David Moylan (LOC)

David Moylan (LOC)
Originally uploaded by The Library of Congress

"THE ARMLESS JUDGE
Ten years ago David Moylan was a railroad switchman working in a Cleveland yard. A switch engine running in the dark without a headlight ran him down and cut off both his arms. That would have settled the fate of most men. And it did settled Moylan's fate--but not in the usual way. He firmly declined to pass the rest of his life in a state of semi-dependence on his relatives, or hold a tin cup for charitable nickels. Since he was disabled physically, Moylan decided to earn a living with his brains. They were good brains, although it had never occurred to him before to make much use of them. He had a pretty fluent tongue too. So the switchman made up his mind to be a lawyer. As soon as he got out of the hospital, Moylan bought a copy of Blackstone. He read it by turning the leaves with his tongue. He learned to write with his teeth. In three years he passed the state law examinations for admission to the bar, ranking among the first ten in a class of 205. That was seven years ago. Attorney Moylan has made a fair living ever since. But now he is Judge Moylan. On November 2d he was elected to the Cleveland municipal bench. And his professional brethren say that he'll make a mighty good judge."
chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn95060914/1915-11-19/ed-...

BADD 2013: Bad History Doesn't Help

It's that time of year again--for the eighth May in a row, it's Blogging Against Disablism Day, hosted by the ever-excellent Goldfish.  How many things last eight years online, with hundreds of quality contributions, from bloggers all over the world? This has.

We've contributed to BADD every year--sometimes with a long essay, sometimes with a calendar, sometimes with a paragraph, sometimes with images. Our previous contributions:
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012

This year, I'm on another cranky rant--about bad history.  Bad disability history, to be precise.  It's all too common, it doesn't help fight disablism, and in fact it often hurts the cause.

The classic example of bad disability history is the faux etymology of "handicap." Maybe you've run into the mistaken notion that "handicap" is somehow related to the phrase "cap-in-hand," a reference to a beggar's gesture, removing one's hat in humility, before asking a favor.  It's still easily found on some organizations' websites and even state agencies' sites (but I'm happy to see that there are many fewer such appearances than I saw ten years ago).  It's been common enough to be included in Wikipedia's "List of Common False Etymologies," which is worth a visit whenever one of these chestnuts comes along.  Anyway, Ron Amundson wrote the definitive debunk of this tale, and it's also clearly labeled "false" on snopes; but that doesn't keep it from being circulated (that link will take you to a 2011 textbook that tells the false etymology as fact).  If your book or website includes this nonsense, I'm going to wonder if the rest is also cut-and-pasted from a dodgy source, without any effort to fact-check.  Bad history hurts the cause.

******

Portrait of Stephen Hopkins (1707-1785, seated, holding a quill pen in his right hand

Here's a factoid that comes around every July in the US--did you know that one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence had cerebral palsy? Well, maybe--maybe a member of the Continental Congress in 1776 had a physical condition we'd call cerebral palsy today. Impossible to say, since it wasn't a diagnosis ever given in the eighteenth century.  But that person probably wasn't Stephen Hopkins (1707-1785), to whom cerebral palsy is sometimes attributed.  The attribution usually rests on two facts:

1.  Hopkins had a shaky signature on the Declaration.

2.  Hopkins is said to have acknowledged his shaky handwriting in the moment, with the statement "My hands may tremble, but my heart does not." 

A person's hand might tremble for various reasons. But let's look at more details of Hopkins' life before jumping to diagnose him with cerebral palsy.  As it turns out, we have many examples of his writing throughout life, because he was a professional surveyor, justice of the peace, town council president, Chief Justice of the Rhode Island Supreme Court-- all jobs that required handwriting.   And as a young man, Hopkins had unusually clear handwriting, according to his nineteenth-century biographer, William Eaton Foster:

"The records of the town of Scituate for these ten years [1736-1746], in his handwriting, are still in good preservation, and are of interest from their legibility and neatness. Written before the nervous difficulty of his later years..."

In mid-life, Hopkins' writing became less and less legible; eventually he hired an amanuensis, someone to do his writing for him.  His palsy was progressive, with onset well into adulthood. That could match a lot of diagnoses, but it doesn't sound anything like cerebral palsy.  Remember, starting a sentence with "many medical historians believe..." doesn't get anyone off the hook from bad history.  Which medical historians? When, where, why? Again, if your book or website includes assertions of fact that are easily contradicted by evidence, I'm going to wonder what else it says that I can't trust.  Bad history hurts the cause.

*******

(Sign that says "Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid. (Albert Einstein)")

Finally, here's a quick one, but I'm seeing it a lot lately in disability-focused spaces.  Albert Einstein never said this quote about fish climbing trees.  Doesn't matter what cute sign or graphic you saw on pinterest, he just didn't.  The quote seems to have first appeared in a self-help book in 2004, quite a long time after Einstein's passing; wikiquote has it under unsourced or dubious/overly modern.

Misquotes are pretty easy to look up in the 21st century.  Good history checks the source, finds a title and page number, before using a quote (or making a cute sign with it).  Again, the appearance of a well-known misquote throws everything around it into question.  Bad history hurts the cause.

*******

Please be scrupulous about the disability history you use to fight disablism; a solid assertion of fact is powerful! Faux etymology, misattributed quotes, and garbled legends, not so much.  Also, those things make me really cranky.

Want to learn more? Come visit the Disability History Association website--or become a member!  Join the H-Disability listserv, now in its twelfth year. 

In its Eighth Year: BADD 2013

Join us and many, many other disability bloggers for BADD 2013, hosted once again by the excellent Goldfish.  This will be our eighth year in the swarm, meaning we've never yet missed a chance to join in.  Our previous contributions:
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012

"The Price of Coal" (23 March, Swansea)

From:  http://www.dis-ind-soc.org.uk/en/events.htm?id=1
Roadshow: The Price of Coal

Sat 23rd March 2013

National Waterfront Museum, Swansea

Disability history roadshow at the National Waterfront Museum, Swansea, 23^rd March 2013 (10am–4pm).

Click here for the day's programme (PDF)

Click here for the flyer (PDF)

Did you or a member of your family work in the coal industry in south Wales? Did you face difficult working conditions or the constant threat of accident? Did you experience injury, illness or disease as a result of this work? If so, come along to the Disability History Roadshow at the National Waterfront Museum, Swansea on Saturday 23 March 2013 between 10am and 4pm. The Roadshow will focus on the human costs of this most dangerous of industries and explore the consequences for the people of the mining communities of south Wales. It will include:

• talks by historians on the industry and working conditions;
• historic documentary films on disease and disability;
• photos, documents and archives;
• readings of poetry and historical sources;
• medical equipment;
• archivists on hand to discuss any historical documents relating to the coal industry that you might wish to bring along.

Come and find out more about how our fathers and grandfathers, working in the bowels of the earth, faced danger, disease and death in the course of their daily lives and paid the heavy price of coal.

Confirmed speakers and guests include: Rhodri Morgan, Hywel Francis MP, Steven Thompson (Aberystwyth University), Ben Curtis (Aberystwyth University), Anne Borsay (Swansea University), David Turner (Swansea University).

Jo Walton, "Among Others"

I stopped and turned around.  I could feel my cheeks burning.  The bus station was full of people.  "Nobody would pretend to be a cripple! Nobody would use a stick they didn't need! You should be ashamed of yourself for thinking that I would.  If I could walk without it I'd break it in half across your back and run off singing.  You have no right to talk to me like that, to talk to anyone like that.  Who made you queen of the world when I wasn't looking? Why do you imagine I would go out with a stick I don't need--to try to steal your sympathy? I don't want your sympathy, that's the last thing I want.  I just want to mind my own business, which is what you should be doing."

It didn't do any good at all, except for making me a public spectacle.  She went very pink, but I don't think what I was saying really went in.  She'll probably go home and say she saw a girl pretending to be a cripple.  I hate people like that.  Mind you, I hate the ones who come up and ooze synthetic sympathy just as much, who want to know exactly what's wrong with me and pat me on the head.  I am a person.  I want to talk about things other than my leg. (191)

--From Jo Walton, Among Others (Tor Books, 2010), winner of the Hugo and Nebula Awards.

I got this book for Christmas because it was well-reviewed, but I didn't realize how much I'd like the main character Mori, a physically-disabled Welsh girl about my generation (she's a year or two older than I was in 1979-80, when the book is set), awkward and lonely and haunting the local library, reading many of the same books I did at that age (but far more, because I was never a fast reader).  Her disability isn't a main theme of the book, but it's important.  And maybe young and not-so-young readers will learn something from the character's experiences, which are based on the author's:  "all the disability stuff in the book is entirely from experience," Walton told the Guardian.  Another extract:

I found myself being helped down to the car.  That sort of help is actually a hindrance.  If you ever see someone with a walking stick, that stick, and their arm, are actually a leg.  Grabbing it or lifting it, or doing anything unasked to the stick and the arm are much the same as if you grabbed a normal person's leg as they're walking.  I wish more people understood this. (224)

Disability Blog Carnival NEWS!

After six years of organizing the Disability Blog Carnival, I decided to let it drop... but I'm happy to say, it's baaaaa-aaaaack!  Emma at Writer in a Wheelchair is going to pick up the baton for the next few months.  Here's the announcement, and here's the nitty-gritty details:

On the 28th of each month I will post a collection of links to different posts about disability and/or by disabled bloggers.  Things that have caught my eye but also things that people send me.  My plan is that for the first three months I’ll host it here to get it started but then from April I might see about getting different hosts and it moving around again.

I encourage anyone who loved the carnival, anyone who contributed to the carnival, and anyone who never heard of the carnival, to support Emma in this.  It can't work without submissions, so write stuff or send her links to stuff you saw and liked.   Blog carnivals are, at their best, great snapshots of a vibrant community.  I can't wait to see the Disability Blog Carnival in 2013.

Disability Blog Carnival #84 is up NOW!

Dave Hingsburger hosts the October edition of the Disability Blog Carnival, at Rolling Around in My Head, here.   It's short but Dave puts a lot of context into his collection of links.  Thanks Dave!

Did you know that the Disability Blog Carnival started in October 2006?  So we just passed its sixth anniversary.  Back then, it was twice a month, and often jam-packed with links.  Well, the online climate is different today--blogs have to compete for attention with so many other venues and formats.  I know I'm not blogging much nowadays, and that seems to be true for a lot of folks.  Submissions for the carnival have been sparse for a couple years now, and some editions never even post.  I think, therefore, that the we've come to the end of the run for the Disability Blog Carnival.  The existing eighty-four editions remain a strong record of disability blogosphere for a vibrant six years. 

If there's anyone who'd like to take over organizing the Disability Blog Carnival, perhaps to restart it sometime in 2013 or beyond, I'm glad to help, just holler.  (There are several other blog carnivals on disability themes still happening right now, too.)