An interesting article from Esther in the Seattle PI (from her "Witnessing Alzheiner's" column). I'm gonna try to go hear John at It's About Time this Thursday . . .


J.W. Marshall & The Poetry of Illness
Of the mountain of books I have used to help me manage my life during Abe's illness, J.W. Marshall's Meaning A Cloud sits at the top. Marshall's first full-length collection of poetry, Meaning A Cloud carries us from the accident-site where he was struck by a car, to his Seattle neighborhood and, finally, through his mother's stroke and subsequent death in a nursing home.

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Ahh, California . . .

Calif. agency pulls winners of stem cell poetry contest after poem's religious tones offend

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — An attempt to lighten up the heavy subject of stem cells through poetry has backfired on the California agency that manages the state's $3 billion research fund.

The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine decided to hold a poetry contest to commemorate Stem Cell Awareness Day last Wednesday. But it later pulled the winning entries from its website because of religious language in one of the works.

The poem "Stem C." begins, "This is my body/which is given for you," and ends with, "Take this/in remembrance of me."


I don't quite understand what makes stem cell research a "heavy subject." But it sounds like it might have been interesting poem.