Bay Area Brain Tumor Walk, May 13, 2017 at Crissy Field.

Team "Glio Warriors for Jean and Jonathan" at the
Bay Area  Brain Tumor Walk in 2013

Special Rosamundi issue with an
article by Jean about her
preservation garden for
endangered roses

    Team Rosamundi will remember Jean at the annual Bay Area Brain Tumor Walk, May 13, at Crissy Field in SF.  Rosamundi is also the name of the journal of the Heritage Rose Foundation, where Jean worked as a research editor, doing her bit for the cause of preserving old roses.  Jean understood that we're all in this together, the web of life, and that people change lives for the better all the time.  One needed change is improving treatments and support services for patients like Jean, with a glioblastoma multiforme (GBM).  Please join our team and help make that happen.

    GBMs are the most common and the most lethal type of malignant brain tumor.  When Jean was diagnosed in 2011, the "gold standard" FDA approved chemotherapy for GBMs was temezolomide.  This drug helped about 1 in 5 patients by increasing their life expectancy by a 

Wild college days
Jean lived with a gentle intensity

couple of months — to about a year and a half.  At the walk, you'll have a chance to talk to long-term GBM survivors, and exchange news about promising treatments.
   If you've never been to a walk before, you might be surprised by the upbeat energy.  Most of the credit belongs to the survivors, happy to be alive after confronting a terrible diagnosis.  But some of it goes to those of us who come because someone we love did not survive, and appreciate having a place where we can share and acknowledge our grief.  Jean lives in the memories of a wide circle of people.  The Remembrance Ceremony at 9:10 will give us another chance to honor the bright spirit that passed from us in 2013.

Some Jean thoughts of my own, four years after.

On our honeymoon,
Jerusalem, Marh 1998

    She was a vivacious, brilliant, fascinating woman, and one of the great things about being married to her was to able to have an intelligent conversation, any time I could manage one.  At parties, she was usually the person I wanted to talk to most.  She was also an extremely good person, and many have wondered how someone so nice could also be so interesting.  After she was diagnosed with the tumor, she was still a linchpin in the support networks for our moms and her brother, as they confronted their own serious medical problems.  And they were not burdens, she found ways to have fun in the process.

With friends at Café Samovar, San Francisco,
 December 2012, taking a break from the Zen Hospice.
We enjoyed our lives together to the very end

    She did much to help me too—much—and going to the Walks is one way to  stay connected.  The first time was in 2013, three months after, and a sanity saver in a very dark time.  The raw grief has passed, but 2017 is a dark time too, although not for me in particular.

    Jean carried the idealism of her college days forward into that busy world called adult life, and would be sad to see what is happening in this country.  One problem is that there's less funding for medical research as more money is funneled to the military and the police.  That's another reason why your support for the NBTS is especially important now.

The poem we will read at Remembrance Ceremony May 13

Israel pictures

Terrye saying goodbye at Ben Gurion International

Much thanks to my sister Terrye and my niece and nephew Rutie and Yehudah, for their bemused tolerance of this wandering workaholic.  Will be trying to find words for the experience, but for now will need to make do with a few pictures.

At the entrance to Yad Vashem,
the World Holocaust Remembrance Center

My grand-nephew Nachman, Yehudah's son

Yehudah and his GF Raz,
lounging on Terrye's couch.
They are a charming couple indeed.

Father, son, guitar

µ, Rutie, and Rutie's son Eitan.

Back from two weeks in Israel/Palestine

Software engineering class at Bethlehem University.  That's me toward
the back wearing a cap. There were 17 students in the class, 14 females and 3 males.

     Returned Sunday from twelve days in Israel, sight-seeing and renewing family ties; and two days in Palestine, checking out Bethlehem University (BU), a Catholic school established by the De La Salle Christian Brothers.  The whole complicated story will be on the Wood St. blog in a week.  For now, just

Caffeine station on Yussef Plaza,
the main social space

a note explaining why you may wish to donate to BU, even if you happen to be a recovering Catholic, or a skeptic like me, with no affinity for faith-based anything.

• Your money will be put to good use.  The nominal annual tuition at BU is $4,000, and your donations go directly into tuition subsidies ensuring that no student actually pays more than 2K.  The per-capita GDP in Palestine is approximately $3,000, and the unemployment rate hovers above 25%.

• BU is open to all.  The 3,290 students are 3/4 Muslim, 3/4 female, and in Yussef Plaza, the main social space, women with and without head coverings chat amicably.  You could imagine this means that the Muslims and Christians students get along fine.  If you're an inveterate dreamer, you could even imagine it portends a day when Jews and Arabs will be on friendly terms.

• The Computer Science students are familiar types, with important differences.  Fellow programmers, think back to our difficulties in learning our trade, when the greatest physical hardships we faced were all night coding sessions fueled on sugar and caffeine, sprawling over uncomfortable chairs. Our brothers and sisters at BU endure far worse.  They pursue their studies under martial laws that can turn a five mile commute to school into an odyssey.  And that's when the military checkpoints are open.  Just like for us, one of their motives for learning how to code is to escape to an exotic land of decent pay, respect and dignity.  But their starting point is further back, in a world of endemic humiliation — and those great humanitarians Trump and Netanyahu are not about to make their lives any easier.  Writing a check is one small thing that can help.

BU Guest Relations Officer Brother Michael Andrejko (center) posing
in front of the library.  The round hole on the upper right was
made by a tank shell.