Dallas Buyers' Club

My friend Jeremy stopped by today to teach me how to add pics to my postings.  He asked me how I decided what to write about, and I told him I usually didn’t decide until fairly late in the evening.  

Tonight, for example, I could have written about:

1.  how poaching for aphrodisiacs is depleting an already small stock of rhinos (listen, you impotent guys, one word--Viagra); 

2.  how the N.S.A. was planning to tap even more emails and calls;

3.  the visit by a Pakistani to various members of Congress to get answers about why his innocent relatives were killed in a drone strike;

4.  an article in the latest Nation about the progressive victories in the November elections;

5.  an article in Lancaster Farming about how big agribusiness is trying to pass a law that would override state laws on  caged chickens.  (I have a personal interest in that one--my chickens are NOT kept in cages.)

Instead, I’ve decided to write about the “Dallas Buyers’ Club,” a movie about the AIDS crisis in the late 80s and early 90s, before we were sure how the disease actually worked and what drugs might be helpful in alleviating the disease.  Linda and I saw it tonight at the Pocono Theater in Stroudsburg.

I had a Poly Sci major who had AIDS in the early years of the disease.  He sat in the back of the classroom away from other students. I made it a point to shake his hand, but I think he was afraid that other students might be reluctant to sit near him.  Now people with AIDS live long lives, but at that time the diagnosis was a death sentence.  He died a semester before he would have graduated.  San Jose State, to its credit, awarded him his B.A. posthumously.  

I don’t think you will “enjoy” the “Dallas Buyers’ Club,” but I think you will benefit from seeing it.