October 2010 - My Journey with AIDS

Clint “I-like-it-when-gays-die” McCance speaks to CNN’s Anderson Cooper: brain farts maybe?

Thursday night AC360’s Anderson Cooper interviewed the Vice-President of Midland School District in Arkansas whose Facebook rants against gays, “fags”, “queers”, the recent rash of publicized gay suicides of five young men and boys, and his mocking of...

Published Thu, Oct 28 2010 11:32 PM by My journey with AIDS...and more!

Filed under: youth, activism, YouTube, sexual orientation, gender, homosexuality, social conservatives, homophobia, youth suicide, restorative justice

Medical update: great news!

When I last checked in about my health I had received some upsetting, though not surprising, results after being off my HIV meds for a few months. Six weeks or so later, the results are in after being back on everything and my immune system has bounced...

Published Thu, Oct 28 2010 9:45 AM by My journey with AIDS...and more!

Filed under: AIDS and HIV, mental health, medical update, viral load, CD-4, type-II diabetes

Kodak moments or scenes

View Full Album I am sticking my neck out and entering a photo contest. Actually I’ve already sent my entry in. Would I be jinxing my chances if I told you which of these five finalists, from my extensive collection, I...

Published Thu, Oct 28 2010 4:25 AM by My journey with AIDS...and more!

Filed under: Uncategorized

Clint McCance is a man who should be run out of Arkansas

This idiot’s 15 minutes (I don’t expect he’d know what that means) will, hopefully, soon be over but surely not before he loses his elected job on the Midland, Arkansas school board. Anderson Cooper set the story up this way last evening: It turns out...

Published Thu, Oct 28 2010 12:04 AM by My journey with AIDS...and more!

Filed under: youth, child abuse, politics, YouTube, mental health, sexual orientation, homosexuality, queer, social conservatives, bullying, homophobia, youth suicide, Clint McCance, Midland Arkansas

A Facebook friend writes, “Please tell the story behind this picture!”

Happy to do so, Barbara, particularly because I have so little to lose with this tale ever-imprinted on my Facebook history. I’m not getting any younger, however, so my memory may not be one hundred percent. Halloween, preceded as it is a few days earlier...

Published Mon, Oct 25 2010 11:31 PM by My journey with AIDS...and more!

Filed under: autobiography, Toronto, friendship, Halloween, facebook, drag

Sticks and Stones…

I’d imagine it must be painful for a parent to have to impart to their children those familiar words, “Sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me.” I was certainly skeptical. Long before summoning the courage to come out to my parents...

Published Wed, Oct 20 2010 5:15 PM by My journey with AIDS...and more!

Filed under: youth, activism, social justice, YouTube, sexual orientation, gender, homosexuality, queer, social conservatives, Wear purple, Stop Homophobia, bullying

“Changing My Mind” could change yours – about mental illness and Margaret Trudeau

This is an autobiography, her third, of someone whose slow-motion train wreck – no, a series of fast-moving train wrecks – was seen, at least in part, by political watchers and gossip magazine readers the world over. We suspect the ending...

Published Tue, Oct 19 2010 2:50 PM by My journey with AIDS...and more!

Filed under: mental illness, mental health, bipolar, stigma, recovery, Margaret Trudeau, Policy and Advocacy, Substance abuse

View from roof-top near High Park, Toronto

Brother André

Millions of Roman Catholic pilgrims climb the 283 steps to St. Joseph’s Oratory – praying on their knees. In the early days of my AIDS diagnosis I used to go to a “healing mass” at Our Lady of Lourdes on Sherbourne Street here in Toronto...

Published Thu, Oct 14 2010 11:50 PM by My journey with AIDS...and more!

Filed under: AIDS and HIV, spirituality, Québec, Montréal, faith, church, Brother André

A stroke of spirit

Jill Bolte Taylor, author of “My Stroke of Insight” and featured in a popular TED lecture, was this week’s guest on CBC Radio’s Tapestry program. I still get goose-bumps listening to her story, in which she “experienced that...

Published Sun, Oct 03 2010 10:42 AM by My journey with AIDS...and more!

Filed under: autobiography, spirituality, YouTube, mental health, euphoria, Jill Bolte Taylor, Mary Hines, brain, CBC Radio "Tapestry"