Tiffany's blog

A lot of my friends will read this blog and when they get to my referencing a movie they may become skeptical because they often doubt my love of movies based on their general belief that I am at war with pop culture. Of course this is totally unfounded and meant for another blog entry entirely. Anyway, one of my favorite lines in a movie is from the "Interpreter" starring Nicole Kidman and Sean Penn. Ms. Kidman's character asked an embattled foreign dignitary to read from his autobiography about the power of the human voice. "THE GUNFIRE AROUND us makes it hard to hear. But the human voice is...

The first ones are the pioneers/ visionaries who often see a world that is different from the one we have now. The firsts are those who often going against the grain and are marked for scrutiny like no other. I would love to believe that such a spirit exists for me, in me. But as I write this entry I am not so sure. As someone who works in HIV vaccine research I certainly would like to believe that the pioneering spirit exists after all that is what I ask people to do when they volunteer to participate; but as I read the recent article in the Nation about the first, 72 Kenyan babies...

"The color of my skin does not automatically identify me." That is what I wish so many of my friends would say as I see countless agencies target their HIV prevention efforts to African Americans but my friends are Ethiopian, Nigerian, Jamaican, Haitian, Dominican or some other nationality and therefore get missed by these educational efforts. I honestly recognize that the CDC's numbers are primarily reflective of African Americans but since the U.S. policy has traditionally banned entry of persons with HIV to this country all those black folk who are not African American are acquiring it here...