When I was seven, I had to go to the hospital in North Sydney. I had something but the doctors couldn't figure out for a week they poked around me, one day taking so many blood tests that they ended up having to hold me down. They ended up figuring it out and I was out in about ten days. Andrew from Bound By Gravity wrote me a few days ago about another seven year old boy who is in hospital in Ottawa with a tougher haul these days. He has Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia. But that boy, Shane, has a request. He wants cards from around the world for his birthday. Here is Andrew's explanation of what you can do to help Shane. I like how Brooksie puts it:
Yes, you do have time to do this. He's a seven year-old child with leukemia sitting in isolation at a hospital right now. You'll make the time.You can make the time, too. He address to write to is here. Bullet points in a moment.Right?
- US College baseball season has begun.
- Earlier this week I saw a blip pass by that for some reason did not get much attention. Canadian pension funds are doing very well.
Canadian pension funds moved into a healthier financial position last year, buoyed by strong stock market performance and higher bond yields, Mercer Investment Consulting reported Tuesday. The median return for Canadian pooled balanced pension funds was 13 per cent for the year, "benefiting from strong performance in most of the major equity markets in 2006," Mercer said in reporting the results of its pooled fund survey.
Whenever there is a tough patch for pensions, people go one about how the sky is falling and turn, in despair, to libertarianism. Expect packed union halls and a spike in NDP polling for the next wee while. - A few weeks ago we discussed the meaning of local in our form of Federalism. It appears, however, that in the heartland of the individual, local does not actually mean the local community as the council of Fort MacMurray Alberta is looking for a stop to the expansion of the tar sands that are the windfall fueling the provincial boom and the local social bust. Here is the story for Jim Elve's place. So is the best "local" really just the next big faceless bureaucracy below the national level?
- Rob posts an very lucid article from the New York Times on the way food and health have been treated for the last number of decades.
- Dick Cheney is getting a hard rap this week. Last night on CNN there was a little tag line on the screen which was something like "Cheney Deluded?" Now, if I was ever to have a bull headed crazy power freak in my like, Dick's the man. Why? Well, he wrote Dad a letter one that hung on the cottage wall next to the one from Michael Palin for one thing. Maybe it is the Libby case where all of a sudden the defense is not backing up all those bloggers that claimed the charges were overkill. NPR has more on Dick the Contrarian, who even seethed at Wolf Blitzer this week - seethed!!
- I think I would be more sympathetic if there was a concurrent promise to create a Maritimes Union with centralized services, two of which were not nepotism and patronage...did I say that out loud?
Comments
cm - January 26, 2007 8:33 AM
First, with nothing of value to add. It's a hollow victory indeed.
gorthos - January 26, 2007 10:51 AM
Well, my story. I was very violently ill one camping trip and ended up hospitalized with severe gastroenteritis. I lost a lot of my body weight over the week or more that I was in and I remember at one point a nurse sitting at my bedside crying. Nasty.
I am not a big payer-attention-to-er of charitable campaigns but as a father of three boys I am a blubbering suck when it comes to sick kids. I also throw my support with al behind this. What wil it cost you, $5 max. Send the poor kid a card.
gr - January 26, 2007 10:55 AM
Post card to Canada is only 55 cents US.
http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=2741732
Back to baseball: Mets manager Randolph gets a little raise and a new contract, but man, considering the cash in MLB, 5 mill. for 3 years is what a 21 year old, one armed, needs surgery on his only arm, fat with 2 broken legs, 9.02 era 0-13 game winner would get for half a season. Give Willie a bonus, I say.
Paul of Kingston - January 26, 2007 12:15 PM
New term (you heard it here first):
BSR: Blogate Social Responsibility.
Good one Al.
Paul of Kingston - January 26, 2007 4:11 PM
An interesting point, to ponder local in the context of what is happening in Fort mac. Ironic that their local issue has such a global impact.
Alan - January 26, 2007 4:14 PM
Hey - The Cat Empire - this band sounds great. David S. just played "The Chariot" on <i>The Beat Authority</i>. I want.
gorthos - January 26, 2007 4:38 PM
Is this a free for Al?
Alan - January 26, 2007 4:44 PM
No, that is when I can't think of anything to post at all. This is a relatively free commenting one, though, as you have the means to tie a number of tangents to stake the claim of relevance. Still - no rude, no personal and no Entertainment Tonight clap-trap.
Jay Currie - January 26, 2007 8:44 PM
The Libby charges are bogus simply because Lord Black's nemesis could not even summon the evidence to sharge Libby with, well, breaking the substantive law against outing covert CIA types 'cause, well, val wasn't.
"So Dick, how do you feel about your gay daughter's forthcoming baby?" Seeth. Can't say I blame the guy.
Alan - January 26, 2007 9:14 PM
The funniest thing about the Libby charges is not some much that they are substantive (perjury is a crime wherever people want truth) but they speak to that great crime control argument: "if you had nothing to hide why did you lie?"
Jay Currie - January 27, 2007 5:01 AM
Or, perhaps, to the radical idea that busy people do not have perfect recall of every word they have uttered in the previous couple of years. Remember, Libby is being charged with making statements to investigators which do not square with the statements made to those investigators by people who Libby spoke to months before either party was questioned.
Alan - January 27, 2007 11:12 AM
Would you agree that the hallmark of most capable successful people is a very good memory?
Knut Albert - February 1, 2007 3:39 AM
There are requests for postcards like these from time to time, but the hospitals tend to drown in them, and have to spend precious hours sorting sacks of mail long after the patients are either well or have passed on. It's a sort of chain mail. So - as a general piece of advice - don't.