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.

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?)

Giuseppe Pontiggia, "Born Twice"

I recently picked up the English translation of the Italian novel Nati due volte by the late Giuseppe Pontiggia, because it seemed like my kind of subject--the narrator is a father whose second son has cerebral palsy. It's not so much a novel as a series of vignettes, thirty-eight scenes across the son's first three decades, in the father's marriage and work lives. I have no way to judge whether the translation is a good one, but some of the observations are very sharp, unsentimental, like this description of another parent, a mother in a parent support group:

Her son's case is not serious; he has trouble walking, and physiotherapy alone will probably take care of it. She tends to observe us with careful and detached curiosity, like a first-class traveler visiting the third-class deck. She never neglects to mention the minor nature of her son's condition. When we're discussing the most difficult cases she opens her eyes wide in a kind of theatrical solidarity, but you can tell that hearing other people's stories simply offers her yet another form of reassurance. (p. 69 in my copy, at the beginning of the chapter titled "Pleasure Island")

Yep. Met her, or at least met her American sisters (and brothers). Other standout chapters for me were focused on the son's school principal, a visit with a dementia specialist, and a lot of the conversations with the son (Paolo) as a teen and young man. The title phrase, Born Twice, refers to a counselor's advice that "These children are born twice. They have to learn to get by in a world that their first birth made difficult for them. Their second birth depends on you, on what you can give them...." I remember being aware of that, when my son was first born. I had been a teacher, I knew full well that birth didn't have the last word on anyone's outcomes in life.

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).

Disability Blog Carnival #75 is up NOW!

[left: blog carnival logo featuring black-and-white historical image of a hospital, with the words "disability blog carnival/can't shut us up now" superimposed in yellow scrawly print]

It's a milestone! And to mark the occasion, Emma at Writer in a Wheelchair has this month's edition of the Disability Blog Carnival, with the theme "Milestones." The milestones represented include weddings, new and improved wheelchairs, first long cane, turning 21, new diagnoses, sad holidays, successes in advocacy... well, suffice to say it's another strong, diverse, honest collections of posts. Well done to Emma and all the contributors.

Next month's edition of the Disability Blog Carnival is scheduled to be hosted at Finding My Way: Journey of an Uppity Intellectual Activist Crip. More on that as details become available.

UPDATE 4/13: Cheryl at Finding My Way had to cancel--anyone available to be a last-minute substitute host?

No, Amy. Just... no.

I miss the FWD blog for all kinds of reasons, but one of the features they did really well was "Dear Imprudence," reviewing advice columnists' advice on matters pertaining to disability. Now, I don't claim to have anything like their wealth of insight on the subject, but you don't need much insight to realize that today's Ask Amy advice is just wrong.

The question comes from a woman who uses a wheelchair (she explains that her mobility is affected by multiple sclerosis). Her son is getting married soon, and she wants to know how they can handle the mother-son dance at the reception. So far so good. Reasonable question, especially if she hasn't ever been in a dancing situation while using a wheelchair before. And a mother-son dance is already kind of an anxious-making situation--how many times in life are you dancing with your son, while a room full of all the people you love just watch?

Amy starts off okay--she asks a spokeswoman from the National MS Society to comment. That person just encourages the mother to have fun and enjoy the music:

"When we have events with dancing, people in wheelchairs treat the wheelchair as their legs. A wheelchair can easily move to and fro to the music. Your son can spin you about and you can even circle around him in your chair. Just think of your chair as your chariot. The key is to take this with a bit of grace and humor. The chair is the tool for you to enjoy the music and the key is to have fun."

Fine, for a soundbite--nice note of reassurance that there are plenty of times that people use wheelchairs on a dance floor. And Amy could have stopped there, and all would be okay, but she decided to add her own suggestion:

Your son might want to show his solidarity to his mom by borrowing a wheelchair for his own use during this special dance with you. He could appoint two ushers to wheel you both in a lightly-choreographed duet. You'd have to work this out ahead of time, practice a little, and make sure everyone involved was sober.

Uhhhhhhhhh....... this is a bad, bad idea, Amy, for a lot of reasons. First, the son wouldn't be showing "solidarity" by borrowing a wheelchair (and from whom, exactly?). The mother doesn't sound like she needs any gestures of "solidarity," anyway; what she needs is a dance partner. If she doesn't know how to dance in a wheelchair, and he doesn't know even how to use a wheelchair, then two wheelchairs digs them even further into confusion, no?

Appointing ushers to wheel you both... oh my. The mother of the groom may well wheel her own chair ordinarily--she doesn't say in the letter. If so, it's weird to suggest that she not do so for the dance. The idea of rounding up two random ushers to make a pas de quatre (?), well.....now they'd have four people on the dance floor who don't know what to do--and the whole mother-son dance aspect is out the window. Oh, but it will be "lightly choreographed." They'll "practice a little" and "make sure everyone is sober." Sure. Dancing gracefully together for an audience only requires a little planning and a blood alcohol level below .08. Right?

Grrrrr. I was at least happy to see that the very first comment called Amy's advice "tacky," "condescending," and "mocking." Right on, and then some.