Nate Wilson

I've only just started reading Nate Wilson's fantasy novels for children (he also writes books for adults), so it was sad to hear - via a tweet from his father, Douglas Wilson (an even more prolific writer of all manner of things) - that, as this page describes it:  'Nate is preparing to undergo extensive brain surgery to remove a “farm egg” sized tumor near his brain stem.'  

Nate and his family, and his father's family, are all Christians, so the perspective on this relatively sudden sideswipe to his life is being handled in a manner that might be different to those without a faith. I say 'might' because no doubt there are people without faith who can face such a trial with humour, bravery, integrity and the like. As Nate seems to be doing. 

Still, if I was in his shoes, even though I'm a Christian too, I'd be struggling with this situation. I don't regard myself as a brave person, and anyone who's read my book Diary of a Prostate Wimp will know that I found even that relatively minor interruption to my otherwise healthy life quite a challenge. (This wasn't intended to be a opportunity to mention my book, by the way. It just came to mind...!)

So those of you out there who are praying people, pray for this fellow-writer, that the operation required will be successful and he will come through it safely. 

What Does Super Jonny Do When Mum Gets Sick?

I'm part of a group of Facebook where a number of New Zealand self-published authors get together to help and encourage each other, discuss problems and suggest solutions. I've only been with the group a few months, but it's proved very valuable.

It's also helped some of us to promote our books a bit further, something that I'm also doing on Google+ plus with a different set of authors, ones who are rather more far-flung around the world.

Anyway I recently received a copy of Simone Colwill's book for children, What Does Super Jonny Do When Mum Gets Sick? It's about a little boy whose mother goes into hospital with an illness (the illness is unspecified in the book). The little boy, who sees himself as a superhero, asks How can I help? 

A number of hospital workers, ranging from the doctor down to the cleaner, all say they can help, but Jonny wants to give each of them something of his own as well. Unfortunately, Jonny feels his offers are unrecognised. I offered to help, but no one would listen. Discouraged, he comes up with several imaginative but unrealistic options to save his mother. She tells him, however, that he's already helped; each of the things he gave away was useful to the various hospital workers, though not necessarily in the ways he'd envisaged. Ultimately, she tells him, his superhero hugs are the best thing of all.

The book's delightful illustrations by Jasmine Ting give the easy-to-read story plenty of zip and zing, characterise the different people nicely, and add their own quirky humour and detail.

Finally there's a page of suggestions as to how to use the book in different situations: schools, hospitals, doctor's waiting rooms and so on.

This is a book that children will enjoy even apart from the crisis of a mother being hospital, and parents and medical professionals will find valuable.

Asbestos

I've more than once been asked to write something about Mesothelioma on this blog (no need to ask why, just accept the fact that's the case) and invariably fail to remember how to spell it. Never mind - accept the fact that the spelling above is correct. Just accept it!

Mesothelioma, as you'll know, is a cancer related to asbestos; that is, people who've worked with asbestos and inhaled the asbestos dust over a period of time are very susceptible to getting the illness. Just so you're really clear about this, mesothelioma is named from the mesothelium, which is a membrane that covers and protects most of the internal organs of the body. It's composed of two layers of cells: one layer immediately surrounds the organ; the other forms a sac around it. The mesothelium produces a lubricating fluid that is released between these layers, allowing moving organs (such as the beating heart and the expanding and contracting lungs) to glide easily against adjacent structures.

Now there's something you didn't know you'd find out when you came to read this blog today. Anyway, if you've contracted mesothelioma you may need a mesothelioma lawyer so that you don't find your employer or ex-employer trying to wriggle out of paying you money in compensation. That's another story. What I'm more interested in today is asbestos itself.

Asbestos is a Greek word meaning 'unquenchable' or 'inextinguishable' - a pretty scary sort of thought in itself, particulary if you've picked up the cancer connected to it. There are other other illnesses you can contract via asbestos: asbestostosis, which affects the lungs, for instance, and lung cancer itself.

Asbestos ain't fun to be around, even though it's very effective as a building material, with various qualities that make it useful. In fact, it's not so much its use in building that's the big problem (although there are hazards), it's what happens when you 'unbuild' it.

Now you might think we've only just discovered in the last couple of centuries that its use brought problems; nope, the ancient Greeks noticed that when their slaves mined asbestos they tended to get sick. Of course, there were always plenty more slaves around, so it didn't matter in those days. (Slaves were only there for use, like other tools and materials.)

There's a story that Charlemagne had a tablecloth made out of asbestos. Certainly it might have saved on the laundering, but you have to kind of wonder what it did to the food....

Mining of asbestos in modern times turned out to be not much better for the slaves - sorry, workers - than it had been in ancient days. Miners got sick just like their forebears and were probably treated only marginally better.

Strangely, asbestos is found naturally in the air outdoors, and in some drinkable water, including water from natural sources. Most people's systems cope with the infinitesimal amounts that they come in contact with, but there have been studies done in which it was found that people living near to asbestos deposits got sick; increasingly, the closer they lived to the deposits. Mesothelioma was one of the main illnesses they contracted.

When the Twin Towers were destroyed on 9/11, millions of particles of asbestos were released into the air. That's pretty scary.

You look around the world some days and think: this is a pretty okay sort of a place. And then you discover that the Creator seems to have left some very strange things just kind of lying around. Equally, when you think that the ancient Greeks had a fairly good idea that asbestos, for all its useful properties, wasn't that healthy for humans, you have to wonder why we moderns have considered using it in such huge quantities.

Seemingly the only way we learn is when we find we have to fork out large sums of money in compensation.

Young at Heart

Saw two movies in a row over the weekend, one in the theatre at the Rialto and one as a DVD at home. In fact, both of them were DVDs, as the smaller cinemas at the Rialto basically show their movies off DVDs onto a screen. Bit of a cheek really, charging you full price for that!
Anyway, that aside, the one we saw at the Rialto was Young at Heart. I’ve just been on the Net looking to see if I could find some background info about the choir that features in the movie, and there’s obviously quite a bit at the FoxSearchlight site – if I can dig my way through all the links. Might leave it till later since there are reviews and videos galore, with the choir hiving hither and yon, including, no doubt, going to places like Las Vegas (although I couldn’t see that when I searched).
The movie: it’s kind of a rough grainy doco, with a sometimes wavering camera (to make sure you know it’s being taken ‘live’ no doubt) but it would almost not matter what the director and cameraman did, these old folk take over the screen time after time. From the first full-in-your-face song to the poignancy of the last moments, when we learn that the same singer who opened the show has died since the making of the movie, this is a life-empowering, soul-engaging heck of a film. Not because it’s particularly well-made (though it probably hides its craft more skilfully than we realise) but because the people in it are just so endearingly alive. Mostly in their eighties, and full of aches and pains and all sorts of chronic illnesses, they come utterly alive when they start performing for an audience. There’s no holding them back. And some are so keen they’ll get up off their sickbed, practically, in order to make it to the show.
Only a few of them can actually sing particularly well – but it isn’t the professionalism of the singing that’s of interest here. These people sing from the heart, and communicate life to their audiences. The sense of spirit within their singing is so strong that they reduce young men a quarter their age to tears in the concert they do in a prison. And wondrously, that scene avoids all the worst things non-Americans dislike about Americans; for once there’s no performing for the camera by the prisoners. They’re engrossed in the singing to the extent that what they’re thinking and feeling is written all over their faces. I found this to be one of the most moving parts of the film.
The two deaths in the film are wrenching as well; two wonderful characters just don’t manage to make the final concert, two guys as different as possible but both with an enormous strength and a willingness to put their lives on the line to try and get through their illnesses. It must have been tough on the Bob Cilman, the choir’s director over the 25 or so years he’s been running it, to see one after another of his people die on him, often in difficult circumstances. Hard-nosed as he sometimes seems when working with the choir, he’s a softie at heart, and must have had his heart broken a number of times.
But the sadness is alleviated time after time with the wonderful humour, the kind of humour only people who’ve been through eighty years of life and grief can summon up. In scene after scene one of the ‘cast’ will drop a complete non sequiter into the conversation, leaving us laughing, or offer a throwaway line that beats anything the average comedian can do.
I’d love to see it again, even knowing that some of the cast don’t make it. They affirm life to such a degree that they make you realise that while growing old might make you look like that least attractive creature on earth, it’s what’s on the inside that counts.