Cleft Lip / Palate Support Group
Cleft is a congenital deformity caused by a failure in facial development during gestation. It can be treated with surgery shortly after birth with highly successful results. Cleft occurs in somewhere between one in 600 and one in 800 births. Cleft occurs in several severities and is divided in two major categories: cleft lip and cleft palate.
In The Sanctuary Of Outcasts
by Neil White
This is an autobiographical account of the author's incarceration in federal prison in Carville Louisiana. Carville is a secuded island on the Mississippi River and was also the last surviving leprosarium in the United States. More than half of the complex was empty and the government had been keeping white collar inmates and those with medical needs there. The narrator was sentenced for the crime of bank fraud; kiting checks to support his publishing business ventures.
When Neil first arrived at Carville, he imagined a new journalistic scheme, seeing himself as an undercover reporter out to write a sensational account of that unique place and those who lived there, primarily the "lepers" (or Hansen's disease patients, as they prefer to be called.) However, the beauty of the book is how the focus shifts for Neal from learning things from the patients about their lives to learning things from them about Life in general, lessons he finds immensely useful when he is rocked by his wife's decision to file for divorce and the prospect of being separated from his children. In The Sanctuary Of Outcasts is not the investigative journalistic piece Neil imagined at first; it is the story of a man coming to terms with his own ravenous ego and the consequences of all those he had hurt (small business investors, friends and family).
The setting of Carville is still integral to Neil's story, and the people he met there, both patients and inmates. He pays equal attention to the perspectives of his medical entrepreneur roommate, "Doc", and a car-jacking drug dealer named "Link" (as in "missing"). He talks about how he was afraid to touch the Hansen's patients at first, but soon found himself in awe of their serenity and capacity for creativity and joy in the face of being totally separated from their families and old lives, often having their names changed to protect against anyone's knowing their or their families' identities.
His best friend and mentor is an elderly black woman named Ella Bounds, a double leg amputee who travels in an antique hand-cranked wheelchair. Ella gives him a pivotal piece of advice when he tells her of his concerns that he really has not changed as a person, and is afraid he will let his family and friends down again. She tells how the Coca Cola distributor in the early days of Carville had sent the colony hundreds of chipped and cracked Coke bottles, so they could refuse to take them back after use. He feared a public boycott if customers discovered the glass containers had been touched by the lips of leprosy patients. So the patients put them to use in as many ways as they could think of: turned upside down and stuffed into the dirt to line flowerbeds and walkways, sugar dispensers in the cafeteria, flower vases, even bowling pins. "You is what you is," she said. "CoCola bottle still a CoCola bottle. Just found 'em a new purpose."
by Neil White
This is an autobiographical account of the author's incarceration in federal prison in Carville Louisiana. Carville is a secuded island on the Mississippi River and was also the last surviving leprosarium in the United States. More than half of the complex was empty and the government had been keeping white collar inmates and those with medical needs there. The narrator was sentenced for the crime of bank fraud; kiting checks to support his publishing business ventures.
When Neil first arrived at Carville, he imagined a new journalistic scheme, seeing himself as an undercover reporter out to write a sensational account of that unique place and those who lived there, primarily the "lepers" (or Hansen's disease patients, as they prefer to be called.) However, the beauty of the book is how the focus shifts for Neal from learning things from the patients about their lives to learning things from them about Life in general, lessons he finds immensely useful when he is rocked by his wife's decision to file for divorce and the prospect of being separated from his children. In The Sanctuary Of Outcasts is not the investigative journalistic piece Neil imagined at first; it is the story of a man coming to terms with his own ravenous ego and the consequences of all those he had hurt (small business investors, friends and family).
The setting of Carville is still integral to Neil's story, and the people he met there, both patients and inmates. He pays equal attention to the perspectives of his medical entrepreneur roommate, "Doc", and a car-jacking drug dealer named "Link" (as in "missing"). He talks about how he was afraid to touch the Hansen's patients at first, but soon found himself in awe of their serenity and capacity for creativity and joy in the face of being totally separated from their families and old lives, often having their names changed to protect against anyone's knowing their or their families' identities.
His best friend and mentor is an elderly black woman named Ella Bounds, a double leg amputee who travels in an antique hand-cranked wheelchair. Ella gives him a pivotal piece of advice when he tells her of his concerns that he really has not changed as a person, and is afraid he will let his family and friends down again. She tells how the Coca Cola distributor in the early days of Carville had sent the colony hundreds of chipped and cracked Coke bottles, so they could refuse to take them back after use. He feared a public boycott if customers discovered the glass containers had been touched by the lips of leprosy patients. So the patients put them to use in as many ways as they could think of: turned upside down and stuffed into the dirt to line flowerbeds and walkways, sugar dispensers in the cafeteria, flower vases, even bowling pins. "You is what you is," she said. "CoCola bottle still a CoCola bottle. Just found 'em a new purpose."
To take it a step further, I was in a self defense class recently and the instructor used me as an example because I was aware and responsive of everything around me and stepped up to, rather than stepped back from a potential perpetrator. It was a process to be comfortable in my own skin and I believe it is possible for many to do the same. Much of our confidence comes from the depths our own determination. This abstract is a great reminder that we must look at ourselves with confidence, if we expect others to do the same. This is my take away, anyhow.
Thank you Jon.