HemaBlog™

Cheers! To the Colburn-Keenan Foundation

The weather was spectacular in Simsbury, Connecticut for the annual “Wine by the Vine” fundraiser to support the Colburn-Keenan Foundation. I was happy to attend with my boyfriend Doug and met up with my brother Tim and his wife Lee. We also socialized with many friends from our hemophilia community including nonprofit friends, pharmaceutical and homecare rep friends and friends of friends!
For only a $50 admission ticket we were able to sample lovey and delicious wine and beer locally brewed by Rosedale Farm, where the event was held. It was fun to chat with friends, sample the goods, enjoy hot hors d’oeuvres and beautiful desserts, and listen to a folk singer from 3 pm – 6 pm.
Laurie Kelley with Sandy Williams of Novo Nordisk

The Colburn-Keenan Foundation is named in part after a legend in our community: Donald Colburn. Donald had hemophilia, HIV, and its complications and had already founded American Homecare Federation (AHF), a successful homecare company. Donald was responsible for kicking off NHF’s Campaign for a Cure back in 2000 with a half million dollar grant. They also had adopted a child with hemophilia from Eastern Europe. Sadly, Kathy passed away from cancer in May 2006 and Donald passed away from cancer in July 2006. The Colburn-Keenan Foundation, founded in 2006, represents their dream and a living legacy to their outstanding lives of philanthropy. The majority of their personal estates have gone into a trust to fund and sustain the Foundation, where amazingly 100% of monies raised will go directly to programs and services.

These services include providing financial assistance to individuals with chronic illnesses, with a priority placed on those living with a bleeding disorder. These include providing assistance with insurance premium, deductible, and co-pay expenses and assistance with all other socioeconomic expenses such as rent/mortgage, utilities, car insurance or repairs, medical travel, funeral expenses. And  the Foundation provides more!

Since its inception in 2006, the Foundation has provided a whopping: 1) $981,139 in individual assistance grants; 2) $188,000 in organization grants and 3) 118 scholarships totaling $544,000.

This generosity made it very easy for me to justify playing in the silent auction. Though  a fierce competitor beat me in the African Safari auction item, I did win James Taylor tickets (which I happily gave to my brother Tim and wife Lee, me being more a classic rock kind of girl; see my book review below) and Patriots tickets and a signed baseball by David Ross of the Red Sox, both of which I more than happily gave to sports-fan Doug. I was happy to take one of the many pumpkins home as my prize!

Congratulations to the stunning work of the Colburn-Keenan Foundation!

For more info: http://www.colkeen.org/

Good Book I Just Read

Slash by Slash [Kindle]

You’ve got to give Slash credit for just being alive. The former guitarist of the 90s band Guns N’Roses uses a pacemaker to keep himself going after the wretched excesses of life on the road in one of the most popular bands of their era. In this bio, Slash, born in England as Saul Hudson, the son of parents already steeped in the music industry, runs wild as a child in the streets of LA, becomes a defiant teen, develops a true passion for music and the guitar and becomes an accomplished guitarist, helping to form the band GNR. Debauchery describes the band’s lifestyle and impact as it acted out with drugs, alcohol and sex, trashing hotel rooms, causing problems for everyone including police and business owners, and eventually ripping themselves in two when the volatile and mercurial Axl Rose has a prolonged showdown with the often drug-induced and soft-spoken Slash. To this day they do not speak. Slash tells his tale factually and hides nothing, except for an in-depth analysis of what really ailed Rose and GNR. Slash may have been too doped up to know. The birth of his first son was the impetus to get clean once and for all and he has come out ahead. He is a talented guitarist (just saw him live this summer, up close), and has evolved with several bands, currently with Myles Kennedy and the Conspirators. A good read, easy and interesting, but also sad… that so many rock stars are bent on self-destruction. Here’s one who went to the brink—and lived to tell the tale. Three/five stars.


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