American Diabetes Association

Your Gift Could Save a Life or Find a Cure

Lynette M Burrows

Finishing my Best Gifts posts, this charity is no surprise: The American Diabetes Association. Readers of this blog know that my niece and my husband are diabetics. Giving to the American Diabetes Association and their research partner, the American Diabetes Association Research Foundation are on my list. Your gift pays forward to the newly diagnosed, those struggling with the disease, and medical personnel who treat the disease. Your donations could save a life or help find the cure for diabetes. History Founded in 1940 by twenty-six physicians, the Association was strictly for medical professionals. Their purpose was to address the increasing incidence of diabetes and the complications that arise from the disease. Membership was $2.00 per year. The first annual meeting of the Association occurred on June 1, 1941. The keynote address was given by the co-discoverer of how to use insulin in treating diabetes, Charles Best. (English physiologist Sir Edward Albert Sharpey-Schafer discovered insulin in 1910. In 1921 Doctors Best and Fredrick Banting discovered how to extract insulin and began testing how to use it.) Continuing research developed new forms of monitoring and testing and treating diabetes. The Association brought in local affiliate associations and began to publish periodicals. […]

Will You Raise Your Hand?

Lynette M Burrows

BOUNTIFUL FEAST SEASON I am proud to be an American. (Raise your hand if you’re proud, too). Americans are some of the most caring, most passionate, and most inventive people on the planet. However, we’ve also become a people obsessed with ‘doing.’ We brag about how busy we are as we pass one another and hurry off to the next activity. And in all the doing, some of us forget how and why we are doing all these things. Right now we are rushing into the bountiful feast season. We’ll proudly fix meals that once fed the entire colony and all of their guests in 1621. Many of us will say grace, giving thanks for our bounty. Some won’t. We’ll watch parades, football games, and maybe a sappy holiday movie or two. A few of us will take an after-dinner walk. Most of us won’t. (*Raising my hand sheepishly*) We won’t remember that the first feast came only after a tremendous amount of physical work. The early settlers suffered through a two-month journey on a ship most of us modern Americans wouldn’t step foot on. Those that survived the journey were challenged by winter weather, limited food, poor housing, and […]