| PageOneQ Pridelets for August 24
by
Thomas Allen Heald
 ON THIS DAY
On this day in 1981, playwright and reluctant activist Larry Kramer (pictured) makes an impassioned plea in "The New York Native": "It's difficult to write this without sounding alarmist or too emotional or just plain scared... If I had written this a mouth ago, I would have used the figure '40.' If I had written this last week, I would have needed '80.' Today I must tell you that 120 gay men In the United States -- most of them here In New York -- are suffering from an often lethal form of canter called Kaposi's sarcoma or from a virulent form of pneumonia that may be associated with it. More than thirty have died. By the time you read this, the necessary figures may be much higher. The majority of Kaposi cases are being tended to at New York University Medical Center... Money is desperately needed, both for both research which is going on around and for chemotherapy for many of many of the patients who have no money or medical insurance. I hope you will write a check and get your friends to write one, too. This is our disease and we must take care of each other and ourselves. In the past we have often been a divided community, I hope we can all get together on this emergency, undivided cohesively, and with all the numbers we in so many ways harness." (Kramer hasn't calmed down yet.)
BIRTHGAYS (and the occasional straights):
* 1694 - German adventurer Theodor Baron Neuhof, who convinced the Corsicans to make him "King Theodore I"
* 1957 - Oscar Wilde portrayer / "Jeeves and Wooster, "Black Adder," "HGTTG," and "Whose Line Is It Anyway?" comedian Stephen Fry
Q.UOTE
"The press like to talk to actors. They mustn't be surprised when actors talk back to them. We are privileged that we have access to the media and our opinions sometimes are reported and I appreciate that. But I only speak on things that I am an expert on...You won't hear me talk about my politics, you won't hear me talk about my vegetarianism, you won't hear me comment on the Iraq war. You'll only hear me talk about being gay and being an actor. I am just public on those two issues."
-- Ian McKellen
THE BEDSIDE TABLE
"AIDS, While The World Sleeps" by Chris Bull with foreword by Larry Kramer
An estimated 40 million people live with HIV, the precursor virus to AIDS, the most devastating disease that humankind has ever faced. Most people with HIV will die of the disease within the decade, and in Africa, where in the sub-Saharan states HIV/AIDS is the leading cause of death, over two million people died in 2001 alone. AIDS has profoundly changed the world.
Now in "AIDS: A World Changed," longtime gay journalist and author Chris Bull has assembled a landmark collection that will be necessary reading for a broad and diverse constituency, from public health students and professionals to academics, activists, policy makers, and the millions whose lives have been indelibly marked by the epidemic. Included are essays, polemics, fiction, and investigative journalism—pieces that helped us to understand the epidemic and its ramifications and that have withstood the test of time—including Larry Kramer’s incendiary manifesto “1,112 and Counting,” and selections from Mark Schoofs’s Pulitzer prize–winning series AIDS: The Agony of Africa and from Tony Kushner’s Angels in America.
This long-overdue collection also includes the most important writing on AIDS by Michael Bronski, Gabriel Rotello, Jeffrey Escoffier, Cindy Patton, Randy Shilts, Michael Callen, Susan Sontag, Paul Monette, Donna Minkowitz, Barbara Smith, Amber Hollibaugh, Gore Vidal, Jeffrey Schmaltz, Michaelangelo Signorile, Judith Valente, and many others.
This work is copyright© 2007 Thomas Allen Heald, all rights all rights reserved. Brought to you by the power, passion, and pride of PageOneQ.com. Additional material provided by publishers. Contact the author at tom@idontgetit.org. Archives may be found at Pridelets.com.
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Originally published on Friday August 24, 2007.
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