Tannishblog

It's snowing hard today. My usual early morning routine was altered by my shoveling my neighbors walkway at 6AM. She's over 80 and has a doctors appointment later. Then I dutifully drove the thirteen miles to work.

There's something calming about driving in relatively light traffic in the snow. One must concentrate, sure, but when there's no sense to hurrying, the mind can relax and focus on the task at hand, namely getting myself and my vehicle across town in one piece. All distraction fades. It's almost like meditation.

It's the focusing that the mind likes. Scientists have measured endorphin levels in the brain during certain activities and found that moments of concentration will produce pleasure-related compounds. That would explain my preferences for activities like writing, playing music - even playing computer games - that force the mind to a singular activity or to a series of decisions. Then the brain relaxes into a state similar to meditative absorption.

I have time to blog while at work today because no one else made it in. Our office only has four people, anyway. Being a roofing company, we're virtually at a stand-still this time of year regardless of weather. I'm sure my roofer friends are snuggled nicely this morning as the storm front that crippled Washington State last weekend is blowing through the Windy City today.

Query to self: Why am I still here?

Today is World AIDS Day. While America sleeps, tens of thousands of people are living with a highly transmittable disease of which we aren’t supposed to speak.

It’s sad to think that such a pervasive disease cannot get the airtime and attention given to breast cancer. I remember the outcry many years ago where a few prominent televangelists labeled AIDS "the gay disease," and summarily doomed any effort to combat the problem in the USA. Others of similar beliefs dismiss AIDS as a heavenly retribution for promiscuity. Or for poverty, as if that is ever a conscious choice. I can’t help wondering how those same people would react if their virginal daughters contracted AIDS through a blood transfusion, for example. Would they then believe their own rhetoric?

Meanwhile, over in the UK, they’re seeing RED and organizing fund raising in harmony with the single thing people share in all the affluent, industrialized nations: shopping. Buy a RED product, wear a red ribbon. Force the world to acknowledge a disease that affects us all.

While AIDS is the Disease That We Must Not Mention, breast cancer, by comparison, is widely publicized. Everybody worries about breast cancer these days although fewer women die from it than from AIDS. Even conservative ministers like tits, it seems.