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Hi all, Tonight at sundown I lit candles and said Friday night prayers to remember my mom's passing 15 years ago. I kept looking at the bright flames. All of a sudde it HIT me that PD awareness month was ending, and I felt very emotionally charged. I began to feel that so many of us might die without a cure for PD, at the rate things are going, despite all of our efforts. I was beginning to ask for whom the candles were really lit. Then I began to thnk about how angry I am that not one story about Parkinson's Diesease appeared in any Maine newspaper, radio or TV show during the entire month of April. I wondered if the flames represented my hopes, dimmed by media silence. I could not suppress my feelings. I watched the flames, and decided I HAD to talk to somebody. So I called up Bob Melville, the past editor of the Biddeford Journal -Tribune. I have known him since I moved to Maine in 1982, when I lived and taught in the tiny coastal community of Biddeford Pool,where Bob and Barbara still live, right on the road by the edge of the ocean. When the operator placed the call (my fingers weren' working),I got their answering tape. I began to talk to it. Out of my mouth came, to my own dismay, "I'm angry!" I told the tape how mad I am that the whole of April had come and gone and NOT ONE PEEP from the media. No "mainstream" publicity for us in Maine, despite several excellent programs on April 10 and 11, the Tutu prayer nowithstanding. All of a sudden, a warm voice interrupted my pained soliloquy. It was Bob. He said, "Is that Ivan?" I said, yes, and immediately explained how angry I was. I told him that a whole MONTH had passed, and that I felt that Maine's mainstream media had not brought us ANY closer to a cure. He said he had been watching the papers HIMSELF, and when I told him, "Bob, I'm MAD!" , he was very sympathetic. He said if there was a local angle or "hook" he would ask the paper to write a story. I explained to him that on Wednesday, May 5, having already cancelled an appointment this morning because I could not find a way to get to Boston safely, two states away, I am AGAIN going to be seen about brain surgery. He said that my considering brain surgery wasn't enough of a "hook," because I now live in Portland, and he needed a Biddeford "hook". I kept talking and talking and finally, when I told him about Pakrinson's Power Across America, which begins in Durham New Hampshire, about an hour south of BIddeford, Maine, and then has a HUGE kick-off in Boston, he then got excited. I explained how bicycles were being ridden across North America to San Francisco and that was all it took. Bob caught fire. Somehow I guess that spilling my guts to him was what it took. By the time I was done talking he told me he was going to drive north to my PD-adapted house this upcoming week, and get the SCOOP and write a story HIMSELF. Well, Mom, this PD story will be dedicated to you. And to all of us for whom those two candles on my kitchen table burned so brightly tonight-for Muhammad Ali at the Olympics, for all of us who light one candle to remember our loved ones, for Mr. Udall, for all of you. I hope and pray that Mr. Melville will follow through. Anyone who wants to encourage him or pray that he comes to interview me -go for it! Thank you for listening-I have been feeling angry that the "cure" is taking so much work, that I somehow have to learn every moment, every time I encounter someone, that only if I SPEAK UP will people hear my story and act to help, that the story takes telling and re-telling, that I must NOT give up hope if we are to succeed. Thanks again for being there, everybody. And DON-keep typing and talking!! Ivan PS I received a HUGE packet from Joan Snyder today about the art exhibition in Chillicothe, Illinois, along with Dennis Greene's poem (I miss him so much and am still sad that he's not on our list-what a loss!, and, beautifully printed, Archbishop Tutu's prayer. I filled 4 pages of my very special PD photo album and scrapbook with all she sent me. Joan, thank you!