[x044] – Public Appearances > 2011 > MS Clinic Time Capsule

Another video can be view, HERE!

Harry Potter author JK Rowling has buried a time capsule to mark the start of building work on a research clinic for patients with neurodegenerative diseases.

The clinic, at the University of Edinburgh, is to be set up following a £10 million donation from Ms Rowling and will be named after her mother, Anne, who died of multiple sclerosis (MS) when she was 45.

The buried capsule contains written accounts from patients living with multiple sclerosis and other neurodegenerative diseases, as well as contributions from clinicians, commenting on current treatments and their hopes for the future.

The Anne Rowling Regenerative Neurology Clinic will focus on clinical research targeting the discovery of treatments to slow progression of these types of diseases, with the hope of repairing damage.

Work at the clinic will also seek to provide insight into conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, Huntington’s disease and motor neurone disease.

Ms Rowling said: “I am both delighted and moved to be marking the start of the official building work for the Anne Rowling Regenerative Neurology Clinic. This time capsule captures how it is for people living with MS and other neurodegenerative diseases right now, and the current state of research.

“I believe that this clinic will have a huge positive effect on both of those areas in the future. I am enormously impressed in what has gone into setting up the clinic so far, and I look forward to seeing it completed and making further great strides in research and treatment.”

The clinic, which will become operational in 2012, will be housed in a purpose-built university facility next to the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh and within the flagship life sciences project, the Edinburgh BioQuarter.

Siddharthan Chandran, professor of neurology at the University of Edinburgh, who will lead the clinic, said: “Neurodegenerative diseases are one of the major challenges to modern medicine. Within this group of devastating disorders, MS disproportionately affects the Scottish population.

“All patients with these tough diseases need treatments that will slow, stop and ideally reverse damage. This clinic will pioneer a range of studies that over time will improve patients’ lives through innovative clinical research.”

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As you may remember, Jo has penned the foreword for a book called ‘Dear Me: A Letter to My Sixteen-Year-Old Self’ by Joseph Galliano. USA Today have made the foreword available and it can be read here:

This is an extraordinary little book, based on a simple but wonderful idea: What would you say to yourself if you came face-to-face with the sixteen-year-old you? One of the many things that delighted and touched me as I read the letters that follow is the commonality of our human experience. Nearly everyone who wrote, whether their letter is jolly or poignant, seems to have looked back on their younger selves with compassion, remembering how vulnerable and dangerous an age sixteen is, for all the fun and freedom it is supposed to entail.

The overwhelming message of this body of letters seems to be: Be yourself. Be easier on yourself. Become yourself, as fully as possible.

Attempting to isolate those life lessons I could pass back to the girl I used to be was a truly illuminating exercise. It made me look at my seventeen-year-old daughter and remember, in a more powerful way than ever before, just how raw and vivid life is for her, in a way that it has been only intermittently for me as an adult. I would not go back to sixteen for anything you could give me, and yet I still recognize that she has something I have lost along the way—something I had to lose, to stay sane.

You might have picked up this book out of interest in some of the fascinating people who have contributed. I don’t think you will be disappointed. The great thing about these letters is that they are extraordinarily revealing, whether short, long, full of practical advice or metaphysical musings.

Whatever your motives in buying this book, thank you. One dollar a copy will benefit Doctors Without Borders.

Finally, let me urge you to use the blank pages at the end of the book to write your own letter to yourself, aged sixteen. I think you’ll find it just as thought-provoking and worthwhile as we all did.

Jo has also contributed a letter to the book, which will be released on October 25th. We’re really looking forward to reading Jo’s letter!

As we said on our Twitter, Jo Rowling has received an award for her charity work for Edinburgh University.

Last year Ms Rowling donated £10m to fund the Anne Rowling Regenerative Neurology Clinic at the university, which will focus on developing treatments for multiple sclerosis and other degenerative neurological conditions.

Princess Anne succeeds the Duke of Edinburgh, who stepped down as chancellor in 2010. Prince Philip had held the role since 1953.

Party Against Privilege protesters campaigned outside the ceremony at the Old College on South Bridge.

During the ceremony, the princess, who is the university’s eighth chancellor, presented an award to Harry Potter author JK Rowling.

The author received a University Benefactor’s award, which is given to individuals or organisations that have made significant contributions to the life of the university.

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We’re currently working hard to bring you pictures and video of Jo receiving her award. The event was streamed live on the web but it was not announced until the event was starting that Jo would be present. Despite this, IHOR’s eyewitness has reported a “huge mob” of people outside the area where the ceremony took place (however, some of this mob may have been part of the protest aimed at the Princess Royal).

The first picture of Jo at the ceremony can be found below and here, courtesy of Twitter user @GeorginaGossip. Jo is standing up in her ceremonial robes.

For those of you looking for a bit of magic, how about the boots Jo wear while she wrote “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone”. These magical boots come with a hand-written letter from Jo and a typed letter from one of Jo’s personal assistances, Fiddy Henderson!

Finally, something for the J. K. Rowling fan who has everything, including some extra space in his or her shoe closet. Arriving on the heels, so to speak, of Tuesday’s announcement that a one-sentence letter from J. D. Salinger to his maid was being offered for $50,000, a company in Omaha is putting up for auction a pair of boots that Ms. Rowling wore while she wrote the first book in her best-selling “Harry Potter” series. The boots, which are being sold by Blue Earth Benefit Auctions in an online auction that starts Friday, October 21 at 8:00 A.M. Central on proxibid.com, were given to a fifth-grade class at Harrison Elementary School in Omaha in 1999. At that time, the class was conducting a project called“Operation Shoe Tree,” in which celebrities or other people the pupils admired were asked to write about their lives from the perspective of their footwear.

Ms. Rowling sent along the boots as well as a questionnaire (in her handwriting) in which they described themselves as “extremely hard-working,” having “carried my owner all over Edinburgh in search of good cafes to write in.” The boots went on to say, “I happen to know that her black sandals have met Kirk Douglas’s shoes, Donny Osmond’s shoes and Rosie O’Donnell’s shoes. Naturally, I don’t talk to them anymore.” (The boots also recalled an incident from Ms. Rowling’s teaching career when they were made fun of by a student who called them “kinky.”)

An auction Web site did not list an opening bid for the lot, which includes Ms. Rowling’s questionnaire and a letter from her assistant (sent “by owl post”). The auction company said that proceeds from a 10 percent buyer’s premium would be donated to the Nebraska affiliate of Susan G. Komen For The Cure and Omaha Schools Foundation.

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J.K. Rowling has written the foreword to a book untitled : Dear Me: A Letter to My Sixteen-Year-Old Self. 

About 70 celebrities have written a letter to their 16 years-old selfs. We know that for example that letters of Kathleen Turner, Suze Ormond, James Franco and Aasif Mandvi will be in this book.

Jo was touched by the letters as she says :

“commonality … Nearly everyone who wrote, whether their letter is jolly or poignant, seems to have looked back on their younger selves with compassion”

A part of the book’s proceeds will be donated to “Doctors Without Borders” and it will be published on October 25th.

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Last Saturday, the Harry Potter fans from all over the United States came together in Maine and on the internet try to persuade the voters in Maine to vote against the Propostition 1.

While we waited to call there was a wizard rock concert going on as well. Featuring  Draco and the Malfoys and Harry and the Potters.

The Wrock 4 Equality was an amazing thing to be apart of by me having called Maine a bunch of times. Being apart of the whole experience gave a great adrenaline rush and it was completely amazing.

To find out more about the Harry Potter Alliance go to www.theharrypotteralliance.org

For other articles on the Wrock 4 Equality you can vist

The Leaky Cauldron

or

The Wall Street Journal

HAPPY HALLOWEEN EVERYONE

Emilie~

J.K. Rowling has contributed to a celebrity hand display which will help raise funds for Tilly Lockey, a young girl who needs prosthetic limbs that will need replacing every year until she is 18.  The pictures and casts will go on display at Newcastle’sLife centre for one day and then will be put up for auction at an event on September 5th. The exhibit is free of charge.

Sarah Lockey said: “We have all of these wonderful quirky and unique drawings and hand casts created by celebrities to help us raise funds for Tilly. These will be auctioned at a dinner in September but we wanted to share them with as many people as possible before they become part of someone’s private collection.”

Thanks SS!