ETA 11/20/08: My heart breaks to report this but I just learned that Lori Hall Steele passed away last night. My deepest sympathies to her young son, mother, and extended family and friends.
Ok, ok … I know this is a food blog, but I’m a food writer by trade, a freelance one at that. And I’m here to ask for your help. (This is what I blogged over at my writing website, The Renegade Writer, today.)
I’m not a big reader of essays, but earlier this year I was pointed to an essay at the Washington Post written by Lori Hall Steele, a freelance writer I know from Freelance Success. By the end of her essay, my heart felt as if it were going to break in two. Go ahead. Read it. I’ll be curious what you think. And don’t read any more of my post until you go read it.
Ok now. Here’s the deal. A few months ago, I was stunned to learn that Lori had been diagnosed with a particularly brutal case of Lyme Disease. She couldn’t work, and when you don’t work as a freelancer, you don’t get money and you can’t pay bills. Her friends in Michigan held a benefit for her. I thought things might get better, but recently I found out they were only getting worse. Her doctors were now leaning toward a diagnosis of ALS, or Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease, a progressive neurodegenerative illness.
Lori’s financial resources are exhausted. She’s gotten funding from ASJA (the American Society of Journalists and Authors) and just got another emergency grant from them, but it’s not enough. (You can read more detail about Lori’s plight here.) She’s days away from losing her home. At this point, Lori not only can’t work, she’s bedridden and using a ventilator to breathe.
I wracked my brain trying to figure out a way to raise more money so that Lori doesn’t have to worry about losing her home, not when she’s fighting for her life. My suggestion was a blog-a-thon, which I’m starting here. Below is a PayPal button where you can donate directly to Lori. Please please please click on it and give generously. (There’s also a button on the blog started by Lori’s friends in Michigan.) If you blog, consider adding this button to your site and blogging a bit about Lori … let’s spread the word and see what we can do for her and her son. Right after I post this, I’m going to write to every writing blogger I can think of. I know that the power of virtual communities can do good things. My heart breaks thinking about Lori’s words in her Washington Post piece:
“I tell him I’ll always be here for him, one way or another. Always always always. Just like my mother is here for me. Just like I was there when he was 3. It is an impossible promise, a gamble with his trust. I secretly pray I don’t let him down, not on this.”
Please, give what you can spare. $25 is a week’s worth of fancy coffee drinks for some of us. I know times are tight — they are around here — but they’re nowhere near as bad as they are for other folks.
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