After five years, I just removed my yellow LiveStrong wrist band - the one that started it all. I wore it because I'm a cyclist and my sister had breast cancer. Long after it became a tired cliché for doing good and 'being cool', it was a still the simple statement that I wanted my sister to live. She inspired me to raise other monies to fight breast cancer and to ignore the rainbow of imitation bans that followed.My sis is a cancer survivor now and it is great to hear her rail about how we ignore Vitamin D while the cancer 'industry' is raising boatloads of money to try to cure something that is better prevented. Every solution must start somewhere and for me it was partly that faddish, stupid, overblown, piece of yellow rubber around my wrist.
When I first saw the Nothing But Nets promo I thought, oh brother, not another catchy campaign to save the world for a few bucks! But that is just what it is, a simple swat at malaria, which kills a million children in Africa each year. The promo reminds me of one of my favorite words, prophylactic. It just means protection by way of a barrier. A Haitian auto-mechanic friend use to always joke that a 'Jim' should not forget his ‘Jimmy-hat’. He was speaking prophylactically about prophylactics. Of course I kept looking around for my baseball cap – like a dumb-ass.
The inexpensive nets are a barrier to the malaria carrying mosquitos that infect 500 million people every year. Like the buck people gave to wear yellow and fight cancer, the nets are not a cure-all, but they are on the road to a real solution. Kids are good hucksters because they can understand saving other kids like themselves, via netting that reminds them of indoor camping. We better watch out, the little buggers just might grow up to be caring adults. Wouldn’t that be payback?
James C. Collier
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Technorati Tags: Acting White: Prophylactically speaking…Nothing But Nets, Malaria, Africa, LiveStrong, Mosquitos, Acting White
3 comments:
First of all, I am glad to read that your sister is a survivor! I am an advocate for Breast Cancer Awareness and Education. My mom is a survivor also.
I saw Nothing But Nets and wondered if it was the ball team or the bug nets.
My church sponsors purchasing nets during the year. It is a worthwhile effort and it is helping to protect others from being stricken.
Nothing but Nets is a great program. And I think because its so easy to do, just getting a simple net, people have responded.
This is what I think: Nothing but Nets
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