[PHOTO] National AIDS Memorial, Episcopal Cathedral of St. John the Divine, New York City

Last Monday was my day for exploring the upper half of Manhattan island, and one of my stops was the Episcopal Cathedral of Saint John the Divine, a massive edifice at 1047 Amsterdam Avenue, towards the southern end of Columbia University's main campus.

The Cathedral has an excellent reputation in many things, one of these being a forward and progressive early response to HIV/AIDS and the epidemic's victims. In the realm of the ephemeral, for instance, it hosted Diamanda Galás's 1990 Plague Mass performance; in the realm of the more enduring, it hosts a Keith Haring altar (unphotographed by me, alas) and the National AIDS Memorial, a complex of altar and book commemorating the victims of the disease.



Candle and rainbow banner were both present.



The National AIDS Memorial Book of Remembrance is a sadly thick book, protected behind glass.



I was shocked by the date cited for publication on the book's front page: "November 9, 1985"? (The use of the term "A.I.D.S. Related Complex" dates the book as surely if less precisely, as does the absence of the term "HIV", as does the spelling-out of the disease.) The Cathedral responded at such an early date? Especially in the context of the ambient linked homophobia and hatred of even potential AIDS victims from the circles of American religion at the time, this is exceptional, and laudatory.

[BLOG] Some Monday links

• A BCer in Toronto's Jeff Jedras wonders whether the Liberal Party of Canada should continue to exist, if in so doing it would allow a centre to exist beyond the Conservatives on the right and the NDP on the left. (If, as he notes, is the question.)


• Beyond the Beyond's Bruce Sterling mourns the imminent death of Minitel, the prototype French computer network launched in the 1980s that after three decades is set to be ended. (It still has three-quarters of a million users, apparently.)


• Centauri Dreams notes the recent astronomical data suggesting that planets are common regardless of the abundances of elements in their parent stars. The discussion in the comments about the sorts of variations noted in planetary systems so far is worth noting.


• Eastern Approaches visits northwestern Bulgaria and finds a declining region kept afloat by mass migration,to Bulgarian cities and to the wider European Union.


• Extraordinary Observations takes a look at statistics on migration to and from Rust Belt cities in the United States, finding that while net migration seems to be up there's not such a huge revolution as some sources suggest.


• Language Hat and Language Log take a look at the emergent linguistic tendency to refer to LPs as "vinyls".


• Lawyers, Guns and Money's Erik Loomis points out that the term "Latino" in the United States is so broad as to make generalizations about the present behaviour of Spanish-speakers untenable, never mind future predictions.


• Strange Maps looks at the north-south variations in vocabulary spoken in German-speaking Europe. Bavaria and Baden-Württemburg have more in common linguistically with Austria than with the former East Germany, unsurprisingly.


• Supernova Condensate features pictures of the Egg Nebula, AFGL 2688, a pre-planetary nebula belonging to a planetary system in the process of forming.

[DM] "A brief note on the restored Mediterranean periphery"

I've a post up at Demography Matters making the argument that from the perspective of Mediterranean European countries, it doesn't really matter whether the Eurozone survives or falls apart: people are going to be leaving in droves for more prosperous countries, in northern Europe and elsewhere, regardless.