Airport Blogging: A cool video, a cool book

I've been away, at a symposium in honor of Grad School Mentor. I'm blogging in my head about that, and grad school, and mentoring and scholarship--I'll aim to find time to actually type said thoughts later in the week.

For now, as I have a few extra hours before my plane leaves, some recommendations:

• the Dance your PhD videos on youtube, especially the study of dancers, communication and touch. I heard about the Dance your PhD contest on NPR. I've always loved assignments that ask students to translate work from one genre to another, or to use wordless formats to convey a project they will complete with words.
  
• American Band, by Kristen Laine, a narrative about a year in the life of a high school band in northern Indiana. I've never met Kristen, but she's married to one of my college classmates and I talked to her on the phone once for 40 minutes when I called, trying to reach my classmate for a piece I was writing for our class newsletter. She told me then about the research she had done for this book (which involved moving her family to Indiana for a year so that she could immerse herself in a high school band's classes, rehearsals, and culture). This book is lovely: great writing, fascinating exploration of coming-of-age themes (looking at the role of religion in some kids' lives, looking at the drive for independence, looking at the role of teachers and mentors--typical themes, maybe, but handled with such care and detail that you can really see how complicated it is to be a teenager). It's smart, readable, and fascinating. Kristen was nice enough to send me a copy of the book (inscribed!); I googled it and discovered she had won the Winship/PEN New England Award last year. I wrote to congratulate her and she offered to send me the book. So she's a Really Nice Person as well as a Really Good Writer. Looking for holiday break reading? or a gift for someone? Check out American Band. (I'm also plotting ways to use parts of the book in class: it's got great examples of using narrative, observational sources--good stuff for teaching research skills and researched writing.)
• Links on the American Band website led me to this foundation which provides musical instruments for schools. If I can't find a good German outlet to make a donation to this year, I'll give here; Kristin was nice enough to give me her book, and it's reminded me how important music can be for kids. So I'm going to be making an extra donation to a musical organization this year.
  
• On our Hanukkah tzedakah night, we'll choose between the Heifer Foundation, Maria's children (which does wonderful art programs for Russian orphans), or the Bebor school in Nigeria (which provides stable education for kids in an unstable area, through a localized effort started by one of our friends). (Shannon's strollerderby post reminded me about this.) What charities do you like to support?
  

Doing Good

Three good things one might do today, if one were able and inclined:

• become an organ donor, if you're not already. Shareyourlife.org has links to organ donation information in the United States, and you can get more information about organ donation at http://www.organdonor.gov/myths_and_facts.htm
• donate blood, if you can. (the one time I tried to donate blood, I fainted, and woke up to a Red Cross worker looming over my bed saying "don't ever try this again." Not very inspiring.) But Annika is using a lot of blood today, and lots of other people need it, too.
• help fight Proposition 8 in California. The No on 8 campaign is fighting to keep marriage rights for all Californians, straight and gay. The opposition forces (largely funded by the Mormon church) are outpacing our side on fundraising 3:2, and the proposition seems to be gaining in the polls. I just contributed via Lesbian Dad's excellent fundraising post. If you're in a position to help protect marriage rights for all of us, please do. If this proposition passes in California, it's likely to lead rollbacks in marriage rights elsewhere. One of the reasons Politica and I moved here to Germany is the better legal protections afforded our family. I'm still hoping for a legal wedding in our lifetime--and a legal wedding sure would protect Curious Girl more strongly, too. Please help if you can.

And thanks for reading my last post: readers help make writers, and knowing you're reading is encouraging.

A Popsicle

Things are looking up, and I am wordlessly grateful for all the comments on the previous post.

Quiet Friend is better today--recognizing more people, more alert, even sat up to eat a popsicle. It may be that the combination of not enough platelets and too much fluid in the body caused weirdness in the brain.

So things are looking up, today. And Mississippi Friend, ever a believer in the kindness of strangers, will be touched by your comments. Thanks for helping us wait this out--today, hope seems more possible.

Love Needed

Quiet Friend (for whom Politica recently organized the room renovation) is in hospital tonight, having been medevaced home from Mississippi last night. He and Mississippi Friend had gone back to their hometown for Christmas, and what had appeared to be some discomfort from a pre-bone-marrow-transplant-spinal-tap blossomed into increasingly painful and complex symptoms. So they ended up on a private plane back to the university hospital here.

Things don't look good--although QF has had some moments of lucidity, and may somehow find the strength to fight back whatever is going wrong, whatever that may be, as doctors have not yet figured out what might actually be causing the current crop of problems. But still, they don't look good, and Mississipi Friend is awash in hopes and feelings. Quiet Friend has been through a lot, medically, in the past seven years, and between the cancers he seems to be prone to, and the cumulative effects of chemo over time, he may simply be worn out. For all he's gone through, this is the first I've seen him looking truly sick. Tired before, fiercely scarred after the brain tumor, but never sick. He looks far away sick, like he's just withdrawn into his body which is busy trying to do what it can.

Politica spent the night at the hospital with him, so that Mississippi Friend could get some sleep. Friends took Curious Girl to a New Year's Eve party so I could slip down to the hospital and sit with them a while. Mississippi Friend is a wonderful friend, and there were a small group of us at the hospital, and more people are coming in from out of town tomorrow. Politica is planning to go a-sabbaticalling on Friday, to somewhere far away for a while. She's wrung out, not sure how she can leave someone who's close as family to us, knowing she has to be doing things with other people in a faraway place next Monday. Mississippi Friend is tired, full of emotions, fears, hopes, grief. She still gets indignant about the fact that the universe just isn't fair. It should be fair, she thinks. It's supposed to be. But it's so clearly not.

We could use some more love in the universe. So could you toss some out for us? I'll collect it for my friends, and share it with all of you.

Barn Raising

Politica spent the day at Mississippi Friend's house, working with a group of contractors and friends clearing out two of the bedrooms in the Victorian house Mississippi Friend and Quiet Friend bought, intending to restore it so they could grow old together in the city. Shortly afterwards, Quiet Friend got diagnosed with an incredibly rare cancer, and time that might have been spent on the house got redirected to doctors, hospitals, and sickbeds. Quiet Friend is now incredibly-rare-cancer free, but has recently been diagnosed with another cancer, one which isn't responding to treatment. So he needs a bone marrow transplant. MF wants to ask her parents and in-laws to come help take care of her/the house/their child/QF during the transplant and recovery, but there's no place in the house for them to sleep, those other bedrooms never having been restored. So Politica is organizing a group of people willing to donate time and/or money to get at least one other bedroom habitable. It's a good thing, and it is at least a thing we can do in the face of the medical problems plaguing them.

We have another friend with a different and rare cancer who'll be having another kind of surgery next week. This surgery should set him up well for a multiple organ transplant sometime next year. I've blogged before about Annika and Moreena's experiences and the importance of talking about organ donation. Now I have two other friends waiting for transplants. I missed the work party today because I was taking care of Curious Girl. The least I can do is remind anyone reading this that organ donation saves lives. Shareyourlife.org has links to organ donation information in the United States, and you can get more information about organ donation at http://www.organdonor.gov/myths_and_facts.htm. The National Marrow Donor Program has information about bone marrow donation in the US. I hope more people I know never need the services here--but too many people I know are already waiting.

Giving Life

I live in a state that makes it easy to be an organ donor: we can indicate our donation preferences on our drivers liscenses. Last year, according to the state's online donation registration form, 170 people became donors (and 1000 donated tissue)--but there are 700 people in my state waiting for an organ. 700.

Before I moved here, I thought organ donation was a good thing, but I had never really talked to my family about it. Now that I've had the privilege of reading Moreena's stories about Annika and her family, organ donation seems all the more pressing. Anyone reading an Annika story with a modicum of attention will be charmed and enthralled by the irrepressible spirit and will of a most delightful girl, a girl who had the bad luck to be born with a serious liver disease, a girl whose every day makes marvel at the resilience of children in the face of serious medical problems. Moreena's stories, too, connect to other liver kids, some of whom are now quite big and relatively healthy, others of whom, sadly, didn't make it. (Moreena's post about the death of Annika's PICU neighbor and the pulling of so many emotions around a very sick child is one of the most moving posts I've ever read.)

I'm not shy about having opinions here, but I rarely post direct advice for readers. But Moreena's post about charity asked her readers to write about organ donation, and so I'm asking you, too, to learn about organ donation, and then sign up. Tell your families. I hope that we all live long and healthy lives. But I also know that many lives are made possible by organ donation. Keep that possibility in your mind. Organ donation gives life.

Shareyourlife.org has links to organ donation information in the United States, and you can get more information about organ donation at http://www.organdonor.gov/myths_and_facts.htm