[CW-Grad] A special request from David

[dlope015 at student.ucr.edu]

I would like to ask everyone for a favor. November 7th marks the Dia De Los 
Muertos Celebration in Santa Ana and some close friends and I will be erecting 
an altar in memory of those that have fallen due to AIDS. I would like to invite 
you all to please write something a poem, a few words, anything that would 
show your feelings toward AIDS, loved ones you have lost, or AIDS awareness 
and please send it to me. These will all be displayed on the altar for everyone to 
appreciate. Thank you so much for helping out. Let me know if you have any 
questions. 

Thanks for wanting to help out! I really appreciate it! What I am asking people to 
do is extremely limitless. There are no parameters in terms of length or 
censorship. It is directly or indirectly associated with AIDS, however, that means 
you could write specifically about a person you might have known, someone you 
currently know, you can MAKE someone up, you can also speak of the global 
issue, or give statistics, give advice, give a thought, express yourself through an 
imaginary conversation with someone who might be living with it or has died 
from it, the options are endless, a POEM is the perfect way to execute this (in 
my opinion) but PLEASE really be creative with it...I've gotten so many negative 
attitudes toward this, I don't know if it's the laziness of people or that they 
authentically don't really care about the issue...but I think it's important and I 
HAVE lost someone important to me to AIDS that's why I'm doing this...in his 
honor. 

So if you can, I'd really appreciate reading it and displaying it for everyone else 
to see that you put it in the effort. It's not too hard, you just need to really focus 
for about a minute and something will come. It's good to realize that there are 
more difficult things in the world sometimes. 

If you can do this, please include in your email your name (or if you choose to 
remain anonymous), the city you live in and any affiliations (i.e. clubs, 
organizations, schools, etc.) that you might belong to. 

thanks so much again! and I hope that everyone will send me something. 

You can send them directly to me ASAP, by Monday, November 2nd.

Thank you!

-David L.