Sue McBean🇺🇦⛵️💚🌱✍️📸
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organicbotanic.bsky.social
Sue McBean🇺🇦⛵️💚🌱✍️📸
@organicbotanic.bsky.social
Health academic, #IDSky, sailor⛵, photographer, botanist🌿, writer. Memoir, poetry, children’s stories. AI, public health, education, climate, UCU, films

N Ireland 🇪🇺 Avoid🦠Covid.

Photographs mine unless credited

X: @organicbotanic Blue Sky 3/9/23
Pinned
Honoured to be in this #poetry collection (p.14):

Thoughts from the other side of the Mid Atlantic Rift

Written on #Rathlin Island on a #Sailing boat. Grateful to @chaossectionpoetry.bsky.social for the call, curation & publication. Means so much to me to support #US #Protest #Politics #Metaphor
Reposted by Sue McBean🇺🇦⛵️💚🌱✍️📸
Huge thanks to Melissa at Collaborature for the chance to guest-judge the November contest. Judging poetry is never easy, but The Carpenter at St. Ignatius by Chiwenite Onyekwelu stood out to me: collaborature.blogspot.com/2025/11/the-...

collaborature.blogspot.com/2025/11/meet...
November Contest Winning Entry
Collaborature poetry and fiction journal, contest, November, winning entry, Chiwenite Onyekwelu
collaborature.blogspot.com
December 9, 2025 at 8:55 PM
Reposted by Sue McBean🇺🇦⛵️💚🌱✍️📸
BREAKING: The Lib Dems 10-minute rule bill to rejoin the customs union has just passed!

After a 100-100 tie the deputy speaker followed convention and cast the deciding vote in favour.

It’s unlikely to get government time so probably won't progress - but indicates strength of feeling on this issue
December 9, 2025 at 4:33 PM
Reposted by Sue McBean🇺🇦⛵️💚🌱✍️📸
Critical incidents have been declared at several hospitals. www.itv.com/news/central...
www.itv.com
December 9, 2025 at 3:01 PM
Reposted by Sue McBean🇺🇦⛵️💚🌱✍️📸
Stock photo purveyors of the world: Please update the medical masks in your photos to N95s. It’s been 5+ years and baggy blue surgicals are *so* 2020. #COVID is airborne so you don’t want your mask to have gaps.
Mask Mandate Returns At New Jersey Hospitals.

Respiratory virus season has prompted mask mandates in New Jersey: Hackensack Meridian Health (17 hospitals) and RWJBarnabas Health (14 hospitals) now require masks for visitors as of Dec. 1.

Source: archive.md/h4MBj
December 5, 2025 at 1:10 AM
Reposted by Sue McBean🇺🇦⛵️💚🌱✍️📸
A school study shows shared classroom time and poor air quality drive virus transmission more than close contact.

Prolonged exposure in poorly ventilated spaces is the main risk factor, suggesting ventilation improvements are key.

#SARSCoV2 #COVID #flu
#LongCOVID

nature.com/articles/s41...
The relative contribution of close-proximity contacts, shared classroom exposure and indoor air quality to respiratory virus transmission in schools - Nature Communications
The relative importance of close-proximity interactions, shared space and air quality to the transmission of respiratory viruses is not well understood. Here, the authors investigate this question by ...
nature.com
December 5, 2025 at 4:50 PM
Reposted by Sue McBean🇺🇦⛵️💚🌱✍️📸
A woman I know and her boyfriend booked a travel to Vienna. The day before taking a bus to Barcelona to take a plane to Vienna, he started with flu symptoms, diarrhea, coughing, aches, and with 39C (102F) fever they took the bus. A day later, both had high fever, in a bnb apartment in Vienna.
December 9, 2025 at 7:44 AM
Reposted by Sue McBean🇺🇦⛵️💚🌱✍️📸
An excellent early article by independent US journalists on the Koch network. Climate change/COVID two sides of the same coin. www.exposedbycmd.org/2021/12/22/h...
How The Koch Network Hijacked The War On Covid - EXPOSEDbyCMD
As Omicron surges, a shadowy institute filled with fringe doctors appears to be part of big business’ two-year strategy to legitimize attacks on pandemic interventions.
www.exposedbycmd.org
December 8, 2025 at 10:36 AM
Reposted by Sue McBean🇺🇦⛵️💚🌱✍️📸
December 9, 2025 at 12:07 PM
Reposted by Sue McBean🇺🇦⛵️💚🌱✍️📸
Thanks so much for frankness and telling #Covid like it is @zackpolanski.bsky.social 🙏
December 7, 2025 at 12:02 PM
Reposted by Sue McBean🇺🇦⛵️💚🌱✍️📸
For the longest time my daughter couldn’t get out of bed, let alone outside.
She was isolated for most of her teens. From 12pm
@longcovidkids.bsky.social has a @biggive.bsky.social #ChristmasChallenge to raise funds to bring hope & improve experiences for children suffering.

🙏 consider supporting
December 2, 2025 at 9:47 AM
Reposted by Sue McBean🇺🇦⛵️💚🌱✍️📸
This week’s #TheWinter10 - with lots of repeats from previous weeks:
Common Field Speedwell, Red Deadnettle, Common Ragwort, Petty Spurge, Smooth Sowthistle, Burnet Saxifrage, Shepherd’s Purse, Yarrow, Groundsel, Daisy
#WildflowerHour
December 7, 2025 at 7:05 PM
Reposted by Sue McBean🇺🇦⛵️💚🌱✍️📸
It’s Sunday & it’s 8pm, so it must be time for #wildflowerhour! Please share your pics of the wild & naturalised blooms you’ve spotted from across Britain & Ireland in the last week. It’s been pretty chilly and wet so well done if you managed to spot #thewinter10! 😀
Well, these pics for #WildflowerHour were taken on frosty Friday - not been outside since!!
Wild weather has been a chilly, wet, windy challenge. Yes, I am a tender perennial 😇
Hope everyone’s well & warm 🌱
@wildflowerhour.bsky.social
@bsbibotany.bsky.social
December 7, 2025 at 8:00 PM
Reposted by Sue McBean🇺🇦⛵️💚🌱✍️📸
Green Alkanet flowering under the garden hedge #wildflowerhour
December 7, 2025 at 8:08 PM
Reposted by Sue McBean🇺🇦⛵️💚🌱✍️📸
White Dead-nettle still flowering along rural lanes, Leicestershire. #wildflowerhour
December 7, 2025 at 8:07 PM
Reposted by Sue McBean🇺🇦⛵️💚🌱✍️📸
On our walk yesterday, a cheery Potentilla indica and its strawberry-like fruit.
#WildflowerHour
December 7, 2025 at 8:06 PM
Reposted by Sue McBean🇺🇦⛵️💚🌱✍️📸
No #thewinter10 this week, but 7 mostly bedraggled flowers in N. Wilts. for #wildflowerhour: Trailing bellflower, Primrose, Mexican Fleebane, Winter Heliotrope, Welsh Poppy, Wood Avens & White Deadnettle. @bsbibotany.bsky.social
@wildflowerhour.bsky.social
December 7, 2025 at 8:04 PM
Reposted by Sue McBean🇺🇦⛵️💚🌱✍️📸
Galinsoga quadriradiata, a tatty as well as Shaggy Soldier as a #PavementPlant in #Cambridge in a spot where I've not seen it before.
#WildFlowerHour
December 7, 2025 at 8:03 PM
Reposted by Sue McBean🇺🇦⛵️💚🌱✍️📸
Window now open to apply for a BSBI grant for 2026!
We offer grants for short #WildFlowerID courses (our online course #Identiplant & courses from external providers), and for Plant Study & Research.
Find out which grant is right for you: bsbi.org/learn/grants
December 4, 2025 at 11:23 AM
Reposted by Sue McBean🇺🇦⛵️💚🌱✍️📸
A #HolidayRobin to brighten up the timelines and to wish you all a good weekend. 📷 🪶

#Birds #Photography #UKWildlife #ArtAdventCalendar
#EastCoastKin #Nature
December 6, 2025 at 1:03 PM
Reposted by Sue McBean🇺🇦⛵️💚🌱✍️📸
Repost because I forgot to ALT in my excitement 😩"Found this in the mail the other day and it made my day/week. From
@theora666.bsky.social
. So fun and creative! What a delight to find something lovely among the boring/spammy regular mail. My first card this season. I'm so excited!"
December 6, 2025 at 10:41 PM
Reposted by Sue McBean🇺🇦⛵️💚🌱✍️📸
Sometimes, to fight the system, one must make temporary peace with its distribution channels. "Record of Dissent" on sale here: a.co/d/6VS5ZgR

Reviews would be helpful for visibility too! #protestpoetry #trump #dissent

thetruthabouttigers.com/2025/12/07/t...
’Tis the Season to Resist: Record of Dissent, $4.99
If anyone’s interested, the poetry collection I edited, Record of Dissent: Poems of Protest in an Authoritarian Age, is on sale on Amazon for the at-cost price of $4.99. I’m not wild about sen…
thetruthabouttigers.com
December 7, 2025 at 6:18 PM
Reposted by Sue McBean🇺🇦⛵️💚🌱✍️📸
Caerphilly school shuts as 'flu-like' illness hits 250 pupils and staff
Caerphilly school shuts as 'flu-like' illness hits 250 pupils and staff
The school says it will shut for a short "firebreak" period to allow a deep clean.
www.bbc.com
December 6, 2025 at 5:50 PM
Reposted by Sue McBean🇺🇦⛵️💚🌱✍️📸
Reposted by Sue McBean🇺🇦⛵️💚🌱✍️📸
I’ve teared up during races before out of gratitude that my legs were working.

Today it was out of gratitude that there is still beauty around us, and there are so many people who are fighting and are already laying the groundwork to rebuild after the Trump era.

Keep fighting, fam.
December 6, 2025 at 5:02 PM
Reposted by Sue McBean🇺🇦⛵️💚🌱✍️📸
There was a 5K race to raise funds for pediatric cancer research at the UofA today.

As I ran, I got overwhelmed by the fact that all around me were the things that I value and that MAGA is trying to destroy.

Education. Community. The Arts. Research. Appreciation for all people.
December 6, 2025 at 4:55 PM