Leukemia and Lymphoma Society Light the Night

At the Boston ACS meeting I collected $1600.00 from my chemist friends in two committees.  I CHALLENGE THE NORTH JERSEY SECTION TO MATCH THIS.
I have asked the Younger Chemist Committee to form a team and walk with me.  YCC's in other sections have done fundraisers for cancer and other causes and since the North Jersey Section YCC is award winning I thought they could do it.  Maybe next year!

Since you are all researchers I thought that you might want to know that the doctor who examined me when I went for my usually quarterly check up at the Cancer Institute of New Jersey is a clinical researcher who works for the "new Merck".  He does clinical trials at the the Shearing Plough location in Kenilworth and examins patients one day a week at the Cancer Institute.  We spent the first ten minutes of the exame period talking about Schering and Dr. Cecil Pickett who used to be head of research.  He said he would be there in December when I go again. I hope so, he was nice as is my oncologist Dr. Strair.  That doctor and I forgot to get his name gave me some information about research on CLL which is what I have.  I looked up the research papers.
Anyway I thought I would tell you this.

I will be walking the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society's Light the Night Walk for the fifth year in a row. I have worked on this fund raiser every year since I was first diagnosed with Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia. It is truly an inspiring evening of walking with lighted balloons, red for supporters and white for survivors and gold for those who have lost the battle.
I not only walk for myself but for all those who have suffered from blood cancers some of them in silence. Remember our former webmaster died from a blood cancer.

I have become a patient advocate to spread the word about blood cancer. Few people know that SEPTEMBER IS BLOOD CANCER AWARENESS MONTH IN NEW JERSEY.

The LLS is trying to make September blood cancer awareness month nationwide. You can help by contacting your congress person. Here is the link:Act now to make September Blood Cancer Awareness Month

The Light the Night New Jersey Team will be on Good Morning America on Channel 7 ABC on Wednesday September 22. I don't know if it is an interview or just in the audience as I have been. The show airs from 7 AM to 9 AM when I am usually exercising so I will watch it on the Internet.

I am walking the Light the Night walk on Saturday October 2 at Princeton Forrestal Village. The ceremony starts at 5:00 PM and is usually over by 9:00 PM. We walk rain or shine in warm weather and cold weather and I have had all of that.  THERE IS STILL TIME TO WALK WITH ME.

If you would like to donate to my team my web page is :

http://pages.lightthenight.org/nj/Colonial10/jbrown_LTN45

I hope you donate the cost of one less cup of Starbucks coffee or Latte even more if your company will match.

You have until JANUARY 31 TO DONATE! Think about your tax deductions.

Remember I am walking for a cure. The researchers are close to getting cures for some blood cancers but they need money for this. Researchers are humans who have families and houses and need to eat so you will be stimulating the economy by donating to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society!!! Think of that!

Jeannette Brown

Welcome to our new volunteers and Farewell to one.

The North Jersey Section is continually recruiting volunteers to do the work of the section. We have recently recruited three new volunteers who have already started working. I wanted to take this opportunity to thank them for volunteering and show what they are doing.

How do I find volunteers? Well as a Chemistry Ambassador, I do it by giving my elevator speech everywhere I go. Tradition has it that men do a lot of business in the locker room of the golf club or gym. Well women have gotten into this action as well and we talk in the locker room of the YMCA. I found two women there who turned out to be chemists. One of them is semi retired from EXXON Mobil her name is Margaret. Margaret worked with me at Rutgers/Ag Day in April. The other woman has just been recruited by me in the Y her name is Lori she is a tutor now but did work as a chemist before her son was born.

 

Some volunteers seek me out, one of them is Penelope (Tawanna) who was a chemical technician and is now studying for a degree in chemistry. She contacted me two years ago about an Earth Day event in Irvington. She is now the Earth Day and National Chemistry Week Poster Contest organizer.

 

 

 

Another woman who contacted me by phone while I was on vacation in Martha's Vineyard is Dodda. She said she saw the information about recruiting volunteers on our website and wanted to volunteer! She has done an outstanding effort of volunteering. She introduced us to the 4H Club in Somerset County. We have participated in the Science day that they organized and the 4H fair last August. She and I were the pioneers on the street fairs; the first one was before we had our tent, which we now have. Both of us operated the booth with the help of Bill Suits who was the person to put up and take down the tent. Dodda is now only going to do volunteer work in the schools before she leaves to really retire. We want to thank her very much for all the work she did. She became my right hand in organizing street fairs and other events.

Figure 3 Dodda explaining something

The Younger Chemist Committee is becoming another source of volunteers. Chenghua and Michelle came to us and worked the table at the Ag/Rutgers Day event last April.

The other source of volunteers is the Teacher Affiliate Group Eve came to help at Science Day in the 4H Club and the 4H Fair.

Figure 4 Eve at AG Day

Members of the executive committee also volunteer but in this article, I want to highlight the work of the newest volunteers.

Why this article? Well it is to tell you that you can join this happy group of volunteers. Alternatively, I should say become a Chemistry Ambassador (www.acs.org/chemistryambassador) as the ACS is calling volunteers. Volunteer opportunities are listed on our website www.njacs.org and Volunteer Match. www.volunteermatch.org. the same opportunities will be listed there.

Hope you will join us at National Chemistry Week events at Liberty Science Center October 23 and at the USA Science and Engineering satellite event at the New Jersey Science and Engineering Festival in Clifton October 23 & 24.

Jeannette Brown

Publicity Chair

Black History Month 2. African American Women in Science

Congratulations to the NJACS webmaster Paul Tukey.  He correctly identified all three women in the quiz.
Anyone else want to try.  I will not reveal the answer until the end of the month.

Jeannette

Black History Month 1. African American Women in Science

I write three blogs off and on.  This month I will put the same information in all three blogs, because it is Black History Month and I want to convey some information to the public.
As you know I am writing a book about the history of African Amercan women chemists so I am going to give you a quiz. 
I will post some photos and I am going to ask you to identify them and what was their claim to fame.  The only clue is they were all chemists  but what did they do?

Ok. Its up to you to tell me who they are and what they did.  That's a hint they are all deceased.

Good Luck

Jeannette

Washington DC ACS Meeting

Sorry I dropped the ball on posting during the meeting. I was very busy with meetings so when it was time to write, I was tired.
I spent most of the meeting on Diversity topics. I am a member of the Joint Subcommittee on Diversity and we spent most of our meeting reorganizing. It had been a group where members of all Diversity groups met to coordinate activities. In effect this group will still do that but it will be a stronger group. It used to be that the chair's of all the diversity groups met separately from the committee and in DC under the leadership of Terry Quinn Grant, we all met together to thrash out what the group will do and how it will be organized in the future. It was a very productive meeting.
I am the historian on the Women Chemists Committee. The WCC talked about programing for the San Francisco meeting and I am organizing a symposium of all the outside Diversity groups such as NOBCChE, AISES, SACNAS and the Chinese Chemistry group. I envision this symposium to be panel discussions by each group in which they explain what they do, how they are organized and what would be the connection to the ACS in the future and now.
In effect this was done by each group at a reception during the DC meeting, but this will be for the west coast.
I am a member of the Committee on Minority Affairs and we discussed programing and action items. The committee wants to make sure that diversity is held to be important throughout the whole ACS and not just lodged in these committees. We are thinking of ways to diversify the Council. Stand by for that action item. The committee selected Dr. Marie Daly (the first African American women to receive a PhD in chemistry) to be highlighted by the society just as Dr. Percy Julian was. I will be the champion of this cause. I am going to the Board of Directors to ask them to set up a task force to see what can be done. Maybe there will be another NOVA production, that would be great it we can pull it off in this economy. But there are a lot of independent film makers who may want to produce a documentary about her life this remains to be seen.
Of course the highlight of the meeting for me was the Fellows award ceremony. Just as I suspected I was the only African American woman to be nominated in this class of Fellows. There are three African American men and two of them were at the ceremony. Dr. Jim Shoffner did not attend unfortunately after all the hard work he had done for the ACS.

At the Chem Luminary Awards the North Jersey section came up with two awards. The award for best local section and for Earth day. I was excited about that. I will post the photos on the website soon.

Last but not least I have a publisher for my book about African American Women Chemists. I have started a new blog about the book and the writing of it. I will probably be posting to this blog and to that one more often because writer needs to write just as a singer needs to sing every day and I am both. Here is the other blog http://aawomenchemists.blogspot.com
Jeannette Brown

Death of Barbara Hodson Ullyot

I am the current 2009 Ullyot Scholar at the Chemical Heritage Foundation (CHF). I have been at CHF for two months working on my project The History of African American Women Chemists. Barbara Ullyot and her late husband Glen are major contributors to CHF and they sponsor this two month Scholarship for independent scholars like me. I am truly grateful for this award as it enabled me to continue my research and even submit a proposal to a publisher for publication. Note I have not yet heard from the publisher, which means that it might be good news or just that it is summer and every one is on vacation.
As soon as I got to CHF I wanted to send Barbara Ullyot a thank you note, but I was told that it is usually done at the end. But I did thank her in person. Barbara Ullyot had a new project at ACS to start the endowment for Project SEED. She was on that team. So I saw her at the Project SEED Anniversary Symposium and I said: "I am the current Ullyot Scholar at CHF." She said:"I know." Then I thanked her and told her she would receive the first autographed copy of my book. Little did I know that she was suffering from lung cancer. I will follow through and send a copy of my book to her son.
Those of you who have been ACS members and councilors for as long as I have will remember her as Barabara Hodson when she was the staff person in charge of meetings and membership. If you become a councilor you become friends with the ACS staff. At least that's the way it was in the old days. They became like family. It is the same sort of today except the family has changed and all the old faces have retired or died. The new staff members have been promoted to take their place or left for other positions.
But I guess I learned something. Always thank people who help you. I am glad that I did thank Barbara Ullyot when I saw her so that she knew that I was grateful for the award.
For those of you who remember Barbara Ullyot her obituary is at the following web page; https://www.usna.com/SSLPage.aspx?rss=obits_arch&referrer=&pid=8246.
Her first husband was a Naval man so she will be buried in Arlington Cemetery next to him and the memoral service will be held on July 30 at Ginger Cove in Annapolis, the retirement community in which she lived.
I wondered if the ACS was going to do a memorial to her. But her obituary says contributions should be made in her name to the ACS Project SEED Scholarship Fund.

Since I was a former chair of the Project SEED Committee, I donate to Project SEED every year and you should too. I hope that you will do it in her memory if you knew her or just because it is a good cause.
Jeannette Brown

Salt Lake City Tuesday Day 5

The day ended with the Annual Awards Banquet. It is a black tie affair for the awardees and most of the attendees as well. It is usually very elegant. There were about 37 awardees, but of that group only one African American awardee, Dr. Shirley McBay of the Quality Education for Minorities group. She is one of the women in my book and I suggested that she be nominated for the ACS Award for Encouraging Disadvantaged students into the Chemical Sciences. She is only the 4th African American woman to win any ACS national award and I believe only one man has won an award. I am trying to work to change this. I would like to see minorities and especially African Americans be nominated and win ACS national awards for research and not just mentoring. I am working on it.
Dr. McBay gave her award talk in the Environmental Chemists Division. She talked about environmental racism and how the ACS and anyone in the community can help to change this. People of color and poor people suffer from environmental racism in that they may live near toxic waste dumps or poor air quality or just lead paint in the housing. There are groups working on the clean up. I will write the full story of her talk for the Women Chemist Newsletter and he Committee on Minority Affairs Newsletter as well.
I had breakfast with the Public Relations group of the ACS. They are going to roll out some new tools to help us and they wanted our input as to what they should do. It was a very productive meeting and many ideas were generated.
Then I went to the convention center to pick up the press release about the DNA paper as it was not in my kit. I wrote the story there in the press room.
The women chemist luncheon was held in the convention center. The speaker was the 2009 Garvan-Olin Medal winner Kathlyn Parker. She gave a talk about her life and her research.
After the luncheon I made my only visit to the exposition which was very large. I did not stay long because I would have needed my scouter to see all of it and I did not pick up the scouter that the ACS rented for me.
After Dr. McBay's talk I went to see Dr. William Carroll win the Henry Hill award. Dr. Henry Hill was the first African American ACS president back in the 70tys.
That completes the circle of my day. Tomorrow is the last full day of the meeting for me.
Jeannette Brown