patconroyTV.pngPat Conroy, the beloved 70-year-old Southern novelist seen in this YouTube, probably isn’t one for e-books. A year or so ago, I tried in vain to see if he might go for the cause of a national digital library endowment, given his interest in K-12 and the disadvantaged.

Still, I loved The Great Santini, his biography of his father, and his other works (available in E), and my wife has been fighting pancreatic cancer. So I’ll sadly pass on the news in case you haven’t heard: Conroy himself has just been diagnosed with the same disease. He will undergo treatment at M. D. Anderson Cancer Center. The Charlotte Observer has more details.

Update on Carly: The first scan after 28 days of Hiroshima-level radiation therapy was encouraging. The tumor shrank by a third and possibly is dead. While she isn’t out of the woods yet, there’s hope, and I’ll wish the same for Conroy.

D.C.’s screwed-up priorities: Federal funding over the years for pancreatic cancer is scandalously low, considering that it is among the major cancers. Check out information from the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network.

 

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