Tag: aids

Designing Women (and Mark G. Harris)

In my recent LJ Runway Monday post, I mentioned fabric that I was given by Lynne and Lindsey. I’m sure you’ll be seeing more of Lynne’s donations, but there are some other people I’d like to mention, too. Kathy S saved a couple of bags of fabric scraps from being thrown away and brought them to me. I’ve gone through them and found some delightful little pieces that will be fun for designs. There are also a couple of pieces that are too large a scale for Barbie, like this one:

but you never know what use my trusty sewing machine and I might find for that. Be afraid. Yes, I’m talking to YOU.

Then, last night, I thought to go by the post office, where I found packages from Mark G. Harris and my LJ/FB/Twitter buddy Rain Wolfe. Mark sent some fabrics that he knew I’d love–thanks so much, Mark! There was also fabric in Rain Wolfe’s package. Of course, I’m not going to show y’all ANY of these fabrics because then it wouldn’t be a surprise when I use them in my designs. But I bring all this up for a reason.


Included in ‘s package was a book I’d never seen called The Art of Barbie. As described by the Daily Telegraph, the book, which came out in 2000 just after Barbie’s 40th birthday, presents “Unique and individual interpretations of Barbie by a diverse and glittering range of artists, photographers, designers and sculptors.” These include such fashion icons as Missoni, Prada, Jimmy Choo, and Paloma Picasso, among dozens of others. Considering my enjoyment of Barbie and fashion, it’s a perfect fit! Even better, all of the sales of the created designs and art, as well as all of Mattel’s licensing royalties, went to The Elton John AIDS Foundation. What a brilliant gift!


There is one distressing note. Tucked inside the book was this fantastic bookmark made by MouseRug. Their products are not just for mouse pads and bookmarks. Abby happened to be here because I was photographing her for a Flickr contact, and she pounced on my bookmark and claimed it for her loft apartment.

Oh, well, it is the Qashqa’i shekarlu rug, copied from the one that was draped over Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic couch. Maybe this will give Abby some interesting dreams.

Thank you all for the terrific surprises. I think you were instrumental in making my headache go away so I could finish my last painting well before the end of the week!

Photo Friday, No. 177

Current Photo Friday theme: Best of 2009


Note about this photo: I haven’t previously published the photo that I thought was my best one in 2009. I took it in Galveston in August. I was just trying to get the contrast of the child’s dark skin and clothes against the bright sky, and I had to photograph her fast because she never stopped moving.

It was only after I uploaded the photo that I saw the bit of graffiti I’d inadvertently captured on the lower right of the photo. I found it so disturbing in the context of photographing a child that I was reluctant to share it (even though I thought it made a powerful image). For me, not much is more soul-numbing than the death of a child from disease, injury, or violence. The United Nations made the decrease in mortality rates for children under age five one of their Millennium Development Goals. It goes without saying that poverty and HIV/AIDS have an enormous impact on this fragile population.

The reason I decided to share the photo after all is because of a report in September showing that as of 2008, global child mortality rates are continuing to decline. I was particularly moved by a quote from Caryl Stern, President and CEO, U.S. Fund for UNICEF:

“Statistics tend to be clinical and antiseptic, however the practical, real world implications of this development cannot be ignored. These new numbers illustrate that 1,500 more kids a day are waking up to see the sunrise, play with their friends and make their mothers smile.”

That’s a “best of” worth sharing.

There are no accidents

Lindsey has been preparing/finishing a series of canvases and prints with the theme of repurposed materials/urban sprawl that she and Tom just hung at Té House of Tea this morning. To keep me company and share mutual encouragement, she did some of her work here at The Compound while I finished sewing my final collection.

She also brought in a blank 18 x 24 canvas and stuck it under my nose. I often note that I can’t paint on larger canvases. All that white space intimidates me, and I’m used to working on 3 x 5-INCH and 4 x 6-INCH canvases for One Word Art, the paintings I sell to raise money for AIDS and HIV organizations. Lindsey suggested that I visualize the canvas in sections and paint them as I normally would the small canvases. I’m not sure she meant for me to take her so literally, but that’s what I did.

When I put down my base coat, every section was a shade of blue or green except one, which I painted red. I jokingly said that I was going to call it “Green and Blue and Red.” And then, as I layered on colors, I finally said the painting was just “Red.”

While Lindsey and I were painting, we were joined by Tim, who started a couple of canvases of his own (in oils, which I love, love, love to smell, since I only work in acrylics), Tom spent some time sketching, and Rhonda helped Lindsey stamp and finish her title and price cards to hang next to her finished works. The creative energy was amazing, and Lindsey occasionally checked out my painting, at one point saying that it reminded her of a patchwork quilt.

Did the suggestion of quilt panels put something in my head? (If you’ve read here long, you know I’m a several-time panel maker for the NAMES Project’s AIDS Memorial Quilt.) Was I subconsciously remembering that World AIDS day was upon us once again? (Because in all honesty, I’ve been so wrapped up in sewing and other things that I only realized with a jolt at midnight that it was December 1.)

I don’t know, but when Lindsey came by this morning to pick up her paintings and Tom, she reminded me of (Red)™ and pointed out that my painting and its title were the perfect way to mark World AIDS Day 2009.

I dedicate this to all of you who are living with HIV/AIDS. You’re not alone; worldwide, we’re still fighting the fight with you by giving our time, our money, and our efforts to raise awareness.


Red, 2009

World AIDS Day, December 1

World AIDS Day was first recognized in 1988 and has become a day to raise money and awareness, fight prejudice against those with HIV/AIDS, and improve education about the virus. The World AIDS Day theme for 2009 is “Universal Access and Human Rights.”

According to UNAIDS estimates, there are now 33.4 million people living with HIV, including 2.1 million children. During 2008, approximately 2.7 million people became newly infected with the virus and an estimated two million people died from illnesses caused by AIDS.

Around half of all people who become infected with HIV do so before they are 25 and are killed by AIDS before they are 35. HIV hasn’t gone away, and there’s still a lot of work to be done toward its management and eradication. The red ribbon pin in this post’s user photo sits on the window ledge in front of me to remind me of that every day.

Each time I put on my jewelry, I wear my Until There’s A Cure bracelet in honor of the beautiful friends I’ve lost because of AIDS. Not a single day of my life goes by that I don’t think of them.

I was so fortunate to have known them.

Steve R, Don P, Jeff C, John M, Tim R, Pete M

Another one bites the dust

It was different from all the other stores in the Bookstop chain. The people who worked there had a certain attitude–not quite as “customer-friendly” as the one trained into Bookstop employees in different stores. The attitude came with the neighborhood. Their customers seemed to expect and even like the rudeness, much as tourists crave the same from NYC cab drivers or the French. Such attitude gives us stories that usually end with a shake of the head and a slow smile of acceptance that we’ve joined a community of the skillfully insulted.

When Barnes & Noble bought the chain, only the Alabama Theater Bookstop got to keep its name, as if to reassure customers that nothing important to them would change–and the exterior, with its blazing marquee and art deco facade, rated high on the list of importance.

Over time, Bookstop’s next-door-neighbor, Cactus Records, disappeared, but Whole Earth Provision Company expanded to fill the empty space. Another neighbor, Whole Foods, moved to a new location across from the Borders down the street, but was replaced by a Petsmart. The copy place turned into a restaurant, then a different restaurant, but Bookstop stayed, lighting up the night, luring customers with the promise of multi-levels of book browsing, a magazine off the stand in the mezzanine, a cup of coffee or tea from the barista in the balcony, an impromptu conversation with a fellow shopper, and beautifully preserved walls and ceiling.

Now B&N has been lured to a tonier address in a new development a few blocks away–across from the River Oaks Theater, also a beloved landmark. No one knows what will become of the Alabama Theater Bookstop, but we all know this is a city that loves to level and rebuild. So we wait and see what an improving economy will bring and hope developers are listening–the chatter seems to have made them back off a plan to tear down the River Oaks theater, at least for now.


On the night when I took these photos, the doors of the Alabama Theater Bookstop closed for the last time not just on a store, but on a piece of my history. It was here I met a person who would reshape my personal and political landscape in ways I never imagined. I miss him.

And I will miss this place.

It was a Sunday seventeen years ago, too

I’m never sure how to talk about the dead.

When I first met Timothy and Jim and Timmy back in the chat room that would form the playground for our friendships and the fertile ground for our writing relationships, I spoke so much of the friends I’d lost. My grief was new, and I knew that I was talking to people who either shared or feared similar losses. They provided my safe place to exorcise some demons, celebrate some angels, and ultimately, to heal.

Those griefs are older now. They’ve been supplanted by more recent losses. The absences of those friends are no less significant to me, but they’re not as sharp. Even though their deaths cut a deep swath through my emotional landscape, I’m not, by nature, a person who will stand too near an abyss for too long. I move on, and I look for reasons to laugh and feel good and be silly and enjoy what I have.

When Steve died from complications from AIDS on that Sunday, June 14, 1992, the hurt was overwhelming and magnified by my disappointment with our government and my frustration with what tiny progress had been made by medicine and science. And of course, I was much younger then, so it wasn’t surprising that I heard myself saying, I will never feel joy again.

I’m so glad I was wrong about that. I’m glad for my own sake as well as for the people who love me, because how wretched it must have been for them to watch as I got hammered by one blow after another from 1992 to 1997.

And now, sometimes, I feel reticent to speak of those losses because what I do not want, am never seeking, is sympathy. I’m sorry my friends are dead. I’m sorry that they got cheated out of years they should have enjoyed. I’m sorry for the families and friends who cherished them and miss them. I’m sorry for the world that such bright lights–and all the other bright lights who also suffered and were lost–were extinguished. And of course I’m sorry that my time with them was cut short. But I’m not sorry for me, because I got to know them! I got to love them and be loved by them! And I still feel their impact on my life in profound ways.

They are lost in some ways, but they aren’t lost in all ways.

In a larger sense, they were part of one of the most catastrophic events of the twentieth century, and what they endured has helped extend the lives of people into this century. But when I talk about them, to note incidents in their lives or their birthdays or the anniversaries of their deaths, it’s because I believe those millions of the world’s losses must always be narrowed down to real faces, real lives, real friends and sons and brothers (and for others: fathers, mothers, sisters, and daughters).

Timothy was driving us to the gym Sunday afternoon. I stared from my passenger side window and was annoyed to feel tears sliding down my face. Earlier, I’d looked at the clock at the exact time Steve died on that Sunday, June 14, 1992, and I went numb. I didn’t expect feeling to come back when I was doing something so mundane as going to the gym (though it does happen to have also been Steve’s gym). I made myself a promise. If I didn’t cry right then, when I got in the water and no one could tell anyway, I’d get to cry. I don’t know why I make these deals with myself, because if there’s anyone I’ll cry in front of and talk to about what I’m feeling, it’s Tim. He never says anything stupid or unkind when that happens. But whatever, that was what was in my head.

Only as I walked at the edge of the pool to my lane, a man passed me. A familiar face.

“Charlie?” I asked hesitantly. He turned, trying to place me. “Becky,” I said. “John’s friend.”

Through Steve I met Jeff (died 1995). Through Jeff, I met John (died 1996). Charlie was John’s roommate when John died. I haven’t seen Charlie since 1997, when he came to The Compound one evening with some others to sign or add things to a Names Quilt Panel made for John by our friend Pete (died 2002).

We talked and caught up, in that rapid-fire way people do, then he said, “Sometimes I still feel John’s presence very strongly.”

So do I, Charlie. I feel all of them still working their miracles of friendship and love in my life.

I didn’t cry in the pool.

Tim knows me so well

Only Tim would think to text me this link, knowing I would care that Ethan Zohn, winner of Survivor: Africa decided to cut off all his hair after starting chemo for CD20-positive Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. Ethan is a favorite Survivor contestant of mine, and my admiration for him grew when he donated some of his game winnings to start Grassroot Soccer, an organization mobilizing the global soccer community to fight the AIDS epidemic in Africa.

Zohn’s longtime girlfriend Jenna Morasca, winner of Survivor: Amazon, has said she’ll stay by Zohn’s side every step of the way. Both have lost a parent to cancer. I was glad to read they’re still together and send out good thoughts for the best possible outcome for the couple and their families.


Jenna Morasca and Ethan Zohn

Houston Friends

This is among my favorite days in Houston, one of the biggest “eating out” cities I’ve ever been in, because it’s Dining Out for Life. Participating restaurants give 33 OR MORE percent of the day’s proceeds to AIDS Foundation Houston. Having seen firsthand the way AFH helped my friends, I’m always happy to donate to their organization. Tom donates his time to them every Saturday.

Today, for us, it’ll have to be Taking Out For Life. I have one of my hellish headaches and can’t imagine sitting in a restaurant. I don’t have much of an appetite at the moment, but I think food from Barnaby’s will hit the spot later tonight. Here’s a link for the names of other local restaurants who are part of this effort. Please support them today and all year!

Last year, Houston raised more than $80,000 on this day, and more than $4 million is raised throughout North America yearly. This link will give you the list of the 3500-plus restaurants participating in Dining Out For Life internationally.

This nearly was mine

While mulling over ideas and possibilities and even some outlines of what I want to write next, I feel increased pressure to do something creative for my own well-being. I mentioned a project I’m working on, but I’m not ready to post photos of it yet (though I’m closer after getting some advice from Lindsey and Lynne last night).

I took my camera with me on a walk on Tuesday just in case I saw anything worth shooting. I took a lot of photos, finally realizing that I seemed more interested in textures than anything else. It’s been almost two years since I did any of my small paintings that I sell to give the proceeds to AIDS assistance organizations, and I’m hoping Tuesday’s photos will inspire more paintings.

I threw the photos into a Flickr set and kept it public, though I imagine the photos won’t be of much interest to anyone unless you, too, can be inspired by photos of not much more than texture or color.

The photo on the left is of part of a two-story duplex in the neighborhood. It was one of two places that Tom suggested I see after he did initial legwork when we were in the market for a house fourteen years ago. I never went inside it, because The Compound bungalow was my one-and-only. As soon as I stepped inside the front door, I knew it was meant to be mine. Still, even though I never looked at the duplex, my feelings for it remind me of certain flirtations from my long-ago past: enduring affection for what might have been mine.

Memories

This is Hallmark’s 1995 Holiday Memories Barbie. She was designed to commemorate 85 years of Hallmark, who described her as wearing an early twentieth century outfit (with “faux fur”) to go shopping for holiday postcards on a snowy afternoon. I think she’s got the right idea. In these days of e-mail, texting, and easy accessibility by phone, there’s something special about getting a card, a letter, or a postcard in snail-mail. Receiving and sending cards are two of the things I like best about December.

On this day last year, The Compound was in upheaval, Tim was in Maine, and Rex was lonesome. And as always, I was thinking about my friend John and imagining what trouble he’d be charming his way out of if he were still around.