Drowning in work here, folks, which is a pity because there’s lots of news to talk about. Back soon. Meanwhile: I try not to do this very often, because most of what we have to talk about is so much more interesting than me — but my week at UGA, which is capped by an appearance at the Decatur Book Festival, has generated some ink. So here’s some amusements for your morning coffee:

• A very kind Q&A with me, done by excellent pal Barth Anderson, operator of the feisty food-policy site Fair Food Fight
• Another Q&A by my former colleague Phil Kloer, for the great arts blog Arts Critic ATL
• And a video about one of my speeches at UGa, done by student TV station WNEG-TV. (The last line of the report? I didn’t say that. But otherwise, well done.)

Constant readers, I’m teaching this week at the University of Georgia’s Grady College of Journalism and New Media Institute, so blogging will be light. If you’re in the Athens or Atlanta area, please come say hello, I’ll also be speaking publicly:

• Tuesday: 4 p.m., Room 175 of the University of Georgia’s Coverdell Center for Biomedical and Health Sciences, Athens.
• Wednesday: 6 p.m., the Vaccine Dinner Club of Emory University (Whitehead Health Science Center Administration Building), Atlanta.
• Thursday: 4:15 p.m., Athens-Clarke County Library, Baxter Street, Athens.

Here’s a press release that UGa kindly put out about the events.

Meanwhile, some reading: When we’re talking about MRSA control, we often talk, somewhat lightly, about isolating people within a hospital or nursing home in order to control MRSA’s spread. For instance, isolation is the key technique on which “search and destroy” hinges.

In today’s New York Times, Dr. Abigail Zuger writes a thoughtful column on the historic roots and present-day challenges of putting patients into isolation. It’s very much worth reading, particularly for understanding why tending to patients in isolation is such a time-burden for health care staff. Also, her description of how C. diff spreads will make you want to wash your hands immediately.

More soon.

Constant readers will remember that Superbug exited this space in early June to go hang out at Scienceblogs, and returned in late July after an ethical dilemma there wasn’t solved to my comfort level. Nothing special about me; a number of bloggers there left, about 20 or one-quarter of the roster if the numbers I’ve heard are correct.

Scienceblogs was a great blog community, and its implosion is a pity. But the unintended consequences turn out to be good news, which is the seeding of that concentrated array of talent back throughout the blogosphere. All kinds of exciting new arrangements are being rumored and chatted up.

And today, one makes its debut: Scientopia!

It’s a very cool-looking new network — employee-owned, as it were — that turns out to be hosting a number of my former Sciblings, including Book of Trogool, Christina’s LIS Rant, The Questionable Authority, Good Math/Bad Math, and excellent physician-blogger PAL MD of White Coat Underground.

There’s a Twitter addy and an RSS feed and all kinds of shiny newness. Check them out, please.

Hello again, constant readers. If you’ve been following the ongoing implosion at my briefly-new-and-now-former home at Scienceblogs, you’ll know why we’re back here blowing the dust off things. If not, never mind: There’s way too much news to talk about, anyway.

To maintain some continuity, I’ve changed the URL for this site to Superbugtheblog.com, though the former address, drugresistantstaph.blogspot.com, will also now redirect here. RSS feed buttons are in the sidebar.

I’ll be cleaning things up in the next day or so and updating the archives. But in the meantime, I’m back and I hope you are too.

Constant readers, I have an exciting announcement. After 3 years here on Blogger, SUPERBUG has been invited to join the thoughtful, knowledgeable, chatty and sometimes raucous community over at Scienceblogs. From today, I’ll be posting instead at a new page:
http://scienceblogs.com/superbug.

I will keep this site up as a resource, at least until we can work out the mechanics of transferring this blog’s archives over to the new page.

You’ve been such great readers, so thoughtful and thorough. I really hope you’ll follow me over to the new location. I would love to engage with you there too.

Sincere thanks to all of you for all your attention, and warmest wishes.

Constant readers, my warmest greetings for Christmas or whatever winter holiday you celebrate! You are high on the list of the many gifts in my life. Thank you for gathering here and contributing to this truly international community of concern about antibiotic resistance.

I’ll be back early next week with news of two fascinating new studies. Snow-dusted (12″ and rising here) holiday wishes ’til then.

Constant readers, I am very sad to tell you that Lori Hall Steele, the writer and single mother afflicted with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, died Wednesday. As I told you back in September, she could no longer work, could not pay her mortgage or her medical bills, and was about to lose her house to foreclosure, leaving her 7-year-old son homeless at the same time that she was about to be hospitalized with what is inevitably a fatal disease. The news prompted a blogathon on her behalf by fellow freelancers around the country that raised almost $20,000 more than $30,000, enough to ensure that her house was safe for as long as necessary.

A heartbreaking essay that she wrote about her son, before she knew she was sick, is here.

Many of you told me privately how much this story touched you. (And readers outside the US expressed shock that the cost of healthcare could turf a dying young mother out of her home.)

I send sincere thanks to all of you who sent Lori (whom I never met) money, or prayers, or warm thoughts for her and for her son. I am confident that none of it was in vain.

UPDATE: Lori’s obituary is here.

I hope my constant readers outside the US will forgive me for a moment if I speak just to my countrymen.

Folks: This is the most extraordinary election of my lifetime, and I suspect of yours too.
Please vote.
The strength of our democracy depends on the participation of all of us.

And non-US readers, hold a thought in your hearts for us today.
The past eight years have displayed so much that is not good about America.
We profoundly hope for change — and we hope equally to be brave, and civil to each other, in creating it.

Thank you all.

Constant readers will know that I keep the personal buzz on this blog to a low rumble, so as to stay out of the way of the news about MRSA, which affects hundreds of thousands of people beyond n=me. Today, though, I’m going to break my own rule, tell you a story, and launch a personal plea. Readers outside the US will be astounded such things can happen. Readers in the US will recognize how sadly common to our fractured system stories like this are. And they will be right. And yet, this one has particularly touched me.

So: Lori Hall Steele, of Traverse City, Mich., is a prolific freelance writer and blogger and the divorced mother of a 7-year-old son. She is also newly diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. She is bedridden and using breathing support and is unable to work. As a freelancer, she no doubt has not-excellent health insurance. Her bills are extraordinary. And, to add insult to grave injury, she is about to lose her house to foreclosure.

Before she became ill — her first symptoms appeared a year ago — Lori wrote an essay for the Washington Post, about watching Bambi with her son and trying to explain, yes, the death of Bambi’s mother. As often happens, they held the essay for months, and it was published in June. It is extraordinarily resonant. Please consider reading it. Tissues will help.

Let us be candid with each other: ALS is a one-way trip. People who support Lori are not expecting miracles; they are asking only for compassion, and for the ability to keep an ill young mother and her child together in the home they love for whatever time she has left.

If you are touched by Lori’s story, please consider visiting Save Lori’s House, which details fundraising efforts to help her, including a PayPal account.

Writers around the US are rallying to offer what support we can, via a blogathon of which this post is one entry. Lori’s friends are attempting to log the blogathon here.

(And because we always worry about such things on the intertubes: This has been vetted by many eyes. The chair of the Writers’ Emergency Assistance Fund, an arm of the American Society of Journalists and Authors, has been in contact with the family since the spring and has spoken by phone with family and friends. If you Google Lori’s hometown newspaper, the Traverse City (MI) Record-Eagle, and put her name in the search box, you will see notices of fund-raisers for her dating back early this year. So there is no evidence this is a scam.)

I appreciate your indulgence and support, all of you. We’ll get back to MRSA tomorrow.