As you’ve surely noticed, I’ve been sporting an increasingly unruly mane over the past twelve months. As of May 1, I haven’t had a haircut in one full calendar year.

That all ends on Monday, May 13, when I will be shaving it off as part of a “Brave the Shave” event in Manchester, Vermont, benefiting the St. Baldrick’s Foundation for pediatric cancer research. I hope I can count on your sponsorship!

According to the American Cancer Society, over 10,000 children under the age of 15 are diagnosed with cancer each year, and troublingly, that number has been on the rise in recent decades.

We only have the medical know-how to cure 80% of those kids, though: about 2,000 won’t pull through…like the “St. Baldrick’s Kid” I’m honoring on my page, Cameron Fahey, a Chicago teenager who shared my passions for punk rock, politics, and pro-social action, but ultimately lost his battle with lymphoma in 2014.

I can’t fathom what it’s like for a parent to hear that their child has cancer, let alone to lose them to it; even the thought of one of my nephews getting diagnosed makes my blood run cold.

It makes me want to do something to help prevent another family having to go through that horror. And growing hair is one thing that I do pretty damn well.

You might not know — I didn’t myself until recently — that most childhood cancers develop differently than adult cancers, requiring an entirely separate field of scientific research.

Currently, childhood cancer research only receives 4% of federal cancer research funding. That's not a typo: just four percent goes to pediatric research!

The St. Baldrick's Foundation funds cooperative research through the Children’s Oncology Group, to the tune of $19 million in 2018. That's impressive, but still not even two-thirds of the $30.1 million in promising research that they would have liked to underwrite.

With your generous help, hopefully we can get them closer to being able to fund every penny in 2019!

I set the lofty goal of raising $2000 for this event. Then I exceeded that goal and went higher...and higher...and higher. And now, on past five grand, I am completely in awe of the generosity my loved ones have shown.

Now I'm really reaching for the stars and hoping to break $6000. Can you help me get there?

My average donation has been around $50, so just twelve more people chipping in that amount would allow my sponsor total to crest $6K.

But even a bunch of small dollar donations help fund the fight, so I hope you’ll hit up my donation page and spend whatever you can. Remember, you’re not doing it for me, you’re doing it for the kids.

Thank you so much for reading this, and hopefully for taking action to help fund this important, life-saving research. It genuinely means a lot to me!

Hirsutely yours,

Bruce McD.