Adventures with Safe Sex Messaging

                                           Waiting for the Number One train at the elevated 125th Street station, my stop on the subway, I was thinking about the day ahead.  The young man sitting on the bench next to me was looking at the buttons on my yellow Taxi bag.

"Did you know New York has its own condom this year?"  He'd heard about it.  "Would you like one?"  He was agreeable.  From the bag I took the small plastic storage lid with the red cover that I'd started carrying the day I met M. E. Carew a/k/a the blogger, Xtreme English. 

"Take some!" I offered.  He was surprised, "More than one?"  I reassured him that many more were in my front hall awaiting takers.  A long wait between trains, gave us time to exchange pleasantries.  Roberto, from a city north of Mexico City, is a first year law student at Columbia.  He encouraged me to distribute the NYC condoms at the gate in front of the school.  Now that the weather's warm, Ron Bloom promises he will do just that with me.  More later.

Much later in the day met a friend at Knitty City where  a serendipitous knitting circle happens most Wednesday afternoons.  Betty (on the right), another former lawyer who knits, teaches classes there, has followers.  Others of us join in.  "What do you do with knit swatches?" one asked.  Suggestions bounced around...patches on jeans.  "I made one into a condom amulet; would you like to see it?"

"Did you say condom amubulance?"  Much hilarity.  Showed them the Book of Condom Amulets also in my bag and THE PRINCETONIAN, the first in my academic series.  I met Stella--a name from my past--who knew that I'd knit worms and gone to Oberlin College.  But she was not sure how she was aware of these two unrelated facts. 

Here's my second Oberlin Condom Amulet--a pin-on style.  Gave my first to an Obie, a librarian, who publishes a terrific blog, Women's Health News.  The link is to the archive of her HIV/AIDS category, one of many important to read.  I'm overdue in adding her to my blogroll.  When she published my gift on her blog, I read it caused a stir her town, Nashville.  And that is what we want--public art that makes people think.

Comments

[sahara]

Hey there, Naomi- As the weather will be nice this Wednesday, I'ma stop by to knit. Do I need to come early, to get a seat? ;-D

[Xtreme English]

omigod, you went to OBERLIN????!!!! the coolest people I've met out here on East Coast have gone to Oberlin. Wot is it with this Oberlin????