Week Two: |
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| A Sad Note
of Remembrance |
A sad note went around through my old
classmates on Facebook about how one of "us", Danny
Miller, had passed away. Being
in a graduating class of less than 50 in a Baptist High School means
we had all pretty much been friends, so it's sad to see someone only
49 like myself pass away.
Surprisingly, this made me realize that I could have very well been
the first in my class to pass away, back when I was 34 and in the
hospital. |
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Oldies!
This is becoming a semi-regular update addition. |
| Every few weeks, I come
across some pictures from my past that I haven't seen or thought
about in a long time. So every few weeks, I've been sharing some of
my past with you. |
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Four generations of the men in my family.
That's my Dad (Doug in the dark blue), my Great-Grandfather (by my
mom and Grand Mother, me in the wolf pack shirt, and my GrandFather
in the light blue. |
| My Mom and I had the same hair back
when I was 20 and she was only 39. We still have the same color
today at 49 and um, um, um. Hmm. Mom is telling me that she just
turned 49 on her birthday March 9th. I guess that means, since I
turned 49 on March 14th, that we're both 49. |
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In 1976 when I was 14, my mom's parents took me on a two trip to and
through Florida. On the trip down, taking A1A down the coast, we
visited Fort Augustine and Daytona Beach. Tracking inland next, we
stopped at Disney (back when there was only the "Magic Kingdom") and
Silver Springs (for the Glass-bottomed boat ride) before heading
over to the Sarasota area to spend an enjoyable week on the Gulf. |
| But here I am back in some
present day pictures. Now that I've gotten back on my feet from that
medication fiasco last month, it's back to the salt mines for me.
I've gotten back out a few afternoons digging through the dirt,
leveling it out for the pool and out working in the yard and
gardens. |
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| Someone's
in the Kitchen |
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None of my latest baking comes from the
aidsmeds.com cookbook; but I should submit these recipe for next
year's edition. Although I haven't made muffins since Jim was in the
hospital (those nurses on the 9th floor got my last two batches of
muffins), we had bananas hanging around the kitchen so I turned them
into banana nut bread. Since mom only had one loaf pan, I also had
to make a pan of muffins. |
| With so many birthdays to celebrate,
back when we were kids, Mom and Dad started the tradition of
allowing whatever the birthday person wanted for dessert rather than
birthday cake. Instead of birthday cake, Mom wanted a chocolaty
Texas Sheet Cake. |
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| Mom made me an icebox
cheesecake for my bday. We forgot to take any pictures. The
cheesecake was eaten up so fast that we made another one before the
week was over. We didn't take any picture of it either. |
| Catawba Care
News and Duties |
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The agency has gotten some new branded
stuff to give away at some of our events. The backpack and water
bottles ought to go over well the school/college kids. I love the
cute slogan on the merchandise -
R U + U R - ?
(Are you positive you are negative?) |
| Ever since the Video Competition the
agency held for World AIDS Day, we've been videotaping clients and
other things, which I've been including on a CD. The staff in the
Prevention/Education are able to use these taped interviews when
clients are available. Next month, I'm going to use some of clips to
put together a special video for an upcoming fundraiser. |
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Our latest Catawba Care exhibition
booth set up was over at Winthrop University. Just before Spring
Break began, CC and the health department at the college sponsored a
"Safe Spring Break" dance. |
| My friend Sandy and I
worked this event. I love working with Sandy. Not only is she good
at talking to people and working the crowd; but we laugh and laugh
and laugh when we're together. |
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No pictures! Sandy told me.
I just came in from the rain and my hair is up. |
Hair down and the sexy-eyed
look from Sandy |
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| Not only did we pass out
HIV literature and condoms; but we held a give-away of several water
bottles, cups, bags, and gift cards. Our most-wanted prize wasn't
even offered with the number-drawing. Everybody wanted one of our 30
free glow sticks! LOL |
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| During the event, a
performance troupe and the health dpt. staged "incidents" to
demonstrate how to react to unsafe behavior - a girl dragged out of
the club struggling against a guy; rowdy drunks, bad pickups,
discussions of unsafe sex |
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| Sandy and I enjoying the
thumping club music. |
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Outside of the ballroom
where the dance was held was this beautiful artwork.
Both sides of the hallway held lighted panels of tree trunks, ... |
| ... while this center piece has cutout
sections of seating and water burbling through the center. |
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| An
Unexpected Gift |
| Last month at the "Black
HIV/AIDS Awareness Day" event, I met up with Sondra, a
representative from an organization named "Tell Them!" That group's
purpose is to help put people in touch with their legislators to
discuss sexual health care issues like prevention of teen
pregnancies, STDs, and HIV. She and I have been corresponding
recently and I've made arrangements for her to come give a
presentation to clients at Catawba Care. Part of the presentation is
going to be about her organization's upcoming "Bee Day" event. Last
year, they set aside one day to get as many people as possible to
email their legislators, while this year they will be taking that
concept a step further and taking people to the capital to advocate
for sexual health care issues in person. |
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As part of their online promotion of "Bee Day", they asked people to
change their Facebook avatar to advertise the event. Each week they
picked a winner and gave out a prize. |
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The website for Tell Them! (http://tellthemsc.org)
had a graphics generated that created a generic avatar you could
use. As you can see they use a "Bee" symbol (and words like "buzz"
and "swarm") as part of their branding. |
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While that was nice, of course, with a little photo-shopping, I was
able to jazz up my version of the bee avatar each week, as I tried
to win the weekly prize - oh, and of course publicize the upcoming
event for Tell Them. LOL |
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My efforts were rewarded though, and I won the first week's
competition. |
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| Soon the prize arrived in
the mail, and it was some lovely handmade jewelry. |
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With little bees and
"honeycomb" shaped golden beads, the necklace and earrings are very
nice (they are valued at over $50!). Of course, my days of dangly
earrings ended way back in the middle of the 80's ,
so I gave them to Mom as a late birthday gift. She wore them a few
days later, and they looked really nice. |
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Week Three: |
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| It's
Officially Garden-Time |
| While everyone else thinks
it's too early, last year I think I waited too late to plant my
garden. Sadly my plants didn't do well once the heat settled in. So
I figured it couldn't hurt to start earlier this year. I started all
my plants from seeds inside, and now that it's warmer it's time to
get them transplanted outside. |
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| I transplanted one parsley
plant from last summer that survived inside this winter, along with
onions, cukes, broccoli, radishes, pumpkins, squash, okra, beets,
carrots, and cantaloupes. |
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Wish you
were here;
Glad I'm not there |
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While I have been enjoying an early
Spring, it looked like one was coming to my friends in Ohio too.
Becca and her mom Angie sent along this picture of some of the
flooded baseball fields around town as Spring there had the Winter
snows melting. |
| However, just a couple days later (as
there usually is this time of year), the city of Canton got some
snow and looked like this picture for a few days. |
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| Another
Year Older |
| Although plans haven't worked out to
get together with my immediate family members celebrating their
birthdays in the last month and a half (Jonathan, Lisa, Donny, Celia [that's my Mom!], Jon, and
Kayla) like we have quite often
in the past; or being able to get together with my other family
members (TJ and Ann), or my friends (Ritchie, Angie, Mike P, Austin,
and Mary) who also had birthdays, I still turned older myself.
Having been in the hospital on my 34th and 36th birthdays with
doctors telling me that I might not live to see another day much
less another birthday, I am actually very happy to be 49 this year. |
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Happy
Birthday to all my friends and all (well, nearly all LOL)
my family members.
May you have a great year and many more birthdays to come! |
| Spring in
South Carolina |
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The Red Maple is slowing filling up with red leaves now. |
| It's time to take the indoor plants outdoors. |
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These are my new holly hocks. I planted
them last year so should be getting flowers this year. I have no
idea what color they will be; but I'm anxiously waiting to see the
stalks form that will have the flowers. |
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| The tulip magnolia just
gets prettier and prettier as more bud appears and blooms blossom. |
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Speaking of buds appearing, this year my tiny red bud tree is really
going to be a red bud tree.
It's got all sorts of reddish/purple buds appearing all over it's
trunk and limbs. |
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I planted morning glories and strung yarn
for the plants to climb up. |
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Working hard, I've got sections all around the yard, dug up, planted
with seeded and covered in straw. Hopefully in a few months, I'll
have grass to mow. |
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The irises that I planted out by my deck are doing very well.
Someone that Mom and Dennis know through playing bridge sent these
to me last year, so we don't know what they'll look like. I'm
thinking they'll be larger irises (like the ones I grew at my old
12th street house) rather than the small kind (like the small purple
ones that grew in a large patch next to Jim's pool. |
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Mr. Kitty has messed with this bunny.
(See the story from last month if you
don't know about Mr. Kitty and the bunny) |
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I cleaned up all the grass and weeds around all the irises planted
up on the hillside. I really should have split up the bulbs this
past Fall; but now it's a job for this coming Fall. LOL
I did intersperse 20 new bulbs. After the irises bloom this year, I
hope we see these nearly two dozen new gladiolas grow and bloom too.
That should help keep the hillside in some color. |
I have a project for later this Spring/Summer. Mom would like a
walking path up through the woods to a small clearing in which she'd
like a few benches, maybe a small water feature and some potted
plants.
This winter, Mom and D picked up an electric chain saw. When I
finally get around to cutting down the dead pear tree in the front
yard, I'm going to lay down a ground cover and then chip the chopped
up tree to make the path. |
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Both sides of our property are lined with red tip bushes. However,
they have grown very, very tall over the years. Although Dennis cut
some back a few years ago, there's still too much shade on my poor
garden. So I got to work with that chain saw and cut three of them
down to a much better height and really opened up a section for the
sun to shine through. My garden should be much happier now. |
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Sadly, I also had to use the chain saw to take down the apple tree
in my side yard that dead this past Summer. There are a few other
dead trees n the front woods that I'll eventually chop down; but
they have been dead for a long time. |
Two Special
Advocacy Meetings
Advocacy Part 1 |
| I made a proposal to
Catawba Care's Executive Director to hold a special client meeting
by combining an advocacy training presentation from "Tell Them!", with
a presentation by me about my letter-writing campaign and other
advocacy opportunities, followed up by the clients taking an
advocacy action for themselves by attending a Client Advisory Board
meeting. |
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I had a crowd of just over a
dozen people turn out.
This pix has been blurred to protect the innocent from my
shutterbuggering. LOL |
I didn't blur this one to
protect anybody.
It's just a bad picture. LOL |
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| The meetings went really
well. Sondra from Tell Them gave a very informative presentation.
Afterwards I got 9 letters to legislators written, and then Anita,
the clinic's director, spoke about ways the clients could be
advocates at and for the agency. By the end of the meeting, I had
several people that wanted to attend a meeting of the SC HIV/AIDS
Task Force, and several that wanted to attend a special meeting with
Tell Them. I was very pleased to see so many people want to do some
advocacy work, and I'm very excited about two upcoming trips to
Columbia to directly speak to our legislators about funding for the
AIDS Drugs Assistance Program (ADAP). |
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Although with the pizza that the agency provided for these meeting,
I baked a batch of Chinese Almond Cookies |
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Positive Cookies
Lemon Smilies, Cherry Awareness Ribbons, and Orange Pluses |
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| Advocacy
Part 2 |
| The Director of my ASO was
hoping that a local reporter was going to come out away our meeting
to film some clients discussing the ADAP funding crisis.
Unfortunately, he wasn't able to come to the clinic until the next
morning, so I made plans to be back the next day at 9:30am. Even
though I really hate mornings, I believe that HIV is becoming a big
problem again because it's fallen off the radar of the media. It's
that old adage of "out of sight, out of mind." |
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| I have been tracking the
ADAP issue in SC and around the US for some time now. I regularly
update a post at aidsmeds.com with the ever increasing numbers of 11
states that are unable to help supply meds to over 7500 Americans.
I'm terribly afraid that at some point soon, we're going to be
seeing Americans dying from AIDS because they don't have meds. Since
this is a subject I know a lot about and a subject that I
would be glad to talk to a reporter about, I came back to the agency
the next morning to be interviewed. |
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The reporter was from the
local cable company that produces a local news show.
You can see the news segment at this
link |
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The reporter filmed me
speaking, the clinic director and I talking, and the director
speaking.
Being a part of the SC HIV/AIDS Task Force, I was able to
knowledgeably speak about how $10 million is needed to properly fund
ADAP, and that without that funding the cost of caring for those
sick HIV positive people could run the taxpayers $48 million. It
really seems like the $10 million investment is the way to go in
these bad economic times - much less when you realize the cost in
human lives that these meds can save. |
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| This interview doesn't really show off
the clinic's director, Anita Case, in the best light. I think this
has been the first time that I've ever seen her when she wasn't
smiling. But then again, talking about people not having HIV
medications and dealing with all the complications from that -
maybe even the "complication" of dying - really isn't something to
smile about. |
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| Springtime! |
| It's been absolutely
beautiful around here lately. With Spring the air, everything is
beginning to grow, to bloom and to green up. |
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| Looking at the Redbud Tree
and seeing the Dogwood Tree in the background. |
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| ACK!
The frost is coming! |
| After all these gorgeous
nice warm days, some chilly rainy days are on the way - and some
frost!! |
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| Using old showers
curtains, pieces of wire fencing, an old sheet and some newspapers,
I got all of my little plants covered up and protected from the
killing frost. I knew this might be an issue when I planted early;
but I think everything will turn out okay. |
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| Advocacy
Part 3 |
| As the new ad-hoc leader
of an advocacy group, I had my work cut out for me this week. Things
started off this weekend with me giving a lending hand to the Tell
Them! group. They asked me to help re-work a large Op-Ed piece
for the newspaper in Greenville newspaper. It seems there's another
strange piece of legislation the SC legislature is considering for
the budget. Called the "Freedom of Conscience" act, this bill would
allow health care personnel (doctors, nurses, pharmacists, etc) to
simply not give a patient all their options based on their moral
objections - especially informing women about emergency
contraceptives and abortion options. Of course, none of us is really
pro-abortion; but once health care officials can start
discriminating against people based upon a doctor's moral beliefs,
then we could all be screwed - or maybe even dead! |
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| So I wrote this Op-Ed and
I edited it down to the required 250 words for a "letter to the
editor" - and got published! in the Rock Hill Herald! (see it online
here - "Bill
would restrict health care options"). |
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| I kicked off the week by
meeting up in Rock Hill with some client/volunteers from my advocacy
meeting. We headed down to Columbia (about a 75 mile trip to the
state capital) to a special meeting of the SC HIV/AIDS Care Crisis
Task Force. The group had a special guest in from "AIDS Healthcare
Foundation" out of California. That group not only has a clinic; but
also does a lot of advocacy work. The speaker did a quick overview
of the work his agency has done, and then discussed our situation in
SC and talked about how we could and should talk about our situation
with our legislators. After a short luncheon, we caravanned over to
the State House and put our advocacy into action. We were able to
talk to two of our Representatives and requested that they fully
fund ADAP. |
| Because I was the leader of my peeps, I
really had to go back down to the Columbia the next day too. This
time Tell Them! was holding a luncheon and a training session. |
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| We had a delicious mean in
the Capital City Club, right across the street from the State House,
up on the 25th floor overlooking the city of Columbia, SC. |
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| That's Elaine, the head of the SC
Coalition for Healthy Families, whom I helped with the Op-Ed piece,
passing out "bee" stickers which would identify us as part of the
group when we got to the State House. |
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That's our area coordinator, Sondra,
who is the rep that gave the presentation to my group at Catawba
Care. She has family members that have dealt with HIV/AIDS and she
has been instrumental in getting her agency to deal with STD and HIV
prevention along with teen pregnancy prevention. |
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| After the luncheon and
training session, our group headed across the street. The Tell Them!
reps were very well coordinated and helped arrange things, so we
were able to talk to several Senators and several Representatives.
Not only did we talk to them about Tell Them!'s position (thanking
the legislators for keeping money in the budget for prevention
programs) but were also able to talk about the serious need for ADAP
funding. |
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| I had a secret weapon for
our meetings with our legislators. As you have seen in my blog, I
have frequently gotten people to attend rallies and meeting with me
by offering lemon bars and cookies. So I baked up more "Positive
Cookies" which I packaged into sandwich-sized plastic containers to
which I attached a note. The note said that I baked them, that I was
with Catawba Care, and that I hoped that while the legislators
enjoyed the cookies that they would consider fully funding ADAP.
After my group would speak to the legislators and hand them a packet
of information, I would hand them the cookies. I explained how I had
used the cookies to get my friends there and thought it was a shame
that the very people we were coming to talk to were being left out,
so I made them cookies too. |
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| Needless to say, at first,
I got some strange looks; but when the legislators opened up and
could smell the cookies and heard my spiel about the cookies, their
looks of distrust turned to smiles. I bet none of their constituents
had ever given them cookies before. When we couldn't see one Senator
because he was busy with his bill coming to the floor, we went over
to his office to speak to his staff. Of course, I left them cookies
for the Senator, and an extra container that had a few broken
cookies when I had dropped the container earlier in the day. So I
may not have gotten onto the Senator's good side; but I sure won his
staff over. |
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| What an amazing month I've
had! Spring has come and the flowers are beginning to bloom. I had a
birthday and celebrated another year (which is awesome since I was
in the hospital on both my 34th and 36th birthdays and could have
died). I planted my garden. I won a lovely gift in a contest. I was able to sponsor a
special advocacy meeting at my ASO. I was in a TV news report. I cut
down several huge bushes and a tree. I had
an Op-Ed piece and a letter to the editor printed in two newspapers. And I spent two days
in the state capital hobnobbing with doctors, lawyers, lobbyists, Senators,
Representatives, and my friends from the ASO advocating for ADAP and
meds for HIV positive people. WooHoo! |
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