L.A. Archdiocese considering $200-million fund-raising campaign

In the midst of renewed public outrage over its handling of the priest molestation cases, the Los Angeles Archdiocese is considering a $200-million fund-raising campaign.

The archdiocese has hired a New York company, Guidance in Giving, to study the feasibility of a capital campaign that would shore up the church’s finances.

The archdiocese is $80 million in debt, according to a recent church financial report. In 2007, the archdiocese agreed to a record $600-million settlement with more than 500 alleged victims of priest abuse.

The consultants conducting the six-month study are interviewing every pastor in the archdiocese, as well as lay leaders.

A spokesman for the church said initial feedback has been “very positive.” The funds used would “be put into various endowments earmarked to support the pastoral priorities of the archdiocese, as well as for the general repair and upkeep of our parish churches and schools,” spokesman Tod Tamberg said in a statement.

The campaign would be the archdiocese’s first in 60 years. During the Truman administration, the church raised $3.5 million for new schools in just three weeks. At the time of that 1949 drive, there were about 650,000 Catholics in the archdiocese. Now there are more than 5 million, according to church figures.

The church has not announced the possibility of a campaign to the faithful, but Tamberg acknowledged it in response to questions from The Times on Tuesday.
Last week, Archbishop Jose Gomez publicly rebuked his predecessor, Cardinal Roger M. Mahony, and a high-ranking bishop, Thomas J. Curry, for their handling of molestation claims in the 1980 and 1990s. Files made public last month showed Mahony and Curry working to conceal priests’ sex abuse of children from the police.

At the same time he condemned their actions, the church posted 12,000 pages of priest personnel files on its website that revealed many more instances where officials covered up for abusers. Gomez, who got his undergraduate degree in accounting, assembled a special committee last year to evaluate the possibility of a large-scale campaign, according to the church financial report.

The archdiocese is still paying back a $175-million loan it received to pay victims in the civil settlement. “The archbishop considers stewardship of the church’s financial resources and sound fiscal planning to be a vital dimension of the new evangelization,” church auditors wrote in a recent report.

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Well: Warning Too Late for Some Babies

Six weeks after Jack Mahoney was born prematurely on Feb. 3, 2011, the neonatal staff at WakeMed Hospital in Raleigh, N.C., noticed that his heart rate slowed slightly when he ate. They figured he was having difficulty feeding, and they added a thickener to help.

When Jack was discharged, his parents were given the thickener, SimplyThick, to mix into his formula. Two weeks later, Jack was back in the hospital, with a swollen belly and in inconsolable pain. By then, most of his small intestine had stopped working. He died soon after, at 66 days old.

A month later, the Food and Drug Administration issued a caution that SimplyThick should not be fed to premature infants because it may cause necrotizing enterocolitis, or NEC, a life-threatening condition that damages intestinal tissue.

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Catherine Saint Louis speaks about using SimplyThick in premature infants.

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Experts do not know how the product may be linked to the condition, but Jack is not the only child to die after receiving SimplyThick. An F.D.A. investigation of 84 cases, published in The Journal of Pediatrics in 2012, found a “distinct illness pattern” in 22 instances that suggested a possible link between SimplyThick and NEC. Seven deaths were cited; 14 infants required surgery.

Last September, after more adverse events were reported, the F.D.A. warned that the thickener should not be given to any infants. But the fact that SimplyThick was widely used at all in neonatal intensive care units has spawned a spate of lawsuits and raised questions about regulatory oversight of food additives for infants.

SimplyThick is made from xanthan gum, a widely-used food additive on the F.D.A.’s list of substances “generally recognized as safe.” SimplyThick is classified as a food and the F.D.A. did not assess it for safety.

John Holahan, president of SimplyThick, which is based in St. Louis, acknowledged that the company marketed the product to speech language pathologists who in turn recommended it to infants. The patent touted its effectiveness in breast milk.

However, Mr. Holahan said, “There was no need to conduct studies, as the use of thickeners overall was already well established. In addition, the safety of xanthan gum was already well established.”

Since 2001, SimplyThick has been widely used by adults with swallowing difficulties. A liquid thickened to about the consistency of honey allows the drinker more time to close his airway and prevent aspiration.

Doctors in newborn intensive care units often ask non-physician colleagues like speech pathologists to determine whether an infant has a swallowing problem. And those auxiliary feeding specialists often recommended SimplyThick for neonates with swallowing troubles or acid reflux.

The thickener became popular because it was easy to mix, could be used with breast milk, and maintained its consistency, unlike alternatives like rice cereal.

“It was word of mouth, then neonatologists got used to using it. It became adopted,” said Dr. Steven Abrams, a neonatologist at Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston. “At any given time, several babies in our nursery — and in any neonatal unit — would be on it.”

But in early 2011, Dr. Benson Silverman, the director of the F.D.A.’s infant formula section, was alerted to an online forum where doctors had reported 15 cases of NEC among infants given SimplyThick. The agency issued its first warning about its use in babies that May. “We can only do something with the information we are provided with,” he said. “If information is not provided, how would we know?”

Most infants who took SimplyThick did not fall ill, and NEC is not uncommon in premature infants. But most who develop NEC do so while still in the hospital. Some premature infants given SimplyThick developed NEC later than usual, a few after they went home, a pattern the F.D.A. found unusually worrisome.

Even now it is not known how the thickener might have contributed to the infant deaths. One possibility is that xanthan gum itself is not suitable for the fragile digestive systems of newborns. The intestines of premature babies are “much more likely to have bacterial overgrowth” than adults’, said Dr. Jeffrey Pietz, the chief of newborn medicine at Children’s Hospital Central California in Madera.

“You try not to put anything in a baby’s intestine that’s not natural.” If you do, he added, “you’ve got to have a good reason.”

A second possibility is that batches of the thickener were contaminated with harmful bacteria. In late May 2011, the F.D.A. inspected the plants that make SimplyThick and found violations at one in Stone Mountain, Ga., including a failure to “thermally process” the product to destroy bacteria of a “public health significance.”

The company, Thermo Pac, voluntarily withdrew certain batches. But it appears some children may have ingested potentially contaminated batches.

The parents of Jaden Santos, a preemie who died of NEC while on SimplyThick, still have unused packets of recalled lots, according to their lawyer, Joe Taraska.

The authors of the F.D.A. report theorized that the infants’ intestinal membranes could have been damaged by bacteria breaking down the xanthan gum into too many toxic byproducts.

Dr. Qing Yang, a neonatologist at Wake Forest University, is a co-author of a case series in the Journal of Perinatology about three premature infants who took SimplyThick, developed NEC and were treated. The paper speculates that NEC was “most likely caused by the stimulation of the immature gut by xanthan gum.”

Dr. Yang said she only belatedly realized “there’s a lack of data” on xanthan gum’s use in preemies. “The lesson I learned is not to be totally dependent on the speech pathologist.”

Julie Mueller’s daughter Addison was born full-term and given SimplyThick after a swallow test showed she was at risk of choking. It was recommended by a speech pathologist at the hospital.

Less than a month later, Addison was dead with multiple holes in her small intestine. “It was a nightmare,” said Ms. Mueller, who has filed a lawsuit against SimplyThick. “I was astounded how a hospital and manufacturer was gearing this toward newborns when they never had to prove it would be safe for them. Basically we just did a research trial for the manufacturer.”

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Zynga at a Crossroads in Mobile Quest

SAN FRANCISCO — Zynga has been on a monumental losing streak. Hits have been rare, profits nonexistent and crucial employees are fleeing.

The story of the company, which developed the notion of social gaming and persuaded tens of millions of people to try it out on Facebook, illustrates how suddenly the fortunes of hot Internet companies can shift. Two years ago, as Zynga was first being pushed for a public offering, it was said to be worth $20 billion.

By the time the offering took place, a little over a year ago, it was for less than $10 billion. And Zynga has spent most of the time since then sliding downhill. The value of the company Tuesday, as it released mediocre but nevertheless better than expected fourth-quarter results, was about $2 billion.

In the next few months, Zynga faces a crucial test that will determine if even that sum is excessive: Can it successfully put its most popular Web games, starting with Farmville, on mobile devices?

“Do I wish that we would have gone all-in on mobile and made a bigger commitment to it earlier?” Mark Pincus, Zynga’s founder and chief executive officer said in an interview after the earnings release. “Yes.”

Mr. Pincus called 2013 “a year of investment and transition.”

“While we are excited about the long-term growth opportunity on mobile, and the opportunity to make games even more accessible to people in more parts of their day, we need to build a compelling network around it,” he said.

That is because social gaming on mobile is not necessarily social.

“It’s kind of ironic, isn’t it?” Mr. Pincus said. “You’re holding a phone, an inherently social device. Yet the experience we have is a more fragmented one.”

The pain accompanying Zynga’s transition to mobile was evident in the company’s fourth-quarter earnings report. Revenue was $311 million, flat with the year before. Daily users of the games were down 6 percent from the third quarter, a clear measure of flagging interest. More casual users dropped as well.

Earnings per share were a penny, better than the 3-cent loss that analysts had been expecting on an adjusted basis. And Zynga’s cash hoard of $1.65 billion was untouched.

For the full year, revenue was $1.28 billion, up 12 percent from 2011. Not exactly what you would expect from a growth company. Nor were its immediate prospects cheerful. Zynga warned that it would release few new games in the first quarter and that its revenue would drop from 2012.

Weak as the results were, however, they were not as bad as some feared. Zynga shares immediately rose in after-hours trading by 7 percent. In regular trading they were also up 7 percent to $2.73. That jump was fueled by an analyst upgrade from Merrill Lynch, which said the stock was so beaten down it now accurately reflected the company prospects.

Many online stock sites, by contrast, have been portraying the company as going the way of Pets.com or MySpace. “Zynga’s Earnings May Reveal Its Impending Demise” read the headline at one.

Michael Pachter, a managing director of Wedbush Securities, wrote in an e-mail that Zynga management was “definitely saying the right things, now all they have to do is execute.”

Aside from Mr. Pincus, it is a largely new team. Just last week, Zynga suffered another defection when its chief games designer, Brian Reynolds, quit, saying he wanted to experiment “more than might be appropriate for a publicly traded company.”

As recently as two years ago, Zynga had only 20 people working on mobile issues. Then the team ballooned into the hundreds. In the last few months, the team members have integrated into each game.

The central issue overshadowing even the mobile transition is whether Zynga first became successful merely because it was in the right place at the right time, a condition also known as dumb luck. Zynga’s rise was inseparable from Facebook, which gave the developer preferential treatment.

That era is over. In March, Zynga will lose its special status on Facebook.

There are other perils for Zynga, plenty of them. Analysts have been pointing to the rise of King.com’s games, including Candy Crush, which makes the latest version of Farmville look as complicated as advanced physics.

“Who thought crushing candy would have been popular?” said Brian Blau, a Gartner analyst.

King.com is touting itself as a new, improved Zynga, which underscores the volatile nature of the gaming business. “This is a hits driven industry, and Zynga could not sustain their hits,” Mr. Blau said. “Game players are fickle.”

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Report: FBI was watching bunker hostage-taker the whole time

Federal Bureau of Investigation negotiators were watching Jimmy Lee Dykes, 65, "the whole time" as they prepared to enter the bunker where Dykes was holding a 5-year-old boy hostage, CBS News reported in its Monday evening broadcast.

Officials rescued the boy, named Ethan, early Monday evening in a surprise raid that left Dykes dead, ending a nearly weeklong standoff that began after Dykes boarded a bus and killed a bus driver before taking the boy to his underground bunker.

Citing unnamed federal sources, CBS News reported that the FBI rescue team created two diversions to distract Dykes before they entered the bunker from the top.

Officials said at a news conference that negotiations had deteriorated over the past 24 hours and that they had seen Dykes with a gun inside the bunker.

“At this point, FBI agents, fearing the child was in imminent danger, entered the bunker and rescued the child," Stephen E. Richardson, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s office in Mobile, Ala., said at a nationally televised news conference.

Officials did not go into further detail at the news conference, promising more information soon.

CBS News reported that officials had lowered a camera into the Dykes' bunker and "had eyes on him the whole time."

Dykes attacked the school bus a day before he was to appear in local court to answer charges of menacing a neighbor. According to residents of Midland City, Dykes was a fierce presence, firing shots at people and beating to death a dog that trespassed on his property.

Authorities maintained contact with Dykes through a 4-inch PVC pipe through which medicine was sent into the underground shelter, built by Dykes. Ethan was said to have a form of autism.

Michael Muskal contributed to this report.

ALSO:

Alabama standoff ends with child released, captor dead

Texas judge faces 'court of inquiry' into wrongful conviction

Ed Koch remembered as 'Uncle Eddie' and a savior of New York

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Live action: Twitter grabs Super Bowl spotlight

NEW YORK (AP) — Beyonce’s splashy show, a freak power outage, and —oh, yeah— a captivating game of football combined to generate a record 24.1 million posts on Twitter during Sunday night’s Super Bowl.

That’s up from 13.7 million last year — and that doesn’t even include chatter surrounding the ads.

Twitter said in a late Sunday blog post that about half of the more than 50 national TV spots that aired during the game included a “hashtag,” a word or phrase preceded by a number sign that’s used to organize subjects on the short messaging site. During last year’s game, only one in five ads included one. Brands ranging from Oreo to Tide and Budweiser, meanwhile, captured online buzz by linking the blackout to their brands in humorous tweets.

Super Bowl XLVII, like the London Summer Olympics and the U.S. presidential election, was yet another moment in which Twitter became the platform for millions of people to share quick reactions and participate in a massive, public conversation. Though it’s not as popular as Facebook Inc. or its buttoned-up cousin LinkedIn Corp., Twitter’s surging popularity during big events is a testament to its reach and utility. The question is whether these moments can translate into revenue for the 7-year-old company.

The company makes money by charging advertisers to promote individual tweets, accounts or trends designed to spark a conversation. Research firm eMarketer estimates that Twitter will book advertising revenue of $ 545.2 million this year, up 89 percent from 2012. Next year, worldwide ad revenue is expected to hit $ 807.5 million, a 48 percent increase from 2013.

Tweetable events such as the 34-minute Super Bowl power outage are ripe with marketing potential, provided that brands act quickly.

“It’s really clear right now that Twitter has a lock on real-time conversation on the Internet,” says eMarketer analyst Debra Aho Williamson.

To capitalize on this, Twitter has to show advertisers that it pays to promote their tweets — even though fans are likely to spread the catchiest slogans on their own, free of charge.

That’s what happened with a certain cream-filled cookie on Sunday.

It took Oreo’s marketers roughly 10 minutes after the power went out to tweet a picture of an Oreo cookie in the half-dark with the words: “You can still dunk in the dark.” As of Monday afternoon, the image had been shared on Twitter more than 15,000 times. Tide followed suit with the slogan “we can’t get your blackout. But we can get your stains out” with more limited success. The message was re-tweeted about 1,300 times. Calvin Klein, meanwhile, tweeted a video of a shirtless, chiseled male model doing crunches “since the lights are still out…”

Such “real-time marketing” is still in its infancy, but Williamson expects this to change, as more companies develop the ability to respond to events immediately.”

“To do what Oreo did actually takes a lot of pre-planning,” she says.

Laurie Guzzinati, spokeswoman for Oreo owner Mondelez says the power outage was a natural moment to engage consumers. The cookie’s TV ad had a planned social media component asking people to follow Oreo on Twitter and post photos on Instagram. The company had set up a “social media command center” that included people from Oreo’s brand team, the ad agency 360i and other partners whose job was to follow the Super Bowl and interact with fans on Facebook, Twitter and elsewhere.

Mondelez likely spent the going rate of as much as $ 4 million on its Super Bowl television spot. But Guzzinati says the company didn’t pay Twitter anything for the “dunk in the dark” picture. Still, Twitter says advertisers moved quickly following the outage.

Matt McGee, editor-in-chief of the blog Marketing Land, counted 26 Twitter mentions in the 52 national spots that aired during the game. Facebook, meanwhile, got only four shout-outs, while Google Plus walked away with zero (though Google Inc.’s YouTube scored one mention from Hyundai).

“When it comes to second-screen advertising, it’s Twitter’s world now and there’s no close second place,” McGee wrote in a blog post late Sunday night. “Last year, brands split their focus on Twitter and Facebook with eight mentions each. This year, brands recognize that Twitter is where they need to try to attract the online conversation around one of the world’s biggest events.”

David Berkowitz, vice president of emerging media at 360i, which worked on the Oreo campaign, says Twitter has done a good job tying itself into major television events.

“If you look at (Twitter’s) trending topics any day especially during prime time or major events, they’re heavily fueled by television,” he says. “So TV is responsible for Twitter’s growth in general.”

He thinks Twitter has done a better job than other social media sites like Tumblr and Pinterest in proving it’s the place to be when it comes to talking about big events online.

“A large part of it right now is just showing this is where the conversation is happening and building their brand around that,” he says. “Even with other very successful social media sites, no one is better at conversation than Twitter.”

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AP Retail Writer Mae Anderson contributed to this story.

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For “Life of Pi,” the secret to its sound is in the silence

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Ang Lee‘s “Life of Pi” was a famously difficult movie to pull off, a philosophical and spiritual journey featuring a young protagonist (don’t work with kids) stranded on the open sea (don’t work on water) with his only companion, a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker (don’t work with animals).

Throw in a beloved bestselling book whose devoted fans would be comparing the adaptation to the novel, extensive special effects that included a menagerie of largely CG animals, and Lee’s decision to shoot in 3D for the first time, and only the truest of true believers would have dared suggest that the movie would end up an international hit with grosses approaching $ 450 million, and a critical favorite with 11 Oscar nominations, including Best Picture and both sound categories.

For Oscar nominated sound mixers Doug Hemphill, Ron Bartlett and Drew Kunin, “Life of Pi” was both a technical challenge and a spiritual journey – as Hemphill termed it, “one of the most beautiful mixing experiences I’ve ever had.” Hemphill and Bartlett spoke to TheWrap about sound, silence and the particular challenges of an impossible movie that turned out to be possible after all.

What was your basic approach to the sound mix on “Life of Pi?”

Doug Hemphill: It was all based on the tacit understanding that the sound reflected Pi’s inner life and the arc of the story. That was our roadmap, but since Ang is incredibly creative, we took chances here and there and went to different places. And the way I always work, I try to stay in the audience. It’s not a technical job to me. It’s a job of feeling emotions and participating in the film and the story, and responding with sound as if I was an audience member. Would I like to have quiet here? Would I like to have some sound that would help tell the story better? It’s just a million choices that are sometimes based on your instincts.

You talked about the quiet, and a lot of the movie takes place in a setting that seems very quiet: the open sea, particularly when it’s calm.

Hemphill: There are so many things going on in the film, and one of them is the Buddhist idea that you can’t have anything until you lose everything. Ang said to me, “Sometimes in film there’s a desire to fill in the quiet spaces with something, and I don’t want to do that.” He wanted to have that quiet, and let people think and absorb, as Pi was doing in the film. It takes confidence to be able to do that.

Ron Bartlett: There were moments in the film where we really went with a more sparse, isolated feel. Out in the middle of the ocean we purposely dialed some things back and didn’t fill the track up with sounds for story reasons. Pi’s abandoned, he’s alone, he’s totally isolated, and we didn’t want to wrap a lot of sound around him.

Hemphill: That’s a maxim that was used throughout “Life of Pi” in the track. It’s like a writer saying, “Let the readers finish the sentence and bring themselves into the story.” Certainly with sound and music, when you hold back a little it can be just right for the story, because it doesn’t crowd the audience.

I spoke to composer Mychael Danna, and he said at first he sometimes found himself trying to put too many ideas into the music. But he had to learn to dial it back, and simplify what he was doing.

Hemphill: The whole film is like that. It’s not a literal movie about including the sounds of everything you see. It’s about what is necessary to tell the story and leave breathing room. Mychael was definitely very conscious of that, and I think he wrote one of the most beautiful scores I’ve heard in a long time. I can’t tell you the effect that score had on us when we were working on it.

Bartlett: The music was really the heart and soul of the film, and it was a dream gig to mix that kind of score. The challenge was to make it the best I could, because I had so much respect for it.

Let’s talk about the sequence in the movie where Pi and Richard Parker find themselves on an island occupied by tens of thousands of meerkats, all of them chattering away.

Hemphill: We were just laughing about that last night. Ang said to Eugene Gearty, who did the sound design, “OK, you’ve got 100,000 meerkats in the movie, Eugene. What are you going to do?” And Eugene knew it had better be good. He was out recording meerkats until he probably became the world’s leading expert in meerkat vocalizations.

Bartlett: He used some great tricks with the sound design to make it feel like a crowd. And there are so many different emotions running through that sequence. Pi is elated, he wakes up with the sound of the water lapping, and now he’s got land and water and food and everything’s great. And then he find that something weird is going on. So many different emotions, all in one sequence.

Was it tricky to find just the right balance in a sequence like that?

Hemphill: Very. Volume changes, revealing things but leaving the audience enough room to dive into the story – all the little adjustments make such a big difference. I’ll give you another example: One of our biggest challenges was when Pi and Richard Parker are in the lifeboat and they’re dying, and the tiger’s head is in his lap, and Pi says, “Can you feel the rain?” We worked hard to get the flat, dead-sounding rain plops, and have that be very sparse and funereal. And with Richard Parker’s vocals, we made a very conscious choice not to have any growls, just labored breathing and wheezing.

As Ang said, Richard Parker has his head on Pi’s lap not because he’s his friend, but because he’s too weak to attack him.

Bartlett: Things were so exposed in the film that you had to have the exact right sound, the right level. Everything was magnified because of the sparseness at times. And then it would go the other direction, like the storm sequence or the shipwreck sequence, where you’re flooded with sounds. It goes from the sparsest raindrops to the hugest storm.

The two storms, though, play very differently onscreen.

Hemphill: Yeah. I’ve worked on a lot of movies with storm sequences, like “Master and Commander,” and the first storm sequence in “Pi” wasn’t a big action setpiece for me. It was about Pi being frightened and alone and separated from his family. So the storm had a real emotional content to me. It wasn’t about, “This is a Ferrari with the pedal to the metal.”

And for the second storm, we changed the paradigm. That storm was about Pi’s epiphany. Even though visually there was a huge storm, sonically it was the music that was telling the story and conveying the emotion. I was tasked with having a certain amount of what you saw in the soundtrack, because you see the storm. But what I chose to do was use filters to take frequencies out that would leave the music room and freedom to play, but still give the audience the sense of a storm under the music.

Bartlett: To rack focus, but respective of sound.

Hemphill: That’s what we do. To the layman I say, “You know how a cameraman racks focus to determine what you’ll be looking at? We do the same with sound.”

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Well: Expressing the Inexpressible

When Kyle Potvin learned she had breast cancer at the age of 41, she tracked the details of her illness and treatment in a journal. But when it came to grappling with issues of mortality, fear and hope, she found that her best outlet was poetry.

How I feared chemo, afraid
It would change me.
It did.
Something dissolved inside me.
Tears began a slow drip;
I cried at the news story
Of a lost boy found in the woods …
At the surprising beauty
Of a bright leaf falling
Like the last strand of hair from my head

Ms. Potvin, now 47 and living in Derry, N.H., recently published “Sound Travels on Water” (Finishing Line Press), a collection of poems about her experience with cancer. And she has organized the Prickly Pear Poetry Project, a series of workshops for cancer patients.

“The creative process can be really healing,” Ms. Potvin said in an interview. “Loss, mortality and even hopefulness were on my mind, and I found that through writing poetry I was able to express some of those concepts in a way that helped me process what I was thinking.”

In April, the National Association for Poetry Therapy, whose members include both medical doctors and therapists, is to hold a conference in Chicago with sessions on using poetry to manage pain and to help adolescents cope with bullying. And this spring, Tasora Books will publish “The Cancer Poetry Project 2,” an anthology of poems written by patients and their loved ones.

Dr. Rafael Campo, an associate professor of medicine at Harvard, says he uses poetry in his practice, offering therapy groups and including poems with the medical forms and educational materials he gives his patients.

“It’s always striking to me how they want to talk about the poems the next time we meet and not the other stuff I give them,” he said. “It’s such a visceral mode of expression. When our bodies betray us in such a profound way, it can be all the more powerful for patients to really use the rhythms of poetry to make sense of what is happening in their bodies.”

On return visits, Dr. Campo’s patients often begin by discussing a poem he gave them — for example, “At the Cancer Clinic,” by Ted Kooser, from his collection “Delights & Shadows” (Copper Canyon Press, 2004), about a nurse holding the door for a slow-moving patient.

How patient she is in the crisp white sails
of her clothes. The sick woman
peers from under her funny knit cap
to watch each foot swing scuffing forward
and take its turn under her weight.
There is no restlessness or impatience
or anger anywhere in sight. Grace
fills the clean mold of this moment
and all the shuffling magazines grow still.

In Ms. Potvin’s case, poems related to her illness were often spurred by mundane moments, like seeing a neighbor out for a nightly walk. Here is “Tumor”:

My neighbor walks
For miles each night.
A mantra drives her, I imagine
As my boys’ chant did
The summer of my own illness:
“Push, Mommy, push.”
Urging me to wind my sore feet
Winch-like on a rented bike
To inch us home.
I couldn’t stop;
Couldn’t leave us
Miles from the end.

Karin Miller, 48, of Minneapolis, turned to poetry 15 years ago when her husband developed testicular cancer at the same time she was pregnant with their first child.

Her husband has since recovered, and Ms. Miller has reviewed thousands of poems by cancer patients and their loved ones to create the “Cancer Poetry Project” anthologies. One poem is “Hymn to a Lost Breast,” by Bonnie Maurer.

Oh let it fly
let it fling
let it flip like a pancake in the air
let it sing: what is the song
of one breast flapping?

Another is “Barn Wish” by Kim Knedler Hewett.

I sit where you can’t see me
Listening to the rustle of papers and pills in the other room,
Wondering if you can hear them.
Let’s go back to the barn, I whisper.
Let’s turn on the TV and watch the Bengals lose.
Let’s eat Bill’s Doughnuts and drink Pepsi.
Anything but this.

Ms. Miller has asked many of her poets to explain why they find poetry healing. “They say it’s the thing that lets them get to the core of how they are feeling,” she said. “It’s the simplicity of poetry, the bare bones of it, that helps them deal with their fears.”

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Have you written a poem about cancer? Please share them with us in the comments section below.

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DealBook: Suit to Accuse S.&P. of Fraud in Mortgage Bond Ratings

The Justice Department, along with state prosecutors, plans to file civil charges against Standard & Poor’s Ratings Service, accusing the firm of fraudulently rating mortgage bonds that led to the financial crisis, people briefed on the plan said Monday.

A suit against S.&P. — expected to filed this week — would be the first the government has brought against the credit ratings agencies related to the financial crisis, despite continued questions about the agencies’ conflicts of interest and role in creating a housing bubble.

Several state prosecutors are expected to join the federal suit. The New York State attorney general is conducting a separate investigation, an official in that office said. The official declined to say whether New York State’s action involved other ratings agencies besides Standard & Poor’s.

Up until last last week, the Justice Department had been in settlement talks with S.&P., these people said. But the negotiations broke down after the Justice Department said it would seek a settlement in excess of “10 figures,” or at least $1 billion, these people said. Such an amount would wipe out the profits of S.&P.’s parent, the McGraw-Hill Company, for an entire year. McGraw-Hill earned $911 million last year.

During settlement negotiations, the Justice Department held out the threat of a criminal case against S.&P., the people said. Ultimately, the government plans to bring a civil suit, which has a lower burden of proof than a criminal case.

The case is expected to be brought in California, these people said. The state suffered disproportionately during the housing bubble, and the government is hoping the venue will yield more sympathetic jurors.

The case is focusing on about 30 collateralized debt obligations, an exotic type of mortgage security. According to S&P, the mortgage securities were created in 2007 at the height of the housing boom.

Prosecutors, according to the people, have uncovered troves emails by S&P, employees, which the government considers damaging. Portions of those emails are likely to be disclosed in the government’s complaint against S&P, these people said.

In a statement on Monday, S.&P. said it had received notice from the Justice Department over a pending lawsuit. The ratings agency argued any such legal action would be baseless, since it downgraded plenty of mortgage-backed investments, including in the two years leading up to the financial crisis. It also contended that other observers of the debt markets, including government officials, believed at the time that any problems within the housing sector could be contained.

“A D.O.J. lawsuit would be entirely without factual or legal merit,” the agency said in its statement. “With 20/20 hindsight, these strong actions proved insufficient – but they demonstrate that the D.O.J. would be wrong in contending that S.&P. ratings were motivated by commercial considerations and not issued in good faith.”

Shares of McGraw-Hill closed down nearly 14 percent on Monday, at $50.30.

Mary Williams Walsh contributed reporting.

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Medical clinic workers struggle with burnout

Every day after work, Sandeep Lehil changes out of her lab coat and blue scrubs and sits cross-legged on a large, black pillow in her airy, quiet Los Feliz apartment. She takes two deep breaths and tries not to think about the patients she so desperately wants to help.

She pushes out thoughts of the man with heart problems who left her exam room in an ambulance. And the patient who walked out when she told him his tests indicated he could have HIV. And the woman who Lehil fears is addicted to pain pills.

"Meditation is the only thing that keeps me sane," said Lehil, a nurse practitioner in South Los Angeles. "It's like clearing your head of the anxieties and troubles you've had that day."

Lehil, 28, and others like her at community clinics throughout the U.S. are key players in the push to lower the nation's healthcare spending. They conduct physicals, refill medications and manage chronic diseases for low-income patients, providing the care necessary to keep them from requiring more costly medical treatment.

The jobs are demanding — providers spend long hours treating patients who have multiple chronic illnesses and often have gone years without care. Administrators have trouble finding enough doctors, nurse practitioners and physician assistants to staff their clinics.

That is expected to cause a major roadblock next year, when the bulk of the national healthcare reform law takes effect, aiming to help 30 million uninsured Americans gain coverage. In preparation, clinics — expected to get an influx of new patients — are stepping up recruitment and trying to hold on to the care providers they have. But burnout is common, and staff members often leave for less-stressful, higher-paying positions elsewhere.

"The workforce shortage is certainly one of the top challenges we are facing currently, and the expansion hasn't even occurred yet," said Carmela Castellano-Garcia, president of the California Primary Care Assn., which represents community clinics.

Lehil graduated in May from Johns Hopkins University with a master's degree in nursing and an idealistic goal: to make a difference in a medically underserved community. In July she started as a nurse practitioner at T.H.E. Clinic, a community health center in South Los Angeles.

Lehil said the work is fulfilling but draining, and busier than she ever could have anticipated. By the end of the week, she said, "it's almost like running on empty."

T.H.E. Clinic has eight full-time providers but needs 11. There are ongoing advertisements, and the clinic is "constantly fighting" for family practice providers, often competing with nearby centers, said human resources director Lilia Marin-Alvarez. To find new clinicians, T.H.E. Clinic and others rely heavily on the National Health Service Corps, which offers scholarships and loan repayment for those willing to work in underserved areas.

While still in school, Lehil saw an ad for T.H.E. Clinic. The name — To Help Everyone — immediately appealed to her. Lehil interviewed and, soon after, accepted a job offer. Now, Marin-Alvarez said she just has to make sure Lehil stays.

Lehil speaks quickly and walks with purpose. She wears Crocs, red-rimmed glasses and a loose ponytail, and she has several tattoos, including the infinity sign on her wrist and a flock of birds on her back. A stethoscope rests on her neck and two silver bangles on her wrist.

Raised in a tight-knit, professional Indian family in San Jose, Lehil attended UC Berkeley as an undergraduate and majored in public health. Her parents wanted her to be a doctor, but she decided to become a nurse practitioner, in part because medical school would have taken too long.

When Lehil started working at T.H.E. Clinic, she wondered how she could possibly see two dozen or more patients in a day. "It's not like they have one thing wrong with them," she said.

She took the time she needed, but it resulted in longer waits. When her patients became frustrated, Lehil just apologized and smiled.

During the first few weeks, she left each Friday with a dull headache, which she tried to shake off before Monday morning. To better manage the stress, Lehil started meditating an hour a day, at home and at the Zen Center of Los Angeles. She also moved to Los Feliz so she could take walks in Griffith Park in her free time.

On a Tuesday in the fall, Lehil arrives at work before 8 a.m. so she can get a head start on reviewing lab results and medications for the patients she expects to see that day. Hand sanitizer, a bottle of water and a clipboard filled with papers sit on her desk. She picks up a thermos and takes a sip. She wants to switch to green tea, but not today. She has 15 patients scheduled for this morning and 12 others this afternoon. "Today's a black tea day," she said.

For 10 hours, she moves quickly from one patient to the next, starting every visit the same way: "Hi, I'm Sandeep. I'm here to help you."

To save time each day, Lehil starts triaging, addressing her patients' most urgent health issues and saving the others for future visits. This morning, Mitchell Chambers, an expressive and friendly man, has come to see her. He has high blood pressure, is at risk for diabetes and has undergone open heart and gastric bypass surgeries. She notes all of it in his chart but focuses on one thing: his high cholesterol, which hasn't been treated.

She hands him a flier about nutrition and urges him to stop smoking and start exercising. She also writes him a prescription. Chambers, 50, makes a thumbs-up sign and promises to try to follow her instructions. "I'm in your hands," he says.

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BlackBerry Z10 Smartphone Already Going for $1,500 on eBay

The new BlackBerry Z10 smartphone won’t be out for weeks, but you can already get your hands on it via eBay for about $ 1,500.

BlackBerry — the company formerly known as Research In Motion (RIM) — announced the new smartphone at an event earlier this week and handed out samples to guests and members of the press in attendance. It didn’t take long for the Z10, which could potentially turn around the struggling company, to pop up on eBay.

[More from Mashable: BlackBerry’s Secret Weapon: Women]

One page notes “this particular device was given to all attendees of the Jan. 30, 2013 product launch.”

[More from Mashable: Don’t Hold Your Breath for More BlackBerry Tablets]

BlackBerry didn’t tell attendees what they can or can’t do with the device, which comes unlocked, according to the listing, and without a SIM card.

Four units are currently being sold on eBay, with bids starting at $ 800 and rising quickly. The auction for the one going for $ 1,500, which has eight bids so far, will end this afternoon.

Images by Mashable and via eBay, eBay

Click here to view the gallery: BlackBerry Z10 Review

This story originally published on Mashable here.

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