[St. Baldrick's 2008]: Arrows
T-minus six hours, and a few more stories...
I have a very special copy of JRR Tolkien's The Hobbit, alongside my shelf with the red leather-bound copy of The Lord of the Rings that deor, malada and cerebresque gifted me with, and The Silmarillion that was my SCAdian godfather _constantine's gift. The collected works -- the whole of the story and world that Tolkien created that is collected in those three hardcover volumes -- is a very special story to me, for reasons I wrote once about in the story Thread of Gold; for reasons which are intimately connected with so many part of my life, including where I am today, as a professional and as a man.
While my copies of The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings were gifts of close friends, I bought the green-leather copy of the Hobbit was bought long ago for a purpose. Back in high school, we had yearbooks to sign rememberances in each other's covers. But for the great circles of friends that I have had the great fortune of meeting and making beyond school -- from the floor of the House of Delegates to the forests of Revel Grove -- no such official keepsake exists. So I bought a copy of The Hobbit -- one sturdy and heirloom quality -- and made it my rememberance book; and have taken the book with me across continents and even oceans so it could be signed by friends; and many are the pages filled now by so many of you.
In chapter XIV of The Hobbit, the great dragon Smaug has been roused. His armor was like tenfold shields. His teeth were like swords, his claw spears. The shock of his tail was like a thunderbolt; his wings like a hurricaine, and his breath a fire of death itself. Down upon Lake-Town, the citadel of the men of Esgaroth, did Smaug storm in his fury. And there he was met with a hail of arrows, unleashed by the archers of the city, manning the walls and heights of their city, holding the line between their families and the Dragon.
Long did the battle rage. Well-protected was the Dragon by his scaly armor. But Smaug was not invulnerable. There was but a single weak patch, a single point on his left breast where there were no armored scales to protect him. It's secret was discovered by clever questioning. And that information, delivered to the men of Lake-Town, enabled a single, perfectly delivered bolt to break through and bring down the monster once and for all. After ages of fear, the great Dragon Smaug, so long a terror, was gone for good.
Doug, one of our awesome team captains, actually has been doing the St. Baldrick's fundraiser for many years, ever since his first year as a medical student at St. Louis University Medical School (where culfinriel did her eye surgery residency). Now as a third year resident here at Wash U, he is next year going to Wisconsin to start his Pediatric Hematology/Oncology (cancer) training. Starting three years ago, one of his classmates, Steve, joined him as an intern. For the past two years, they've been shaving their heads and raising money for the fight against cancer in kids as a part of the team from Cardinal Glennon Children's Hospital (the pediatric hospital for St. Louis U. Med).
This year, instead of rejoining the SLU team for the St. Baldrick's effort, they decided to try to recruit a home team from Wash U. After all, Wash U has almost three times the number of pediatric residents and vastly more pediatric fellows; Wash U ought to be able to find the folks to field a team of their own. So they sent out an e-mail which a whole bunch of us got and thought, "Hey! That would be pretty cool!"
So Doug and Steve got all the paperwork together and got us registered and got us all started. The website required us to set some kind of arbitrary fundraising goal -- there are elementary school kids shaving their heads for $20, St. Baldrick's veterans with goals in the thousands, and everyone else in between; the St. Baldrick's effort requires no specific minimum. So Doug and Steve picked $500 a man (or woman, as Kate, one of our next year's Chiefs, joined the team), pretty much because it sounded like a nice round number. Doug, being bad-ass, set himself a goal of $1000. And so, we set out.
So I started out with the official fundraising arrow labeled on my webpage arbitrarily set at a goal of $500. And you all swiftly pushed us over that line. And so I gently bumped up the official goal to $600. And we crossed that line. I bumped it up to $700. To $750. To $800. Bumped it up to a $1000. And you all kept giving and giving and giving and filling up that fundraising arrow. We were not just the first member of our team past $500, we were the first past $1000, too. As of T-minus six hours, all of you account for more than a quarter of the entire team's total. You're all more than two-hundred dollars ahead of team captain Doug's second place; almost *double* third place. But this isn't a competition, of course; the only opponent we're truly racing is death itself. And we're winning that race, too.
Already, tremendous progress in the fight against cancer been made. The vast investment in biomedical research over the last twenty-five years has paid many dividends, this just one. Cancers which once killed 9 out of ten children who had them now can be beaten back -- even cured. Cancers which once were virtual death sentences are now ones where children have a fighting chance. Children born in the latter half of this decade have vastly better odds of surviving cancer if diagnosed today than they did just fifteen years ago -- something especially important to me now that so many of my friends now have young children; and now that I am an uncle myself. And what we've learned in the search for a cure for cancer has had tremendous impact on many other fields as well. The drugs which are the backbone of our efforts to stave off the HIV virus and hold back AIDS, for example, were originally developed by cancer researchers -- by my mother's former research mentor, in fact. And what we've learned about immune cells in part through our study of the most common pediatric cancers has greatly advanced our ability to help transplant patients balance between the dangers of organ rejection and immunocompromise.
If every dollar in the fight against cancer -- against disease -- is an arrow, all of you have unleashed a veritable storm. Like the bowmen of Bard standing the line against the onslaught of Smaug, you're helping fill the sky with defiance. You've answered the Dragon's terrible roar with the sound of our trumpets. And together, we *will* bring the Dragon down.
- And lo! even as he laughed at despair he looked out again on the black ships, and he lifted up his sword to defy them.
My parents have been quite amused and supportive of my whole going-bald-for-the-kids thing. Shaved down to the scalp is not an uncommon hairstyle in traditional China, and my father and uncles spent much of their teenage and young-adult lives shaved bald while they were students in high school or soldiers in one of Mainland China's long-forgotten wars against Taiwan. Like everyone else, my parents are much curious to see how I look bald. :-)
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As I've mentioned from time to time in this Journal, I don't write much about my family in this Journal for two reasons.
Firstly, because my family largely doesn't read this Journal. (littleholly is an exception (Hi, littleholly! (waves)) and Gauss reads from time to time.) Most of my family doesn't even know my Journal exists. I've always written with the purpose of sharing stories with those kind enough to read along; and that would be the audience primarily of my friends. So there isn't much reason to use my Journal to talk about my family, to communicate with my family, when they don't even read this Journal.
And secondly; the subject of family is one very painful to many of the people who *are* among my Journal readers. I've always worried about talking about my happy family life and my close relationship with my parents, Gauss, my extended family, admist folks who often have been less lucky. And while my friends have again and again encouraged and reassured me not to let that be an issue in the stories I choose to tell here, I still feel more comfortable not inadvertently rubbing salt into friend's wounds old or new. Especially since, as noted above, my family largely doesn't even read this Journal or know it exists.
But it is as I have written many times through the course of my Journal, for all the seven-plus years that I have been sharing stories here; anything that is worth celebrating in me as a man, is because of what my family made me to be. All the good parts in me, are what my family raised me to be.
In the last few days, many friends have said many very, very kind things about me, especially in the posts they have written to link to our St. Baldrick's effort. I am deeply humbled, moved, and honored by the very kind things you all have said about me. But the credit belongs to the people -- to all of you -- who made me who I am today, who shared their lives, their experience, their support and their love. Friends. Teachers. Mentors. And above all, my family who made me who I am. If there are parts of me worth praise, it is because the people who have been a part of my life -- my family above all -- shaped me to become them.
Over the last five years, do you all realize that you all have helped missysedai and silmaril and I raise something approaching ten-thousand dollars to help support medical research?
I've always said that even the smallest donation can make a real difference in the world of molecular biology, and it's true. But the almost a thousand dollars y'all have chipped in to me in this latest effort buys a *lot* of cells and assay enzymes and mice. And the nearly ten-thousand you've helped us together raise in missysedai's Blogathons and silmaril's Kidney runs and my head-shaving, well, that's, like, wow.
Most of you are familiar with the traditions from SCA or Ren Faire or fantasy of a Knight and his squires, or a Lady and her men and women at arms. Back on the Usenet newsgroup that began so much, there was a similar happy tradition; and it is the very special friendship which links us. For almost eight years now, I have been humbled to be one of missysedai's Warders, one of her men-at-arms, alongside dscotton and silmaril and thette. There's been many, many, *many* happy stories along the way -- too many to even summarize here. This tale is just one brief capture of what we share.
There have been many amazing projects that you all have joined with us, been a part with us; The Last Gribbin Gift and To Collect the Tales of Dream but two of the more memorable. But of all the many happy tales and amazing things that you all have been a part of with us; perhaps the most spectacular of all is that amazing total you all have helped the three of us assemble to support medical research, to support the fight against disease, to help and honor people we care deeply about. Almost ten-thousand dollars over the last five years. That's, no matter how you slice it, a pretty big deal. That's a hell of a lot of support. And you all helped us make it happen.
I'm humbled, honored -- proud -- to be one of missysedai's men-at-arms. Proud to be one of silmaril's brothers-in-arms. And humbled, honored, and proud to have been a part of such a company as all of us here gathered on LiveJournal in this circle of friends; and to have done such things as we have done and will yet do.
- Look around you. Take a good look at the men and women that stand next to you. Remember their faces. For one day you will tell your children, and your grandchildren, that you served with such men and women as the universe has never seen. And together you accomplished a feat that will be told and retold down through the ages; and find immortality as only the Gods once knew.
- - Adm. William Adama, "Exodus"