“Quarantine,” as Dr. David F. Musto, a Yale University drug policy historian, noted in his 1986 article “Quarantine and the Problem of AIDS,” comes from the Italian word for “forty days.” That’s the arbitrary length of time ships coming from supposedly contagious areas used to be held at a distance from port to prevent disease from spreading to the city’s population. It’s an old idea, used back then to evoke a feeling of safety from diseases like leprosy, yellow fever, and cholera. On Friday, Australian Prime Minister John Howard declared it a fit idea for AIDS.

More specifically, he said on Friday that Australia should bar HIV-positive immigrants from entering the country, according to an AP report. Howard said Health Minister Tony Abbott was looking into means of tightening Australia’s HIV-exclusive immigration policy, the report adds. Currently, Australia’s health screening program unconditionally bars immigrants with active or untreated tuberculosis but evaluates HIV-positive applicants on a case-by-case basis.

While an Australian move towards a more HIV-exclusive immigration policy would hardly make it the first nation to bar all HIV-positive people entry — Russia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates all unconditionally ban HIV-positive people from entering their borders — the decision would put them among a small and dwindling group of nations maintaining absolute bans. France and Britain have admitted non-citizens infected with HIV, and Costa Rica, South Africa, and Thailand have all lifted HIV-exclusion policies, according to one 1998 report.

Current U.S. immigration policy, signed into law by President Clinton in 1993, excludes HIV-positive people from entering the country. The U.S. first categorized HIV as a “dangerous contagious disease,” added it to its exclusion list, and began requiring mandatory testing of all applicants for the virus in 1987 under President Reagan.

Unlike President Reagan, AIDS isn’t a subject I would normally discuss. Outside of a few debate rounds in high school when the other side chose to debate U.S. HIV-exclusion policy, I knew little about the topic before I set out writing this post. I’m not an activist on the issue and certainly not an expert. I don’t even know anyone who is HIV positive. Still, I think the issue prompts a more thoughtful, hard look at how we react to incurable, mysterious diseases like leprosy and cholera. Australians are (at least somewhat understandably) scared of AIDS, but in this case, perceived security should not trump the individual value of immigrants in Australia or elsewhere. Australians, give out condoms and research cures. Don’t throw up a wall and pretend the black-plague-at-the-gates will disappear if you hide in your own quarantine.

In The Fray Contributor

How am I supposed to blog when a literary giant has fallen?
The Tart cried. Adam too. As always, Maud has the best links and the soulful brevity.

Jennifer Leblanc

Politicians need to stop acting as if they understand the plight of the working man.

Wednesday, former Sen. John Edwards, currently running for the Democratic presidential nomination, worked a shift as a nurse aide at the Sarah Neuman Nursing Home in Mamaroneck, New York. This publicity opportunity was part of "Work a Day in My Shoes," a program sponsored by the Service Employees International Union.

Some might say, “Wow, Edwards is really trying to understand how it is to be blue collar.” Not me. I’ve worked as a nurse aide in a mental hospital, and I know first hand that one day working in those shoes is easy. It’s the next day, and the day after that, that’s a real pain.

Though it goes without saying: Nursing homes and hospitals of all types are hard places to work.

Take a moment and imagine working with the sick and infirm all day. Imagine a guy with Alzheimer’s who cannot remember his daughter, or a diabetic woman who has lost a leg and is terribly afraid she’ll lose much more. Now imagine seeing this everyday, and people in much worse condition, and not saying “To hell with this.”

Let me tell you this: It’s not easy. You wake up and you think of the people at work — those improving, those not — and you don’t want to do it. But you do anyway because you know how things are, and something makes you want to help (Note: It’s not the pay).

That’s why I can’t stand seeing a politician “working in someone’s shoes.” For them — and their publicist, the media, etc. — it’s a show. When you’re doing it day after day, watching how people are continuously abused by the system, then you understand the situation. And there isn’t one reporter there to ask you about it.

Sen. Edwards is a fine person I am sure. I voted for him and Sen. John Kerry in 2004, and I did it proudly, feeling that he would help the so-called little guy.

Both of my parents work in healthcare. My mom is a nursing home social worker and my dad, until recently, worked as a nurse aide in the same mental hospital I did. I’ve grown up watching the whole system because it’s put food in my stomach.

But not for a minute do I believe Sen. Edwards has clue one how it feels to be in that line of work. Yes, he has worked with insane men (I’m from a state that sent Conrad Burns to the Senate three times), but not in the way I or my dad did.

Frankly, I’m fine with that. I’m not looking for someone to understand how it is to live paycheck to paycheck.

But more importantly, I’m not looking for someone acting like they do.

Patrick Duganz

Once a week I go to the movies. By myself. I'm probably going to do this every week for the rest of my life. I sit where I want, no one finishes my drink, and most important, I get to see whatever I want. For Grindhouse, I was definitely on my own. But for this one, I'm dragging everyone back with me.

I went Saturday night. I was expecting it to sell out, so I bought my tickets online. I also got there early to avoid sitting next to an old-school, genuine "grindhouse" viewer. Neither happened. There were maybe 20 people in the cinema with me. But those 20, like me, cheered and clapped at the end of the second film. The last half hour alone was worth the ticket price.

The first movie is quite campy — half homage, half spoof of B-movies. It's entertaining to see B-movie kings like Jeff Fahey and Michael Biehn alongside A-List Bruce Willis. Lost's Naveen Andrews was wonderfully slimy in a Miami-Vice-style suit and British accent. Otherwise, there are lots of zombies, cheap jokes, and a smokin' sex scene interrupted mid-way by a polite apology about a missing reel. Dang.

The second movie has two parts — I don't provide spoilers, so feel free to keep reading. I could care less about the first part — it was just the foundation for the end but with great music. I admit — I was bored. And I was thinking, "I get how this will end, chicks die, yadda yadda." Oh no. Instead, I am going to build a shrine to Zoe Bell, Tracie Thoms, and Rosario Dawson.

First I started smiling uncontrollably. Then I was laughing. When it was over, had there been a man sitting beside me, I would've made him my bitch. And liked it.

So I see the headlines about the movie's five-million-dollar, opening-weekend failure and think, huh? But…? Why? Why is Harvey Weinstein apologizing? My God, man, stand by your product. I do agree with him about the length of the movie. Three hours and 12 minutes is quite a stretch. They're toying with the idea of splitting the movies into two showings. My money goes to the second one. Yours should too.

Jennifer Leblanc

This Easter, among overflowing baskets of mashmellow chickens, chocolate bunnies and Jelly Bellys, lay the bittersweet lamentations of the Pope. 

Speaking Sunday to tens of thousands of faithful at St. Peter’s Square, he cracked the eggshell of Easter’s sugary coating to discuss “how many wounds, how much suffering there is in the world.”

I am happy to say that, for a change, the Pope and I are on the same page.  While Christian holidays like Easter and Christmas often seem divorced from their principled roots and pious traditions — Easter marks the second biggest holiday for candy sales in the United States — the Pope kept the spirit of Christ’s resurrection central to his traditional “Urbi et Orbi” Easter address.  He spoke about terrorism, about kidnapping, and about the parts of the world that need political, economic, and social resurrection the most.

From Darfur to Afghanistan, Congo, and Somalia, the Pope’s call for reconciliation and peace, though idealistic, echoes the sense of hope growing in Northern Ireland.  On a holiday known for it’s pastel bunnies, egg hunts, and baskets of candy, I welcome his social conscience.  I only wish he had a few less conflicts to lament.

Read more about the Pope’s address here.

In The Fray Contributor

This may be a familiar scenario to you (as it is to myself and all book lovers): you've started a classic novel/current bestseller/a friend's all-time favorite. You're mildly interested. Soon, you're just bored. You don't care who killed so and so, or how the multi-generational saga will unfold. But, this book has been hailed for decades as a masterpiece. Or, everyone is talking about this new book by Famous Author. Or, this book changed my boyfriend's life — I can't stop now. You tell yourself, I haven't read enough of it/I'm already half done/ I'm not as smart as others if I don't like it.

My (and Guy Dammann's) advice — step away from the book. First of all, no matter what anyone else thinks, you're entitled to your opinion. For instance, I hate Joyce Carol Oates's books. Yes, yes, I know — Columbia, Princeton, awards, prolific, etc. She's probably a lovely woman, others may be touched by her stories, but I'm not a fan. I don't apologize.

On the otherhand, my favorite book of all time is The Instance of the Fingerpost by Iain Pears. In my humble opinion, it's one of the greatest books ever written. But for my friends and co-workers, there was eye-rolling, groaning, "it was so boring." I play offended, but it's cool. (To those who don't like Christopher Moore, the genius of A Dirty Job and The Stupidest Angel, well, I can't be seen with you).

It has also been my experience that, if you hate a book, set it down and it may come back to you, somehow. I hated Poe as a teenager — not anymore. Ditto for Truman Capote, who is now a favorite (and may I add, Capote over Infamous). It took me a couple of years to get into Primary Colors, but in the end I loved it. The most memorable return to a book for me was The Ground Beneath Her Feet by Salman Rushdie. I started it when I was 18, when it was first released. I gave up before Vina even met Ormus. A few months ago, I devoured it. I'm still not over it. Since I've finished it, no other book can compare. Who knows why I felt nothing at 18 or why now it's a song that I want to hear again and again. It doesn't matter either way. There's always another book.

But I feel your pain, still. As zen as I may be about it now, it's instinct for a bibliophile to feel guilt over abandoning a book. Just yesterday I let go of Heyday by Kurt Anderson. I know I'll go back to it someday. But it's not the right time. I move on. 

Now, A Farewell to Arms. Did that suck or what? I actually finished it, too. Never again!

I could not put down Suite Française by Irène Némirovsky. The experience was a first for me: as I was finishing it, I felt sadness, and a little desperation. I knew the end was near, that this person had to leave me soon, and there was nothing I could do about it. I had never before felt as if I would miss a book, or it's author, as I would a friend going away for good. It must have been because of the book's background. I knew Némirovsky died at Auschwitz before she could finish it. I knew the last three intended parts of the novel died with her, unwritten. It's silly, really, wishing someone gone for six decades to somehow be saved because of her words. Suite Française will never be finished. The other precious 5,999,999 others were never saved either. Too much was lost. I feel it when I think of the last three missing parts of that novel.

The remaining words are all the world can ever have of a writer anyway. Suite Française was just our introduction to Némirovsky. Her previous novels are being translated and sold. And another, although much shorter, novel was found in her archives. Chaleur du Sang, or Fire in the Blood as we will know it, will be published in the fall, along with a biography of Némirovsky. What is left will have to be enough.

Jennifer Leblanc