Hello stranger, my friend Amit is fight’n Leukemia. Here is how you can help! Thank you!
Two weeks ago I got a call from my doctor, who I’d gone to see the day before because I’d been feeling worn out and was losing weight, and wasn’t sure why.
He was brief: “Amit, you’ve got Acute Leukemia. You need to enter treatment right away.”
I was terrified. I packed a backpack full of clothes, went to the hospital as he’d instructed, and had transfusions through the night to allow me to take a flight home at 7am the next day. I Googled acute leukemia as I lay in my hospital bed, learning that if it hadn’t been caught, I’d have died within weeks.
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I have a couple more months of chemo to go, then the next step is a bone marrow transplant. As Jay and Tony describe below, minorities are severely underrepresented in the bone marrow pool, and I need help.
A few ways to help:
- If you’re South Asian, get a free test by mail. You rub your cheeks with a cotton swab and mail it back. It’s easy.
- If you’re in NYC, you can go to this event my friends are putting on.
- If you know any South Asians (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, Maldives, or Sri Lanka), please point ‘em to the links above. Thank you.
My friend Amit Gupta founded my favorite photography site Photojojo. A few weeks ago, he was diagnosed with leukemia. Amit is one of the nicest, most genuine, most creative people you could ever meet. Prior to founding the awesome Photojojo, he also co-founded Jelly in 2006 in NYC, a coworking community, that’s now spread to 60 cities across the world and helped spark the coworking revolution. It looks like Amit will need a bone marrow transplant quite soon. We can help him with that.
Unlike blood transfusions, finding a genetic match for bone marrow that his body will accept is no easy task. The national bone marrow registry has 9.5 million records on file, yet the chances of someone from South Asian descent of finding a match are only 1 in 20,000.
This is where we come in. We’re going to destroy those odds.
How? By finding and registering as many people of South Asian descent as we possibly can.
Tests are easy– a simple swab of the cheek. If you’re a match, the donation involves an outpatient procedure. It’s not fun, but it’s not dangerous either. And doing it could save a life.
We are encouraging anyone of South Asian descent to take a test to see if you’re a match.
You can get a free test by mail, or, if you’re in New York, you can join us Friday, October 14th for a special party to rally support.
We’ll have test kits on hand at the party, as well as music, booze, and maybe even a photo booth. It will, for the first time, combine a House 2.0-style party with a New Work City-style party, and if you’ve ever been to either, you know they are always something special.
Please spread the word and please do everything you can to help Amit beat leukemia. He’s a superstar.
Much thanks to Tony and pals for organizing this event, and EVERYONE who’s been tweeting and reblogging.
Please help get the word out any way you can. My life quite literally depends on it.
Please send my friend @superamit some love http://blog.postagramapp.com/get-better-amit
My friend Amit was just diagnosed with leukemia. He is one of the most positive, creative, caring, fun-loving people I know. Right now, Amit is in the hospital at home in Connecticut receiving treatment and far from friends in SF (where he lives) and NYC (where he used to live). We can’t visit him yet because of germs and the type of treatment he’s getting, so we’re stuck with the internet to send him good vibes, laughs, and hugs. Please help out!
Amit loves: photos, jokes, mac & cheese, bright colors.
Send photos, cards, candygrams, etc. to him:
Yale New Haven Hospital
Amit Gupta 11 220
Smilow Cancer Center 11 North
20 York St.
New Haven, CT 06511Oh, also: fuckyeahamitgupta.tumblr.com.
P.S. This photo is from brunch at Katherine & Tony’s place in SF c. 2008. Grace took the pic.
DEAREST SNAKEBOMB READERS: Dylan Williams (owner of the excellent US-based distro Sparkplug Comics) is very seriously ill and could use our help. He’s battling cancer and doesn’t have health insurance to cover his medical bills.
Matt from Exquisite Things says it best: “Why should you care? Well, Sparkplug are one of the finest examples of an underground publisher doing what they do for all the right reasons. Dylan isn’t out to make buckets of cash, or publish fancy tomes for your coffee table; he’s far more concerned with publishing comics that push honest self expression. If ever there was someone doing it out of pure love of the medium, it’s Dylan.”
If you can afford to order anything from Sparkplug it will help Dylan tremendously! More info is available via High-Low, including recommended titles. Thanks!
Dylan is a friend of mine, and I would say that on a personal level he has been one of the most supportive folks of my own work and of my experience as a cartoonist in the last couple years, through both friendship and small gestures. He gave me my first in depth review of VSNQST and has supported me by letting me sell my work at the Sparkplug booth. He’s also a former Comic Relief employee - I met him during my first week there when he came to sell us Sparkplug stuff and I was not yet the small press buyer.
That was two years ago, really the first week of my new comics-centric life. Since he was the first person I met in my group of cartoonist pals, his being in the hospital has given me a chance to reflect on my time the past couple years, where my life has been so immersed in this stuff… if not for him, I wouldn’t have learned nearly what I have learned, would not have felt nearly as welcomed in the community… Sparkplug’s existence and Dylan’s presence has made me feel like there’s a place for me in comics.
I would hate to see anything happen to him financially that would force him to take time off from Sparkplug and from comics - he’s really needed here. So to that end, I want to continue the push and say that if you haven’t forayed into the Sparkplug world, now is the best time to do it. Help Dylan pay his medical bills and experience some new and fantastic art.
Some of my favorite Sparkplug titles are:
The Disgusting Room (Austin English) - it’s an amazing tabloid size newsprint comic, mostly reproduced lithographs and it almost looks like encaustic? Really haunting, really beautiful.
Jin & Jam (Hellen Jo) - Classic Hellen stuff. If you’ve only experienced her illustrations, it is time for her comics. Inspired by Korean horror comics, it’s creepy and cool.
Department of Art #1 & Habitat #2 (Dunja Jankovic) - manic musings on life, work, and art, really cool drawings in here.
Danny Dutch & Lemon Styles (David King) - reallllly tight cartooning, 1950s style, with absurdist tendencies.
REPORTER - by Dylan Williams himself! There are 6 issues.
Hello How Are You
New work by Jessalyn Aaland
Tartine
600 Guerrero St. at 18th in San Francisco
Curated by Brianna Toth
December 10th-January 14th
Opening Reception December 10th, 9-11pm
with music by Peace Worlds
Poster by Paul Morgan
Milton Glaser’s 10 things I’ve learned
colander light @ EAT records
