Tag: aids

He was no more than a baby then

Yesterday when I went out to take a package from the UPS driver at the gate, I noticed a small bird on the ground and didn’t think much of it. But later, when I went out with the dogs, they thought a LOT of it. Their interest was in making it a morning snack, and I realized that the bird couldn’t get away from them. I shooed the dogs back inside and had a look around. That’s when I spotted a nest that had fallen from a tree and broken up, and now its occupant, too young to fly, was helpless against Compound dogs and also this guy who was wandering around.

We have so many doves living on or around The Compound, and I figured this one was a mourning dove. Much to his dismay, I used a small stick from his nest to direct him into a box, where’d I’d placed the part of the nest I could salvage. I was keeping a wary eye skyward, as I didn’t want an irate parent to swoop down on me, but when she finally arrived, she stayed on the ground, getting as close to me as she dared, to watch what I was doing with her young’un.

What I really wanted was to return the nest to the tree–a nice leafy, tall ornamental in our front flower bed (planted as a tiny thing by James many years ago, we call it “John’s tree” in his late boyfriend’s memory), but the good branches are too high for me to reach, even by ladder. I finally took this from the backyard, where it’s been hanging with a dead plant forever, and transferred nest and reluctant baby into it.

(iPhone picture added after original post.)

Once the new home was hanging in the tree, the baby bird clung to the wire edges instead of getting into the nest. Mama landed a couple of times, pecking at the nest and apparently soothing her child. Later, Tim moved it higher so the birds wouldn’t be so exposed while hanging from the lower branches. A couple of times I checked on them by looking through windows. I was watching when the dad showed up. Mama flew over the sticks on the ground, as if saying, “See? I told you we shouldn’t have scrimped on building supplies and hired that cheap contractor.”

Tim and I left to run errands, and by the time we returned, Mama had coaxed baby down into the nest, and they were both resting (though she’s not in this photo).

Late afternoon, I checked on them again. No parents were around, and baby was still in the nest, but now I realized that the afternoon sun was baking him.

Fortunately, Tom came home not long after and using the ladder, was able to find a great place for the hanging nest where leaves would shade it from the sun at any angle.

This whole procedure was watched from high in our redbud tree by both parents.

Just before dark, Tom checked on them again, and mother and child were both sleeping inside the new home.

This morning, I went outside to see how things were. I spotted Mama on the branch next to the nest.

Then, when I walked beneath it, guess who I spied enjoying the day, as if none of yesterday’s trauma ever happened?

I think the Muse of Stevie Nicks will bring good luck to me because as it turns out, this is a family of white-winged doves.

Telling An Essential Story

There wasn’t a single panel I attended at Saints and Sinners that didn’t give me a lot to think about, and this was my first on Saturday morning: AIDS Is Still With Us: Telling An Essential Story.

Moderated by Jameson Currier (Where the Rainbow Ends; The Wolf at The Door; Dancing on the Moon), the panelists were Lewis DeSimone (Chemistry; The Heart’s History), Trebor Healey (Through It Came Bright Colors; A Horse Named Sorrow; Faun; Sweet Son of Pan), Daniel M. Jaffe (Jewish Gentle and Other Stories of Gay-Jewish Living; The Limits of Pleasure; One-Foot Lover), and Andrew Holleran (Dancer from the Dance; Nights in Aruba; The Beauty of Men; Grief).

DeSimone, Healey, Jaffe, Holleran, Currier

In the early and mid 1990s, the years when I was an AIDS caregiver to several friends, many of the above books and others were essential in helping me understand the politics and social and personal implications of AIDS, particularly as it affected gay men. In fact, sometimes their voices and the stories they told helped me keep my wits in a world gone mad. Fiction and memoir also gave my friends and me a place to begin sharing a language and context with one another. Those books broke down barriers and gave faces and names to what to many people were just statistics that they believed had no impact on their lives.

I remember after Steve R died how I attempted to write several different short stories, and I believe even the beginnings of a novel or two, but I simply couldn’t do it. Everything was too raw, too close. But I think all of those stories–from the caregivers, the ill, the healthy positive, the partners and friends–both old and current, still need to be told. I think there’s public complacency, a sense that because new drugs and treatments have made HIV manageable, that no one wants to read about it anymore. But the compelling stories of populations with rising numbers of HIV infections and AIDS illnesses still have something to tell us about poverty, marginalization, medical care and drug access, and health crises–because AIDS/HIV surely won’t be the last.

I’m grateful these writers and others are still telling the stories. They encourage me to feel that my own voice might join the conversation one day.

Are we human, or are we dancer?

Or both?

Many of us who go to Saints and Sinners leave it with a feeling of euphoria. For a few days, we get to interact with old and dear friends, listen to people talk and join in conversations about what we love passionately–writing and books, and we get to find new writers, new friends, and new restaurants (it IS New Orleans, after all). Some of us hear our fears expressed and addressed. Some of us come away with new ideas for invigorating our careers and honing our craft. We reflect and talk about it for days afterward, relive stories and jokes with one another and on our social media sites, and most of all, we remember why we love what we do even though it seldom brings us those tangible rewards by which the larger society measures success.

For me, one of the brightest points of the weekend was getting to meet an author whose works I’ve read since I first “discovered” a genre of fiction I’d known nothing about. Through the years, I’ve cherished each work from his backlist that I could get my hands on, or I eagerly purchased any new work as soon as it was published. It has been one of the greatest honors to work, alongside Timothy J. Lambert, with Andrew Holleran on some of his short fiction, and to have my name as editor on covers of anthologies that contain his stories.

I’m sure you’ll understand why my heart overflowed when I handed him one of my favorite books–a little battered and discolored by age and multiple readings, to sign:

and later read his inscription:

When I think of those early years of reading gay-themed books while some beloved friends slipped away from this world–oftentimes titles recommended by those very friends–I never, ever envisioned such a thing.

When I get disheartened–or even when my heart breaks again–I remember all of this, square my shoulders, and go forward. Sometimes the surprises the future holds are better than anything we could have dreamed.

April Photo A Day: My Sunday

My Sunday has definitely not been a day of rest.


Pier is wagging his tail!

First up, Pier the Miracle Dog. Some of you may have followed Pier’s story on his Facebook page. (Warning if you go to his FB page: Some of the early photos of his injuries are graphic and will break your heart.)

Pier is a black lab who was picked up by BARC in Houston after being badly–and deliberately–burned by person(s) unknown. Scout’s Honor Rescue put him in their program, and thanks to the great Scout’s Honor board members, volunteers, and the medical staffs at VERGI and Texas A&M Small Animal Hospital, Pier is healing and thriving. Pier has thousands of people all over the world who have sent love, prayers, good wishes, toys, treats, and monetary donations to help him. Sunday he was taken to a local restaurant where his Houston-area fans were invited to come and meet him.


A very good boy.

Pier is nothing but joy. No shyness, no fear, he’s happy, obedient, eager to please, friendly, and he loves his tennis balls. I cried for this dog so many days after his rescue, and getting to see him today, I cried again, but they were tears of joy. His strength and resiliency are an inspiration to me.


A new friend with Pier.

Saturday night Tim and I were up into the wee hours of the morning inputting his edits and mine into the manuscript that’s due in a few days. Today we finally compiled the twelve stories we’re submitting into one document and printed it out. We’ll each do one more read-through, add our parts (Tim in the introduction, me in the afterword), and then send it on its way. I’ve said it before: I love being able to help writers find a home for their fiction.

Finally, today is the birthday of our late friend Steve R. As we do every year, we celebrated with chocolate–this year, a yellow cake with chocolate frosting. Lindsey and Rhonda joined us for dinner and cake.

That’s a lot of celebrating for one day, but note the picture of a baby in a silver frame behind the cake. That’s our godson Matthew when he was an infant. He’s eight now, and today was a special day for him, too. Matthew, Tom and I love you and we’re very proud of you!

And for those of you who follow Runway Monday, I won’t be getting my final collection up because sewing has had to take a back seat to editing. But if it’s not finished this week, it definitely will be by next Monday. Thanks for hanging in here with my Model Muses and their fashions.

Prompt from FMS Photo A Day.

Legacy Writing 365:359


“Mahkota” the Native Americans called the river. “Blue earth.” The name came from the fertile blue/black soil of the land along and beyond the river banks. It’s the land where he grew up, the land he farmed, the land that has fed so many of us since we first ventured into the territory that would become Minnesota.


It’s the land where he, just out of the Marines after serving in World War 2, brought his young bride from California to settle and raise seven children in a marriage that would celebrate sixty-six anniversaries.


It’s the land that gave him the fortitude and faith he needed to cope with the tragic illness and death of his firstborn son. This is how Tom and I came to know him. He never wavered in his love and acceptance of Steve, even though, like many parents of the 1980s, he learned that his son was gay and had AIDS in the same conversation. His pride in the man Steve was never faltered, and he would tell anyone the facts with his usual unflinching honesty.


I didn’t know the news when I wrote Sunday’s post. As Nan said in the card we received on Monday, you are with Steve and the angels now, Ron, no longer in the physical pain that was part of the last of your ninety-one years growing up on, living on, and working that rich blue earth. Thank you for being part of our lives. We will never forget you.

Legacy Writing 365:358

My late friend Steve R was interested in angels and anything to do with angels. He was, after all, the person who introduced me to the angel books that my friends are still embellishing and coloring for me all these years later.

In the months after Steve died, Lynne and I were visiting a ceramics shop close to the neighborhood where we lived in the Houston suburbs. We could buy greenware there, sand and clean it, then return it to be fired. This was my first experience with ceramics, and I decided to do this angel for Steve’s parents.

When Tom and I were able to go to Minnesota to visit them, I fell in love with their old farmhouse. Among some of its features were stained glass windows, and this window was in a wall between two rooms inside the house. The angel had a place of honor there, where Steve’s mother could look at her while she played her pipe organ.

They have since sold their farm and the old house and moved into a place that’s more manageable for them. I don’t know if they still have the angel, but I do know that everything about Steve remains close to their hearts, just as to my own heart. One reason I enjoy the Christmas holidays now is because I know how festive he’d make them if he were here. Sometimes the best way we can honor the memories and relationships of those we’ve lost is to celebrate life. It’s what those who loved us would want most for us–our happiness.

Legacy Writing 365:339

Our friend John died in the hospital of complications from AIDS on December 4, 1996. Neither Tom nor I can fathom that it’s been that long. I was there that night, and if I ever shared John’s equivalent of an E! True Hollywood Story, I’d probably be in serious hot water. I will leave it at this: There are compassionate ways to let someone go and lean on one another in a time of crisis, and then there is what happened that night. For a number of years, those events left me raw. Time helps, as does having other people who were there and have the same perspective that I did.

John’s love James was with him when he slipped away. Afterward, we went to John’s apartment, where his roommate gave us all the time we needed to do–oh, those kinds of things we might tell our best friends, “If I die, go to my place and get rid of X, Y, and Z before my family shows up.”

While we were doing that, James suddenly cracked up laughing and handed me this card.

“I was with him the day he bought this,” he said. “He intended to give it to you. I guess he forgot.”

I opened the card and read this:

When I looked at James with confusion, he reminded me of the first day John brought James to The Compound to meet Tom and me. I’d known John for several years and foolishly had been caught in the middle of a bad breakup between him and my beloved friend Jeff (who’d died in 1995). During the bad breakup, Jeff kept telling me things he thought John was doing to mess with his head, and I kept vowing that John would never do those things.

So on this visit with James and John, John began to tell me all the things Jeff had been right about. I sat there open-mouthed, occasionally sputtering, “I defended you, you brat!” As more stories were told, I had a few confessions of my own to make of things I’d done to help Jeff try to get accurate information about John. James and Tom laughed at our “True Confessions,” and later that afternoon, when James and John were in Montrose’s legendary (and now-closed) bookstore Crossroads, John picked up this card for me.

From time to time, I still use this phrase with my friends: “I think it’s time you turned yourself in,” to let them know that those things we do (and maybe hope no one finds out about) are probably more funny than awful. Within friendships, there should always be room for laughter and forgiveness.

I still remember, from tenth grade, the quote from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar: “The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.” With John, there was no evil. There was just life, and life can be crazy and messy and flawed and absolutely wonderful all at the same time. I’m so grateful I was part of his life; he will always be a part of me.

Legacy Writing 365:336–World AIDS Day

Tom and I drove to Salt Lake City for Thanksgiving of 2000. My brother, along with my nephew and his family, were there, as was our mother, and Debby flew in to spend the holiday with us as well. Margot went with us and experienced her first real snow. She wasn’t a fan, but since she saw David’s dog Bailey treating it like nothing special, she adjusted. Along with putting together a feast and watching lots of ball games on TV, we did some sewing.

I was hoping to finish my late friend Tim R’s AIDS Quilt panel before December 1.

So Mother worked on the panel.

And Debby worked on the panel.

Thanks to them, a lot of progress was made. It was a time of great bonding for us, and since Daniel’s son, Dave, who was seven at the time, was there, it was a chance to talk openly about some of the issues surrounding HIV and AIDS with a bright child to absorb information. Having endured with my late friends a time of silence about their illness and the challenges they faced, I know that honest discussion and education do more to help create a tolerant world, curtail the spread of the disease, and drive funding for better and more accessible health care for everyone.

When we returned to Houston after that trip, there was still work to be done.

But I wasn’t alone. Lynne worked on the panel, too.

And in a ceremony on World AIDS Day Eve in 2000, Tim’s parents, part of the support system that sustained him through his illness and made sure the last sounds he heard on earth included the laughter of his family at home around him, were able to give his panel to the NAMES Project.

Each year since 1992, I’ve done a World AIDS Day newsletter. At this point with all the resources available on the Internet, I’m not sure the information I provide is necessary. But what will never STOP being vital is that we remember the ones we lost. That we remind the world there were people here who were taken from us too soon. That we do everything we can to encourage people to be as safe as they can be to stop the transmission of the virus, to be tested so that they can get good healthcare quickly and not transmit the virus to anyone else, and to know that there is a world community who wants you to be here and healthy for a long, long time. You are needed. You matter.

For twenty-four years, World AIDS Day has been observed on December 1. The theme from 2011 to 2015 is Getting to Zero. I dream of that world with no new infections and no new AIDS deaths by 2015. I’ve seen amazing progress made since I first became involved with AIDS awareness and caregiving in 1990. I remember when so much of the struggle was just coping with bigotry, indifference, poverty, and fear. Those things have no place in the face of any disease, including AIDS.

With all the progress that’s been made, the largest group getting new infections is young adults and teens ages 13 to 29; sixty percent of them don’t know they’re infected. If you’re concerned about AIDS, be an advocate for testing. Be an advocate for accessible medical care. Be an advocate for compassion and outreach. There are so many organizations who can use your time, your voice, and your donations. Although I’m not doing my usual resource list, if there’s ever a time I can help any reader here find resources local to you, I will be happy to research information with you.

That Christmas after we all sewed on Tim’s panel, my mother sent me this ornament with a note about how we all worked together to honor Tim’s memory with our needles and thread. As you can see, a dog “altered” the ornament at some point in the intervening years. That’s okay. Just as with people, flaws become part of the story.

Thank you for reading here. I write in memory of Steve R, Don P, Jeff C, John M, Pete M, Tim R and all those loved and lost.

Legacy Writing 365:331

It’s time once again to break out the story of the Angel Books.

I first became acquainted with these through my friend Steve R in the early 1990s. Though I’d been a fan of Christmas in my younger years, the luster of the holiday faded for me after my father died. My two biggest Christmas advocates, Lynne and Liz, lived far away from me, as did most of my family. It really took Steve, whose excitement about Christmas never wavered even when he was sickest, and our friend Tim R, who went all out for the holiday with his decorating-passionate mother, to melt the holiday icicles encasing my heart.

Steve had found, at Bookstop, one of these books of angels, based on women in Renaissance paintings, to color. That was a period when I’d developed a passion for Renaissance art, thanks to Houston’s museums and a past-life regression I experienced. The angels intrigued me, so Lynne and I bought a few books and began coloring, painting, and otherwise decorating angels. After Steve died, the tradition continued. Though the books are out of print, one year Marika found several and dispersed angels among some of our friends to color and surprise me. I was thrilled to receive new angels from around the globe, and they’ve joined the many angels that Tim arranges throughout the house each Christmas season.

Thank you to everyone who’s ever colored one of these angels for me. There are still angels left to turn into art if you’re interested in contributing one to this festive band.


Dining room windows.


Living room window.


Double windows in living room.


Angels now spill over to nestle among stones and crystals.