| leatherman's log |
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June 2011 |
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| Week One: |
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Here's a quick leftover picture from
May. By the end of the monthly HIV Task Force meeting, almost all of
my cookies were gone. Hopefully, my legislators enjoyed them as much
as my fellow advocates, and will remember to fully fund the ADAP
program. |
| Graduation
Congratulations |
Where have the years
gone?!? While I can easily remember the days when Ritchie stayed
over at my house and we played in the "boat" (a papasan chair) and
my boyz were just newborn puppies, now my boyz and my Ritchie are
all grown up. |
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Congratulations to Ritchie
for graduating from high school!!
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 Car Trouble
/ Car Repair |
| My car died on me! It had
been acting up some during the last couple weeks in May, and at the
end of the month it finally died - in the middle of an
intersection!!
That was the day that I met Sondra before we went canvassing, and
she was a sweetie and helped get me out of the way of the traffic.
However, I had to call Triple-A to get a tow. |
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| I ended up NOT getting the
tow though. When the driver/mechanic arrived and asked me about the
problem, he immediately thought he knew the problem - the
alternator. After hooking
my car battery up to his truck, and giving my alternator a good
whack with a mallet, he had my car running and the battery charging.
After explaining to me how easy it would be to replace my own
alternator, rather than towing me home, the driver/mechanic followed
me up the highway to my exit, and my car kept running fine all the
way home. |
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| As soon as my May
disability check arrived, I was ready to go buy a replacement and
get my car running again. By removing my alternator first, I would
be able to take it in when I bought the replacement and skip being
charged the "core charge" of $70, leaving only the $96 price for the
rebuilt alternator. How ever easy that sounds, it wouldn't turn out
that way. It took me and Dennis several hours just to get the old
alternator off my car - mainly because we had crappy tools. After
running up the the auto parts store and getting a new small socket
set, the bolts easily came off. The problem then came with putting
the new alternator back on. All we had to do was line up the three
bolts, but after several more hours, a lot of sweat and frayed
nerves, I suggested we just quit for the night and go get dinner. |
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| Of course, a new day
really didn't mean that anything would be easier. It just meant that
we wouldn't be as sweaty. After a few more hours, we were finally
able to get the bolts on and screwed in. With a few last attachments
to the battery and tightening up the belts, we had the alternator
back on, and the car running. WooHoo! |
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But there was another,
unrelated, problem
that I had to deal with that day besides the car. |
| The Fort
Mill Tsunami of 2011 |
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When I went out on the second day to
work on the car, I went out through the back door and noticed that
something was radically different - the pool was only about
half-a-foot tall!! Rushing over, I threw off the tarp to try to
determine what had happened. |
Looking at the side of the pool, I saw
that the seam had burst open sometime during the night, and the
water flooding out had continued to rip the liner around 2 feet of
more. |
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The resulting tsunami had swept across the backyard washing
everything, but the grass, up against the fence. Even half of the
Mexican Garden had been swept clean by the wave of water that rushed
through the yard as the pool ripped open. |
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Sadly, Mom and I used box knives to cut
the liner into chucks that we could stuff into heavy-duty contractor
trash bags, so that the trash collectors would pick up the remains
of my pool. |
| Hopefully we'll be able to
find a new pool on craigslist in the next couple of weeks. Until
then I'll be sitting out by the tarp reading my booking and hosing
myself off when it gets too hot. |
| Working for
Catawba Care |
| The agency has finally put
together an official "Peer Counseling" program which will pair up
clients to new incoming patients. This project will aid our new
clients by letting them speak with and ask questions of one of our
more knowledgeable long-term patients. Hopefully seeing someone that in
a similar situation will help the new clients as they learn to deal
with their situation. Although I'm not a woman or black, after 20
year of dealing with HIV/AIDS I have a lot of experiences and a lot
of knowledge about the issue and should be of some help. |
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| Since I was already at the
clinic, I stayed around for a couple more hours and stuffed condoms
into packets so that we have plenty of safer sex packets to pass out
over the next couple of weeks. |
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National HIV Testing Day, SC Black Pride Day, the Charlotte Gay
Pride Event and numerous other events will be coming up over the
next few weeks, and we always need these packets to give out. |
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Week Two: |
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| Around the
Yard |
Although Spring is winding down as Summer is gearing up,
there are still plenty of flowers bloom throughout the property. |
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Every other day, new
lilies are blooming up on the hillside outside the front of the
house. It shouldn't be much longer until the gladiolas are blooming.
UPDATE: Some of the glads ARE already blooming!! |
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After redoing the Mexican Garden last year, the cacti are doing
really well this year and there are a lot of blooms and new growth
this Spring. |
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| A Look From Within the Mexican Garden |
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| I really
should become a Professional Mover |
| I haven't been just
sitting around looking at the pretty flowers in my yard. Nor, of
course, have I just been sitting around by the pool (since there is
NO pool) reading books. I have been busy helping a good friend of
mine, Larry, move into his new home. We have had to scrub walls,
hack at overgrown shrubs, mow through a forest of grass, and cut
down dead tree limbs before they crashed down. Then came time for
painting ceilings, closets, and walls. Next came the tough chore of
loading the contents of a 10x10x10 storage bin (packed clear up to
the 10 ft tall ceiling!) into a U-Haul, and then unloading it all
into the house. I've gone over several times since then to help move
appliances, strip wallpaper and grease off the kitchen wall, un-bury
furniture and drag it into the appropriate rooms. |
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After moving Carolynn, my
belongings and then myself before leaving Ohio, I got quite
experienced at moving. I have just been improving my skills as a
Professional Mover helping out Larry during his move. So remember
the next time one of you has to move to give me a call, I'm a pro! |
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| Thankfully now after 2 to
3 weeks worth of working (when my friend wasn't working at his job),
he's now in his new home with his bedroom, bathroom, and living room
all set up. There's still a couple more rooms to finish painting and
a lot of stuff to unpack, but Larry and his cocker Murphy are
settling in their new home and these other projects can be done at
any ol' time. |
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Week Three: |
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| 2011 MSM
HIV Prevention Institute |
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Going down to Columbia with Catawba
Care Prevention/Education Dpt. staff members, I recently attended
the MSM (men who have sex with men) HIV Prevention conference
dealing with the African-American community. |
| Our friend, Sondra Bloxaum from Tell
Them!, was also attending this conference. Not only did she have a
booth set up but she was scheduled to give a lecture about advocacy. |
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| There were well over 200
people attending this conference. The event started with a
continental breakfast, a few opening words, and each of the day's
speakers talking about the purpose of their class. |
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| There's my friend Sondra
addressing the whole crowd. |
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| After the opening, Sondra
held her lecture about "Advocacy 101" right there in the main room. |
| Eschewing the mic, Sondra roamed the
floor, walking among the tables and getting closer to the people she
was speaking to. Although I knew much of what she spoke about, I
really enjoyed her lecture because she was able to really stir up
the crowd. She gave them the reasons to advocate, the tools to reach
their legislators, and hopefully the motivation to act. |
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| Lunch was a huge buffet
that I shared with Monica, Tellus and Eric (a new Catawba Care
employee) from out Prevention/Education Dept. and Cecillio (a former
CC worker). During the meal, a very inspired transgendered woman
from D.C. spoke. |
| That's Tellus, in the aqua shirt, being
recognized for all the hard work he and others put into putting this
event together. I think they did a great job - especially Tellus! |
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I really enjoyed this
conference. Though is was about MSM HIV Prevention, it was also
filtered through the values of the African-American community. One
speaker spoke to the differences best when he discussed that most
often it is women who are social workers counseling HIV patients.
Not that woman are not great at their job; but woman don't have the
same cultural issues as gay men, much less gay black men.
That's
what I learned the most about - how many cultural differences there
are between me as a gay white man with HIV and gay HIV+ black men.
They have to deal with more church influences and more issues about
acting masculine vs. feminine. It was a very interesting day with a
lot of eye-opening education for me. I was really glad that I got
the chance to not only be a volunteer and help as a session
facilitator but to actually attend sessions and enjoy this learning
experience. |
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Week Four: |
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| Catawba
Care's National HIV Testing Day Event |
| Since June 27th, National
HIV Testing Day is on a Monday, Catawba Care held a special event on
the preceding Saturday. Over at North Central Family Medical Center
in Rock Hill, SC, we set up our exhibition booth and had three staff
members ready to give HIV rapid tests. |
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| With just a small pinprick
of blood, the test result come back within 20 minutes to tell you
whether you are HIV positive or negative. Although the rapid test is
close to 99% accurate, if the test shows you positive, a more
comprehensive follow-up test (known at the Western Blot) test is
given to confirm the results. |
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| We also had other
volunteers out today over in Lancaster, SC with our second
exhibition at the "Lancaster
Fatherhood Project" event; however theirs was not a testing event.
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| As usual, I really enjoyed being at an
event like this, not only for the purpose behind it; but also
because I was able to hang out with members of the
Prevention/Education Dept. and learn more about this kind of
advocacy. We talked about the issues surrounding giving out
incentives to get people to test (you can't give out too much money
per person else you might enable people to engage in risk behaviors
- ie buy drugs or liquor; however a limited amount of $5 gift cards,
which basically pays for someone's travel costs to come to your
event, is an acceptable incentive) and how important it is to follow
up testing with counseling and treatment. Just testing people is
only the first step to helping reduce the infection rate, treatment
and counseling needs to the ultimate goal. |
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| Anything that I can learn
to help with prevention and education about HIV is very important
for the state I live in. South Carolina has now become number 8 on
the list of states with the highest infection rate. According to new
CDC information taken from the latest census, in the list of the top
25 cities in America with the highest HIV infection rates, the
Charleston/North Charleston area is #20, while the state capital of
Columbia comes in at a whopping #6! And so close to the state line
here, I should also mention that the Charlotte-Gastonia-Concord area
is #18. YIKES! |
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