A tribute to Kathy Goldfarb-Findling

A lesson learned later in life: If you find yourself on the fence, it’s never a mistake to go to a funeral – ever; it is however, often a mistake to excuse yourself from one… You can take this to the bank.  How many times have I passed on a funeral because I felt: too busy, didn’t really know the family, forgot and wasn’t dressed appropriately, had a meeting scheduled, a hectic day ahead, etc. etc.? Lame even at the moment, and I knew it.

I understand ‘not all funerals are equal’ relative to my sense of loss, intimacy with the bereaved, time and distance realities… I’m talking here about funerals within reach and primarily funerals of acquaintances: nodding neighbors, professional contacts, family members of relatives and co-workers, etc.: funerals I don’t ‘have’ to attend.  

I just came from the funeral of , a woman intimately involved in the Central New York professional philanthropic community for many years, and someone who has always kept an eye on AIDS Community Resources – especially our two primary youth initiatives, the Teen AIDS Task Force and The Q Center.

Kathy was not someone I saw often or knew well. She was, however, someone I liked immediately and someone I always felt like I knew well, if that makes sense…? Cathy was the only foundation representative in my entire professional career that sought us out and announced upon her first visit: “We haven’t ever given you any money and it’s time to remedy that!” (I will never be talked out of believing in angels!). That visit resulted in us hosting 3 African teens, all HIV/AIDS educators, and their chaperones, from Zimbabwe, for an amazing/inspiring/sobering week-long 9 county experience culminating in a regional youth summit at the State Fairgrounds: a week and an event that changed lives on two continents. The ripple effects continue to this day…

    Years later as we were looking to establish the Q Center, a safe space for gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered and questioning youth, and Cathy had risen to a position of leadership at the Gifford Foundation, I called and asked for a meeting. On the day of my appointment, as I sat with one of her staff, Cathy stuck her head into the meeting room and declared: “Give him what he’s asking for – we’re going to fund them…!” On she went and so they did..!  We now have a library and group meeting room, both full of color, furnished courtesy of Gifford and Cathy’s commitment to the misrepresented and marginalized in our community.  

        All the reflections shared at Cathy’s funeral solidly resonated with my limited experience of her. She was the real deal with intimates and acquaintances: one face, one heart, one vision of how to be in the world, no matter who she interacted with.

   I didn’t have to go to Cathy’s funeral, and I did forget, as I dressed that morning in ‘casual Friday’ attire. I did have a hectic schedule, and I didn’t know the family. I went. I’ve learned (mostly…), and Cathy left me with yet one more bequest: images of promise and possibility, of delight in doing good with good humor, of trusting intuition and common sense, of spontaneous generosity towards all. A mistake dodged and a blessing bestowed: I’ll never be talked out of attending a funeral or believing in angels. 

 Kathy Goldfarb-Findling is second from left in front row of this 2001 photo.  She stands alongside three teens from Zimbabwe.

 

Inspirations

Inspirations

January 2013

 

I am continually exposed to inspiration because of my position, and every now and then I manage to let it take hold… I write this in the season of all manner of heightened emotions, and I thank the ‘Powers that Be’ that ‘inspiration’ is one of them:

-         I walk through the reception area and one of our clients stops me to say how much fun the Nutrition Team has made their group sessions, and how she has changed her eating habits and feeling better because of it…  

-         A long absent volunteer pauses in the middle of emptying the trash to share the fact of his recent incarceration and how he’s …”back on track now, and so happy to be back here with you guys!”

-         I’m stopped in the parking lot and asked for help by a woman who seems a bit flustered and is double parked: she is bringing in armloads of gifts, as one of our Holiday Angels, “My kids are all grown and doing fine now,  so it’s great to be able to shop for someone in need!” She gives me a hug and thanks me.

-         A ‘higher end’ restaurant opens for lunch just to accommodate our 80 + staff for a holiday luncheon and offers us a deal we couldn’t match at McDonalds: “We love what you guys do!”

-         A local (previously unknown to the agency) woman from the community sees my photo and comes into the office with the portrait she has painted of me – and it’s really good! She then goes on to say that she would like take photos and do the same for any clients, staff, or volunteers: “My way of giving”. She’s already begun. She will take no money – even for supplies.

-         Two long time volunteers and donors ( a couple) notify us that in 2013 they want to double what they already give on a monthly basis -  to be split between ACR’s general needs and the Q Center: “how impressed….with the outstanding work you are doing….and the many clients the agency serves…”

-         A Facebook notice goes out about our Nutrition Programs’ need for an additional freezer, and within seconds (I do not exaggerate) there is a response and the freezer is delivered the next day…

It goes on… and I am left, ‘balanced’ in a way that I could not foresee – or talk myself into…

     In the face of recent stunning tragedy and senseless loss (those small radiant faces will not leave me) when the world seems so very out of balance,  I witness good every day; I witness generosity every day; I witness transformation every day; I witness self sacrifice and caring that is second nature to more people than I can count. I need no convincing, that evil doesn’t triumph; It’s constant reminding I seem to need, and mercifully it’s pressed upon me daily.

      To Inspire: to breathe; to have an animating effect upon; to stimulate or impel towards some creative effort; to infuse life into… If I could steal a turn of phrase, “Be the inspiration you want to see in the world”: my New Year’s wish for us all.

 

Nutrition and AIDS Health

As I write, the Summer Olympics are about to begin and the International AIDS Conference in Washington DC is in full swing: hate missing it (both actually!). Circumstances kept me home-based, but other ACR staff are attending the Conference to soak up as much as possible from this rare opportunity… I’ll save any reflections for next month.
In the mean-time there has been no shortage of activity on the ‘home-front’. In a matter of days we are initiating a first time 14 county-wide Nutrition Program, and, as of yesterday, we were notified that a long past request to expanded our Housing Initiatives had been (unexpectedly!) approved, adding an emergency funding component that can make all the difference in the lives of the many we serve who have had a troubled housing history (often of their own making..), and who are now putting their lives back together – or together for the first time….
Sustenance and shelter: nutritious food and safe/secure housing – the foundations of health, both mental and physical for all of us, but not the experience of so many who come through our doors. For someone like me, who has never worried about or lacked either, I am routinely stunned, saddened, and humbled by how much I have always taken for granted: never a worry about a roof over my head or three squares.
To listen to the rhetoric of the well-heeled politicians and loud mouth pundits who celebrate corporate welfare (can you spell “greed”?) while they denigrate the expansion of health care, the food-stamp program, ADAP (AIDS Drug Assistance Program), housing subsidies, and so on, leaves me on slow boil: “Out of touch”, doesn’t come close to describing them. Such mean spiritedness is stunning… I know, yet again, I digress…. It’s the heat.
One of the great pleasures of our new Nutrition Program is the opportunity to work more closely with the Food Bank of CNY, a remarkable operation doing remarkable good, not just in distributing food, but in the continued cultivation of diverse and healthy choices: an “In touch” agency if ever there was one. I love being in their company.
So, no slow down this summer: new programs require all manner of activity: hiring, renting new space, moving offices, purchasing equipment, advertising, staff training, client recruitment, community partnerships, etc. etc. Not exactly high jumping but clearly a win for the many living in poverty we serve who understand, with no explanation needed, that a secure food source and dependable shelter are spring boards to improved health and a long and productive life.
I’ll carry that torch any day… Hope you’re having a great summer!

AIDS Walk/Run $2,000,000

June 2012

I have to comment about the 20th Anniversary of our Onondaga
County-based AIDS Walk/Run: a milestone on multiple levels. Way back when, this event was the agency’s ‘first ever’ big fundraiser, and we had no idea what to expect; we just knew we had to raise money to support our newly established youth initiative, the Teen AIDS Task Force (TATF) program, and a Walk seemed like a good idea. Little did we know… Being fairly naïve helped get us in too deep to back out – which was a good thing.
Just to multiply the anxiety, a few weeks prior to the event, officials from the local park where the Walk was to be held, called to let us know, because of flooding problems, we were being, ‘booted’: weather rules here in CNY… Can you say ‘scramble’? I’ll spare you the frantic details, but nature’s caprice led us to contact Beaver Lake Nature Center, and the rest, as they say, is history: oh happy flooding!
The ever-beautiful Beaver Lake Nature Center has proven to be a twenty year boon on every level: participants love the space and the space seems to love us. Over the twenty years, $2,000,000 (!) has been raised by this event, sustaining and growing the twenty years of our youth-targeted services. These events are hard work, both logistically as well as the raising money part (getting harder and harder during these tough economic times), but we’re proud of doing our part to locally fund programs, especially given the political whims and ideologies of government support.
The Walk/Run has always a great time – always. Regardless of the weather (rained this year, but no flooding!) The energy (along with the music) pulses in the very diverse crowd that gathers – for very diverse reasons: some runners come just to run and have no particular connection to ACR or AIDS: they like to run; many come to memorialize those they have lost: family and friends often ‘in uniform’ (photo of their deceased loved one on their T shirt), keeping the memory alive and finding purpose in being part of the solution; a lot of youth attend – many TATF members – excited to be together and part of a larger movement – the very youth this event supports; many working in the health care field form teams and walk in solidarity with their patients – making a huge impact on the growing numbers, of people living with HIV who participate, manifesting a very different ‘face of AIDS from 20 years ago’ when it all began…
I have had the privilege of attending every one of these events. My ‘job’ is easy there. Outside of a couple media interviews and a brief welcome, I get to step back and view this grand spectacle of hope, energy, and movement. I get to think back 20 years to the uncertainty, anxiety, and loss that were the back-round against which we held the inaugural Walk. I have the rare visceral experience of connectedness – of being part of a multitude literally moving forward – of change having happened and currently happening… To think, I have a flood to thank for much of it… Gotta love it!

the gay thing/homosexual agenda

So, I’m talking with one of our Teen AIDS Task Force (TATF) staff the other day and in the midst of our conversation she shares a recent incident: as she was about to begin an HIV 101 presentation to a large suburban school health class (at the school’s invitation), the teacher took her aside and asked her if she could, “try not to emphasize the gay thing”… (!) She went on to say that, “parents had complained”… The TATF staff person in question was much nicer than I would have been and politely listened. She then proceeded to present the same curriculum she always does – which, by the way, does not include any section on “the gay thing”. One is only left to conjecture that the request was that the TATF staff not include in her heath education presentation the fact that anal sex is one of the major routes of HIV transmission – a fairly serious omission during a high-school health class on how to protect oneself from HIV infection and other STDs.
During that very class (life being what it is), one of the students raised his hand and said that he found the current power point slide (photo here inserted) of condoms, “offensive”… She courteously (again, I suspect, unlike me) moved on to the next slide. I leave it to you, dear reader, to judge the nature of the photo and wonder what is afoot… All I could think was, “Back to the Future”!
A week later this image was further confirmed, at the AIDS HIKE for Life. There I was introduced to the young TATF high-school chapter member who had raised the most money for the HIKE. Going door to door, in the mostly rural area she lived in, she collected over $1000.00 (amazing, in my book)! Along the way, two of her stops deserved special mention: at one she received an extensive doorstep lecture on, “the homosexual agenda promoted by AIDS agencies…” and at the second, all 7 individuals in the household had never heard of AIDS – had no idea of the disease. There she was invited inside and spent the next 20 minutes giving the family a short course on HIV/AIDS. Thank the heavens for unflappable staff and bold well informed young people!
I am now at a point where, “the gay thing/homosexual agenda” belief/charge/misinformation bores me more than it angers me… We’re 30+ years into this global epidemic: millions infected, millions dead, 50,000+ new infections in this country alone every year, and there continues to be a persistent insistence on the part of a growing number of self proclaimed morality police that there should be no talk about this disease in any way other than to, “Just say no”, to (even!) discussion of any kind of sexual expression/activity outside of a heterosexual marriage: a stricture and strategy guaranteed not only to alienate just about every young person out there, but to guarantee an increased level of sexually transmitted diseases and unplanned/unwanted pregnancies… These bigots really are boring.
In the spirit of transparency however, I take it back about the anger/bored thing. I am angry at this one-more-form of abuse, any young person, who understands him/her self to be gay, has to suffer. Every time a health educator is pulled aside to censor critical sexual health information in the name of promoting a ‘gay agenda’, every time a hand goes up in class and a benign photo of a condom is challenged as being ‘offensive’ and the whole class loses out, every time some blowhard wants to harangue a young person (who may be gay) about the ‘homosexual agenda’, wounds are inflicted on countless kids who are mightily struggling already to keep their head above water in the treacherous seas of adolescence. I am angry… and I’d appreciate it if you’d be angry as well. Let it propel you to taking a bigot aside, raising your hand in the face of hate agendas and, spending the time to educate the uniformed. Despite the effort and (often) difficulty, there’s no satisfaction like it, and the need couldn’t be more immediate. Thanks for listening.

Teen AIDS Task Force 20 years

Anniversaries: always bittersweet hereabouts. AIDS/HIV never had much of a cultural trajectory 30+ years ago: ‘cure’ was imminent and anniversaries came as surprises and sobering reminders of powerlessness and limitations. On the other hand, here we are happily celebrating a twenty (20!) year anniversary of our peer driven youth initiative, Teen AIDS Task Force (TATF), a program which has reached tens of thousands of young people in the Central, Northern, and Mohawk Valley region of NYS, with intensive HIV/STD prevention interventions.
Way back when, a student intern from Syracuse University, in conjunction with our then Prevention Director, put together a
high school based initiative they loosely modeled after Students Against Drunk Driving (SADD) chapters, christened it TATF, and got down to work providing frank comprehensive abstinence based (vs. ‘abstinence only’) information and interventions intended to lead to behavior change.
To this end TATF staff would meet with a select group of students on a monthly or bi-monthly basis to cover HIV/STD basics and attendant issues (drug and alcohol abuse, sexual and domestic violence, decision making, peer pressure, etc.), along with leadership skills development.
TATF members were in turn responsible to creatively provide information and model behavior change to the greater student body and at times to the larger community. TATF always operated on the belief that motivated young people can influence their peers in a powerful way and lead to changed norms and changed behaviors.
A more difficult intervention we have never undertaken – or a more successful one. The multi-layered journey of establishing a presence in schools, especially with an initiative that includes the dissemination of explicit sexual information, is not for the fainthearted. Especially during the inaugural days, it was not unusual to be met with ‘bible-in-hand’ adults accusing us of having a, “homosexual agenda”: tape recorders were often present as we offered informational community forums where the local high school was considering a TATF chapter. Teachers, administrators, school board members, parents (many of whom changed every year…) all weighed in with little or no input from the youth in question. It was never boring.
Despite the wild ride, twenty years into it, the Teen AIDS Task Force program has expanded dramatically: we are in high schools, middle schools, after school programs, alternative to school programs, inpatient facilities, church sponsored groups, and GLBTQ youth support groups. In schools where we have not been able to establish a chapter (the reasons are legion and mostly, ‘political’), we are routinely asked to conduct multiple health classes.
TATF members of every stripe raise money and participate in our 3 regional AIDS Walks – the initial and still the primary funding source of the TATF initiative. TATF members take this program seriously and shoulder responsibility to keep it going. We now have ACR staff, who were members of TATF chapters, ‘way back when’: a very gratifying and unexpected outcome…
Yep, this has been a very positive adventure – one I want to celebrate. This is young people at their best and brightest and boldest. This is young people insisting on (if I may), ‘keeping it real’, and relevant to the persuasive and pervasive cultural influences that could leave them with a life short-lived and short-changed. More sweet than bitter, this 20 year anniversary…

Teen AIDS Task Force 20 years