As soon as she heard the AIDS Quilt was coming to West Marin for the first time since 1989, Inverness Park poet Jody Farrell dialed the phone and made a simple request.
She wanted to make sure the West Marin quilt exhibit included two three-by-six-foot panels dedicated to her son Steve, an AIDS sufferer who died at 37, just five months after the quilt last left town.
"I want [Steve's panels] to be in people's faces," she said Monday at the Dance Palace, where the quilt was being prepared for public view. She hopes people will say, "'Oh, Jody had someone who died of AIDS,' because then it touches them. We have to look at it."
Farrell recalled when she, her son, and her son's companion Christian Kiillkkaa, together saw the quilt seven years ago at the Red Barn. Steve, who was ill at the time, was shocked to find a panel memorializing a doctor who had once treated him, his mother said.
"Later we went out to Limantour Beach to sit in the sand dunes," she continued, "and we talked about the quilt and made little jokes - if we died and somebody made a quilt, what symbols would we want on it?"
A little more than a year later, Farrell found herself creating a quilt panel for her son. On it is a poem she wrote. Next to it is a panel created by Kiillkkaa and Steve's sister Susan that shows pictures of Steve at different stages of his life.
The two panels, along with 30 others, will be shown Wednesday, Nov. 27 through Sunday, Dec. 1, at the Dance Palace. Display hours will be from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m., except Friday, when the exhibit closes at 6 p.m.
Sunday is World AIDS Day, and the West Marin AIDS Fund will celebrate the occasion at 6:30 p.m. with a program at the Dance Palace hosted by Sacred Heart Church's Father Joe Bravo.
Farrell will read the poem that's sewn onto the quilt plus three of her others. The program will also include music by Rhiannon and the West Marin Festival Singers. Harmony Grisman and her friends from Sunburst Camp, a retreat for kids living with AIDS, will be special guests.
The evening will conclude with a candlelight walk through Point Reyes Station and a community party at Cafe Reyes.
In all, the AIDS Quilt is made up of 37,472 individual panels. Displaying the entire quilt - including its walkways - would require a piece of open land the size of 22 football fields, or 24 acres. However, immense as it is, the quilt represents just 12 percent of the AIDS deaths in the United States alone.
Here are some statistics to consider:
had died from AIDS-related illnesses as of Oct. 31, and another 685 are living with full-blown AIDS (Acquired Immuno Deficiency Syndrome). Some 2,500 to 3,000 people in the county are estimated to be carrying HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, which is generally transmitted sexually or through intravenous drug use.
A small handful of those West Marin residents living with AIDS have been helped by the West Marin AIDS Fund, which paid the $1,600 it takes to get the AIDS Quilt delivered.
The nonprofit, which was established last May, began as a fundraising tool for AIDS groups over the hill.
However, said Toby Hamann, the group's president, "as we got organized, the consensus of the board of directors was that we had people in our community who weren't getting their needs met."
So, in the past six months the AIDS Fund has developed a service bureau, which coordinates rides to medical appointments and grocery deliveries from the Marin Food Bank, as well as "Meals From Friends," a service providing hot meals prepared by West Marin restaurants and the Point Reyes Presbyterian Church.
One of the AIDS Fund clients is John Welch, a 25-year resident of Marshall who is staying in Point Reyes Station because an AIDS-related condition, cytomegalovirus retinitas, has blurred his vision so much he can no longer see well enough to drive.
Welch, 53, was diagnosed as having AIDS in 1990. "I had to stop driving in late October," Welch told The Light in an interview Monday. "It's pretty amazing that I can't read. I see the landscape, which I love, in broad strokes." All is not lost, however. Welch said he can see Tomales Bay well enough to know when its waters are calm.
Welch, who until recently worked as a staff attorney for Legal Aid of Marin, said he is grateful to the AIDS Fund volunteers, whom he calls on two or three times a week to shuttle him to and from medical appointments.
"By providing these services," he said, the group helps "keep one somewhat independent, even though one might not be able to drive. I've had to consider [moving to] Fairfax just to be tied into a bus system. The West Marin AIDS Fund has certainly come in handy."
Having had election-day eye surgery, in which doctors inserted time-released medicine into his eyes, Welch hopes his vision will return in a matter of months.
Aside from the blurred vision, he suffers from neuropathy, a condition that manifests itself in "tenderness and tingling" in his feet. "I'm not quite able to feel the bottoms of my heels. Consequently, I'm not as in touch with the ground as I used to be," he said with a laugh.
A keen sense of humor and a positive attitude have helped Welch cope. He said living with AIDS is "the same as living with a nasty uncle or something - you just sort of put up with it. I don't think it's fruitful to feel sorry for yourself. So far I've met most of the challenges the best that I can."
A friend asked him recently, "Are you on the way out?"
Welch said he often replies to such blunt questions by saying, "Point Reyes is about as close as I want to come to the Promised Land for a while."
West Marin Aids Fund is seeking donations and volunteers, while Welch is looking for a place to live that is closer to needed services than his home in Marshall. Those interested in helping can call Toby Hamann, (415) 669-7510.