They say that travel broadens the mind.  It certainly fattens other parts of the  body, at least on the basis of  our ten day trip to South Carolina, just completed.  We had decided to drive down – so with two days there and two days back, that’s a lot of sitting – and broadening.

Once there, it was nice - very nice, in  fact – and I’ll talk about that in a minute. But writing about vacations, and vacations for people living with HIV in particular, almost feels awkward.  It shouldn’t do, but it does. I guess it’s because so many people in the poz community don’t take them – it’s a luxury that a meagre government disability doesn’t even come close to covering – so we don’t hear much vacation talk. (How’s lack of vacation for one’s health, by the way?) And to be frank, when we do hear some lucky soul has managed to get away somewhere, it tends to grate. People living with HIV are not supposed to have a little luxury, here and there, right?

But here's the thing. There is a myth  - or at least a mis-statement - that HIV attacks the disadvantaged in our society.  How many times have you heard that, as if the privileged are immune?  In truth, HIV disproportionally affects the disadvantaged. I sometimes think that the focus on vulnerable populations – a key pillar of HIV prevention which largely reflects economics/economies of scale - leaves many people out in the cold.  The results are everywhere.  The roster of poz PositiveLite.com writers, for instance, includes two lawyers, a banker, a public servant.  So many of the people I know who have sero-converted are not, in fact, in “vulnerable populations” at all.

So we acknowledge our privilege and move on.

Back to our journey through middle-America to the south, an area of this continent which aside from Florida – and I never think of Florida as the south – I wasn’t all that familiar with.  We think of the south as antebellum mansions, Spanish moss, quaint manners, a broadly endearing accent  - and mint juleps.  I experienced all but the latter.  Which is a shame, because I don’t even know what a mint julep is, but I wanted one.  Passed on the grits too (do people really eat that stuff?)  and  I should have passed on the chicken and biscuits, a gloppy concoction foreign to our northern palates, and deservedly so.  The hush puppies were OK though.  More than OK too were the regional specialties of the Lowcountry of South Carolina, in particular the Gullah food we became addicted to, a remnant of the black slave culture of the south.

Loved Charleston by the way. If there is a prettier, more civilized-looking  city in North America, I have yet to find it. I could live there. Savannah, which I had high hopes for, even reading up (again) on The Garden Of Good and Evil so that I could really get in to the groove of the city, was a bit of a disappointment.

But perhaps one of the highlights was in fact seeing middle-America and just how interesting that can be.  True, the landscape can look much like our Southern Ontario one - believe it or not, Canada is not all lakes and mountains – but there is an unmistakable foreignness to the United States. It’s hard not to be conscious of the right-wing element, and of the high visibility of religion.  Mostly that’s not a problem when one is travelling through – in fact it’s easy to ignore it.  Only once did it become obtrusive.

On the journey north, we had stopped at a place off the highway somewhere in North Carolina.  It was called Stormin’ Norman’s Barbecue.  Partner Meirion alerted me to the sign outside. ”Do you want to go in or not?’ he said.  “Christian Owned and Operated. May God Bless You as You Travel” he read.  I have no problems with being blessed. So we went in.

We were greeted by a cavernous space, somewhere between a school gymnasium and a real restaurant, with a slightly unpleasant smell and zero charm.  It was packed. The service was cafeteria style.  There was a long list of options available hand-written over the counter, all variations on Sunday-dinner-style food.  The line was moving real fast, so we each grabbed a tray and went for it.

Everything looked like your mother would make  - on a bad day.  Wanting to play safe and because I’d had some excellent southern fried chicken on our trip already, I ordered that, with a side of baked beans and green beans.  The portions were enormous, however, unappetizing looking. I turned down dessert, some gloppy looking stuff scooped out of a large tray.  Trifle perhaps? In any event, the whole ball of wax didn’t cost much. And I had in front of me a piece of chicken breast bigger than the average whole turkey. This can’t be bad, I thought.

We sat down with our trays at one of the booths that lined one wall and looked around at our fellow patrons.  They were all wearing suits, the men that is.  The women, many of a certain age, had on those overly prissy outfits not usually seen outside reruns of The Mary Tyler Moore Show.  I should have mentioned this was about noontime on a Sunday; all these folks had clearly just emerged from church and Stormin Norman’s was where they went next. And did I mention that the busboy had a cross emblazoned on the front of his white t-shirt?

We felt conspicuous.  Nobody seemed to be actually looking at us, but as two oddly dressed strangers in town we would have expected to be looked at.  Nope – they were doing their darndest NOT to look at us, I could tell that. It felt awkward. Plus the food wasn’t tasting all that good – probably the worst, chewiest, least flavourful fried chicken I’ve ever had, in fact.  Colonels Sanders had nothing to worry about here at Stormin' Norman's.

The upshot was we left our food all but untouched, and left pretty quickly.  It just didn’t feel comfortable being in that space, quite aside from the rotten food.  But it left me thinking what a hostile environment places like this would be for same sex couples living in that area, yet alone people living with HIV brave enough to want to disclose, and how political and religious climate does shape our existence, even if we aren’t of the faith.

Let’s be clear, not all the places we visited were anything like this.  We loved West Virginia for instance – what a beautiful state that is – and felt instantly comfortable there.

In any event, the south is nice overall. Today’s  post is illustrated with iPhone photos from the road, a quirky place at times, plus below, one other I liked from my little Lumix which gives  a flavour, perhaps, of the considerable quiet beauty of the south that endears whatever its politics.

Conferences in exotic places like New Orleans – and New Orleans is a rather exotic city, at least for North America – are funny things. You want to cover the conference and all it has to offer, but you also want to see the host city. Typically the very full schedules these conferences have limits your ability to do both. This latest one was no exception.

Let me just say a few words about HIVers and travel. Conferences like this are accessible to HIVers even from far flung destinations. Scholarships covering things like travel, accommodation and registration are often available, but typically quite limited. You have to make a good case, fulfill the requirements and convince the organizers that you will be sharing the information you learn in a meaningful way. Being “well connected|” helps, but isn’t essential. It does help though to be tapped in to an ASO that routinely makes HIVers aware of opportunities when they arise. It doesn’t hurt, too, to work the internet so that you learn about such opportunities independently.

Be prepared to work once you get there, though. Consider beforehand if you are up for the challenge. It can be tiring in the extreme. The organizers are investing A LOT of money in you and are expecting you to deliver on your side of the bargain.

Anyway, back to the Housing Summit in New Orleans. I was extremely busy, particularly wearing a PositiveLite hat most of the time. I covered every minute of the conference proper, tweeted as best as I could live from the conference room as highlights unfolded, and did six video interviews. Two of those were quickies for PositiveLite of which you see the second today (see below) and four on-camera ones for the OHTHN/PositiveLite collaboration which sees us jointly produce videos for content on both sites.

Doing those, even though I try not to let it be, is a big deal for me. I am reasonably comfortable on camera, but the lead-up can feel a little bit nerve-wracking, particular if the interviewee is high-powered. There is always preparation involved and never enough time to do it. You have to know your questions in advance, and often know the answers too, however technical  the subject matter. In New Orleans too, we were faced with a tight schedule too, and challenging logistics.

In any event, everyone came through and I thought we got four good OHTN interviews.(Thanks Ryan, Lori and the entire OHTN gang!) Those videos will be appearing here once the OHTN folks get done editing them.  In the meantime, here are the details

• Brandon Marshall, British Columbia Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS on housing as prevention for people who use drugs
• The Hon Libby Davies MP, Vancouver East on her history of advocating for a Canadian national housing strategy - and more
• Eric Rice, University of Southern California on the internet and social media as tools for HIV prevention for homeless youth
• Kevin Fenton, Director, National Centre for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD and TB Prevention, US Centre for Disease Control and Prevention on “big picture” policy issues concerning housing and HIV

All in all it was an intense learning experience for me, pushing home time after time the connections between accessible, affordable and appropriate housing and healthy outcomes. You can read my earlier post here  where I wrote about that in more detail.

One personal note – and I know one that Brian Finch, for one, will identify with - I went to New Orleans with the intent of providing as live coverage as possible. My principal weapons would be my iPhone loaded with a travel plan that avoided the roaming charges the unwary can be saddled with, a newly bought wifi-enabled laptop and two cameras with video capability. That wifi thing though can be the ultimate challenge. My room had it – at a price (which fortunately the OHTN covered) but the conference room itself did not. Oy vey! Back to the iPhone, a challenge in itself for my stubby fingers. Still we tweeted, as did others. But struggling with that whole social media aspect, away from home, was a bit overwhelming, as it was for Brian in Rome. Next time I will be better.

As for New Orleans itself, I loved it. My huge regerta was that I couldn’t explore more of it – or eat my way around it, for it’s a foodies' city par excellence. But I did get out to the French Quarter, where I loved the architecture, the quirkiness and the feeling of being in a quite unique place. Today’s photos celebrate that uniqueness.

Today's post also has a bonus - the wonderful Libby Davies, NDP MP for Vancouver East, saying hello to PositiveLite on video. That interview was extremely rushed – a victim of the crazy logistics issues we were dealing with at the time – but she is such a warm, likeable person that it was a real pleasure to get to talk with her. Scroll through through to the end of the pics toi see it.  Enjoy.

 

 . .  and here's the Libby Davies interview

I've just come back from five days in New Orleans, a place I`ve never visited before, but one which I enjoyed immensely.   Not that I had a lot of time to see it. Reporting for PositiveLite kept me very busy – more on that later – but what I saw I loved.

There will be a photo post featuring New Orleans coming up shortly – the French Quarter is hugely photogenic – as well another post that includes a video interview I did with Libby Davies, MP for Vancouver East and a long-time friend of the HIV community. Today, though I want to talk about housing basics, what the conference was about and also feature an interview with one of the HIV-positive presenters.

The summit, by the way, attracted about 300 people – researchers, service providers, policy makers and consumers. I fit in to none of these categories.  

I’ve never experienced homelessness. The only times I’ve ever slept outdoors were on camping trips: that was a long time ago and hardly counts. Camping, while exposing you to overnighting in the great outdoors, hardly replicates the lot of the homeless who, besides having no permanent roof over their head, routinely experience a plethora of social ills which make this a desperate condition indeed, and one which too often ends badly.

Nevertheless, housing and HIV have been on my radar for some time. I was at the Ontario AIDS Network (OAN) meetings a decade ago when a prioritizing session identified the number one issue that needed to be addressed as the housing needs of people living with HIV. (Out of this exercise came the Positive Spaces, Healtthy Places project - see below).  Housing, across North America, is still the number one unmet need, at least in the context of appropriate, affordable and accessible housing; many HIVers live in substandard conditions, albeit with a roof over their head.

But in those days, things were simpler. We did not have research data that established the extent of the HIV housing problem, nor the impact on people’s lives, health and overall wellbeing of not being housed adequately. All that has changed; now we have a lot of data and more is emerging all the time. The Housing Summit, for short, is about just that – sharing that date and seeing how it can best be used for moving forward with advocacy, policy development, and program delivery - and housing. And that’s not impossible. Housing units are coming on stream all the time, their need demonstrated and established by research such as that shared at the New Orleans summit.

Here is the argument: housing equals health, and you can measure that in a number of ways. Give HIVers the right housing and the chances are they will have better numbers - better adherence, which in turn increases the likelihood of viral load suppression (Did you know, by the way, that only 19% of HIVers in America have undetectable viral loads).  But its not just about the numbers, better housing equals better quality of life, better mental health, less depression, more sense of community. House the homeless and the demonstrated result is fewer hospital visits, less reliance on social services and - if dollars are to be the measure of all this – huge cost savings. It is these latter cost efficiencies which are the draw for municipalities and other authorities with responsibility for housing. So it is about cost effective solutions, but also compassionate solutions.

At the summit, we saw dozens of examples of research which essentially proved this point, both at the national level, and by various demographic groups. It’s not practical for me to deal with these here, but for those with an interest in the topic, the summit website is the place to go.

As for Canadian content, there was a fair bit of it. I'm featuring an example here today – the Positive Spaces Healthy Places research project. Weve talked about it before. I'm even one of the research cohort, people living with HIV, both housed and not, regularly questioned to determine the impact of housing on a variety of health and wellness markers.

This project is unusual, ground-breaking even, in the degree to which it uses people living with HIV – peer research assistants (PRAs)– to gather the data. Paid jobs too! James Watson, whose interview with me is below, started off as a peer research assistant on this project a few years ago and now coordinates a staff of twenty-five or so other PRA's. It’s one of the better examples of GIPA (Greater Involvement of People Living with HIV) out there right now,

Thanks, James, for the interview – and thanks to the OHTN for the scholarship which funded my attendance at the Summit and which allowed PositiveLite to bring you this coverage. Stay tuned for more.

So yes, I loved Philadelphia. And not just because any mention of the city, particularly combined with the tag “Tom Hanks” seems to get a ton of hits for PositivelIte.com. No, it’s just a very nice place. More on that later.

I’m off to New Orleans this week for the National Housing and HIV Summit,  reporting of course for you know which website, plus working with the OHTN  on interviewing presenters etc.   In other words, I’m in between trips and haven’t reported on the last one yet. Here’s a post rectifying that.

So we went down to Atlantic City by bus. With a bunch of seniors. Why we travelled this way – a first I should add – is a long story which will prolong this post endlessly, so let’s just accept the fact we did the seniors' bus trip thing. I'm not sure the journey itselfwas the highlight of the experience – in fact it made a great case for the joys of independent travel - but the rest of the trip was pretty damn good. Particularly Atlantic City itself, which I really liked.

I always travel with a bunch of cameras by the way. That’s me. My camera of choice is a big clunky Nikon D90 with an 18-200mm lens, which is responsible for the larger images here today. But I’m also fond of my little back-up, a Lumix LX3 (not featured today) and my iPhone, particularly when I use it with the $0.99 Lomo app, the best ninety-nine cents I’ve ever spent, I might add. The Lomo Camera app – I’ve written about it here before – imitates the cheap and nasty look of images taken on a line of very basic Russian cameras still made to this day. Anyway, I love Lomo. Here are a few samples I took last week.

As for Philadelphia, we were only there for a day, so my impressions may be superficial, but it seemed like a lovely, green, liveable space. All the good indicators were there – nice neighbourhoods, a nod to downtown living, much public art, a respect for history.   (The Liberty Bell  - pictured below - and numerrous attractions.) Add to that, the steps where Rocky did his training thing, and even a monument to Rocky, and what more do you want?

Herewith the proof in a few pics from the Nikon.

 

And here are some of Atlantic City. I liked it there too. It has really quite stunning beach, which outr hotel room overlooked – seven miles(!) of surprisingly unspoiled, almost pristine beach, semi-ignored by most due the resorts two big attractions – the boardwalk and the casinos. We sampled both. The casinos are essentially smaller versions of the Vegas variety, and not quite so overblown. The boardwalk is a mix of upscale and downscale, a little bit seedy in places but grand in scale and always interesting, day or night. Anyway, the pics . . .

Ageing isn't just about how the body deals with HIV as we grow older. It's also about the choices we make, like how we spend our summer vacations. Which leads me to recount today's adventures, which find me on a bus full of seniors heading for Atlantic City. It's El Cheapo Tours all the way. $499 includes the bus there and back, three nights at Trump something, a bunch of goodies like some gambling money, food vouchers, a day tour of Philadelphia- and piped-in Zamfir on the bus.

If you thought nobody listens to Zamfir anymore, they do on bus tours.

You learn pretty fast that you will be well looked after all the way. Another way of saying this is that bus tours are for people who need high maintenance travel. Need help scheduling going to the bathroom, how to operate a hotel elevator or can't go outlet shopping without a guide in tow. Bus tours are for you!. They are not recommended so much for those merely wanting to get from A to B, unless price is everything. Although in truth they have a quaint charm that some will find endearing. If it weren't for the Zamfir, I might even fall in that category.

So yes, bus tours do tend to attract an older crowd. In fact Meirion and I thought we might be the youngest on the bus. Not at all. This was good.

Atlantic city, our destination. Is a gambling town. It is also on the ocean, with a famous boardwalk, which attracts me far more than the casinos. I love what we in England used to call the seaside. Everything about it attracts me.

As I write this we are passing through the outskirts of Philadelphia. I am tempted to write a post called "I Didn't See Tom Hanks in Philadelphia PositiveLite insiders will know why- and I'll share that next time, along with tales from Atlantic City itself.

A few weekends ago I spent time up north, as we southern Ontarians say, in the Muskokas for those who know their Canadian geography. It’s where Torontonians and many others - Americans even – go to escape the city in summer. People who can afford it have cottages there. It’s pricey though. It’s also quite lovely.   We are well in to the Canadian shield here, so the flatlands and rolling hills of southern Ontario give way to dramatic rocky outcrops, endless acres of pine forest and many lakes. It’s a picture perfect playground for the well-off.

My partner and I were there at a cottage rented by some friends of ours. It was quite lovely. We two stayed in a little designer bunkhouse right by the water. You don’t need to do a lot there to have a good time. I spent hours sprawled on a chaise lounge reading, something I don’t do a lot of these days. (What was I reading, you ask? The Keith Richards bio “Life”. And yes, “Life” is good.). There is a certain luxury that comes from doing so little.

While idling by the water’s edge, I can’t help but notice the toys that neighbouring cottagers are using – expensive but noisy speedboats, water skidoos (PWCs) and more, toys used only a few months a year. As can also be said of the cottages themselves; the season is short, from the long weekend in May to the beginning of September.

All that conspicuous consumption, particularly the two-homes thing, grated a little. But how could it not, when half my life - my HIV soldier half - concerns people who often live diifficult lives in one way or another, where hard times never really go away. Affordable, supportiv housing, for instance, is one of their prime needs, not like the Muskoka crowd, who wonder what designer sheets should they buy for their second home.

The question that this in turn raises – and I’ve thought about this often – is how do I feel about the fact that as a sort of middle class-type person myself am  I iin fact a good fit for the work we do? I do a lot of middle class-type things. I live in a middle class home. We go to fancy restaurants more than we should. We support the arts. We go to the opera. We like martinis. Like it or not, we are, I suppose, middle class.

And is labelling myself “middle class” contributing to one of the most pervasive –isms of all. Do we need to even talk or think in terms of class-ism. Just how helpful is that? Is it even productive to view the work we do through the lens of a perceived class system? Does the act of doing that perpetuate any signs of a class distinction that might exist?. And is my English background coming out here, becasue people from the UK have, I think a different way of looking at this kind of issue? It’s a reflection of that nation’s history.

Think about the people who are most active in the HIV community, our leaders, our spokespeople. Chances are they are, for want of a better term, middle class. There is a good chance too that they will be gay men. Are middle class gay men of which I suppose I am one really the right people to be advocating for people far less fortunate, far less priviledged than ourselves. More importantly, do our causes du jour reflect causes that concern us personally or rather causes that concern people far less fortunate, far less priviledged than we are

Anyway, these are the questions I ask myself when I put aside my book and think. Perhaps I should just keep reading

I will say as a community, many of us have a lot of experience in working with issues we have no personal stake in. I for instance can get as impassioned as anyone in the need for safe injection sites like Vancouver’s Insite, yet, I am hardly a user myself. ( I hate needles. Being on Fuseon, a self-injected HIV entry inhibitor confirmed that once and for all ) Many of those in the forefront of the battle against criminalization are unlikely to be charged ourselves. And the quest for more housing suitable for HIVers with limited income and special needs is full of advocates who are more than well-housed themselves.

All this is why people like Kengi from Los Angles are so valuable. Kengi has become a friend of PositiveLite and has on occasion written for us; we‘ve also interviewed him at length here and here. Talking with Kengi who has lived on the streets himself taught me that housing issues, typically framed in the context of looking at the needs of less than adequately housed HIVers, need to fully encompass the very special needs of homeless HIVers too.

Interestingly the North American Housing and HIV/AIDS Research Summit  is coming up in New Orleans next month. Both Kengi and I applied for scholarships. He works in that field. I do not. Guess who got the scholarship to go and who didn’t? But at the very least, my trip to New Orleans will be very much INFORMED by the lessons I’ve learned from Kengi, even though I do not have the life experiences myself to bring to the table.

The moral of this story? Leave aside for the moment the discussion of class divisions that started this post. Those discussion worry me even as a subject to talk about. Let’s just say that privileged gay white males are well represented – perhaps too well represented - in advocacy work affecting the lesser-advantaged. That doesn’t meanmy WMCGM (I just invented a new acronym for white middle class gay men) colleagues are anything less gifted spokespeople – WMCGM often bring other skills to the table and care desperately about the epidemic – but I’m wary when they become too visible, too wealthy, to be close with those who they serve.

But then I worry about a lot of things.

Perhaps I should stick to my Keith Richards book, where i am just learning that while Keith himself did not,  Mick Jagger came from what Keith calls a very middle class background.

See - that kind of talk again.  it’s totally pervasive!

As an aside, while the term "middle class" is generally not well defined in the English speaking world, those wily Americans have got it down pat.  According to Wikipedia, you can tell what class you are by looking at a simple chart. It's here for the curious. (Look under "Academic Models.")