About Ed Whitlock
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My fellow citizens: I stand here today humbled by the task before us, grateful for the trust you have bestowed, mindful of the sacrifices borne by our ancestors.

I thank President Bush for his service to our nation as well as the generosity and cooperation he has shown throughout this transition.

Forty-four Americans have now taken the presidential oath.

The words have been spoken during rising tides of prosperity and the still waters of peace. Yet, every so often the oath is taken amidst gathering clouds and raging storms. At these moments, America has carried on not simply because of the skill or vision of those in high office, but because We the People have remained faithful to the ideals of our forbears, and true to our founding documents.

So it has been. So it must be with this generation of Americans.

That we are in the midst of crisis is now well understood. Our nation is at war against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred. Our economy is badly weakened, a consequence of greed and irresponsibility on the part of some but also our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age.

Homes have been lost, jobs shed, businesses shuttered. Our health care is too costly, our schools fail too many, and each day brings further evidence that the ways we use energy strengthen our adversaries and threaten our planet.

These are the indicators of crisis, subject to data and statistics. Less measurable, but no less profound, is a sapping of confidence across our land; a nagging fear that America’s decline is inevitable, that the next generation must lower its sights.

Today I say to you that the challenges we face are real, they are serious and they are many. They will not be met easily or in a short span of time. But know this America: They will be met.

On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord.

On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn-out dogmas that for far too long have strangled our politics.

We remain a young nation, but in the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things. The time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit; to choose our better history; to carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea, passed on from generation to generation: the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free, and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness.

In reaffirming the greatness of our nation, we understand that greatness is never a given. It must be earned. Our journey has never been one of shortcuts or settling for less.

It has not been the path for the faint-hearted, for those who prefer leisure over work, or seek only the pleasures of riches and fame.

Rather, it has been the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things — some celebrated, but more often men and women obscure in their labor — who have carried us up the long, rugged path towards prosperity and freedom.

For us, they packed up their few worldly possessions and traveled across oceans in search of a new life. For us, they toiled in sweatshops and settled the West, endured the lash of the whip and plowed the hard earth.

For us, they fought and died in places Concord and Gettysburg; Normandy and Khe Sahn.

Time and again these men and women struggled and sacrificed and worked till their hands were raw so that we might live a better life. They saw America as bigger than the sum of our individual ambitions; greater than all the differences of birth or wealth or faction.

This is the journey we continue today. We remain the most prosperous, powerful nation on Earth. Our workers are no less productive than when this crisis began. Our minds are no less inventive, our goods and services no less needed than they were last week or last month or last year. Our capacity remains undiminished. But our time of standing pat, of protecting narrow interests and putting off unpleasant decisions — that time has surely passed.

Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America.

For everywhere we look, there is work to be done.

The state of our economy calls for action: bold and swift. And we will act not only to create new jobs but to lay a new foundation for growth.

We will build the roads and bridges, the electric grids and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together.

We will restore science to its rightful place and wield technology’s wonders to raise health care’s quality and lower its costs.

We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories. And we will transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age.

All this we can do. All this we will do.

Now, there are some who question the scale of our ambitions, who suggest that our system cannot tolerate too many big plans. Their memories are short, for they have forgotten what this country has already done, what free men and women can achieve when imagination is joined to common purpose and necessity to courage.

What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them, that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long, no longer apply.

The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works, whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified.

Where the answer is yes, we intend to move forward. Where the answer is no, programs will end.

And those of us who manage the public’s knowledge will be held to account, to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do our business in the light of day, because only then can we restore the vital trust between a people and their government.

Nor is the question before us whether the market is a force for good or ill. Its power to generate wealth and expand freedom is unmatched.

But this crisis has reminded us that without a watchful eye, the market can spin out of control. The nation cannot prosper long when it favors only the prosperous.

The success of our economy has always depended not just on the size of our gross domestic product, but on the reach of our prosperity; on the ability to extend opportunity to every willing heart — not out of charity, but because it is the surest route to our common good.

As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals.

Our founding fathers faced with perils that we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man, a charter expanded by the blood of generations.

Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience’s sake.

And so, to all other peoples and governments who are watching today, from the grandest capitals to the small village where my father was born: know that America is a friend of each nation and every man, woman and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity, and we are ready to lead once more.

Recall that earlier generations faced down fascism and communism not just with missiles and tanks, but with the sturdy alliances and enduring convictions.

They understood that our power alone cannot protect us, nor does it entitle us to do as we please. Instead, they knew that our power grows through its prudent use. Our security emanates from the justness of our cause; the force of our example; the tempering qualities of humility and restraint.

We are the keepers of this legacy, guided by these principles once more, we can meet those new threats that demand even greater effort, even greater cooperation and understanding between nations. We’ll begin to responsibly leave Iraq to its people and forge a hard- earned peace in Afghanistan.

With old friends and former foes, we’ll work tirelessly to lessen the nuclear threat and roll back the specter of a warming planet.

We will not apologize for our way of life nor will we waver in its defense.

And for those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that, “Our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken. You cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you.”

For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness.

We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus, and nonbelievers. We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth.

And because we have tasted the bitter swill of civil war and segregation and emerged from that dark chapter stronger and more united, we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself; and that America must play its role in ushering in a new era of peace.

To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect.

To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict or blame their society’s ills on the West, know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy.

To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history, but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.

To the people of poor nations, we pledge to work alongside you to make your farms flourish and let clean waters flow; to nourish starved bodies and feed hungry minds.

And to those nations like ours that enjoy relative plenty, we say we can no longer afford indifference to the suffering outside our borders, nor can we consume the world’s resources without regard to effect. For the world has changed, and we must change with it.

As we consider the road that unfolds before us, we remember with humble gratitude those brave Americans who, at this very hour, patrol far-off deserts and distant mountains. They have something to tell us, just as the fallen heroes who lie in Arlington whisper through the ages.

We honor them not only because they are guardians of our liberty, but because they embody the spirit of service: a willingness to find meaning in something greater than themselves.

And yet, at this moment, a moment that will define a generation, it is precisely this spirit that must inhabit us all.

For as much as government can do and must do, it is ultimately the faith and determination of the American people upon which this nation relies.

It is the kindness to take in a stranger when the levees break; the selflessness of workers who would rather cut their hours than see a friend lose their job which sees us through our darkest hours.

It is the firefighter’s courage to storm a stairway filled with smoke, but also a parent’s willingness to nurture a child, that finally decides our fate.

Our challenges may be new, the instruments with which we meet them may be new, but those values upon which our success depends, honesty and hard work, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism — these things are old.

These things are true. They have been the quiet force of progress throughout our history.

What is demanded then is a return to these truths. What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility — a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character than giving our all to a difficult task.

This is the price and the promise of citizenship.

This is the source of our confidence: the knowledge that God calls on us to shape an uncertain destiny.

This is the meaning of our liberty and our creed, why men and women and children of every race and every faith can join in celebration across this magnificent mall. And why a man whose father less than 60 years ago might not have been served at a local restaurant can now stand before you to take a most sacred oath.

So let us mark this day in remembrance of who we are and how far we have traveled.

In the year of America’s birth, in the coldest of months, a small band of patriots huddled by nine campfires on the shores of an icy river.

The capital was abandoned. The enemy was advancing. The snow was stained with blood.

At a moment when the outcome of our revolution was most in doubt, the father of our nation ordered these words be read to the people:

“Let it be told to the future world that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive, that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet it.”

America, in the face of our common dangers, in this winter of our hardship, let us remember these timeless words; with hope and virtue, let us brave once more the icy currents, and endure what storms may come; let it be said by our children’s children that when we were tested we refused to let this journey end, that we did not turn back nor did we falter; and with eyes fixed on the horizon and God’s grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations.

Thank you. God bless you.

And God bless the United States of America.

Vicky (Beijing 2008 Paralympic Games Rowing Coxed Four LTAMix4) and husband Eamonn Nolan with Brian McLean, president of Achilles Canada at the Annual Christmas Party. Achilles Canada is a non-profit organization that provides people with various disabilities an opportunity to receive the physical, psychological, and communal benefits of running.

Vicky and her seeing-eye dog Angus (“there are hundreds of photos of Angus and very few of Eamonn”)
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For the Women’s College Hospital Foundation

My friend Sarah Evans, founder of Sarah Evans Writes
I’m helping Sarah build her e-zine called Living Beyond: “Living your best with a Diagnosis.”
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Giving the gift of life — to a total stranger
LISA PRIEST Globe & Mail

Kevin Gosling was sent to three psychiatrists to see whether he had a death wish, was seeking atonement for a past sin or was just plain crazy when he offered to do something no other Canadian had ever done: donate part of his liver to a stranger.

The 46-year-old man’s wish was answered last year when he underwent a six-hour operation at Toronto General Hospital to have two sections of the left part of his liver dissected and transplanted into a child.

At a news conference today, the product developer will tell his story of what drove him to become a Good Samaritan to someone he had never met.

It was a process that was not only lengthy, but also cost him thousands of dollars in associated travel costs and lost time off work.

“I’ve had people say to me, ‘Are you crazy?’ ” Mr. Gosling said in a telephone interview from his home in Cornwall, Ont., southeast of Ottawa near the U.S. border.

“It’s difficult to explain. . . . I just wanted to help. I’m young, I’m capable, I’m willing. It’s very heartbreaking to know people on the wait list are dying.”

Knowing many patients die on the waiting list — 100 out of 400 people waiting for a liver at Toronto General Hospital died last year was a key motivator for Mr. Gosling.

The death rate for patients on the liver transplant waiting list is far higher than for those who queue for kidneys, many of whom can be kept alive through dialysis.

Last year, 713 patients were waiting for a liver and 141 died while in the queue, said Margaret Keresteci, manager of clinical registries for the Canadian Institute for Health Information.

Though live liver transplants have been performed in Canada — about 60 were done last year alone — they have always been part of a directed effort: a wife donating to a husband, a parent donating to a child, one relative donating to another.

A more unique version of that happened two years ago when playwright Michael Healey donated part of his liver to author Tom Walmsley, a man he scarcely knew.

But Mr. Gosling’s case is different: Up until his donation, no Canadian had ever provided a live liver donation to a complete stranger.

Stranger-to-stranger donation has been done with kidneys, with three anonymous donor transplants performed in British Columbia during the past two years, said Bill Barrable, head of the British Columbia Transplant Society.

Donating a portion of liver, however, is a technically challenging operation that, according to the medical literature, carries a 1-in-200 risk of death.

Consequently, hospital officials had to be able to justify what benefits Mr. Gosling would incur. While benefits of organ donation are obvious when a donor helps a relative, the benefits were intangible in Mr. Gosling’s case.

“We can’t harm one person just for the benefit of another person,” said Linda Wright, the bioethicist at University Health Network, comprising Toronto General, Toronto Western and Princess Margaret hospitals. “. . . We had to be sure that we felt that there was a benefit to the donor as well as to the recipient.”

Mr. Gosling spent months persuading hospital officials that his motives were pure: He had no book deal, he was not some crazy person who liked to be operated on, and no, he had not done something heinous for which he was trying to get back into God’s good books.

In fact, Mr. Gosling describes himself as an ordinary man who attends his Anglican church every Sunday, the 11th of 13 children, who grew up in a household where money was tight.

“It’s very rewarding knowing you did something to help someone,” said Mr. Gosling, who regularly donated blood and put himself on the bone marrow registry as a willing donor. “It’s special, there’s no doubt about that.”

Though it was special, it was not easy. After Mr. Gosling, a father of three adult daughters, sought out the hospital to make his donation, he was subjected to examinations by a raft of health specialists, including physicians, surgeons, social workers and psychiatrists.

A series of medical tests were performed to ensure he was healthy enough to undergo the operation. He was instructed to lose 20 pounds (nine kilograms) to reduce the risk of surgical complications to himself and the recipient. Mr. Gosling did even better, dropping 44 pounds to 169 from 213.

Though his theoretical risk of death was 1 in 200, in actuality it was far lower at Toronto General Hospital, which has the largest liver transplant program in the country. The institution has performed more than 200 living liver transplants with no fatalities, said Gary Levy, director of transplantation at University Health Network.

“We spent time trying to understand what his mindset was,” Dr. Levy said in a telephone interview. “Did he really understand that he was putting his life in jeopardy? It turned out that he was a very together human being.”

And the transplant was a smashing success. A letter from the recipient’s family said the child is doing extremely well.

“They’re extremely grateful to this individual for the kindness and the gift,” Dr. Levy said. “It turned out to be a win for both, but especially for Kevin who wanted to make a difference.”

Ms. Wright described Mr. Gosling’s donation as the “purest form of altruism.”

But it is an altruism many would find difficult to comprehend: He risked complications of liver failure, uncontrolled bleeding, a bile leak and infection, not to mention possible death.

During the operation, transplant surgeon Ian McGilvray removed left segment 2 and 3 of Mr. Gosling’s liver, about one-third of the organ, during a six-hour operation. That’s less than is required for an adult-to-adult liver transplant, where one-half to two-thirds of the right part of the organ is removed. The recipient’s transplant, performed by another surgeon, took eight hours.

Despite the risks associated with the transplant, Mr. Gosling suffered no complications from surgery. And the liver regenerates: within 12 weeks of the transplant, it typically grows back to 90 to 95 per cent of its original volume, Dr. Levy said.

Today, Mr. Gosling said he feels terrific, both physically and spiritually, having done what he set out to do. And although he had planned to remain anonymous, he decided to allow his story to be publicized because he wanted to promote living liver donation, knowing that it may not be for everyone, but it certainly is for more than just one man.

“Everything was worth it. I’d do it again, if I could,” Mr. Gosling said. “I have no regrets.”

Ivy League next chapter for book-loving native girl
LISA FITTERMAN
Special to The Globe and Mail

MONTREAL — When she was 13, Skawenniio Barnes just wanted a quiet place to read after school on the Kahnawake Reserve outside of Montreal. So the Mohawk teenager — whose first name means “beautiful word” — fought to build a library.

Come September, she will be toting her books in the hallowed halls of one of North America’s most prestigious Ivy League schools. Her steely determination so impressed Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Dartmouth that all four universities offered her full scholarships.

“I’ve dreamed about this since, like, forever,” Ms. Barnes, now 17, said in an interview from the library at the Kahnawake Reserve, where she works some evenings after school.

It’s the latest chapter in a story that began four years ago, when Ms. Barnes, then a scholarship student in Grade 9, complained to her mother that there was no library on the reserve.

By then, Ms. Barnes had been so hungry for words that she left the Mohawk immersion school on the reserve and fought her way into a private Catholic girls school in Montreal. She had gone searching on the Web, e-mailed her academic credentials to the school and got permission to attend, despite not being a Catholic.

When she returned home after school every day, there was no place for her to read and study. And she loved books, especially the ones that featured bespectacled boy wizard Harry Potter.

But she knew that more than a magic spell was needed to make her dream come true.

“Write a letter,” her mother, Patricia Barnes, said.

So she did — a no-nonsense missive to the Mohawk Council of Kahnawake about the “dire need” for a library.

Her plea caused a small storm when it was published in the reserve’s newspaper, and she thought it would end there — until she decided to enter a contest for CosmoGirl!

On a whim one night, she wrote a 300-word essay for the magazine’s Girl of the Year competition, in which she eloquently described her dream of having somewhere to curl up and read after school. Other children on the reserve dreamed of it, too, she wrote. They just weren’t as outspoken as she was.

“When I got the call that I’d won, I didn’t believe it,” Ms. Barnes said at the time. “I was so excited, I was, like, screaming and jumping around.”

That’s when her literary crusade popped into high gear. Her winnings included a $10,000 scholarship, which Ms. Barnes put toward her college education.

It also won her a photo shoot for CosmoGirl! at the Strand bookstore in New York’s Greenwich Village — her first trip on an airplane. She wandered the aisles, delighted, gazing at more books than she’d ever encountered before in her life.

Most important, her mission to build a library got national attention on radio and in newspapers.

Then the books started flowing in — boxes and boxes of them — from a public enthralled by the young girl’s pluck. More than 30,000 arrived from as far away as Australia. There were encyclopedias, years worth of National Geographic magazines, Alfred Hitchcock potboilers, cookbooks and, of course, several that featured Harry Potter.

She went on to win the Peter Gzowski literacy prize, received fan mail from children across North America and was invited to Ottawa, where Roch Carrier, the national librarian, offered her lunch, a tour of the National Library and the opportunity to pick out more books.

Kahnawake now had more books than it knew what to do with — and no place to store them. For months, they were stored on teetering stacks in the basement weight room of the Kahnawake Peacekeepers’ Station.

Ms. Barnes’s campaign helped persuade the band council to set up a library-organizing committee — which she promptly joined as the youngest member.

“The girl is very driven,” band council spokesman Joe Delaronde said. “In a small town like this, it’s sometimes very difficult to maintain that drive. Peer pressure will tend to bring you back sometimes.”

Chief Lindsay LeBorgne, who’d supported the idea of a library, said the problem about opening one always revolved around money.

“But Skawenniio’s initial letter touched a chord. And with the magazine contest win, well it seems that she was born under a good star.”

On Oct. 4, 2003, she cut the ribbon to the new library, called Skawenniio Tsi Iewennahnotáhkhwa (Skawenniio’s Place Where One Reads). Housed in a former bakery, there were freshly made hemlock shelves donated by a local contractor, and a catalogue that seven librarians from the National Library had helped collate.

To help the library establish itself, the band council agreed to pay its utility bills for two years, while the Caisse Populaire Kahnawake is paying the rent on the building until the end of this year.

“She has always been opening doors,” her mother said. “The library was huge, but in the end, it has just been a larger door that Skawenniio was able to take advantage of because she works hard, period.”

Ms. Barnes has since turned her attention to books more challenging than Harry Potter, studying health sciences at Dawson College, a CEGEP (Quebec’s stage between high school and university) in Montreal.

Hoping to become a lawyer, she applied to several U.S. Ivy League schools. In her essay appended to each application, she described how hard it was to grow up in Kahnawake, where life was often overshadowed by drug busts, cigarette trafficking and tense standoffs between natives and police.

The fourth of five children, her father is an iron worker and her mother is a homemaker. Neither of them graduated from high school.

“I had to start working at 13,” she wrote. “I was a waitress and a cook at my uncle’s restaurant and I had a lot of responsibility at a young age. If I was thrust out in the world tomorrow to stand on my own two feet, I’d be okay.”

It worked.

Last month, she received an early acceptance from Dartmouth College. Harvard, Princeton and Yale quickly followed suit — each offering a full scholarship, worth about $46,000 (U.S.) a year.

Now the only dilemma for the Mohawk teenager who brought tens of thousands of books and beautiful words to her reserve is choosing which school to attend.

For the moment, she is leaning toward Yale, if only because the university is in New Haven, Conn., — a smaller town where she feels she won’t “get lost in the cracks.”

But she is keeping all her options open. “I remember the year that I started pushing for the library, I told my family that I was going to go to Princeton,” she said. “Honestly, I never thought I’d get into one, never mind four.”

Created by Ron Foreman on behalf of the Lengvari family (42mins 56secs, 134MB)

Sarah Evans of Ability Culture asked me and Dave Carlson to help her build a website called Living Beyond, “Living Your Best with a Diagnosis”. Dave will do the logo and help me build the site. Dave is very knowledgeable about website accessibility.
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