back from the mile high city

hi all,

miss me? :-) i'm back from denver where we had an awesome hair show & will blog more about that later...

but first, i got an email today about an interesting sounding never give up that i thought i'd share with all of you - the author, kevin winge, is the head of an amazing organization in minneapolis called open arms of minnesota. open arms is one of the beneficiaries of the red ribbon ride, which you've all heard me talk about in the past. open arms is a meals-on-wheels type of program founded originally to serve the hiv/aids community & has recently begun to also serve the breast cancer, ms & als communities. i also had the huge honor of having kevin speak at the opening ceremonies of the ride. i will be forever be humbled by his words and actions... he's an amazing man.

"A few days into the new year of 2004, I was walking down a hospital corridor toward the room of a friend who was dying, when I had a flashback. Just for a moment, it felt like it was 1995 and I was in a hospital in upstate New York, approaching the room of another friend who was also dying. Of course it wasn't 1995. I wasn't in New York, and I wasn't visiting my gay white friend who was dying of AIDS. It was a new year in a new century. I was in Cape Town, South Africa, and this time the friend dying of AIDS was a black mother of three children.

"Two friends: a wealthy, white, gay man in America and a poor, black mother in South Africa. The only thing they had in common was that they died of AIDS. Yet, when I think of Nombulelo, John creeps into my memory. And when I think of HIV/AIDS in South Africa today, IÂ’m transported back to the start of the AIDS epidemic in the U.S. in the 1980s. I keep asking the question: don't we have a responsibility to help people living with HIV/AIDS wherever in the world they live?"

~ Kevin Winge

i urge you to check out the book - it looks like an interesting and timely read. i'll be picking up a copy tonight.