In memoir, United Hospital nurse reflects on experiences in COVID ICU

April 27, 2022 by

The cover photo for Amanda V. Peterson’s memoir was taken by Dr. Avi Nahum, who treated COVID patients at Regions Hospital.

After accepting a post in United Hospital’s COVID intensive care unit in March 2020, Amanda V. Peterson began writing as a form of what she calls “paper therapy.” Two years later, Peterson is a published author, and her memoir, “Everybody Just Breathe,” sold out its first press run in just three weeks.

The book, published by Beaver’s Pond Press in St. Paul, is a candid, emotionally charged reflection on Peterson’s experience as a nurse and mother during the global pandemic. Its subtitle is something of a warning: “A COVID Nurse Memoir of Stamina and Swear Words.”

“ICU nursing kind of brings swear words to begin with, but I counted it up and my COVID-to-Jesus-to-F-bomb ratio was pretty solid,” Peterson laughed.

“It’s a year in the life of me trying to survive, of everyone trying to survive,” she added. “All day long I was telling my patients, ‘Just breathe, that’s your one job,’ because no one could. Then it became my own mantra, my own way to escape.”

Peterson, a member of the Minnesota Nurses Association, lives in Hudson, Wis., with her husband and two children. She has worked as a registered nurse since 2006, and in the ICU at St. Paul’s United Hospital for the last 14 years.

When United created a stand-alone COVID ICU in the spring of 2020, Peterson was among those who volunteered to work inside. For a full year, she saw only COVID-19 patients, and after a brief respite in 2021, Peterson was back in the COVID ICU when it reopened to handle the Delta wave last fall.

For Peterson “it wasn’t even a question” as to whether she would volunteer to work in the COVID ward.

“This was everything we had trained for,” she said. “You knew this was going to be a pivotal moment in everyone’s career, and I couldn’t sit that out. I wanted to be able to tell my kids that their mom stepped up.”

Peterson did not initially intend to write a book about her experiences – she calls herself an author “by accident” – but began typing her thoughts into a Word document and, sometimes, posting on social media after the pandemic began.

“I wrote a lot on social media about trying to educate the public, urging everybody to bond together and explaining what we were going through in the hospital,” Peterson said. “And I also wrote at home to kind of document what I was going through, almost trying to get it out of me so I could absorb more.”

Every January, Peterson makes a bound photo album for her family of highlights from the previous year, and last year she decided to do the same with her writing, collecting it in a 75-page file. Peterson sent the file to two local publishers and asked if they could bind it together as a keepsake.

Amanda V. Peterson

“Within two weeks both had written back and said they wanted the rest of this story,” Peterson said. “I picked the one that was going to let me keep my swear words.”

The book was scheduled to print last fall, but when the Delta wave hit, Peterson decided to keep writing. It finally published March 28, and a second press run is already in the works.

Reader reaction, she said, has been overwhelmingly positive, with nurses across the country reaching out with their responses to the book. For Peterson, it’s been a form of validation.

“It’s been like, ‘This is how I felt, but does anyone else feel this way?’” Peterson said. “And the response has been, ‘Hell yes, we felt that way!’”

Just as the writing process was therapeutic for her, Peterson hopes the book can be therapeutic for readers as well. She worked with a mental health professional to compile a list of discussion prompts, included at the end of “Everybody Just Breathe.”

“We as nurses had to just ‘do’ for so long that you couldn’t emotionally pass through it because you had to keep going,” Peterson said. “Normally, ICU nurses are adept at having a crappy shift, going home and letting it go. We compartmentalize for a living.

“But the problem with COVID was that it was everywhere. Everybody else is living it too. It’s all over the news. There’s a fear factor. We don’t know what we’re dealing with. So people don’t want to hear about your bad day because they’re coping like you’re trying to cope. You couldn’t vent it out. You couldn’t let it go.”

Peterson continues writing online at thisnursemom.com, where you can also buy a copy of “Everybody Just Breathe.”

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Friends’ labor history series looks back on ‘World in Turmoil’

April 24, 2017 by

May is labor history month, and for the last 18 years, the Friends of the St. Paul Public Library have marked the occasion with a series of labor-related programs in the city’s libraries and union halls.

The award-winning “Untold Stories” series will continue this May, with an appropriately severe theme for the dawn of the Trump era: “A World in Turmoil: 1917-2017.” All programs are free and open to the public.

• Workers’ Memorial Event, April 26, 7 p.m., St. Paul Labor Center, 353 W. 7th St. Panelists will explore workplace safety issues in advance of the national commemoration, held April 28. They include labor historian John Sielaff; workers’ comp attorney Mike Scully; and Phil Qualy, director of the UTU Minnesota Legislative Board.

• David Noble Lecture with Roderick Ferguson, May 2, 7 p.m., Cowles Auditorium, 301 19th Ave. S., Minneapolis. Presented by the University of Minnesota Department of American Studies, the annual lecture honors a groundbreaking professor in the field whose work offers fresh perspectives on our history and culture. Ferguson, a faculty member at the University of Illinois, will present “The Bookshop of Black Queer Diaspora.”

• 1917 – A Look Back, May 3, 7 p.m., Rice Street Library, 1011 Rice St. Panelists will travel back in time to 1917 for a look at politics and labor, from the nonpartisan league and the women’s suffrage movement to the Twin Cities streetcar strike.

• Nativism and Resistance – Then and Now, May 9, 7 p.m., East Side Freedom Library, 1105 Greenbrier St. Freedom Library co-director Peter Rachleff will discuss how business and political leaders promoted nativism in World War I-era Minnesota as a means to squelch the labor movement and its farmer allies, followed by a conversation about the re-emergence of anti-immigrant fears today.

• “Racism in our Hometown,” May 15, 7 p.m., ESFL, 1105 Greenbrier St. Presented by the APWU Solidarity Kids Theater, this multi-media puppet show introduces the family of Arthur and Edith Lee, who moved into an all-white neighborhood in 1931. Arthur’s union coworkers at the Minneapolis Post Office, most of whom were white, protected his family when police failed to stop racist mobs trying to force him from his home.

• 100 Years at the Library, May 16, 7 p.m., St. Anthony Park Library, 2245 Como Ave. Speakers will describe the St. Paul Public Library as it appeared 100 years ago, from one of four Carnegie libraries in the city celebrating a centennial.

• Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and Maids, May 16, 6 p.m., Rondo Community Outreach Library, 461 N. Dale St. Professors William Jones, Yuichiro Onishi and James Robinson will paint a portrait of the early history of the Brotherhood, from the participation of A. Philip Randolph to the Brotherhood’s presence in St. Paul.

• Payne Avenue Walking Tour and Library Celebration, May 21, 10:30 a.m., Arlington Hills Community Center, 1200 Payne Ave. Rachleff will lead a tour of the East Side artery, ending the walk at another library celebrating its centennial. Space is limited; reservations are required at sppl.org/storyfair.

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As local preemption debate heats up, new book charts CA city’s progressive renewal

March 1, 2017 by

978-080709426-6Mayoral elections are on the horizon in both Minneapolis and St. Paul. Corporate lobbyists at the Minnesota Capitol are taking aim at local ordinances expanding access to earned sick and safe time.

The timing, it seems, couldn’t be better for author Steve Early’s book reading and discussion at 7 p.m. March 7 at the East Side Freedom Library. The labor rep-turned-journalist’s latest book, “Refinery Town,” traces a progressive revival afoot in Richmond, Calif., an industrial city in the Bay Area long dominated politically by its largest employer, the Chevron Corporation.

The book charts the course activists took, beginning more than a decade ago, to combat the deindustrialization, poverty, crime and public corruption plaguing Richmond in the late 20th century by electing municipal representatives who have since passed a string of progressive reforms, from a higher minimum wage to a nationally heralded approach to community policing.

In the forward to “Refinery Town,” Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders argues that Richmond’s success “reflects the lessons of grassroots organizing elsewhere,” and Early’s latest book “offers ideas and inspiration for making change where it counts the most – among friends, neighbors, and fellow community members.”

We asked Early what lessons Richmond’s progressive renewal might offer for activists in Minnesota and what to expect at the book event March 7. His answers have been edited for length.

UA: Why did you decide to write about the progressive turnaround in Richmond?

SE: “I retired (from the CWA) in 2007 and started doing a series of labor-related books. Five years ago I moved to Richmond from Boston, and that’s when I first got invested in the Richmond Progressive Alliance, which is the subject of the book. I got invested as a rank-and-file member of the RPA, and as it attracted more attention because of the unusual trajectory from a company town to a widely hailed progressive city, I decided it was going to be a good subject for a book.”

UA: The list of progressive policies coming out of Richmond City Hall is impressive. Is it replicable?

SE: “In some ways the agenda of people thinking about running for local office in Minneapolis and St. Paul seems to be very similar: trying to raise the minimum wage, raising labor standards, making housing more affordable, trying to make the police accountable and trying to provide greater environmental protections to the extent any municipality can impact the problem of global warming.

“They might not be the big-picture issues that motivated you to go to Bernie Sanders’ rallies or to join the resistance to Trump… It isn’t going to begin to change electoral politics as much as we need, but it is one way to do that incrementally, to start locally, to build a bottom-up base for a broader – hopefully nationwide – progressive movement.”

UA: What lessons does Richmond’s progressive success story offer for the rest of us?

SE: “To be successful here in Richmond, progressives really had to set aside some of the differences they had. People here have been willing to coalesce and campaign under a common banner. That’s paid off. And you have to be patient and persistent in pursuing your goals. You can’t expect to accomplish them overnight. Also, don’t just pop up every two years and run candidates. The RPA functions year round, it’s a membership organization that people pay dues to, and it’s constantly engaging in issue-based organizing. That’s not the usual model for political parties in this country.

“And the key part is RPA candidates are corporate free. They refuse corporate donations, just like Bernie.”

UA: In Minnesota, Republican lawmakers are pushing a bill to restrict local governments’ power to act on issues like sick time and minimum wage. Have you seen similar pushback in California or around the country?

SE: “This is very definitely part of a wider pattern to curb public policy initiatives at the city level, where governments have become more progressive. But this is happening not just as a conflict between progressives or Democrats at the city level and Republicans at the state level. In New York, progressives on the New York City Council adopted a modest measure to tax plastic bag use, trying to wean people away from an environmentally destructive practice, and this was blocked by a Democratic governor.”

UA: What can people expect at the event March 7?

“I try to make these events not just about telling tall tales about a city in California, but exchanging ideas and strategizing jointly with people who are similarly engaged in progressive local politics and community organizing.”

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Talking more than weather, ZeVan’s memoir recalls a career ‘among the giants’

April 8, 2016 by

81pezcc85ULBarry ZeVan – “the weatherman” to television viewers in Minnesota and across the country – has written a memoir that looks back on his career in broadcasting and show business, and he’s donating a share of proceeds from the book to two union charities.

The 78-year-old ZeVan self-published “My Life Among the Giants” earlier this year after a writing process that took 11 months. The book runs 284 pages long, includes 32 bonus pages of photos and is available for purchase now on Amazon.com.

The memoir recounts ZeVan’s many run-ins with celebrity actors, artists and politicians over the course of his career – relationships that stemmed mostly, he said, from “being in the right place at the right time.”

“I got to meet ambassadors and presidents and kings and queens and everything else,” he said. “Being in show business and broadcasting, you meet everyone eventually.”

ZeVan’s friend Jerry Stiller, the legendary actor and comedian, encouraged him to collect his stories in a book. “Some people have said my life should be a movie,” ZeVan said. “The problem is it would be a 17-hour movie.”

Locally, ZeVan is best known for his work delivering TV weather forecasts on KSTP and, later, KARE. His broadcasts on KSTP drew a 51-percent share of the Twin Cities audience in 1974, higher local ratings than anywhere else in the country, he says.

ZeVan also did the weather for TV stations in Detroit and Washington D.C., where he struck up friendships with high-profile ABC news anchors and reporters. Ted Koppel was his neighbor, ZeVan says, and Peter Jennings “was like a brother to me.”

Sam Donaldson wrote a review of ZeVan’s memoir that appears on the back of the book. “How can Barry ZeVan know so many famous people?” Donaldson asks. “Beats me, but he does and the stories he tells about them make fascinating reading.”

But ZeVan, who continues to work as a documentary producer and narrator, has done more than deliver weather forecasts over the course of his career.

He got his start in radio at the age of 5 doing spots for KDKA in Pittsburgh, and two years later – before the rest of the country had TV stations – ZeVan was acting on a New York TV station. As a high-schooler, he acted in “Mr. Peepers” and danced on the Philadelphia-based “Teen Club,” featuring Dick Clark as its announcer.

ZeVan signed his first union card at 16. In fact, he joined three unions – the Screen Actors Guild, the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists and Actors Equity Association – in the span of a month.

“It meant I got more professional work,” ZeVan said. “If you’re not a member of those unions, you don’t get professional work – or professional pay.”

Not only is ZeVan a longtime union member, he’s a longtime union activist as well.

He serves as a vice president of SAG-AFTRA’s Twin Cities local and on the advisory board of the Minnesota State Retiree Council, AFL-CIO. Last summer he used his acting skills in an advocacy role, addressing a Democratic National Committee meeting on retiree issues in the character of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Barry ZeVan gave a speech while in character as his boyhood idol, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, at a DNC meeting in Minneapolis last year.

Barry ZeVan gave a speech while in character as his boyhood idol, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, at a DNC meeting in Minneapolis last year.

“We need unions today more than we ever did,” ZeVan said.

That’s why he’s donating 20 percent of proceeds from “My Life Among the Giants” to two union-sponsored charities, the SAG-AFTRA Foundation and The Actors Fund. Both help workers in the industry who are struggling to make ends meet.

“I’ve been there,” said ZeVan, who recalls picking up shifts as a taxi driver when work was scarce, just to make an extra $10 a week. “I know how it hurts to be struggling. It’s no fun.

“And thank God for that union pension. That helps a lot of us in the business keep bread on the table every month.”

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