Why haven't I had a haircut since May 1 of last year? So I could ask for your help fighting pediatric cancers!

Hey buddies,

As you’ve surely noticed, I’ve been sporting an increasingly unruly mane over the past twelve months. As of today, I haven’t had a haircut in one full calendar year.

That all ends on Monday, May 13, when I will be shaving it off as part of a “Brave the Shave” event in Manchester, Vermont, benefiting the St. Baldrick’s Foundation for pediatric cancer research. I hope I can count on your sponsorship!

According to the American Cancer Society, over 10,000 children under the age of 15 are diagnosed with cancer each year, and troublingly, that number has been on the rise in recent decades.

We only have the medical know-how to cure 80% of those kids, though: about 2,000 won’t pull through…like the “St. Baldrick’s Kid” I’m honoring on my page, Cameron Fahey, a Chicago teenager who shared my passions for punk rock, politics, and pro-social action, but ultimately lost his battle with lymphoma in 2014.

I can’t fathom what it’s like for a parent to hear that their child has cancer, let alone to lose them to it; even the thought of one of my nephews getting diagnosed makes my blood run cold.

It makes me want to do something to help prevent another family having to go through that horror. And growing hair is one thing that I do pretty damn well.

You might not know — I didn’t myself until recently — that most childhood cancers develop differently than adult cancers, requiring an entirely separate field of scientific research.

Currently, childhood cancer research only receives 4% of federal cancer research funding. That's not a typo: just four percent goes to pediatric research!

The St. Baldrick's Foundation funds cooperative research through the Children’s Oncology Group, to the tune of $19 million in 2018. That's impressive, but still not even two-thirds of the $30.1 million in promising research that they would have liked to underwrite.

With your generous help, hopefully we can get them closer to being able to fund every penny in 2019!

I’ve set the lofty goal of raising $2000 for this event, but think of how quickly I could meet that goal if just twenty people donated $100 each…or if forty people were willing to part with $50…or if eighty people threw in just $25!

But even a bunch of small dollar donations help fund the fight, so I hope you’ll hit up my donation page and spend whatever you can. Remember, you’re not doing it for me, you’re doing it for the kids.

Thank you so much for reading this, and hopefully for taking action to help fund this important, life-saving research. It genuinely means a lot to me!

Hirsutely yours,

Bruce McD.

https://www.stbaldricks.org/participants/BruceMcD

-- 

+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=++=+=+=+=+=+
"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." - Margaret Mead

"Finders keepers?" No, Finders GIVERS: 2018's Found Money Charity Report!

Unless you live a strictly cashless life, you've probably got a small jar or jug (maybe even an actual actual piggy bank) where you chuck your pocket change at the end of the day. If, like me, you rely on coin-operated laundry machines, you probably have two: one for quarters, and one for the rest.

I, on the other hand, have three: for the past twenty-odd years I've kept an additional receptacle, dedicated entirely to money that I unexpectedly come across while stumbling my way through life, which I tabulate at the dawn of the new year and donate to charity.

Since 2011, I've been posting the results here, and encouraging friends and family to make a matching donation to the Sean McGrath Fund at Princeton Area Community Foundation, a memorial that I co-founded, and which has distributed nearly $50,000 to a wide range of health and humanitarian nonprofits over the past fifteen years. 

This year I'm making a found money donation of $69.31--and hoping you will do the same (see donation details below)!

So how did I come across almost seventy free bucks this year? Found money comes in a several varieties, but let's start with the obvious; actual U.S. currency that I plucked from sidewalks, subway platforms, and floors throughout the year, 231 pieces in all:

10.00 x 1 = $10.00

1.00 x 2 = $2.00

.25 x 9 = $2.25

.10 x 29 = $2.90

.05 x 20 = $1.00

.01 x 170 - $1.70

There's also foreign currency, which I used to find quite frequently here in New York City, but which has been pretty rare the past few years. In years past, I've come across moolah from over a dozen countries, but all I found this year was a five Euro piece (worth $0.06). However, that's an improvement over the previous year, when found bupkes (which, in case you're unfamiliar with Yiddish, isn't a currency; it's an expression).

Another common way to come across lost dollars and cents in NYC is by unlocking the value of forfeited MetroCards. Whether lost or discarded for having less than a ride's worth of value, I adopted eight cards totaling $11.46 this year (easily transferred to my main pay-as-you-go transit card), as well as one unlimited ride card, which I was able to use for six subway trips before it expired, equating to $16.50 in found value. Add to that two disused cards worth a combined $19.48 that my friend Greg donated when I visited him in Philly, and this year's value of found MetroCards comes to $47.44.

And a new addition to this year's found money charity tally actually comes from nonprofit organizations: for many years, some have sent direct mail appeals which include a self-addressed stamped envelope, which renders the stamp useless if I chose to make an online donation, or opted not to donate at all. This year, perhaps for just that reason, I noticed a new trend, with some groups paper clipping a stamp to the return envelope instead of affixing it. Receiving four of those in over the course of the year adds another $1.96 to the kitty...

...which brings 2018's total to the aforementioned $69.31, the second-highest total since I've been tracking detailed results, and nearly triple the size of last year's pool!

2011 - $49.23       2012 - $45.65       2013 - $17.55
2014 - $63.13       2015 - $113.51     2016 - $43.38       2017 - $23.58

Over the eight years listed above, this little annual hobby has resulted in over $400 in pre-matched dollars; with matches from friends, that has been boosted to well over $1000, which has supported charity initiatives across the country and around the world.

I hope you'll join me by pitching in some of your own virtual coin and cash! All you have to do is click the fourth button on the PACF site ("Support a specific fund") and make sure you specify "Sean McGrath Fund" in your note.

Before I wrap up, I'll leave you with a look at some of the more battle scarred coins, weathered either by time, or--for those that spent winter beneath snow and salts--literally by weather.

Whether or not you contribute a few dollars to the Sean McGrath Fund, I hope you've been inspired to track the spare change that you find throughout 2019, and to donate the total to your favorite charity next year! You might be surprised at what you'll find.

Thank you for reading, for donating, and for all the little things you do to help change the world!