plot points: a fake blog

Damn.

New post on the Murray Chronicles cancer blog: Five pounds of grapes in a one pound bag or how radiation therapy prep goes horribly awry:

Karaoke in the OR, or things not to say to your anesthesiologist...

In which I leave agenting for life with a flightless, aquatic bird in formal wear.

This is not my real blog. No, no, my real blog is over here: The Swivet. And I even made a handy LiveJournal syndicated feed for it.

I tend to cross-post Swivet posts here on LJ as links. My other LiveJournal entries are friends-locked and mostly deadly dull. But do leave a comment of you'd like to be added. Or, if you'd like to know more about my agenting, you can go here.

Cheers!

Do the Write Thing for Nashville: A Literary Flood Relief Auction

Please help spread the word! Thanks!

Then get angry about this:

From the National Center for Lesbian Rights website:

Greene v. County of Sonoma et al.

Clay and his partner of 20 years, Harold, lived in California. Clay and Harold made diligent efforts to protect their legal rights, and had their legal paperwork in place—wills, powers of attorney, and medical directives, all naming each other. Harold was 88 years old and in frail medical condition, but still living at home with Clay, 77, who was in good health.

One evening, Harold fell down the front steps of their home and was taken to the hospital. Based on their medical directives alone, Clay should have been consulted in Harold’s care from the first moment. Tragically, county and health care workers instead refused to allow Clay to see Harold in the hospital. The county then ultimately went one step further by isolating the couple from each other, placing the men in separate nursing homes.

Ignoring Clay’s significant role in Harold’s life, the county continued to treat Harold like he had no family and went to court seeking the power to make financial decisions on his behalf. Outrageously, the county represented to the judge that Clay was merely Harold’s “roommate.” The court denied their efforts, but did grant the county limited access to one of Harold’s bank accounts to pay for his care.

What happened next is even more chilling: without authority, without determining the value of Clay and Harold’s possessions accumulated over the course of their 20 years together or making any effort to determine which items belonged to whom, the county took everything Harold and Clay owned and auctioned off all of their belongings. Adding further insult to grave injury, the county removed Clay from his home and confined him to a nursing home against his will. The county workers then terminated Clay and Harold's lease and surrendered the home they had shared for many years to the landlord.

Three months after he was hospitalized, Harold died in the nursing home. Because of the county’s actions, Clay missed the final months he should have had with his partner of 20 years. Compounding this tragedy, Clay has literally nothing left of the home he had shared with Harold or the life he was living up until the day that Harold fell, because he has been unable to recover any of his property. The only memento Clay has is a photo album that Harold painstakingly put together for Clay during the last three months of his life.

With the help of a dedicated and persistent court-appointed attorney, Anne Dennis of Santa Rosa, Clay was finally released from the nursing home. Ms. Dennis, along with Stephen O'Neill and Margaret Flynn of Tarkington, O'Neill, Barrack & Chong, now represent Clay in a lawsuit against the county, the auction company, and the nursing home, with technical assistance from NCLR. A trial date has been set for July 16, 2010 in the Superior Court for the County of Sonoma.

It's stories like this one, and the story of Janice Langbehn and Lisa Pond's recent abuse at the hands of Miami's Jackson Memorial Hospital that make what President Obama signed into law this week so damned important.

Are you as outraged as I am by this story? Then please blog about it, pass it along over Facebook, Tumblr or Twitter and do whatever you can to help raise the visibility of Clay Green's case. And please do send a letter to the local Sonoma County paper, the Santa Rosa Press Democrat (which is owned by the New York Times) at letters@pressdemocrat.com. Include this link to NCLR's page. And to learn more about NCLR's Elder Law Project, click here.

Via The Bilerico Project and Livejournal's ONTD Political Community.

Guest Blogger Alan DeNiro hits the road for a good cause: Mercy Corps!

Random House forms new IP Creation and Development Group with Keith Clayton to head.

Win a scholarship to the Backspace Writers Conference & Agent-Author Seminar in NYC!