The three biggest holidays of the year are upon us. Thanksgiving - when we gather with our families and eat more food in one sitting than most third world villages see in a year.  Christmas - when the battle of who spent more, and who got bigger and better gifts, ensues. And New Years - when everyone gets dressed to the nines, goes out, proceeds to get drunk and then pukes in their neighbour's bushes.

This, though, is the one time of year that I truly get excited, because along with all of the aforementioned traditions, people start acting nice!  They call it holiday cheer. Neighbors start helping each other more, people in traffic tend to cut you off less. It is these small things that I look forward to all year long.

But this year it seems holiday cheer is either in very short supply or is extremely late in its arrival.

I look around and all I see are people bitching and complaining about frivolous things  - and I find myself wanting to whack people over the head with a wreath. I mean who gives a shit if you can't afford the new iPhone4. What the hell is wrong with the iPhone3 you bought less than a year ago? You can't get a date for Saturday night? Suck it up and put on your big boy panties, call some friends and just have a game night, or something. I mean if people died because they didn't get laid by some hung stud every Saturday night I would have dropped dead about ten years ago!

One of the biggest things that has irked me about this year’s lack of holiday cheer has to do with the simplest of gestures that, to me anyway, is a big deal. Christmas cards. It's big for me because I have a ton of friends and family and while I would love to get each and every one of them a gift, living on a $700 a month disability check just doesn't make it possible. But what are possible are Christmas cards.

As I was compiling my Christmas card list I ran into some names that I didn't have addresses for, so I made phone calls and emails to procure said addresses and was shocked and appalled at some of the responses I got. While everyone was willing to give me their address so that they may receive a card, there were a lot of “OMG people still send actual cards?” And “OK. here's my address, but you’re wasting time and postage cause you won’t get one back from me, I don't bother with Christmas cards!”

Am I truly the only person left on earth that actually sits down and writes out Christmas cards?  I remember as a child, one of my favorite things about Christmas, aside from decorating the tree, was opening the mailbox and finding cards in there. My mother used to let us open and read them and then scotch tape them around the doorway.

Has this become a bygone tradition? Has the world become do digital that it is beyond people to actually write out cards in lieu of mass e-mails and e cards? Have we really become such an impersonal society?

So here is my holiday request for all of you; quit your bitching, buy a box of Christmas cards and take an hour off from facebook and let those people in your life know that you’re thinking of them. Hell you don't even have to licks stamps, they come pre-sticky now.

Getting Christmas cards in my mailbox is still one of my favourite things about the holiday season. Give it a try, you might be surprised!

Thank you for reading.

XXOO Danny

So I was in a committee meeting with a local HIV/AIDS organization that I sit on the board of. We were discussing plans and events for this year’s World AIDS Day (December 1^st). A committee member asked me if I could imagine a world free of HIV/AID., I looked at her and said “no I can't imagine that. Just being realistic, and to be perfectly honest, I am not hoping for a world free of HIV/AIDS.” The entire room went silent, all eyes on me, and said committee member was looking as if I had just called her the whore of Babylon and pushed her grandmother down the stairs.

“How can you sit on this committee and think like that?” she demanded of me. “Very easily” I replied. With the entire room looking at me like I had just insisted the earth was flat and the pope wears a pink satin garter belt from Victoria's Secret, I decided it best to explain myself.

It's all too huge, too widespread. The world has been trying to contain this virus for thirty years to no avail Yes,we have made great strides in controlling it, but containing it? Impossible. There are far too many areas in this world where access to care and medications are either so limited or just non-existent for this pandemic to ever be contained. I’m not trying to be a kill joy here, but just stating reality as I see it, the reality of HIV/AIDS that the world is facing - in my opinion.

Not nearly enough people are getting tested, resulting in millions of people around the world who are positive, without treatment, not using condoms, unknowingly infecting others. It's a roller coaster domino effect that we have yet to break. Have we slowed the roller coaster down? Yes, definitely. Have we come close to shutting it down for good? The unfortunate truth is no, not even close.

Am I saying that I have giving up hope on us ever conquering HIV? ABSOLUTELY NOT! I will never give up that hope - 'til my dying day I will stand and fight. And speaking of my dying day, this brings me to my second point on why I am not holding my breath for a world free of HIV.

As far as I can see, and I can see pretty far, (I just got new glasses), there are two ways of obtaining a world free of HIV, One is very unlikely, and the other is just unthinkable.

First, find a cure and vaccine. But science has been busting it's ass for nearly 30 years and hasn't made too much headway there. I am not saying science should give up, I'm just not holding my breath on that avenue. I just don't see it happening. Again MY opinion.

Second, to eradicate AIDS, everyone living with HIV/AIDS would have to die. Start from scratch with an untainted world population. Now I don't know about you, but I have SERIOUS issues with this option for very simple reasons. I'M NOT READY TO DIE! Nor am I ready for the many friends, colleagues, and well every other infected person in the world to just buy the farm. It's just that simple.

What I do hope for is a world where every person gets tested, every person knows their status, every uninfected person protects themselves, and every infected person has the care, medications, and support they need to live long, happy and healthy lives. This is what I am working towards. This is my wish this World AIDS Day.

Thank you for reading. XXOO Danny

(Editors note: Read what POZ magazine has to say about ending the epidemic here.)

This disease will be the end of many of us, but not nearly all, and the dead will be commemorated and will struggle on with the living, and we are not going away. We won’t die secret deaths anymore. The word only spins forward. We will be citizens. The time has come.

— Tony Kushner, Angels in America, Part Two: Perestroika (1992)

I was born in 1981, the year the first case of AIDS (then identified as GRID) was documented. Growing up during the AIDS pandemic meant that I was not immune from the danger, fear and loss associated with the pandemic. But as a mere child, I was also protected from the worst.

This week, ACG screened the documentary film We Were Here. (An excellent review of the movie by John McCullagh can be read on PositiveLite.Com). What is captured in the film, beyond the magnitude of death, suffering and loss from the AIDS epidemic? The incredible will, the selflessness of people who were affected, infected, and dying - and their creative, spirited, unstoppable drive to make change and save lives.

We Were Here reveals just a few of the civil rights attacks on gay men and HIV positive people in the 1980s. There were discussions around quarantine, unethical research practices, the closure of bathhouses, testing without consent, and job loss due to HIV. The civil rights attacks were not limited to the States. In Canada, activists fought the same forms of discrimination, including bathhouse closures, restrictions on blood donation, and attacks against gay men’s sexuality, just to name a few.

AIDS Activism hasn’t just been about life and death, it has also been about protecting people’s human rights – the right to self-determination. Early AIDS Activism changed so much, beyond the scope of the disease; it changed the way health care and support services are provided in America, and in Canada.  When the Denver Principles were written, “people with AIDS” were identified as more than patients – as agents, as people - who needed to be in control of their health care, treatment, sex life, and their destiny. At this point the role of health-care providers was clarified – “to serve people, whether the treatment is AIDS or anything else.”

While reading “AIDS Activist” by Ann Silversides (on Michael Lynch and AIDS Activism in Toronto), I was struck by how fundamental AIDS Activism has been in shifting to a more inclusive, ethical, patient-centred kind of research and treatment. When a federal government created an Ad Hoc Task Force on AIDS, the chairman responded to complaints that the Task Force did not contain members of risk groups by saying that having interest groups involved in scientific, technical discussions would not be appropriate. When Ontario developed an Advisory Committee on medical service needs, the question was again raised if the gay community would be represented. Ontario Health Minister Larry Grossman replied, “We have an advisory committee on cancer and we don’t have cancer victims on it.”

Enough said. Reading this reminded me of how far we have come towards recognizing people living with HIV as citizens. Through the Denver Principles, the Paris Declaration, the UNAIDS endorsement of GIPA, we have, in conjunction with better treatment and greater awareness of the social determinants of health, helped to align civil and human rights with medical and social service delivery.

The impact is extraordinary.

How different my work would look if I was working here at ACG 15 or 20 years ago.  On ACG’s website, a peer blogger who blogs by the name Church Mouse has been documenting her experience of love and loss and living with HIV in the ‘90s. In one post, “The Soldier Within,” Church Mouse describes disclosing her status to her mother… with her support worker by her side. I can’t help but imagine what a different role the support workers and volunteers at ASOs played then – something I will never experience. Today, in 2011, a great deal of my work in Positive Prevention involves creating workshops and training courses that promote health and wellness among people living with HIV. In a way, most of my work focuses on the top two tiers of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs: esteem and self-actualization.  I am grateful for those who have made room for this to be possible.

There is one more reason for me to be grateful to those have fought in the AIDS war.  Like all of you reading this, my life has been deeply enriched by people in it who are living with HIV. I am grateful for the HIV positive people in my life who make me laugh, inspire me, support me and who have taught me much more than anything I could ever have hoped to learn in graduate school. People living with HIV are my friends, mentors, co-workers; they are my community.  It has occurred to me that without the AIDS activists who struggled in those early years, I would not have the same people in my life today. It is an eerie feeling, and I can only resolve it by expressing gratitude for the energy, commitment and dedication of those whose hard work has allowed my life to be enriched by so many people living with HIV.

The story is not over.  Today we are fighting criminalization, stigma, rising infection rates and the ever-stubborn “isms” and “phobias”. We don’t know what the future holds for those aging with HIV, there is still no cure, no vaccine and meds that are not exactly side-effect free.  We have a lot of work to do. And yet I feel the urge to pause and reflect and say - to those who have worked for a better future for us all, to those who have died and to those living with HIV - thank you.

It's Monday night at 11:39 pm and I've just come in from hanging out with some of the guys from the HIV support group that I have the honour to attend from time to time. Afterwards, about 10 or so of us went out to have coffee at a local diner. It's been a while since I've been to the group because many people I do HIV peer support and education for also attend the group. I want them to be able to express themselves without feeling like I am there to observe them.

However tonight I needed to be around people who have been in this struggle for some time, to take in some of their wisdom. I also wanted to be around the people who are newly diagnosed and maybe offer them a glimmer of hope. I am very glad I took time out to do this for myself.

When I think of World AIDS Day, so much comes into my mind, so many feelings, some good and some bad, but right now I'd like to simply take a moment to honour all those who have lost their life to AIDS, including members of my own family and close friends of my family. I also want to honour four men that lost their battle with AIDS. It is because of them that I work so hard at trying to make things better for others.

When I think of what World AIDS Day represents for me, it represents LIFE, but more so, an abundant life, filled with my awesome circle of friends, colleagues and supporters. I live full of joy and even a bit of pain. But at the end of the day I have the ability to wake up with full activity in my limbs, a sound mind and the with thehonour of serving those now LIVING with HIV as best I can.

I think about what I've been able to contribute in the few years that I've been fully engaged in helping to be the change I want to see in the world. Involved with speaking at the local and even national level, I must say that I'm very proud of the work that I've been able to carry out for the good of humanity.

As I type this I am reminded of words from a speech from Dr. Martin Luther King that so eloquently says “I may not get to there with you........” and my eyes begin to fill with tears - not of sadness, but of great joy. Because I know that one day people will look back on this and say “remember when HIV and AIDS . . . ” , While some will be able to recall the days of this pandemic, there will those who will not; it will be a thing of the past. I know the work that I do today is not for me, but for those who will come after me. I guess the more I live and the older, -  even wiser  - I get, I know that change may sometimes be things I work on, but not actually see.

The words to the old gospel song say “we must work while the sun is shining. We must keep our lamps trimmed and burning and know that our labour is not in vain, because late in the midnight hour, God's gonna turn it around and it's gonna work in my favour. I must work, I must work, I must work.”

This weekend I will join other HIV positive artists in the World AIDS Day Art Walk at the Gay and Lesbian Center here in Los Angeles. I am showing my paintings and photography. My goal is to be that light that I used to hear my great grandma speak up. That bright and morning star that shines so that others can have hope and see their way. She used to tell me that I never needed to be the biggest or the brightest light. I just needed to be one light in a sea of lights, so that others who are discouraged, wounded, angry, lost and bewildered may see the path that keeps them from stumbling or falling along the wayside. That guard rail and the sharp turn that protects people from going over, that gentle voice that reassures, calms and understands.

My artwork and photography will represent, pay honour and respect those who have come before me, but encourage, smile at and brighten the path of those who will come after me. My friend Travis once said “I want to knock a dent in this (HIV)” So with each day I raise I will do my best to knock a dent in HIV on my side of the world.

I may be shattered in many ways, but I am far from broken. I might even be wounded from all that I've been allowed to see, but time will heal. Many of us have loads that are hard to bear, long days and nights with no sun in the sky, so for them I will rise each and every day, as long as there is life in this body and I will shine this light, work while it is day to lighten the load, ease the burden. Because I know that one day this will all be over. The work will be done, the road will be paved, the storm will have passed and souls will be whole.

World AIDS Day........everyday represents an ABUNDANT LIFE filled with LOVE for mankind. It represents hope for a brighter day. It represents the God in me that sees the God in you and it bows to its greatness. Ma use to tell me "the race is not given to swift or the strong, but to those who are willing to see things through to the very end and sometimes baby, you don't get to see the end. Just know that when you are called to a higher state of being, when you apply for a job of service, God will call on you to do things that are beyond you. When it is all said and done it will always fall right into place. There is no self in selflessness."

I can see LOVE and there's nothing higher than this. CHOOSE LOVE

Honestly, I wasn’t going to write a piece about World Aids Day.

There is an opinion often voiced amongst people living with HIV that EVERY day is World AIDS Day for us. With that mind-set comes more than a hint of resentment that the world only notices us once a year, and that’s shitty. I can sympathize.

Add to that the notion that if a good number of us aren’t exactly over AIDS, aren’t exactly post-AIDS either, but are definitely well on the way to it all being a big yawn and that’s another reason to not get too excited about World AIDS Day.  Stir in the PositiveLite.Com patented brand of subversive activism that suggests that we who live with HIV are more – way more – than the AIDS virus and that for many it’s only a small part of what makes us tick, and there are three reasons right there not to go all gaga about making a big splash on December 1.

But then, but then . . .

That’s a very insular view of the world isn’t it?  It presumes that because we are alright, or sort of alright,  there is nothing to worry about.  That there’s no such thing as a global crisis. No such thing as having a conscience. No such thing as a proud history to be honoured. No such thing as the need for people living with HIV to speak up, like our Montreal guy Ken Monteith so succinctly pointed out here.

Ultimately, I think that World AIDS Day is all about the contradictions.  All about the opposing forces that make us want to ignore it versus those forces which insist we can’t. It’s a very complicated thingy to process now, more complicated than ever, in fact. As a wily BC prevention campaign has recently pointed out, it’s different now.

This week the regional AIDS Service Organization of which, many moons ago, I was chair asked me for a contribution to their World AIDS Day newsletter.  Just a few sentences, they said, or maybe a paragraph.  "Sure" I said, without thinking, But then I found summarizing what I felt about World AIDS Day surprisingly difficult.

In past years, I’ve been very, very angry around December 1, posting images in my blog of hands dipped in blood to describe the government’s role in all this. I’m less angry now.  Perhaps age hasn’t bought wisdom or even clarity but rather realization that things are more complex than we could ever have imagined .

So here is what I wrote for my AIDS Service Organization World AID Day newsletter.

I think it’s a time for reflection more than ever now, because no one response, frankly, cuts it.  I hate it when it becomes all about funding; it’s much more complex than that.  I mean we can get angry about what hasn’t been done, but we need to be truly happy about all that we have achieved.  We can say that AIDS isn’t over, but that doesn’t acknowledge how well many of us have adapted, and in fact have triumphed over illness and adversity. We can say that HIV remains a serious disease, but we need to acknowledge that treatment is (mostly) easier than ever. We can point out that many of us with HIV aren’t even infectious anymore, I truly believe that, yet the global picture is entirely the opposite.  I think ultimately, the important thing is we think – and talk about – ALL these things.  We need to talk about the fact HIV is still here, but that it’s different now.

That's the closest to clarity of thought I have on the matter. Reading it over afterwards, though, I noticed there is more than a touch of optimism in its words. I guess that’s where I’m coming from now. It’s challenging though, isn’t it?