She talks to wolves...

So, there's this writer you might have heard of on my friends page: Shira Lipkin, AKA shadesong. Not only are we fellow alums of Scheherezade's Bequest (the online magazine of Cabinet des Fées), not only is her story "Valentines" being published in the Interstitial Arts Foundation's forthcoming Interfictions 2, but she is also one seriously classy dame. She is a Survivor Speaker and a major fundraiser each year for the Boston Area Rape Crisis Center.

Although she often works directly and extensively with BARCC, her main fundraising efforts for them each summer are expended in running one of the best Blogathons around.

For those who aren't sure what a Blogathon is, allow me to fill you in: each summer, many bloggers raise funds for their favorite charities by committing to update their blogs every half hour for a twenty-four hour period. They must blog every thirty minutes, no exceptions. As you can imagine, to make this more interesting, they generally develop themes for their bloganzas. For example, The Chef's Table will spend 24 hours cooking "a chef's tasting menu" and sharing recipes. In 2005, catvalente wrote "The Descent of Inanna," which was subsequently published as a limited edition by Papaveria Press. Last year, shadesong played the part of a psychometric xenoarchaelogist, writing pieces of flashfic to accompany creative items donated to her for the purpose. She later auctioned those items for further donations to BARCC.

This year, shadesong has solicited crafts and goods inspired by her works. If you were to scroll through blogforbarcc (the community set up for auctioning this year's donated items), you would find custom yarn (Phoenix-style!), lovely jewelry (Sihaya designs! Wyrding Studios originals!), autographed CDs (s00j's Sirens!), and even incredible edibles (Polidori chocolates! ginger syrup!) . You would also find a print that has struck my heart with primal desire:


"From the Ashes" by Aaron Aurelio Acevedo.
(Gorgeous work, aaronace.)

This coming weekend, shadesong will be posting pieces of her flashfic every half hour along with the creative items inspired by them. I hope you'll tune in to read them! And if you've a bit of change to spare for charity, please consider supporting her in her endeavors. They are incredibly worthy.

...besides, not only will you be helping charity - you'll be supporting the arts and possibly getting something shiny in the bargain as well!



Read shadesong's original post on Blogathon 2009 at this link.

Storm, one of my favorite songs by S.J. Tucker, the Skinny White Chick (and 1/3rd of Tricky Pixie!) features the following lyrics:

They see a woman on a mission
with a song for anyone who'll listen,
and when the sun is rising, she is already gone.
By the time the dawn has broken, she's as good as gone.

I'm quoting those lines here and now because our dear lady musician has been hospitalized (and released, pending diagnosis). At last word, they were tending toward a diagnosis of appendicitis*. Our amazing s00j, who spends all of her time on the road bringing joy to our lives through voice and guitar, is uninsured. She's facing bills for two different hospital stays, daily tests, medication, an ambulance ride, CT scans... and possible surgery. If you haven't blanched by now, or shaken your head and murmured "My word!", you're not familiar with the high cost of medical attention in America.

So let's keep our lovely musician itinerant and able to do her job, eh? She sings for her supper and we pay for her lovely words, her music, her song. If she's too sick to sing for us, or too bound by debt, it's even more important for her wide network of patrons to grow itself, bind together, and offer up what support we can.

omnisti got the ball rolling: he explains her situation and some basic ways you can help her in this post. Buy her CDs at wholesale prices, donate money, do what you can!

More of us have taken up the call with saveours00j, a bazaar wherein you can find amazingly unique items up for sale or bid with a donation to s00j. There's awesome hand-crafted jewelry there, Jayne (of Firefly fame) hats, Tarot readings, editing services offered, etc.

I would be donating jewelry, except I'm light on some base supplies and don't have the funds to re-purchase at the moment. However, I whipped up the following banner:



Please feel free to use it to advertise saveours00j! Spread it far and wide! All I ask is that you do not hotlink. (Save the banner and upload it to your own site, livejournal, whatever, please.)

The photo used in the banner was taken by the marvelous Ryan Nutick when he and copperwise attended the last Tricky Pixie concert in Portland.

Also, Vixy (as in Tony &) has alerted us that she is donating money from CD sales and purchases at her Etsy shop to help s00j recover.

And that's all I got, folks. Spread the word, and bring in the love!



* Probably unlikely due to the amount of time that's elapsed (appendicitis is sort of a quick and dirty thing, you know), but there's still something wrong and she's definitely racked up the medical bills in caring for it.