The group will take a deep look at the Cuban health care system and Cuba itself, traveling in Havana and the province of Pinar del Rio. For more information, please read the trip notice or visit the Center for Cuban Studies website. For now, under State Department restrictions, the trip is limited to persons actually engaged in some form of health care provision. The Center expects to receive a People to People health care license soon, which will then extend the possibility for non-health care practitioners to come on our health care trip; when this occurs, Phil will make an announcement.

As the trip is only two months away, please contact Phil or the Center as soon as possible if you’re interested.

Fluent in Spanish, Phil first went to Cuba in 1968 for a month’s time under the auspices of the Ministry of Public Health and subsequently organized the first large health practitioners’ trip to Cuba later that year. His most recent trip was in January of 2010. There will be modifications to the trip plan to include more of an experience of current Cuban psychiatry/psychotherapy. According to Phil, “my aim is to have a lot of fun, steep ourselves in Cuba and its present political, cultural and economic evolution, and to get a feel for a national health care system at work, and specifically for the Cuban health care system.”

On August 2, The Marin Independent-Journal published “The Toughest Story a Parent Could Tell,” an interview with Phil conducted by Paul Liberatore. Read it online at the I-J Web site, or click the graphics below to download a scanned clipping:

Part 1 (7.6 MB)

Part 2 (6.4 MB)

We were fortunate enough to capture her deeply touching introduction; if you know someone who might be interested in watching, please share a link to the video.

Look at that torso. A glimpse of that too identifiable chin. Goodness, he is a hulk, for a small guy really buffed, a slim Jewish Schwarzenegger and he can’t show it to anyone lest he get caught and his career snaffued. After all, Obama half naked revealed abs and pecs and that was a steal not a reveal. And Strauss-Kahn, we have only heard not seen. And at 62, younger than me, but well, still old, what was he thinking (or not). And Clinton and Edwards, no revelations there, that is in the buff. And Spitzer, very homely and bald, paid for it – sex that is–not much personal allure for the mass virtual physical groping.

The strenuously cultivated and constantly calculated careers damaged and lost for what benefit and from what psychological causes or aberrations. Is it truly possible to believe you can get away with any such subterfuge in the age of global information sharing? You gotta be kidding yourself to expose, or pay, bribe, think an affair is secret and will be kept secret. No doubt the prior California Guv basted his problem children and mothers with dough in exchange for a long silence that allowed him to run for office and stay in. He was known for groping before the first election. And Strauss-Kahn had also been implicated and warned before his current imbroglio. Seems to be in character with these two–and unrestrained. The ex-New York Guv appears to have confined his spending to hookers – many 10s of thousands of dollars spent on fornication. And Edwards apparently jism-ed public money in a stupid attempt to get away with his infidelity, forever reminding us of the ugliness of a betrayal of a wife near death.

So many white male politician lawyers – Wiener and Arnold are not – the rest are. Is that a key to the dunce club door?

(Read the entire piece on Tikkun.org)

From the time I started to read this book, I wanted to write about it. I made notes all over the margins with what I hoped would be useful things to say. Now that I am writing, I feel that I will never be able to do justice to this remarkable book. I will try, in the hope that many other people will discover it and experience its gritty, deeply felt, and hard-won wisdom.

Phil Wolfson’s Noe describes the experience of a family facing the serious illness and eventual death of Noah, their sixteen-year-old son. The book is woven from a rich tapestry of voices, from the author’s journals, Noah’s chemotherapy diaries, and the convincingly channeled voice of the boy who has died: “Pay attention, you bozo … I am going to tell you how to proceed. Don’t think I haven’t been watching you mope about these last weeks since you were so careless with our journal. After all this is also my loss. It’s my story you’re supposed to be telling, not just yours…”

Read Kim Chernin’s review of Noe in its entirety at Tikkun.

Kim’s most recent books include: Everywhere a Guest, Nowhere at Home: A New Vision of Israel and Palestine; In My Mother’s House: A Memoir, The Hungry Self: Women, Eating and Identity; and My Life as a Boy: A Woman’s Story.

Our grateful appreciation to Michael Lerner, Kim, and staff person Alana Price. Please consider supporting Tikkun and the Network of Spiritual Progressives.

Franz Wisner, author of Honeymoon with My Brother and How the World Makes Love:

“There is no doubt Phil Wolfson’s poignant and thoughtful Noe will break your heart. There is also no question Noe will strengthen your heart, as well as deepen your sensitivity and widen your range of emotions. A seasoned psychiatrist, Wolfson shares, through unbroken honesty and thoughtful prose, the toughest story a parent could tell. Yet out of the depths of his family’s tragedy, Wolfson enriches our emotional knowledge, better equipping us for the blows, large and small, sure to befall us all.”

Jerry Jampolsky, MD, founder of The Center for Attitudinal Healing and author of Love Is Letting Go of Fear:

“A sensitive chronicle of the vagaries of love and the struggle to stay clear and present despite great stress and difficulty. Noe can serve as a guide to those who are living through overwhelming personal crises, facing their own or a beloved’s death. It charts the possibilities for coming apart, staying together, and the choices that will have to be made during and after a great illness. A terrific book for fathers building a new culture of connection with their children.”

Lew Carlino, director and screenwriter of Resurrection and The Great Santini:

“Phil Wolfson has beautifully written a loving threnody to his son, Noah, who died young, much too young, of cancer. The work takes us deep into the sorrow and courage that lies in the most tender and vulnerable recesses of the human heart, until, finally, we are there, with Noah, walking alongside him on his via dolorosa. And we come to understand that we are walking with Wolfson and his family as well and, ultimately, with each other, sharing the grief that life brings us, and that the music of this book, this healing paean, is helping us along our way.”

Ralph Metzner, PhD, author of The Well of Remembrance and The Unfolding Self:

“My friend Phil Wolfson and I belong to that sorrowful fellowship of parents whose children have died. In this book of great courage, he shares the harrowing journey of his family as they endure the four-year ordeal of their teenage son succumbing to leukemia. Blending Noah’s rueful journal notes as he anticipates his life’s ending with Phil’s tender descriptions of an exuberant youthful life amidst the terrible despair of the helpless parents—this story is a heart-opening testament to the power of the spirit of love.”

Sasha and Ann Shulgin, authors of Pihkal and Tihkal:

“We lived this story with the Wolfson family and knew intimately of their pain, struggle, and loss, and their simultaneous commitment to love and sanity. They were courageous in their use of alternative methods to explore and heal mind and heart, and that story is told in Noe as an offering to others to take risks to find new truths. Noah’s death is still a terrible loss to all of us—he was an exceptional young man. Noe reveals him to you in hopes of helping you on your own life’s bittersweet path.”

Judy Norsigian, co-author of Our Bodies, Ourselves:

“This extraordinary memoir and moving story about losing a child to leukemia offers many provocative insights about how we raise our children, deal with death, and create the communities that support us in times of crisis.”

]]> http://noe-thebook.com/2011/05/blurbs-for-noe/feed/ 0 http://noe-thebook.com/2011/04/a-short-film-by-eric-wolfson/ http://noe-thebook.com/2011/04/a-short-film-by-eric-wolfson/#comments Wed, 13 Apr 2011 05:29:31 +0000 yourprotagonist2 http://noe-thebook.com/?p=52 Continue reading →]]> Eric Wolfson has created a short film that captures the essence of his father’s memoir.

In this deeply personal video, Phil, Eric and Alice, Noah’s mother, speak openly about his life, his illness and their hopes for how this book might touch others.

Please watch. If it moves you, we hope you’ll consider sharing it.

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