• Chicago Tribune, on Arthur Miller Chicago Tribune, on Arthur Miller Arthur Miller was a storyteller who wrote of family, morality and power, the calamity of the Depression and the yearning to reach the elusive American dream. He created theater
• Chicago Tribune, on Arthur Miller
Chicago Tribune, on Arthur Miller
Arthur Miller was a storyteller who wrote of family, morality and power, the calamity of the Depression and the yearning to reach the elusive American dream. He created theater from the whole cloth of human experience and human frailty. He used ideas to entertain and to educate.
Miller’s death on Thursday at 89 brought to a close an era of American theatrical history. He was an intellectual who never forgot his roots in New York, an artist whose tales reached the masses. He wasn’t America’s Shakespeare, but he provided Americans with a voice as tough and chiseled as the young country in which he lived. …
Willy Loman was Miller’s most famous character, “Death of a Salesman” his masterpiece — six weeks to write, a classic to savor. In Loman, the playwright found a flawed man who was “not the finest character that ever lived. But he’s a human being, and a terrible thing is happening to him. So attention must be paid,” Loman’s wife, Linda, said.
It was a plea for the common man by a playwright who never lost the ability to tell a good story well. He found America’s soul — and story — within America’s families. He didn’t condescend toward his characters, he celebrated them, their everyday dreams and everyday delusions. There was death and life in his plays. Attention was paid.
Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, on HIV testing
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate that nearly 300,000 Americans are HIV-positive and don’t know it.
Results from two federally funded studies suggest that routine voluntary HIV screenings could lead to fewer infections and better treatment. The idea deserves the serious consideration the CDC is giving it.
Nearly 40 percent of people with HIV in the United States don’t learn they have the disease until their immune systems are so badly damaged they become sick. At that point, the effectiveness of treatment is compromised. And a person who spends a long period unaware of an HIV infection is more likely to spread it.
Making voluntary HIV tests part of the medical culture, like cancer screenings or cholesterol tests, would cut down on the number of infections spread by people who don’t know their HIV status. …
Getting primary care doctors to offer and encourage HIV tests would be especially helpful for populations at especially high risk, such as African-American women, who make up 65 percent of new female HIV infections in America.
Knowing one’s HIV status should be the norm. CDC-recommended testing for those at risk could help slow the spread of this disease.
