Thank You!!!

Thanks to your generosity, we collected enough sunscreen to fill a large flat rate box! It's off to Under the Same Sun and then to Africa where it's so desperately needed.

Considering that a bottle of sunscreen costs anywhere from $7-$10, this collection is no small feat. In fact, it cracked me up how many people said, "Do you know how expensive sunscreen is?!"

Uh...yeah. :)

We will continue to collect sunscreen in lieu of birthday and Christmas presents, so keep it coming! For more information about this campaign, click here.

Be True to Your School

These days, I spend most of my time like this:

I have many fascinating and brilliant things to write about (stop snickering), but lately I've been so swamped with three kids and three classes that I just can't get to it. Seriously, I'm so sleep deprived that I developed what I call a "slutter" - a slur and a stutter mixed together. You could arguably add "slut" in there, but that's another story from another time period.

For the most part I love being in school and wish I could be a professional student (unfortunately Robbie curls into the fetal position whenever I say the word "Ph.D.") I'm in no hurry to graduate, but when I have insane weeks like the past couple weeks, I find myself obsessively checking how many classes I have left until graduation. The answer is always the same: too many. 

I spent the first half of grad school at a seminary on the University of Chicago campus in Hyde Park. I loved commuting there for intensives every January, but the commute - combined with major changes that the school made after the recession hit - became too much for me last year. I transferred to an ecumenical seminary in Detroit that I was already attending as a guest student. 

Hyde Park could look rough if you went too many blocks in any given direction, but for the most part it was a gorgeous, affluent campus. Many of my classmates affectionately called our seminary "Hogwarts" after the old gothic building and the old rumpled staff. 

Now I go to school in an old church in downtown Detroit where most of the neighborhoods are rough. I'm only one of a couple non-Christians, which can be frustrating and lonely sometimes. But there are a lot of things I love about the seminary: the energy, the activism, the racial diversity...the groundskeeper whose name really is Willie. 

Last Saturday after class I took some pictures of the Heidelberg Art Project going on next to the school. The shoes represent people living on the street, but you can find better information about it here.

Typical of the area - one abandoned, one beautifully renovated.

While I was at it, I took some pictures of our school. It's no Hogwarts...but it has a magic all its own. 

It's Official - I'm Offbeat

I'm so honored that Miren's birth story was published today on Offbeat Mama! It was fitting to re-read the final lines about struggling to remember my gratitude as I sat sipping a "boy this has been a long day from hell" Oberon. Most days I remember. Some days I need a few extra baby smiles...and a good beer.

What Can They See?

One of the biggest questions I get about the boys and OCA is: what can they see? The short answer is that each person with albinism has varying vision, but generally it's like a low-resolution digital picture.

The longer, much better answer is in this video presentation by NOAH. I'm SO glad this is finally available in a form I can share because the information and pictures are invaluable! It's a little long, but if you want to get the general idea quickly, fast forward to the part that shows visual representations of what a person with 20/20 vision sees compared to what someone with 20/100 or 20/200 vision sees. Emerson's vision at this point is about 20/300 - 20/400 and Fionn is around 20/100 - 20/200.