Nightingale on Her Lantern

This oil painting and collage of the song, “In the Garden” represents all those who are shining thier light in a dark time. Florence Nightingale, who pioneered nursing, was called, “the Lady with a Lamp”. This lantern is a painting of the exact lantern she carried leading the first professional nursing unit during the Crimean war. Nightingale also instituted sanitation in hospitals and in private houses across Britain, India, later catching on throughout the world. She was also a pioneer in the graphical representation of statistics. Making pamphlets that helped everyone understand how disease spread. As I remember this amazing woman I am reminded of all those women and men who are fighting for cures for disease and public sanitation, and in hospitals now. The song “In the Garden” describes the song author imagining spending time with Jesus the night before he was crucified. It reminds me of the working heroes today who face death every day so that others may live.