Endless Knots

Frontier 6 makes The NYT

Remember the blogging general, Lieutenant General Bill Caldwell? Thom Shanker's piece in today's New York Times carries a story about Army operations in Afghanistan and references a recent post by Frontier 6, Caldwell's online handle. I love this description of Caldwell's blogging efforts:

It is perhaps one of the worst-kept secrets in the Army, but Frontier 6 is the Internet alias of Lt. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, the Fort Leavenworth commander and occasional blogger, who previously served as the top military spokesman in Iraq.

It takes courage for people in positions like Caldwell's to try out new media--and to push against the strictures imposed by the "way things are supposed to be." Keep posting, Frontier 6!

If this is true, bye-bye MS

Thanks to Clara Shih, I've just come across this article reporting on research claiming that MS has been reversed in animals, namely mice. Researchers at Jewish General Hospital Lady Davis Institute for Medical Research and McGill University in Montreal are reporting that "a new experimental treatment for multiple sclerosis (MS) completely reverses the devastating autoimmune disorder in mice, and might work exactly the same way in humans."

According to the article in physorg.com:

The new treatment, appropriately named GIFT15, puts MS into remission by suppressing the immune response. This means it might also be effective against other autoimmune disorders like Crohn's disease, lupus and arthritis, the researchers said, and could theoretically also control immune responses in organ transplant patients. Moreover, unlike earlier immune-supppressing therapies which rely on chemical pharamaceuticals, this approach is a personalized form of cellular therapy which utilizes the body's own cells to suppress immunity in a much more targeted way.

GIFT15 was discovered by a team led by Dr. Jacques Galipeau of the JGH Lady Davis Institute and McGill's Faculty of Medicine. The results were published August 9 in the prestigious journal Nature Medicine.

The only proviso?

MS must be caught in its earliest stages, Galipeau cautioned, and clinical studies are needed to test the treatment's efficacy and safety in humans. No significant side-effects showed up in the mice, he said, and the treatment was fully effective with a single dose.

But when it was caught early, the treatment appears to be quite simple:

"It's easy to collect B-cells from a patient," he added. "It's just like donating blood. We purify them in the lab, treat them with GIFT15 in a petri dish, and give them back to the patient. That's what we did in mice, and that's what we believe we could do in people. It would be very easy to take the next step, it's just a question of finding the financial resources and partnerships to make this a reality."

Phenomenal.

Why Everything Matters! really matters

If you've ever...

... felt you're so different that you don't match the rest of humankind (a few of us); or

... thought the world might end precipitously (some of us); or

... had your heart broken (that would be most of us); or

... tolerated an annoying sibling, lost a parent, enjoyed a baseball game, or lived in Boston (have I gotten everyone else?); or, just in case I've missed someone...

... heard a voice in your most quiet mind that tells you what's about to happen (hmmm);

and/or,

...wanted to hold those you love most tight in your most fearful moment...

Read Ron Currie's new book, Everything Matters!

It's risky reading books by friends. You want to love the book because you love them while, at the same time, if you're a really good friend, you have to be honest otherwise they'll never trust your opinion.

So I read with trepidation but only for a few pages because soon I was burning through them so fast that I was also wishing I could slow the whole thing down yet none of this was possible because before I knew it, 320 pages had slipped past, I turned Arctic cold, my arm hairs literally (it's a book) were standing straight up, and I was reaching for the phone to call Ron to tell him that this book is indeed one apart.

All the stars line up for a great read - Ron's usual energetic writing and ability to reach for words that elude others, not fancy words, just ways of using those we know in ways we've never known; a story that likely has never crossed your mind (at least not mine); insight into broken characters that both provokes that inner click and makes you wish you could redo their lives for them...and so much love for parents and children that...let me only say this: If I type much more, I'll have to have the keyboard repaired from water damage.

And then there's the ending, previously noted. Others who've read it have described sobbing at the end, ignoring their very own children, or, as one person wrote: "It's a life-changing book. I'm beside myself with emotion. I want everyone in the world to read this book."

That means you. Please read it and tell me what you think. If you've already read, then lucky you.

Thank you, Mr. Currie, for what must have been a lot of tears yourself to get to the end.

A truly important question

Daughter #2 posed it night before last. You can wash up after dinner, dry the dishes, and be done in, what, 20 minutes? Meanwhile, if you use the dishwasher, it takes at least an hour.

Her question: What is the dishwasher doing all that time?

"Perhaps" from The Persuasion

"Perhaps," the first chapter of my novel, The Persuasion, has been published in the literary journal, Melusine: Woman in the 21st Century.

 

How this happened bears telling: I was casting about, looking for literary journals to submit my work to, when I happened upon Melusine, whose subtitle stopped me right there, dead in my keys.

In the novel from which this chapter is taken, the main character, Mariana, is beseeched by the ghost of Margaret Fuller, the 19th-century phenom, to rewrite Fuller's classic treatise, Woman  in the Nineteenth Century. What Fuller wants Mariana to do is write "Woman in the 21st Century."

So I wrote to the editor, Janelle Elyse Kihlstrom, explaining the coincidence and submitting the first chapter. Two weeks later, Janelle accepted the submission. If you click through, you'll see why we both thought this chapter is a good fit for Melusine.

Thanks, Janelle.