Wasting Away in Margaritaville

Some people waste away in Margaritaville. While wasting away in sheer randomness, I'm sitting here and I wonder, what exactly does the “Crisper” drawer in a refrigerator do? Sure, it sounds like a fancy contraption that you nestle your veggies into with tender loving care, but does it really keep them fresher, crispier, or lengthen their short little veggie lives? Perhaps it’s just me, but I don’t see how it is possible for this drawer to do anything that the other refrigerator drawers do. There isn’t any button that accommodates this drawer with cooler temperatures than the rest of the fridge. And while I’m on things that make you go hmmm, why is it that the abbreviation for refrigerator has a “d” in it—fridge—when there isn’t a “d” anywhere in the unabridged term? Typically abbreviations are meant to shorten the word rather than add to it, but I digress.

On a more literary note, I happen to be a fan of novels by Sarah Addison Allen. It all began one summer afternoon when I strolled into my local bookstore and saw their monthly recommendation of Garden Spells. I read it in two days. The synopsis behind her books is food and non-gushy romance, non-gushy being the operative non-word, of course. Allen writes about food in the genre of magical realism sprinkled with a dash of romance and a pinch of ubelievably charming characters. My only beef, no pun intended, with her debut novel is her tendency to be overly generous to one incredibly undeserving character. Her second novel was The Sugar Queen, fabulous, and most recently and long anticipated is her novel, The Girl Who Chased the Moon. I loved this one the most of all. Her dishes of choice for this story is the town's local BBQ restaurant which also offers homemade cakes that Allen brings to life with magic and descriptions that have you smelling vanilla, sugar, and butter right steaming right from the very pages. In any case, my whole point for mentioning her is that I read in a magazine the other day that there is a new release by a woman named Aimee Bender fabulously titled The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake about a girl who has, since childhood, been able to feel the emotions of the person who made the food that she eats. I have already ordered my copy in hopes that it satisfies my literary appetite much like Allen does. I'll keep you posted.

So, I was in the big “G” the other day, and for those of you who are not my co-worker of whom I share this nickname with, the big “G” is the local Goodwill. I was perusing the bookshelves when I noticed a tangerine hardback book that I have recently seen for full retail price at Barnes and Noble very recently. The book is titled The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, and I was pretty excited after having inspected it to find that it was in brand new condition for the incredibly low price of $3.00. I had never been interested in it when I saw it before, and this time was no exception, I simply planned to buy it to flip on eBay for at least a 75% profit. It wasn’t until I got home that I read the inscription on the front of the book which piqued my interest leading to follow that up with the reading of the inside of the dust jacket. I was riveted. I have only read a small portion of the beginning, but the topic was so interesting that I have already scanned other facts in the book, pictures, and some of the afterward, fear not though, this wasn’t a novel that I ruined for myself. The book is based around HeLa cells that have been used to create treatments and cures for various medical anomalies and diseases such as HIV, cancer, STI’s, Parkinson’s, In Vitro Fertilization, polio, cloning, and more. If you noticed, HeLa is the combination of the first two letters in each of Henrietta Lacks’ name. She made several appointments with doctors after multiple symptoms lead her to believe that she had a “knot” inside of her. This knot turned out to be an aggressive and eventually a fatal form of cervical cancer. Before Lacks died, the doctors cut a sample of the tumor during their tests to determine her diagnosis, cells that the doctors never disposed of but rather saved in culture to use for future science experiments. Human cells have never been very successful with these experiments because usually outside of their natural habitat, they cannot survive. Henrietta Lacks’ cells however, did survive, and not only did they survive, but they regenerated incessantly becoming the world’s first immortal cells. Scientists have used these cells for various experiments and today, 60 years after Henrietta’s death, the cells are still reproducing and can be found in the billions in each scientific culture lab across the world. This book addresses the fact that Lacks never gave permission for doctors to use her cells in this manner, a practice that today, is still legal (I can recall the appendix I had removed after a vicious appendicitis and even my own recent bout with pre-cancerous cells). Doctors continue to attempt to find other sets of cells like Henrietta’s to further medicine. Aside from present issues of legality, the author Rebecca Skloot also addresses issues of past legality in that Henrietta was African-American, and these cells were used for patients of all races during an era where the “one-drop” of black blood rule could mean life or death. In addition, Skloot talks to several of Lacks’ family members, primarily Deborah, one of her daughters about how they lost their mother at such an early age, and although her cells live on and people are getting rich off of them, her own family cannot even afford to go to the doctor. So far, this is the most interesting, haunting, and shocking books I have ever encountered and I encourage any of you who might be interested in a story that most people are completely oblivious to but have been, unbeknownst to them, touched by in some way or another. I say, it's a must-read.