Turkeys

Pocono Turkey 2008 © Frank H. Jump

Back in the old days of ACT UP demos when I was an active participant in the endless chanting “How many more have to die?” – some of the more cynical of us (Ron Goldberg- are you listening?) would ask – Who is Harmony Moore and WHY does she have to die?

On a much lighter note, there aren’t as many turkeys being slaughtered as chickens – and most of the almost defrosted turkeys to be devoured tomorrow (can’t wait to get mine stuffed and in the oven) have already died months ago.

There’s another week until World AIDS Day and not one day goes by when I’m not reminded I’ve been living with a killer virus for over half of my life. That being said, I do have much for which to be thankful-

I am gainfully employed & fulfilled by my career in a period of the worst unemployment in decades.
I’m in a loving & committed relationship with the love of my life for over 21 years.
My health, aside from producing outrageously high triglycerides, is better than the average fifty year old American man.
And although I do experience the blues more than I ever have before, the bouts aren’t debilitating and I always manage to rebound.

It doesn’t look like I’m going to be releasing my Fading Ad book on World AIDS Day as planned. I don’t want to rush and I’ve been very busy with the service learning curriculum around HIV/AIDS I’ve been developing at my school. Perhaps after the holidays will be a more realistic goal, even though I would have liked the eBook out for the holiday buying season. Our recent loss of data with BLUEHOST (who takes no responsibility for the server failure) has been remedied. Fortunately I’ve been a digital pack rat and had almost all of my files backed up (somewhere).

Well, I’m not usually much of a talker [here] and posting daily photos (obsessively) is really my forté, so I won’t bore you with any more of my psychobabble. But do drop me a line and let me know it isn’t all for naught. Happily, my friends are no longer dying in droves and it looks as if I’ll be around at least until retirement. I must reiterate that The Fading Ad Campaign remains a metaphor for survival, if not just from AIDS but from disenchantment- from a wearing down of that naïve optimism that has buoyed me for these first fifty years – and a metaphor of surviving a rabid anti-Progressive, Right Wing movement that is hell-bent on causing this Administration’s failure. Turkeys!