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Souvenir by Meera Atkinson
June 26, 2016 / mascara / 0 Comments
Meera Atkinson is a Sydney-based writer, poet and scholar. Her work has appeared in over sixty publications, including Best Australian Stories 2007, Best Australian Poems 2010, and Griffith REVIEW. Meera has a PhD from the Writing and Society Research Centre at Western Sydney University and is co-editor of Traumatic Affect (2013), an international volume of academic essays exploring the nexus of trauma and affect.
It was a late winter night; the kind that feels like spring will never come. Around the corner from the choked neon artery of Kings Cross a decrepit Persian cat with knotted fur sat at an upstairs window of an Art Deco building. The cat leapt off the ledge, sauntered into the kitchen, and rubbed its arthritic hips against the frail stockinged legs of an old woman who was finishing a meal of fried fish fingers.
Peggy stood and rinsed the plate under the cold tap before laying it face down on the aluminium sink. The flat was dark, except for a bald bulb illuminating the kitchen. It was tidy enough, but nothing was clean; a film of dust and grime covered the surfaces and the air had a musty scent to it, as if the windows had long been closed. Everything gave off Peggy's peculiar smell: cheap perfume and stale make-up mixed with that strange salty stench of aged, unwashed skin.
Over the years, the cat had scratched the stuffing out of the arms of the sofa, and the floral carpet had worn threadbare in heavy-trafficked patches. The furnishings dated from the wake of WWII when an eighteen-year-old Peggy first moved in with her husband, a returned soldier. Oh, the Cross had seemed so grand then, with life ahead of them, all promise and plans. But gradually the neighbourhood changed around the distinguished old building, morphing into a sleek and moneyed enclave of stock brokers and publicists, its glamorous heyday and bohemian history alive only in the memory of the few left to recall it. The sleaze, sex, suburban punters and die-hard junkies persisted like dwindling life forms circling a dying star.
Peggy made her way to the bedroom and sat at her dresser. She powered a pale mask onto her face, and the particles made craters of her pores. When she considered herself in the mirror, under the stark glow of the overhead light, Peggy still saw herself as she was at forty, the decade of her prime. Back then she was the owner of a prosperous photographic business, respected by the community, welcomed everywhere, finally happy and free. Her husband, an immature young man when they married, had grown into a brutish bore far removed from the swaggering digger she waited for, and on her fortieth birthday he was five years in his grave. Satisfied, Peggy applied her lipstick and, standing, smoothed down her skirt. With some effort she tottered down the hall. A camera rested on a side table in the hallway, obscuring a framed photograph of a girl with a strawberry blonde ponytail. Peggy picked up the camera, hung it around her neck on its leather strap, and closed the door behind her leaving the cat staring dully at the door.
Emerging from the wrought iron gates at the entrance of the building, Peggy adjusted her wig, a silvery blonde bouffant, as the gate swung closed behind her. Once a glamorous faux-hairdo, its original glory had given way to gravity; the wig had lost its shape, and it was lacklustre and matted. Peggy was one of those elderly women whose years are impossible to guess. She had a kindly face that had once been pretty and her still generous lips were coloured with wonky red lipstick. She wore only black and white: a no longer so white shirt, a knee length black skirt that had seen better days, and sensible yet stylish black shoes that were worn down at the heels and scuffed at the toe. She was coatless and seemed impervious to the cold. The huge old Polaroid camera hung like a relic around her neck, pulling her already burdened shoulders down further.
Jasmine, a transgender working girl,leant against the wall in her usual spot, smiling warmly at Peggy as she stepped out into the night.
"Evening Peg", hollered Jasmine in a singsong tone.
"Good evening", replied Peggy with a sweet smile as she passed by.
Jasmine called out.
"You have a good night hey! "
Peggy reached the glittering main drag and weaved through the crowds with a fragile sure-footedness and an intimate knowledge of the curves and crannies of the streets that eluded the tourists and revellers. She disappeared into restaurant after restaurant and promptly appeared again. She made her way down The Strip, venturing off into the laneways that shot off it. She walked in and out of doors, in and out, until at last the corns and calluses on her feet complained. The largest, on her big toe, was threatening to become ulcerous, and the pain of it forced her to return to the flat without a penny earned.
The following Saturday night Peggy went through the same ritual once again: first the fish fingers, then the powdering of her face, the drawing of dubious eyebrows, the rubbing in of out of date anti-biotic cream on the corns, the careful covering the area with bandage and stockings, the dressing in linty black and sullied white, before setting out again, her collapsing wig set high on her head, her lips in the trademark red. She turned into the first backstreet and entered a small, upmarket restaurant. A clean-cut waiter spied her and moved forward in a swift motion stopping her in her tracks: "You know I can't let you in. Owners orders."
Peggy's eyes flicked up to meet his briefly before she turned and left, the camera hanging heavy around her neck. She seemed unaffected, oblivious to the humiliation; a small, half-mad smile set on her face, her eyes deep set and distant as if focussed on another dimension. She walked further down the street, entering the colourful doorway of a busy Thai restaurant. At first she seemed to go unnoticed but as she approached a young corporate looking couple eating spring rolls at a cosy corner table a tiny Asian woman materialised and spoke in clipped accented English: "No, you go please. Customer don't like." Peggy turned and left, once again seeming to float above her expulsion.
She continued down The Strip, and when she reached the intersection of William Street she crossed over into Victoria Road, walking with the famous Coke sign blinking behind and above her. Peggy passed by a noisy café with a NO HAWKERS sign before entering the loud, bustling restaurant beside it. The staff didn't seem to mind; the owner, Johann, a benevolent old German, considered her a local institution and didn't have the heart to refuse her.
Years ago, when Peggy had first wandered into the place, it had wider aisles, fewer tables, and it was not peopled by garish groups of well-to-do trend-makers swilling wine. Then a good night at The Bavarian meant a few immigrants and truck drivers, and perhaps a table of scruffy young people wearing torn jeans, eating cheap in the homely room. It was not the kind of restaurant she serviced back in those days, and she only bothered with it on slow nights, and not so much to work as to take the opportunity for a coffee break and a chat with Johann. Over the decades, the classy restaurants that were once her stock in trade had disappeared one by one and business at The Bavarian had picked up, attracting the professional class who flocked to eat its hearty fare, streaming from renovated Paddington terraces and slick Surry Hills penthouses and the new high rise luxury apartment buildings of Darlinghurst to enjoy the novelty of working class fare: homemade sausage, stew, schnitzel, hash browns and slaw. Paradoxically, it was the only place left in the Cross that welcomed her.
A waiter in lederhosen stood impatiently beside a table, order pad in hand, while a young couple deliberated over dessert. Finally, the young woman flicked her red hair, closed the menu and announced her decision. The waiter moved off. Peggy snaked along a clear passage surveying the diners. Her melancholic-mad eyes settled on a table where two middle-aged women ate their meals and talked soberly. One of the women saw Peggy's approach from the corner of her eye and, visibly annoyed at the intended interruption, held up a hand before Peggy could speak: "No photos thank you."
Peggy crossed to another table where an older couple considered their menus. The woman looked up at Peggy and quickly turned back to the menu. Peggy addressed the man: "Would you like a souvenir photo, Sir?" He forced a quick smile and avoided eye contact: "Not tonight thank you." The young woman with red hair watched as Peggy made her way toward them. She leaned forward and whispered to her boyfriend. "There's an old woman coming. I think she's going to ask us to have our photo taken. It's so sad. Everyone's turning her down." Her voice trailed off as Peggy appeared smiling her inexplicable smile. "Would you like a souvenir photo?" asked Peggy, cheerily. The young woman looked up at her and noticed, with a sharp stab of pity, that this inspired hope in Peggy's tired blue eyes. Peggy spoke again. "A souvenir photo to remember the occasion?" The young woman glanced at her boyfriend awkwardly and looked around the room to see if anyone was watching. "Okay", she said, in a small embarrassed voice.
Peggy sprang into action and positioned the camera. She viewed the pose in the frame: the young woman's stiff, uncomfortable smile, the young man's exaggerated, indulgent grin, his shot glance toward the young woman, humouring his girl. The flash went off. The Polaroid developed up from the white plastic like magic. Peggy waved it in the air and blew on it, then handed it to the young woman who stared at the photo. The paper was damaged with a crease at the corner, and it had a bad colour, making her and her boyfriend look sallow and dark under the eyes. The young woman feigned satisfaction. "Thank you. How much?", she asked. "Twenty dollars please", replied Peggy.
The young man's eyes widened, and he pulled a face in the direction of his girlfriend as he reached for his wallet, plucked out a twenty, and gave it to Peggy. As Peggy moved off his outraged whisper could be heard by the dinners at the next table, but not by Peggy, whose hearing wasn't what it used to be: "Twenty bucks?!"
Peggy moved to a table where a bespectacled man was in intense debate with two female companions. "Would you like a souvenir photo?" Peggy asked the clever looking gentleman. They turned to acknowledge her with indifference. The man nodded no and resumed his discussion.
Her feet ached and, with the mere twenty dollars in hand, Peggy walked back to her flat. When she opened the door, the cat meowed and rubbed around her throbbing, varicosed legs. Peggy put the camera down on the side table and kicked off her shoes. Her corn had rubbed red again under the bandage. She picked up the cat and sat down on the sofa, stroking its lustreless fur in the dark.
The next Saturday night Peggy ate her fish fingers, made her face up, and walked down The Strip, darting in and out of cafes and restaurants, the crooked, beatific smile fixed on her face. When she reached the The Bavarian, she was once again tolerated by the staff and shooed away by the diners. Peggy was just about to leave when she noticed a rowdy table where a group of friends were held to ransom by their life-of-the-party pal, seemingly at the tail end of an animated story. Peggy made her way over and waited for him to finish before speaking. "Would you like a souvenir photo, something to remember the occasion?" A girl in the party promptly answered: "No, thank you." The storyteller, drunk and bloated, interjected. "Oh, come on!" He turned to Peggy: "Sure, we'll get a picture.""Dave!" protested the girl.
Peggy stood back with her camera. "Can you squeeze in together please?" She made a waving gesture. The group squeezed together. Peggy framed the pose: Dave smiled cheesily with his arms stretched around the women either side of him. One fellow held up his drink, a woman smiled into the camera sarcastically, and the girl who'd first said no turned to Dave with a why-are-you-letting-her-take-our-photo sneer. The flash went off. The Polaroid developed and Peggy passed it to Dave. The paper was not creased this time but there was still the bad colour and the top of Dave's head was cut off.
"Twenty dollars thank you", said Peggy, sweetly.
Dave pulled out a twenty and handed it to her and the group closed in to look at the photo. A roar of laughter erupted from the table as Peggy departed, which even her failing ears caught. A voice cut through the din.
"Hey, Dave's had a lobotomy."
"About time", said the girl who'd said no.
"Check out the look on Zoe's face", observed another.
On her way home Peggy's feet hurt so bad that she sat down to rest on the edge of the El Alamein fountain. She watched the street, staring blankly into the night, watching the ghosts of yesteryear. A car pulled up in front of her. Jasmine climbed out and walked toward Peggy in high heels. She sat down, crossed her long, muscular legs, and rummaged around in her purse for a cigarette. "Good thinking Peg. Time for a break." Jasmine lit the cigarette and exhaled with a dramatic sigh. "You live alone in that nice old building, don't you?" asked Jasmine. Peggy nodded. "No family?" Peggy nodded again. "I had a husband once but he died, a long time ago", said Peggy. "I had a daughter. She passed too". Jasmine sounded a small apologetic "oh". "It's not right for a child to die before a parent is it?" She looked briefly at Peg's profile, took another drag of her cigarette and blew the smoke out in a straight line in front of her. "You don't work these dirty streets unless you got a story eh? Ah well, they're cleaning it up so much there won't be anyone with stories left soon."
Peggy's mind drifted back to a time when going out to a restaurant on a Saturday night was special, when a woman would wear her finest dress and a man would wear his best suit and they would be greeted at the door by a bow-tied maitre'd and shown to an elegantly set table. And when Peggy approached them and offered to take a photograph almost everyone would jump at the chance to take a memento of good times home to show the family, a keepsake of happiness, to put in a frame on the mantel, or to give pride of place to in a photo album. Cheerful diners, in couples or groups, would pose, the women handsome with set-hair and pearls and the men slick and clean-shaven. Peggy spoke in a daze, as if talking to herself.
"It was wonderful then. People dressed up so nice for dinner. I took photos in every club and restaurant in the Cross. One Saturday night I took sixty photos!"
Peggy adjusted her wig, which was slipping, and continued.
"Back in those days everyone wanted a souvenir because the night was special, see. It's not like that any more."
"Nah", said Jasmine, butting her cigarette out, "it's all selfies and piss-ups these days, isn't it?"
Jasmine stood up with a sigh.
"Better get back to the salt mines", she said, laughing at her own joke.
Peggy stood and wavered slightly on her ulcerated foot. Jasmine grabbed Peggy's arm and together they crossed the road. "Good night", said Peggy, when they reached the other side, leaving Jasmine to take her position against the wall.
Peggy took the elevator up to the top floor and the cables creaked as the lift rose. She lay her camera down on the side table along with the $20. It wasn't much, but it all helped. Peggy switched on the radio, poured herself a port, and sat down on the faded reproduction Louis XIV chair in the dim living room. She sipped her drink and tapped a cigarette out the pack, humming along to a jazz standard, a song she'd loved when she was a girl. Tommy Dorsey came on next and Peggy rose unsteadily, sore corn and all, and began dancing, slowly, around the room, port in hand. When the song ended Peggy stopped and stood looking through the window at the skeletons of trees.
The following Saturday night Peggy left her building with the camera around her neck. As she set off she saw Jasmine bent down to a car window. Peggy walked up The Strip, past an arguing tattooed couple and the bikers who still loitered around their motorcycles. She played out the same routine, weathering a string of ejections before taking refuge in The Bavarian on Victoria Street. As she entered the familiar clamour, the waiter looked up at her with a tense grimace. A waitress passed with plates in hand and glanced at Peggy with a regretful twist to her smile. A man Peggy had never seen before stood behind the counter. The headwaiter approached her and spoke in a low, sympathetic tone.
"I'm very sorry. We've got a new owner. He has a policy."
Peggy stood with no perceptible response. He continued.
"You can't take photos here any more. I'm very sorry."
Peggy walked back down The Strip with throbbing feet. She rounded the corner into Potts Point, passing Jasmine's empty spot. She entered her building, took the lift up, opened her door, and placed her camera on the side table. She moved into the kitchen and poured her nightly shot of port. The cat rubbed against her shin and purred. Peggy took the drink into her bedroom, and when she switched the light on the room illumed, revealing her bed with its frilled, stained mauve bedspread and dusty lady porcelain boudoir lamps on the bedside tables.
Peggy took a seat at the dresser and put her drink down next to the scattered make-up. She removed her wig, placing it on a battered Styrofoam wig head, and opened a jar of cold cream, spreading it onto her face and removing it with tissues. She sat staring at her bare, wrinkled face in the mirror until the cat jumped up onto the dresser, weaving before her, all croaky chirrups, all love.


What are the basic principles of energy flow in an ecosystem?
Is it the two laws of thermodynamics and 10% law as well?
I would also point out that energy flow through the ecosystem is linear, it is not a cycle as in case of matter.
Matter flows from producers to consumers and decomposers, and then returns to producers again. However, energy flows only from producers to consumers and decomposers. Thus, there is a need in continuous income of energy from the sun.


Hi @kylepjohnson I am Pabitra, a senior undergraduate at IIIT Bhubaneswar, India. I would like to try my hands on Odia language to add into CLTK. However it seems @inishchith has already added the corpus and his PR cltk/cltk#606 is waiting to be merged in the cltk master. Would it be fine if I proceed by following up the issue cltk/cltk#595 and add the docs for Odia language?


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Sharps and Flats
Check out this article! https://www.salon.com/1997/05/30/sharps_26/
Michael Ullman
May 30, 1997 11:00PM (UTC)
Toward the end of his short life, Franz Schubert stated his artistic credo in a letter to his brother Ferdinand: "I shall never turn my inmost feeling to personal or political account. What I feel in my heart I give to the world and there is an end to it." By "the world," he first meant his friends, who tended to be accomplished amateur musicians. One of the most beautiful vocal quartets included on this new Arabesque disc is the heroic, and finally serene, "Gebet," or "Prayer," a 10-minute song that Schubert wrote in a single afternoon at the request of the Countess Esterhazy. The next night Schubert accompanied on piano as the Esterhazy family sang "Gebet." The piece is tactful as well as exquisitely lyrical: Each singer sings a solo passage, the men tending to stress their willingness to do battle for the Lord, and the women or the whole quartet stressing the peace and tranquillity that will result from being the deity's messenger even "in the quiet of home."
The vocal quartet was one of the most popular musical genres in Schubert's Germany, where they were sung at home and by various singing fraternities. Half of the pieces here are sacred, or at least prayerful, even if the deity involved is something as romantic as the "spirit of love" or "the Infinite One." No one but Schubert could have written the gracefully flowing melody of the beginning of "Geist der Liebe" (Spirit of Love), with its gentle evocation of the evening spreading over the fields. The spirit that "enthralls all things that tremble with life's pulse" -- Schubert renders the trembling with repeated chords and a suddenly agitated vocal line -- is eventually called upon to lead a youth to his love.
"Widerspruch" presents us with a common problem among romantics: the hopeless restlessness of a hero who exuberantly proclaims his yearning for eternity, particularly when he is stuck at home. (In the mountains, the singer feels small, overwhelmed by the majesty of the natural world.)
Michael Ullman is a jazz writer and lecturer in the music department of Tufts University.
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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Ought to You Purchase A Home At Auction?
Property auctions in Italy characterize a implausible alternative to pick up a home at a knockdown price. Proxy bids are frequent in auctions of excessive-finish items, equivalent to art gross sales (the place the proxy represents either a non-public bidder who doesn't need to be disclosed to the general public, or a museum bidding on a particular item for its assortment).
This article will clarify the fundamentals of residential property auctions so you'll be able to decide if this feature might be just right for you, whether or not you wish to reside within the property or simply invest in it to sell again.
Auctions may differ as to the value at which the item is sold, whether the primary (greatest) worth, the second value, the first distinctive worth or some other. If the property is a chief candidate for buy-to-let, consider using a London-based mostly auction house to get maximum exposure to a wider range of buyers. Such a deposit is most often used in auctions involving high-worth goods (similar to real estate ).
The more traditional Public Auction additionally has its advantages, bringing a conclusion to a sale beneath one roof at one given time, and with the right advertising and advertising, Bradleys attain buyers masking the entire of the South West region and thru Move With Us, our partners, the entire of the UK, giving the best protection of your property to patrons available in the market place at the moment.
Auctions can be a riskier technique to purchase a property than buying a property by an actual property agent, so it's necessary to be extremely effectively-educated concerning the course of and in regards to the properties you have an interest in bidding on. Foreclosed homes may be financially interesting, but there are various obstacles to consider before shopping for.


An impacted tooth simply means that it is "stuck" and cannot erupt into function. Patients frequently develop problems with impacted third molar (wisdom) teeth. These teeth get "stuck" in the back of the jaw and can develop painful infections among a host of other problems (see Impacted Wisdom Teeth). Because there is rarely a functional need for wisdom teeth, they are usually extracted if they develop problems. The maxillary cuspid (upper eyetooth) is the second most common tooth to become impacted. The cuspid tooth is a critical tooth in the dental arch and plays an important role in your "bite". The cuspid teeth are very strong biting teeth and have the longest roots of any human teeth. They are designed to be the first teeth that touch when your jaws close together so they guide the rest of the teeth into the proper bite.
The older the patient, the more likely an impacted eyetooth will not erupt by nature's forces alone even if the space is available for the tooth to fit in the dental arch. The American Association of Orthodontists recommends that a panorex screening x-ray, along with a dental examination, be performed on all dental patients at around the age of seven years to count the teeth and determine if there are problems with eruption of the adult teeth. It is important to determine whether all the adult teeth are present or are some adult teeth missing. Are there extra teeth present or unusual growths that are blocking the eruption of the eyetooth? Is there extreme crowding or too little space available causing an eruption problem with the eyetooth? This exam is usually performed by your general dentist or hygienist who will refer you to an orthodontist if a problem is identified. Treating such a problem may involve an orthodontist placing braces to open spaces to allow for proper eruption of the adult teeth. Treatment may also require referral to an oral surgeon for extraction of over-retained baby teeth and/or selected adult teeth that are blocking the eruption of the all-important eyeteeth. The oral surgeon will also need to remove any extra teeth (supernumerary teeth) or growths that are blocking eruption of any of the adult teeth. If the eruption path is cleared and the space is opened up by age 11-12, there is a good chance the impacted eyetooth will erupt with natures help alone. If the eyetooth is allowed to develop too much (age 13-14), the impacted eyetooth will not erupt by itself even with the space cleared for its eruption. If the patient is too old (over 40), there is a much higher chance the tooth will be fused in position. In these cases the tooth will not budge despite all the efforts of the orthodontist and oral surgeon to erupt it into place. Sadly, the only option at this point is to extract the impacted tooth and consider an alternate treatment to replace it in the dental arch (crown on a dental implant or a fixed bridge).
Shortly after surgery (1-14 days) the patient will return to the orthodontist. A rubber band will be attached to the chain to put a light eruptive pulling force on the impacted tooth. This will begin the process of moving the tooth into its proper place in the dental arch. This is a carefully controlled, slow process that may take up to a full year to complete. Remember, the goal is to erupt the impacted tooth and not to extract it! Once the tooth is moved into the arch in its final position, the gum around it will be evaluated to make sure it is sufficiently strong and healthy to last for a lifetime of chewing and tooth brushing. In some circumstances, especially those where the tooth had to be moved a long distance, there may be some minor Agum surgery required to add bulk to the gum tissue over the relocated tooth so it remains healthy during normal function. Your dentist or orthodontist will explain this situation to you if it applies to your specific situation.
The surgery to expose and bracket an impacted tooth is a very straightforward surgical procedure that is performed in the oral surgeons office. For most patients, it is performed with using laughing gas and local anesthesia. In selected cases it will be performed under IV sedation if the patient desires to be asleep, but this is generally not necessary for this procedure. The procedure is generally scheduled for 75 minutes if one tooth is being exposed and bracketed and 105 minutes if both sides require treatment. If the procedure only requires exposing the tooth with no bracketing, the time required will be shortened by about one half. These issues will be discussed in detail at your preoperative consultation with Dr. Hashemian. You can also refer to Preoperative Instructions under Surgical Instructions on this website for a review of any details.
You can expect a limited amount of bleeding from the surgical sites after surgery. Although there will be some discomfort after surgery at the surgical sites, most patients find Tylenol or Advil (if not allergic) to be more than adequate to manage any pain they may have. Within two to three days after surgery there is usually little need for any medication at all. There may be some swelling from holding the lip up to visualize the surgical site; it can be minimized by applying ice packs to the lip for the afternoon after surgery. Bruising is not a common finding at all after these cases. A soft, bland diet is recommended at first, but you may resume your normal diet as soon as you feel comfortable chewing. It is advised that you avoid sharp food items like crackers and chips as they will irritate the surgical site if they jab the wound during initial healing. Dr. Hashemian will see you seven to ten days after surgery to evaluate the healing process and make sure you are maintaining good oral hygiene. You should plan to see your orthodontist within 1-14 days to activate the eruption process by applying the proper rubber band to the chain on your tooth. As always Dr. Hashemian is available at the office or can be beeped after hours if any problems should arise after surgery. Simply call Dentofacial & Cosmetic Surgery Institute Spring Hill Office Phone Number 352-688-4556 in Spring Hill, Lecanto Office Phone Number 352-527-8000 in Lecanto, or Land O'Lakes Office Phone Number 813-922-1818 in Land O'Lakes if you have any questions.


I've written for print and online publications for 20 years, and my work has won awards from the Educational Advertising Awards, Pride of CASE V (Council for Advancement and Support of Education), Jesuit Advancement Administrators, Wisconsin Excellence in Journalism Competition and more.
I believe deadlines are sacred, and my speed and dependability mean that your projects stay on track or even finish ahead of schedule.
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I know that even a single typo can be a credibility buster, and I pride myself on clean copy. Thanks to my attention to detail, you'll spend less time editing and won't have to worry about embarrassing gaffes making it into print.
Education: I have deep knowledge of higher ed marketing, and I excel at discovering and telling compelling stories that drive student applications, boost yield, and engage alumni and donors. I've written for Marquette University, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Medical College of Wisconsin, Loyola University Chicago, University of Minnesota, University of Michigan, Michigan Tech University, Milwaukee School of Engineering, Lawrence University, Alverno College, Kalamazoo College, Waukesha County Technical College and Nativity Jesuit Academy, among others. I also covered education (primarily K-12 schools) as a newspaper beat reporter in three states.
Health care: During my six years as a senior writer/editor for Marquette University, I covered the health sciences beat and led the university's annual research publication. I've interviewed countless scientists, doctors and other health care professionals on complex subjects and know how to make those topics understandable and interesting for a lay audience. My freelance clients have included Children's Hospital of Wisconsin/Children's Research Institute, UW Health, Froedtert Health, Medical College of Wisconsin, Little Company of Mary Hospital Foundation, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee's School of Public Health and Marquette's College of Nursing. I've also interviewed health and nutrition experts for national parenting publications.
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