This is something you may or may not know. A child diagnosed with leukemia today has close to a 90 percent chance of survival. This is still an amazing statistic to me when I consider that that same child, had they been born the year I was born, would have had almost no chance of surviving. The reason that this phenomena has occurred is because of the bravery of children and parents over the last 50 years. When there was no hope, parents agreed to allow their children to be treated with new drugs. When there were signs of progress, parents continued to sign up for clinical trials so their child could be part of the answer. Today, even when we win so often, parents and children still enroll on clinical trials because they know that those remaining percentages are not just numbers – they are children.

I spend a lot of time thinking about this, both in my job and in my work on my book. In my job, more often than I like, I have had to spend time justifying why an insurance company should have to pay for a child’s treatment when they are on a clinical trial. There are insurance providers out there who are eager to jump on those words and label it experimental and ineligible for coverage. These are not crazy new therapies that we are talking about. These are, most often, tweaks to the standard of care treatment. The intent is to see if something new added or something old subtracted can edge up that survival rate. We also want to bring down the number of kids who have lifelong complications from the powerful treatment that they endure to cure their disease. I experience these disputes happening more often. I fear a result of this will be less willingness to enroll on one of these trials.

I was having one of those days yesterday at work. The issue on board just seemed so simple to me, but nothing that I was saying seemed to make a difference. There were several people involved, and we seemed to be getting nowhere. And then Ellie called.

Ellie is one of the family members of the main characters in the book that I am writing. I had a heck of a time finding Ellie. I knew that she existed. I knew she had married, and I had what I thought was her last name. I searched databases and sent out numerous hopeful letters. I missed many times. After more than a year of this, I came across an article that spelled her name a little differently than what I thought. I went back to work, and I was pretty sure that I found her. I sent another letter. The Saturday morning that my phone rang and I saw the caller ID is still crystal clear in my mind. My heart double-clicked. I answered the phone not knowing if she would be okay that I contacted her, or if she would be angry with me.

We talked several times over the next few weeks. The first conversations were cautious and polite. I was not sure how much she knew about the story that I had, and I certainly didn’t know her well enough to understand how much she would want to know. She was a widow well into her 80s. Who was I to bring my business into her life?

Turns out, we have become each other’s gift. I have filled in blanks for her. Some were things that she had not cared to know of at the time. Most were things that the family just did not talk about. I sent her pictures, articles, a recording of her father’s voice. She sent me pictures, documents, and has shared stories from her memories. Finding her has been more than I could have hoped for. We are now a part of the other’s life and we talk now just to catch up. Sometimes something new comes up that one of us wants to share, but mostly it is just to chat.

That is what happened yesterday. Ellie called to chat. The big news was that she had returned from getting her check-up at a major hospital where she had gotten a new heart-valve as part of a clinical trial. It had been a year, and part of the trial requirements were periodic follow-up visits. We talked about how that meant traveling several states away, but it was important to her to have her information kept as part of the study. It was important for her, because this new heart valve was a miracle for her. She was back in her twice weekly bowling league!

Talking with Ellie made me happy. I asked her if she would share with me any issues that she had with insurance. She laughed and said she had been told that she would not be covered, but she fought it, and she won.

If that’s what we have to do, that is what we will do.

Rather than do a standard review of the books, I thought I would just provide a little this and that about the book, the author, and the times. Here are my first two reads on my Newberry journey:

Book: The Higher Power of Lucky

Author: Susan Patron

Something about the author: Susan Patron is a retired Los Angeles librarian who wrote her first book in 1990. When Lucky was awarded the Newberry, there was much controversy over her use of the word “scrotum” in the book’s first pages. The context of the word was as part of a story about a dog getting bit in said place by a rattlesnake. About the controversy, Patron said that she took the event from a real life story, and that the use of the word was intentional.

What it’s about: Lucky is a ten-year old girl who is living in a small California desert town with a Guardian – who happens to be an ex- of her father. Lucky’s odd job is to clean up around the town business where all of the twelve step groups meet. Through her listening in on conversations, Lucky is introduced to the idea of a Higher Power and the benefit a Higher Power can bring to a person. In her quest to find her Higher Power, Lucky goes on an adventure that leads her to her own answers.

Year it won: 2007

Somethings about that year: Nancy Pelosi became the first speaker of the House, the IPhone was introduced, Bush orders more troops to Iraq, Denis Johnson’s Tree of Smoke won the National Book Award for fiction.

Favorite part: When Lucky and Lincoln go on a quest to change the punctuation on a traffic sign. In this section, Patron brings the friendship between Lucky and Lincoln into focus and you realize how important they are to each other and how much each admires the other.

Favorite character: Lincoln is Lucky’s friend in town. Lincoln’s mom thinks that he is going to be President, but all Lincoln wants to do is tie knots. He can tie some of the most exquisite knots in the world and he is always seeking out more and better knots.

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Book: Rabbit Hill

Author: Robert Lawson

Something about the author:  During World War I, Lawson served as a member of the first Camouflage Company. The role of the company was to create fakes to fool the enemy. Its members were other artists that served in the unit stationed in France. Lawson wrote and illustrated his first children’s book after the war.

What it’s about: The animal residents of Rabbit Hill farm are in a tizzy about newcomers to their abandoned farm. Their emotions range from lust for the food that will finally return, to fear that there may also be dogs or cats that come with the newcomers. The family that arrives turns out to be more than the animals could have wished for. The couple seems to enjoy their animal neighbors, their cat is too old to care about anything beyond its reach, and they seem to be planting a giant garden. A minor hiccup occurs when one of the spunky young rabbits is injured and retrieved by the couple, and speculation about the too-good-to-be-true owners rages among the animals.

Year it won: 1945

Somethings about that year:  Going My Way won the Oscar for best picture, Alexander Fleming won the Nobel Prize in Medicine for the discovery of penicillin, World War II comes to an end.

Favorite part: The animal procession through the garden at the end of the book is completely charming.

Favorite character:  Papa Rabbit who is a Southern Gentleman living in Connecticut. None of his fellow animals care to hear his tales of the good life in bluegrass country. It is hilarious how Lawson writes the other characters cutting him off when he starts in on his reminiscences.

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What’s on the treadmill now? Ginger Pye by Eleanor Estes (1952)

For seven years now, Dan and I have hosted an annual Mardi Gras party. It started when Ali made the decision to go to Tulane for college and Hurricane Katrina decided to make her freshman year one for the record books. A city that we had only recently been introduced to, became a closely held cause. This was a place that our daughter had chosen to live in and learn in. When she returned to New Orleans after spending a semester back in her hometown, we showed our support in a way that we have come to very much enjoy. We planned a party.

I can’t remember every specific over the years, but I do know that there are staples. There are red beans and rice, and there are muffalettas. There is Dan’s homemade beer and there are usually Hurricanes. There are beads, and there is a designated charity. The first year, we asked attendees to consider dropping a donation in the bowl that we then donated to Habitat for Humanity in New Orleans. One year we supported an effort to rebuild a football field at a school that was devastated by Katrina. This year’s cause was near and dear. Now that Ali is in her second year of teaching elementary school, we asked her what her school or classroom might need. She suggested that we get books for her students. There are books that her kids have in the classroom, but many of her students do not have their own books at home.

I have been to my fair share of charity events, but I must say that this little effort of ours is the one that warms my heart most. Over the course of the evening, about 80 people came into our house. Each got to see some old friends or meet some new ones.

The collection of people always charms me. Work folks, neighbors, relatives, book club members, and people who have been in our lives forever, just seem to fit so well. It becomes apparent that there really isn’t much that needs to happen to make people happy. The food and drink were enjoyed, for sure, but what was truly valued was the time spent in the company of others. And when the night was over, we had a pile of children’s books, promises for more, and $470 to spend at the bookshop. Happy days for Andrew Wilson Charter kids!

Because of Dan’s beer-making hobby, having gatherings throughout the year is tantamount to necessity. Most gatherings are not as planned as the Mardi Gras one, but each has its own specialness. Knowing myself as I do, I would have never thought that I would be the kind of person who would throw parties for the heck of it, but that is exactly who I have become. We spend so much time with the parts of our lives that are structured and necessary. Adding being social to our lives wherever and whenever we can, makes us richer!

Today is the 203rd anniversary of the birth of Abraham Lincoln. I doubt that there are many who would not put Lincoln in their their “Best of…” list of presidents. I know that I do.

During the 200th celebration year of Lincoln’s birth, Maira Kalman wrote her own valentine to Abraham Lincoln via an art blog published in the New York Times. Maira Kalman has long been a favorite of mine. Her colorful bursts of art are oftentimes paired with sparse hand lettered words that are perfectly chosen. When her art graces the cover of the New Yorker, I usually need to tear it off and save it in my collection of things that are too precious to get rid of. She has created books for children and adults. She has even, improbably and beautifully, illustrated Strunk & White‘s classic, The Elements of Style.

If you are going to take some time to reflect and honor our 16th president today, I would highly encourage Ms. Kalman’s TripTik for the journey. I don’t think it will disappoint, and I believe Abe would very much like it.

In reference to the first part of the title of this post, I would say the answer is quite simple. Most of us work because we have to. In my case, that happened about thirteen years ago. After having the wonderful opportunity to stay home with the kids while they grew, the time came for me to get back to work and help with the expenses that were going to be part of life with tuition. I wouldn’t say that I went back to work kicking and screaming, but there was some pouting involved.

My initial reentry point was not good. I could do the job just fine, but the environment was not friendly, and nothing that I did seemed to generate the least bit of notice. I could have been doing lousy work and I think I would have gotten as much feedback as I did when I did good work. I began to wonder if that is what I should expect from a job, and that I should just be happy that I had a paycheck.

But I did start looking to see what else was available to me, and I found it. Almost twelve years ago, I started working at my current place of employment. That is where the second part of this post’s title comes from – why we stay.

I know that there are people who hate their jobs and dread going to work each day. I know that jobs are not easy to come by and that job security easily can out-trump on-the-job happiness. What I want to reflect on, however, is what it means to be committed to a place because it provides you with what you want and what you need. That is where I am, and that is why I have stayed.

This week during a lunch hour, one of my co-workers booked our conference room and invited others to gather during lunch to get a knitting lesson. When noontime came, I wandered in with my ball of yarn and found several of my mates already there. There were knitting needles on the table (that we could keep!), several different yarns, and examples of knitted items. For half an hour, we sat, chatted, and made fun of our incompetence. All the while, those who knew how to knit, helped those who did not. It was relaxed and fun. It is the kind of thing that makes me stay.

Also this week, I sent an email to one of the doctors that I work with. What I was asking tickled him and he responded with a brief note that let me know that I had made him laugh. That makes me stay.

Sometimes I teach someone how to do something. Sometimes I listen. Sometimes I plan something special. I learn from others who have skills and ideas that I do not. As often as I can, I laugh. I accomplish goals, and I scrap goals that no longer make sense. My job is what others have set for me and what I have set for myself. It is why I stay.

In my position now, I manage several people. It was not something that came naturally to me, but as I continue to learn how to do this, I have grown in my comfort with it. One of the things that I struggle with most, is figuring out my role in making those that I manage happy – and what that means as far as them wanting to stay. I want to think everyone has a job that they get pleasure from, and that their time at work is more than just the hours that they put in and the product they produce. I want everyone to feel noticed and appreciated. But I do know that whether anyone gets all of that in a single position, will not determine their professional paths. Each day can bring opportunities or ideas that the day before did not hold.

Why I stay is because of the challenge of my work, the support of my own management, the camaraderie of my team; the opportunities for newness. When my days or weeks are bad, there are always parts of that equation that ground me. However, just as I cannot guarantee that anyone I work with with will always be there, I can’t guarantee that I will either. The reasons why I stay makes it easy to think it could happen.

When I was a sophomore in college, I started cooking dinners with my boyfriend and his three housemates. It was our way to save money, and strike a little independence from the dining hall drill.

None of us had any experience with cooking. My mother was never an adventurous cook, nor was she one to encourage me into the kitchen to cook alongside her. The boys were the same way. But we were ready for the challenge. We had a few tools – most notably, The Better Homes and Garden Cookbook, The Moosewood Cookbook, and The Fannie Farmer Cookbook. There was no Internet to look up recipes, but there was Mr. Food on the local tv station. I remember that I copied down his Chicken Tetrazini recipe one day while I watched him cook, rather than do my studying. Sometimes we would get a family recipe during the weekly call home, or via the letters that came into our mailboxes.

There were mishaps. Some of the more notorious were the home shucked clams to be placed in the homemade clam chowder (picture clam juice and sand strewn around an already not immaculate, college student apartment kitchen), and the ten pound noodle kugel. But the success was that for three years, we were family. We planned our meals, shopped, cooked, and ate together. If someone was working or had something going on, the schedule would be adjusted or there would be leftovers saved. We sat down each night and ate and talked and laughed and argued. Sometimes friends would join us –bringing fizzy wine and $1.99/six pack beer. Through our cooking and sharing meals, we discovered our community.

At graduation, we all began to scatter. The boyfriend and I got married. We moved to a new state. We grew up some more. We made our own family.

The change from a couple to a family was sweet. Our two babies came close together and grew up well. They were cute and smart and funny. When Dan was traveling a great deal, I remember sitting with both of them at the dinner table one night and realizing what good company they were. It is memory that cannot be matched.

The whole idea of sharing food as comfort and community has become a part of who we are and what we love. For years after the kids were born, we invited two adored couples to our house for an annual Twelfth Night celebration. Beyond getting a chance to cook a great meal, we wanted to show them how fun life with kids could be, because we knew what great parents they would be. They watched our kids grow from elementary school children to college graduates, and we got to celebrate their children as they arrived. It became a ritual, and they are great parents.

I can’t imagine our life without the food and meals that we often get to share — with each other, the people we love, and the people that we want to get to know better. Our daughter is at the ready to discuss the random gathering that has become our Thanksgiving table, but it never is without laughter and good feeling.

A few months ago, we were talking with some friends about our college day cooking and we all recounted Moosewood Cookbook meals. We decided that we would have a meal where each of us would bring one of our favorite recipes from the cookbook. The years have certainly refined our cooking skills and tools since the days when we first opened that book – which is now showing quite the worse for its wear.

However, the specialness of cooking for friends, knowing that the result would be an opportunity to spend time over a meal together, was a fresh as ever.

But somewhere in the middle of my freshman year of college, that plan dissolved. Being away from home and experiencing a whole new kind of life, changed many things. My priorities got shifted. My interests expanded. One day, I made a call to my parents and told them that I was switching from my pre-med major to something called Environmental Studies. It was a good day.

And then, almost twenty-five years later, I was sitting in a classroom learning about public health. That was a good day too.

For those of you not too familiar with public health, it is all about the big picture. People in public health work in all different kinds of areas – medicine, government, journalism, academia, ethics. They are the people who inspect restaurants and the responders to flu outbreaks. It is multi-faceted and ever interesting!

On my first day of my first class of my masters program, my professor instructed us that our first assignment was to go home and subscribe to something called the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly. He explained that this was a weekly report from the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta. Its content; a summary of goings on in the public health arena. Good student that I am, I subscribed immediately. Oh man! What a treat my MMWR continues to be.

Each Thursday morning, an email pops into my inbox. Many weeks, the content is pretty basic stuff: number of smokers, a group of passengers who got sick on a cruise boat, celebration of Safe Drinking Week. But then, there are weeks when I will open the email and something will catch my eye. Sometimes, I will learn about a disease that I have never heard of before. This week, I learned about Nodding Disease - a cute name for a serious issue for some children in Africa. No one knows what causes this disease that shows up in previously healthy children. The symptoms start out as involuntary head nodding and moves into very serious neurological problems. Public health workers from the United States and all over the world are working to figure it out.

It was in the MMWR that the first cases of a strange immune system disease among gay men in Los Angeles first was published.

Content oftentimes reads as a detective story. A problem was reported and public health investigators went out to figure out what was going on. How cool is that?

For about an hour over lunch, he talked about what it was like to be a child growing up in Italy. With pictures and words, he began his tale as a small boy in short pants standing beside his handsome father in military attire. The Italy that he introduced us to was far from the pasta and wine nirvana that we think of today. There was famine and political unrest. There were leaders making bad decisions. He recounted the conflict that arose in his own family when political decisions diverged. The little boy in short pants could not grow up oblivious to that.

The story literally got played out in his own backyard. One anecdote that he shared was playing outside one afternoon and hearing a commotion over the fence.  Two small children were thrown over the fence with a plea to hide them. The neighbor children were Jews – in danger of being rounded up as so many others had – taken to the nearby train station and packed into cattle cars for delivery to concentration camps. The boy’s family hid the children and got them safely to a neighborhood church, but the sounds and sights of that day and countless others embedded in his memory to be shared many times over during his lifetime.

The doctor ended his talk emotionally. He spoke of the importance of telling his story and how he has made certain his child and grandchild will keep remembering it for future generations. He had with him a picture book, drawn by his granddaughter, that told her grandpa’s story. On one page was a crayon drawing of two children flying over a garden wall.

What a gift I got yesterday to be able to be the recipient of a memory.

That single newspaper article has grown into a amalgam of stories centered around three families. I now know members of each of those families. Each family has shared memories with me that are weaving an American saga that continues to thrill me. The other piece of this work has been that I have been able to give each of those families memories that they didn’t know existed. I have pieced snippets of stories together. I have built histories and made connections. I even found a recording and got to share voices of family members now gone.

The whole book writing process is new to me. There are lots of guides out there that tell you how to go about it. One that I just finished reading is Betsy Lerner‘s The Forest for the Trees.

After working on this project for three years, I am now at a point that I know this can actually happen. What I don’t completely understand is how it all works. Betsy, who has worked in many areas of publishing, gives a good analysis of what it means to write, what it takes to find an agent, get a publisher, get edited, watch your book get built, see it delivered to your neighborhood bookseller, and how the work of promotion can be a make or break. There was something comforting about reading this. She made it clear that my publishing innocence brought challenges, but did not guarantee defeat.

When you write a non-fiction book, the process for publishing does not wait until the book is done. Once you know what you want, a proposal is created. The proposal gets sent out to agents who can decide if yours is a project in which they could get interested. The proposal is like a business plan with a couple sample chapters attached.

I do have a proposal for my book and last year I sent it out a few times. I have gotten as many rejections. Even though I knew rejections are part of the game, they are deflating. But now we have a new year and new promise. I am giving my proposal a new going over, before sending it out again.

What started out as my project is now a shared project. The gift from the families I have gotten to know is also my debt. This book will happen. I love telling it, and I owe it to so many to tell it. I will keep readers of the blog updated on my work.

That is just what I did to celebrate my birthday this week. Along with good friends, we set up at one of the long tables inside B-B’s prior to the show. The music treat is not the only one in store here. B-B’s also puts out some of the best barbecue in the city. There is the smoked meat, but there is also some wicked Cajun food.

And then at 7:00, the music started.

For several years now, Trampled Under Foot has gifted our city with their availability. The brother and sister trio are accomplished musicians who put out gutsy blues that make everyone in the audience happy. They do this almost every Tuesday night at BB’s,and if you go to your website you can find lots of places around the city where they play. These are winners of an international blues band competition, and for $5 you can sit with a bucket of PBR’s, a belly full of smoked goodness, and an appreciative audience and hear their music romp. That is a beautiful life!

And all around this city and any other city, there are such opportunities – musicians making music and sharing their gifts. These are not the high dollar Ticketmaster gigs. This is walking in, handing over your dollars, and getting a Sharpie mark on your hand. We should all get out there and do more of this. Have you done that lately? Share!