Hasta La Gadget!

It has now been almost eight years since I have been diagnosed with HIV. In today’s day and age, HIV is a manageable chronic disease much like diabetes. We have come a long way since the onset of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the early 1980s. The havoc it wreaked within the NYC gay community left many casualties behind. I think often of how my fate could have been so different if I was born in 1961 as opposed to 1981.

I can still remember the heroes of my youth who fought this disease so valiantly. The young, brave Ryan White taking on a society’s discrimination with all his courage. The handsome and inspiring Pedro Zamora of The Real World who helped me to not only put a face on HIV, but a face on what it meant to be gay and living a life of dignity and truth. The charismatic Maurizio, the partner of my older cousin Sandy, who had been an Italian model in his younger years, gracing the pages of magazines. In 2000, he passed away from an HIV-related complication. Another life lost on a pile of so many before. The ultimate devastation for Sandy, whose photo album of friends was a graveyard of men long gone.

About a year into being diagnosed it was necessary for me to start taking medication. My T-Cells were getting lower and lower. At the time I was unemployed and receiving government assistance. If I didn’t have Medicaid my life would have been in jeopardy. And this is where the latest assault on the Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”) and the Supreme Court of the United States come in. This is where I must make a resounding call for a single payer health care system. In today’s day and age in the most industrialized country in the world, no one should be dying because of lack of quality care and access to that care.

For the approximately 1.2 million Americans living with HIV in the United States, HIV should now be a manageable condition with access to life-saving medications and quality care. However, a report published by the Kaiser Family Foundation in the beginning of 2014 found that over 700,000 people between the ages of 19-64 were still uninsured. The authors of the report estimate that this number would be reduced by 200,000 as a direct result of the ACA. Though the ACA is of great importance to this segment of the population, an estimated half a million people remain uninsured.

Single payer health care is the final answer. In a nutshell, single payer is universal health care. Giving everyone access to state funded health care, health care would be recognized as a basic human right rather than a commodity.

It is important that we understand what is at stake right now and make sure that we don’t go backwards. We must solidify what we have in place in order to move forward. The same folks with the same right-wing agenda who brought you the 2012 Supreme Court ACA battle (National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius) are it again! Part II features the same cast of characters, including Michael Carvin, the plaintiff’s attorney, who once again is trying with all his might to cripple the ACA. United States Solicitor General, Donald Verrilli, is being forced to defend the government’s position for the second time.

2012’s NFIB v. Sebelius case hinged upon the individual mandate and Medicaid expansion. With some exceptions (religious objectors, undocumented immigrants and incarcerated individuals), the individual mandate part of the ACA requires everyone to maintain a minimum level of health insurance for themselves and their tax dependents. Those who do not satisfy the individual mandate will face a financial penalty, also known as the shared responsibility payment. The individual mandate of the ACA was upheld by a slim 5-4 Supreme Court decision, where, in a surprise twist to many, Justice Roberts sided with the four liberal justices of the court (Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor and Kagan).

The ACA also expands Medicaid eligibility. Funded by both the state and federal governments Medicaid provides health insurance to people with very little income. Though this program is a voluntary system for states, at this time all states participate in the program. Under the ACA expansion, Medicaid would now cover all people under 65 with household incomes at or below 133 percent of the federal poverty level (FPL). In 2012 this was $14,856 per year for an individual and $30,657 per year for a family of four. Pre-ACA Medicaid coverage by and large excluded non-disabled, non-pregnant adults without dependent children, unless states got waivers to cover them. Unfortunately, Medicaid expansion was limited by the Supreme Court when they allowed states to choose whether or not they wanted to expand Medicaid enrollment. Only Justices Ginsburg and Sotomayor found Medicaid expansion to be constitutional. Currently 28 states plus D.C. have expanded their Medicaid coverage, five States are considering expanding, and 19 states have decided against expansion.

The Carvin case now before the Supreme Court, is the right’s latest effort to take down the ACA. Carvin argues that the law holds that Federal subsidies will be given to states with exchanges that were “established by the State.” With only 14 states setting up their own exchanges so far, the Federal Government has had to set up the exchanges for most of the remaining states and in some cases partner up with them. Carvin seeks to create chaos and unravel the ACA by applying a phrase of four words in the most literal of ways, in an effort to make the case that people in those states with federal exchanges should not be given subsidies, because they were not set up by the State. People in those states who are making use of the exchanges are by and large dependent upon federal subsidies. The ACA would be in serious jeopardy with so many people removed from the health insurance program. Costs for those remaining on the program would skyrocket, resulting in a crushing blow to the ACA, from which the program and the new law might never recover. Essentially right-wing ideology would triumph at the cost of people’s lives.

The ACA has been the biggest health care expansion since 1965, when Medicare and Medicaid became law. To all the critics of the ACA, we can agree with its shortcomings while understanding that it lays a foundation for us to build upon. I recently attended a health care panel where one man reminded everyone in the room of what President Obama had to go through to get this law enacted. Obama, he said, came out of this period of time with arrows coming out of his back. I am grateful for this law, because I clearly understand that it is means for the poorest people in this country. I would not be here today if it wasn’t for the free, quality health care I was given in the form of Medicaid. As we know, even with government assistance, many Americans are saddled with high health care costs and are forced to navigate an often complex system.

I support the ACA and I advocate for a single payer national health insurance system. With this system in place, all medically necessary services for every United States resident would be covered. For-profit healthcare would disappear. Patients wouldn’t be burdened with obstacles to care such as premiums, deductibles and co-pays. The Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act (H.R. 676) seeks to create a single payer system here in the United States. This is what HIV+ people, LGBT people, people of color and those who are living in poverty desperately need. This is what we all need in order to be a society in which our ideals are realized rather than sold off.

We can’t go backwards, there’s just too much at stake.

…the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars.

— Jack Kerouac, On The Road

In his newest collection, Hollywood Catechism, San-Francisco-born poet Paul Fericano sweeps up humor, irony and deep feeling in a winning trifecta. He takes the materials of popular culture — from Elizabeth Taylor to The Three Stooges — and makes of them something transcendent. Fericano rewrites Catholic liturgy, as in “The Director’s Prayer”, which begins, “Our Fellini / who Art in Carney, / Clooney be thy name,” and ends not with “Amen” but, “Cut.”

Yet, it is not all fun and games. For Fericano, founder of a support group for survivors of clergy abuse, male sexuality is inherently tied up with violence. A form of re-empowerment comes through satire. Master of the one-liner, Fericano sometimes delivers punch lines as titles, such as, “A Direct Correlation Between the War On Terror and the Proliferation Of Penis Enlargement Spam,” and the chillingly prescient (a la Ferguson), “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Man.”

The poet also simultaneously admires and appropriates both Hollywood stars and famous poets, cutting everyone — affectionately — down to size. Obsessed since boyhood with the Three Stooges, poetic slapstick inhabits these poems in line after line that both hurts and makes us laugh. Indeed, Fericano may be said to be pulling off his own aesthetic — “stoogery” — delivered with same affection and dismay as the fool in King Lear’s court.

These are poems that read like the messages in a bottle that might be written by the last sane man on Earth, when everyone else has gone mad.

In Poppin’ Johnny, Long Islander George Wallace’s poems explode on the page. Like the cartoon call-outs when Batman hits a bad guy in a punch-up scene, these poems are loaded with “pow,” “bam,” “biff.” But, for all their muscular gestures, these poems also convey sensitivity and irony — sometimes at once.

As much as Wallace has been called an inheritor of Kerouac, his heady and ecstatic proclamations can also be traced back to Whitman. Consider these lines from “Starlight! So Much Starlight”:

[…] i saw starlight in

the coffins of the mad. i saw

starlight in the eyes of a dog.

i saw a man with a tin badge

he wore starlight on his chest.

handcuffs have it electric lights

have it window shades drawn

at night. […]

These are poems obsessed with cars and dames, liquor and baseball. But beneath the brass-band bravado lie the horrors of “My First Dance” — shaking a grown man’s enormous sweaty hand, being pinned and kissed by a fat girl, drinking punch from a paper cup and sympathizing with the “four-legged madness of a dog / who was trying to do nothing more / complicated than just get away.”

Yet even the most intimate moments are told in a vernacular slant, like when the speaker realizes in “How it Worked” that his lover is kissing him goodbye for the last time, and says:

i laid there like a pizza delivery guy with too / many pizzas to deliver who has fallen off his bicycle and / onto some wet pavement. i laid there like bambi on ice, / like flipper on a plate, and i looked back at her like roy / rogers trying to figure out what is wrong with his faithful / horse trigger.

These are poems as rough and vulnerable as manhood, as full of hope and heartbreak as the New World.

You could drive Route 66 from coast to coast to get a feel for the poetry of America. Or you could pick up copies of Fericano and Wallace, and read these poems out loud.

Portions of this article first appeared on robertpeake.com

From time-to-time, people who learn about the inside-out nature of the human experience begin to feel guilty if they partake in any sort of outside-in action designed to improve the quality of their lives. As one of my own mentors said to me, “taking action to improve your plight is like carrying Dumbo’s feather — it’s just a way of tricking yourself into allowing what would happen naturally of it’s own accord.”

Where I am at the moment with the seeming paradox of taking outside-in actions to make changes in an inside-out world is as follows…

In my household, we are long-term practitioners of the “five-second rule”, that well-known urban myth which states that in defiance of all known laws of biology, food which is picked up and placed in ones mouth within five seconds of dropping it on the floor is still germ-free and safe to eat. We kind of all know it’s not true, and we do it anyways. I think it’s because we were all so well brought up that it makes us feel rebellious to do something “wrong” and “dangerous”, no matter how small. (Also, Nina’s a really good cook…)

When it comes to my life, I follow something I call the “five-minute rule”. Despite the fact that I know my experience is created 100% from the inside-out, and biologically speaking I can only ever feel my thinking and not the events of the outside world directly, if I can make myself feel better by taking five minutes or less of action, I’ll usually take it.

For example, let’s say I’ve been stressed out about whether or not there’s enough money in my checking account for an impending purchase. I know that my feeling of stress is a direct reaction to my thinking and not to the actual balance of my account. After all, there are 23+ hours of the day where my bank balance is exactly the same and I’m not feeling stressed about it.

And I know that the longer and harder I think about it, the more of a big deal it will seem to me, AND I know that if I just let the worry thoughts pass, I’ll invariably get new thoughts and those thoughts will bring new feelings.

So why don’t I just carry on with my life and let the worry-full thinking pass?

Because I also know that if I take the five minutes to go online and check my account, I’ll feel better. Not because my bank balance will necessarily be where I want it to be, but because I’ll stop thinking about it and feeling all the feelings which come with those thoughts.

In five minutes, I can make an appointment with a doctor to check on a mysterious pain or lump I’ve been worrying about. I can respond to an email I’ve been avoiding, reach out to an old friend I’ve been ignoring, or make amends for something I’ve been feeling guilty about.

I can also take a self-directed action – do some deep breathing, say some affirmations, drop into self-hypnosis, or drop down and do some push ups.

I know that it isn’t really my action that’s changed my feeling, but I’m happy to take that action anyways. After all, it only takes five minutes, and the fact that it was just a “Dumbo’s feather” doesn’t mean I’m not flying at the end of it.

For all those things that five minutes of action won’t fix, it’s equally great to know that I don’t need the world to change in order for me to feel better. I am living in the feeling of my present-moment thinking, and I love the fact that I can’t accurately predict what I’ll be thinking five minutes from now, let alone five days, five months, or five years.

Since I’m only ever and always feeling my own thinking, that means I’m as likely to be feeling good as bad, happy as sad, grateful as maligned, and inspired as distraught. I don’t need to control my feelings to enjoy my life any more than I need to control the weather to enjoy my day.

I am not a victim of the weather not because I can control it or avoid it, but because I can always work with it and through it. And I need not be a victim of my feelings not because I can control or avoid them, but because I can always work with them and through them.

When I’m not scared of my feelings, (because I don’t need to change them, avoid them, or act on them), I’m free to feel them fully. Unresisted sadness can be delicious; unbridled anger is like being one with a gale force wind.

But from time to time, I forget all that and I once again become frightened by own internal weather. My experience of the world looks all too real, and phrases like “it’s just my own thinking and it will pass” seem cruel instead of comforting.

It’s in those moments that I willingly and willfully ignore the truth of the inside out nature of the human experience and take five minutes to make a change.

With all my love,

For more by Michael Neill, click here.

By Christine DiGangi, Credit.com

Many people who have finished college in the last decade have student loan debt, but some have found that repaying that debt is more complicated than they expected it to be. There are many resources for student loan borrowers trying to figure out repayment, and some go to financial planners for advice on how to manage their student loan debt as a part of a broader financial strategy that will carry them into retirement.

1. Not Knowing Repayment Options

Borrowers with federal student loans have many options for making their payments more affordable. Ara Oghoorian is a financial planner in California who specializes in working with health care professionals, meaning many of his clients have six-figure student loan debt balances.

A common question his clients ask is about loan repayment options, because even if they have high salaries, they may still struggle to afford loan payments in addition to their other expenses. Understanding how loan repayment options apply to your specific situation can be difficult.

“Sometimes they’re extremely well informed, but other times they just know the terms, they . . . need to know how it works,” Oghoorian said about his clients.

If you’re challenged by the loan payments you’re required to make each month, look into things like income-based repayment, pay-as-you earn and public service student loan forgiveness. Do your own research, but ask an expert if you’re not sure how these things work or if your loans qualify.

2. Servicers

Oftentimes, a person’s student loan debt comprises several individual loans, and even if you make one monthly payment to a single loan servicer, the payment is divided among multiple loans. If you want to focus on a particular loan, it can be challenging to communicate that to your servicer.

“One thing that’s really common is people try to pay extra on their student loans, but it just goes toward future payments,” said Sophia Bera, a financial planner in New York. “If you write a letter and send that in with your student loan payment, you can specify which student loan you’d like to pay off.”

Bera said she sometimes gets on the phone with her clients and their loan servicers to make sure the instructions are clear, but it’s also crucial to follow up in writing.

Many borrowers have complained about difficulty working with their servicers — the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau accepts loan servicercomplaints, and President Barack Obama recently issued a directive to the Department of Education to make sure it’s easier for borrowers to manage loan repayment. Keeping good records and diligently maintaining communication with your servicer is crucial to managing your debt.

3. Balancing Loan Payments & Savings

Oghoorian said he reminds his clients that the large amount of debt they have was an investment in themselves, and they have to look at the interest rates on their debt and compare it to returns they can get on other investments.

“When you’re paying debt, whatever you pay additional, you’re earning that interest rate, and you have to look if you can do better than that,” he said.

Borrowers often don’t know exactly what they’re paying, which is why Bera tells her clients to know the specifics of their loans, like interest rates and repayment schedule, so they can fit loan repayment into their grand financial plan.

Take advantage of 401(k)s and employer benefits, Bera said, while also putting enough away in savings to handle necessary bills in case of an emergency.

4. Too Much Debt

One of the most common problems borrowers encounter when starting to repay the loans they took out for their education is they have too much debt. The obvious solution is to not borrow excessively in the first place, but that doesn’t do a graduate any good (future graduates, take note).

Scot Hanson, a financial planner in Minnesota, said he often encounters parents of graduates who want to help their kids who are struggling with unaffordable debt, but that’s not always a good strategy — for the parents or the kids. He knows this from experience, because he’s helping his own daughters with the unaffordable debt they took on. He does what he can without sacrificing his savings.

“Sometimes they want to help their kids so bad, but you help your kids by taking care of yourself,” Hanson said. “You’re in no position to be bailing them out because your retirement plan is marginal at best anyway.”

Graduates having trouble with federal student loans should explore their repayment options, but the bottom line is student loan debt is generally not dischargeable in bankruptcy, so making payments is a must. There are some refinancing options for student loan borrowers, and you typically need good credit to qualify for them (if you want to know where you stand, you can see two of your credit scores for free on Credit.com). Finding a way to make those debt payments manageable, as well as adjusting expenses as much as possible to accommodate them, can be the best way to tackle the problem of too much debt.

More from Credit.com

• How Student Loans Can Impact Your Credit
• Can You Get Your Student Loans Forgiven?
• Strategies for Paying Off Student Loan Debt

This article originally appeared on Credit.com.

Sixteen-year-old Grayson Moore had no label, only metaphors, to describe the disconnect he felt between his body and soul.

It was like car sickness, he says, when your eyes and inner ears disagree about whether you are moving.

“It makes you sick,” Moore says. “That’s the same with gender.”