My legs hurt tonight. Twenty miles is a long walk in the early spring when you haven’t had a lot of time to train.

But I now know that by September, I will be in shape to walk the 26.2 miles of the Jimmy Fund Marathon Walk. I know that by the end of next month, I will be ready to do the walking the Relay for Life of Greater Fall River will require. And I know if I had really needed to go beyond 20 miles next week, I could probably pull it off–not bad for a 60-year-old.

Walking requires putting one foot in front of the other–regardless of the distance. It requires being in reasonable physical condition. At my age, it means checking periodically with my doctor to make sure my heart is up to the task.

Ending hunger is complicated. It shouldn’t be, but it is. We produce more than enough food in the US to feed all of our people. We don’t. Part of it has to do with poverty. Part of it has to do with politics. Part of it has to do with things I know nothing about. If I can help raise awareness of the problem by joining with several thousand other people and walking an obscene distance I can cover, then it is worth the effort.

Ending cancer is even more complicated–and there is not a lot of hands-on stuff I am even remotely qualified to do. I am not a doctor, scientist or lab technician. I can read, I can think, I can write, I can speak, I can organize, I can walk. There are lots of people who can do at least some of those things–and lots who can do them all.

But there are not a lot of people applying those skills to NET cancer. Nor are there lots of doctors, scientists or researchers working on this thing. So I read about NET every day. I think about it every day. I write about it every day. I speak about it whenever I can. And I walk every time I think it will do any good.

We need more people doing the science that needs to be done. We need more resources to fund those people and the work they do. We need what they discover to reach the broadest possible audience.

So I keep doing what I can do. I read, I think, I write, I speak, I organize, I walk.

But alone, to paraphrase Helen Keller, there is only so much anyone can do–together, we can accomplish so much.

Please join us in the work ahead.