May 4: Marie Booth (1864-1937)

[visual description: a drawing of Marie Booth as a young woman, in profile, head bowed over folded hands; she has her hair in a low bun, and is wearing glasses and a high-collared jacket]

It's hard to imagine more formidable parents than Catherine and William Booth, the founders of the Salvation Army. Intensely religious and endlessly energetic in the pursuit of their causes, they had eight children, two of whom became "generals" in the Salvation Army. In fact, daughter Marie was the only one of the Booth children who didn't work for the Salvation Army.

Marian Billups "Marie" Booth, born on this date in 1864, had an illness (or, in some accounts, an accident) in early childhood that "rendered her too delicate to take her place beside her brothers and sisters in their public work" (Booth-Tucker, The Life of Catherine Booth (1872), p. 534). Her sister Evangeline recalled an incident from their childhood that will perhaps sound familiar to anyone with a close sibling:

My mother often said that our sister Marie, two years older than I, was her most beautiful baby. But at a very early age smallpox weakened her health and she could not profit by study as did the rest of us, nor in later years take part in public life. Being nearest to her in age, my mother asked me to make it my duty to help her with her lessons and see that she had a place in the games.

One day she failed to grasp the intricacies of a French translateion and our governess, becoming irritated, took hold of her beautiful hair and pulled her head first one way and then the other... and my small hand smote the cheek of the governess. I was ordered to bed without lunch or supper. ...

For two days I refused to say I was sorry for the reason I could not say so truthfully, after which my mother returned.... It might have been right to defend Marie but she was sure I was sorry for the way I had done it. I still wanted to say "No," but I caught the dimness in my mother's eyes and I replied, "Nearly." I was nearly sorry.

(From P. W. Wilson, General Evangeline Booth of the Salvation Army (1948), pp. 44-45.)

Marie attended public family events and held the rank of "staff captain" in the organization. She died in 1937, age 72, and was buried with her parents.

RIP: Howard Leland Rice (1932-2010)

[visual description: Howard L. Rice in a wheelchair, holding a microphone; he's an older white man wearing glasses and a grey suit]

It's been a rough month for disability obituaries. We lost historian Paul Longmore (1946-2010), of course, and activist Barbara Knowlen (1941-2010), and I've recently learned of another: Rev. Howard L. Rice (1932-2010), former chaplain and Professor of Ministry at the San Francisco Theological Seminary, and once the moderator of the Presbyterian Church USA (the annually elected head for the whole denomination). Rice died August 8.

Rice (pictured at left) was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis as a young man, and used a wheelchair or crutches much of his adult life. (Later in life, the MS diagnosis was changed to spinal cord damage.) As a minister, he experienced first-hand the barriers that church buildings and their congregations present to disabled people, especially to disabled worship leaders. I heard him speak at a conference once, about deciding that he wasn't going to accept speaking invitations at inaccessible churches anymore--it wasn't practical ("If we can't go, we can't come," he noted, on the problem of accessible restrooms), and it wasn't tolerable on any other grounds either. When he did speak from an accessible pulpit once, he declared, "I don’t believe you have to preach from a pulpit. But it’s nice to have the choice."

Paging Sarah Palin

There really are still people out there who believe this hateful nonsense.

And they get elected. In the US. In 2010.

No amount of photo ops with cute children can change the ugly of this.

ETA: Not surprised at all to discover that FWD blog had a post about this, and Liz has a whole bunch of links to reactions on the topic. Joel at NTs are Weird also has a comment.

October 12: Frances Dana Gage (1808-1884)

[Visual description: engraved portrait of Frances Dana Gage]

You have attempted to mold seventeen millions of human souls into one shape, and make them all do one thing.

--Frances Dana Gage, on women's restricted place in society

Today marks the 201st anniversary of the birth of Frances Dana Gage, an American reformer, suffragist, and abolitionist. She was born in Ohio, married there, and raised eight children. She presided over a woman's rights convention in 1851 in Akron, where she famously introduced Sojourner Truth as a speaker (the refrain "Ain't I a Woman?" came from Gage's summary of Truth's speech that day). She toured giving lectures on woman's rights and abolition throughout the "old West." During the Civil War, she worked for the Sanitary Commission, visiting military hospitals and prisons.

In 1865, she was in a bad carriage accident and never recovered from her wounds; this was followed by a stroke in 1867. So her post-war work was more in writing and encouraging the movements she held dear. She was also a frequent contributor of fiction to the literary magazines of the day, and wrote children's books, poetry, and novels as well.

Gage was a Universalist by lifelong religious affiliation, but "Then came the war, then trouble, then paralysis, and for 14 years I have not listened to a sermon because I am too great a cripple. I have read much, thought much, and feel that life is too precious to be given to doctrines."

Definitely Severely Euphemized

[Image description: "Severely Euphemized" t-shirt from the Nth Degree.]

Proving once again that faith organizations can be among the most strenuous in bending inside out and sideways to avoid using the word "disability," I give you the Lutheran (ELCA) summer youth event for disabled teens.... the Definitely Abled Youth Leadership Event. Look around the page, see if you can find the word "disability," or "disabled," or "accessibility," or.... hoo-boy.

(The program may be fine for what it is, but you have to wonder about a program that won't even use the D word in its website.... )

RIP: Nancy Eiesland (1964-2009)

[Image: a black-and-white portrait of Nancy Eiesland, from her faculty webpage]

Sad news: Nancy Eiesland of Emory University has died this week, from cancer. If you're interested in how disability studies scholarship might inform the sociology of religion, you won't get far without running into some of Nancy Eiesland's work, especially The Disabled God (Abingdon Press 1994) and Human Disability and the Service of God (an edited collection, Abingdon Press 1998).

Eiesland wrote last year in a campus publication about her lifelong experiences with surgeries and pain and medication, noting "for most of us, pain will be an ordinary partner in an ordinary life." Her colleague and friend Christian Scharen has this remembrance. According to the Facebook group "Friends of Nancy Eiesland," a memorial service is being planned for the afternoon of March 22, in Cannon Chapel on campus.

February 26: John Puleston Jones (1862-1925)

The Welsh celebrate St. David's Day this weekend, so it seems timely to note the birthdate of a Welshman.

John Puleston Jones was born on this date in 1862, at Llanbedr. He was 18 months old when he became blind from an accidental injury. His mother (who wrote poetry as "Mair Clwyd") is credited with insisting that he learn independence skills in childhood. Puleston Jones was an excellent student through school, and after a year at the College for the Blind in Worcester he went on to Glasgow University and Balliol College, Oxford. He graduated with first-class honors in modern history.

Puleston Jones was always interested in Welsh culture and history, and helped to found the Dafydd ab Gwilym Society at Oxford in 1886. In 1888 he was ordained as a pastor. He served in various churches, published his sermons and theological essays, and wrote articles for a Welsh pacifist periodical (Y Deyrnas) during World War I. He is best remembered today for devising adaptations of Braille to fit the Welsh language--adaptations that apparently remain in use today.

Today, a plaque marks the house where the Rev. Dr. Puleston Jones was raised, in Bala.

November 9: Walter Geikie (1795-1837)

[visual description: a memorial plaque that reads:

Walter Geikie RSA 1795-1837
Deaf Artist of Renown Co-Founder of the World's First Deaf Church and Society
Beloved of all in this Parish and City
Installed by his fellow deaf Scots of the Donaldsonian Association 6th April 1996
His true memorial may be seen in our city art galleries and in the quality of life and dignity accorded to deaf citizens of Edinburgh today
'Come join wi' me, folk of Auld Reekie
To weave a wreath for glorious Geikie'

engraved in gold lettering on dark stone]

Scottish painter Walter Geikie was born 9 November 1795, in Edinburgh. When he was two years old, he survived a serious illness with total deafness; because of his early age at the time, he didn't develop spoken language, either. Geikie's father, a wigmaker, believed the boy could learn, and taught Walter to read and do basic math. At 15, Walter was admitted to the new Institute for the Education of the Deaf and Dumb in Edinburgh, but soon his skills prompted a transfer to the Trustees' Academy of Industrial Design.

Geikie studied drawing at the Academy, and became a successful artist, specializing in scenes of urban life. He exhibited paintings in Edinburgh to critical acclaim. He also published two volumes of etchings. Walter Geikie was voted into the Scottish Academy of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture as a academician in 1834.

Geikie is also remembered, as the memorial plaque above indicates, for co-founding the first deaf church in Scotland (or maybe anywhere), where scriptures were discussed and sermons delivered in sign language, by and for deaf believers. (An offshoot of the church, the Edinburgh and East of Scotland Society for the Deaf, still exists.)

Geikie died suddenly from typhoid fever at the age of 41. A posthumous collection of his works, titled "Etchings Illustrative of Scottish Character and Scenery," was popular and helped keep his name before Scottish audiences through the mid-nineteenth century.

For further reading:

Elizabeth Bredberg, "Walter Geikie: The Life Schooling and Work of a Deaf Artist at the Beginning of the Nineteenth Century," Disability & Society 10(1)(1995): 21-39.

Archibald Geikie, "Brief Sketch of the Life of Walter Geikie, Esq., R. A. S., Edinburgh, Scotland," American Annals of the Deaf and Dumb 7(4)(July 1855): 229-237.

Harry G. Lang and Bonnie Meath-Lang, Deaf Persons in the Arts and Sciences: A Biographical Dictionary (Greenwood Publishing 1995): 141-143.

July 18: Hermann of Reichenau (1013-1054)

[Image description: A painting showing a brown robbed monk, Hermann, holding a crutch in one hand and a book in the other, with a harp nearby, and the words "Salve Regina," the name of his best known composition; found here]

Maybe some of the fine medievalists blogging about disability history can help with this one: I saw reference to Hermann von Reichenau's birthday today (the Catholic Encyclopedia gives the date as 18 February instead; still, five years till his 1000th!). The son of a nobleman, he didn't walk, and was hard to understand when he spoke, so the assumption is usually that he had CP or something similar. He was called "Hermann der Lahme," or "Hermannus Contractus" or Hermann the Lame, Hermann the Twisted. At age 7 Hermann entered the monastery at Reichenau. There, he became an expert on Arabic mathematics and astronomy, composed hymns and poetry, and wrote historical chronicles and treatises on music theory and math games. He seems to have introduced the astrolabe to central Europe, among his other accomplishments.

The relics on display here seem to include part of Hermann's skull? Am I seeing that right?

While I'm on the subject of cloisters, I recently read Mark Salzman's Lying Awake (Vintage 2001), a short novel about a cloistered nun in 1990s California who's diagnosed with temporal lobe epilepsy. But Sister John, a published poet, experiences her seizures as ecstatic spiritual revelations, and isn't sure she wants to lose that by having the recommended neurosurgery. The story follows her decision-making, the conversations she has with doctors and priests and her sisters in the community. It's thought-provoking, because the life of a woman religious involves vows and habits of selflessness that affect her criteria for deciding about medical treatment. (If the author's name rings a bell, Mark Salzman is married to filmmaker Jessica Yu, who won the Academy Award for her 1996 short-subject documentary Breathing Lessons--about Berkeley poet Mark O'Brien, who used an iron lung.)

Blue Christmas/Darkest Night services

[Image: a newspaper announcement for a "Blue Christmas" service tonight.]

Across North America, churches (mostly mainline Protestant or interfaith congregations) are offering "blue Christmas" or "Darkest Night" services tonight, in recognition that not everyone experiences the holidays as a time of joy and celebration. They invite folks who, for reasons related to depression, anxiety, pain, loneliness, grief, or personal crisis, want to avoid the traditional jollity and cheer of community gatherings, to attend a winter solstice service that more closely reflects a complicated relationship with the season.

I haven't attended one of these services, but the effort is encouraging: better than casual "hey, cheer up, it's Christmas" responses, anyway. It may be a once-a-year thing for some congregations, but in others, such offerings could well represent a broader commitment to respect and address difficulty and diversity.

September 10: Jean Vanier (b. 1928) and Jose Feliciano (b. 1945)

Two birthdays of living figures today:

Community is made of the gentle concern that people show each other every day. It is made up of the small gestures, of services and sacrifices that say 'I love you,' and 'I am happy to be with you.'...it is taking the small burdens from the other.

--Jean Vanier (from Community and Growth, 1979)

Jean Vanier is a Catholic philosopher, born in Geneva on this date in 1928, raised in Quebec, and longtime resident in France. In 1964, Vanier founded the first L'Arche community, in which people with developmental disabilities and their assistants live together in homes, forming a community based on mutual commitment, learning, and support. He also co-founded Faith and Light (Foi et Lumiere), a worldwide movement of forming communities to encourage people with developmental disabilities (and their families) in their spiritual lives. Vanier retired from running the International Federation of L'Arche in the 1970s, but continues to visit its many communities around the world, and lecture on the movement's ideas and practices.

Jose Feliciano is a singer and musician, born blind on this date in 1945 in Lares, Puerto Rico, one of eleven brothers. He was raised in New York City. Feliciano is best known for "Feliz Navidad" (the song that means much of monolingual America knows a few holiday greetings in Spanish every December). He also hit the pop charts in 1968 with his non-traditional version of the "Star-Spangled Banner." Feliciano is married, with three kids, and lives in Connecticut nowadays.

YouTube has a live 1973 Feliciano performance of "Feliz Navidad," as well as an interview about his performance of the "Star-Spangled Banner" with archival footage, and lots of other Jose Feliciano clips (most are not captioned). (My favorite is probably the 1970 duet with Johnny Cash. Or for some further culture-crossing, try this clip of him playing the music from "Zorba the Greek," complete with clapping and shouts of "Opa!")