Frontdesk
by David Waggoner

Every June throughout my high school career, students were given reading lists to prepare for the next year’s studies. My classmates and I would roll our eyes and stash the lists away—mine usually ended up in the back corner of my desk drawer. By August the list would surface again, thanks mostly to my mother’s efforts. And I was faced with twenty or so book titles and less than a month to plow through them. They were not-so-nice reminders that summer was coming to a close and soon I would be heading back to school. The tradition followed me into college, as did the accompanying feeling of dread.

Of course, now, with the busy schedule that comes with keeping a non-profit magazine on-press, I treasure those days when I had the time, energy, and opportunity to immerse myself in Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms or Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights or The Stranger by Albert Camus. I envy those who find this wisdom earlier rather than later, like Robert Harless. Diagnosed as HIV-positive three years ago, Harless became apathetic. After counseling and taking prescribed depression medication, he enrolled in real estate and business courses at Sacramento City College. He is one of five beneficiaries of a $1,500 scholarship given out this year by another member of the Sacramento community, Joyce Mitchell. He can now pay for the books he needs this fall.

Joyce Mitchell has long been an AIDS activist who found herself with a pool of money, donated by family and friends to honor her mother’s memory, and decided to help out college-enrolled, HIV-positive young adults on an annual basis. “These are people who are dealing with life-and-death issues,” Mitchell said in a recent interview in The Sacramento Bee. “Getting through college is a very different experience for them. We want to make this the first easy thing they’ve had.” She took $960 and multiplied it into $20,000.

Her kindness and insight into the needs of those living with HIV/AIDS has started something grand. She is investing in the futures of those who want to enrich their lives through learning and become productive members of their communities. Some have lost their parents to the disease; some are barely out of their teenage years and are dealing with financial, physical, and emotional challenges that even thirty-five-year-olds stumble over. They are the ones who are poring over those reading lists as the last bell of the school year rings. We need to join Ms. Mitchell in nurturing these positive collegiates. Even if you can’t give money, there are many ASOs that could use a hand in their programs that help HIVers obtain GEDs or improve job skills.

And maybe we can even entertain the idea that, even if our school days are over, we can still find that reading list in the back corner of our desk drawers and pick up where we left off. Even if we aren’t graced with three months off every summer, we can find the time. (Hint: Hide that television remote.) With that in mind, A&U humbly offers you its Summer Reading issue: a list, albeit short, to get you back into the swim of things—some poetry by Christine Korfhage and John J. Mundt and fiction by Jean Paik Schoenberg, as well as an interview with J.L. King, author of one of the hottest best-sellers in recent times, On the Down Low. Afterwards, trot on down to your local card shop and buy a bookmark, dust off your library card, and take heart: Class is back in session.

August 2004