peter staley's arrest in nyc protesting the cost of hiv drugs.
If you run an Internet search on Vietnam and the war, most of the information you get begins at about 1962. I think this is telling. It is missing the whole period that led up to the reasons the war happened in the first place. Brendan Fraser
the new denver hiv resource website is finally online. this is the 1st of 3 phases of online information to be made available for denverites and coloradans. i am glad the process has begun.
please take a look as we want the hits to be many so that if someone googles hiv in denver our site will pop up. of course that is my mug in a shot from the site used in the banner here. it will be disappearing in a couple of days. if you click on the "living with hiv" pulldown, you should see me. there is more in store for this site, however.
alas, the whole story of living with hiv will not be on this site as we know it. it will mostly be a resource for people looking for information and answers now and at this juncture in their lives. and well it should be useful like that.
but there is so much that got us here that is slipping into the quiet. so much tenacity and so much chutzpah. but that story is for other days. for today, please just take a gander at the new digs and feel the light emanating from behind the plus sign shaped windows.
Elie Wiesel: I have learned two lessons in my life: first, there are no sufficient literary, psychological, or historical answers to human tragedy, only moral ones. Second, just as despair can come to one another only from other human beings, hope, too, can be given to one only by other human beings.
last week on peter staley's blog, i first heard of the "berlin patient" who had been on hiv drug therapy and underwent bone marrow transplant surgery and now has no signs of active hiv in his bloodwork.
and i found an article on donklephant. here is an excerpt.
The startling case of an AIDS patient who underwent a bone marrow transplant to treat leukemia is stirring new hope that gene-therapy strategies on the far edges of AIDS research might someday cure the disease.
The patient, a 42-year-old American living in Berlin, is still recovering from his leukemia therapy, but he appears to have won his battle with AIDS. Doctors have not been able to detect the virus in his blood for more than 600 days, despite his having ceased all conventional AIDS medication. Normally when a patient stops taking AIDS drugs, the virus stampedes through the body within weeks, or days.
The breakthrough appears to be that Dr. [Gero] Hütter, a soft-spoken hematologist who isn’t an AIDS specialist, deliberately replaced the patient’s bone marrow cells with those from a donor who has a naturally occurring genetic mutation that renders his cells immune to almost all strains of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.
considering the goings on in the world this last couple of weeks, especially in america, i think i'm gonna try audacity and go with hope.....
so my accidental hero- peter staley- has started his own blog on poz online. his path and an interview with him in poz actually redirected my thinking when i was struggling to get clean. he struggled with his own meth issues and had allowed his life to polish his struggles into something more valuable- a message. i have every intention of becoming a regular reader and will no doubt share things once in awhile.
on his blog, i heard about a new online gay soap opera which is geared towards hiv prevention. it is called "in the moment" and here are the first two episodes. i won't post all of them, but may once in awhile.
if you want to read more you can check out peter's blog here
firstly, i am sad to announce that the international carnival of positivities has posted its final edition today- you can read it here ron hudson who champions the carnival has done an amazing job and helped to build a bridge among the vastly different corners of the world affected by hiv/aids. the world is definitely in need of a new someone to watch over us with the icp's departure.
Now about sex. Many of needed an overhauling there. But above all, we tried to be sensible on this question. It's so easy to get way off the track. Here we find human opinions running to extremes -- absurd extremes, perhaps. One set of voices cry that sex is a lust of our lower nature, a base necessity of procreation.
Then we have the voices who cry for sex and more sex; who bewail the institution of marriage; who think that most of the troubles of the race are traceable to sex causes. They think we do not have enough of it, or that it isn't the right kind. They see its significance everywhere. One school would allow man no flavor for his fare and the other would have us all on a straight pepper diet. We want to stay out of this controversy. We do not want to be the arbiter of anyone's sex conduct. We all have sex problems. We'd hardly be human if we didn't. What can we do about them?
We reviewed our own conduct over the years past. Where had we been selfish, dishonest, or inconsiderate? Whom had we hurt? Did we unjustifiably arouse jealousy, suspicion or bitterness? Where were we at fault, what should we have done instead? We got this all down on paper and looked at it.
In this way we tried to shape a sane and sound ideal for our future sex life. We subjected each relation to this test -was it selfish or not? We asked God to mold our ideals and help us to live up to them. We remembered always that our sex powers were God-given and therefore good, neither to be used lightly or selfishly nor to be despised and loathed.
Whatever our ideal turns out to be, we must be willing to grow toward it. We must be willing to make amends where we have done harm, provided that we do not bring about still more harm in so doing. In other words, we treat sex as we would any other problem. In meditation, we ask God what we should do about each specific matter. The right answer will come, if we want it.
God alone can judge our sex situation. Counsel with persons is often desirable, but we let God be the final judge. We realize that some people are as fanatical about sex as others are loose. We avoid hysterical thinking or advice.
book of alcoholics anonymous
my sponsor has advised on more than ten occasions that i start to put down on paper, the relationship ideal that works for me. and frankly, i have never quite felt audacious enough to enough to even consider an ideal. more likely, i have held the belief that i was damaged good and didn't really deserve to have a relationship.
but i am changing that belief. i am open to revisiting this concept of ideal. not a fantasy, but a friendship that involves emotional support, companionship, emotional and intellectual growth and laughter. i would very much be interested in meeting someone who would support my human service and recovery interests, re-ignite my love for cooking and dining out, drag me to the theatre, and follow me to exhibits and installations, while respecting my independence and keeping their own. he's not young and there's no need to be pretty. he's smart, he's funny. he's thoughtful. and he's both trusting and trustworthy. he admires all types of people, is quite spiritual, and enjoys quiet just as much as parties. and he loves my cooking as much as he loves my jokes. and you better believe he loves music.
here is an excerpt from a seattle interview about crystal meth in 2005 with one of my personal heroes: peter staley. i think the content speaks for itself. i find myself slowly moving towards activism in this regard and hope that wherever i eventually land in my movement of beliefs and ideals that i find myself in the company of men and women who actually give a damn. there are wars to be waged, changes to fight for, and healing to nurture. still some days, i cannot believe i have survived all i have to participate in this. so sign me up mr. staley. i think the meth mystique is bullshit. it's built on a concept that there is an easy way to paradise. a quick fix. an easy feel-good with no repercussions. a fast infusion of networking and communication to other gay men and an easy for source of validation. it's none of those things in my eyes. it is merely smoke and mirrors. smoke and mirrors.
So if you could give marching orders to some group of people on this issue, who would you give them to?
Gay men in general, and in particular the guys who are not using meth. I feel strongly that if a person who would never use meth is having brunch on a Sunday with others who have used meth that weekend, and is listening to the meth users share their experience in a joking way—if the listener doesn't say anything, then by his silence he is playing a role in meth's popularity in the community. He's playing a role if he doesn't say, "What the fuck are you talking about? Don't you know that destroyed the lives of some of my friends?"
By his silence he's complicit.
Absolutely, he's complicit. In my mind, this kind of silence is a form of pushing.
So why do so many people remain silent?
The whole basis of our community is very libertarian. The gay liberation movement's primary focus has been fighting against those who are trying to tell us how to live our lives, so we're very reluctant to tell each other how to live our lives. And rightly so. I have a strong libertarian streak. But I hope our community only takes that so far.
For example, if we had been completely libertarian during the height of the AIDS crisis in the '80s, there would have been no pressure from some gay men on other gay men that condoms be used all the time. That was our greatest hour as a community—when we started helping each other, as well as pressuring each other, and started expecting that we take care of our own. Now, here we are again, faced with a situation where the health of many gay men is under serious threat. We need to start helping and pressuring each other again.
the only difference i see in this course of action is perhaps tactical. i am not sure that pressuring is a solution. it may have worked when fear was so predominate, but change doesn't typically stick when it's coerced. if we as a culture start moving towards a deeper happiness then social norms will change. and when we adopt the helping each other philosophy truly and not as a means to manipulate then we can evolve.
oh, yes i do think that brother michael coulda stopped making changes a long time ago, but it ain't my journey. i've lived my own hell, so i try not to emphasize anyone else's. besides, he can rock da house.....
