RIP: Jean McWherter Flynn

I know this blog is dormant, but this is where I need to say Rest in Peace, to blogger Jean McWherter Flynn, who died yesterday in an Ohio nursing home from an infection. She was posting on Facebook right up to the day before; I don't think she expected to leave quite so suddenly, but she seemed aware of (and justifiably angry about) her situation and its limits.

Jean was one of my first "blog friends," back in the lovely old days of blogging. When Facebook and Twitter took over social media, we were friends there too. I never met Jean, but I liked her; she was smart and kind and funny. I already miss her.

BADD 2015: Wikipedia Against Disablism, Part 2

Ahem.  Hello? Hello?

Okay, I'm here for BADD 2015, because how could I break our ten-year streak of participation? I couldn't.  I'm not so much of a blogger these days, but I'm willing to add my bit to the big event.  For our past nine appearances in the series:

2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006. (For the record, the 2007 and 2008 entries are two of my favorite blog posts I've ever written, on any blog, or any topic.  BADD has been good for me.)

Last year I wrote about why Wikipedia needs more and better content on disability topics, and how anyone can help; and how that fights disablism, by shifting language, removing cliches, decreasing melodrama, respecting personhood, perhaps in small ways, but for a big diverse audience that will never see your blog or your journal article.  I'm still pretty involved there, and in the past year I've found more ways to discover stories to improve Wikipedia's disability content; so I'm still preaching that same sermon today.

But first:

Headline from a 1910 Aberdeen Herald newspaper, from Aberdeen, Washington, reads "Ableism the Issue; All Others Sunk into Insignificance in this County; All kinds of Diversions are Attempted by the Abel Press, but are not Successful. What is Abel Spending So Much Money For?" From Newspapers.com

Eliza Suggs (1876-1908), temperance activist

That headline didn't actually have anything to do with disability or discrimination, but I was still startled to see the word "Ableism" appear in a newspaper from over a century ago!  I found this because I acquired a Newspapers.com subscription through The Wikipedia Library, a project that matches experienced Wikipedia editors with scholarly resources that aren't always available for off-campus folks.  So far it's been extremely useful, and hardly a day passes without finding something fascinating.  Like the tidbit above. 

One of the ways I'm using searchable old newspapers like this is to find the disability stories that are hiding, that are lost, that we forgot, that we need to remember.  Not all of them made the big national papers, but they survive in local dailies, and sometimes there's plenty to meet Wikipedia's criteria for notability and reliable sources, and start a new entry. Maybe everyone knows about Helen Keller, or thinks they do, enough to put her on US currency (again). But there are so many others worth learning about!  Some American biographical examples, from recent wanderings on Wikipedia or in old US newspapers:

1. Eliza Suggs (1876-1908):  "Carried in arms or wheeled about in a carriage, her frail hands and well developed head have accomplished wonders, obtaining a fair education, which makes her a valuable assistant, sometimes as secretary of religious organizations and work. In former years she assisted her father, more or less, in evangelistic work, and she has presided in public meetings with marked dignity and ability." Suggs was born in Illinois, to parents who met while they were enslaved on a Mississippi plantation; she had osteogenesis imperfecta (OI), and was a temperance activist alongside her preacher father, and later on her own.  I didn't write this entry but I'm glad somebody did.  Here's her memoir online, along with a photo of Miss Suggs (above, right).

2. Anita Lee Blair (1916-2010) was the first blind woman to serve in any US state legislature.  I wrote about her on DSTU a few years ago, and finally got her Wikipedia entry started earlier this year.  I found a campaign ad of hers from 1952 in a Texas newspaper recently, too, featuring her guide dog Fawn, and text proclaiming her achievements and her independence.

"Fear" (1981) by Elizabeth Layton;
a drawing of an older woman peeking
out from a closet with a fearful expression

3. Elizabeth Layton (1909-1993) was an artist based in Kansas who found her art late in life, in a drawing class she took at age 68, hoping it would help with her lifelong struggles with depression, and with more acute grief following the death of her son.  It did help, and it also brought her national acclaim:  in 1992 she was the focus of a show at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American Art.  I started her Wikipedia entry last week.  At left, a 1981 drawing by Elizabeth Layton, titled "Fear."  (Were you expecting sentimental art from an old lady?  Her drawings were edgy, even controversial.)

4. Dwight D. Guilfoil Jr. (1926-1989) was a businessman and a disabled veteran, who advocated for hiring disabled workers, and used his own company to demonstrate the possibilities.  Guilfoil doesn't have a Wikipedia entry yet, but I think he'd be a great candidate for one.  For now, check out an essay he wrote titled "Let's Stop 'Handicapping' Americans," which appeared in syndication, in newspapers across the US, in 1960.

UPDATE (February 2016): Dwight D. Guilfoil Jr. has a wikipedia entry now.

5. Mary Dobkin (1902-1987) was a immigrant child in Baltimore when she lost both feet to frostbite as a little girl. This early experience, and a lifelong love of baseball, made her a tireless advocate for poor kids in her adopted city; she coached kids' teams, integrated during the Jim Crow era, and took particular interest in providing sports opportunities for disabled kids.  There was a television movie made about her in 1979, but until today, no Wikipedia entry.  So I'll get right on that.




By the end of today, California time, there will be a new Wikipedia entry on Mary Dobkin, in honor of BADD 2015.  (I'll light up her name as a link when the entry is up.)  Anyone want to join in?  Plenty of other stories to tell, and every well-told story helps.

BADD 2014: Wikipedia Against Disablism

Manke Nelis (1919-1983), a Dutch singer and musician whose right leg was amputated after a motorcycle accident in the 1950s; in this image, he is an older man on a sports field, singing into a microphone, with his arms raised.  His sweatshirt reads "Nelis Goes to Hollywood." Image from Wikimedia Commons (of course).

(Blowing dust from the mike)

Tap tap tap.... hello? testing... hello?

Yeah, it's been a long time since we posted any new content here on DSTU.  But today is Blogging Against Disablism Day, and I have it on good authority (from Goldfish directly) that we're the only blog that participated in all eight previous BADDs, so I'd hate to break that streak.  We're here for BADD. 

Our previous eight appearances:  2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006. (For the record, the 2007 and 2008 entries are two of my favorite blog posts I've ever written, on any blog, or any topic.  BADD has been good for me.)

If you clicked any of those links, you'll know I usually blog about disability history for BADD--about the ways we use and record history, the stories we forget, and the stories we need to remember and retell.  This year, I'm on the same soapbox, but this time, no rant--instead, a challenge. 

For the past couple years, I've been putting more and more time and energy into editing on Wikipedia.  It's not easy, but it's interesting, and I seem to have a knack for it. I'm slowly learning how to do more and more there. I know schoolkids aren't supposed to use Wikipedia, but I hope they do anyway, because I'm consistently impressed with the way new entries are combed for typos, outlandish declarations, and unsupported claims of notability.  Writing on Wikipedia makes me think about the details.

I mostly create biographical entries for women, artists and scientists and museum folk not previously represented with full entries.  In addition to starting new entries, I make many small edits on existing entries--and some of those small edits involve shifts in language, removing cliches, decreasing melodrama, respecting personhood.  In other words, I find ways to use Wikipedia to fight disablism when I spot it.   Might seem extremely minor, but these entries are consulted by many thousands more readers than a journal article or a blog post will ever draw.  And the beauty of crowdsourcing is in the cumulative effect of many little contributions and improvements.

So now the challenge:  join me.  Or maybe join WikiProject Disability, which is the gathering of Wikipedians interested in disability topics.  Editing from a base of support and coordination like a WikiProject helps in learning the ropes. Or try an edit-athon--there are several going on in any given month--you can participate in person or virtually.  Edit-athons are supportive events, and tend to bring more attention to their products.   Can you contribute images or sound clips to Wikimedia, or verified quotes to Wikiquote, for use in Wikipedia entries?  Maybe you can translate an entry, or add a Wikipedia assignment to your course syllabus.

There's plenty of work to do out there--and Wikipedia is one pretty nifty place to do some of it. 

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

BADD 2012: History is still happening

A day late--I was hoping something would go up on DSTU yesterday, but as it hasn't, I'll write this, rather than missing a year of BADD.  To read our past six, more punctual entries, see 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2011.  The official list of contributions for BADD 2012 is growing at the Goldfish's blog, and you can follow the @BADDtweets account on Twitter for updates.

A few years ago, I started a Flickr group for disability history images--called, cleverly enough, Disability History.  Today it contains over 200 images contributed from libraries and personal collections, including images of family life, activism, art, technology, war--all topics I was hoping it might address.  It's true that most of them are black-and-white, or rather that warm sepia tone that makes the past look maybe a little rosier than it should.  But some are in color, because history didn't stop with the invention of color film, and indeed, history is still happening.  I certainly welcome contributions to the growing collection of recent disability history images there--we could especially use more images from non-US/UK contexts.  Here's a sampling of the generous additions so far, by the Flickr users credited in each caption:

Lilibeth Navarro leads a Not Dead Yet protest in Hollywood, on a sunny March day in 2005, 
against the film "Million Dollar Baby" (which went on to win best picture).  In the image, several protestors 
in power chairs roll past stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, with walking protestors behind them.  
(I'm just barely visible at the way back.)  Photo by Cathy Cole.

Candid undated snapshot from shows three people.  The young man at rear, left, is violinist Itzhak Perlman, 
smiling and flashing a peace sign; his arm crutches are both visible.  The other two people are not identified; 
one is an young Asian woman, and one is an older white man with a mustache.  
Photo from the account of Erin Corda, who writes, "I found this 120 color transparency of 
Issaac Perlman while clean out my fathers sheet music cabinet."

Informal snapshot from the 1960s, shows a smiling blonde little girl with glasses, a green print dress 
with very white collar and cuffs; white socks and black maryjanes.  She's standing outdoors, in front of blooming flowers and a stone wall.  Photo from the account of Joshua Black Wilkins, who writes, "My aunt Karen. 
Who had Downs Syndrome."

Art piece by Al Shep, titled clinical waste / institutionalisation, which addresses the history of asylums.  
In the image, two trash bins are marked with stenciled block lettering and images.  The trash bin on the left says 
"Empty Unreal Unable to Feel" with the face of a woman labeled "Annie, May 1900 Melancholia Recovered"; 
the larger blue bin on the right is stenciled with a definition of "institution" (the wording wraps around the bin so 
 we can only read part of the definition, with words like structure, social, behaviour, community, 
permanence, rules).  Other images of the project are here.  Photo by Al Shep.

A portrait of Jack Smith, of Rhodell, West Virginia, made by photographer Jack Corn in 1974; he is a white man in his early 40s with sandy hair.  His arms are crossed, showing his watch and wedding ring; he does not have legs.  Jack Smith was disabled in mining accident, and became active with the United Mine Workers Union during his eighteen-year struggle for worker's compensation.  Photo from the US National Archives, Documerica set, in Flickr Commons.

BADD 2012 is upon us!

The logo for Blogging Against Disablism Day
BADD

It's year 7 for Blogging Against Disablism Day, and The Goldfish has all the details for getting involved on 1 May.  Also follow BADDTweets on Twitter for developments.  DSTU will try to have something for our seventh entry in the annual event--stay tuned about that.  But go on over and have a look at who else will be contributing!  The posts should start going up soon, as May 1 starts arriving in various places...

Disability Blog Carnival News

The May edition of the Disability Blog Carnival will be hosted by Astrid at Astrid's Journal, with the theme "Care." Here's her explanation:

This could be health or social care, but also the care family members provide each other or self-care, of course. Please submit your posts in a comment here or E-mail me by May 25. I will post the carnival on May 29.

Astrid also mentions that the Blog Carnival of Mental Health's May edition will be hosted at the Madosphere, with the theme "patients and professionals."

BADD 2011: Disability History

I've had a rant coming on since, oh, 2008 (my paper at the Berks conference that year reflected the beginnings of this rant), and nothing in the time since has allayed my concerns, so here it is, for Blogging Against Disablism Day 2011. (This is DSTU's sixth time in the event; read our past entries here: 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006.)

Disability history is too important to hide away in journals, it's too important to bury in jargon, it's too important to present to empty conference rooms.

Disability history is more than a line on your CV, academics.

I'm frustrated whenever I find some really amazing disability history in a scholarly journal. Why? Because it's in such an inaccessible place, and often presented with such inaccessible language that it will never reach the majority of the audience who wants, needs, and will use that history in their work. Of course I know that journal articles and conference presentations are part of the game of academic careers. But if your work is valuable and relevant beyond the department hallway, don't you have a further obligation to find that audience and present that work in accessible formats?

Blog about disability history. Post disability history images on Flickr. Curate a disability history exhibit off-campus. Make a zine. Start a Wikipedia entry, or improve one that exists. Speak to non-academic audiences about your work. Speak to children about it (there's a real challenge). Write for non-academic audiences, on op-ed pages, in local publications, in national magazines. Make a podcast. Make a video and post it online. Donate a copy of your book to a public library. Don't wait for someone else to do it. Don't assume your work is too esoteric. Don't dumb it down, but use plain language and express yourself clearly. Take a class if you need new skills. Enormous potential is wasted when you don't take responsibility for putting it where it can be read and seen and discussed, by teachers and retirees, by activists and local government officials, and other folks who can't take books out of university libraries or attend scholarly conferences. It's not just giving, either; taking your work off-campus is also an opportunity to see its practical dimensions, and to learn about resources for further study that aren't in the usual places.

What can disability history do if you take it off-campus? It can ignite, it can comfort, it can inform, it can connect, it can solve mysteries and correct misunderstandings. Tracking down a history of families like mine was a priority when my son was first born--if I don't know those stories, how do I know where we fit in? Whose pasts can we learn from? There was a hunger to know that went far beyond thinking about a postdoctoral project or an interesting reading to assign to a class. The conventional wisdom is full of nonsense about disability history; solid scholarship that reaches into the community can engage that nonsense and replace it with something far more powerful.

If you're doing disability history, it should matter.

ETA: In comments, the question of "what is disability history" came up. If you're interested in further information on disability history, come join the H-Disability listserv (just past our 10th year, and reaching over 500 members), and the Disability History Association. (Why didn't I think to link to these originally?)

Long overdue updates...

Goldfish called me "a real community blogger" back in January, but I haven't been doing a very good job of that lately! A few efforts to make up for that:



The SIXTH annual Blogging Against Disablism Day (BADD) is coming up on May 1 (a Sunday this year), coordinated as always by Goldfish. We've participated every other round, and I'll try to get something ready for this year too--but that's one day of the year you never need to worry about finding amazing blogging on disability culture, disability rights, and the disability experience. Join in by following the directions at the link above.

There was no Disability Blog Carnival this month, but check out the Assistance Dog Blog Carnival or the Chronic Babe Carnival for all your link-love needs. Also, the next Blog Carnival of Mental Health should post on April 30th, so that's coming up soon (submissions requested by April 27).

HKMB: Seven Blind Women in History who were not HK

[Visual description: Photograph of a Rose Parade float in Pasadena, 2009, sponsored by the Lions Club, featuring a large framed image of Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan, with many many flowers below and "The Miracle Workers" as the caption; taken by me]

As I said when we announced we'd be participating in the Helen Keller Mythbusting Blogswarm, we've already done some mythbusting posts about Helen Keller here at DSTU. But another invitation in the blogswarm call suggests bloggers write about other historical women with disabilities, so that the Helen Keller story has more context. Helen Keller was unique, like any individual is, but she was obviously not the only blind woman to do anything interesting, ever, anywhere.

So here are seven more historical names for starters, all but one of them born before Helen Keller. No living women included, just to keep it historical. And I know other people will write about Anne Sullivan and Laura Bridgman for this event, so I skipped them too. I wish the list was more diverse--mostly English speakers here, and a cluster of musicians--but it's a start and I hope others will add to it.

Let the parade begin!

1. Matilda Ann "Tilly" Aston (1873-1947) was a blind writer and teacher in Australia, founder of the Victorian Association of Braille Writers, and of the Association for the Advancement of the Blind. She is considered the first blind student enrolled at an Australian university. In addition to her writing and literacy work, she campaigned successfully for voting rights and public transit access for blind Australians. Aston edited a Braille magazine for many years, and was an enthusiastic correspondent in Esperanto.

2. Elizabeth M. M. Gilbert (1826-1885) was an Englishwoman who campaigned for blind education and employment. Her father was a college principal and bishop, and Elizabeth (blind from age 3) was educated in languages along with her seven sisters. With an inheritance to support herself, she founded the Association for Promoting the General Welfare of the Blind, and helped to found the Royal National College for the Blind. She also lobbied for the 1870 Education Act.

3. Fanny Crosby (1820-1915) was an American hymn writer, credited with writing over 8000 hymns (many under pseudonyms). She started as a student at the New York Institute for the Blind, and stayed on as a teacher of rhetoric and history. She had to resign at 38 when she married a fellow NYIB alumnus. Crosby played one of her own compositions at the funeral of President Grant in 1885. Said Crosby, "If perfect earthly sight were offered me tomorrow I would not accept it."

4. Frances Browne (1816-1879) was an Irish writer, blind from infancy. She began publishing poetry in her twenties, and succeeded well enough to move to London by 1852. She is best known for her children's book, Granny's Wonderful Chair and Its Tales of Fairy Times, but she also wrote three novels in the 1860s.

5. Charlotta Seuerling (1782?-1828) was a Swedish composer, writer, and musician. Charlotta's parents were both theatre professionals, so Charlotta had plenty of access to music as a child, and plenty of travel experiences too. When Per Aron Borg opened his Stockholm school for blind and deaf students in 1808, Charlotta was his first student, and her musical exhibitions were popular fundraisers. Charlotta Seuerling went on to help found the Institute for the Blind in St. Petersburg.

6. Maria Theresia von Paradis (1759-1824) was an Austrian composer and musician, a contemporary of Mozart's. She began performing as a teenager, singing and playing organ and piano. She commissioned works by Salieri, Mozart, and Haydn, and gave concerts in London, Paris, Frankfurt, Prague, and other major European cities. Maria Theresia von Paradis is credited with helping Valentine Haüy establish the first school for the blind in Paris in 1785. She also taught singing, piano and theory at her own music school for girls in Vienna.

7. Mary Mitchell (1893-1973) was a successful Australian writer who became blind in midlife. Faced with rapidly diminishing vision, she learned to type on a typewriter and use a dictaphone, and wrote eight more novels with them. Mitchell was vice-president of the Braille Library of Victoria. She also wrote Uncharted Country (1963), about the practical aspects of living with blindness.

June 19: Helen Keller Mythbusting Day Blogswarm

More information here. Regular DSTU readers will know I love a good feminist disability history mythbusting blogswarm. I'm so there. Past mythbusting DSTU posts about Helen Keller include:

Keeping Helen Company in Statuary Hall
(was Helen Keller's statue the first showing a person with a disability in the US Capitol's Statuary Hall? No, not really)

June 27: Helen Keller (1880-1968)
(Is HK "the only feminist socialist Swedenborgian depicted on an American coin"? I assume so.)

Mook-Badhir
(Is there a Bollywood version of the Keller/Sullivan story, in which Teacher is an older male and Helen is a gorgeous twenty-something woman, and everyone sings? Yes there is!)

Join in the mythbusting fun! Note that you don't have to write about HK to participate; Anna suggests that some bloggers might want to "bust the myth that the only women with disabilities doing anything of interest in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were white women from the US!"

BADD: "It will be interesting."

Coming in a bit late for our fifth straight appearance in the Blogging Against Disablism Day swarm. Sunny Saturdays and blogging don't go together in my universe! And this will be briefer than our past entries, too. (Past BADD entries: 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006) Go to Goldfish's complete compendium of links to BADD posts for some much meatier fare.

"If this activation resulted in a living haploid, what would it be like? Probably small, female, infertile. The brain? The body? What right had I to create this entity? I knew it could never be normal, but could it be happy? Could it love? Could it be loved? By me? No doubt the thing could be stopped... somehow.... 'No,' I said, 'I shall let it develop. It will be interesting.'"

--the newly-expecting Mary, narrating character in Naomi Mitchison's Memoirs of a Spacewoman (1962).

For mid-20c. science fiction, Memoirs of a Spacewoman seems to have a refreshing lack of disablism, an unusual openness to disability being an everyday part of the far future. Mary is also that rare mother character that's neither tragic nor hovering nor heroic--Viola (the "haploid") is one of Mary's several children, and when she worries about Viola it's usually for specific reasons, not a generalized "poor baby" attitude. Mary's professional work, studying modes of communicating among non-humanoid life on distant planets, requires her to be especially inclusive in her understanding of differences (across a range much vaster than present-day humans are ever asked to accommodate). And there's some indication that her traveling schedule gives her somewhat flexible expectations about how her kids will grow and change. But one doesn't get the sense that Mitchison means us to see Mary's love and respect for Viola as very unusual for their future world.

I don't read much science fiction these days, but books like this make me think I should go back and re-read some of the short stories from the 1950s and 1960s that I read when I was a kid (in the 1970s and 1980s--I was buying old paperbacks at library sales, thus the lag). What might I have absorbed from those stories, about disability, about normality, about the future and who belongs where? Is the Mitchison novel unusual for its genre and era, or am I presuming too much? Happily, I've discovered that many pre-1963 SF stories are available free, in audio format, from Librivox. So I'm downloading away, grabbing the ones with titles that grab my attention, or the ones with women writers, just to see what I missed or forgot the first time.

"It will be interesting."

PS: While writing this, I found a cite for a recent article about Memoirs of a Spacewoman by a Scottish disability studies scholar; haven't read yet (I intend to, soon), but here it is:

Gavin Miller, "Animals, Empathy, and Care in Naomi Mitchison's Memoirs of a Spacewoman," Science Fiction Studies 35(2)(2008).

(guess I should have looked for it first; I'd hold off and post later, but it's Blogging Against Disablism Day today, right?)

Yes, it's that time of year again.... BADD 2010!

Click the logo above for more information, then sign up to participate. BADD is now in its fifth year, which you know qualifies as "longstanding" in blog time.

Blog Carnivals, past and future

Sorry so late with this--the most recent Disability Blog Carnival, #57, appeared at Jodie's Reimer Reason Blog on June 10. Because participation (like blogging in general) has been down significantly in recent months, the next one will appear on August 13, hosted by Laura at Touched by an Alien: Life as I Know It, with the theme "Relationships and Disability." The blogcarnival.com form is here, or you can leave links in comments here, or just put "Disability Blog Carnival" in the title or text of your post--I usually find those too.

Meanwhile, this post at Our Bodies Our Blog looks like something some disability bloggers might want to get in on...

Fem 2.0 is hosting a blog carnival on caregiving. Here’s the notice we received via email with encouragement to share:

Women take care of children, spouses, parents, family members, friends. We dominate the caregiving professions, like nursing or social work. Ask anyone receiving care of any kind and he or she will most likely tell you that the primary caregiver is a woman.

Caregiving is a huge part of women’s lives, and so often it’s a job for which we usually don’t get or expect monetary compensation. How can caregiving be made easier to make our lives easier?

Over the next couple of weeks, Fem2.0 is partnering with the National Family Caregivers Association, the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation, and the American College of Nurse-Midwives to start a fresh discussion about caregiving and women.

What is caregiving in all its shapes and forms?
What role does it play in women’s lives?
What can be done, or what changes need to happen, to facilitate caregiving?

We are looking for insights, comments, and expertise. We are looking for personal stories to illustrate the human experience of caregiving and to build a sense of solidarity among all caregivers.

Here’s how you can get involved:

1. Blog about it at your own site by July 13, and send Fem2.0 the link, so they can add your post to the blog carnival on Fem2.0. Alternatively you can write a piece for the Fem2.0 blog and send it to info@fem2pt0.com.

2. Participate in the Women and Caregiving Twittercast Monday, July 13, at 10 p.m. (EST) — hashtag #fem2. Find out how to join a Twittercast here.

Housekeeping Time

I notice that I've still got "new" tags on the blogroll for things I added in May 2008. So it must be time to cull through--move dormant and defunct blogs out of the active blogroll, delete links that don't work anymore, and add more blogs. I've given up trying to keep up with ALL the disability-related blogs out there--it's a huge universe compared to where we were just three years ago! But I'll add the links I've got, anyway. Stay tuned.

UPDATE (5/28): Okay, done with my first pass. All bad links have been removed. All dormant blogs have been moved to the dormant/inactive list. Reactivated blogs have been moved off the dormant list and back to the blogroll. Some new links have been added and marked "new." Old "new" tags have been removed (if that makes sense). Some were judgment calls--blogs changed names or URLs, or have only posted once in 2009, or whatever. Please correct me if I've put your blog in the wrong category, under the wrong title, etc.

I was sorry to learn that two disability bloggers, Grace R. Young and Alyric, have died in the past six months without being acknowledged here. Condolences to their families (in both cases, family members put a note on the blog to alert readers to the news).

History Carnival #76: April Showers Bring May Flowers?

A gardening theme seems right for the May edition of the History Carnival--let's dig right in!

[Image below, at left: illustration of a hoe, shovel, and rake, bound up with a ribbon that forms a shamrock-like shape, with "P." on top and "H." underneath]

The Free Gardeners of Scotland, a nineteenth-century friendly association, had a fascinating iconography, as shown and described at the Bartholomew Archive blog. (Credit where credit's due: I found the Bartholomew Archive blog by following links posted at both Collins Maps and The Map Room. But it's about far more than maps; follow the blog's link for historian-pleasing posts about ornate stationery, obscure satirical cartoons, railway history, and much, much more.)

A garden is a nice place to read in the springtime... I'm partial to biographies of women, so I'll gladly settle into the hammock with a new book about Katherine Willoughby (at Philobiblon's suggestion), or the new bio of Anne Sullivan Macy (as discussed by its author, Kim Nielsen, at her new blog). Or just tour the various blogs posting in observance of Mary Wollstonecraft's 250th birthday (which happened April 27, hope you didn't forget): Historiann, River Fleet, and GypsyScarlett, among others.

Or perhaps you've got some old (really old) mail to catch up on. Captain Cecil Mainprise's letter from Tibet to his sister Delia is up at Field Force to Lhasa 1903-04; Marion Brown's sending frilly pink letters to her cousin's fiance in 1872, at my own blog of correspondence transcripts, Letters from Sanquhar. Or maybe you just need to sit in an alcove and think about big questions, like "the origins of World War I," or "What did the British Empire ever do for us?"

Hey, what's that racket? Aha, just the cats boxing. Or Fred Ott sneezing (garden's full of pollens). Or one of the other 70 short films the Library of Congress recently uploaded to their new YouTube channel. Read all about this latest LOC venture.

While you're digging deep to make room for a large root ball, be careful you don't dig into the abandoned subway tunnels underfoot. Exercises in "nostalgic futurism" can show where those lie, at Strange Maps. Meanwhile, Laura Wattenberg has been digging in the Social Security data to learn what the Great Depression did to American baby-naming trends.

Creepy things lurk in gardens, under stones, and in some blogs too... Erika Dicker shares a rather shocking "Object of the Week" at the Powerhouse Museum's blog--a century-old Radiostat machine, or portable therapeutic vibrator device. Just as implausibly constructed (and just as real) are the CIA assassination plots against Castro outlined in a recent post at Edge of the American West. Antonio Salieri certainly has an unsavory reputation, from the play and movie Amadeus--is it warranted? Romeo Vitelli at Providentia digs into the facts behind the rumors and drama. Meanwhile, North Carolina is in the painful process of uncovering that state's eugenic sterilization program, and making gestures of redress, notes the Carolina Curator.

How does your garden grow? "Don't be lax!"
You could import some especially sturdy varieties, like the Hungarian horses sent to India in the 1890s. You could hire some experts at creating dramatic landscapes--like the American Museum of Natural History did for their legendary dioramas. Clio Bluestocking is having some luck with growing enthusiastic students, through museum field trips and film clips. Or consider, as Alan Baumler does at Frog in a Well, the 13th-century advice of Zhu Xi on critical reading for a liberal education:

Here’s what is necessary: one blow with a club, one scar, one slap on the face, a handful of blood. Your reading of what other people write should be just like this. Don’t be lax!

On the other hand, Zhu Xi also advised that

People beyond mid-life shouldn’t read much; they should simply turn the little they do read over and over in their minds. Then they’ll naturally understand moral principle.

That's probably a good note to end on. Gather up your cuttings and shears. Thanks to all contributors and writers and readers, it's been fun, but now, the gardening edition of the History Carnival is over and done.

News of the Day: Amazonfail and BADD 2009

Does the "Amazonfail" story affect disability studies books too? Oh yes it does!

Will there be a Blogging Against Disablism Day 2009? Oh yes there will!

Disability Blog Carnival #55 is up NOW!

The April edition of the Carnival, now posted at Yet Another Never Updated Blog, has a superheroes theme--even entries that weren't written directly for the theme are very cleverly worked into the flow--so go read up on heroes and villains, invisibility and other superpowers, secret identities, language, teamwork, and pirates and prosthetics. It's a generous, diverse collection of posts, and quite a number are from new-to-the carnival bloggers.

We need a May host! Email me quick if you want this slot. It can be a bit of a time commitment, but it's usually pretty fun, and you get all the glory, all the traffic, all the link love. (I'm glad to help too, of course.) When we have a May host, I'll post it here--watch for the Bat Signal.

UPDATE: Sarah from Same Difference was first to the mark, and she'll host the May Carnival. Posting date is May 14, so deadline for submissions is May 11--you can submit links for consideration at the blogcarnival.com form (but BEWARE THE CAPTCHA), or in comments here, or there.

In other Carnival news, I'll be hosting the History Carnival here at DS,TU again, on May 1 (edition #76). May 1 has also, for the past three years, been Blogging Against Disablism Day. So yeah, could be a busy week... !

RIP: Sara at Moving Right Along

Sara was one of my favorite bloggers--funny, honest, eclectic. I learned last night that she has died. Jana and Kay have posted beautiful remembrances, and I thank them for those. (Edit: Here's Elizabeth's post about Sara, and Goldfish's too.)

Me, I'm posting links to some posts of Sara's that I have saved in my reader:

ATTN. Camera-Happy Friends and Family Members

The "G" Word

The two-parter about walking down granite stairs in the rain

On Feet and Feminism

Heathered

Get Well Wishes for Amputees

Remembering her mother

Thoughts on cleaning the bathroom

Favorite shoes!

Independence Day: "Every life is a collaborative effort. Every one. In this country, we tout independence on a nigh mythic scale and tend to scorn people who are obviously not independent, but the truth of the matter is that no one is entirely independent."

Mango Scones!

Her last post at Moving Right Along (posted in January 2009) was a show-and-tell about her newly decorated "subtle and elegant...funky and handcrafted-looking...totally original" leg, purple with "ars gratia artis" monogrammed upon it. Sara looked forward to wearing this leg during "shorts season."