Surviving Shingles: A Four-Month Esprit of Agony

Today, I am pleased to share with you — Volume 7 in my continuing “Boles Book for…” learning precis series called — “Surviving Shingles: A Four-Month Esprit of Agony!

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Three Eras of Preservation and the Scourge of Magnetic Tape

In the Modern Age of Entertainment, we have — so far — sustained Three Distinct Eras of performance preservation. The First Era was Film.  The Second Era was Magnetic Tape. The Third, and current, Era is Digital. The most cursed of all the Eras, is the misbegotten second — Magnetic Audiotape and Videotape — where performances were not actually preserved, they were only perpetuated to die!

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Do You Remember Kaposi’s Sarcoma?

The other day, an old graduate school friend and I got together to rehash our old lives and new experiences, and one of the first things he said when he saw me was, “Those red marks on your face remind me of Kaposi’s Sarcoma.”  I was instantly stopped — “Kaposi’s Sarcoma” was a phrase I hadn’t heard in over a decade — and when I quickly explained the marks on my face were actually pinches of frostbite from the dermatologist to remove some overactive sebaceous gland residue, he smiled with relief. As an older Gay man, my friend knew lesions that look like that have traditionally indicated a dire diagnosis.

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Papa Francisco’s “To Do” List

Although it is always a possibility to become Pope and CEO of one of the world’s largest churches once one enters the Catholic priesthood, I can only imagine the enormity of the tasks that await Pope Francis I, who at the age of 76 and with only one lung is already at a considerable disadvantage compared to some of the younger and fitter Cardinals. I thought it might be interesting on the day of his inauguration to take a look at his “To Do” list.

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The Goodness of Free HIV Testing

I don’t know about you, but when I read most of the news today, I get a bit bummed at the direction that humanity seems to be taking. Whether it is schol budgets being slashed for reasons of insufficient monies or defense budgets getting increased by massive amounts because unnecessary wars need to be fought to kill not the people who decide to go into the wars or the children of those people but the people whose jobs get exported, many of whom ultimately somehow end up voting for the people that sent them to war and that would send them to war. Then I get to see a nice bit of good news and it gives me a bit of hope — no giggles — as was the case when I read about the Walgreens store as well as others that made plans to offer free HIV testing on HIV awareness day.

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