For sev­eral rea­sons, one of my favorite movies is “With Hon­ors” (1994). The film por­trays four room­mates at Har­vard Uni­ver­sity who are deal­ing with the pres­sures of their senior years when they befriend a home­less man (Joe Pesci) who teaches them many life lessons. A lesser movie would turn the theme into a cliche, but this film does it well.

I moved to Boston in 1998 to study jour­nal­ism at Boston Uni­ver­sity after high school. I lived in the city and worked as a jour­nal­ist for nine years before I moved to Israel, so I have an emo­tional con­nec­tion to the Boston sights and scenery por­trayed in the movie. Josh Hamil­ton, who plays one of the room­mates, is a main­stay of indie films — most notably in “Kick­ing and Scream­ing,” another favorite film of mine about the pres­sures of col­lege grad­u­a­tion. And Moira Kelly has always been an endear­ing pres­ence on the screen since her roles in “The Cut­ting Edge” and “The West Wing.”

But the sub­plot that always touched me — and I hope I am not reveal­ing any spoil­ers since the movie came out six­teen years ago — was Pesci’s character’s strug­gle with mesothe­lioma, a dis­ease that is con­tracted by con­stant, reg­u­lar expo­sure to asbestos. (I will not give any more details.)

My last jour­nal­ism job in Boston was work­ing as the editor-in-chief and exec­u­tive direc­tor of Spare Change News, a non-profit news­pa­per that reported on social-justice issues and gave jobs to home­less peo­ple in which they would sell the news­pa­per. It was a chance to use my pow­ers for good, so to speak.

Dur­ing my time at SCN, I worked with many home­less peo­ple — most of whom were mere vic­tims of cir­cum­stance. I had grown up fairly poor in the Mid­west until I was a teenager, so I empathized with them. But it was still enlight­en­ing — and depress­ing — to see the real­i­ties of their lives in a world that is often cruel and unforgiving.

Every time that I watch “With Hon­ors,” I think of my for­mer col­leagues. I was the first pro­fes­sional jour­nal­ist hired to edit the news­pa­per, and it was an honor and a priv­i­lege to do so.

After I was laid off from my job at SCN and no other jour­nal­ism jobs were avail­able in a dying indus­try, I moved to Israel to work in the online-marketing indus­try in Tel Aviv while I fin­ished my M.B.A. as well. And one of the things I learned in my classes was that it is impor­tant for busi­ness to use their exper­tise to give some­thing back to society.

So, with that in mind, I am to make the anti-mesothelioma cause the offi­cial char­ity of Con­sid­er­a­tions. I will devote part of my time to report­ing on the issue both here and in reg­u­lar blog-posts. I know that it is a com­plex issue involv­ing mesothe­lioma lawyers and mesothe­lioma attor­neys who are fight­ing mesothe­lioma law­suits for asbestos can­cer and mesothe­lioma can­cer. But I want to do what I can.

If any­one has any advice or feed­back on this cause, please feel free to e-mail Con­sid­er­a­tions at sjsc­world­wide @ gmail.com (with­out the spaces). I hope to make this blog a resource for the issue in addi­tion to the ongo­ing com­men­tary the writ­ers pro­vide on the issue of the day.

Tags: mesothe­lioma, asbestos, mesothe­lioma lawyers, lawyer mesothe­lioma, mesothe­lioma attor­ney, mesothe­lioma attor­neys, mesothe­lioma law­suits, asbestos can­cer, mesothe­lioma can­cer, mesothe­lioma asbestos