Unabashed: Five Shopping Days to Go

My birthday is a day when I unabashedly receive all sorts of love and attention and presents from my minions, as well as from my friends and family.

Actually, now that I think about it, I'm unabashed about receiving love and attention and presents every day of the year. But especially so on my birthday, and during my birth-week and birth-month.

Aidan in costume. Can you guess who he is?

Last year was the first year since 2008 that I did not post a birthday wish list. I only wanted one thing last year. I still want Aidan back. But now, after spending a year and a half figuring out how to put one foot in front of the other--which is essentially what grief is--I have found that I can find moments here and there of peace and joy and contentment, even while my heart is broken.

So, with no further ado, and with a mere five shopping days to go, here's my 2014 birthday wish list:

1. Say Aidan's name to me. This is very simple. You don't have to have a script. I was texting my friend Soap about some assorted topics, and then suddenly I get a text from her that just read "Aidan today." I texted back "Aidan today what?", and she said, "I am thinking about him and wanted to say his name to you." I loved this. 

2. The recovery of the 200+ Nigerian schoolgirls kidnapped by terrorists more than a month ago. I just heard that they've been located.

3. Diet Coke. I know, I know--it's bad for me. So is pollution, but I'm still gonna breathe.

4. A hanging flower pot for the backyard. It doesn't have to be this elaborate.

5. An agent or publisher for my almost-finished novel.

6. Good Lord Bird by James McBride. I despise and eschew our selfie culture, but I took a selfie anyway with my friend The Generous Listener (TGL) at #FFWgr because James McBride was signing autographs in the background. His book sounds like a delightful and completely new take on the John Brown story.

OK, that'll do it for this year. Happy shopping!

[Update: Apparently James McBride's people do not allow unauthorized use of James McBride's image on wildly popular personal blogs with upwards of seven loyal followers. OK, whatever.] 

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

I'm late to the party with this book review, as the book was published a couple of years ago now, and Henrietta's story has been updated on the pages of National Geographic and the New York Times. But for those of you who have not yet read it, or have not been around me when I'm going on and on about it--you deserve to be let in on the secret: this is an amazing story, and beautifully told by freelance science writer, Rebecca Skloot.

Henrietta Lacks died in 1950--but part of her still lives on, and I'm not talking about her soul. Her cells, people. Her cells. The Immortal Life is the story of Henrietta and her family and her now-famous immortal cells, known in science and medicine as HeLa, which jump-started the science of cell culturing and all the related scientific miracles that grew out of cell culturing.

When Skloot learned in a high school biology class about these omnipresent and imperishable cells, and about the woman they came from, she hungered to know more. She started on a journey through labs, hospitals, phonebooks, and cemeteries to get to know Henrietta and her descendants; and she crafted a tale of science, family, American history, and ethics that is unlike any other.

The cells were taken by doctors at Johns Hopkins Hospital, without Henrietta's knowledge or consent, during her treatment for the cervical cancer that ultimately killed her. They were cultured in a lab, and miraculously, they didn't die like every other cell sample that the scientists had attempted to grow.

Henrietta Lacks' immortal cells, stained with dye.
Photo from Smithsonianmag.com

Meanwhile, Henrietta suffered through intense and unsuccessful treatments for her cervical cancer, and died. Her children had no idea that part of their mother lived on until Henrietta's daughter, Deborah, received a phone call from a reporter, asking about her mother who had been dead for 20 years. The reporter wanted to know what she thought about her mother's cells being so famous and important to science and medicine--and Deborah said WTF?

Skloot's narrative traces the incredible story of Henrietta Lacks' immortal cells--"the first immortal human cells ever grown in a laboratory." Her cells were part of research into the genes that cause cancer and those that suppress it; they helped develop drugs for treating herpes, leukemia, influenza, hemophilia, and Parkinson's disease; and they've been used to study lactose digestion, sexually transmitted diseases, appendicitis, human longevity, mosquito mating, and the negative cellular effects of working in sewers.

No one knows why Henrietta's cells lived and thrived--but they did; and the scientists who first successfully grew the cells sent batches of them to other scientists, who grew more of them to use in their own experiments. To this day, Henrietta's cells are living and growing and being used in medical and scientific applications around the world and even in space.

Scientists had been trying to grow living cells in the lab since before the turn of the century, but the cells kept dying. It was not until 1951, when Henrietta Lacks' cells began growing in the lab, that the science of cell culture was born. This happened to coincide with the biggest polio epidemic in history, and HeLa cells were used to grow the Salk vaccine and demonstrate its effectiveness. These experiments soon led to advances in virology, genetics, radiation research, and many other branches of science and medicine; they went into orbit on satellites and with the first humans;

Henrietta's cells quickly became famous around the world; they were "taken, bought, sold,
and used in research without her knowledge or theirs." Meanwhile, her family remained poor and unknown, having no awareness and no control over the use of their own genetic material.

Henrietta’s drama becomes the story of ethical dilemmas in science and medicine: informed consent, medical and genetic privacy, patient confidentiality, genetic discrimination,
biological patents, and cell ownership. With sensitivity and perseverance, Skloot digs out the details of Henrietta's life, and the lives of her family members; she weaves the complex science and the deeply personal family story into a colorful, touching narrative.

Infidel

People. I have read a book that hits the mark in so many ways it makes me sweaty. You should go out and borrow it from the library or buy it from your favorite bookseller.

The book is Infidel, by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a woman from a strict Muslim upbringing, with an unquenchable curiosity and a passion to bring justice to oppressed women and girls. Her story is both horrifying and inspiring, enlightening and provocative. It's the kind of memoir that makes you grateful for every little thing you have that you normally take for granted. Like genitals that aren't mutilated, for example, or the freedom to go in and out of your house whenever you want.

Born in Somalia, into a culture that values honor above all, Ali learned early on to protect and defend her family's honor by utter submission within the clan, and retaliation outside of it. When her grandmother called her stupid, and hit her, she was not permitted to talk back; but when a schoolmate struck her in the face, Ali's older cousin, supported by her family, ridiculed her for not retaliating, and forced her to fight until both girls were bloody.

Ali recalls that by the time she was ten, she had lived through three different political systems,

all of them failures. The police state in Mogadishu rationed people into hunger and
bombed them into obedience. Islamic law in Saudi Arabia treated half
its citizens like animals, with no rights or recourse, disposing of women
without regard. And the old Somali rule of the clan, which saved you
when you needed refuge, so easily broke down into suspicion, conspiracy and
revenge.

Also during those early years, she endured the excruciating horror of genital excision, sometimes called female circumcision, which involved a home surgery so horrific that I can't describe it in a PG-rated blog. On the same day, her brother and sister underwent the "necessary and proper dignity of purification" as well, on a table in the bedroom. Ali remembers her brother's silent tears and her sister's screams as the itinerant circumciser wielded his scissors. She was five years old, her sister four, her brother six.

Besides experiencing the ritual abuse and cultural disregard for girls, Ali also contended with a mostly absent father and a hardened, bitter mother who dispensed affection frugally but fierce punishment and criticism liberally. In spite of all of this suffering and disappointment, the tone of Ali's memoir is astonishingly affable, matter-of-fact, and even forgiving.

Ali escapes to Holland to avoid an arranged marriage--and this becomes a place of enormous change, growth, and challenge for her. Three years after successfully seeking asylum, Ali finds herself translating for other asylum seekers. She obtains a degree in political science, and eventually--you might think this sounds like a fairy tale, but it really happened--becomes a member of the Dutch Parliament.

The memoir not only traces the author's travels across countries, continents, political systems, and cultures, but it also narrates her journey from Islam to atheism. This aspect of Ali's compelling life story accentuated the strength of her character, her courage, and her bright, questioning intellect. The destination of atheism, by the time Ali arrives there, more than three-quarters of the way through her narrative, seems almost inevitable.

Is that strange for me to say? I'm a person of deep Christian faith, with no inclination to ditch it. I suspect that one of my favorite atheists, Christopher Hitchens (who wrote the forward to Infidel, and who has become friends with the author), would argue that Ali's gradual intellectual abandonment of her faith logically applies to any faith, to believe in God in any form and by any name.

But that's only true if all faiths are fundamentally the same. I'm one of Richard Dawkins' deluded believers: Jesus teaches a counter-intuitive gospel (love your enemies; take up your cross) that rejects the do-it-yourself salvation of other faiths. I don't feel threatened by Ali's conversion from Islam to atheism; in fact, I think her truth-telling is brave and inspiring. Hitchens' forward asserts that you can't read Infidel "and expect to be confirmed in the rightness of your 'own' religion as against the 'other' one," and that's true. But "not confirming" does not equate with disproving or discrediting.

I recommend Infidel to my vast Green Room audience, and I'd like to know what you think about it.