Here's the scene at the cafe on the corner. Very Christmasy! I really should go out after work and take some pictures of holiday lights. That's perhaps the one good thing about darkness falling at 4:30 p.m. -- we have lots of time in the evening to enjoy light displays!
Yesterday was World AIDS Day, despite the refusal of the Trump Administration to recognize it. I've written before about AIDS and the impact it had on my life as a young gay man. Men of my generation, even if we didn't catch the virus, were indelibly scarred by it. (Men just a couple of years older bore the brunt of the plague, with huge numbers of them dying young.) So yesterday...
...I wore my red ribbon on my lanyard at work, as I always do on December 1. I wonder if the kids even know what it means. I did hear one student talking to the head librarian about a project she's doing on HIV and AIDS, so there is still awareness out there, for which I'm thankful.
Last night I re-read the Barbara Kingsolver essay about the Canary Islands that I saved many years ago, from her book "High Tide in Tucson." It was much as I remembered it -- a very evocative depiction of the landscape and the flora and fauna. But she didn't mention those spiny cacti once, and that was my clearest memory of the whole piece! She focused on the moister, more fog-bound environment of the laurel forests on La Gomera. Funny how the brain deceives. (I have since learned those "cacti" are actually a type of Euphorbia, and thus not cacti at all.)
I applaud your wearing of the red ribbon but not that shirt! Yesterday, on Radio 4, I heard the story of a woman who contracted HIV/AIDS through sexual contact when she was at university and just 21 years old. I was impressed by how she seems to be coping with her situation - loud and proud and grateful for life saving medication that of course was not around in the early eighties.
ReplyDeleteMy sister and I have lost several friends to AIDS, the youngest was 32 when he died, and we'd been close friends since our teens. Some of our friends have been living with the disease for decades now; so much progress has been made with medication in that area. One died of COVID three years ago; he would have turned 60 last year. Another one is in his early sixties now and his health is better than it was ten years or so ago.
ReplyDeleteIt is good to know that students still learn about this important subject.