Leg splints and mid-century modern design

"What works is better than what looks good. The 'looks good' can change, but what works, works."

--Ray Eames

I was enjoying the extensive online Library of Congress exhibit, The Work of Charles and Ray Eames: A Legacy of Invention today. The Eameses were important mid-20c. designers, who are best known for plywood, fiberglass and wire-mesh chairs and other furniture, among their many other endeavors. Even if you don't know their name, some element of their work is probably familiar to most Americans.

Why is this relevant to disability studies? Well... during World War II, they were part of a team of designers hired by the US government. (This wasn't unusual; my great-aunt Mimi was a shoe designer during the war; the government needed designs that could be mass-produced within the limits of wartime supplies, thus... canvas shoes.) One of the items Ray and Charles Eames designed was a molded plywood leg splint for the US Navy. Note that the original splints are now prized by collectors, like most Eames designs. The Eameses even featured a sculpture made from their splint on their 1944 Christmas card. The splint label above was designed by Ray Eames.

The technical solutions, materials, and sinuous shapes the Eameses used in the splint project were turned, after the war, to the design of durable, ergonomic, molded plywood furniture. Just one more example--like the audiobook, TV captions, Montessori schools, etc. etc.--where innovations are worked out first for disability-related applications, and only later translated to wider use.

Disability Blog Carnival #28 is up NOW!

[Photo description from Andrea: "Description: a photo of part of my desktop, a faux-oak surface with several items lined up along the back edge, (left to right) a clear green plastic desk lamp; a piece of mirror glass on the desk holding the quartet of a green-swirled globe of art glass from Scotland, a faceted crystal, and a small green beaded keepsake tin, and a purple glass tray with green beach glass from the North sea and pieces of granite from Loch Ness; a green glass bottle; several clear green plastic desk accessories including a stapler, tape dispenser, page holder, a tool caddy with green scissors and pens and suchlike, and in front of these is an electric mug-warmer with an old mug bearing the inscription, “SAVE THE EARTH (IT’S THE ONLY PLANET WITH CHOCOLATE)”. The photo has the post title added in the blank area near the top that reads, “A FEW OF OUR FAVORITE THINGS”."]

Andrea at Andrea's Buzzing About returns to hosting the Carnival with a holiday-appropriate theme, "A Few of Our Favorite Things"--so, for some last-minute shoppers, consider tasty hot dogs; a moped-taxi; a Ted; books, movies, art, TV shows and music with disability themes; photographs of autumn leaves; and the Teen Possibles (no, you can't give them as a gift--but their blog brims with friendship and fun and art and energy, and everyone can use a little of that elixir in the depth of winter, eh?).

Next edition of the Disability Blog Carnival will be hosted by Connie Kuusisto at the [with]TV blog--she set the theme, "Disability in the Media: Tell us of your experiences and/or your impressions." Connie welcomes submissions by email, and you can also use the blogcarnival.com form, or leave comments here or there, for consideration.

Anyone want to host a spring carnival? I'm now recruiting hosts for March, April, and May. Email me or leave a comment here and we'll work out a schedule. Hosting the Carnival is a commitment of time and energy, but it's also fun, and it helps the rest of us keep track of what's new and interesting out there.

National Library of Medicine's historical image collection online

A message on H-Sci-Med-Tech pointed me to the National Library of Medicine's History of Medicine image collection online--wow. It's an amazing collection of images from all times and places. Many recent public service posters and program covers, but also much older stuff, like the lithograph I've included at left, titled "Souvenirs of War": it's captioned in French, and from the uniforms I'm assuming early 19c. The caption is in French, and repeats a refrain, "ah, quel plaisir d'etre un soldat!"

[Further image description: All four men visible are using different orthopedic supports--one man in the distance is walking with crutches; another closer to the viewer is also using two crutches, but has his leg hitched up; a third man, in the center of the frame, is using two simple "peg-leg" style lower-limb prosthetics, and a thin cane; the fourth man, on the right, is in a box-like chair with small wooden wheels; he may also have his head/neck wrapped (it's hard to tell).]

Radio interview with Burch & Joyner

Disability history on your iPod--it's a click, drag, and drop away. North Carolina Public Radio aired a nice long half-hour interview today with Susan Burch and Hannah Joyner, authors of Unspeakable: A Life Story of Junius Wilson (UNC Press 2007). It's online here.

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.)

Stop Eugenics video and the HFEB

The HFEB, or Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill (the full phrase sounds ominous already, doesn't it?) is a piece of legislation before the British parliament that would make it illegal for couples or individuals to choose for an "abnormality." Clause 14 spells it out:

Persons or embryos that are known to have a gene, chromosome or mitochondrion abnormality involving a significant risk that a person with the abnormality will have or develop—

(a) a serious physical or mental disability,
(b) a serious illness, or
(c) any other serious medical condition,

must not be preferred to those that are not known to have such an abnormality.

This would prohibit, say, a Deaf woman from choosing a deaf donor to increase the chances of her child being deaf like her. There are myriad other troubling possibilities. English bloggers Grumpy Old Deafies are all over the case. Today they posted a video made in protest of the HFEB by stopeugenics.org:





Transcript of the title cards, which appear in white against black, between scenes of a line of paper cutout dolls being cut away from the line, one by one, with large scissors:

Nobody's perfect.
Nobody.
Not even you.
Stop Eugenics.
Just stop.
stopeugenics.org

More videos from the same campaign are here.

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.