How HAVA and voting of disabled citizens might effect a close election

"Recount Redux?: What Might Happen in a Close Election" shows the results of some research by Dan Tokaji on Equal Vote Blog. Given that the Help America Vote Act of 2002 is responsible for the electronic voting machines that are meant to allow disabled citizens to vote independently and privately, and given that machine type varies, and that some machines provide paper verification of votes while other machines do not... what happens in the event of a recount?

Tokaji writes:

Could the discrepancy between paper and electronic records really make a difference? In a close enough election, it might. If voting equipment and associated errors were randomly distributed throughout the state, then one would not expect it to matter whether paper or electronic ballot records govern in the event of a recount. Even if 10% of votes are thrown out, it wouldn't affect the election result so long as the errors are random -- that is, so long as they affected all candidates equally.

In reality, however, voting equipment isn't randomly distributed, at least in Ohio.

Gallaudet and deaf identity

Lennard Davis at Inside Higher Ed on "The Real Issues at Gallaudet":

For non-deaf people, this issue was perhaps the hardest thing to understand. Why would anyone reject a president for not being “deaf enough” when the person was in fact unable to hear since birth? The difficulty might be easier to understand if you imagined deciding to elect a president of the United States who spoke with a heavy accent and whose command of English was less than perfect. Add to this the fact that one of the new definitions of being deaf isn’t that your ears don’t work — it’s that you belong to a linguistic community the way that Hispanics or the French do. Your community has a literature, a culture, a history, and a language — but the leader of your community doesn’t share fully this cultural palette. Wouldn’t you want someone who was fully of your identity?

Go and read.

So ends October

This is the end of National Disability Employment Awareness Month in the U.S. The month began with U.S. Attourney General Gonzales bragging about the Bush administration record in settling ADA cases and improving access for disabled Americans. I thought I'd end the month with some facts from the U.S. Census Bureau. Take note of the very last statistic, especially:

51.2 million or 18% of the population -- Number of people who have some level of disability.

32.5 million or 12% of the population -- Number of people with a severe disability.

4 million or 11% -- Children ages 6 to 14 who have a disability.

72% -- People 80 and older with disabilities, the highest of any age group.

20% -- Females with a disability, higher than the 17 percent of males. On the other hand, among children under 15, boys were more likely than girls to have a disability (11 percent versus 6 percent).

Using or Needing Assistance

10.7 million or 4% -- People age 6 and older who need personal assistance with one or more activities of daily living (such as taking a bath or shower) or instrumental activities of daily living (such as using the telephone).

2.7 million -- Number of people age 15 and older who use a wheelchair. Another 9.1 million use an ambulatory aid such as a cane, crutches or walker.

Specific Disabilities

1.8 million -- Number of people age 15 and older who report being unable to see.

1 million -- Number of people age 15 and older who report being unable to hear.

2.6 million -- Number of people age 15 and older who have some difficulty having their speech understood by others. Of this number, 610,000 were unable to have their speech understood at all.

14.3 million or 6% of the population -- Number of people with limitations in cognitive functioning or a mental or emotional illness that interferes with their daily activities. This includes those with Alzheimer’s disease, depression and mental retardation.

On the Job

11.8 million or 6% -- Number of 16- to 64-year-olds who reported the presence of a medical condition that makes it difficult to find a job or remain employed.

56% -- People ages 21 to 64 having some type of disability and also employed in the last year. The rate ranged from 82 percent of those with a nonsevere disability to 43 percent with a severe disability. For those without a disability, the rate is 88 percent.

44% -- People with a nonsevere disability who work full time, year-round. This compares to 53 percent without a disability and 13 percent with a severe disability.

Income and Poverty

$22,000 -- Median earnings for people with a nonsevere disability. This compares to $25,000 for those with no disability and $12,800 for those with a severe disability.

18% -- People with a nonsevere disability and household incomes of $80,000 or more. By comparison, 26 percent of people without a disability had household incomes of $80,000 or more with the same being true of 9 percent of those with a severe one.

11% -- The poverty rate for people ages 25 to 64 with a nonsevere disability. This compares to 26 percent for those with a severe disability and 8 percent of those without a disability.

Happy Halloween from Hermione

Deciding who's legitimate

Although it's been a very quiet scuffle as far as blogger disagreements go, there's been a bit of a dust-up among disabled bloggers recently. It's been so quiet that it's impossible to tell how many people know about it, have strong opinions about it, or are effected by it, specifically.

Generally speaking, the issue is about disability hierarchy, or judgments disabled people place upon other disabled people regarding their abilities and inabilities. I suppose this kind of ranking is human nature since it happens within the black community according to skin shade and within the GLBT community with regard to how closely individuals meet gender binaries (male, female; likes men, likes women).

One type of disability hierarchy relates to types of impairments. Basically, among the obviously disabled, people with spinal cord injuries rank higher than folks with congenitally-caused conditions, intellectual or developmental impairments, and mental illnesses -- and the less-paralyzed the better for SCIs as well. The more normal the body (and behavior) the higher you rank; the less drooling, spasticity, deformity, etc., the higher you rank.*

Unless you're normal enough to pass as nondisabled, and then it gets tricky. The misleading idea that ability and disability make up a binary situation leads to questions of whether or not an individual is truly impaired or disabled. At what point is one legitimately disabled? How can you tell who's a fake? What if your condition is intermittent or varies daily? How much of a developmentally-impaired individual's behavior is abnormal and how much is just not accepted by a narrow-minded public? Are you still disabled if your bipolarism is controlled by medication? If your prosthetic limb works so well no one would know that it's underneath your pant leg, do you qualify or not?

These aren't just arbitrary questions. Much of it has been written into law as if there are definitive answers, and people qualify for assistance of various kinds depending on the legal ruling. Besides personal identity, there's a lot of money and some legal rights at stake. These legal determinations bleed into social interaction and voilà -- disabled people (as well as the general public) end up thinking within the binary system. You're either disabled, or you're not.

About a week ago, WheelchairDancer responded to an article she'd read in the NYT, written by someone with troubling health issues, declining physical abilities and an illusive diagnosis. While noting the similarities in the Times story and her own, WCD wrote:

The frightening loss of function continues. I do use a wheelchair, but I didn't END UP there. I embrace my chair as a freeing pair of legs. My condition has not stabilized. I try to walk as little as possible; it's painful and awkward. Walking is reserved for ever shorter distances only. I am being fitted with braces, but we are still trying to figure out which ones are best.

The above caused the disagreement I'm writing about here, though WCD went on in that same post to say:

I go to doctors trying to find out what is "wrong with me." I feel like a puppy coming to a human for food that keeps getting kicked and slapped, but keeps coming back because it has a misplaced faith in human goodness. Why do I do this to myself?

And why do I believe I need a diagnosis? What good would a diagnosis do me emotionally? Since they are already treating symptoms, what good would a diagnosis do me physically? Can there be a cure without diagnosis?

I suspect WCD wrote that post with an exhilaration and relief to see her story mirrored by someone else's. A lack of diagnosis can make a person extremely eager to find connections in others' experiences. I know myself that these connections can make you feel better, safer, less alone. And they can offer hope.

Al Masters of Crip Revolution responded with what might seem like a benign comment:

WCD, Let me make sure I understand...You are disabled to a point that you need a wc, yet do not know why. It seems like the wc is so much a part of your being. Dance, etc. Could you live your daily life without a wc if it was necessary? Maybe I have missed something reading your blog for a long time.

However, it struck a nerve for WCD, and her next post revealed her inner anxiety:

I KNEW it. I KNEW it. I KNEW I should not have posted yesterday's post. All my self-doubt alarms are going off...

What I hear is:

You aren't truly disabled. You're faking. And, moreover, you have deceived everyone who reads your blog.

I know. He didn't write that. But I hear that. So, let me speak to that weird combination of his/my concerns.

At no point in my blog have I denied that I can walk.

What follows is both her defense of her status as a wheelchair user and some deeply eloquent ruminations on the emotional process of living with a mysterious but progressive physical condition. What she writes resonates strongly for me.

The rest of this disagreement, if it was indeed with Masters, played out privately. But WCD's third post on the topic announces that someone(s) finds enough fault with her blogging as a wheelchair user to notify her that she's off their reading list:

I feel like I have laid my very self very bare. I really appreciate the words of support from all of you.

To those you who have let me know by email that they won't be reading any more, thank you for reading -- I guess this is kind of useless because you won't see it. I am sorry you find me not suited to your notions of disabled community any more. I have enjoyed our ethereal contact.

I wasn't aware, myself, that WheelchairDancer could walk, and I'll admit it surprised me. But I think my belief that she only travels by chair was my assumption (and sloppy reading skills) rather than any omission or misdirection by her. The dominant cultural narrative about wheelchair users dramatizes impairment as a sudden and total injury, not an on-going negotiation between energy and ability.

Are you truly disabled if you can walk, but choose to save your energy for something other than the journey from place to place? What if you use a scooter because you're overweight? What if you're overweight and have arthritis? A heart condition? What if you're getting over a bad cold and borrow a scooter at the mall because of residual fatigue? What if WCD's use of the wheelchair remains unchanged but she gets an official diagnosis? What makes wheeling legitimate?

This question of legitimacy comes up publicly. Last year's Ms. Wheelchair Wisconsin had her tiara yanked away when she was seen ambulating in the local paper. Michael J. Fox's true impairments have been widely debated just recently. Stories about actual fakers often make the news.

Legitimacy implies integrity, but the problem is that diagnosis implies legitimacy. Also, full disclosure is demanded since disabled bodies are treated as public property to be stared at and judged. These social conditions to claiming identity isolate and, ironically, disable too.

______________________________________________

*"Ranking" here refers to favorable treatment in the same way that attractive people have advantages less attractive people don't. Generally, men have more social power than women, tall people have more power than short, etc. It's not a literal ranking so much as a class system.

Gallaudet Board ousts Fernandez

It seems the current stand-off is over. Check out Ragged Edge for the details and links to deaf bloggers on the topic.

Saturday at The Gimp Compound

This guy just visited the suet feeder in the back yard. He's a pileated woodpecker and he's huge -- about 15". Just him today, though sometimes he comes with his mate. The suet feeder hangs on an old oak tree at the edge of the deck outside the kitchen table window, so he's less than 20 feet away.

He's kinda stupid, and utterly paranoid, and a complete delight to see. Seriously, when's the last time you saw a huge wild bird up close? It's thrilling.

The Gimp Compound is part of a neighborhood built in an old (now mostly decimated) oak grove, or a lightning hazard, really. I suppose he lives at the top of one of these trees, though it's unusual for them to take a home so close to people.

I do a lot of bird-watching from the kitchen table, especially this past year because the vent makes me somewhat less mobile while at home. Bird-watching is a very underrated activity. For winter, there's five sources of food near the window here, plus the heated bird bath. This includes one little feeder six inches from the window, the suet feeder, a peanut feeder, and an elaborate platform towering 25 feet off the ground that holds sunflower seeds. That last was a manly victory over the squirrels and is restocked with use of a pulley. There's a hand-welded squirrel guard halfway up the post courtesy of my uncle, and the last branch any squirrel successfully jumped to the feeder from was long ago sawn away. Squirrel-foiling around here is a family affair.

The purple finches sometimes decide to have a bath party and take turns splashing in the bird bath, splattering the nearby porch window and driving the cat nuts. They like to talk while they eat, but if a bird they don't know joins them they quiet down and keep their thoughts to themselves. The chickadees swoop in and look cute. The nuthatches do everything upside down, which often makes me laugh. The juncos prefer to forage under the feeders on the ground. The bluejays are stunning and bossy.

All the woodpeckers -- the downies and the hairies and the flickers -- are quirky and cautious and spend lots of time looking around sideways before getting to the suet. There's one male flicker who keeps trying to use the finch feeder but his feet are built wrong so he's very awkward at that. It irritates the finches to have him clamoring around, I think. The cardinals are loners and don't like the finch flocks, so they come when the lunch crowd is gone, though I saw two bright males battling for territory in the neighbor's trees this morning.

And the squirrels. Yesterday's entertainment was a squirrel trying to get to the peanuts hanging in a mesh cylinder under the eaves. He couldn't figure it out, but one day soon he'll be frustrated enough to try a flying leap from the tree. After he finds a successful route to the peanuts, they will be moved and we'll start the challenge again.

But Mr. Pileated! Seriously. Thrilling. Makes me want to wander around the house going "Ha-ha-ha-HA-ha!"

This is what he sounds like outside of cartoonland.

Saturday Slumgullion #16

Today's linkfest is a fun luxury for me, since I can collect the blog posts no one submitted to the Disability Carnival #2 but are too good to not plug while they're fresh and juicy:

• Lance Mannion: Resenting the handicapped parking spaces -- Mannion on rich white guys, Limbaugh, and those who hate disabled people. This link really belongs below in my post about Michael J. Fox, but I found it too late. Via Planet of the Blind

• From NPR: Blogs Capture, Amplify Gallaudet Protest -- Offered both in audio and written transcript, NPR's Joseph Shapiro discusses how both sides in the Gallaudet protest of 2006 are using blogs to share info and garner support.

• The Blind Bookworm Blog: So I'm not the only one -- Kestrell unpacks the language of a recent Guardian article on blind British politician David Blunkett. Also check out her 13 Days of Halloween, which is on-going.

• Special Education Law Blog: File and Win? -- Charles Fox critiques the New York Magazine article "The Autism Clause" which he says grossly oversimplifies the situation of parents who sue for their childrens' educations.
  

• Gordon's D-Zone: Too Blind to See? -- Gordon Cardona has been blind and now he can see, yet he talks about the quality of his life before and after and says some interesting things.

• Allison Kaftan: I Want My Life Back -- Allison Kaftan writes that she wants the Gallaudet protest to be over and life to be normal again.

• AmpuTeeHee: ... and so this is the day when things will get really interesting -- The AmpuT tells of the imminent loss of her much-needed rental wheelchair and also, in a most excellent follow-up, how things did get interesting.

• The Meanderings of a Politically Incorrect Crip: If It's All Right With You -- Charles Dawson meanders eloquently about empowerment and, eventually, disability.

Michael J. Fox and his political ads

It's been the topic of discussion everywhere this past week. Michael J. Fox's ads for three Democratic candidates aired supporting them because of their support for embryonic stem cell research. Rush Limbaugh accused Fox of faking and exaggerating the symptoms of his Parkinson's disease for emotional effect. Pundits like Keith Olbermann responded to the hoopla.

And bloggers, too, of course.

At Shakespeare's Sister, Zack Handlen writes:

To whit: they’re picking on the handicapped kids.

Seriously, what the fuck is this shit? At this point in most novels, a reader would start rolling his or her eyes at the astonishing absurdities in play. It’s not enough that they’re responsible for thousands of deaths, not enough that they’ve eroded our civil liberties to the point where I feel I should ask for permission every time I use the toilet in my own apartment- they’re now so enthralled in their own pitiless mechanisms that they actually think accusing a sufferer of a major illness of “faking” is a well-considered, do-able strategy. What's next, driving by cemeteries and screaming "POSERS!!!" at the graves?

I'm incredulous too, but the rhetoric on all sides of this discussion feels uncomfortable to me, ambivalent as I am about cures. Handlen (above) follows a tack I wish I wouldn't see. He implies that attacking Fox -- "the handicapped kids" -- is one step away from accusing dead people of faking it. It makes for a dramatic and amusing comeback, but it doesn't say much about society's perception of people who are ill or disabled. Practically dead. Absurdity is often best responded to with absurdity, but this particular comparison isn't original and speaks to the general societal belief that Fox and people like him are, indeed, helpless, hopeless victims.

At Norwegianity, Mark Gisleson says:

It should also be noted that the actor's Michael J. Fox Foundation (MJFF) for Parkinson Research has granted $74 million to Parkinson's researchers over the past ten years.

Fox isn't doing [TV show] Boston Public out of ego, he's doing it to make still more money so he can invest more into finding a cure for those who are cursed with this affliction, even though Fox knows no cure will be developed in time to help him.

In other words, Fox is working hard raising cash and fighting for the freedom of scientific research that doesn't serve his personal interests to the degree critics have claimed. As Gisleson says, most likely it is true that any cure of Parkinson's would come too late for Fox, though I also suspect he maintains some hope for himself. Yet this is an important point to make when others accuse the actor of self-interest -- what an original crime that is!

Amanda Marcotte at Pandagon says:

While no Republicans to date have explained exactly why their right to win elections is so great that it trumps things like noting their slivering evil in public, this premise is behind all arguments against Michael J. Fox’s ad supporting Claire McCaskill because of her stance on stem cell research. I keep seeing variations on this quote from Ann Coulter: “(T)he Democrats hit on an ingenious strategy: They would choose only messengers whom we’re not allowed to reply to.”

Is it wrong to be amused by and love the term "slithering evil" here?

Marcotte expresses the complexity of the situation well, in my opinion. She gives Fox the credit of his own agency while noting the weird problem some Republican critics have with their malevolent tactics being thwarted by the stereotypical view of ill and disabled people as sufferers and victims. Those meanies! Pricked by their consciences finally? Maybe, or by social mores. Too bad it's at the expense of the image of disabled people again.

In an interview with Katie Couric, responding to Limbaugh's comments, Fox calmly states:

Well, first thing, [Limbaugh] used the word victim, and in another occasion, I heard him use the word "pitiable." And I don’t understand, nobody in this position wants pity. We don’t want pity. I could give a damn about Rush Limbaugh’s pity or anyone else’s pity. I'm not a victim.

An excellent, excellent response. I remain uncomfortable with emotional pleas for help, which Fox's ads did have a flavor of, but that's partially my baggage in needing to vehemently reject the victim status given disabled folk. I'm glad Fox spoke (and continues to speak) for himself as well as the cause of stem cell research generally, and I'm satisfied with the way he faced the camera and implicitly said, "This is me. That shock you're feeling at seeing me? That's what this is all about. Don't turn your back on the reality for some moral ideal."

Other crip bloggers on Fox, Limbaugh and the stem cell campaign ads:

Zephyr

Al Masters

Penny Richards

Stephen Kuusisto

Mark Siegel

Things that crack me up, #13

Visual description: A very large white man in blue jeans, a button-down shirt and a panama hat sits outdoors sleeping in his power wheelchair. He must weigh 300-plus pounds and is facing the camera with his legs comfortably spread so that his big belly looks somewhat comical. Just behind him is the standard blue "Handicapped Parking" sign.

Garry Trudeau cartooning disability

I think I just made up a word there, but last Sunday's Washington Post did a rare in-depth feature story on Doonesbury cartoonist Garry Trudeau, and because of his Iraqi-war coverage through the character of B.D., disability is present in his work.

While Trudeau's certainly covered war in his cartoon strip before, using a major character like B.D. to show the experience of a National Guardsman who is shipped to Iraq, loses a leg to a bomb and comes home to deal with both adjustment to life as an amputee and post traumatic stress creates a new level of comic-reading awareness to the perils of war. And the experiences of permanent disability.

Approaching his cartooning like a journalist, Trudeau has learned much from injured veterans and the Post article begins by explaining how much more crip savvy Trudeau is than reporter Gene Weingarten who is writing about him:

It's hard to know what to say to a grievously injured person, and it's easy to be wrong . You could do what I did, for example. Scrounging for the positive, I cheerfully informed a young man who had lost both legs and his left forearm that at least he's lucky he's a righty. Then he wordlessly showed me his right hand, which is missing fingertips and has limited motion -- an articulated claw. That shut things right up, for both of us, and it would have stayed that way, except the cartoonist showed up.

Garry Trudeau, the creator of "Doonesbury," hunkered right down in front of the soldier, eye to eye, introduced himself and proceeded to ignore every single diplomatic nicety.

"So, when were you hit?" he asked.

Trudeau, who successfully dodged the Vietnam draft with a medical dispensation, proves to have some psychological understanding of injured vets as he explores B.D.'s PTSD and attempts to fit in again with his cartoon family. This understanding comes from having met and really listened to this new generation of injured soldiers:

So when the new invitation came from the Pentagon -- essentially, carte blanche to visit injured vets -- the investigative cartoonist leapt at it, not sure what he would find.

The very first person he spoke to was a 27-year-old MP named Danielle Green. She had been a college basketball star, a left-handed point guard at Notre Dame. Green had just lost that hand in Iraq. She'd been on the roof of a police station, behind sandbags, trying to defend it from enemy fire, when she took a direct hit from a rocket-propelled grenade.

"This was an elite athlete, and she'd lost her whole professional identity," Trudeau said, "but that's not what she wanted to talk about. What she wanted to talk about was how her buddies carried her down, put her on the hood of a Humvee, where they stopped the bleeding, then went back up to the roof, against orders, and found her hand buried under sandbags. They took off her wedding ring and gave it to her. She's telling me this with a million-dollar smile. This was not about bitterness or loss. It was about gratitude."

Interestingly, Trudeau's wife, former morning news anchor Jane Pauley, links her husband's recent coverage of B.D.'s mental illness to her own public struggle with bi-polar disorder:

Pauley thinks the story of B.D. has been something special, the best work Trudeau has ever done. And then she says:

"I don't think he's consciously aware that it has anything to do with me."

With . . . her?

Pauley smiles. "Garry's mind is very compartmentalized. The department doing the strip in his brain is not directly connected to the husband part, but . . ."

Pauley takes a forkful of scrambled eggs.

". . . it defies credulity that on some level it is not present in his work. What is he writing about, really? He's writing about mental illness, and how it's possible to find a way out of it, with help. It's very hopeful."

The truth and hope Trudeau's fictional characters present is part of what the best of art can offer, and though I don't know the particular experience of losing a limb myself, he does seem to present the some truths about disability. And he shows them with a sort of humor that rings true as well.

Disability Blog Carnival #2!

Welcome to the second Disability Blog Carnival! Though this incarnation of the event is more petite than the first showing at DS,TU, I'm excited to present an impressive variety of topics from people who relate to the issue of disability in many different ways.

I offered the theme of "the cure" as an idea for entries and we're rewarded below with a range of posts that reveal that opinions differ, inform, change, and creatively interpret what living fully with a disability means. Prevention, prenatal screening and eugenics are intertwined with the notion of "the cure," sometimes inextricably, in the sense that they cure the world of new disabled people, and several people wrote about disability from this perspective. Others looked at being cured on a distinctly personal level, imagining the specifics of what they would wish for and what "the cure" would change about their daily lives. Also, "the cure" is sometimes fake or illusive, it presents new dangers or challenges to think beyond societal obsessions with bodily perfection and health as definitions for a fruitful life.

While some disabled people dream desperately of a cure, some eschew any need of one, and others balance both ideas together at once, there is no doubt that living with a disability is a learning experience. The learning curve and uniqueness of each person's journey is a second theme here, reminding us that every day can be an adventure (sometimes an absurd one) when society and the world are not really built for you.

Attitude is another theme many bloggers chose to cover -- both ableist societal attitudes and their outspoken responses to them. While "nothing about us without us" has been the rallying cry for disability rights worldwide, parents and teachers of disabled children find the need to advocate and express some righteous anger for the sake of those they care for, and they're represented here too. Meanwhile, disabled adults are speaking up for basic respect and for their human rights.

And so, the carnival. Images are mostly of various medicinal, sometimes mysterious, remedies and "cures" of the past. The images themselves were found on a variety of sites selling antique curiosities.


The Cure

Thus Spake Zuska: Too Much Pink? or, What Should I Be Doing? Zuska looks at the commodification of breast cancer and Audre Lorde's "warrior" writings. "The Race for the Cure" of breast cancer presents complex issues of fighting a deadly illness, accepting disfigurement or plastic surgery for "normalization" and the commercial, economic interests in this public but very personal cause.

Processing in Parts: Changing Into Versus Being. Zilari ponders prenatal diagnosis and "prevention" and the difference between changing into someone with a certain condition and always having been that someone.

Whose Planet Is It Anyway?: Perfect Irony. Abfh examines eugenic thought and how following it would impact the world.

Diary of a Goldfish: Prevention Better than the Cure? #2. Goldfish writes about prenatal screening and its effectiveness in preventing disability in society when being born "normal" does not guarantee not being disabled.

Growing Up With A Disability: To Cure or Not to Cure, That is the Question. David discusses the prospect of cure with Ashley, a woman with a learning disability.

Ballastexistenz: Hey, Watch It, That's Attached! Amanda takes a detailed look at what "the cure" would change about her entire body -- and life.

Arthritic Young Thing: It's Not Just Me. Zephyr examines the complex journey of her disability experience, involving denial, expectation and hope of cure, and the bittersweet relief of acceptance.

Thou Shall Not Suck: Hope Matters. Unholy Moses adds to his previous post about Michael J. Fox's stumping for pro-embryonic stem cell research candidates by noting he has a personal stake in the issue and that the scientific freedom to explore ESC provides much-needed hope.

Diabetes Mine: Pssst -- Diabetes Cures for Cheap! (Gotcha!!) Amy Tenderich reminds us that not every treatment or cure offered is real. Some are scams and some can be dangerous.

Pedestrian Hostile: Glass Helmet. Jennifer Justice recalls how a surgical procedure meant to fix her left her worse off than she was before.

Planet for the Blind: On Being Well. Stephen Kuusisto shares a memory of a morning with Mia Farrow and some of her adopted disabled children that illuminates the difference between being cured and being well.


The Learning Curve

Temporal Island: Blind Cricket. Deanne describes her first try at blind cricket and looks ahead to the prospect of improving her game.

Chair on Wheels: 20 Things I Learned in Portland. Kevin presents a list form of his adventures on a recent trip to a conference on rural independent living, including an encounter with an aggressively affectionate drunk woman.

Arthritic Young Thing:The Dance of Yesterday. Zephyr lives in a body with chronic pain and the need for cautious movement, but yearns to dance like she used to.

Ryn Tales: Handicap Placards and New Car Purchase in Summer's Heat. Kathryn Stanley talks about the bureaucratic complications to getting that little disable access placard for a new car.

But You Don't Look Sick: Watch Your Meds. Karen Brauer cautions about medication theft, particular for people with chronic conditions where their medications have high street value.


Attitude

A Letter to My Children: Step Away, Other Mother, Or I Shall Sic My Worms on You. Lisa Ferris writes about a Mommy Drive-By on the playground where her entire right to parent is challenged.

Terrible Palsy: Special Needs Playgroup. Mom of Moo hears another mother's ugly tale of ableism by a pediatrician at the hospital.

Postcards from Holland: They. Another Mom, Apostrophe S, finds that an older relative can't accept or relate to her child.

The Short Bus Queen: Miss B. Stirs the Pot a Little Bit More. Special Ed teacher Miss B. speaks up for a former student she learns is being bullied at a different school.

The Life and Times of Emma: Disability Questions. Wheelchair Princess takes on ten questions about her life with cerebral palsy. The first is essentially about "the cure."

Fey and Strange: Adults Acting Like Children. Fey Stranger brings the anger for parents of small children that, well, do all sorts of things to make life difficult for wheelchair users.

Crip Revolution: Damn A Baby Boomer. Al Masters rants about aging boomers "discovering" what's wrong with health care and other aspects of society PWDs have been talking about for years.

One Can Dream: And Yet, I Am Not Free. Ramona Harvey tells of the troublesome leadership of the state independent living council in Indiana (ICOIL), where she serves as secretary yet finds she is not free to speak her mind at council meetings. (Kevin of Chair On Wheels provides a backup account complete with numerous corroborating links.)

***

There you have it! Thanks to all who submitted their own writing or nominated someone else's work, and thanks to Penny Richards for beginning this carnival thing.

The third Disability Blog Carnival will be on Thursday, November 9 (submission deadline Monday, November 6) at David Gayes' Growing Up With A Disability. Entries can be sent in here, to the carnival site, or through email if necessary.

Things that crack me up, #12

Visual description: A variation of the international symbol of disability access, painted on the ground to indicate a disabled access parking space. The stick figure in the wheelchair is not sitting upright, but leaning back in her chair.

Caption from the original, taken and uploaded by Andrew Anker at Mobile Andrew: This spot is apparently reserved for very relaxed handicapped people.