Leukemia and Lymphoma Society Light the Night

I will be walking the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society's Light the Night Walk for the fifth year in a row. I have worked on this fund raiser every year since I was first diagnosed with Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia. It is truly an inspiring evening of walking with lighted balloons, red for supporters and white for survivors and gold for those who have lost the battle.
I not only walk for myself but for all those who have suffered from blood cancers some of them in silence.

I have become a patient advocate to spread the word about blood cancer. Few people know that SEPTEMBER IS BLOOD CANCER AWARENESS MONTH IN NEW JERSEY.

The LLS is trying to make September blood cancer awareness month nationwide. You can help by contacting your congress person. Here is the link:Act now to make September Blood Cancer Awareness Month

The Light the Night New Jersey Team will be on Good Morning America on Channel 7 ABC on Wednesday September 22. I don't know if it is an interview or just in the audience as I have been. The show airs from 7 AM to 9 AM when I am usually exercising so I will watch it on the Internet.

I am walking the Light the Night walk on Saturday October 2 at Princeton Forrestal Village. The ceremony starts at 5:00 PM and is usually over by 9:00 PM. We walk rain or shine in warm weather and cold weather and I have had all of that.

If you would like to donate to my team my web page is :

http://pages.lightthenight.org/nj/Colonial10/jbrown_LTN45



I hope you donate the cost of one less cup of Starbucks coffee or Latte even more if your company will match.

You have until JANUARY 31 TO DONATE! Think about your tax deductions.

Remember I am walking for a cure. The researchers are close to getting cures for some blood cancers but they need money for this. Researchers are humans who have families and houses and need to eat so you will be stimulating the economy by donating to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society!!! Think of that!

Jeannette Brown

Vacations, Book Writing, Summertime

Well two weeks ago I went on a vacation, sort of. It was supposed to be a wonderful vacation in the Berkshires with music, dance, relaxation and only a little book writing. The Berkshires are in western Massachusetts and the summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra in Tangelwood. I used to go there all the time when my girl friend had her house up there. This time I invited to share my girl friends time share along with several others of her friends. We had tickets to a lot of concerts and there is going to be time for me to edit what I had written and send it off to my personal editors. At least that was the grand plan. It started off OK even though we had a two hour delay driving up due to traffic and construction in New Jersey. We got to Tangelwood in time for the preview concert, followed by a picnic dinner supplied by our overnight host and hostess. We were staying overnight, the first night at the home of one of my friends because we could not get into the time share until Saturday. Moving into the time share was ok as were the concerts at Tangelwood. Sunday night was a concert by Audra McDonald which was great.

Then came Monday. I went for a swim and came back for breakfast. My girlfriend took a walk in the woods and then decided to go for a swim in the outdoor pool, (I went in the indoor pool that opens at 8, and the outdoor pool opens at 10 AM. My friend was in a hurry because she had to leave for a meeting another part of Mass and I was going to meet with a chemist friend of mine who lives in the Berkshires. She was rushing to the pool and did not see the glass door, she thought it was open and ran into it. She fell and fractured her wrist which we found out after six hours in the ER. So that shot Monday.

The rest of the week was spent nursing her with the help of the other women that came.

But having said that, I did get some things done on the book. I took two afternoons when I sat in my "t office" on the balcony of the time share. I edited what I had written so now I have the second draft of some of writings about the women. I sent it off to a personal editor and she is looking at it. Editing is a great process, especially when you edit more than one segment of the book. You get to see the big picture and make connections between the women. It will help me write the overview chapter, but this blog is helping me do that. I did get to get away to visit with my friend in the Berkshires. I also got to take the car to see the Rockwell museum in Stockbridge Mass and wonder at the scenery.

It was about this time that my editor told me if I want a book launch in August 2011 he needs to see the book in early December not late December as I had planned. So when I came back home I started to speed up my writing. I set a new time table to finish writing in September do the back stuff in October and finally putting together and editing in November. Therefore I can't let life get in the way of my writing. That is easier said than done. I got two days of writing done last week. Hopefully next week will be better.

I take the book with me wherever I go as now I am on route to a ScienceMakers board meeting in Chicago by train. I brought the information about one woman with me to write about during the break times and on the train.

Here are some observations about the book:

• Research can now be done by Google as well as going to the library. With Googling you need to have patience because I found some good information after 25 pages. Maybe I did not ask the right questions. You can also find some of their research in Google Scholar.
  
• I am very much indebted to Dr. Winni Warren who wrote Black Women Scientists in America. Although I started my research long before she did, she was meticulous in her research and I check her references as well as the new ones I discover by googling. I have t told her this and she has encouraged me to write my book.
  
• Ebony magazine has portrayed the lives of many of the women in the book including a complete spread about a husband and wife couple who were scientists in Albuquerque New Mexico. I think Ebony was more interested in the fact that they were the Black middle class along with four others in the town at the time. The fact that they were scientists did not seem to interest them at the time.
  
• The University of Chicago was the university that many of the women went to for their Ph. D. research. It far out numbers the other institutions
  
• I will go through all of the women in the book and point out similar connections. Right now have three or more women born in 1926.
  
• I have also used genealogy in Ancestry .Com to find out more information about these women. I will tell that to Dr. Henry Lewis Gates Jr. who helped me get my publisher.
  

Well that's all for now.

Jeannette Brown

 

E

Half way through maybe

Well today, I finished the first drafts of the women that I have a lot of information about with the exception of one or two. Now I have to decide if I am going to write up woman that I don't have much more information about than is published.

I looked at one woman and sent for more information via interlibrary loan. I no longer go to the libraries to do the research I let the library bring the books to me. That way I can write and not waste time in travel. I am still taking the oral histories of women where there is not a lot of published information.

I expect to look at my first drafts while on vacation in the Berkshires and then release them to my personal editors for review. I still have a lot of the back work to do, index references etc. Book writing is hard, but fun.

Jeannette

Book Progress to date

Wow. Sorry for the long time between posts. You would think I have been busy writing but I have been busy and sometimes writing. I am not as far along as I wanted to be on this date, but I am working on it. My mentors have been pushing me to write and not procrastinate. For example I have postponed a visit to an orthopedic doctor because even though both knees bother me at times and so does my hip, I can still walk and exercise so adding another doctor to my group is not what I need at this time.

I have also been busy with American Chemical Society business. I gave four African American middle school and high school students' awards last Tuesday. I will post their photos on the website soon. These are the possible future chemists and future readers of my book or website.

I need to schedule two oral histories of two women for my book. They are both in the Washington DC area so that I can do it easily but the problem is scheduling. It seems other 70 year olds are as busy as I am.

I am also still doing some research for the book. For this, I am choosing to sit at home at my computer and let my library send me the documents by interlibrary loan as long as it exists in New Jersey. Our new Governor is cutting budgets one of them being the library budget by 74%!!!!! Penny wise and pound-foolish.

So I am going to write today Saturday, and I hope to get out into the garden later this afternoon. I cannot sit and look at the computer all day; I have to give my eyes a rest!

Jeannette

Speed Bump by Dave Coverly on Creators.com - A Syndicate Of Talent

Speed Bump by Dave Coverly on Creators.com - A Syndicate Of Talent

Writing and Research or both

I spent last week writing about Eslanda Goode Robeson. Wow. There is so much written about her as she was Paul Robeson's wife. That is the good news. The bad news is that everything conflicts with everything else. It is as if everyone has his or her own interpretation of her life. I guess I am writing another interpretation but some things should be facts and should agree. At least that is what I think as a scientific researcher, but that does not seem to be so. The one fact that I am talking about is when she graduated from Columbia University and when she entered for that matter. Some say she spent two years at the University of Illinois and then went to Columbia and some say she left the U of Illinois in her senior years. I have seen graduation dates from Colombia that range for 1914 to 1920! I have seen a graduation photo of her wearing an academic gown that looks like that of a PhD and not a BS, but maybe they wore those types of gowns early in the 20th Century at Columbia. She does have a PhD in Anthropology from Hartford Seminary.

Therefore, I guess I will try to solve this problem by checking with the Columbia University archives and yearbooks if they have this information. My Oxford University editors might ask me these questions so I might as well get the answers now.

Also photos. So far, there is only one photo that I will have to pay for from a newspaper. I hope to get permission to use other photos for little or no money. I am doing this as I go along so I do not have to do it at the last minutes. I may have more photos then will be printed in the book but I can use them for website that will be an addition to the book. I think I am writing for the website as what I write is long but it will be up to the editors to shorten the writing for the book.

I have been asked to do a short version of one of my women for church. I think I will write about Eslanda Robeson because of her connection to the United Church of Christ via her grandfather and there is the New Jersey connection with her husband. This will be my Black History month speech at church.

You should see my office now. Since there is so much written about Essie Robeson I have papers and books strewn around everywhere. I sit the middle of this mess and either type or ponder which version to use.

There is a budding Writers group here in the Hillsborough Library. I went out to the meeting last Thursday. Only three of us showed up and the organizer of the group did not show. So the three of us introduced ourselves. One woman writes romance novels and has published many; the other woman is a science writer for Pharma for a living and wants to start writing poetry. She brought a poem for us to review. We do not know yet what this group is going to do because the leader did not show up, but it was nice meeting those two women. My monthly lunch with the Princeton Research Forum people was canceled due to the snowstorm. That was to be Thursday also.

Well that is where I am now.

No one has answered my Black History Month quiz yet. Did I stump you?

Jeannette

Black History Month 1. African American Women in Science

I write three blogs off and on. This month I will put the same information in all three blogs, because it is Black History Month and I want to convey some information to the public.


As you know I am writing a book about the history of African Amercan women chemists so I am going to give you a quiz.

Ok. Its up to you to tell me who they are and what they did. That's a hint they are all deceased. The people who read this blog should not have a problem with this quiz.

Good Luck
Jeannette