things that are serious

I'm overwhelmed by reading the reports of the tsunami and its aftermath, and can only point to the Tsunami Help site for guidance on where to help if you're able. See also this Flickr site collecting relief org contact info (via largehearted boy).

I inadvertently discovered writer Maureen McHugh's blog the other day -- Hodgkins and Me -- which was also how I discovered she's fighting cancer. It's a remarkable site and I urge you all to read it. Her intellectual courage and involvement in her treatment is a model for dealing with those big life things that seem impossible to handle well. And with humor, too. From today's entry, on whether it's more important for a doctor to be good or nice (not that they're always mutually exclusive):

And I've been conditioned by years and years of medical shows--from Dr. Kildare, through Medical Center and ER to now, House, that if my doctor gets involved in my case, he'll go the extra mile, and he'll save me. I want him to like me. I want him to show engagement with me. I know I have a rather textbook presentation of a really curable disease and that I seem to be responding to treatment pretty much as expected, but it's not my textbook, it's the doctor's. In my textbook, I have the most serious illness I've ever had in my life.

I don't have a word for all of that. So I default to that wimpiest of words--nice. Yeah, I'd prefer a brilliant doctor who's an asshole over a mediocre doctor who bakes cookies for me, but I don't get to make that choice.

So I hope my oncologist is an excellent clinician. (And actually, I think he is.) But I can report confidently, he's nice.

Why don't you go ahead and pre-order Maureen's collection Mothers and Other Monsters coming in the spring from Small Beer Press? (Scroll to second option.)