Speaking Love and Anger: A Response to Ngọc Loan Trần’s “Calling IN: A Less...
There are many things I like about Ngọc Loan Trần’s article Calling IN: A Less Disposable Way of Holding Each Other Accountable. I’m particularly struck by the author’s insistence that, within social...
View ArticleSo, Do You Really Need That Cane? Why, Yes. Yes I Do.
I found out this spring, after a series of muscle spasms that left me crying on the floor, that I have a pulled ligament between my spine and my hip. I probably pulled it long ago; my physical...
View ArticleWhen I Ask For an Assistive Listening Device, Feel Free to Treat Me As a...
This afternoon, my husband and I went to see a matinee in town. We went to a particular theatre to see it because they have assistive listening devices for all of the movies there. These devices are...
View ArticleThe New Derrick Coleman Duracell Ad Gets It Right
Every time that a new ad featuring a person with a disability comes out, I get ready to cringe. So when I learned that Duracell had released a video ad featuring Derrick Coleman, a fullback for the...
View ArticleWhy Is My Cane a Topic of Elevator Conversation?
Apparently, questioning my use of a cane has become a go-to topic of conversation when I’m riding the elevator in my building. You’ll remember that it happened a couple of weeks ago. Yesterday, when I...
View ArticleAutism, Homelessness, and Kindness
A few weeks back, I was walking in the park, delivering lunches, when one of the homeless women there asked a young man if he wanted a lunch. The young man said yes, and he came over and got one. We...
View ArticleWhat Do You Mean By “Civilized”?
I’ve been distributing lunches to homeless and hungry people for six months. After a night and a morning of driving rain, I brought food today to people living under the Water Street bridge on either...
View ArticleOn Insults in Dialogue
Here I am, late to the party, but this article on Skepchick got me thinking. Apparently, last month, there was a big blow-up about ableist language used in another post, and this Skepchick article...
View ArticleOn Normalcy and Identity Politics
I used to be quite enamored of identity politics. My main exposure to the concept came from Tobin Siebers’ Disability Theory — a book in which he makes the compelling argument that identity is a form...
View ArticleIf You Don’t Provide Accessibility, Your Message is “You Don’t Matter”
You never know when a lack of accessibility — and the message that you are not important enough for someone to provide it — is about to hit you in the face. Case in point: On Sunday, I was having a...
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