Together

I’ve long been convinced that some of the most effective melavangelism work is being done at the grassroots level by us plain old ordinary melahomies. Through social media and in-person encounters we share melanoma facts and the stories of our individual journeys on the melanoma road. Our posts, shares, tweets and blogs reach (and sometimes annoy) people we know in real life whom would likely never be reached by the awareness-building efforts of the melanoma nonprofit organizations but for the fact we so frequently share the great content put out by those organizations. And sometimes, and perhaps much more often than we know, our grassroots efforts succeed in changing the behaviors of a few members of our little circles of family, friends, neighbors and co-workers and convincing these folks that melanoma isn’t ‘just skin cancer’. By working together as the community of credible people who really ‘get it’ because we ‘got it’, perhaps we’ll someday succeed in demolishing The Hotel Melanoma. And what a very, very fine day that will be.

With thanks to my melapal Donna for reminding me of a great song, I’ll leave you with The Hotel Melanoma rendition of “You & Me” from the Dave Matthews Band…



Gonna back black flags, nothing small
Wake with our deeds and we’re without fear
In cyberspace we'll be on, on
Our tunes aren’t subpar, can swallow the scars
And then when we get all in motion
We gonna take a road to the end of C’s world
All the way to the end of C’s world

Oh, and when the kids are old enough
We're gonna teach them don’t fry

You and me together, we could do anything, baby
You and me together yes, yes
You and me together yes, yes

You and I, we're not tied to the browned
Not stalling but rising, yikes mole thing’s around
Eyes closed about the tan shop
Eyes closed, we're gonna win youth from chars
Our arms wide as the sky
We gonna ride pale hue all the way to the end of C’s world
To the end of C’s world

Oh, and when the kids are old enough
We're gonna teach them don’t fry

You and me together, we could do anything, baby
You and me together yes, yes

We can always look back at what we did
All these memories of UV C baby
But right now it's you and me, forever cure
And you know we could do better than anything that we did
You know that you and me, we could do anything

You and me together, we could do anything, baby
You and me together yeah, yeah
Slew of us together, we could do anything, baby
You and me together yeah, yeah
All of us together yeah, yeah
All of us together, we could do anything, baby