A couple years ago I told my son that usually if there is a dog at the beginning of a book or movie, there is not a dog at the end of the book or movie.
And he took this extremely literally, so now whenever we are watching a show where there’s, like, an unmentioned dog in the background somewhere, he’ll be like, “CAN’T WATCH THIS DOG MIGHT DIE” and leave the room.
Artificial Intelligence is coming for my unpaid internship.
you think you can hurt me? i've been a john green fan consistently since 2013
credit for the format to @iwatcheditbegin
This is very impressive and commendable, but what if I told you that I’ve actually BEEN john green since 2013?
This is a coffee advertisement.
Look what people can accomplish when they work in real solidarity and partnership with each other. Incredible.
I’ve signed 600,000 tip-in sheets to be bound into first printings (150,000 for TFIOS, 200,000 for Turtles All the Way Down, and 250,000 for The Anthropocene Reviewed), and probably around another 200,000-250,000 books in total.
Neil might have me beat just because I suspect he has signed 1,000 books in at least 900 separate signings. Same may be true for writers who tour a lot like David Sedaris.
But of course I am not really interested in signing the most books. I am interested in making sure that everyone who would like a signed book can get one without paying a surcharge, and I am interested in finding some way to maintain some kind of personal connection to the reader in the sense that at least there is one page of the book that your real hand and my real hand have both touched.
And also I suppose I am interested in the sheer pleasure of being forced to abandon proper work in order to spend two months cocooned in a glorious flow state achieved via signing my name over and over again for ten hours a day every day.
alaska young
Tumblr coming back around to Looking for Alaska is the weirdest and most delightful shit this unpaid coffee company intern has ever experienced.
I haven’t read the book myself since 2004, but I hear it’s good.
You may wonder what this whole Awesome Coffee Club thing is all about. Today I was reminded what it’s all about:
In 2019, the unpaid intern who runs this tumblr account visited Sierra Leone’s Kono District. Kono is the among the most impoverished communities in the world due to a long history of enslavement, colonialism, and civil war. A decade ago, Kono’s healthcare system was in a state of collapse–clinics had no running water or electricity or paid staff, and inconsistent supplies of medications and other necessities.
As a result, Kono was the epicenter of the global maternal mortality crisis: One out of every seventeen women could expect to die in childbirth. Over 10% of children died before the age of five.
Beginning in 2014, Partners in Health began working with Sierra Leone’s Ministry of Health to bring change. This started with the basics at the region’s hospital, Koidu Government Hospital: running water, 24-hour electricity, and hiring nurses, community healthworkers, cooks, facilities management staff, and so much more.
At the time, KGH’s maternity ward had a dirt floor. Many people were dying for want of an emergency C-section or a blood transfusion. By 2019, this was getting better–two functioning operating rooms were able to perform C-sections, and a blood bank could address postpartum hemorrhaging. But it was still inadequate, and maternal and child mortality were horrifyingly routine.
To address the crisis, PIH Sierra Leone directors Jon Lascher and Dr. Baillor Barrie wanted to build a world-class maternal and child health center that could save thousands of lives yearly while also serving as a teaching hospital to train the next generation of Sierra Leonean healthcare workers. They told us they needed $25,000,000 to break ground, and would probably eventually need another $25,000,000 to support the hospital’s operation over its first few years.
I am, as unpaid interns go, doing quite well, but not THAT well. So our family committed what we could and asked others to join us, and within two years, we passed that $25,000,000 goal. Together, we’ve now raised close to $40,000,000.
Today, I visited the site of the Maternal Center of Excellence, the first wards of which will hopefully open next year. Nearly all of the construction team are from Kono, and 65% of them are women–they work as welders, engineers, planners, laborers, and so much more. You see three of them above. I had the privilege of talking with them about this project. The young woman to the right, Success, told me that her dream is to work for the hospital her whole life, helping to maintain and support it. One of the other women told me, “We are passionate about this work because it is the future of our country. And we know that we and our friends will someday give birth here.” I am so proud that our projects support their training and livelihood, and so grateful to have them as colleagues in this work.
The hospital–which will include over 100 maternal beds, a NICU, and enough operating suites to perform over 10 emergency C-sections per day, will also require ongoing funding for staff, stuff, systems, maintenance, and more. Our hope is that open-ended projects like the Awesome Coffee Club and Awesome Socks Club can help provide that funding, although the most efficient way to support this project is to donate directly!
So that’s why this tumblr, and the awesome coffee club, exists. World-class maternal and infant healthcare is coming to Kono, a wonderful and too long impoverished by colonialism and extractive capitalism. It is only a first step. There is so long to go. But what a first step.
(In the picture above, Henry is at the far right, along with other survivors of MDR-TB and me, author and unpaid coffee company intern.)
Greetings from Sierra Leone. In 2019, I visited a tuberculosis hospital here and met a kid named Henry. He was very sick but also full of joy. He’d already been at the hospital for months, and his TB was not responding to treatment. He was 16, but looked no older than my nine-year-old son Henry.
Lakka Government Hospital is the best place in SL to receive treatment for drug resistant TB, but it is still dramatically underfunded. Especially back then, the newest and best treatments were simply unavailable, and many patients died as a result.
Over the next three years, Henry got so sick. Standard second-line treatment failed. He was a patient at the hospital for over THREE YEARS. He was such a special kid–one of his doctors referred to him “as the one who helps others”–and the staff was heartbroken as they watched him get sicker.
But then, through support from Partners in Health and Sierra Leone’s Ministry of Health, Henry became the first person in Sierra Leone to be treated with the newest and best combination of drugs for his TB.
He survived. He is cured.
I saw him today. I wept. He is in his first semester of university now. When I asked him how he was doing, he said, “So great.”
People ask me why I am so fixated upon TB and furious about it.
It’s because of Henry.
Sarah and I are headed to Sierra Leone soon to visit with healthcare workers there and learn about the challenges and opportunities they face.
When we asked what we could bring from the U.S., they asked for a couple things, including Awesome Coffee and Awesome Socks, so that healthcare professionals and patients can taste and wear the products that represent such a significant portion (over $2,000,000!) of the new funds supporting stronger maternal and child health–including hiring more community health workers and building the Maternal Center of Excellence at Koidu Government Hospital.
