I’m going to Egypt baby

I find out more and more that my sister and I are a lot alike. That’s funny because growing up we…well let’s just say we weren’t the best of friends. Now I guess its the type of thing where your family is all you got. Friends seem to come and go. I’ve known her all my life. Now, why the picture. She has wanted to go to Egypt. I said if I have my spring break at the same time. Well guess what folks I do. In March my sister..the Yale Professor…yeah I’m pretty proud…she would say it’s no big deal…will be traveling together to Egypt. 24 hours together for a week. We’ll be OK.

I know someone has been downloading pictures of me so I thought you may want another one. I’m lying.

Sat. Night

I realized just a few moments ago that when I’m not in school I don’t really know what to think about. I could think about work but that has fallen from being at the top of the list. It is as if I were back in college again working through my BA with the world ahead of me. I can’t wait to see what is next in store. I’m watching West Wing to be inspired again. Great TV. I remember when TV was great. I think it was during the hey day of E.R. great TV. I’ve started my accumulation of items that I want on my around the world trip. It will happen. Then I will try to find what I should do next. Well enough talk of that it won’t be for some time so who cares. I’m adding some raw video of something that we shot in Ecuador. It is one of the shots that I like the most. I also included one shot that I took today. I’m waiting to get my car back before I go back to getting church photos.

Walk On

I realized today that I’m getting older. No. That’s a good thing. I realized that sometimes, only sometimes that I have good ideas and sometimes I even have insight….or…at least I think I do. It’s funny thing. I’m going to finish a very bad paper here in the next hour. Come hell or high water, I’m going to do it. I bought my around the world book. Come hell or high water I will traverse this planet. Who wants to come with me. I’m going to look for myself. Well maybe look around a bit. I will start to walk first. Little by little looking around until I am lost. God grant me one request that I don’t regret. Walk on.

The Prodigal

So a friend of mine, Kevin has returned from a life on the road. He was met with great fan fare and trumpeting of horns. I think those are the same things. For now enjoy a look back at Kevin day which coincided with World AIDS day.

Slide show soon.

World AIDS Day

An AIDS warrior’s legacy: Heart, tenacity

WASHINGTON (CNN) — To see white-haired Father Angelo D’Agostino, an 80-year-old Jesuit and doctor, you would almost certainly underestimate his strengths.

He looked like a quiet, gentle priest, only about 5 feet tall and stocky, with an easy, infectious laugh. But beneath the priestly vestments he was one of the fiercest fighters you would ever meet when it came to protecting HIV-infected children in Nairobi, Kenya. He would take on anyone, and he did. He was their fearless defender.

As we observe World AIDS Day today, it’s appropriate to remember a man who brought heart and tenacity to the fight. D’Agostino died November 20 of a heart attack following surgery after he was hospitalized for abdominal pain.

“In the very positive sense, he was somebody who could get you to do anything, it was very difficult to say no to him. He was like a pit bull,” says Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health and a longtime friend of “Father D’Ag,” as everyone knew him.

In the early 1990s, he created an orphanage called Nyumbani — Swahili for “home” — for homeless HIV-infected children in Nairobi. When the government wouldn’t let them go to school with other children, he sued and won. When the children started dying from AIDS because they couldn’t afford the drugs that would keep them alive, and the cemetery behind the school was getting full of tiny caskets, he fought drug companies and the government to get the children affordable medicine. He needed a lab to monitor the children’s health and he couldn’t afford one, so he built one of the best in the region from scratch. He fought tirelessly for his children. He was afraid of no one.

The United Nations says the vast majority of the 4.3-million people newly infected with HIV are in sub-Saharan Africa. But AIDS is not just about Africa anymore. The economic powerhouse of India now has 5 million people infected, more than any other country. Experts are also concerned about China, Indonesia, and Eastern Europe, where the disease is skyrocketing.

The United States has not contained the epidemic either. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 1 million people in America are living with HIV, and about 250,000 of them don’t know it. African Americans make up nearly half of all new infections but only 13 percent of the population. “We’re beginning to see the face of the epidemic changing. AIDS is increasingly becoming a black disease in the United States,” says Dr. Kevin Fenton of the CDC.

To contain the epidemic will take more people like Father D’Ag: people with guts who are willing to make sacrifices.

“For me,” he said in a 2000 interview, “it’s the combination of a long life of study in both medicine and the priesthood and as far as I’m concerned it’s the most effective, most rewarding work that I’ve done in either medicine or priesthood.”

His children, who often saw more strife in just a few years than many of us see in a lifetime, were his constant companions, and they undoubtedly learned from his teachings.

He liked to tell the story “Once I went up with a group of them in an airplane ride around the city, and when we got above the clouds the little fellow next to me turned around and said ‘Are we gonna see Jesus now?’ He thought he was in heaven.”

Heaven is something the children at Nyumbani often learned about the hard way. Before Father D’Ag got much-needed AIDS medicine for the children, he lost about a child a month to the disease. The children would gather for the funeral at Nyumbani and carry the casket to the cemetery behind the school until that plot was full, then they moved to another cemetery in the city.

When the casket was lowered into the ground, the children would line up for an African ritual and toss handfuls of dirt on the casket.

Earlier this week, it was Father D’Ag’s casket they tossed dirt onto, their way of sending him to heaven.

Christy Feig and Saundra Young are producers for CNN Medical News in Washington.

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