Skip to main content
search
Monthly Archives

July 2016

Ruth Cocker Burks: The altruistic woman who cared for gay men dying with AIDS in the 1980s in the USA

By Gigs & Shows, Health, Inspiration4 Comments

ruth-burks-image-brian-chilson

Ruth Cocker Burks, image by Brian Chilson (from Out Magazine’s Website)

The photo above is of Ruth Cocker Burks.

Ruth is the altruistic woman who cared for gay men dying with AIDS in the 1980s in Little Rock, Arkansas, USA. It started when she was at University Hospital visiting a friend who had cancer. At the time she was 25 years old with a young family.

One day she saw a door to a patient’s room with a big red bag over it. Inside was a gay man dying of AIDS. Nobody came to visit him. He was asking for his mother. So Burks called his mother. His mother told Burks that being gay had brought shame on the family. His family didn’t want to know. Even the healthcare staff treated him as cursed. So Burks cared for him. She visited him in hospital and when he finally passed away she buried him.

Burks then went on to give this end-of-life care to hundreds of gay men and to bury at least three dozen herself. Luckily for Burks, her mother had bought 262 plots in a graveyard when she was younger due to a colossal family argument. This meant that Burks has plenty of space for the burials.

From the bottom of my heart and on behalf of those gay men, I just want to say: Thank you Ruth Cocker Burks. Nobody deserves to die alone, afraid and without care or love.

Burks believes that a higher power led her to her destiny of caring for these gay men dying with AIDS. I don’t know if that’s true or not. But what I do know is that Burks’ actions represents the very best aspects of humanity: care, compassion, kindness and love.

Burks is an inspirational woman and I wish we could all be more altruistic, meaning that we care for the well-being of others more.

The blog post above is a shortened paraphrase of Meet the Woman Who Cared for Hundreds of Abandoned Gay Men Dying of AIDS from Out Magazine’s online website.

Blog soon,

Antony

mental-health-wisdom-banner



I aim for posts on this blog to be informative, educational and entertaining. If you have found this post useful or enjoyable, please consider making a contribution by Paypal:


Share on Social Media:
Friday 22 July 2016

The Story of Neil Gaiman’s Cousin Helen

By Books & Authors, InspirationNo Comments
neil-gaiman-author-image

Neil Gaiman, Image from The Byre Theatre.

 The Writer Neil Gaiman used to think that making up stories for a living was trivial. That was until he learned the story of his cousin Helen. Here is Neil Gaiman sharing the story of his cousin Helen:

“Helen is 96 and now lives in Florida. At the end of World War II, Helen and her two sisters wound up in a refugee camp in Southern Europe having fled Poland. Homeless and displaced, they finally ended up in America.

In Poland, Helen had been smuggled into the Warsaw Ghetto. There was a corpse run every morning, transferring the corpses out of the ghetto and she snuck back in on the returning transport. I think she snuck back out that way, amongst the corpses, too. Inside the ghetto, she started teaching the local girls arithmetic and grammar. At that point in time, books were illegal and there was a death sentence for anyone found possessing one. However, Helen had a Polish translation of Gone with the Wind and she kept it hidden behind a loose brick in the wall. She would stay up late every night reading so that when the girls came in the next day she could tell them what had happened in the chapters she had read the previous night and just for that hour these girls got out of the Warsaw Ghetto and they got to visit the American South.

Helen’s story – this story – made me realise that what I do is not trivial. If you make up stuff for a living, which is basically what I do, you can feel kind of trivial sometimes but this made me realise that fiction is not just escapism, it can actually be escape, and it’s worth dying for.” – Neil Gaiman

(From The UN Refugee Agency, Last accessed: Sunday 17th July 2016.)

People need stories, we always have. In ancient history, our ancestors sat around camp fires telling one another stories, illuminated by the glow of the fire. Then they began writing them down and having them printed and published in books. Today we still have printed books and ebooks are in their infancy.

In the future, people will still need stories. To understand why this statement is true, you need to understand why people read stories. We read stories to light up our imagination, for pleasure, for entertainment, to make us laugh, to make us cry, to be thrilled, to make us feel alive, to give us hope, to unwind, to escape and to learn.

Blog soon,

Antony



I aim for posts on this blog to be informative, educational and entertaining. If you have found this post useful or enjoyable, please consider making a contribution by Paypal:


Share on Social Media:
Wednesday 20 July 2016

Photos from Astley Hall Park Today

By Friends & Family, Happiness & Joy, Inspiration, NatureNo Comments

Today my good friend Simon and I went to Astley Hall park. Here are some photos of the beautiful park, click on any photo for full size image:

astley-hall-park-july-2016-0

Astley Hall
astley-hall-park-july-2016-1

Astley Hall Park/Grounds (1)
astley-hall-park-july-2016-2

Astley Hall Park/Grounds (2)
astley-hall-park-july-2016-3

Astley Hall Park/Grounds (3)
astley-hall-park-july-2016-4

Trees that Simon and I nicknamed ‘Teardrop Trees’ (1)
astley-hall-park-july-2016-5

Tree that Simon and I nicknamed ‘Teardrop Trees’ (2)
astley-hall-park-july-2016-6

Art installation (1)
astley-hall-park-july-2016-7

Art installation – Close up (2)

Essential Info:

  • Free parking is available in a reasonably-sized carpark.
  • A super-expensive cafe is on site. Avoid due to costs and take your own food/drink.
  • Toilets on site.
  • A Chorley Remembers Experience, guided tour of Astley Hall, as well as various events are on throughout the year. For more details including Opening Times, Admission Prices, etc. See Astley Hall’s website here.
  • Has facilities for children such as play area/park.

Blog soon,

Antony



I aim for posts on this blog to be informative, educational and entertaining. If you have found this post useful or enjoyable, please consider making a contribution by Paypal:


Share on Social Media:
Sunday 17 July 2016

Book Review: The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

By Amazon, Books & Authors, ReviewsNo Comments
the-graveyard-book-neil-gaiman-cover In The Graveyard Book, Nobody Owens (also known as Bod) is saved from murder by Ghosts. As a toddler, Bod, crawls out of his cot and walks up the hill to The Graveyard in the dead of night. Meanwhile his family are being murdered in their sleep by a man named Jack.

Jack tracks Bod up to The Graveyard. The ghosts save Bod’s life after Mrs Owens makes a promise to the Spector that is Bod’s mother. The ghosts agree to raise Bod and grant him the Freedom of The Graveyard.

Bod is to be raised by ghost surrogate parents Mr & Mrs Owens, with Silas who belongs to neither the world of the living or the world of the dead acting as Bod’s Guardian.

This is the start of a truly remarkable adventure story. Bod is taken through a gravestone that leads to a desert and city of the ghouls, he develops a friendship with a dead Witch and a living girl, he is taught how to fade, he goes to an ordinary school and uses

fear and dreamwalking to deal with bullies, he learns the ways of The Sleer and finally learns the truth of why his living family was murdered, why the man Jack is still after him and has to fight off The Jack’s order.

The Graveyard Book is the most wonderfully imaginative story that I’ve read in a long time. As the plot unravels the reader is captivated throughout and ponders on the mystery of why the man Jack murdered Bod’s family and why he continues to search for Bod to finish the job of wiping out his family.

The characters are superbly surrounded in mystery with hidden talents that make each character brilliant.

The Graveyard Book has made it on to my top shelf – where I keep my favourite books and there is no doubt in my mind that it is a book I will read again and again. It was a book that I honestly didn’t want to ever end.

At the end of the book, in an acknowledgments section Gaiman writes that this book was inspired by Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book, that Gaiman read as a child, and also inspired by his own children at a certain age. This inspiration shines through as I found myself thinking that The Graveyard Book reminded me of the story of The Jungle Book, way before getting to the end acknowledgements section.

I would highly recommend that anyone and everyone reads The Graveyard Book, which is available to buy on Amazon and at all good book shops.

Review soon,

Antony

mental-health-wisdom-banner



I aim for posts on this blog to be informative, educational and entertaining. If you have found this post useful or enjoyable, please consider making a contribution by Paypal:


Share on Social Media:
Saturday 16 July 2016
×