Ya Gotta Have Heart! Individuals and Organizations Who Make a Difference.

[Guest]

.

[Alaska Pack]

Just thought I'd post an inspirational story that I just heard about on our local NPR.  It shows that even a person working in a small town can do big things.

                                 The Alaska Sudan Medical Project

Jill Seaman, MD, and Sjoukje de Wit, RN, have worked with the Nuer since 1989 and 1993 respectively. They helped establish TB treatment in the West Upper Nile region of Sudan under the auspices of the non-government organization (NGO) Doctors Without Borders (Medecins Sans Frontiers, or MSF). MSF closed this program when security risks became overwhelming. The Nuer, however, could not escape. TB became one of their most lethal infectious diseases. They begged medical workers to return. Since no NGOs were willing to start treatment in such an unstable war zone, Ms. de Wit and Dr. Seaman with financial and moral support from their friends re-entered the area in July 2000.

Jill’s work was recognized by Time Magazine, when it profiled her as one of its 10 “Heroes of Medicine” in 1997.

Jill Seaman, MD was one of the 2009 MacArthur Fellows, just announced. Her fellowship was for Dr Seaman, 2009 MacArthur Fellow

    adapting the tools of 21st-century medicine to treat infectious diseases endemic to Southern Sudan….

    Jill Seaman is a physician committed to delivering and improving treatment for infectious diseases endemic to Old Fangak, Sudan one of the most remote, impoverished, and war-torn regions of the world….

    She spends the remaining portion of each year in Bethel, Alaska, providing health services to Yup’ik Eskimo communities.

http://www.alaskasudan.org/

http://www.alaskasudan.org/about_us/

http://www.alaskasudan.org/stories/jill.html

Bernice 

[Sengbe Pieh]

“Mom: A Celebration of Mothers from StoryCorps”

It’s mother’s day on Sunday. We pay tribute to mom’s everywhere with award-winning radio producer Dave Isay, editor of the new book, “Mom: A Celebration of Mothers from StoryCorps.” Isay is the founder of StoryCorps, one of the largest oral history projects in US history.

 
You can follow the link to Democracy Now and watch the entire 21:45 video uninterrupted.
I couldn't figure out how to embed that video here, apologies, so I have posted these 3 YouTube videos.
Also, the text for the story was more than 20,000 words so I had to post it in more than one message.
Includes a rush transcript so kindly forgive any minor errors

JUAN GONZALEZ: Sunday is mother’s day. To end today’s show, we pay tribute to moms everywhere with a celebration of mothers from StoryCorps. In 2003, award-winning radio producer Dave Isay created a national social history called StoryCorps. Every day people enter a recording booth on streets all over America and tell their story. Over the past seven years, more than 30,000 interviews have been recorded, making StoryCorps one of the largest oral history projects in U.S. history.

AMY GOODMAN: Dave Isay collected some of these conversations between parents and children, husbands, wives, siblings and friends to form the basis of a new book “Mom: A Celebration of Mothers from StoryCorps.” Dave Isay came to DEMOCRACY NOW! studios, he began by talking about StoryCorps and why he chose mothers as the subject of his latest collection of stories.

      DAVE ISAY: We’ve done about 30,000 interviews now with about 60,000 people. And you know we had- I came on a couple of years ago to talk about the first book which was called “Listening is an Act of Love” which was an overview of all of StoryCorps. And then we knew we were going to do a theme book, so what are we going to do? It was a no-brainer it was going to be Mom. In 30,000 interviews, moms have come up in 30,000 interviews. You know, it’s our first and our most profound bond. And we started culling into the material, and just seeing this poetry and beautiful stuff. There you go, so here’s Mom. But I do want to say this is several dozen stories of kids remembering their mothers or moms being interviewed, but for us, you know, each one of those 30,000 stories is equally valuable. We look at it as a sacred bond with participants in a very important experience in their lives. There are just some that have this kind of universal quality and this kind of poetry that make them appropriate to share with a larger audience and that’s what you get in this book.

      AMY GOODMAN: Why don’t we go right away to the first interview, to the Wrights.

      DAVE ISAY: Okay.

      AMY GOODMAN: Tell us about this one.

      DAVE ISAY: This is the first interview. It is an audio excerpt. As you know, all there are done in audio. It’s two people talking to each other in a booth.

      AMY GOODMAN: Describe the scene.

      DAVE ISAY: So, we have booths all over the country and you-

      AMY GOODMAN: The first one being-

      DAVE ISAY: The first one in Grand Central. Not there anymore.

      AMY GOODMAN: Grand Central Station.

      DAVE ISAY: Grand Central Station here in New York. They started charging us rent, so we moved. You know about that, right? So you bring- you make an appointment with anybody who you want to honor by listening to their story. It could be a friend, your mother, your bus driver–anyone who you want to honor–by having them talk about who they are and what they’ve learned in life. And you bring them into this booth, and the door shuts, and you’re in this kind of sacred space. The lights are low. And you sit across from the your grandma or your mom for forty minutes. There’s a facilitator, who works for StoryCoprs, sitting in the corner of this little booth and for forty minutes to look your mom in the eye and you talk and you listen. And people have very, very intense conversations in the booth. At the end of the interview, two CDs have been burned, one goes home with you, the other stays with us and goes to the Library of Congress, the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress. So, someday your great, great, great, great grandkids can get to know your mom through her voice and stories. So it’s about leaving a legacy. And reminding,you know, at its core it’s so much of what your work is about. It reminds us that every life matters, every life matters equally; and this act of interviewing a loved one tells people that they matter and they won’t be forgotten.

      AMY GOODMAN: So Nancy Wright, she’s fifty-three.

      DAVE ISAY: Yes.

      AMY GOODMAN: And her son, JD.

      DAVE ISAY: Yes, and they wanted- she wanted to remember her mom hwose name was Francis Guy Erickson. And this is just a little excerpt of their conversation.

      AMY GOODMAN: And JD’s nineteen.

      DAVE ISAY: JD’s nineteen, yes.

            JD WRIGHT: What was your relationship like with her?

            NANCY WRIGHT: We had an interesting time, especially in adolescence. We were pretty compatible up to that point and then I think we grated on each other’s nerves quite a bit. And our relationship went really downhill from there. She was critical of me and very judgment-laden, and finally, when I was about thirty, we were together and it was just a miserable weekend. I felt our relationship was awful. And I told her right before I left that I couldn’t deal with that kind of criticism anymore and it wasn’t helping me, and she said that that’s what mothers do. I said I didn’t need a mother anymore, I needed a friend; That if she wanted to continue to try and be my mother that way, that i didn’t want that, but to call me if she wanted to be my friend. She was very angry and upset. I kind of almost didn’t expect to hear from her because she could be a little stubborn. It’s kind of a family trait. I think about two weeks, though, after that conversation, I picked up the phone one day and a kind of small voice said on the other side, “Hi, this is your friend.” And it was. And we stayed friends until she died. With only occasional lapses in critical judgment. But, I think I had my lapses, too.


      AMY GOODMAN: That’s Nancy Wright talking to her son JD, who is nineteen, about her mom, Francis Guy Erickson.

      DAVE ISAY: You know, I’ve been- one of the great things about having a book is you get to go into a little bit more debt in stories than you do in radio. And radio, as you know, is so powerful also, because there’s nothing more powerful than the voice. But Nancy talks about her mom leaving these huge tips everywhere she went. She said that it was her mom felt it was our duty in life to kind of raise the social- the economic status of waiters and waitresses across the country, and when her mom died, they left a Francis Erickson memorial tip after her funeral of, you know, three times the size of the meal. And I’ve been on a book tour for a couple weeks and have cut back on my expenses a little bit so I can also leave these huge Francis Erickson tips, which is- really actually feels really good.

      AMY GOODMAN: What about the Conolly’s?

      DAVE ISAY: This is a story that is from the second section of Mom. The first section is called ‘Wisdom’ and it’s a dozen stories of wisdom of moms. The second section is ‘Devotion.’ And Jerry Johnson brought his mom Kerry Conolly to the booth. Kerry Conolly was eighty at the time. Jerry was in his fifties. Kerry had been a single mother bringing-up six kids in Detroit. She worked as a tray girl, pushing food trays to patients, at a hospital in Detroit. And her son just wanted to thank her. So this is an excerpt of their interview.

      AMY GOODMAN: And where was the StoryCorps booth where this was-?

      DAVE ISAY: It was somewhere in Detroit, probably downtown Detroit.

            JERRY JOHNSON: We always loved Christmas.

            KERRY CONOLLY: Yes.

            JERRY JOHNSON: And I cannot remember one Christmas that I didn’t feel like I was the luckiest kid in the world, even though now I realize, we hardly had anything in terms of money. How’d you hold that together?

            KERRY CONOLLY: Well you know, we got one sick day a month. And I was sick, I would still go to work. I was saving those days for Christmas. At Christmastime, then they would pay me for those days. And you know around the first of December the rich people, they would clear out their children’s toy chests and they would take these nice toys to the Salvation Army. I would go there and I would get me a huge box and I would go around and pick out nice toys and I would get that for a couple of dollars. And then I would use the other for fruit and for food. And so it seemed like we had a big Christmas. But I never did tell you I was Santa Claus because I said I cannot give no man credit for- [Laughter].

            JERRY JOHNSON: I know I speak for the rest of the kids who aren’t here in telling you how much we love you and how much we appreciate the sacrifice that you went through and the guidance and leadership that you were teaching us and I I think is helping us all be better parents.

            KERRY CONOLLY: You know, my whole heart was my kids. And the Lord blessed all of them. And I’m so grateful.


      AMY GOODMAN: Kerry Conolly and her son, Jerry Johnson. That’s from the section of your book, ‘Wisdom’ than ‘Devotion.’

      DAVE ISAY: I just want to say that Kerry, in the book, talks about how the happiest moment of her life was watching Jerry cross the stage at Washington University in St. Louis and get his M.D.. And he now works as a physician in Detroit and all of her kids are doing great, doing great stuff.

AMY GOODMAN: How did you choose to divide it into ‘Wisdom,’ ‘Devotion,’ and then ‘Enduring Love?’

DAVE ISAY: Again, these are 30,000 interviews culled-down to thirty-five interviews.

AMY GOODMAN: How did you do it?

DAVE ISAY: The facilitators who have this amazing job, their job is really to collect the wisdom of humanity, sit there and bear witness to these stories. Not only are they in the booth bearing witness and helping people, they’re also keeping a log of everything that’s said and they also make notations about what stories might be appropriate for radio, what stories might be appropriate for a book. So we probably pulled a couple thousand stores that had been marked appropriate for a book and transcribed them. There’s an editorial staff who kind of reads through them and puts them into different categories. And we decide which ones are going to be included in a book like this. When we read through our, you know, forty favorite stories, they just kind of naturally fell into these three piles and the chapters emerged.

AMY GOODMAN: Talk about ‘Enduring Love,’ Dave Isay.

DAVE ISAY: Sure, so these are another dozen stories of moms.....

[Sengbe Pieh]

“Mom: A Celebration of Mothers from StoryCorps” Part 2



      AMY GOODMAN: Talk about ‘Enduring Love,’ Dave Isay.

      DAVE ISAY: Sure, so these are another dozen stories of moms and- I think part of what you see from StoryCorps, what you learn from your show, is that the moms in this book are really a- someone described it as kind of a Noah’s Ark of this country. It’s just everybody and that’s what we try and do with StoryCorps. And you see whether- no matter where a Mom comes from, whether she has one kid or 15 kids, single mom, if she’s working or stay-at-home, that they all share this fierce devotion for their kids, and love. These are stories of moms in their- and often more difficult kind of stories about their devotion to their kids. And I think we’re going to listen to- just like moms are not- this is not a syrupy book. Some of these stories are funny and some of them are full of wisdom and some of them are tragic. And I think we’re going to listen to a story of tragedy. This is Myra Dean who came to StoryCorps to remember her son, Richard Damon Stark. He was nine years old when he died. He was sitting with a friend of his in Texas on a patch of grass watching the sunset when he was hit by a car.

            MYRA DEAN: People used to ask him what he wanted to be when he grew up and he used to tell people he either wanted to be a marine biologist or a garbage man. He wanted to be ten and he didn’t make it. A guy had been hot-rodding through our neighborhood, the car flipped over and it landed on Rich. All I can remember is they pulled the driver out and he kept saying, “Oh my God, what have I done? What have I done?” They put me in a police car and I just started screaming. The ambulance driver came to me at the hospital and said, “There was nothing we could do. He’s gone.” And I can remember having my back to the wall and I just slid down on my butt leaning against the wall. He said, “Ma’am, I’m not supposed to tell you this, but he was dead at the scene.” He’ll never know what that meant to me because one of the things that was the hardest for me was what if he was suffering and I wasn’t there for him, you know? And the worst part is when you realize you’re going to live because you just want to die. I thought I wouldn’t live ten minutes and I was astonished when I’d lived ten days and mortified when I’d lived ten months. Not even grateful yet when I had lived ten years. I was just mostly surprised. There was no one more astonished that I ‘d survived than myself. When you lose your child, it’s like someone has just amputated a huge chunk of your heart. The difference is, people can’t see the amputation. I miss him terribly. He was just a happy kid. It’s been a bittersweet thing that he died watching a sunset.


      AMY GOODMAN: Myra Dean remembering her son in Texas. These are painful, they’re beautiful, they’re- People have mixed feelings and that is expressed in all of this.

      DAVE ISAY: Yeah, and they’re authentic, you know? And that’s why, you know, we’re surrounded- as you explain on your show every day, by so much phoniness and so much spin, that when you hear people just talking from a heart and being real, it just cuts- it just cuts right through you. No one’s looking for fame when they’re coming to StoryCorps and I think that’s part of the power of this project. People are just coming to connect with another human being in an honest way.

      AMY GOODMAN: And, Dave Isay, you started the Griot Project.

      DAVE ISAY: Well, we have a number of projects as part of StoryCorps that are special initiatives. So we have the Griot initiative which is to record African-American stories across the country, which recently became the largest collection of
African-American voices ever gathered. Surpassing the incredible slave narratives that were done as part of the WPA in the 1930s. We have an initiative called Historias, which is now- which we launched about six months ago, recording Latino stories across the country. We have a 9/11 Project, we have a project about Alzheimer’s disease where families who have someone recently diagnosed with Alzheimer’s come and record that person and save their memories for posterity. And I think that’s- and you were asking me about another story to talk about and, you know, the last story in the book, in ‘Enduring Love’ is- I’ve been on book tour and I’ve gotten to meet so many people from the book. And I got to meet one of the people in this story. It’s a woman named Rebecca who took her mother, Carol Kirsch to StoryCoprps and Rebecca was about to have a baby. Carol had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s fairly recently, although the onset was very, very fast. They’re very close. Rebecca wanted to save the stories and the songs of her mom before her mom couldn’t do that anymore. When I saw Rebecca last week in San Francisco at a reading, she said that her mother was no longer able to speak. But in this interview, she was able to sing songs to the baby. As Rebecca says, “I think it would be great if you could just sing a lullaby for her, for the baby. For me and for her, and for future babies that aren’t here and aren’t twinkling in anyone’s eyes quite yet. Maybe it’s in just one of those lullabies.” And she does.

      AMY GOODMAN: If people want to get in touch to tell their stories, to interview someone they care about, how do they reach StoryCorps?

      DAVE ISAY: We have a website which is StoryCorps.org. And we’re still relatively small. We’re working to grow into a national institution that touches the lives of every American family. We’re not there yet, but we do have booths that travel the country. We have booths now in San Francisco and New York and Atlanta, so you can make a reservation and go there, but we have these mobile booths that are everywhere. So just come on our website and when we come to your town, just grab a spot and bring a loved one. I promise you won’t regret it. And I promise that when you bring someone to the booth, not only will it make them feel really good, and we hear from people all the time- and Amy, you know this, People say that those forty minutes of having this conversation are often among the forty most important minutes in their lives. When you bring some to the booth and have this conversation, you’re going to find out something, no matter how close you are to them, that you didn’t know before.

      AMY GOODMAN: You know...

[Sengbe Pieh]

“Mom: A Celebration of Mothers from StoryCorps” Part 3



      AMY GOODMAN: You know, I can’t think of a situation where this is needed more than on this whole debate around immigration. because anytime you can have a debate around people that are being called ‘aliens,’ someone you do not know, you’ve already set up the possibility that bad things can happen to them because you don’t know them. If you just meet people, if you hear people telling their own stories, speaking for themselves, there’s nothing more powerful.

      DAVE ISAY: I think that gets to really to the core of StoryCorps, which as I said, reminds us that every life matters. When you listen to these stories, no matter where they’re recorded, no matter who’s speaking- half of our interviews are held for people who might not have heard of us through public radio or through newspapers. So we’re working with immigrant rights groups or juvenile justice organizations or homeless organizations. When you hear a story, almost by definition it’s going to be someone very different from you, but you’re going to recognize a little bit of yourself in that person. And I think that recognizing that there is so much more as a country we share in common, we do really care about the same things and that everybody is- that every life matters. That there is so much commonality to find, is extremely important. Also, StoryCorps is very much a project about listening. We do spend some much time screaming at each other in this country that I think it’s important for us just once in awhile to keep our mouths shut and just listen to what other people have to say.

      AMY GOODMAN: Dave, could you read a little from Lourdes Villanueva? She’s forty-nine and she’s talking to her son Roger, Roger VIllanueva, Jr. He’s thirty. This is from the section ‘Devotion.’

      DAVE ISAY: Yeah, this is a story I know that the son brought his mom to the booth to honor her. She had been a migrant worker and her parents had been migrant workers. I know she talks about growing up raising him in a car as she was working in the farms. And then she really rode her kids to make sure they went to college and she ended up going through community college and then going through college and, I think, getting an advanced degree. This is just Roger speaking to his mom after she’s talking about the kind of pressure she put on the kids to have them go to school. “I don’t think anybody else loved us enough to give us that tough love, only the people that really love you look out for you and that’s why you pushed us. To this day I still think that had not been for you pushing me to go to college to get my education, I don’t think I would have made it. I can honestly tell you that. From the bottom of my heart, I am glad you did everything that you did. If I was to have the option to choose another mother, I would never choose anybody else but you. When I look for my partner I always say, ‘If my wife can be half the woman that my mother is, I’ll be Okay.’ I know I’ve never told you that, but that’s the way I feel.” And that was recorded in Florida.

      AMY GOODMAN: Let’s go to a clip of that right now. This is Lourdes, this is Roger’s mom.

            LOURDES VILLANUEVA: You pretty much grew up in the back of the pickup truck. I was picking crops. In my breaks, I had to change your diaper and do whatever needed to be done and continue on working. I always thought that you need to do what I didn’t do, which is finish your education first.

            ROGER VILLANUEVA: You always said that you were going to lead by example. I remember when you got your GED, you were in the fields. Instead of having lunch, you’d have your books and you’d be studying. After that, I remember that you said, you know, ’I’m going to community college at night.’ I mean, I was just so proud the day that you graduated.

            LOURDES VILLANUEVA: I had to hurry up and graduate before you guys did because I knew you were coming right behind me and-

            ROGER VILLANUEVA: Yeah, well, I really thought that was something special. If I was to have the choice of choosing another mother, I would never choose anybody else but you. And, when I look for my partner, I always said, ‘If my wife can be half the woman that my mother is, I would be okay.’ I know I never told you that, but that’s what I feel.


      AMY GOODMAN: Well, Dave, I think we will leave it there. Thanks so much for doing the work that you do. I look forward to the next conversation, the next book and the next tens of thousands of conversations that you make sure people get to hear each other, as you said in a previous book, listening is an act of love.

      DAVE ISAY: Thanks, Amy. It’s always a privilege to be here.


AMY GOODMAN: Dave Isay, the founder of StoryCorps. Happy mother’s day, all.

[Jill]

South Korean pastor tends an unwanted flock
In a country that prizes physical perfection, Pastor Lee Jong-rak, his eyes opened after caring for his own disabled son, has been taking in unwanted infants, who if not for his drop box would be left in the street.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-south-korea-orphans-20110620,0,2908922.story


'Dog Bless You' Campaign Brings Service Dogs to Injured War Vets
For every 5,000 'likes' on facebook, a veteran will get a dog.
http://www.ktla.com/news/landing/ktla-dog-bless-you-veterans,0,4696022.story


Japanese Elderly Offer to Take Over Fukushima Nuclear Cleanup
Older men argue they have less chance of developing radiation-induced cancer in their lifetimes
http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2011-05/japanese-pensioners-lobby-take-over-fukushima-nuclear-cleanup


Sent these to Florence a few days ago.  They are only a couple of the many many articles at takepart.com that have given me much pleasure and learning.
http://www.takepart.com/news/2011/06/22/fashionable-
http://www.takepart.com/news/2011/06/02/sandals-with-a-story-buy-this-strappy-shoe-and-send-ugandan-women-to-college0


There's a lot of kindness out there......

[Jill]

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-compton-student-20110703,0,6879063.story
I like stories like this.  A lot.  And I liked the part about the kid's parents being immigrants from the Ivory Coast.

I need stories every once in awhile about people being kind, about people being generous and selfless or heroic. I need them
because they make me want to emulate the people.  And I don't think there is any such thing as our having too many role models,
whatever their ages or cultural backgrounds.   I need stories like this as counterbalance for the too many other stories in the news,
everyday, that bring me down, that make me ache.

This kid, clearly, was "raised right."  I say good for him, good for all involved, good for all of us.

[Jill]

Sweet, (if super scary) a tiny bit sappy, hopeful, dear.  This isn’t related to anything Kiva in particular, but it’s a welcome antidote to all the news about debt ceilings, economic catastrophe, famine in Africa, wars-it seems like- everywhere, etc.

How Jaguars Center Changed A Little Boy's Life
(For me, the video was worth watching).

This story made me think of the line out of Tennessee Williams’ play, The Streetcar Named Desire, about “ the kindness of strangers.” When googling that phrase because I wanted to know the whole quote (“I have always depended on the kindness of strangers”), I came across the following link:

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/75/kindness-of-strangers
So far, I’ve only skimmed through the page at this link and glanced through the synopses of some of these NPR radio stories about that very thing, the kindness of strangers, that is, but some of the stories look kind of fun and possibly worth checking out and maybe listening to, later.  As always, your choice.

[Jill]

A nice story to continue the day with.  I especially liked the part about how the grateful mom, once she’d seen that her son was going to be ok, went up to the man who turned out to be the hero of the story and “spent 10 minutes hugging him, crying and thanking him for saving her son's life.”
(How could we not all relate.....?)


I’m highlighting this not so much because it’s one of those “feel good” kinds of stories we can’t ever have too many of to try to counterbalance the sadness and aching that fills so much of our world, but primarily, because I thought it worth emphasizing the counsel offered by the author of the article,


“…I would strongly encourage anyone who has not been trained in performing the Heimlich, CPR and other life-saving procedures to consider taking the small amount of time it requires to either become certified, or simply become familiar enough to be comfortable taking action in a similar emergency.”


Most of us, if we’re lucky, will never be confronted with a situation where we’d ever need to employ any of these life-saving techniques.  If we were, though, we’d sure be glad we’d taken the time to get prepared for it.  Truth be told, I need a brush-up course, myself.  I very much hope that I’ll follow through with making sure that I get one.

Performing the Heimlich Maneuver

Choking, Etc. for Cats and Dogs

[Jill]

I love stuff like this*.
http://dailynightly.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/12/20/9584376-little-dresses-bring-hope-and-friendship-to-malawi?google_editors_picks=true
http://www.littledressesforafrica.org/blog/


*The only part of it that I don’t love so much is that it has to be such a miraculously big deal for any little girl to get a new dress.  Or for any child to be given a present.  That’s the part that for me is really hard to take.  Still, there’s such sweetness, good heart and connection in this story that I want to try to focus on that, above all. 

[Jill]

Way, way too long, admittedly, but there’s some pretty interesting stuff here.  As always, it’s up to you whether you want to try to wade through the following to find it.


Early this morning, saw some little story about the actress, Jennifer Lopez, that I was only half-paying attention to until she started talking about how she and her husband had had a real health scare with their baby girl, which scare, parenthetically, had a happy ending.  The part that made me start paying more than half attention was when she spoke of how she and her husband had had access to the best health care in the world and how this terrifying time with their daughter caused her to think about all the mothers/parents in the world who might have just as terrifying times and scares about the health of their kids but who didn’t have anywhere near that kind of access at all.


So, with the world working, this time, as we might wish that it would work a whole lot more often than it does, having the realization, having the material means, and having the heart to try to do what she/what they could do to minimize those other moms’ anguish that she, all too well, was able to empathize with, turns out that Jennifer Lopez and her sister ended up forming a foundation with the aim of trying to improve global health care.  Their foundation, specifically, sought to increase and promote access to our sometimes (if relative) state-of-the-art pediatric medical knowledge and expertise via the, for me, wondrous pretty new technology permitted by “telemedicine.”  


“Telemedicine is the use of telecommunication and information technologies in order to provide clinical health care at a distance. It helps eliminate distance barriers and can improve access to medical services that would often not be consistently available in distant rural communities. It is also used to save lives in critical care and emergency situations….”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telemedicine*

* Got a special kick out of this section of this wikipedia piece (and yes, please do consider maybe donating a bit to Wikipedia so they can continue their great service if you can):
“Early precursors -- In its early manifestations, African villagers used smoke signals to warn people to stay away from the village in case of serious disease.  In the early 1900s, people living in remote areas of Australia used two-way radios, powered by a dynamo driven by a set of bicycle pedals, to communicate with the Royal Flying Doctor Service of Australia….”



** NOTE: I'm not highlighting J Lo’s foundation, the Maribel Foundation, for any purpose other than to invite your further exploration into the miracle of telemedicine that hearing this story provoked in me, personally.

And here, is what may be only an oblique reference to the not particularly surprising news that Paul Farmer’s Partners in Health seems to be at the forefront of the science and utilization of telemedicine.


UNRELATED:
Have been following, with great aching, the story of the beaten Egyptian woman activist, Azza Hilal Suleiman, who, thankfully, seems to be slowly recovering.  What an incredibly good and brave woman and what a crummy crummy story and on-the-ground reality.

EDIT: 'Blue bra girl' rallies Egypt's women vs. oppression
If I have it right, it was because she attempted to come to the rescue of the so-called “blue bra girl” that Azza Hilal Suleiman, the hospitalized Egyptian featured in the article above, got so unspeakably and brutally beaten up.  My heart and hopes will be with these women, with their people.  And, for that matter, with the people of Syria and everywhere else where the people are being abused, psychologically or physically, and often, both.   Nobody should have to go through anything even approaching this simply to be able to have those same human rights that we, too many of us, undoubtedly, too often take so very casually for granted.



And here, finally, is my public expression of great caring and sadness for Tia and her family, given the news that Tia’s mum, Jed, received and alluded to in her post here, yesterday.