospital — both in Warren, Ohio — in late March. The health system cited ongoing bankruptcy and financial disruptions from former owner Dallas-based Steward Health Care. Insight has stated its intention to reopen the hospitals, though no specific timeline has been announced.

9. Ascension St. Elizabeth in Chicago closed Feb. 17 before Ontario, Calif.-based Prime Healthcare’s acquisition of the facility and eight other Ascension hospitals in Illinois. St. Louis-based Ascension’s application to close the 40-bed hospital and transfer services to St. Mary of Nazareth Hospital in Chicago was approved in January by the Illinois Health Facilities and Services Review Board. Prime is working with the community and other stakeholders to explore future uses for the hospital, a spokesperson for the health system told Becker’s.

10. New York City-based Mount Sinai’s Beth Israel closed on April 9. Beth Israel had already closed inpatient services and closed its emergency department as the last step in the hospital’s comprehensive closure plan, which began in February. Mount Sinai said it was spending between about $500,000 a day to maintain operations at the hospital and has lost over $1 billion over the last 10 years. Mount Sinai opened an expanded urgent care center two blocks away from Beth Israel following the closure.

11. Irving, Texas-based Christus Health shuttered Christus Santa Rosa Hospital-Medical Center in San Antonio on April 25. Christus Santa Rosa Hospital-Westover Hills opened a tower in the spring and replaced all inpatient beds occupied at Christus Santa Rosa Hospital.

12. Orlando (Fla.) Health shuttered Rockledge Hospital on April 22. Orlando Health acquired the 298-bed facility from Dallas-based Steward Health Care in October 2024 for $439 million. In late February, the health system shared plans to close the hospital due to “years of neglect” ❓❗😞😠that left the facility unable to meet its patient care standards.

Let's write about how we can help to change the world!

As a proud member of the Rotary club of Portland Maine, I am often asked to lead the weekly meeting' opening "thought for the day". This shared meditation moment is presented after the members stand to recite the Pledge of Alliegience. 

A recent message I delivered in my meditation was to compare the wonderful inspirational message in motivaional speaker Admiral William McRaven's "Ten wasy to change the world", with the Rotary Internaational's tenets about how the Rotarians apply his principles in the Rotarian "Four Way Test".

Admiral William McRaven who over saw the 2011 Navy Seal Ossama Bin Laden operation, is a military leader and a popular motivational speaker. Thankfully, he share the content in some of his speeches, especially when he provides us with a summary of th e ten principles to help change the world.

If any of us have heard his speech on line, you know it is worth listening too again.

I thought how his 10 principles match up with our Rotary four way test and reflect on why we are proud to be Rotarians.

First, his good advice is to begin the day with an accomplishment, even a small one and suggests “Set a positive tone for the day, begin by making your bed!”.

2. Find someone to help you….do not try to do everything alone, teamwork is essential. This principle is reflective in Rotarian five avenues of service.

3. Respect everyone- treat all individuals with dignity and consideration …as in "The four way test 'build better friendships'”.

4. Know that life isn’t fair, be prepared for unfairness and adversity.

5. Don’t be afraid to fail, learn from mistakes and keep moving forward

6. Tale calculated risks, don’t be afraid to pus boundaries and try new things.

7. Face down bullies= confront challenges and those who try to hod you back.

8 Step up when times are toughest, be resilient and preserver through difficult situations – reminds us of our humanitarian relief projects and international service, like in the Dominican Republic with our hearing, clean water and prosthetic hands aid.

9. Give people hope, inspire others and offer support especially when they are struggling, to use a quote from Pope Leo XIV, “hope is a motivator, it does not disappoint”.

10 Never, ever give up, maintain unwavering determination and commitment to your goals.

These ten principles are a great way to help us jump start our new Rotary year! We can apply Admiral McCraven’s principles to our Rotary mission of giving Service Above Self.😇