Post by hedanicree on Aug 9, 2007 12:22:55 GMT -5
Hi, guys. Okay, I decided I'd try to help my friends, Joe and Chris, out with this. Their mother died on July 31 and their father is selling several books to help pay for medical and funeral expenses. Below is the e-mail Joe sent out yesterday and I thought I'd put this up here to see if any one here would be interested in these. I assure you everything is on the up and up. The form Joe is talking about below, I have. So if anyone is interested, let me know and I'll forward it to you.
Below is a note from Joe, an excerpt from the update on his mom and the article that ran in the Gazette-Times (sister paper to the Democrat-Herald, where I work).
Dani
____
(Apologies in advance to those of you who have no idea what this is about... I'm sending it to everyone in my address book. Feel free to ignore it if it isn't of interest to you.)
Dear friends,
Some of you may have heard--and many of you have not--that my mother was stricken with terminal cancer about 10 months ago. She passed away July 31, just two weeks after her 56th birthday. During her struggle, she received an amazing amount of support from friends, family, and many complete strangers. Among those supporters are many friends of varying faiths, so one example of this support comes from a number of religious communities: Mom's name was placed in five Protestant and three Catholic parayer circles, five LDS temple prayer rolls, and was even taken to the wailing wall in Jerusalem. Our appreciation of this kind of support can never be fully expressed. It is that spirit that I write this letter.
About a month before mom passed, Dad realized that he was going to have to stay home to take care of Mom as the cancer entered it's final stages. In addition to the already mounting medical expenses, this would incur even more financial stress. However, while talking together, they conceived a brilliant idea that would help aleviate some of the burden.
For those of you who may not welcome a plea such as this, please forgive my presumption. It is not my intention to offend or solicit help from uninterested parties. But if you are interested in helping, please read on. The story is told in two parts: my dad's original e-mail to the online community who followed Mom's struggle, and an article recently published in the Corvallis Gazette-Times. The text is somewhat long, so if you would rather just cut to the chase and find out how to help, please skip to the end. Otherwise, read on...
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From "The Robin Update: 26 June, 2007:"
...So here's what we are going to do. I'm applying for a leave of absence from my job under the Family Medical Leave Act. Then we're moving back to the farm so that I can take care of Robin full time. Unfortunately, that means my paychecks stop. So, while Robin is happy about going back home and having me there all the time, she's really worried about finances. Medical costs that the insurance wouldn't cover have eaten up our savings. While we could push some credit cards to their limits, interest rates are so high that to Robin this is just unacceptable. We can't sell the farm for several more months because of the cost of capital gains taxes. And we can't get a mortgage on it because we would not have income to pay the mortgage payments. So now we start selling things other than the farm.
I'd like to start with some books left over from my days as a book publisher in the 1990s. Robin asked me many times to toss these remainders in a dumpster because we lost so much money trying to make the publishing business work. For her the books represent grief and loss. But for me the books represent a dream that almost came true. It seemed like such a waste to throw them away that I could never bring myself to get rid of them. Over the years I have donated them to worthy causes here and there. But mostly I have moved them a lot, much to Robin's frustration.
When we got the news that Robin might not live much longer, I dusted off my dream. I thought, "What if...?"
If we could sell these books, I could stay at home and take care of her. All we'd need to do is tell a few people what we're doing and ask them to spread the word via email. I'm convinced there are enough people with enough kindness to want to help. Kevin Costner was right, right? "If you build it, they will come!" Okay, Field of Dreams was only a movie, but Ronald McDonald houses are real. Good things happen all the time because most people are mostly good.
I have three titles to sell.
The first is Sandwich Cuisine Oregon Style. This is an extremely good recipe book written by Jan Roberts-Dominguez, who at the time was Oregon's most well-known food columnist. She's now one of Oregon's premier water-colorists and the cover of the book was one of her early efforts to recreate Oregon's landscapes in that medium.
The Portland Oregonian called Sandwich Cuisine "one of the finest first books they had ever seen from a small press." The book is a varnished soft-cover so it's water-proof. And it has a special binding to help it lay flat on the kitchen counter. They retail for $15.95--about the price of a good pizza. But the benefits last much longer than one meal. I have 4,000 copies that if sold at retail plus shipping (round up to $20.00) would earn $80,000.
The second is Pearl S. Buck, Good Earth Mother. This hardback is the "official" biography of Pearl S. Buck, the 20th century's most prolific and honored female author; official because it was commissioned by the family. No other woman received both a Nobel and a Pulitzer; no one that I know of published more than 500 books and articles. The book contains the most extensive catalog of Pearl's writing ever assembled. For that reason, most of the first printing sold to libraries and university courses. I have 1,000 of the second printing left. They retail for $18.95. Rounded up, that's $20,000.
The third book is Dreamer in Five Lands. This almost unknown work by an unknown writer is a better read than Good Earth Mother. The author was Faith Norris, a literature professor from Oregon State University. The book is about her mother, Joan Grigsby, who was a contemporary of Pearl S. Buck. So I designed it to be sold as a companion volume to Good Earth Mother.
Grigsby's and Buck's lives had many parallels, including their love of literature. Grigsby was the first woman to successfully translate eleventh-century Korean love poetry into English. But unlike Buck, Grigsby died in obscurity at an early age instead of becoming world-famous. Juxtaposed, these two women's lives make a fascinating and entertaining study. The two stories are a contrast in good and bad decisions. And in telling the Dreamer's story, Faith Norris tapped into a universal experience for women--the mother-daughter conflict that so often fails to be resolved. These also retail for $18.95 but there are only 800 of them left. I'd like to offer this one in a set with the Buck book for $29.95.
Okay, despite my best efforts to write ad copy, you may not be convinced that any of these are worth the better part of a twenty-dollar bill. But your friends might be interested in them. The books make great gifts and it's not too early to start thinking about Christmas. If you added the potential, you can see that the value of these books adds up to more than $100,000. That's many times what Robin and I need. And that leads to a discussion of Sharing, Inc. But the details for that are in the detailed business plan, which also describes how the email campaign, the distribution, and the payment will work.
Let me know if you want to help. Just reply and ask for a copy of the business plan...
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A farewell fund-raiser
By THERESA HOGUE
Gazette-Times reporter
Stricken with cancer, family holds book sale to pay bills
The only thing that could pull Craig and Robin Battrick away from their Corvallis home of 30 years was the dream of a quiet Midwest farm, a few cows and an orchard. When Robin retired from Hewlett-Packard, and Craig received a layoff notice from HP shortly afterward, they decided it was finally time to pursue that dream.
The Battricks’ three children, Joseph, Christopher and Samantha, were all grown, so in 2006 the two high-school sweethearts pulled up roots and traded their 10 acres on Highway 99W for 50 acres in Coffey, Mo., about two hours from Kansas City.
“Robin is a country girl,” Craig said. “She wanted the elbow room.”
Craig got a job at Sprint-Nextel in Kansas City, and maintained an apartment during the week for work, while Robin lived on the farm. Their dreams were going according to plan, until Craig noticed something odd about Robin one day while they were shopping for building supplies at Home Depot.
Robin appeared to be weaving down the aisle, and her speech was a little slurred. When Craig asked her if she was feeling all right, she admitted that she’d been having trouble writing. Her symptoms sounded just like a former co-worker’s had been when she’d had a stroke, but since it was the beginning of the weekend, they decided to put off a trip to the doctor until Monday.
But Craig and Robin’s daughter-in-law, Ariel Battrick, is a nurse in Corvallis, and when she heard about Robin’s symptoms, she demanded that they take Robin into an ER immediately. So Craig and Robin ended up in St. Joseph’s Medical Center, where a battery of tests turned up four lesions in Robin’s brain.
The next day, a craniotomy and removal of one of the objects revealed that Robin had melanoma tumors in her brain. Robin had previously had two normal-looking moles frozen off, and doctors now believe that although they hadn’t looked cancerous, they likely contained melanoma cells which entered her body and spread.
Melanoma can travel through the blood and lymphatic systems, where it settles on soft tissue interfaces such as the lungs and brain. In Robin’s case, the first to appear and cause issues were brain tumors, but that was only the beginning.
A pea-sized tumor in her pelvic region ballooned to the size of a softball in four weeks, causing her intense pain; the tumor had to be removed. Two tiny tumors on her occipital lobe are causing partial sight loss, but removing them would do even more damage. And now, “Little tumors are appearing all over the place,” Craig said.
There is little to no chance that chemotherapy will extend her life by more than a month, and doctors say it would significantly decrease her quality of life. And at the rate the tumors are appearing, doctors expect that within the next three months, a “serious event” such as a stroke or pulmonary embolism, will end her life.
“When the doctor gave us that diagnosis, it made sense to go back to the farm and stay together as long as possible,” Craig said.
The Battricks are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, something which has sustained Craig and Robin throughout these difficult nine months since her first diagnosis. Because LDS doctrine emphasizes eternal life and families staying together forever, Robin and Craig believe their temple marriage will extend far beyond their mortal lives.
“We’re still husband and wife, and we will be together again,” Craig said. “That kind of knowledge keeps us going.”
He’s decided to use the Family Medical Leave Act to take the next three months off work and stay with Robin until the end. But as Robin’s medical care has eaten up their savings, and he will receive no income during the next three months, Craig has been trying to find a way to make the situation financially viable.
Back in the early 1990s in Corvallis, Craig had a small publishing business, and after the project fizzled, he found himself lugging thousands of unsold books around with him.
“I wasn’t as good a marketer as I was a book publisher,” he said. But with all these unsold volumes piled up, he thought that perhaps they might be the answer to some prayers.
Three titles are available for sale. The first is a Jan Roberts-Dominguez recipe book called “Sandwich Cuisine Oregon Style,” which features one of her early watercolors on the cover. It sells for $20, including shipping.
The second is “Pearl S. Buck, Good Earth Mother,” the hardback official biography. It contains the most extensive catalog of Buck’s writing ever printed. It retails at $18.95.
The third is a relatively little-known book called “Dreamer in Five Lands,” by OSU professor Faith Norris, which tells the story of her mother, Joan Grigsby, the first woman to translate 11th century Korean love poetry into English. It also retails at $18.95, but Craig is willing to pair it with the Buck book for a total price of $29.95 for both.
If Craig can sell these books, he can comfortably afford to take care of Robin for as long as she’s here. Any money that’s left over, Craig will put into a nonprofit, “Sharing, Inc.,” that he created in Corvallis to help out an author with cerebral palsy.
Craig has already received a lot of responses to e-mails he’s sent to friends and family around the country. He’s also received interest from many strangers, something he feels is a response to the prayers that communities of faith have been sending out for the family.
“We don’t have the words to express our gratitude,” he said, “but if ‘thank you’ is enough, I want them to know I appreciate it.”
from www.gazettetimes.com/articles/2007/07/03/news/community/6loc03_farewellfundraiser.txt
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If you've read this far, thank you for your time and patience. I hope, if nothing else, this story has been inspiring to some degree. Our family greatly appreciates any show of support, be it as simple as a kind thought or a silent prayer. If you are able to extend any kind of monetary support as well, that is equally appreciated. Also, feel free to forward this e-mail to others that you think might be interested. Again, on behalf of my family, please accept our many thanks.
Sincerely,
Joseph C. Battrick
AT A GLANCE
To purchase books to support the Robin Battrick Memorial Fund, use the attached form. E-mail books4robin@battrick.fastmail.fm or contact Craig at cjbattrick@gmail.com for additional information. Proceeds in excess of those needed to pay her medical and funeral expenses will be donated to the non-profit organization Sharing, Inc.
_________________
Below is a note from Joe, an excerpt from the update on his mom and the article that ran in the Gazette-Times (sister paper to the Democrat-Herald, where I work).
Dani
____
(Apologies in advance to those of you who have no idea what this is about... I'm sending it to everyone in my address book. Feel free to ignore it if it isn't of interest to you.)
Dear friends,
Some of you may have heard--and many of you have not--that my mother was stricken with terminal cancer about 10 months ago. She passed away July 31, just two weeks after her 56th birthday. During her struggle, she received an amazing amount of support from friends, family, and many complete strangers. Among those supporters are many friends of varying faiths, so one example of this support comes from a number of religious communities: Mom's name was placed in five Protestant and three Catholic parayer circles, five LDS temple prayer rolls, and was even taken to the wailing wall in Jerusalem. Our appreciation of this kind of support can never be fully expressed. It is that spirit that I write this letter.
About a month before mom passed, Dad realized that he was going to have to stay home to take care of Mom as the cancer entered it's final stages. In addition to the already mounting medical expenses, this would incur even more financial stress. However, while talking together, they conceived a brilliant idea that would help aleviate some of the burden.
For those of you who may not welcome a plea such as this, please forgive my presumption. It is not my intention to offend or solicit help from uninterested parties. But if you are interested in helping, please read on. The story is told in two parts: my dad's original e-mail to the online community who followed Mom's struggle, and an article recently published in the Corvallis Gazette-Times. The text is somewhat long, so if you would rather just cut to the chase and find out how to help, please skip to the end. Otherwise, read on...
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From "The Robin Update: 26 June, 2007:"
...So here's what we are going to do. I'm applying for a leave of absence from my job under the Family Medical Leave Act. Then we're moving back to the farm so that I can take care of Robin full time. Unfortunately, that means my paychecks stop. So, while Robin is happy about going back home and having me there all the time, she's really worried about finances. Medical costs that the insurance wouldn't cover have eaten up our savings. While we could push some credit cards to their limits, interest rates are so high that to Robin this is just unacceptable. We can't sell the farm for several more months because of the cost of capital gains taxes. And we can't get a mortgage on it because we would not have income to pay the mortgage payments. So now we start selling things other than the farm.
I'd like to start with some books left over from my days as a book publisher in the 1990s. Robin asked me many times to toss these remainders in a dumpster because we lost so much money trying to make the publishing business work. For her the books represent grief and loss. But for me the books represent a dream that almost came true. It seemed like such a waste to throw them away that I could never bring myself to get rid of them. Over the years I have donated them to worthy causes here and there. But mostly I have moved them a lot, much to Robin's frustration.
When we got the news that Robin might not live much longer, I dusted off my dream. I thought, "What if...?"
If we could sell these books, I could stay at home and take care of her. All we'd need to do is tell a few people what we're doing and ask them to spread the word via email. I'm convinced there are enough people with enough kindness to want to help. Kevin Costner was right, right? "If you build it, they will come!" Okay, Field of Dreams was only a movie, but Ronald McDonald houses are real. Good things happen all the time because most people are mostly good.
I have three titles to sell.
The first is Sandwich Cuisine Oregon Style. This is an extremely good recipe book written by Jan Roberts-Dominguez, who at the time was Oregon's most well-known food columnist. She's now one of Oregon's premier water-colorists and the cover of the book was one of her early efforts to recreate Oregon's landscapes in that medium.
The Portland Oregonian called Sandwich Cuisine "one of the finest first books they had ever seen from a small press." The book is a varnished soft-cover so it's water-proof. And it has a special binding to help it lay flat on the kitchen counter. They retail for $15.95--about the price of a good pizza. But the benefits last much longer than one meal. I have 4,000 copies that if sold at retail plus shipping (round up to $20.00) would earn $80,000.
The second is Pearl S. Buck, Good Earth Mother. This hardback is the "official" biography of Pearl S. Buck, the 20th century's most prolific and honored female author; official because it was commissioned by the family. No other woman received both a Nobel and a Pulitzer; no one that I know of published more than 500 books and articles. The book contains the most extensive catalog of Pearl's writing ever assembled. For that reason, most of the first printing sold to libraries and university courses. I have 1,000 of the second printing left. They retail for $18.95. Rounded up, that's $20,000.
The third book is Dreamer in Five Lands. This almost unknown work by an unknown writer is a better read than Good Earth Mother. The author was Faith Norris, a literature professor from Oregon State University. The book is about her mother, Joan Grigsby, who was a contemporary of Pearl S. Buck. So I designed it to be sold as a companion volume to Good Earth Mother.
Grigsby's and Buck's lives had many parallels, including their love of literature. Grigsby was the first woman to successfully translate eleventh-century Korean love poetry into English. But unlike Buck, Grigsby died in obscurity at an early age instead of becoming world-famous. Juxtaposed, these two women's lives make a fascinating and entertaining study. The two stories are a contrast in good and bad decisions. And in telling the Dreamer's story, Faith Norris tapped into a universal experience for women--the mother-daughter conflict that so often fails to be resolved. These also retail for $18.95 but there are only 800 of them left. I'd like to offer this one in a set with the Buck book for $29.95.
Okay, despite my best efforts to write ad copy, you may not be convinced that any of these are worth the better part of a twenty-dollar bill. But your friends might be interested in them. The books make great gifts and it's not too early to start thinking about Christmas. If you added the potential, you can see that the value of these books adds up to more than $100,000. That's many times what Robin and I need. And that leads to a discussion of Sharing, Inc. But the details for that are in the detailed business plan, which also describes how the email campaign, the distribution, and the payment will work.
Let me know if you want to help. Just reply and ask for a copy of the business plan...
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A farewell fund-raiser
By THERESA HOGUE
Gazette-Times reporter
Stricken with cancer, family holds book sale to pay bills
The only thing that could pull Craig and Robin Battrick away from their Corvallis home of 30 years was the dream of a quiet Midwest farm, a few cows and an orchard. When Robin retired from Hewlett-Packard, and Craig received a layoff notice from HP shortly afterward, they decided it was finally time to pursue that dream.
The Battricks’ three children, Joseph, Christopher and Samantha, were all grown, so in 2006 the two high-school sweethearts pulled up roots and traded their 10 acres on Highway 99W for 50 acres in Coffey, Mo., about two hours from Kansas City.
“Robin is a country girl,” Craig said. “She wanted the elbow room.”
Craig got a job at Sprint-Nextel in Kansas City, and maintained an apartment during the week for work, while Robin lived on the farm. Their dreams were going according to plan, until Craig noticed something odd about Robin one day while they were shopping for building supplies at Home Depot.
Robin appeared to be weaving down the aisle, and her speech was a little slurred. When Craig asked her if she was feeling all right, she admitted that she’d been having trouble writing. Her symptoms sounded just like a former co-worker’s had been when she’d had a stroke, but since it was the beginning of the weekend, they decided to put off a trip to the doctor until Monday.
But Craig and Robin’s daughter-in-law, Ariel Battrick, is a nurse in Corvallis, and when she heard about Robin’s symptoms, she demanded that they take Robin into an ER immediately. So Craig and Robin ended up in St. Joseph’s Medical Center, where a battery of tests turned up four lesions in Robin’s brain.
The next day, a craniotomy and removal of one of the objects revealed that Robin had melanoma tumors in her brain. Robin had previously had two normal-looking moles frozen off, and doctors now believe that although they hadn’t looked cancerous, they likely contained melanoma cells which entered her body and spread.
Melanoma can travel through the blood and lymphatic systems, where it settles on soft tissue interfaces such as the lungs and brain. In Robin’s case, the first to appear and cause issues were brain tumors, but that was only the beginning.
A pea-sized tumor in her pelvic region ballooned to the size of a softball in four weeks, causing her intense pain; the tumor had to be removed. Two tiny tumors on her occipital lobe are causing partial sight loss, but removing them would do even more damage. And now, “Little tumors are appearing all over the place,” Craig said.
There is little to no chance that chemotherapy will extend her life by more than a month, and doctors say it would significantly decrease her quality of life. And at the rate the tumors are appearing, doctors expect that within the next three months, a “serious event” such as a stroke or pulmonary embolism, will end her life.
“When the doctor gave us that diagnosis, it made sense to go back to the farm and stay together as long as possible,” Craig said.
The Battricks are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, something which has sustained Craig and Robin throughout these difficult nine months since her first diagnosis. Because LDS doctrine emphasizes eternal life and families staying together forever, Robin and Craig believe their temple marriage will extend far beyond their mortal lives.
“We’re still husband and wife, and we will be together again,” Craig said. “That kind of knowledge keeps us going.”
He’s decided to use the Family Medical Leave Act to take the next three months off work and stay with Robin until the end. But as Robin’s medical care has eaten up their savings, and he will receive no income during the next three months, Craig has been trying to find a way to make the situation financially viable.
Back in the early 1990s in Corvallis, Craig had a small publishing business, and after the project fizzled, he found himself lugging thousands of unsold books around with him.
“I wasn’t as good a marketer as I was a book publisher,” he said. But with all these unsold volumes piled up, he thought that perhaps they might be the answer to some prayers.
Three titles are available for sale. The first is a Jan Roberts-Dominguez recipe book called “Sandwich Cuisine Oregon Style,” which features one of her early watercolors on the cover. It sells for $20, including shipping.
The second is “Pearl S. Buck, Good Earth Mother,” the hardback official biography. It contains the most extensive catalog of Buck’s writing ever printed. It retails at $18.95.
The third is a relatively little-known book called “Dreamer in Five Lands,” by OSU professor Faith Norris, which tells the story of her mother, Joan Grigsby, the first woman to translate 11th century Korean love poetry into English. It also retails at $18.95, but Craig is willing to pair it with the Buck book for a total price of $29.95 for both.
If Craig can sell these books, he can comfortably afford to take care of Robin for as long as she’s here. Any money that’s left over, Craig will put into a nonprofit, “Sharing, Inc.,” that he created in Corvallis to help out an author with cerebral palsy.
Craig has already received a lot of responses to e-mails he’s sent to friends and family around the country. He’s also received interest from many strangers, something he feels is a response to the prayers that communities of faith have been sending out for the family.
“We don’t have the words to express our gratitude,” he said, “but if ‘thank you’ is enough, I want them to know I appreciate it.”
from www.gazettetimes.com/articles/2007/07/03/news/community/6loc03_farewellfundraiser.txt
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If you've read this far, thank you for your time and patience. I hope, if nothing else, this story has been inspiring to some degree. Our family greatly appreciates any show of support, be it as simple as a kind thought or a silent prayer. If you are able to extend any kind of monetary support as well, that is equally appreciated. Also, feel free to forward this e-mail to others that you think might be interested. Again, on behalf of my family, please accept our many thanks.
Sincerely,
Joseph C. Battrick
AT A GLANCE
To purchase books to support the Robin Battrick Memorial Fund, use the attached form. E-mail books4robin@battrick.fastmail.fm or contact Craig at cjbattrick@gmail.com for additional information. Proceeds in excess of those needed to pay her medical and funeral expenses will be donated to the non-profit organization Sharing, Inc.
_________________
