Paul Haines needs a bit of help

Back in September, Paul Haines, an Australian sf/f/h writer was diagnosed with bowel cancer. He had surgery and then chemo for six months and it was gone...or seemed to be. He recently was told that there are spots on his liver. The thing is, although most of his care is covered, he's written this--

He [his oncologist] still wants to wait a couple of months (ideally he wants even more than that) to see how the cancer in my liver is behaving. He also understands our fear, our need, to not be sitting around waiting to do nothing. So in those couple of months we will try the other two forms of chemotherapy for cancers like I have and to combine that with a monoclonal antibody called Avastin. Chemo fights the tumour, the antibody fights the blood vessels feeding the tumour. Unfortunately, Avastin is not part of Medicare or the private health system's funding at this stage, so we're having to come up with $20,000 to do it. Our parents have said they will help us here, which is a great relief.

You can read his blog here:

Paul Haines lj

And if you have a few extra bucks to throw in, you can donate here:

update Sunday the 27th from Cat Sparx:

"thank you to all those kind people who have made donations to help the Haines family. You guys rock. We've passed the $6,000 mark which means we're nearly a third of the way there. If you haven't donated yet but would like to sling a few bucks in the pot, click http://girliejones.livejournal.com/ and do the Paypal thing.

Some people have been extraordinarily generous, but every little bit helps. I am deeply humbled by the love in this community. That cancer of Paul's doesn't stand a chance."

Homeland by Laurie Anderson

In the busyness of the past few days, I neglected to mention that Rick Bowes and I went to see Laurie Anderson's new show Homeland at the Rose Theater, Tuesday night.

Rick and I haven't talked about it so I don't know if he liked it but I always love whatever she does--I just wish she did more of it more often. I believe I've seen most of her works including the epic United States. She did a benefit right after 9/1l and it's possible that the most recent performance was The End of the Moon in 2004, inspired while she was the first artist-in residence at NASA.

For those who aren't familiar with her work, she's a "performance/multimedia artist," although her work has used fewer props over the past decade. It's always political and to me always entertaining. She sings in her own voice and speaks sometimes in her own voice and sometimes in an artificially created male voice. She plays an electric violin. She tells stories. Stories about America and its place in the world. During this 1 1/2 hour (no intermission) performance she had two female back up singers and four musicians, all excellent. The music ranges from electronic to middle eastern infused, smooth as silk or scratchy strings, eclectic percussion and keyboard. Also an accordion, although I didn't hear it separate from the rest of the music.

Lou Reed joined her and the band for one piece and although he seemed a little uncomfortable, it was nice to see them working together.

C'mon Laurie--I want to see more!