The Golden Gazette

             This past Friday night, I visited my grandmother at her assisted living facility. My grandma, dad, aunt, cousin, my cousin’s two dogs, and I all sat spaced out outside with masks on, enjoying each other’s company. My grandmother is diabetic, so it’s not uncommon for my dad or aunt to ask a nurse or medtech from her facility to view my grandmother’s blood sugar readings from the past week or month. However, when the medtech came outside to give the paper of readings to my father, I noticed her mask was below her nose, and it kept sliding down her face as she spoke. “Joan’s sugar was a little high this week but it’s because…”. The mask slid down. I had a visibly puzzled face, and was internally questioning whether she’d pull it up or not. Luckily she did, but seconds later after saying “you would be able to bring her sugar free snacks for the holidays”, the mask was down once again.  Off of this situation, I made an immediate and ...

  In the past I used to listen to many “The American Life” podcasts; I think they are fascinating! The podcast I listened to this week was titled “Everyone’s a Critic”, and spoke about differing perspectives on issues as important as the coronavirus, down to seemingly trivial matters such as the movie Cats . This specific episode for lack of a better word consisted of 4 very  different parts labeled as “acts”. For this blog, I’d like to share my thoughts on the first act of the episode. The prologue, or first part of the episode, related directly to the title. It was an interview between Ira Glass, an American Life host, and author Michael Shulman about the topic of Amazon reviews, specifically on Shulman’s latest book. Rather than focus on the majority of positive reviews on his book, Shulman confessed to diving deeply into the black hole that is the world of negative reviews. The over ⅔ of positive 4 and 5 star reviews were appreciated by Michael, but the 1 and 2 star review...

  Post-Breakfast Group Photo - Day 3 of the DECA State Conference March 7, 2020 While this picture may seem like just a random picture of a group of my friends, it means so much more.  Let me set the scene, we had just had breakfast at an adorable little bakery in downtown Detroit, and were on our way to the people mover. It was DECA weekend 2020, the weekend of March 7th. All of us were dressed in our business attire, ready to anxiously wait in the TCF center conference hall to see what awards we would possibly win. While extremely nervous, this breakfast was a short period of time that we could all relax amongst one of the most anxious days of our lives.  The significance of this picture to me is that this was the “last hoorah” before COVID-19 hit and everything quickly shut down. All of the DECA competitors were shocked upon hearing that we couldn’t even shake our judges hand due to this mysterious disease that we had heard so much yet so little about. This felt like w...