Showing posts with label children. Show all posts
Showing posts with label children. Show all posts

Wednesday, May 02, 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.

Monday, January 16, 2012

Sighing again

So let me get this straight...

If parents walk into a children's hospital and ask for a highly unconventional series of surgeries to remove healthy tissue and organs, limiting their daughter's growth... a series of surgeries that would never be performed on a nondisabled child... the answer is, fine, because she's developmentally disabled?

BUT, if parents walk into a children's hospital and ask for a very standard surgery to treat an organ that isn't functioning properly, a surgery that will improve their daughter's health and very probably prevent an early death... a surgery that is routinely performed on nondisabled children... the answer is no way, because she's developmentally disabled?

Got it.

(Wolf-Hirschhorn syndrome is caused by a partial chromosomal deletion--just like my son's (unnamed) diagnosis, only it involves chromosome 4 instead of chromosome 7. Chromosomal anomalies can cause a whole array of anatomical and physiological differences that would complicate a surgery, or make it riskier, and I'd certainly expect those particular complications and risks to be explained to me in the planning stages of a surgery. But that's not why Amelia is being disqualified, according to her mother's story.)

Barriers Bridges and Books
has a compilation of links about this story. Stephen Drake is also on the case.

Wednesday, December 07, 2011

Halftime Handoff

Every week during halftime on Sunday Night Football, Toyota announces which sports-related non-profit organization is getting $10,000 in their weekly campaign to publicize such groups. Last Sunday, it was Shane's Inspiration's turn, and my son is in the 15-second video's opening scene (blond kid in the Convaid chair, on the right of the picture, next to the rollerslide):



[Video description: Children playing on an accessible playground, some visibly disabled, some not--they are sliding, climbing, rolling, and smiling--sunny afternoon, colorful autumn clothing]

[Audio transcript: "Thanks to your votes, Toyota is proud to donate $10,000 to Shane's Inspiration, a Southern California-based foundation that helps build playgrounds accessible to children with physical disabilities. Every week, visit facebook.com/toyota to vote for the next Toyota Halftime Handoff."]

Okay, 15-seconds of a corporate ad, probably not going to change the world. BUT--some of the folks watching football on Sunday night never thought about accessible playgrounds before. Now they've heard the phrase. Maybe one or two of those folks are on a town council or city planning board, and when they hear the phrase again, they'll associate it, subconsciously, with smiling children and a nice evening watching football. And maybe, just maybe, that means they vote yes on the proposed accessible swing in their neighborhood... not even knowing why.

(There's a two-minute version of the ad coming out next week, for the Toyota website and Facebook page and YouTube -- I'll post that here when it's available.)

Thursday, February 24, 2011

Cerrie Burnell's Arm, Part 2

Wow, so two years after I first wrote about this, Cerrie Burnell's arm is still a matter of controversy? Maybe because I'm also reading Sue Schweik's The Ugly Laws right now, it seems amazing that in 2011 we're still anxious about the sight of an arm that doesn't end in a hand. For recent blogging about Cerrie Burnell's story, see Planet of the Blind and Bess's The Right to Design, among others.

I had just finished reading (and retweeting) that last link when my daughter's newest issue of American Girl magazine arrived in the mail. [visual description: girl holding a magazine open, with the story "Lizzy's Ride" visible; one page is a large photograph of a girl in equestrian gear, riding a pony, with her arms raised; one arm ends above the elbow]

"Lizzy's Ride" is a six-page first-person story about a Pennsylvania girl who rides ponies in competition. Lizzy says "I was born with only one hand. It might seem like that would be a big deal, but it's really not." The story isn't about her arm, it's about her ponies and how she cares for them on her family's farm. (There's video of Lizzy riding on the American Girl website.) But clearly, the editors at AG don't think that such things should be kept under wraps, either.

Friday, August 28, 2009

Another "hilarious" blind cartoon character ?!?!?

[Visual description: animation still; the human character is an African-American woman wearing a white headscarf, shawl, and dress, sunglasses, bracelet, ring, and large gold earrings; she's holding the head of a large snake in her hands, and smiling at it.]

Hoo-boy. Get ready for Mama Odie, the fairy godmother in Disney's new feature, "The Princess and the Frog." She's a 200-year-old swamp-dwelling seer and she's blind (get it? get it?). She has a "seeing-eye" snake. Yeah, that won't confuse any children about the work of service animals...

Thursday, May 14, 2009

Website: Hidden Lives of the Waifs and Strays

[Image description: a black-and-white photograph of ten smiling English girls in 1915, at least three of them (in front) seated in wheelchairs.]

A remarkable website has come to my attention (hat-tip to Jennifer Bazar). Hidden Lives Revealed is a "virtual archive" preserving the photographs, publications, stories, and sometimes extensive case files of British children in care, 1881-1918. The personal names of the subjects have been removed, but you can access transcripts of correspondence as well as facsimile images. And, because "disability" is one of the keywords in the index, you can find the stories (and there are many such) in which a child's or a parent's disability is a factor in their care arrangement.

Take, for example, J., whose file runs over fifty items. J was born in 1870, and the very first boy in the Society's care. A childhood fall and an accidental burn resulted in physical "deformities." The boy was working as a streetsweeper at age 10; a health inspector removed him from his "wretched and degraded" family and placed him in care. At age 12,
He is now able to run about but a year ago he was compelled to lie on his back & was considered by several doctors in a very precarious condition he is naturally a very good, quiet, little boy & where-ever he has been he was evidently a great favourite. He is decidedly ignorant & can read & write very little.
J. was featured in a Society publication in 1901, as a success story. At the time, the thirty-year-old was working at a printing firm, married, the father of a little girl. But the case file continues for years past this happy ending: there are letters from J himself, and poems he wrote for Society publications. There's a photograph of him c.1923, in a suit and mustache. In 1930, he writes to tell his contacts at the Society that his health has worsened (tuberculosis) and he can no longer do physical labor. There's a flurry of letters as the Society tries to find provisions for this "first boy," but J. died in February 1930.

A. was born in 1892, and orphaned before she was 10. She lived with an older sister who wasn't well-equipped to care for another child; and A. contracted tuberculosis that required a right leg amputation. She was admitted to the Lockett Home for Crippled Children, Southport, in the winter of 1901, in good health. Five years later, a report explains that she's using crutches, healthy and strong, but "her intellect is not very bright." The report concludes that she could earn a living doing ironing if she had a "false leg." "She might also do stocking knitting," opined the writer. Unlike J., we don't know the rest of A.'s story--we don't even know if she got that leg.

Students might quickly take from these case files that work and vocational training are a major concern of the Society--much of the paperwork involves finding placements for teenagers who will soon leave care and need to support themselves. Another issue is morality--standard forms will ask such questions as "Are you aware of her being addicted to any unchaste practice?" The legitimacy and baptismal status of a child is frequently recorded, and the alcoholism and sexual behavior of parents is also a constant theme. Tuberculosis and untreated infections and injuries may strike some students as remarkable common in these materials--an opening to discuss the ways medical care changed in the twentieth century, and how medical history intersects with disability history.

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Cerrie Burnell's Arm


The BBC recently introduced new presenters on their popular children's show, CBeebies: Alex Winters and Cerrie Burnell. They're pictured at left, in a publicity still. Both young, white, conventionally attractive, with big grins for the camera. They're dressed in kid-friendly purple and green sweaters, sitting on a comfy couch with satiny pillows. And Cerrie has a noticeably short arm, ending just below the elbow.

Well, that last detail of the picture is apparently a problem for some parents. They say her appearance is "unsuitable" for a children's show, that the sight of her will "scare" children, even to the point of giving them nightmares. Complaints have been filed. Message boards on the subject brim with panic and ignorance. And it is the parents' problem, not the kids' concern: as Lucy Mangan writes about physical difference in a Guardian editorial on the subject, "To a young child, it is just another element of a large and confusing world that they want to inquire about, no more fearsome or embarrassing than any other."

So, of course kids are going to ask, that's what they do--and they're going to take their cues from how their parents answer those questions. Not just the words, either, but the tone, the body language--I posted some tips here a few years ago.

And think about this--if you're telling your children this lovely young woman is too frightful to behold, what are you telling them more generally about beauty? about perfection? What kind of impossible box are you asking them to fit into, and stay inside, for your approval?

Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Swing time

In the picture, my son and I at the dedication of a new accessible swing at a neighborhood park today... We like to show up for these things if we're available, because it's good for the city officials who approved the funds, and the park crew who will maintain the site, to see who will benefit. To see that it's not just window-dressing, that there are real kids who will enjoy the new equipment.

It's also the one and only day that you can assume the accessible swing will be in working order--in fact, this one had already needed a minor repair before the photo opportunities commenced. (Why do carers let kids mistreat playground equipment? It's not actually indestructible, and it's never inexpensive.)

Thanks again to the Hermosa Beach folks who worked for this swing (and who are working for further accessibility features in other parks), and to photographer Doris Beaman for the lovely picture she took.

Wednesday, December 03, 2008

Sensory Friendly Film Screenings

Got this email through a local group:
Subject: Autism Society of America and AMC Entertainment to Host Films

AMC Entertainment (AMC) and ASA have teamed up to begin testing a pilot program to bring families affected by autism and other disabilities a special opportunity to enjoy their favorite films in a safe and accepting environment on a monthly basis.

"Sensory Friendly Films" premiered across the country last August, and are continuing with a special showing of the new film Bolt for December.

For these movies the lights are up a little, the sound is down, there is no "silence is golden" rule, and people can bring in special dietary snacks.
An interesting experiment, similar to Parent Movie Mornings at some theatres on weekday mornings, where babies are welcome instead of frowned upon, secure stroller parking is offered, and the volume is down. And no doubt any such realistic accommodations are a godsend for many families.

But once again, the sensory-friendly screenings are targeting families and showing kid movies at this pilot stage, rather than imagining there are adults who might also like to "enjoy their favorite films in a safe and accepting environment" that includes lower volume and BYO snacks. These conditions don't have to be "special" or just for children--they might be appreciated by a much wider audience if the option were offered.

Sunday, November 30, 2008

November 30: Linda Bove (b. 1945)

[Visual description: Linda Bove in the 1970s, wearing a rust-colored turtleneck and signing "I"]

When I joined the cast I found the writers would write about 'How would a deaf person do this?' 'How does a deaf person do that?' And it was just related to my deafness and it didn't feel like they were treating me as a person. I found my character one-dimensional and kind of boring. It showed how brave a deaf person was to do this and that in everday life. I said it was no big deal. I have a sense of humor; why don't you show that? I can be angry over something. Show that I can have a relationship with another person.
Today is the birthday of Linda Bove, born on this date in Garfield, New Jersey. If you were a hearing American kid in the 1970s, chances are the first place you saw American Sign Language was on Sesame Street--and chances are, it was being used by Linda Bove, one of the show's longest-running cast members (1972-2003). Bove attended Gallaudet University and became involved in theater as a student; she toured with the National Theater of the Deaf, and co-founded the Little Theater of the Deaf and Deaf West Theatre Company.

Now, for old times' sake, video from Sesame Street, first aired in 1980, in which Olivia (Alaina Reed) and Linda sing and sign the song "Sing" (lyrics here):

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Remembering Herschey Lang (1912-1917)

[Image description: old, damaged photo of a little boy, Herschey Lang, wearing a hat and coat.]
Bella Cohen Spewack (1899?-1990) was a journalist, a publicist, and a writer for stage and screen, best known as the co-writer of the show Kiss Me Kate. But in 1922, while living in Berlin with her new husband, working as a news correspondent, Bella Spewack also wrote a fierce, funny, poignant memoir of her youth, titled Streets. The memoir wasn't published until after her death (it's available from Feminist Press); but because it was written and eventually published, we can remember Bella's little brother Herschey Lang, and have a glimpse of family life in the Lower East Side of the 1910s.

Herschey was born to Fanny and Hoosan Lang, both recent Jewish immigrants from Hungary, when Fanny's daughter Bella Cohen was 13. When he was born, his father brought home to the family's tiny apartment a yellow wood cradle; three cents worth of jelly beans were scattered under his mattress, to ensure a sweet life. Needlework pillowcases and tiny knitted caps were brought as gifts, by neighbors. Then, when he was six months old, Herschey got sick: a rash of sores erupted on his face, arms, and hands. The sores left scars. Hoosan Lang shouted at Fanny, "You wretch! You have brought me trouble! You have borne me a sickly child. And a son, God in heaven, a son!" (pp. 77-79) Hoosan left, while Fanny was pregnant with their second child, Daniel Lang.

Fanny moved herself and her children to a cheaper apartment, using a pushcart to transport their belongings. Bella took care of her little brothers in the streets, while their mother did sewing at home, and tended to their boarders. Herschey learned to walk on the corner of Houston and Goerck Streets, near the Third Street pier. Bella remembered the stares and insults:
Frequently women, and men too, would stop and unashamedly stare at the two in the carriage. Pregnant women looking at Herschey's disfigured face would stick their thumbs in their belts and immediately look away [a superstitious gesture to prevent ugly children].

One woman, whom I had seen frequently on the block, laughed outloud on seeing Hershey. The black salve that I had applied in the morning was still on his face. "Look at the little rat." For a moment, I felt as if the roaring in my ears and the pounding within me would never stop. Then I walked over to the woman and struck out. My outstretched hand landed on her neck.

That woman never again stopped near Herschey's carriage, but when she saw me, with or without him, she would cross to the other side of the street. As her revenge, she tried to spread the rumor that I was crazy, but the street chose not the believe her.
(102-103)
When the pier got a little too pungent in the summer heat, Bella took the little ones to a playground, where they could play in sand and take turns on the swings. She also included the boys in her dramatic productions with neighborhood teens: they played a stringed instrument during a scene from Romeo and Juliet, enacted on a tenement fire escape. Fanny and Bella got summer jobs working at a resort in the Catskills, and the boys came along, so they could eat better and get some fresh air. "I was fierce with desire that children play with Herschey," Bella recalled about that time, "for they shunned him and he loved them dearly." (p. 125) Soon, the management noticed how sickly Herschey was, and sent the whole group back to the city.

Herschey Lang died at age 5, after a long illness that included fevers and paralysis and a lot of lost weight at the end. "My mother was mad with the pain of her loss," explains Bella (p. 157). "So it fell to me to arrange for the burial." The last sentences of the memoir present a painful scene: "My mother and I, carrying Danny in my arms, attempted to follow the hearse on foot for we could afford no carriage. But the hearse moved swiftly. Herschey was light."

Herschey Lang didn't live long, but he was loved, dearly loved, by his mother and sister, right to the end. And he was never forgotten.

See also:

Lisa Muir, "Rose Cohen and Bella Spewack: The Ethnic Child Speaks to You Who Never Were There," College Literature (Winter 2002), online here.

Wednesday, March 19, 2008

March 20: Fred Rogers (1928-2003)

[Image description: Mr. Rogers, at his closet, with one arm raised as he dons his familiar red cardigan]
"You are an important person just the way you are."
This Thursday would have been Fred Rogers's 80th birthday. In observance of the date, the City of Pittsburgh (Rogers's homebase) is inviting folks everywhere to wear their favorite sweater -- if you have one, a zippered cardigan would be most appropriate -- and send in a photo or video. Here's a video explaining "Won't You Be My Neighbor?" Day.

Fred McFeely Rogers wasn't disabled, but for many American children, his show was an early introduction to people with disabilities, adults and children, as "neighbors"--ordinary, interesting, full members of the community. Longtime cast members on Mister Rogers' Neighborhood included Chef Brockett (played by the late Don Brockett), owner of Brockett's Bakery, who sometimes talked about his physical disability (he had a visible limp); and Mayor Maggie (played by Maggie Stewart), who was a professional ASL interpreter as well as a town executive. Violinist Itzhak Perlman was a guest on Rogers's show, and later played at Rogers's funeral, expressing his admiration for the man.

Children with disabilities were regularly cast as Mr. Rogers's friends, and he spoke with them in the same vein of polite curiosity and spontaneous decency that he did with all his guests. (See the late Jeff Erlanger's fond remembrance of his appearance on Mr. Rogers, including clips, here.) In a well-known episode of the show, Rogers took viewers to visit Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh, to demystify the experience of hospitalization. Rogers's Let's Talk About It: Extraordinary Friends (Penguin Putnam 2000) is a picture book for very young children, featuring photos of six real kids playing, disabled and non-disabled, with short bios of each kid in the back--so they're not just models or wheelchair users, they're real kids--pet owners and team members, who like pizza and dolls and swimming. The text of my favorite page:
"If you feel like trying to help somebody, it's a good idea to ask first. Sometimes people want help, and sometimes they don't."
I'll be wearing my cardigan tomorrow.

Monday, March 03, 2008

The face of George Everett Greene

George Green 1894
[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.

Sunday, December 30, 2007

Sunday paper tells the right story

So I looked at the front page of the LA Times today, and said, "Hey, I know them!" David Denney was a classmate of my son's a few years ago; I remember that his mother Amparo always worked for the best in their classroom. She's a great advocate for David. Their family was featured in a front-page feature story in the LA Times--but I was glad to see it wasn't the usual horrid cliched "what a burden, what saints" story about the family of a disabled kid.

Instead, this is a story about an insurance company's decision to deny the home nursing David requires, nursing that it had previously covered year after year. It explains the hoops, the forms, the calls, the letters, the appeals that followed... and how the family accessed Medi-Cal, our state's medical insurance program, to keep their son alive while the fight for continued coverage continues. The value of David's life and his status as a beloved son are never questioned here--as they too often are in stories about other families, other kids--the insurance company's decision and its impact on the Denneys are the focus of this story, and rightly so.

Definitely living!

smiling child[Image description: Smiling blond boy in a zip-up hoodie, sitting in a cylindrical playground structure made from red mesh.]

Jacqui at Terrible Palsy says, "You all know how much I hate the media portraying a person as suffering from cerebral palsy. So I was thinking to myself - how come they can’t say that a person is living with cerebral palsy." She follows this with some joyous recent photos of her kids--definitely living, not suffering! I'll follow suit. Here's my boy Jake, at left, not suffering at all, at our favorite park last spring (cerebral palsy isn't his primary diagnosis, but it's one of the many boxes we check on his medical forms).

Wednesday, October 17, 2007

Wordless Wednesday: Swing

Visual description: A blue accessibility placard with the word "SWING" under the usual symbol; attached to a horizontal bar, to which a heavy-duty playground chain is attached; against a background of trees and blue sky.

For Wordless Wednesday. Taken at the Shane's Inspiration playground in Griffith Park, in Los Angeles, on Sunday.

Wednesday, September 12, 2007

Wordless Wednesday: Proof of Growth

Inspired by a similar image at Jenelle's Journey:

Image description: a row of six AFOs (ankle-foot orthotics) in ascending order of size (L-R), with various shapes, and various colors of foam inserts and straps).

Further explanation: These are six of my son's AFOs, worn in sequence since 2000. There should be a smallest, seventh pair--his first, fitted in 1998--but those are at the Smithsonian. (I'm not kidding, they really are.) And there will soon be an eighth, biggest pair--he'll be enduring a mold-making session this Thursday.

Wordless Wednesday.

Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Wordless Wednesday: Casts, in the Park

child seated, legs in casts
My kid's legs, in casts, taken last week in the park. His sister wrote his name on them.

Two weeks down, two more weeks till the pins come out...

Wordless Wednesday
.

Saturday, August 11, 2007

Incubation and Spectacle

For anyone who's visited a child in a modern neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), this 1904 illustration by May Wilson Preston (1873-1949) will come as a strange image. It was made for a serial in Good Housekeeping called "The Incubator Baby" by Ellis Parker Butler (1869-1937), which was published in book form in 1906:


What are all those people doing there? Shouldn't they be wearing gloves, or even masks? Where are the infernal beeping monitors?

In the early 20th century, incubators for premature babies were considered a fascinating technological novelty--but hospitals needed funds to purchase them, and that required public support for the idea. To raise interest, incubators were displayed to the public, with the babies still inside, many of them under 3 lbs at birth. "Baby hatcheries" were found at state fairs, and amusement parks like Coney Island. Admission was charged (10 cents), ostensibly to pay for the costs of maintaining the display, and for the lesson imparted by the "experts" on site, who answered questions about the babies and the technology. Some visitors returned again and again to follow the progress of particular babies; twins were especially popular. When babies reached a healthy weight, they were returned to their parents (who were not generally involved in the baby's daily care during incubation).

The Brooklyn Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children objected to the Coney Island exhibit early on, but it remained every summer into the 1940s. The Oral History Archive at the Coney Island History Project has audio interviews with several former "incubator babies" who were displayed in their earliest days. (Quality isn't terrific--one is a recording of a phone conversations.)

For further reading:

Hannah Lieberman, "Incubator Baby Shows: A Medical and Social Frontier," The History Teacher 35(1)(November 2001): 81-88. NOTE: Lieberman was a high school student in Minneapolis when she wrote this essay, which won the National History Day 2001 Competition for Senior Division Historical Paper.

A. J. Liebling, "A Patron of the Preemies," New Yorker (June 3, 1939): 20-24.

Sunday, June 17, 2007

RIP: John Tracy (1924-2007)

Today's LA Times carries the obituary of John Tracy, the son of actor Spencer Tracy. In 1942, John's mother Louise Treadwell Tracy helped to found a clinic for deaf children and their families at USC, which became the John Tracy Clinic, a well-known Los Angeles resource for families seeking evaluation and intervention for their preschool-aged children with hearing impairments. They also have a program for deaf-blind preschoolers. Services from the John Tracy Clinic are free of charge, and oralist in orientation. (Read about one blogging mom's experiences at a recent JTC summer training here.)

John Tracy, who was deaf from birth, worked in the art department at Walt Disney as a young man, until he also began to lose his eyesight (he learned that his deafness was caused by Usher syndrome, which usually brings blindness later in life). In 2003, John Tracy was asked what message he'd want to pass along to deaf children today, and he replied: "I want to let the kids know they can live a full life. Sports, schools, hobbies, interests, dating, marriage, have a family, drive a car--all of it." Tracy is survived by his younger sister, his son, and three grandchildren.