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Acoustic folk-rock-roots-blues guy Jim McGowan played the Wine Cafe in Mankato right before he headed across the country to advocate for kids with diabetes.The program he was promoting is called Safe at School, and it helps ensure that kids get the care they need whether it’s a regular day or a field trip or there’s a sub or whatever, and that they get it without feeling too much like a weirdo. That description is not endorsed by Jim or the American Diabetes Association. Probably endorsed by any kid who’s ever shot up in the lunchroom, though.

I’ve never seen Jim do his thing as an advocate. I’ve only seen him perform. I am sure, though, that he’s similarly genuine and compelling, and whatever the advocacy equivalent of “Thank God I’m A Country Boy” is, I bet it brings the house down.

At both kinds of gigs, there’s stuff to work around. Other people’s stuff. You have to stand there and deliver like you’re not knee-deep in crap there’s just nowhere else to stash. You really have to act like you’re the main thing happening here, right now, or nobody’s going to buy it. I am guessing Jim would say this is where being a bar band and being an advocacy director come together.

Of course, yes, people always sit in front and text. I don’t know the equivalent on the advocacy floor. Or maybe it looks literally exactly the same, just like this. There’s always a chance that the phone-user is reaching out to their friends/their legislators, saying “this music is amazing”/”oh my GOD get down here and fund this program.” There is a chance. I kind of think you can tell which performers hope for the best in that regard. They’re the ones who watch the phone-users really close so that as soon as they look up, they’ll make eye contact, with the singer looking like, “well? well?!” I mean why not. At minimum, you’ll get a smile, and that’s a start.

It’s good for kids with diabetes that Jim does what he does to make it easier to get care during the school day. It’s good for bars and for music lovers that Jim puts folk-roots-blues-rock-John Denver covers out there with so much sell and hope and integrity. Thanks, Jim, for the work on both fronts. Thanks also, LeeAnn Thill, for making up Diabetes Art Day and prompting us all to think artfully about such an unartful condition. Thanks too, Amy Stockwell Mercer, for being a longtime bridge between the art world and the diabetes world with passionate writings on both. You guys are the best. You guys make clear that the only way to deal with a weird mix is to wear it really, really well.

The Frye is at The Wine Cafe — the premier venue of diabetes-affiliated Minnesota bar bands — next Saturday, Feb. 9, 9 p.m. – 1 a.m. I might still be wearing this.

My Type Two retired professor friend bequeathed me this brooch and twenty-five others, all silver, all exquisite. She’s not dying but she’s probably closer to it than I am.

Then again, I’m more diabetic than she is.

At her age you would think diabetes is just something else in the mix but it’s a bigger deal than that. She dreads the finger-sticks. She asks how often I do it. I do it a lot. I tell her to rotate which finger so the pads don’t turn hard and spotted.

Her ring fingers each have a diamond ring from Tiffany & Co. in Chicago, where she has shopped every Christmastime of her adult life. Some of the brooches are from Tiffany’s. Some are from Memphis, Scotland, Washington. She loves them but she doesn’t need them any more. Now that she’s retired, she no longer wears navy blue pantsuits with pins that say, “I’ve been elsewhere. I’m here at this university on the prairie, wearing this pantsuit, but don’t make the mistake of thinking I stay here at Christmastime.”

She’s hoping I can give the pins some new life. I’m doing my best, trying to make them work with my style.

I’m Type One and I recently quit the insulin pump — my pancreas ex vivo — and went back to needles. You would think multiple daily injections would be more cumbersome than a pump but not really. Needles are classic and versatile. Needles are simple and sleek. They leave marks, but you’re going to get that. Even with sterling Christian Dior from Tiffany’s, you’re going to get that.