AvsGirl41
New Yorker
I don't know if any AOL users have already posted this, but Bono is sending an "exclusive diary" to AOL about the Heartland tour. Here's the first two installments--dunno where #3 is:
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Day 1 -- December 1, 2002
Statistics statistics? I hate them - I can't even look at them as I type them.? It's World AIDS day? in Africa 6,500 men, women and children will die of AIDS TODAY and another 9,500 including 1,400 newborn babies will be infected? God Almighty?. Here in Lincoln Nebraska, Africa's seeming a lot less far away? students in the University of Nebraska are displaying squares from their AIDS quilt? and the three bus loads of AIDS activists are tonight on their way to the Heart of America tour.
Our tour includes Ashley Judd and her 230 MPH race car driving husband Dario Franchitti, and two dogs Shug and Buttermilk?.Tour de France victor, Cancer beater and not-exactly-slow-himself-cyclist Lance Armstrong?. ten outrageously gifted kids from Ghana who sing, dance and make sure we watch our language? Agnes from Uganda, first time out of Africa in to America, living proof that AIDS doesn't have to equal death?. And finally me, that most awful of inventions, a Rockstar With A Cause, Bono.
I've just heard the news that noted Nebraska punk-rocker and ukulele player Warren Buffett is joining our caravan. During the day he passes off as the chairman of Berkshire Hathaway Group. To me he is Yoda, the Jedi Master of American finance, a deeply serious man with an ear for a great melody i.e. a great idea? great melodies and great ideas have much in common?.. A certain inevitability, clarity, an instant memorability.
America is a great idea?it's an idea that came under attack on September 11, 2001?it's a nervous world, even here in Nebraska; you can feel the edge and it's not because of the cold. Could America lead a historic AIDS initiative, putting an end to the above statistics, saving 2.5 million lives in Africa a year?there's an idea (one of the many on our bus)?America showing what it's for, as well as what it's against.
Anyway, tonight we're going to make our pitch in Lincoln, Nebraska and hear what these most American of Americans say back to us. I'll let you know how we did with the cornhuskers.
Bono
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Day 2 -- December 2, 2002
No longer a concept, I'm on the bus out of Nebraska on the way to Iowa looking back on a great first day in Lincoln?.
Yesterday morning, the rock star ended up on a Methodist pulpit?. I wanted to bang my fist like those fire brimstone preachers I've seen on the TV but I didn't need to -- this congregation seemed to already know that the AIDS emergency is the defining moral issue of our time?. I ended up listening to them.
The notion put by politicians back east that Midwesterners are not interested in a world outside of America was already crumbling by lunch. Politicians are not afraid of rock stars and student activists -- they are used to our placards -- they're afraid of Church folk, farmers, and mothers unions?. However, when you put student activists, actors, rock stars with the mothers, farmers and church folk, the sight of all of us together is terrifying?
Americans in these nervous times are more outward looking? this is good for our campaign?. This is no time for navel gazing. The way the United States is perceived in the rest of the world is now a homeland security issue. We're not wrong to bang on about the AIDS emergency? Colin Powell said that no war on earth is more destructive than the AIDS pandemic. Our traveling scientist/physician, Eric Goosby, says winning this war is immensely doable -- but only if the political will is there.
Ashley Judd is a trip?to be that gorgeous and smart? I thought God was fair!!! Last night she made her debut as an AIDS activist in front of a very responsive Cornhusker crowd?. If she loses interest in acting she'd have no problem as a talk show host. In the darkness you can meet when you consider the scale of the AIDS problem, she is a very necessary firecracker?her conversation crackles and fizzes with an urge to make sense of any moment she's in ?she's also very funny?the fastest mouth in the Midwest is on her bright red bus, with the fastest wheels?. Her husband Dario is someone who I sense knows how to drink when he's not driving?I like this?we may need some diversions. He tells me he has to abstain in racing season?he can feel the wine in his joints when he needs to feel the fuel. He is a star.
Today in Iowa I met the editorial board of the legendary Des Moines Register? bees were buzzing in this hive of a newsroom? including a few Queen bees who responded to Agnes's story of life in Uganda for a mother of eight.
Agnes we first met a year or so ago in Kampala, as part of a troop of AIDS educators called TASO who through their testimony and songs town to town, village to village, save so many lives through their prevention program. Today she showed me the drugs, the anti-retrovirals that are keeping her alive to do her job. Only recently did she and her fellow activists gain access to these drugs. When we first met, these heroes of the hour, the firemen running up the burning building if you like, had accepted they were going to die. She is affronted by the suggestion that Africans would not be able to take pills twice a day to save their life. She is also affronted by the price on her life - 2 dollars a day. It should be one ? it should be none.
I am made sorely aware of how we need the pharmaceutical companies -- we need their scientists ? their research departments?their determination -- to reduce the cost of these lifesaving drugs. I make a note to ring Ray Gilmartin of Merck and Peter Dolan of Bristol Myers Squibb. I know they're paying attention.
University of Iowa, we're coming your way. Apparently there are more pigs than people in this state. That might work for me, I can talk hogwash. I'll end today's diary looking out of the window of our silver blue bus? it's a wide panorama a cinescope of America. This has been my education over the years; looking out the windows of buses, trains, and planes?mostly I read more than I wrote. Or talked. Good night.
Bono
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Day 1 -- December 1, 2002
Statistics statistics? I hate them - I can't even look at them as I type them.? It's World AIDS day? in Africa 6,500 men, women and children will die of AIDS TODAY and another 9,500 including 1,400 newborn babies will be infected? God Almighty?. Here in Lincoln Nebraska, Africa's seeming a lot less far away? students in the University of Nebraska are displaying squares from their AIDS quilt? and the three bus loads of AIDS activists are tonight on their way to the Heart of America tour.
Our tour includes Ashley Judd and her 230 MPH race car driving husband Dario Franchitti, and two dogs Shug and Buttermilk?.Tour de France victor, Cancer beater and not-exactly-slow-himself-cyclist Lance Armstrong?. ten outrageously gifted kids from Ghana who sing, dance and make sure we watch our language? Agnes from Uganda, first time out of Africa in to America, living proof that AIDS doesn't have to equal death?. And finally me, that most awful of inventions, a Rockstar With A Cause, Bono.
I've just heard the news that noted Nebraska punk-rocker and ukulele player Warren Buffett is joining our caravan. During the day he passes off as the chairman of Berkshire Hathaway Group. To me he is Yoda, the Jedi Master of American finance, a deeply serious man with an ear for a great melody i.e. a great idea? great melodies and great ideas have much in common?.. A certain inevitability, clarity, an instant memorability.
America is a great idea?it's an idea that came under attack on September 11, 2001?it's a nervous world, even here in Nebraska; you can feel the edge and it's not because of the cold. Could America lead a historic AIDS initiative, putting an end to the above statistics, saving 2.5 million lives in Africa a year?there's an idea (one of the many on our bus)?America showing what it's for, as well as what it's against.
Anyway, tonight we're going to make our pitch in Lincoln, Nebraska and hear what these most American of Americans say back to us. I'll let you know how we did with the cornhuskers.
Bono
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Day 2 -- December 2, 2002
No longer a concept, I'm on the bus out of Nebraska on the way to Iowa looking back on a great first day in Lincoln?.
Yesterday morning, the rock star ended up on a Methodist pulpit?. I wanted to bang my fist like those fire brimstone preachers I've seen on the TV but I didn't need to -- this congregation seemed to already know that the AIDS emergency is the defining moral issue of our time?. I ended up listening to them.
The notion put by politicians back east that Midwesterners are not interested in a world outside of America was already crumbling by lunch. Politicians are not afraid of rock stars and student activists -- they are used to our placards -- they're afraid of Church folk, farmers, and mothers unions?. However, when you put student activists, actors, rock stars with the mothers, farmers and church folk, the sight of all of us together is terrifying?
Americans in these nervous times are more outward looking? this is good for our campaign?. This is no time for navel gazing. The way the United States is perceived in the rest of the world is now a homeland security issue. We're not wrong to bang on about the AIDS emergency? Colin Powell said that no war on earth is more destructive than the AIDS pandemic. Our traveling scientist/physician, Eric Goosby, says winning this war is immensely doable -- but only if the political will is there.
Ashley Judd is a trip?to be that gorgeous and smart? I thought God was fair!!! Last night she made her debut as an AIDS activist in front of a very responsive Cornhusker crowd?. If she loses interest in acting she'd have no problem as a talk show host. In the darkness you can meet when you consider the scale of the AIDS problem, she is a very necessary firecracker?her conversation crackles and fizzes with an urge to make sense of any moment she's in ?she's also very funny?the fastest mouth in the Midwest is on her bright red bus, with the fastest wheels?. Her husband Dario is someone who I sense knows how to drink when he's not driving?I like this?we may need some diversions. He tells me he has to abstain in racing season?he can feel the wine in his joints when he needs to feel the fuel. He is a star.
Today in Iowa I met the editorial board of the legendary Des Moines Register? bees were buzzing in this hive of a newsroom? including a few Queen bees who responded to Agnes's story of life in Uganda for a mother of eight.
Agnes we first met a year or so ago in Kampala, as part of a troop of AIDS educators called TASO who through their testimony and songs town to town, village to village, save so many lives through their prevention program. Today she showed me the drugs, the anti-retrovirals that are keeping her alive to do her job. Only recently did she and her fellow activists gain access to these drugs. When we first met, these heroes of the hour, the firemen running up the burning building if you like, had accepted they were going to die. She is affronted by the suggestion that Africans would not be able to take pills twice a day to save their life. She is also affronted by the price on her life - 2 dollars a day. It should be one ? it should be none.
I am made sorely aware of how we need the pharmaceutical companies -- we need their scientists ? their research departments?their determination -- to reduce the cost of these lifesaving drugs. I make a note to ring Ray Gilmartin of Merck and Peter Dolan of Bristol Myers Squibb. I know they're paying attention.
University of Iowa, we're coming your way. Apparently there are more pigs than people in this state. That might work for me, I can talk hogwash. I'll end today's diary looking out of the window of our silver blue bus? it's a wide panorama a cinescope of America. This has been my education over the years; looking out the windows of buses, trains, and planes?mostly I read more than I wrote. Or talked. Good night.
Bono
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