Last summer, I did something I hadn’t imagined doing until pretty much right before I did it. I decided to use this platform (and my Twitter account) to ask you, most of whom are strangers to me, to donate money to a dear friend who was in dire need of it.

Her name is Jo Carson, and she is, as much as anyone or anything in my life (ie, parents, teachers, peers)  responsible for who I am now. She’s a writer and lifelong resident of Eastern Tennessee, and I happened to meet her when I was in my early twenties and she was around the age I am now, and I needed someone to both show and tell me the necessity of being a writer. I took her advice, and followed her example, and starting writing my own stories down (though transmogrified into various other forms and shapes) and that led to this which led to that which led to the other thing which led to you reading this here.

Last year, she got very sick, bowel cancer, and didn’t have enough money or health insurance to pay for her treatments. (She told me, way back when, that writing was important work, not that it was remunerative, and she turned out to be correct.)  I decided to use what small fame I have (which, as said, I owe in part to her) and see if I could help by asking you to donate to her cause. You did. You, and others, mostly the many who’ve known her and have been touched by her life and work, saved her life. 

Good work, everyone.

But…

Though she’s defeated bowel cancer, doctors have found a cancerous spot on her lung. This is not a recurrence; it’s another big problem, and one again, she doesn’t have the financial resources to fight it on her own. (She didn’t have much then, she has less now.)  So I and another of Jo’s friends, the marvelous and tireless Lisa Mount, have decided to mount another fundraiser for her, using our various platforms, to once again raise enough money to pay for her medical treatments and related expenses.

The first time around, a year ago, I felt I could dance around the central topic, but this is Round Two, and people require I think a level of frankness. The reason I’m doing this, and asking you again to donate money — any amount, from five bucks on up  — to somebody you don’t know, simply on my word that she’s important and wonderful and really needs it — is because as uncomfortable as it is to ask strangers for money, I’d much, much, much rather do this than ask you to contribute to her memorial fund.  Okay?

By the way, this was supposed to be the Big Reveal to the Texas Saga: I was going to send the $2000 from the State of Texas to Jo’s fund.  Just because I managed to make a hash of that shouldn’t mean Jo goes wanting,  so I’ll make that donation anyway.

Here are a bunch of things you can read about Jo:

Here is the original post from last year, in which I first wrote about her, and here are some related posts that followed.

More importantly, here is Jo’s own account of her illness, and her experiences over the last year, and here’s a video of her performing it at the Alternate Roots Festival just a month ago. Go take a look whether or not you’re inclined to donate.

Donations go through Alternate Roots, a non-profit, so they should be tax-deductible (though check with your accountant, etc.) and ALL money collected goes directly to Jo.

If you can’t donate — and many can’t — please send a link to this post to anyone who might be so inclined. Thanks from me and from Jo and all of us who know her and have been affected by her life and work.

There’a a moment in William Goldman’s novel “Magic” that I remember well even thought  I read it 30 years ago… a magician does a very difficult, subtle trick, and the audience hardly notices. He starts to shout at them, “Do you have any idea how hard this is?”

Sometimes I wonder why actors in musicals don’t ever do that, although I’m sure they’re tempted. Back when I was a literary manager, reading unproduced plays, we would always laugh when somebody sent in the manuscript for their new original musical.  Writing a good, produceable play was hard; writing a musical anyone could or would stage is practically impossible. To a first approximation, it never happens.  Even if you have the most glorious collection of performers, writers, composers, designers, directors, and a mint of money (cough cough “The Addams Family” cough cough) things never work out.

So I’m particularly pleased to tell you about two that did, which you should see at the earliest opportunity:

In Chicago: The House Theatre (full disclosure: I’m on their board and I love them and wish I could I be them)  just opened their original rock musical “Girls Vs. Boys” at the Chopin Theater. Adolescent agonies and sex and drugs and lust, written by Nate Allen, Chris Matthews and Jake Minton, set to an amazing score by Nate Allen and Kevin O’Donnell, choreographed by Tommy Rapley, staged by Nate.  It’s raw and funny and loud and kinetic; the actors are gorgeous and passionate and, as Nate put it to me, “will melt your face off.” This is the show the cast of “Spring Awakening” might have put on after hours just to amuse themselves… you know, when they could really cut loose. Ticket info is here.

And in New York: my dear friend Jack Lechner, one of the cleverest people I know, wrote the lyrics for a new musical based on Dan Savage’s moving memoir of adoption, “The Kid.”  This seems like the happiest collision of geniuses I’ve come across in a while.  New Yorkers: go see it. 

Sorry if this post is a bit rambly and undisciplined… I was up late last night finishing up the most juicy pot-boiler it’s been my pleasure to read for a long while: Game Change, by Mark Halperin and John Heilemann.  You’ve heard about it, no doubt, probably mostly about what is quite literally the least interesting thing in it: Harry Reid’s bit of oblivious obviousness.

I see that one of my good friends and others have taken issue with the book… not because anything in it is incorrect (if anyone has shown that any of the facts therein are untrue, rather than being misinterpreted or misreported from the book, let me know) but because it is somehow unseemly. Mr. Pierce is angrily dismissive because the book says little to nothing about health care or the Afghan war or other significant policy issues, to which I reply, well, Moby Dick didn’t have much about bicycles, but it’s still worth reading. And Mr. Bruni tut-tuts because, well, if if political aides keep telling secrets to reporters, well, then, as Nick Lowe so ably put it, “Where are the strong? And who are the trusted?” I mean, if people keep telling reporters what actually happened during campaigns, so the reporters will tell the public, then how can people be expected to run for office?

Look: I, just like everyone I knew, was completely obsessed with the 2008 Presidential Campaign, and not because of the policy implications. (Okay, not entirely about the policy implications. But ask yourself: how many of your dinner table/water cooler conversations were about the prospects of health care reform, and how many were about, say, the Clinton’s marriage? See?) It was a grand drama, played out over months, between fascinating characters… we all talked about what kind of people the candidates were, what they were thinking, feeling, and going to do next. The authors here have provided much much more grist for that mill, and it’s still fascinating, a year or more later.  It confirms some things we thought we knew about the candidates — good and bad –  contradicts others, ditto, and underlines something that I’ve come to believe more and more: that ultimately, character counts in politics more than specific policy ideas or ideology.

So much for gossip… as for the other argument, that it’s somehow unseemly or unfair for people with knowledge to share that knowledge with journalists, or for journalists to then publish that information… that strikes me as a really strange argument for a journalist to make.

(Disclosure: Mark Halperin was in my college class and he and I had one or two pleasant conversations our freshman year, mostly about college basketball, about which he knew a lot and I knew nothing.)

On Saturday morning, I had the honor of moderating a Colbert Report discussion panel, part of the extraordinary Second City 50th Anniversary celebration. All of the folk you see above: writers Peter Grosz and Peter Gwinn, former exec producer Alison Silverman, co-exec producer Tom Purcell and Stephen Colbert himself, are all alumni of the Second City’s performing troupes, touring groups,  training center, and in Colbert’s case, the merchandise table. (He said that for a long time, he held the record for most T-shirts sold in one night.)  (more…)

You can get to Carnegie Hall by bidding for two tickets to see Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me there on October 22.

I donated this pair of tickets from my personal reserve to Alternate Roots, to raise money for the care of Jo Carson, as described below. All the proceeds will go directly to Jo, via Alternate Roots (that’s not entirely clear from the auction site, but it’s true.)

The Carnegie Hall show sold out in an hour, and at present we have no plans to return to NYC. If you live in or near the city, want to see Wait Wait live, and want to help out a dear friend of mind, this is a great way to do both. Please bid here.

I got an encouraging note from Lisa Mount, my old friend who’s using her remarkable organizational skills (any arts organizations out there that needs to be whipped into shape? This is who ya gonna call) to head up the fund-raising efforts for Jo Carson.

 Spent yesterday in Johnson City with our girl.  She’s looking better than I expected – she’s lost about 20 pounds and I thought I’d see a skeleton, but no, it ain’t that bad at all.  She’s losing muscle tone, because all she can do is lie around, but she hasn’t wasted away.  Yesterday was a good day for her – lots of company, more that just me – less pain than usual, and not so much nausea.  The hard part of all of this is that if she laughs or talks too much, she feels like puking.  But we didn’t have none of that yestiddy.  The puking, that is.  Lots of the laughing and talking.

So the medical plan from here on out is two more weeks (and maybe a day or two more) of chemo and radiation, and then she gets to take a break and recover, which I’ll wager she’ll do pretty quickly.  Then surgery, and its concomitant recovery, then another surgery and recovery.  First surgery sometime in October, probly. 

As of today, a week after I posted my blog entry and related tweet about Jo, we’ve raised more than $13k to pay for Jo’s chemo, related medical needs, and living expenses while she can’t work. Some of that comes from the many people (like me) who’ve known and worked with Jo over the years; she inspires, as you can tell, a kind of fierce affection. But a lot of it came from you; complete strangers to her who responded with gifts ranging from $5 to $500 just because I asked. I am touched and grateful and a bit overwhelmed, and, if may say, delighted that I could use this odd kind of fame I have for what seems to me to be an absolute good.

Along the way, we’ve received many stories of people’s own troubles and unmet needs, most often having to do with their health. It makes me wish I could run fundraisers for everyone; for my friend (also from those long ago days at that theater in LA) who’s in danger of  losing her home; for the people who, like Jo, can’t pay for the health care they need to save their lives. It’s daunting, and even discouraging, to contemplate how much need there is.

We’re not done yet — Jo’s still ill, and the money we’ve raised, as remarkable as it is, won’t nearly meet her needs going forward. I’ll be continuing to ask for your help, in different ways, and hopefully with some pledge premiums thrown in to sweeten the pot — I do work in public radio, after all.  Please donate however much you can, and all the money — all of it — goes directly to pay Jo’s medical and living expenses as she fights colon cancer.

But if you can’t, or prefer not to help out a total stranger, then consider looking around your own lives, finding the people you know who are in need, and help them out, anyway you can.

Below, some of the comments that have come in with donations to Jo:

Of all the random links I clicked on the Internet today, I have to say discovering your wonderful writing via Peter Sagal’s Twitter feed is by far the weirdest yet serendipitous thing to have happened. Keep fighting, stay strong and know that you have wonderful friends who love and support you. And even strangers who can’t wait to buy some of your books now.
Sending healing thoughts & prayers -
Jennifer in Atlanta

Dear Jo, Three years ago I was in a similar place, with a cancer diagnosis and no resources. As recently as yesterday, I was (though cancer-free) so poor I had to use couch cushion change to buy cat food. Today that turned around. Miracles happen, and they are called friends. Thanks for being Peter’s.

We share a name; I had to help.  And you gave us Peter Sagal.

I was touched by Peter’s post on how you’ve been such a support to him.  He then goes on to become who he is..which allows me to hear his witty Wait!Wait! show…and sometimes I laugh at something he’s said..and then maybe I give my dog a extra scritch behind the ear…and then my dog maybe goes outside feeling a little more loved…and doesn’t terrorize a squirrel.  Thank you for being part of the chain that makes this world great.  Gina

I heard about you through Peter Sagal’s twitter; with all the nonsense brought about and encouraged by technology, it was so refreshing to see someone using social media for good.  True good. I am a student in a health coverage cost battle of my own, and I wish I could donate more to your cause.  But I will forward this to my art school friends.  May you find blessings today and every day, despite pain and strife; may you find peace today and every day

I’m lucky enough, via my radio show and this blog and my book, to have attracted a large group of people who like my work and enjoy hearing what I have to say. It’s an honor, and an odd responsibility… I don’t want to misuse your trust, or alienate your affection, because its what allows me to do what I enjoy doing.

But I’m doing something a little different today: I’m asking all of you to donate some money — whatever you can — to someone you don’t know. Her name is Jo Carson, and she’s a dear friend of mine. She’s a writer who has lived her whole life in Johnson City, TN, and lives there still. She was recently diagnosed with colon cancer, and like a lot of people these days — maybe you’ve heard something about this? — her health insurance is inadequate to her needs. Even as we speak, she’s become uncomfortably reliant on the generosity of friends. My purpose here is to vastly expand the number of her friends, and thus to raise some much-needed funds for her.

This is why I’m asking this of you:

Everybody can point to certain people in their life who set them on their course. A teacher, maybe an employer or mentor or friend. They appeared at your  crossroads and pointed your way.  Twenty years ago, I was working in a theater — not as a writer, but as a literary manager, a sort of editor for playwrights, even though I desperately wanted to be a playwright myself. Along with a colleague named Lisa Mount, I had discovered a wonderful new play by Jo, then mostly unknown outside of her circle of Southern writers and theater artists, and we helped arrange its successful production, and Jo and I became friends. One evening, I told her a story, a story I rarely told anyone, certainly not in any depth, about something that had happened in my family. She said to me, quite seriously, “That’s a play. You should write that play.” And I did. Which made me a playwright, which launched me on my odd peripatetic career path that led me to the radio show and here, to you.

There is a lot more Jo taught me, about the value of voices and places that are distinct to you, and the nature of friendship, and what art can and can’t do, and mainly, the ultimate value inherent in just doing the work you were put here to do. And I was honored and thrilled that Jo agreed to read some of her poetry at my wedding, which became everybody’s favorite thing about my wedding.

I have written about Jo before, in this essay and in an expanded version of that episode in my book, but I have never really talked in public about my affection for her, and the vastly important influence she had on my life. She gave me a push when I needed to start moving; she gave me confidence when I had none; she heard I had something to say before I had started speaking.

So: if you like my work, if you like what I have to say, you have Jo to thank. Please thank her by sending her some money to help her get better and get back to her work.

Donations for Jo are being collected by Alternate ROOTS, an arts organization that Jo helped found. They’ll collect the money and give 100% of it to Jo.

If you don’t feel like donating money — anything, a dollar, two, eight, twenty — to somebody you don’t know, then may I recommend buying one of her books? She’s charming and profound and funny and if you want to read the poem she read at wedding, it’s the poem about potato salad in this book.

Many thanks to all and any of you who can contribute anything.

NOTE: As our first commenter says, I really shouldn’t guarantee that your donations will be tax-deductible… that is my belief, but I’m no expert and shouldn’t make that promise. Donations to Alternate ROOTS in general are deductible, but different rules may apply in a case like this.  I have removed that sentence from the post above.

UPDATE: Lisa Mount, pal aforementioned, who’s organizing the fundraising campaign, writes this morning, 15 hours after the post and tweet pointing to it went up:

 So you’ve generated at least 75 gifts, ranging from $5 to $100.  Our total as of this minute is $9161, so I wouldn’t be surprised if we get to $10,000 through this facet of the campaign.  The notes that people are sending along with the gifts are wonderful – lots of “I don’t know you, but thank you for being important to Peter Sagal,” and some advice about using the Cancer Society and other mechanisms to get free meds and cheaper care.  

Thank you all… it’s a wonderful world, when we make it so.

Dan Savage (with whom I was lucky enough to hang out with the other night, and who I probably creeped out just a tad with my obsessive fandom) takes on the topic of Eliot Spitzer’s sex life:

He was horny.

The end.

and criticizes those who have Theorized on Spitzer’s Real Motivation. Since I’m one of them, I was really interested in what Dan had to say:

In short, Spitzer was horny for something he wasn’t getting at home—perhaps he was refused, perhaps he never asked—and he did what most men (and women) do when they’re not getting something they desperately need at home. He went elsewhere. Which doesn’t excuse his hypocrisy—as NY’s attorney general Spitzer prosecuted people for running the kind of prostitution services he patronized himself—and, yeah, he was taking enormous risks… something the rich and powerful and the poor and penniless have been doing for tens of thousands of years. The big difference: we don’t hear about it when the poor and penniless get caught.

Hard to argue with it, so I won’t. Dan’s expansive wisdom about human sexuality can be boiled down to this, more or less: people are wired to want what they want, and they’d be better off figuring out ways to get it safely and honestly and without harming anyone else along the way (unless they want to be harmed, wocka wocka wocka) then they’d be by lying or repressing or denying or agonizing over Why They Want Such a Bad/Illicit/Fun thing. Certainly, I would say, as a practical matter, Dan’s right, and everybody would be better off if they took that attitude toward themselves and toward others: don’t judge, and as Sir Bob Geldof wisely told us, don’t look for reasons, “Cos there are no reasons/What reason do you need to be show-ow-ow-ow-own…”

But, on the other hand, c’mon. People’s heads are a swamp, a fascinating, dark place, and I refuse to just shrug, while peering into the darkness inside somebody else’s, and say, “Well, hell, it’s just like any other swamp, let’s go home.” Mary Roach (another favorite of mine) writes about the scientific study of sexuality in her great new book, “Bonk,” and she reports that the subject is practically unexplored, compared to say, kidney function, because for so long scientists and those who fund scientists have been so squeamish on the topic. The latest research is just fascinating… you might have read the recent New York Times Magazine article about some very surprising findings about female arousal. (Two words, ladies: Bonobo chimpanzees.)

So yes, let’s let Spitzer be, and let’s remember that where he went, many others have gone, and will go, and they are no more or less typically human than he is. But at the same time: don’t tell me I can’t be utterly fascinated with a straight-arrow overacheiving rich Jewish Harvard lawyer who threw away his entire career because he wanted to act out weird violent sexual scenarios whilst wearing his dress socks.

I am a devoted fan of Dan Savage, so was distressed to see his blog post taking me to task. It’s like being condemned by a dear friend…A dear friend who I admire for being willing to condemn everybody else, so I guess I should have seen this coming.

Dan was talking about a segment on this week’s show in which we quoted Andy Card talking about  the “locker room” atmosphere of the Obama Oval Office, because Obama had been photographed sitting at his desk (the Resolute desk) without a suit jacket.  Dan feels we knowingly or unknowingly were parroting a false Republican talking point; ie, that Bush and Reagan always wore suit jackets in the Oval Office, when photos (in his post) show clearly that they sometimes did not.

Well, you can listen to the show yourself, or read the transcript of the segment (I’ll post it after the gap) and decide for yourself if we were parroting anything. For my part, I’ll say this: if there has been any single theme to emerge over the last eight years, it’s the displacement, sometimes intentionally, of substance by symbolism. President Bush himself seemed obsessed with appearances; America always had to “show the world” and “send messages to our enemies” because we didn’t want to “send a signal” that would show we were weak, etc. Historians might decide, someday, that the entire rationale for the Iraq War boiled down to sending a message to the world… a trillion dollar Twitter post: “@muslimworld We will kick ur a$$ & take names!”

This tiny little brouhaha seems to me more of the same. That Andy Card would get all steamed up about the message Obama was sending by wearing shirtsleeves is, to me, hilarious, and it’s my fault if I didn’t make that clear enough in this week’s show. Perhaps I thought it was more self-evident than is the case. And I think that those who believe that brandishing pictures of W. without a suit jacket proves anything about anything important are making a similar error.

And, in regards to being a “card carrying member of the liberal media:” actually, these days it’s a little bar-code thingie on our keychains.  They scan it at the checkout and we get 20% off our quinoa.

Transcript of the offending comment follows: (more…)

…the two and half Jews.

My colleagues and good friends Scott Simon and Ira Glass appeared with me at last Wednesday’s “Audible Feast” benefit for Chicago Public Radio. After dinner and cocktails, the audience was invited into the Rubloff Auditorium of the Art Institute of Chicago to hear first Ira, then Scott, then me relate a story… the theme was “Driveway Moments,” a public radio term of art/marketing, referring to those bits of radio that are so compelling you end up sitting in your driveway (or garage, or parking lot) after you’ve arrived at your destination so you can hear the end…

Ira did a wonderful live, recreation of highlights from the superb “Giant Pool Of Money” episode of This American Life; Scott told a warm, sometimes chilling story about two young women he got to know in Sarajevo (and who inspired his excellent novel, Pretty Birds) and I… I did something else. After the gap, my contribution to the evening. Keep in mind it’s uncut and unedited and uncorrected, essentially a rough draft I improvised from on stage. Enjoy.

(more…)