Wednesday, March 19, 2008

More Than A Diagnosis

In addition to cleaning my desk, I'm trying to reorganize the blogs I follow, using a blogreader as Kelly suggested last week. (I am trainable.) As a result, I visited Finding Wonderland and was referred to a great article about Terry Pratchett.

Note that while he talks about his recent Alzheimer's diagnosis, he also talks about his past as a journalist. The material about his illness sounds mildly hopeful to this Pollyanna, and the stuff about his work as a journalist is both fascinating and heartbreaking.

While we're on the subject of Terry Pratchett, Michelle at Scholar's Blog reports on a Match It For Pratchett: Fandom Contributes To Alzheimer's Research campaign. Pratchett fans are trying to raise enough money in donations to Alzheimer's research to match the half a million pound donation Pratchett, himself, recently made. I found many, many references to this on-line, including a website, but nothing in the mainstream press.

It looks as if the Match It For Pratchett website has only been up since Saturday. A post dated yesterday reported that 824 donations worth over 32,000 pounds had already been made to the Alzheimer's Research Trust in England. Presumably donations are being made to Alzheimer's organizations in other countries.

6 comments:

Kate said...

Thanks for the link to the Pratchett interview. My son frequently mocks my admiration for Rosemary Sutcliff, and it will be extremely satisfying to be able to point out to him that Mr. Pratchett is evidently a fan of hers as well.

But, most of the time I use your blog for more elevated purposes than quarreling with my children, I promise.

Michele said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Michele said...

Thanks for mentioning Match It For Pratchett !

Anyone outside the UK can donate to the UK Alzheimer's Research charity via the website - you just need to indicate you're not a UK taxpayer and that you don't have a UK postal code. I know of Americans who've successfully donated...

(Sorry for the deleted comment - four hours sleep isn't enough to be coherent !)

Kelly said...

You go, Gail! I LOVE my blog reader. I use the google reader, but I know JacketFlap has been keeping up with all the developments. The main thing is you can read your favorite blogs like a newspaper once a day :)

Gail Gauthier said...

Michelle--I definitely respect fan culture, anyway, and certainly hope what appears to be a grassroots fan-based drive is able to help this cause.

Kelly--Yeah, I'm hopeful that I'll be able to take in mass quantities of information in limited amounts of time.

Kate--Hey, quarreling with our children is an elevated purpose.

Michele said...

Well if the fandom-driven fundraising for the hospice where actor David Tennant's mother worked and then was cared for during her last days with cancer is anything to go by, they'll raise that half a million and then some...