Saturday Slumgullion #11

• Stephen Kuusisto, whose new book Eavesdropping is now available, blogs poetically about “the stare.”

Years and years have gone by and I still can’t get used to all this staring. And then the talk. Talk like fruit dropped in crystal. The talk they have kept secret even from themselves.

• Dr. Lisa I. Iezzoni writes in the New England Journal of Medicine (as a doctor who uses a wheelchair) about the failings of nondisabled doctors in dealing with disabled patients.

• Gordon Rattray travels Ethiopia with lots of assistance from generous and friendly people.

• Penny at Disability Studies U, Temple Univ. offers an impressive round-up of recent disability blogging that puts my slumgullions to shame.

• Wheelchair Dancer spent a little time last weekend critquing the NYT and its lack of crip savvy in two particular articles, here and here. Excellent analyses of the nondisabled slant in mainstream media. She also writes with candor and delicacy about how the joys of imperfection do sometimes clash with a decided ambivalence about her disability. I hope to write a response to this soon, but it’s not to be missed on its own.

• Kari Brooks catalogues some of the responses she gets when it becomes known she’s a special education teacher in her post, “God loves alligators.”

• Nappy as I Want to Be writes about youth of color and mental illness. She provides lots of excellent links about specific racial groups and how vulnerability to both mental illness and lack of care can effect each when care is built focusing on the point of view and problems of mostly white males.

• Zilari at Processing in Parts comments on the case of the baseball coach who talks an eight-year-old into harming an autistic teammate in order to force him off the team.

Now, it’s a good thing I don’t engage in making mass judgements about nonautistic people based on the actions of a few. If I did, I’d probably be pointing to this incident as proof that we have a moral imperative to search for a cure for “non-autism”.

• Susan Schwartzenberg’s book Becoming Citizens: How Courageous Families Changed the World for People with Disabilities is also an historical exhibit at the Washington State Capitol Museum in Olympia, running from this Sunday through January 6, 2007.

Like the exhibit, the book traces the families’ efforts to find education, friends and support for their mentally disabled children – at a time when institutionalization was the social norm.

Through informal dinners and other get-togethers, the families became a political force, Schwartzenberg said.

“You learn about these remarkable moms,” Schwartzenberg said. “It’s a story about the women’s movement. It’s a story about civil rights. It’s a story about family collections. And it’s a story about disability as well.”

The families’ efforts culminated in the passage of the state’s 1971 Education for All law, which guaranteed every Washington child an education. The law was the predecessor to the federal Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975.

• In a FindLaw column from 2001, Sherry F. Colb discusses disability discrimination and her experience with the New York bar exam:

The exam was scheduled to begin at 9 AM, but the proctors in the “special” room did not hand out the test papers until closer to 10. I worried briefly that we might not get the full time allotted to complete the test, but no one seemed to be keeping an eye on the clock. The next morning, on Day Two of the exam, it appeared we would again be starting late. I asked one of the proctors whether perhaps we could begin our exam at 9 AM on that day. With a puzzled expression on her face, she asked why. I replied that everyone else was taking the exam at 9 AM, and that I did not know of any reason for us to be delayed. She smiled and responded slowly: “If you think you can take the exam with the normal people, why don’t you go ahead and try?”

• Kenyans in wheelchairs make money with mobile phone service. YouTube video here.

Crossposted on The Gimp Parade