When I first came to Atlanta, I would have said that Atlanta’s word is glamour.  Atlanta and its people seem to thrive on the new, the shiny, the glitzy. Atlanta is a town that seems in a constant state of renewal. It tears itself down, and rebuilds itself into the newest thing.  I often walk through the halls of Atlanta malls and feel underdressed because so many people dress like they are on their way to a music video set or a night club or a movie premiere. Designer clothes, fancy shoes, well-coifed hair; Atlantans are beautiful.

Now having lived in Atlanta for a year now, I’ve adjusted my word for Atlanta. Don’t get me wrong, I still think that Atlanta and its inhabitants are glamorous, but I know it is more than that.  Atlanta is more than glamour.  Atlanta is about style. Atlanta is trendy in a lot of ways, chasing the newest hip “it” thing, but I’ve never known a group of people better able to transform normal shirts, skirts, dresses and pants into a fashion statement.  The city oozes artistic creativity and its people believe in expressing their personal creative style. Sometimes that means sequins and heels.  Other times that means afros, sun dresses, and colorful tattoos. Or locs, ripped jeans and chains. Or bald heads, pencil skirts and ruffles. Either way, it looks so cool!

While creativity, at times, starts with a blank canvas when it comes to clothes, you have to buy them somewhere. How hard would it be to express your personal style while wearing clothes that are sold in chains like NY and Company, Macys, Aeropostale, H&M or Charlotte Russe? Pretty hard. That’s why Atlanta’s uber fabulous boutiques, regional chains, (and those who write about Atlanta style) and online marketplaces are so important.  So when I saw my old college friend posting her unique handmade clothes and accessories on Etsy and Facebook, I wholeheartedly approved. Here’s to finding more ways to express my own Atlanta style.

I attended a session led by Ed Everett (who is the city manager responsible for the awesomeness that is downtown Redwood City). In groups of 4-5, Ed asked us to think of all the ways that community is built, from the ground up. My small group had a really great brainstorm.  We talked about ways to force people to see each other; the importance of sidewalks and public meetings spaces, we discussed how one could implement a social gateway, we debated how one convinces community members to have a commitment to the community, we liked the idea of having food and culture centered celebrations. Interestingly enough, as we went around the room to the different groups, we found that everyone had a lot of the same type of ideas.

What can one do to build a community where none currently exists? We all seemed to realize that the best way to build community is to connect early and often, and to make connection easy.

How can you do this in your community?

*Create spaces where people can connect- Are there public meeting rooms, quads, town squares, gazebos, picnic tables, park benches, fountains, shade trees, church fellowship halls, rotary halls, sidewalks, front porches.

*Create events where people can connect- Festivals, block parties, cook-outs, community gardens, public movie showings, concerts, book readings, small dinner parties, sleepovers for children, vacation bible school, open houses, neighborhood meetings.

*Create community buy-in- Make sure everyone is invested in the success of the community, and wants to be a part of an active connected community. This creates a snowball where the community expects a level of interaction from the members.

When I was in middle school my uncle, who lived with my family, started to go blind.  It started slowly at first, and my mother and all the other adults attributed his weakened eye sight to getting older.  At the time, my uncle must have been in his mid- 40’s and bad eyes run in the family, so no one was surprised that he started needing reading glasses.  Except the reading glasses didn’t work.  In fact, nothing worked.

Finally, after much coaxing, cajoling and outright coercing my mother got my uncle into the car and over to Duke for a physical, including an eye exam.  They returned with thick-ass glasses that my siblings and I made fun of.

It wasn’t until a week or so later that my mom and my uncle apparently went back to the doctor to get the results of the physical.  They, of course, didn’t say anything to us kids.  And I wouldn’t have suspected a thing, if I hadn’t caught my uncle silently crying on our couch before my mom made him leave the room.

A few weeks (or months) later mama took me out for a walk (we still take each other for walks when we have “controversial” aka bad news to share).  It was then that she told me that my uncle was HIV positive and that the disease was what caused him to lose his vision.  I reacted badly and said some pretty hurtful things.  (Give me a break, I was 11) After my mother gave me the look (you know the look), she informed me that he was still family and we would support and take care of him.  She told me that we had to be more careful about washing our hands, and dealing with other body fluids.  My uncle was prescribed what looked like oodles of colorful pills to take every day and he had to stop smoking. He continued to live with us for a little while after that, until again I caught him crying.

That time, mom just called my siblings and me into the family room and told all of us that my uncle now had AIDS.  He moved into a hospice for AIDS patients soon after.  My uncle lived in that home for at least a year or more (it all gets blurry to me). We visited him at least once a week, and got to watch him and a whole bunch of other AIDS victims die.  His fight wasn’t an easy one, and towards the end my mother stopped taking me and the other kids to visit him.  She thought it was too disturbing.

Other than her weekly visits, I only remember a few times when my mother was called to her brother’s bedside.  One was the night that he went completely blind and found himself alone, staring into utter blackness, another happened when one of the other men in the home died (who had come to live there shortly after my uncle) and the last occurred on the night that he died.

My mother recounted the story (or at least his speculation) on how my uncle contracted HIV, but that story doesn’t really matter here.  She also told me of conversations that they had discussed his live and regrets.  She says that he would often dissect his life to see where he went wrong.

I always thought that that was the saddest part of my uncle’s short battle with HIV and AIDS. Even in the end, he equated his being gay with having AIDS. He didn’t “come out of the closet until the beginning of the end and it seems that he still had problems with who he was and how he lived his life.  This, of course, was at least partly to blame on his upbringing, his relationships, and the shame that was still associated with being a gay man in the 1990’s.  I wondered why he never got tested before.  Was it shame? Fear? Lack of education?

My life is riddled with people I wish I could have gotten to know better over the years. People whose stories I wish I could have recorded in some way. My uncle is one of them.

I don’t really know how telling this story is related to the overall mission of this blog, but what I do know is that other people like my uncle exist.  People who feel isolated. People who have health problems they don’t know about. I also know that where we live and how we live affect our outcomes; social, political, economic, educational and health.  Complete communities, which encompass all areas of our lives, support residents allowing them to have full, rich lives.  And we can’t have complete communities without adequate local, affordable healthcare.

I would like to think that the conditions under which my uncle went untested for AIDS for many years (and would have continued to, had he not had those vision problems) no longer exist but I know too well that they do.  AIDS isn’t like cancer in that early detection saves lives (At least I don’t think so) but with the right medication, he would have lived longer, giving me time to grow up and take an interest in him and his life.

Furthermore, who knows how things would be different if whomever my uncle contracted the disease from had been educated about the sexual risks they were taking, and had used condoms.  Now scale that up and think about all the other people who could be saved with proper sex education and access to free condoms.

Luckily, in the county where I grew up, things have changed for the better.  At the local health department, students could get free condoms, birth control and STD testing.  I hope adults without insurance can get the same benefits.

Unfortunately, other areas aren’t as progressive as my hometown.  Even in the city of Atlanta, population 537,958, finding a health department that does STD testing can be a miserable experience. Just this summer, I wanted to have a physical without health insurance. The only option I could find was a Planned Parenthood, if the City of Atlanta has health departments, their web presence is deplorable.  At the local Planned Parenthood, guess who I shared the waiting room with on the day of my appointment? Young gay men and teenage girls. And if the looks on their faces were any indication, they weren’t getting any good news.  It just breaks my heart because it could easily be much different.

Some would say it is unpractical and certainly unprofitable to have plentiful local healthcare in easily accessible areas in and around our neighborhoods. But we already know the difference it makes when folks have easy access to healthy food and more education. (We get healthier, smarter folks) In the same way, having near-by healthcare options and comprehensive sex education can also improve the quality of life of residents.