Tag: The Republican

walk ms 2024: worcester & longmeadow

Some 700 walkers converged upon Worcester Technical High School on a warm Saturday morning in late April to raise awareness and money for multiple sclerosis research.

At Walk MS: Worcester, I had the privilege of hosting the event — using a finicky, hand-held mic which didn’t like the wind — where I was honored to spotlight a local woman’s story about her diagnosis of MS in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Tanisha Stevens, her husband, her two young daughters, her sister, and her best friend took to the stage as we celebrated her strength, her perseverance, and her loving circles of support. Circles were the big theme this year, hence pictures of people holding circles on plastic sticks: Orange for those with MS, green for those who love someone with MS, and yellow for those who work to support the cause.

Participants — some of whom dressed in very colorful, creative attire including orange tutus — said they felt a sense of camaraderie and really liked the message that no one is in this alone.

A week later, under mildly threatening skies, I hosted the Walk MS: Longmeadow event at Longmeadow High School in western Massachusetts. As someone who grew up in The 4-1-3 (the area code), I was so pleased to run into people who not only knew colleagues of mine, but also folks who knew my mom, Judy O’Brien, when she was the manager of two stores in Northampton, Mass. and appeared in regular “Wine Mother” segments on a local radio station.

I even met the effervescent, take-no-BS Judy Potter (second down on the right in the collage above) who pulled from her purse the op/ed I wrote which she’d ripped out of the paper that morning. After reading the piece — where I compared Taylor Swift’s “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart” to pretending all is well when you have MS — she said she, someone who’s had MS for decades, had to meet me. Turns out, Judy’s friends with the first editor I worked with at The Republican, Cynthia Simison, who later went on to run the whole operation, becoming the paper’s first woman to hold the post.

While the Longmeadow crowd was smaller than Worcester’s, it felt supportive and enthusiastic nonetheless, something I experienced acutely when an adorable, beefy bulldog practically knocked me over with excitement as I pet him just a few feet beyond the finish line.

springfield (ma) paper features ‘uncomfortably numb’

Screenshot 2020-05-25 19.09.33The Republican — the daily newspaper for which I used to work way back in the day, back when it was called The Union-News –ran a feature story about my medical memoir, Uncomfortably Numb, and my experiences with MS.

Here’s how it begins:

In her new book, “Uncomfortably Numb: A memoir about the life-altering diagnosis of multiple sclerosis,” West Springfield native Meredith O’Brien describes how she went overboard one Christmas season after a semester teaching ended and she proceeded to tackle “a ton of activities, too many, actually.”

Fatigue hit her hard while she was watching her son at a Christmas musical event at the high school in Southborough where she now lives. “Quite quickly, my thinking became foggy and my legs were on the verge of giving out,” O’Brien recalls. “I had to ask my husband to drive me home immediately. I spent the next several days in bed, unable to do what I wanted because my body needed the rest.”

Read the rest of the piece here.

Thank you to editor Cynthia Simison –who was my bureau chief in the Westfield, MA bureau — and to writer Cori Urban for the piece.

The article includes a plug for my June 1, 1-2 p.m. webinar with Bay Path University’s MFA in creative nonfiction to discuss “The Art of the Medical Memoir.” Sign up for the free webinar here.

Image credit: The Republican.

 

june 1: free webinar on ‘narrative medicine and the art of the medical memoir’

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I’ll be joining award-winning author, Bay Path University writer-in-residence and faculty member, the wonderful Suzanne Strempek Shea on June 1 for a free webinar where we’ll discuss “Narrative Medicine and the Art of the Medical Memoir.”

Hosted by Bay Path University’s MFA in creative nonfiction program, the one-hour webinar, from 1-2 p.m., is open to the public. Register here.

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Strempek Shea is the author of many books including Songs from a Lead-Lined Room: Notes — High and Low — From My Journey Through Breast Cancer and Radiation, a memoir writer Anita Shreve called, “one of those books that changes your life forever.”

Writer Michael Carlton said in Yankee Magazine, Songs from a Lead-Lined Room “is one of the most moving and important books ever written about the extraordinary pressures the disease places not only on the victim, but on family and friends as well.”

Strempek Shea and I worked together at the Springfield, MA daily newspaper, The Republican, and she has written blurbs for a number of my books. It was our connection that resulted in my attending and graduating from the Bay Path University MFA in creative nonfiction program, which she was instrumental in creating.

Please join us for a warm conversation between friends about the craft of writing about the innately personal topics of illness and medicine.

Image credits: Bay Path University MFA in creative nonfiction program, Amazon.

springfield newspaper covers ‘mr. clark’s big band’

the-republican-springfield-ma_largeThe newspaper for which I used to be a reporter, The Republican (in Springfield, MA), was kind enough to run a large piece about Mr. Clark’s Big Band.

Here are the first two paragraphs:

When Meredith O’Brien’s son, Jonah, was a seventh-grade drummer in the Trottier Middle School jazz band in Southborough, 12-year-old trumpet player Eric Green died in his sleep from an undiagnosed heart ailment. The members of the jazz band were shaken to their core.

From the throes of his own grief, the Trottier Big Band’s director, Jamison Clark, became the children’s guide, their catalyst for healing. With a face resembling Santa’s, coupled with eyebrow-raising antics ranging from bathroom jokes to poking fun at his own girth, Clark coaxed the children to pour their grief into their music through a challenging year of mourning.

springfield ‘republican’ reports on book deal

photoThe Springfield (MA) newspaper, The Republican and its web presence, MassLive, wrote about me signing with Wyatt-MacKenzie to publish Mr. Clark’s Big Band in June 2017:

West Springfield native (and former staff member at The Republican) Meredith O’Brien will be out with her next book, Mr. Clark’s Big Band: A Year of Laughter, Tears & Jazz in a Middle School Band Room, next year.

Wyatt-MacKenzie Publishing has picked up the title for release in June. This is O’Brien’s third book, following her novel, Mortified, and her humor and parenting columns, Suburban Mom: Notes from the Asylum.