I picked up Joy in the Morning two weeks ago and fell in love with it. It was so enchanting, and (I felt) so well-written without being pretentious or complex. I wonder about the current widespread attachment to the Twilight series. Teenagers and most astoundingly, middle-aged women are in a frenzy over what is the worst writing I've come across in a long time. But what is bad writing anyway? It doesn't correlate with the number of times you have readers reaching for the dictionary. Betty Smith (and many great authors before and after her) wrote novels, considered today to be classics. It also doesn't have to do with the content of that which you are writing. There's a way to write fantasy and adventure simply and well.

Another note on writing. I've noticed that my sentence structures are slowly growing more and more awkward as I get older. It's painful reading some of my high school journal entries because they're better than anything I've written recently. It returns to how hard I feel it is to marry my thoughts and words. Do I not know the words to express my thoughts or maybe the way in which to construct my sentences effectively?

Making HIV testing a routine in the Bronx

The New York City Department of Health aims to test every Bronx adult for HIV, just in time for National HIV Testing Day on Friday, June 27th. What they’re doing:For those willing, there will be free HIV testing at 40 locations in the Bronx. The goal is to make HIV testing routine and get every adult tested in the Bronx over the next three years.

PROS

• Easy access to HIV testing
• Getting tested will possibly prevent the future spread of HIV infections
• Decrease in hospitalizations and deaths due to AIDS-related illnesses, and in turn saving hospitalization costs
• Encouraging more people to have safe sex.
  

CAUTIONS

• The article mentions that the Bronx is stricken with most AIDS deaths in the city, so HIV has most likely been connoted with death in the eyes of many. There may be many who would rather be unaware than to know their status. Just how many people will actually consent to getting tested?
• Those who test positive may be stigmatized by the community around them.
• The article also mentions that the 20-minute counseling session would be reduced to 3 by an experienced doctor. Hopefully this doesn't mean that people who come in for a broken leg will be sent out not knowing what to do with an HIV diagnosis.
• Easy access to the test will not necessarily mean easy access to antiretrovirals for the HIV-positive
  

It makes me wonder if and how the NYC Department of Health will campaign for this project. Hopefully, a campaign will work on trying to address the stigma, the myths and misconceptions surrounding HIV/AIDS, and an increase in the number of resources for the newly diagnosed HIV-positive.

Epic dreams

Epic dreams (also known as Great Dreams or Cosmic Dreams) are so huge, so compelling, and so vivid that you cannot ignore them. The details of such dreams remain with you for years, as if your dreamt it last night. These dreams possess much beauty and contain many archetypal symbology. When you wake up from such a dream, you feel that you have discovered something profound or amazing about yourself or about the world. It feels like a life-changing experience.

Usually I sleep dreamless nights, but lately I've been slipping into dreams of adventure, romance, etc. I'm a hero in most, jumping buildings, climbing moutains, avoiding car crashes with a child in the backseat at 100mph. Having just graduated and attempting to move on to bigger and better things, perhaps I feel I have the whole world open to me, with an infinite number of adventures to have. Sometimes I even have grandiose delusions that I'm going to change the world someday, working at the NYC Dept of Health, or nursing sick people back to health in impoverished countries abroad. I feel like I have two forks in the proverbial career road. The first path represents all that I've been working toward these past few years, and the second path represents all the new passions and interests I've stirred up just recently. I think I fear most that I'll make the wrong choice. If only these dreams would turn prophetic.

All children, except one, grow up. They soon know that they will grow up, and the way Wendy knew was this. One day when she was two years old she was playing in a garden, and she plucked another flower and ran with it to her mother. I suppose she must have looked rather delightful, for Mrs. Darling put her hand to her heart and cried, "Oh, why can't you remain like this for ever!" This was all that passed between them on the subject, but henceforth Wendy knew that she must grow up. You always know after you are two. Two is the beginning of the end.

-Peter Pan, J.M. Barrie