So, I’ve been watching YouTube for a long time. The first three channels 9-year-old David subscribed to back in 2010 were TomSka (the guy who made asdfmovie), Eddsworld (a guy who was also in asdfmovie), and vlogbrothers.
That last one is the one I want to talk about for a sec. You might know that channel better by its owners – Hank and John Green, famous for founding Crash Course and writing The Fault in Our Stars, respectively.
The gist of the channel is that a couple times a week, each brother makes a video addressing the other one, giving life updates and talking about their interests. A few weeks ago, a pretty important video popped up in my feed – Hank announced that he had cancer. Now, I don’t wanna get too bummer-y on you here, so I won’t. Hank’s not the kind of guy to be a bummer anyway. I’ll get to my point.
This Star Won’t Go Out
Thirteen years ago in 2010 (wow), one of their biggest fans, 16-year-old Esther Earl, passed away from a similar cancer to the one Hank is dealing with today. In her memory, her parents established This Star Won’t Go Out, a nonprofit dedicated to assisting families of children with cancer. In the last thirteen years, they’ve managed to raise over $500,000, an incredible feat. Today, I’m adding on to that pile, and I hope you can too.
Today is Esther Day – a holiday in her memory all about – as John Green puts it – “the different kind of love that we don’t celebrate on Valentine’s Day.” Tell your parents, siblings, cousins, friends, coworkers, etc – anyone who it’s appropriate to say this to – that you love them. I think we could all use a little more love going around, yeah?
Check out John’s video from today about Esther Day:
My Esther Day
There’s lots of people I love that I don’t say it often enough to: Mae, Nathan, Victoria, Connor, Paige, Bryce, Slater, Burke, Ryan, Evan, Sebastian, Dan, Preston, Matt, Keegan, Ashleigh, Abbey, Preston, Joe, Anderson, Alex, Matthew, James, Marco, Cameron, Blake, Jason, Hilary, Brenda, Steve, etc etc. You get my point.
Back to the YouTube thing for a second – one of those channels I mentioned earlier, Eddsworld, is another reason this charity hits especially close to home for me. The channel’s owner, Edd, passed away from cancer in 2012. That was a tough one for preteen David. I’ve still got his comic book sitting on my shelf. Maybe you’ve seen it in some of our video calls, if you’re a client of mine. If you see it in a future call, point it out and I’ll make another donation.
Happy Esther Day!