Fun with Sitemeter

If you're the person who arrived at DS,TU today by googling "how to play level 23 crip rader"--apologies, and good luck. We have absolutely no game tips for you. But if anyone ever develops a game named Crip Rader, we'd maybe be interested in having a look.

Anatomy of a search-string mishap: Crip, level, and play aren't uncommon words on our blog; rader pick up a reference to Laura Rader, a book illustrator, in this February 2007 post about author Jane Yolen. Hmm!

Disability Blog Carnival #38 is up NOW!

Kathryn at Ryn Tales has done a lovely job of gathering a wide variety of posts around the theme "spirituality and disability." Check it out, for heartfelt explanations, pointed critiques, joyful celebrations, and humor, too--because what's better for the spirit than some well-timed laughter? This edition's theme was chosen before the story of Adam Race hit the news, but several of the contributes comment on that current situation, too.

Next edition will be hosted by Emma at Writings of a Wheelchair Princess, on June 12 (three weeks away). She's set the theme "If I knew then..." which seems like a very open invitation indeed, so write something and submit it for consideration: you can use the blogcarnival.com form, or leave your link in a comment here, or at Emma's blog, or you can just use the phrase "Disability Blog Carnival" in your post, and I'll probably find it that way, too.

A note about the blogcarnival.com site: We've known since before we started this Carnival in October 2006 that the CAPTCHA security system on blogcarnival.com is not great for accessibility. We've always had several alternative means of submitting links, and we certainly hope nobody's been left out. But it's lately come to my attention that blogcarnival.com does not have any intentions to update to a more accessible security feature; most inquiries on the matter (including my own) have gone unanswered. This is a problem. Let blogcarnival.com (support@blogcarnival.com) know that they're behind the times with an inaccessible security feature, that better alternatives already exist, and that there are plenty of users who do care about this issue. (And let me know if you find a more accessible site to manage our carnival submissions.)

They're onto us, Kathleen

Many folks have been following the Kathleen Seidel subpoena story--it's being discussed in various sectors of the blogosphere, not "just" on blogs about autism but on blogs about science, law, and blogging itself. (I Speak of Dreams has been compiling a good long list of blog responses to the controversy.)

My in-house science consultant (aka, my husband, the physicist) pointed me to this choice quote in the response by one of the attorneys seeking access to Seidel's email files. Apparently they think her connections should be treated as suspect because she's

"a person utilizing investigative ability well in excess of that available to the mother and housewife she claims to be..."

Uh, whuh? I can't understand, maybe I'm a little distracted, what with the jangle of minivan keys in my pocket and the Spongebob songs running on a loop in the next room... but "mother and housewife" status doesn't limit my "investigative ability," and it is surely completely irrelevant to Ms. Seidel's capacity for finding and analyzing published or public-record legal and scientific documents, too. Now I'd say more about this, but my suspiciously excessive ability to use a search engine doesn't get the dishwasher loaded or the other kid off the schoolbus...

400+ Feeds

Sometime recently, like over the weekend, my Bloglines feeds passed the 400 mark. Now, some of those are defunct feeds that I just keep for the saved posts in them; some are personal friends' blogs, or local blogs, or stuff about history, feminism, maps, music, books, etc. Some are search feeds. But honestly, most of them are disability-related blogs, active and posting a lot! So I guess the 400 mark is as good a time as any to update our blogroll here--it's been a while since I did it--watch for some exciting additions in the next few days.

ADDED LATER: Wow, there are a lot to add. This is going to take a few days. I'm marking new additions to the blogroll "(new)," but truly most of them I've been reading for quite a while--kinda surprised to discover some of them weren't listed here yet!

This is for Kay at Gimp Parade

[Photo description: Signage outside a men's room shows two beige plaques--one, a symbol dressed in Western gear labeled "Men," and the other below is the usual access symbol; both are posted on a stone surface]

Disabled guy doesn't get a hat, neckerchief, chaps or boots, either.... spotted at Knott's Berry Farm last fall.

(There's an equivalent sign on the ladies' room, photo posted here.)

BADD: Skimmed and Overheard...

Some of the striking sentences and bits I came across just starting to skim and scan through the feast of posts for Blogging Against Disablism Day. I'll be adding to this over today and tomorrow--it's too much to read all at once! (I'm focusing on the ones I don't already have in my Bloglines feeds, because it's so much fun to discover a new voice, and there are a lot of new voices participating.)

"That's right, funky business owner -- the mall is more radical than you are." (Willendorf)

"Nobody ever says 'this is what it is like to be 24 and applying for Social Security.' Well, this is what it's like." (Never That Easy)

"So he had to go to a special pre-school and then a special elementary/high school. I found myself wondering if they had a special society hidden away that Tristan would then work and live out the rest of his life in." (Chanelle and Tristan)

"Sometimes I have good days and take the stairs. Sometimes I have bad days and take the elevator. Sometimes I have good days and take the elevator to avoid the chance of my day turning into a bad day. All of these decisions are mine to make, and are no one else’s business."
(Three Square Meals)

"All it would take is truly accessible public buildings and a completely accessible public transport network, and Stephen would never again feel the desperate need to bungee jump over a waterfall, shuffle up a perilous mountain on his bottom, or wheel across the Arctic tundra wearing nothing but a t-shirt emblazoned with the phone number of his charity donation hotline." (An Unreliable Witness)

" It still bothers me when everyone around me uses Healthy Person Logic and applies it to me and my life, because it works in their life and it’s just, to a healthy person, how the world works." (Jay Angel)

"So it is time to say it, and say it every day. There is no normal. There is no normal way to read, or to write, or to listen, or to see, or to get from here to there. There are simply ways of doing things, and the ways which work best for each human individual will vary - based in human capability and human desire and human preference." (SpeEdChange)

"When I applied for disability, the woman said to me, "I'm tired, too, but I still work eight hours a day." I am still furious over that remark." (The View from Room 7609)

"It was seriously, asskickingly empowering to create and post this piece. I love that it ended up so sexy. ...I offer it in celebration of BADD and badass mutant hot people everywhere." (Daisybones)

Penny and Mike speak!

If you get this in time, Penny Richards and I are going to be featured on the Independence Journal radio show this evening, Thursday April 24th at 7:30pm EDT. The subject of the interview is "Disability Blogging." The show is streamed online at the SUNY New Paltz student radio station, The EDGE - http://www.wfnp.org

Click on the address above. Then click on the HOME tab on the top left of the page. Then click on, Webcasting NOW!>> on the right side of the page. Looking forward to your comments.

Get ready for Blogging against Disablism Day 2008!

Back for a third year, the event that is Blogging Against Disablism Day, once again hosted by The Goldfish on May 1. We've been thrilled to be part of BADD the last two years, and we'll definitely have a contribution this time around too. Last year, more than 170 bloggers around the world participated, and it was a great day of reading and commenting. Goldfish has once again declared "language amnesty" for the day, so use the terms that are right and best for your purposes in your part of the world, and expect that others will do the same. But do write something, and do read across the disability blogosphere on May 1--you won't be disappointed.

Ratify Now CRPD Blog Swarm

Andrea Shettle has assembled the RatifyNow CRPD Blog Swarm in support US (and others') ratification of the UN's Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. She's got posters from ratifying countries like India and New Zealand, as well as from countries yet to ratify. I didn't get a chance to make a post for this--the usual excuses apply. But I can make this quick post pointing readers to the blog swarm, anyway. Go, read!

Meet Marianne McHugh (1930-1978)

It pays to read other blog carnivals. I was clicking along, enjoying the unsung stories of teachers and suffragists in the latest Genealogy Blog Carnival, a special edition for Women's History Month, when there she was, Marianne McHugh. Colleen at Orations of OMcHodoy has a nice long reminiscing post about her aunt, Marianne, was was born with Down syndrome in an era when that wasn't a promising start, to say the least. The many photos are such a treasure--baby Marianne with a favorite doll, smiling over the stroller of her new little brother, laughing with her little sister, playing in sand, dressed in her Sunday finest as a teen, in a cowgirl outfit at a Halloween party, posing with relatives (silly faces or solemn, she was great at both).

Go, meet Marianne McHugh.

The face of George Everett Greene

[Image description: head-and-shoulders photo of a 14-year-old boy, taken in 1894--he has close-cropped sandy hair and is wearing an ill-fitted collarless shirt under at least two other layers]

Back last May, for Blogging Against Disablism Day, I wrote up a post about George Everitt Green (1880-1895), an English child who was apparently killed by his foster mother in Canada after he didn't match her expectations for what a teenaged boy should be able to do--he was described as small for his age, "backward," and as having "defective vision." The foster mother was never convicted, and the case was used to spur feeling against immigrants, especially young disabled immigrants, as the "diseased offscourings of the hotbeds of hellish slumdom."

In that post, I wondered if there was a photo of Green anywhere--the Barnardo emigration program that brought him to Canada was famous for photographing each boy before he set sail. Well, thanks to a new comment on that post from sarahquay, I now know there is a photograph of Green, in the Library and Archives Canada, and it's online.

"Death through ill-usage" is the wording of the crime in his file (where the name is spelled "George Everett Greene," thus the spelling in my title above). Above is George Green, age 14, about to board a boat to North America. Hopeful, maybe; confused, maybe; wary, probably; young, definitely. Not much older than my own son. Within the year, he would be dead from abuse, malnutrition, exposure, exhaustion, and gangrene. He's looking out across more than a century, and I wish we could look back and say "things have changed." But they haven't, or not nearly enough.

Tervetuloa, race fans!

The graphic at left is a pie chart of this blog's traffic today, by country, thanks to sitemeter. Yes, today, almost a third of our visitors are coming from Finland. It was the same yesterday.

Finland? Does Steve Kuusisto have something to do with this?

No. Apparently there are a lot of drag racing fans in Finland, and one of them linked to one of my entries about Reggie Showers on a Finnish-language message board. So, Tervetuloa!

UPDATE 12 FEBRUARY: Well, shoot, the pie chart updates itself--so it no longer shows the 31% Finland wedge. I promise, it was there yesterday. Ah well, just now you can see how we also have visitors from Kazakhstan, Kenya, Malaysia, Poland, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Spain, Italy, Canada, India, the UK, France, Sweden, Switzerland, and Thailand. Which is also pretty cool, but I'm not looking up how to say "welcome" in all the languages thus indicated...

"Whatever works" is not a free pass for cruelty

"Whatever works" is a favorite parenting and teaching mantra--because nobody's perfect, life's complicated, and sometimes you find yourself doing the less-than-ideal thing in dealing with kids. Here are some appropriate (invented but plausible) uses of the phrase, in my view:

• "I let Leo bring a book to my cousin's tedious wedding reception, so he'd at least be quiet and have a decent time. My cousin was annoyed with me, but whatever works, right?"
  
• "Okay, so I had to dress like a clown and sing a ridiculous song, but every kid in that class will remember what pi is, from here forward. So, whatever works!"

Note that in these instances, the risk and embarrassment were undertaken by the adult--not inflicted by an adult on a child. Note that "whatever works" isn't used as an excuse for humiliating a child, abusing a child, or causing a child unnecessary pain of any kind. Because ends can't justify those means--no ends--not ever--not with any child. "Whatever works" is not a free pass to be hurtful, cruel, or insensitive to another's pain. Who raised, and who taught, the officials who believe otherwise?

For Blogging against Aversives Day--click the link for many other bloggers on the subject.

Falling through the net

Brent Martin's brutal, pointless death --why don't we hear more about it?

Shane Graham disappeared about eight years ago--and apparently nobody in any position of authority noticed until recently? (There's not even a photo of Graham available to authorities, and his care needs were such that it's unlikely he's still alive but unknown somewhere.)

Bloggers are telling these stories to a wider audience when no one else will--please, keep telling the stories, keep them from falling through the net. Brent and Shane were human beings who deserve to be remembered and mourned, and nobody could deserve the treatment they got.

It's the Blue Badge of Christmas, Tiny Tim!

A couple edgier vintage links for the heart of December: What's the Blue Badge of Christmas? Gimpy Mumpy explained this "very special" aspect of the holiday season in 2006. If you're sitting through one too many cloying depiction of Tiny Tim this season, William G. Stothers wrote the perfect perennial essay, "I Hate Tiny Tim." My favorite line: "When you think about a person with a disability as someone to feel sorry for, as someone to be taken care of and looked after, it is difficult to think about hiring them as a teacher, an architect or an accountant."

ADDED LATER: One more: Andrea's excellent disability analysis of "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer"....Eventually everyone decides to tolerate the mutant reindeer... but only because he can be useful to them...

Reports of my death... ah, you know...

According to our sitemeter, someone in the US (AOL doesn't give locations) came to the Disability Studies blog tonight with the search string "Penny L. Richards' death." And stayed for almost 3 minutes, so they weren't just clicking around. I certainly hope they didn't find what they were looking for, with that phrase.

One possible explanation is that there's a romance writer who uses the pen-name "Penny Richards," and there's a Canadian mystery writer, Linda L. Richards, whose most recent book is called "Death was the Other Woman"--maybe the searcher combined the two authors' names by mistake, and was looking for the novel?

It might also be a genealogist or historian looking for a death date or an obituary--I've been known to search names with "obituary" or "died," when looking for a quick confirmation of a date.

Or maybe one of my students is hoping for a last minute reprieve from submitting a course paper? Sorry, they're still due Monday morning.

(I figure by posting this, I've recorded the search for posterity, anyway. And now back to our usual programming.)

A new vocabulary

Kay Olson of the Gimp Parade is reaching a much larger readership now, as a permanent addition to the team at Alas, a Blog. And congratulations to the Alas blog owner on such a fine choice! In the comments stream of her first post, the usual question about language came up--is it disablist to say someone you dislike is "psycho," or to call bad ideas "lame" or "idiotic"? Yeah, it is. Sorry. I know, maybe it seemed cool in high school, but "lame" isn't your best choice. And it's stale, too. Here, for future reference, are some words that might be more precisely descriptive, with the bonus of not involving whole groups of perfectly decent disabled people in your disapproval:

ill-conceived
ill-considered
ill-informed
misguided
narrow
nonsensical
inconsistent
random
scatter-shot
ridiculous
stale
silly
dangerous
off-base
pathetic
disappointing
frustrating
confusing
infuriating
unconvincing
unwise
heedless
reckless

Got more? That list didn't take long to come up with, no thesaurus required. The Friday spelling test is optional.

BATT: Against Pity

Pity would be no more
If we did not make somebody poor

--William Blake (from The Human Abstract)

You'd think it was obvious, but clearly it's not obvious at all to some people ... Nobody needs pity. Nobody enjoys being pitied--no matter what is promised in exchange. There's a reason "Piss on Pity" is such a popular t-shirt in the disability rights movement.

But don't just take the t-shirt's word for it.... this antipathy to pity has a long, strong history. My favorite version is from George Sand (1804-1876, portrait at left), who experienced regular and intense bouts of despair (she wouldn't have called it depression, but we might today):

I implore you, Pylades, do not see me as a tragic figure, do not tell me it requires an appalling effort for me to sustain this cheerfulness. No, no! This is not a part I am playing, it is not a duty, it is not even calculated; it is an instinct and a need. (from Lettres d'un Voyageur, lettre 5)

Or try these lines from the diary of a young American southerner going blind in 1833:

You are sorry for me!!!
Eternal God! Am I then that thing
As to excite pity!
Give me deep scorn, without disguise,
Most rancorous hate, abhorrence
Any thing, but pity!

---Lines written in the diary of Joseph Lyons, Savannah GA (more about Lyons here)

Looking for more contemporary evidence against fundraisers that rely on pity? Check out all the other contributions to Blogging Against the Telethon, at Kara's place on Monday.

UPDATE: Kara's got the blogswarm up now--great turnout! But wait, there's more good news: Kara Sheridan is already on the schedule to host an upcoming edition of the Disability Blog Carnival (in October).

It's that time of year again...

Miss Crip Chick (Stacey) explains how you can join the campaign against the MDA telethon:

What can we do? Protest. Write a Letter to the Editor. Tell people about the charity, medical, and social model of disability. Blog. Kara and I, along with the Disability Activist Collective (website coming soon) are organizing a campaign against the telethon and the charity model of disability. We need bloggers (not only disability bloggers but all! feminist, queer, woc, environmentalist, activists, great time to build alliances) who will agree to write about this! The campaign will work much like a blog carnival and will be heavily publicized in listservs and other sources of media. We encourage you to participate! To participate, please [leave] a comment or email us a consciouslycrip@gmail.com We will be announcing the campaign on Thursday via media and will tell them to check the website postings on Monday. The campaign will be posted on Kara’s site.

Tapped, Tagged, and Jetlagged

Kristina at Autism Vox tagged me--not the blog, but me personally, by name, with that infernal 8-things meme that's making the rounds. I felt a bit guilty about not responding to the several "thinking blogger" taps we got, but figured that we have a blogroll, updated often, and heavily contributing to the carnivals is my way of pointing out new and interesting bloggers that more folks should be reading.

But eight random things about me, huh? Okay then. But be warned, if another meme comes around in a few weeks asking for ten more random things about me, I'm tapped out. Here's what I can tell you:

1. I'm left-handed. My kindergarten teacher tried to switch my handedness (in 1972!), and in first grade I went to a special ed class for penmanship. I'm terrible with shoelaces and my favorite rotary cheese grater, but I still cheered when my daughter turned up a lefty.

2. I skipped second grade and repeated fourth grade. Same me, same school, just different policies.

3. I went to high school and share a surname with an astronaut--we're both P. Richards, and we both finished second in our respective classes. No relation, though. He's walked in space, I get queasy on small boats.

4. I was the sixth generation of my grandmother's family to live in the house where I grew up, built by my great-great-greats in the 1850s. Various members of the seventh generation have visited the house, slept, eaten, played, and celebrated there, but so far none has taken up residence.

5. My 1990 masters thesis was about a border dispute between Pennsylvania and Connecticut, 1750s-1780s. Wait, you say, Pennsylvania and Connecticut don't share a border! Well, they don't now, silly... but it took some bloody skirmishes and protracted legal wrangling to establish that for sure.

6. I got my first driver's license at age 25. Reluctantly. Still not a car person, even now that I live in Los Angeles.

7. Pregnancy incapacitated me both times--learn more about hyperemesis gravidarum here--but I'm really lucky in labor: had my firstborn in 90 minutes, no drugs, no stitches. Then the fun started.

8. I own and wear more than ten pairs of maryjanes, various colors and brands. Ridiculous, sure, but they suit my big Flintstone feet. (Image above is a turquoise-floral print maryjane from On Your Feet shoes. Might wear those today.)

See, I was clearly reaching towards the end there--just not that fascinated by my own random things, I guess. Now to tag forward: hm, I think I'll just link to some fairly recent adds in our blogroll or my feeds--if they're interested in playing fine, if not, that's cool too. Tagging: Cilla at My Big Noise, Shelob at Caution Blind Driver, Paula at E. is for Epilepsy, zombierubberduckie at Life Sat Down, Penelope at Rolling Around Life, Jodi at Reimer Reason, I'll add two more later, my laptop batteries are kaput for now...