With A Little Help

Last fall, I had the good fortune to attend the 2008 Kidlit Bloggers Conference. That’s where I found out that Portland is practically teeming with very, very cool people who write young adult literature. (Seriously—teeming. Watch where you step.) And now, this fabulous community is stepping out to support one of its own.

Bridget Zinn is a YA librarian and author who recently landed an agent to represent her debut novel. Days later, she was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer. On her blog, she writes: “...I am a super super healthy non-smoking, non-drinking, carcinogen avoiding young vegetarian who wears sunscreen every day. I looked at the list of risk factors for colon cancer and it turn out that I don’t even have one. Not one risk factor. So that was a surprise.”

I think “a surprise” might count as the understatement of the year.

Bridget is currently undergoing chemotherapy. To help raise funds (another “surprise”: health insurance doesn’t cover everything), indefatigble YA librarian Jone MacCulloch has launched an online auction that will run the entire month of May. YA authors, illustrators, family and friends are donating items ranging from original artwork to signed copies of books to signed copies of books that aren't even out yet to getaway vacations. Take a look—I bet you’ll find something that catches your eye!

AND, if you live in the Portland area, be sure to pencil in “Bridget Zinn Live Auction” for Friday, May 29th. There’ll be tons more items up for grabs, including—thanks to my fabulous coworker and certified canine massage therapist Tammy Moody—two gift certificates for canine massage! Got a dog friend who could use some pampering? Then be sure to show up at the Lucky Lab brewpub, bid early and often! (Oh, and there'll be signed copies of Ten Cents a Dance and Tallulah Falls, too.)

To Bridget and her new husband (did I mention she got married the same month she got her agent and her diagnosis? If you want to know how that came about, read here), we wish you much strength, health, joy, and big-time cancer-ass kicking. Many kudos to Jone for organizing the auctions, Lisa Nowak for creating the auction blog site, and all in the kidlit community who are pulling together. You all are amazing.

"God Bless You and All Your Loved Ones"

Until last week, I never knew Roger’s last name. He’s always just been Roger, the guy who sells Portland’s Street Roots newspaper in front of Trader Joe’s. My sweetie and I have seen him every week, in every weather, for the five years we’ve been shopping there.

"Good morning, you two,” he says, as we walk up to the store.

“Morning, Roger,” we answer. “How’s it going?” or “Nice weather, huh?” (in an appropriately ironic tone—this is Portland, after all). On the way out of the store, we stop and buy a paper. Street Roots is a local, grassroots newspaper covering issues relating to the homeless and working poor. Its vendors are homeless; selling Street Roots gives them an income. Vendors have established spots around town, and if you’re in Portland any length of time, you’ll meet them. “Sorry, I bought this one from Roger at Trader Joe’s,” I always tell the guy at Powell’s Books. He nods and smiles. Roger has some loyal customers.

“I’ve got a poem in this issue,” Roger might tell us. “Page five.” We shoot the breeze for a couple of minutes. He tells us about his family sometimes, how his parents are still going strong in their eighties. We tell him what we’re up to the rest of the day. As we turn to go, he says, without fail, “God bless you, and all your loved ones.” It never sounds rote; it sounds, every time, as though he means it from his heart.

“You, too,” we say, and wave. “See you next week.”

If only one of us shows up, Roger invariably sends his regards to whichever of us is missing. The only exception came at a time when, between my writing deadlines and my boyfriend's work, our schedules were so nutty that only one of us could get away do the shopping. Roger still said hi just as warmly, but after a couple of weeks, he stopped asking after whichever of us wasn’t there. After almost two months, things finally calmed down, and we again appeared at Trader Joe’s together. Roger was visibly relieved. “There you both are!” he said.

“Thought we broke up?” my boyfriend asked.

“I was a little worried,” Roger said, and grinned.

Last week, a different vendor was in front of Trader Joe’s. On the way out of the store, we stopped and bought a paper. “Where’s Roger this week?” I asked. The vendor was handing me the paper; he turned it over, and pointed to a headline.

Roger had passed away in his sleep, in the downtown hotel room he’d occupied for years. When he didn’t show up at Trader Joe’s, his customers left messages at the Street Roots office, asking if he was OK. It’s only now, reading articles about him, that I’ve learned he was a star pitcher in high school with the talent to go pro, and alcoholism that kept him from getting there. I’ve learned he was only 60 years old. I’ve learned his last name was Gates. I still don’t know the rest of his story, beyond the bits and pieces he'd shared with us over the years. I know that he’d endured hard miles; that you could tell by looking at him. I know he had a patient and gentle kindness that he extended freely; I know he believed all people were worthy of love; I know he looked on each day as a gift.

We miss his warmth, his smile, his humor and his unshakeable optimism. We’re grateful that our lives intersected, if only briefly, once a week in front of Trader Joe’s.

God bless you and all your loved ones, Roger. May you rest in peace.

Grief and Anger

For the past week, I've been struggling to write my thoughts about the killings at Virginia Tech. The massive media coverage hasn't helped. Instead of gaining any kind of clarity, I've become angrier and angrier, listening as everyone with an agenda and a soapbox hijacks this tragedy and twists it to suit his or her own ends. We’ve heard endless “reasons” for Seung-Hui Cho’s actions: video games, legalized abortion, gun control, not enough gun control, school bullying, liberalism, the Devil.

Seung-Hui Cho was mentally ill. Were there other factors that led him to shoot 32 people? Probably. But none of those factors made Cho psychotic. His mental illness made him psychotic. Psychosis is not a product of society. It’s not an “excuse.” It’s a product of brain chemistry, a biological disorder.

But people want someone to blame. And they adore pointing fingers. So the eagerness to politicize this tragedy, and ignore the bare fact of its cause, is not surprising. But it is reprehensible. If we truly want to prevent this from happening again, we must focus on the issue at hand—mental illness—and how best to get treatment and help to those who need it.

My heart goes out to the families of the murdered, and to Cho’s family, who lost their boy before he ever picked up a gun.

Goodbye, Barbaro

Eight months of trying. Eight months of fighting. Never a question in anyone’s mind that the odds were long. Was the fight worth it?

Yes.

From the beginning, Barbaro’s owners were clear: They would continue only as long as Barbaro was comfortable. “We just reached a point where it was going to be difficult for him to go on without pain,” owner Roy Jackson said. “It was the right decision, it was the right thing to do. We said all along if there was a situation where it would become more difficult for him then it would be time.”

This is one of the most difficult decisions: how far to go. Not just for a champion thoroughbred, but for any beloved animal. Over and over, I hear people say: This is the hardest decision I’ve ever had to make. We talk together about quality of life. We discuss signs to watch for: of pain, of joylessness, of the animal giving up. More often than not, when the owner makes the decision, they tell me: I knew it was time. He told me. I could see it in his face.

“He was just a different horse,” said Barbaro’s chief surgeon, Dr. Dean Richardson. “You could see he was upset. That was the difference. And it was more than we wanted him put through.”

They came close. So close that last month, Barbaro’s doctors were beginning to talk about releasing him from the hospital this spring. But in veterinary medicine, the tide turns with quality of life. Acute pain that can be managed, where there’s a light at the end of the tunnel, yes. Pain that is ongoing and can’t be controlled—no. You can’t explain to an animal, Well, we’re just going to keep pushing ahead, see if we can turn this thing around. Hang in there.

As long as Barbaro was comfortable and fighting, then it was a good fight. The moment that changed, the fight was over. Barbaro was fortunate to have had owners and doctors who understood that, and who were willing to let him go.

“Grief,” said his owner, Gretchen Jackson, “is the price we all pay for love.”

Godspeed, Barbaro.

Barbaro

Two weeks ago, at the Kentucky Derby, a big bay colt blasted past the other horses as if he possessed a top gear unknown to the rest of the field. But more than that, what caught my eye is how relaxed he seemed. His ears flicked from side to front to side, as if he had all the time in the world, there at the finish, to listen to everything around him. With those ears, in that instant, Barbaro had my heart.

I’ve been a horse junkie all my life (the fact that I grew up a city kid, with nary a fiery steed for at least ten miles in any direction, seemed like a particularly sarcastic joke on the part of the universe), and I’ve followed the Triple Crown races almost that long.

The Kentucky Derby. The Preakness Stakes. The Belmont Stakes. Three races in 5 weeks. Anything can happen, and so goes the old saying: That's why they call it horse racing.

As a kid I watched Seattle Slew, the little horse everyone laughed at, romp off with the Crown. Then, the very next year, Affirmed and Alydar slugging it out from Kentucky to New York, Affirm’s margin of victory growing narrower with every race, until that immortal Belmont Stakes: Affirmed and Alydar battling head to head down the homestretch, me jumping up and down in front of the family TV yelling, and at the end…Affirmed again, literally by a nose. The second Triple Crown winner in two years, the third in 5 years. All the "experts" proclaimed that the mighty Crown, the benchmark of equine greatness since 1875, was a benchmark no more. With snide condescension in their voices, they said, Modern horses are just too good. From now on, we’ll probably have a Triple Crown winner every two or three years.

That was 28 years ago. No horse has claimed the Crown since. But this year, as I watched Barbaro blow away the field at the Kentucky Derby, I thought with a thrill of excitement: This is it. This guy could do it.

Anything can happen. A jostle down the backstretch. A thrown shoe. A horse not up to his best. Sure. That’s why they call it horse racing.

We don’t like to think injury. Of course it happens; injury is a risk in any sport, with any athlete performing to the utmost. All it takes is one bad step. But these are horses. We love them. Injury is too terrible to think of.

Yesterday, barely 100 yards into the Preakness Stakes, Barbaro took a bad step. From wishing for a Triple Crown, now we pray only that he survives.