“Patterns and Ghosts”
Leonard starts the essay with a familiar insight: we often
ignore the richness of our surroundings until we have to show them off to an
out of town visitor. The Leonard’ had such a visitor in which they re-discovered
the AIDS quilt (hence the essay title). Leonard uses the event to comment on
the status of the fight against AIDS in the 1990s, really not much of a fight
at all, writing it’s “…as if we’ve decided that the threat to white
heterosexuals isn’t that great and the ghettos deserve what they get.”
He puts forth a good idea from his wife, “My wife has a
theory, still in formulation, of a new political protest art that brings beauty
into the world instead of more insults…other colors besides blood.”
New word: megalith = a large stone used to construct a
monument
New
learning: More Americans died of AIDS in
the 1980s than were killed in the Viet Nam.
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