Blog
World AIDS Day
Recommended Reading for World AIDS Day
Nov 26, 2019 by Victoria Noe
Sunday, December 1 is World AIDS Day. This year’s theme is “Ending the Global HIV/AIDS Epidemic: Community to Community”. I don’t remember a theme to the first observance in 1988. But this year I thought I’d recommend a few books from a community that isn’t always included in discussions about the epidemic: women.
All of these women have written about the epidemic, fiction and nonfiction. Luckily, more women are writing, like Rae Lewis-Thornton, whose memoir, Unprotected, is coming in 2020. In an odd bit of serendipity or karma or fate or timing, five of the seven women mentioned on this page wrote their books from the Chicago area. You’ll be hearing more about that coincidence soon.
For too long, the literature of...
All of these women have written about the epidemic, fiction and nonfiction. Luckily, more women are writing, like Rae Lewis-Thornton, whose memoir, Unprotected, is coming in 2020. In an odd bit of serendipity or karma or fate or timing, five of the seven women mentioned on this page wrote their books from the Chicago area. You’ll be hearing more about that coincidence soon.
For too long, the literature of...
Another World AIDS Day - Part 2
Dec 08, 2018 by Victoria Noe
Tuesday night I was honored to be on the program for the Alexian Brothers Housing and Health Alliance World AIDS Day event here in Chicago. About twenty people took to the stage to recite poetry, sing, play guitar or piano, tell stories. The mistress of ceremonies was a drag queen. It all felt very familiar and comforting.
Almost thirty years ago, Bonaventure House, their housing program for people with HIV/AIDS, was one of my clients. I wrote government and foundation grants for them. So when I found out they were hosting this event, I wanted to be part of it.
It was also the first time I’ve spoken in front of an audience since my mother’s graveside service in March. I wasn’t...
Almost thirty years ago, Bonaventure House, their housing program for people with HIV/AIDS, was one of my clients. I wrote government and foundation grants for them. So when I found out they were hosting this event, I wanted to be part of it.
It was also the first time I’ve spoken in front of an audience since my mother’s graveside service in March. I wasn’t...
Another World AIDS Day
Nov 30, 2018 by Victoria Noe
December 1, 1988
I was in London at a performance of the The Secret of Sherlock Holmes with Jeremy Brett and Edward Hardwicke. At the end of the curtain call, Brett made a brief speech. It was, he explained, the first World AIDS Day, and the ushers were about to circulate around the house with buckets, collecting donations for local AIDS service organizations. I dropped some money in the bucket and filed that idea away, not realizing I’d use it back in Chicago on the second World AIDS Day. And here we are, thirty years later.
I have a lot of friends who are long-term survivors. There was a time when long-term meant a couple of years, not decades. The fact that...
I was in London at a performance of the The Secret of Sherlock Holmes with Jeremy Brett and Edward Hardwicke. At the end of the curtain call, Brett made a brief speech. It was, he explained, the first World AIDS Day, and the ushers were about to circulate around the house with buckets, collecting donations for local AIDS service organizations. I dropped some money in the bucket and filed that idea away, not realizing I’d use it back in Chicago on the second World AIDS Day. And here we are, thirty years later.
I have a lot of friends who are long-term survivors. There was a time when long-term meant a couple of years, not decades. The fact that...
World AIDS Day - And A Big Announcement
Dec 01, 2015 by Victoria Noe
Bus shelter poster, 1991
Dec. 1, 1988. I was in London, at a performance of The Secret of Sherlock Holmes with Jeremy Brett and Edward Hardwicke. At the curtain call, Brett made a speech about that being the first World AIDS Day. The ushers passed around collection buckets for donations to AIDS service organizations in London. What a concept, I thought: the whole world thinking about AIDS.
Over the years I’ve spent World AIDS Day conducting fundraising events, attending religious services, discussing issues. Tonight I’m leading a conversation on women and AIDS – how women were treated at the beginning of the epidemic and where we are now - at Women & Children First Bookstore in Chicago.
Today is also...
Dec. 1, 1988. I was in London, at a performance of The Secret of Sherlock Holmes with Jeremy Brett and Edward Hardwicke. At the curtain call, Brett made a speech about that being the first World AIDS Day. The ushers passed around collection buckets for donations to AIDS service organizations in London. What a concept, I thought: the whole world thinking about AIDS.
Over the years I’ve spent World AIDS Day conducting fundraising events, attending religious services, discussing issues. Tonight I’m leading a conversation on women and AIDS – how women were treated at the beginning of the epidemic and where we are now - at Women & Children First Bookstore in Chicago.
Today is also...
Why This Writer is Thankful
Nov 24, 2015 by Victoria Noe
Washington Square Park
It’s almost Thanksgiving, and for the first time, I’m spending it in New York. I decided to combine a research trip for my 2017 book Fag Hags, Divas and Moms: The Legacy of Straight Women in the AIDS Community with a chance to cross something off my life goals list (sounds better than bucket list, doesn’t it?). So on Thursday morning, I’ll be watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in person with my family. That opportunity has me thinking about what else I’m grateful for this Thanksgiving, related to my writing.
Brooke Russell Astor Reading Room, NYPL
I’m grateful for research librarians. I’ve always loved school and public librarians, but research librarians...
It’s almost Thanksgiving, and for the first time, I’m spending it in New York. I decided to combine a research trip for my 2017 book Fag Hags, Divas and Moms: The Legacy of Straight Women in the AIDS Community with a chance to cross something off my life goals list (sounds better than bucket list, doesn’t it?). So on Thursday morning, I’ll be watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in person with my family. That opportunity has me thinking about what else I’m grateful for this Thanksgiving, related to my writing.
Brooke Russell Astor Reading Room, NYPL
I’m grateful for research librarians. I’ve always loved school and public librarians, but research librarians...
World AIDS Day 2014
Dec 01, 2014 by Victoria Noe
Today, December 1, is the 27th annual observance of World AIDS Day.Since that first year, when I dropped a few pounds in the collection can at the curtain call of a play in London, I’ve marked the anniversary.The second year I coordinated a fundraising event. Some years I went to a special Mass or memorial service. Other years I simply made note of it and went about my business.This year I’ll be part of a reading and panel discussion at Women & Children First bookstore in Chicago about the generation gap in the AIDS community. This reflection on Huffington Post last week will give you an idea of what that means in terms of fighting the epidemic.The theme for World...
World AIDS Day 2013
Dec 01, 2013 by Victoria Noe
In his November 4 review of Time Line Theatre’s revival of The Normal Heart, the Chicago Tribune’s Chris Jones attempts to put the play in historical context: “AIDS is no longer a death sentence.” If only.While it is true that those newly diagnosed are not given a prognosis of, say, thirty days (like Ron Woodroof in Dallas Buyers Club), in the fourth decade of the epidemic, there is still no cure and no vaccine. According to the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), new infections are on the rise in Eastern Europe and Central Asia: 13% since 2006. In the past 12 years, new HIV infections have doubled in North African and the Middle East. Worldwide, 1.6 million people...
Thoughts on World AIDS Day
Dec 04, 2012 by Victoria Noe
AIDS Memorial QuiltNational Mall, Washington DCIn all honesty, it was a week of AIDS. Early in the week I completed the first draft of the second book in the Friend Grief series: Friend Grief and AIDS: Thirty Years of Burying Our Friends. As the week progressed, that high was sustained by anticipation. I was going to a screening of United in Anger and then to a memorial service, organized by a friend and led by my former pastor.But in between the book draft and Saturday, that anticipation became tempered with frustration. The first World AIDS Day was in 1988: why are we still commemorating it? Why do we still need to commemorate it?By Friday, my frustration had hardened into...
World AIDS Day 2012
Nov 30, 2012 by Victoria Noe
Despite the fact that my production schedule has been blown to hell, this week I managed to finish the first draft of the second book in the Friend Grief series: Friend Grief and AIDS: Thirty Years of Burying Our Friends.It’s not the book I thought it was going to be. Whether it is any good at what it is remains to be seen.But what came up time and again – as I re-read classic books by Randy Shilts and Larry Kramer and watched new documentaries on the history of ACT UP – was the frustration and anger that still exists today. And it exists because AIDS still exists.Even the victories have unintended consequences. The AIDS cocktail of drugs that has...
"Forming Community" - AIDS@30
Nov 30, 2011 by Victoria Noe
Steve & I at the Drake "Forming Community" first appeared in April in Windy City Times. I was honored that publisher Tracy Baim asked me to be part of her series on the history of the epidemic. For tomorrow, World AIDS Day, here it is:The first time I remember being conscious of the effects of AIDS was March, 1983. My girlfriend was in the hospital, after a difficult labor and delivery that called for a transfusion. She worked in the lab at that hospital and knew the blood supply wasn’t safe. When I visited her there, her sheets had more color. But she still refused the transfusion.Sex in the 80’s – gay or straight – was a challenge. I was...
World AIDS Day 2011 - 30 Years of AIDS
Nov 28, 2011 by Victoria Noe
“Disenfranchised grief” is defined as grief that is not socially accepted or acknowledged. I learned a lot about it in the AIDS community.Thursday, December 1, is World AIDS Day, this year marking the 30th anniversary of the pandemic.I worked in the AIDS community in Chicago in the late 80’s/early 90’s, after volunteering for a while to raise money for much needed services.If you had told me in 1981 that 30 years later we’d have no cure, I wouldn’t have believed you. Scientists always seemed to be “closing in on” a cure.If you had told me in 1981 that in addition to having friends who died within weeks of their diagnosis, that I would also have friends who have been HIV+...
