Buff Bagwell was a US wrestler who used a wheelchair for prop. This was years ago. I found an action figure of him. Pushing a button on the back of the wheelchair caused the wrestler figure to leap out of his wheelchair—strange but kind of cool. Today, not being able to remember his name, I […]
February 20, 2010 Tribal Membership This week I received an email from someone I didn’t know, a wheelchair user. He’s a quad who became disabled after a diving accident over thirty-five years ago. How do I know all that from the first line of his email? He told me. It read, “I am a C5-6 […]
I managed to make the deadline for the VSA Arts Postcard Project. The theme was to create a postcard with the artist’s definition of disability. Since Christmas I’ve been playing around with my new disabled action figures. It seemed to me that perhaps one of the facets of my definition might be this. […]
Little by little, the good, gray Times has started to recognize disability. Sometimes, it’s even bold in recognizing our perception of the lived experience of disability, rather than the stereotypes. The boldest that I noticed was, of course, the articles written by the late Harriet McBryde Johnson. Last week I noticed on my Times RSS […]
Ah, I just found another interesting detritus uncovered by eBay. It’s the Crippled Black Phoenix. They’re a UK post-rock band. I’m not sure what post-rock is but their music on their MySpace page isn’t particularly offensive, although some of their imagery is. […]
Just got the latest Melody Gardot CD, “My One and Only Thrill.” She’s one of those smokey-sounding women songsters that seem to have a resurgence lately–Madeleine Peyroux, Amy Winehouse, etc. Not only do I like her music, but I’m also impressed with her disability identity. On her MySpace page she talks about the term disability. […]
[…]
According to a news story, Ruby didn’t miss use of hind legs, in the San Francisco Chronicle, “As a UC Davis surgeon once said when asked about dogs and amputation, “People tend to humanize the loss of a limb and dogs don’t. As long as they aren’t in pain and doing the things they love […]
Every Sunday the San Francisco Chronicle has a feature, Wayback Machine, that runs stories from its past. In an article dated February 25, 1934 there is an announcement of a silent movie, “Eskimo,” showing in town. The Chronicle would be hosting 100 deaf persons. During the previous decades movies were silent and had superimposed titles—open […]
Discovered the sweetest picture of two braced and crutched kids have a good time on the playground. They’re at the FDR school in a Spanish-speaking country. There’s a few pictures from the Life Magazine archive that show disabled people. Two young boys in schoolyard […]