My teacher friend Jo-Anne sent me this email about the daughter of two of her former students. This precious not yet one-year-old needs a liver transplant, and Jo-Anne is helping in any way she can to help raise money for the Heatons. If you can contribute, please go to the COTA site. The link is at the end of this email. Bless you.

With the cost of a transplant often exceeding $500,000, many transplant patients are unable to shoulder the financial burden of such a procedure. The Children’s Organ Transplant Association (COTA) is a national charity dedicated to organizing and guiding communities in raising funds for transplant-needy patients. In Port Charlotte, volunteers are raising funds for transplant patients like local girl Meikah Heaton.

Born on November 10, 2008, Meikah was diagnosed with Biliary Atresia, and doctors at Shand’s Children’s Hospital in Gainesville, Florida recommended a life-saving liver transplant. An estimated $100,000 is being raised by Port Charlotte volunteers.

Information about donating can be found here: Children’s Organ Transplant Association

the lesson of the moth

By Don Marquis, in “archy and mehitabel,” 1927

i was talking to a moth
the other evening
he was trying to break into
an electric light bulb
and fry himself on the wires

why do you fellows
pull this stunt i asked him
because it is the conventional
thing for moths or why
if that had been an uncovered
candle instead of an electric
light bulb you would
now be a small unsightly cinder
have you no sense

plenty of it he answered
but at times we get tired
of using it
we get bored with the routine
and crave beauty
and excitement
fire is beautiful
and we know that if we get
too close it will kill us
but what does that matter
it is better to be happy
for a moment
and be burned up with beauty
than to live a long time
and be bored all the while
so we wad all our life up
into one little roll
and then we shoot the roll
that is what life is for
it is better to be a part of beauty
for one instant and then cease to
exist than to exist forever
and never be a part of beauty
our attitude toward life
is come easy go easy
we are like human beings
used to be before they became
too civilized to enjoy themselves

and before i could argue him
out of his philosophy
he went and immolated himself
on a patent cigar lighter
i do not agree with him
myself i would rather have
half the happiness and twice
the longevity

but at the same time i wish
there was something i wanted
as badly as he wanted to fry himself

archy