This is it. Your last chance.
Ian and I are leaving tonight for Omaha, to support the CCFA and my father in this weekend’s ‘Guts & Glory‘ walk. We’re still walking, and I’m still looking for (more) support. The last time I mentioned this, our team had beaten its goals and was number one in donations. We’ve still beaten our goal, but have since been steel-toed from our position in first place.
I’m not pointing fingers. I’m just saying that this is your last opportunity* to avoid being known as the freeloading skinflint who’s selfishly taken hours—hours—of laughter, tears, and enjoyment from the well-crafted and witty prose of this blog, and who callously gives nothing in return.
I’m just saying.
Please, don’t feel any obligation or shame or guilt. I just thought you’d might like to sleep at night; the sound, rejuvenating sleep of someone not steeped in remorse and self-loathing.
Have a wonderful day!
Donate online or by mail
About the CCFA
Read a story about Alec, a twelve-year-old boy with Crohn’s disease
* This is, of course, not your last chance. If not myself, then please support your local CCFA ‘Guts & Glory’ walk. And thank you all for your support!
Dear Friends:
The Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation of America is a non-profit, volunteer-driven organization dedicated to finding the cure for Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis. On Friday, 24 August, I will be visiting my father in Omaha, Nebraska, and volunteering for this year’s CCFA ‘Guts & Glory Walk ‘. I’m asking for your help.
Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis are the main forms of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), and aren’t well known, though they affect hundreds of thousands of people in North America alone. IBD (not to be confused with the unrelated irritable bowel syndrome) is an inflammatory condition of the large intestine, and there is no known cause or cure. It affects both adults and children alike.
A few years ago, my father began showing symptoms of IBD. He couldn’t eat, had trouble sleeping, and was in a state of constant fatigue. He was unable to work or enjoy his life for the pain and discomfort, and for the simple fear of being too far from a bathroom. Every part of his life and body had been consumed by his disease.
During his ordeal, my father found the CCFA and a local support group for those with Crohn’s disease and colitis. The friends he made and the support they provided were so important to his recovery that, when he recently retired, my father wanted to offer that same comfort to others. Last year he went to work full-time as a Development Coordinator for the the CCFA, and started the Nebraska chapter. He has just returned from Camp Oasis, a youth summer camp for children living with IBD.
The CCFA is dedicated to finding the cause and cure for Crohn’s and colitis, and offering help and hope until that goal is met. My father has made that same commitment. I’m asking for your sponsorship as I volunteer and walk later this month.
My team, the Gilberts Guts to Glory Gang, is twenty-four friends and family members who want to support my father and the CCFA. So far we’ve raised $2,200, which is far beyond the goal we set for ourselves. However there are three weeks left, and we want to see how far we can go. 82% of your donation goes to CCFA programs and services, the rest supporting fund raising and administrative costs.
Any support is appreciated, whether it’s ten-thousand dollars or a prayer. Though ten-thousand dollars would be really, really nice. If you do choose to sponsor me, you may donate online or by mail (see the online donation page for further information).
To my blogging friends: because I’m shameless and because it never hurts to ask, if any of you would be willing to donate a blog post about this, I’d be ever so appreciative. I’d thank you. Profusely.
Thank you very much, and God bless!
All the Best,
Jared
Donate online or by mail
About the CCFA
Read a story about Alec, a twelve-year-old boy with Crohn’s disease>
The Age of Dinosaurs
James Scruton
There are, of course, theories
about the wide-eyed, drop-jawed
fascination children have for them,
about how, before he’s learned
his own phone number or address,
a five-year-old can carry
like a few small stones
the Latin tonnage of those names,
the prefixes and preferences
for leaf or meat.
My son recites the syllables
I stumble over now,
sets up figures as I did
years ago in his prehistory.
Here is the green ski slope
of a brontosaur’s back,
there a triceratops in full
gladiator gear. From the arm
of a chair a pterodactyl
surveys the dark primeval carpet.
Each has disappeared from time
to time, excavated finally
from beneath a cabinet
or the sofa cushions, only
to be buried again among its kind
in the deep toy chest,
the closed lid snug as earth.
The next time they’re brought out
to roam the living room
another bone’s been found
somewhere, a tooth or fragment
of an eggshell dusted off,
brushing away some long-held notion
about their life-span
or intelligence, warm blood
or cold. On the floor
they face off as if debating
the latest find, what part
of which one of them
has been discovered this time.
Or else they stand abreast
in one long row, side
by scaly side, waiting to fall
like dominoes, my son’s
tossed tennis ball a neon yellow
asteroid, his shadow a dark cloud
when he stands, his fervor for them
cooling so slowly he can’t feel it—
the speed of glaciers, maybe,
how one age slides into the next.
This Sunday is Father’s Day, a fact which I completely forgot while I was sprinting my way from Terminal 1 to Terminal 3 at Heathrow. Cards are gonna be late this year, collective Dads!
Author and blogfather Tony Woodlief hasn’t forgotten, and somehow managed to artfully relate Paris Hilton to Father’s Day. Bravo.
‘It’s interesting that we celebrate the success of men at business, sports, entertainment, war, and politics, but rarely at the thing which matters more than those often-ephemeral feats, the raising up of confident, competent, moral, courageous children to carry on a free and prosperous civilization. Not to wrestle with this great calling every day of our lives, fathers, is to fail at manhood itself.’
If I learned that my son were using drugs, I expect my response would be something greater than an introspective frown. Then again, he won’t have learned it from watching me.
When a Knoxville, Tennessee father discovered that his son was smoking pot, et al., he made sure everyone else knew as well:
‘The boy was forced to wear a large sandwich board sign that said “I abused & sold drugs,” while standing in front of Cedar Bluff Middle School.
“I would like to say that I’m not out here doing this to humiliate my son,’ the dad said. “I’m doing this because I love him. We do have an extreme drug problem in America, and maybe it’s time for extreme measures that parents need to take to monitor this problem that we have.”‘
To his credit, the boy knows when to take responsibility for his actions: ”Well, I did do the crime and I’m willing to serve the punishment for it.’
Of course, the internet being what it is, there’s some discussion, here. Hackles have been raised, and some folks are more worried about potential low self-esteem than a potential funeral.
Remember Tasha Henderson? In 2005 she dealt a similar punishment to her 14-year-old daughter, who was misbehaving in school.
If they think a little more ‘shame’ is going to faze a middle school student, then they’ve never been to middle school. Drug abuse thrives in secrecy. Some problems can’t be solved with decorum and tact.
(Thanks, Glenn Sacks!)
Dear Friends:
Yesterday morning, a friend’s neighbor accidentally backed over her 15-month-old son with her SUV. The child died later that day.
I don’t know how to pray in situations like this. It feels too overwhelming, too intimidating. What should I ask? Where to begin? I’m thankful that God knows the answers to both.
Please take a moment to pray for this family.
Parentography is a new online community for parents to share reviews and experiences of family-friendly experiences in their home-town, and in their travels.
Places and activities are divided into several categories, such as Major Attractions and Parks & Playgrounds. They’re also organized by age-appropriate…ness and time of year.
Along with reviews (and pictures), parents can also submit Excursions, which…I admit, I don’t quite understand:
‘Excursions are suggestions and ideas from Parentographers about ways to spend time with your children. They range from short activities near home to multi-day adventure-fests. Some excursions involve specific places. Others focus on activities that you can do anywhere!’
The goal, it seems, being to share more about your favorite places than just where, when, and how must it costs.
Parentography is new, and in beta, so the content is slim and site a little buggy. But it certainly looks promising!
(Thanks, Lifehacker!)
Sometimes, it ain’t so bad.
‘Their conversation meanders on to golf and women and work. I eat my food, and I can’t taste it. I think, though my own three boys are near to killing me, that I’ll take all of them, all the children not wanted because they don’t fit someone’s lifestyle. You sit on a bar stool in an airport and laugh out your contempt and you think they don’t know, but they know. They always know.’
I only have the one kid, and somehow I can still relate to this commercial. At first, I thought he was deciding which cone he should keep for himself.
(Does anyone speak Swedish?)
(Thanks, Phil!)
Volkswagen has confirmed what I’ve always suspected. For men, life is nothing more than a downward spiral from strip clubs and casual sex into the squalid depths of matrimony and fatherhood.
But it’s all worth it if you have a cool car.
The consumer within me loves the concept; I can’t deny that it’s a clever ad. I’d probably appreciate it more if it weren’t for VW’s parting message: ‘Finally, it’s great to be a dad.’ Finally. At long last. After years of languishing under the yolk yoke of responsibility and compassion and unconditional love, we shall have our prize.
The father within me is livid at the implication that family isn’t its own reward.
(Thanks, Brent!)
