I mentioned these additions in comments to the last link love post, but these blogs deserve their own announcement too:
Followed Lingling as She Gave Lymphoma a Beatdown
The Sakurako Chronicles
Three Rivers Fog
Whose Planet Is It Anyway?
My friend Amanda asked in comments yesterday if I could point out any cancer blogs because my sidebar blogroll is a bit intimidating in length. When I started this blog about four-and-a-half years ago and started building that big blogroll, I tended to not choose blogs that were mostly about posting on what drugs the blogger was taking and how much energy they had that day. I was looking for expressions -- even homey ones -- of disability as a social/political condition.
Specifically, I remember passing by a number of blogs by people with MS where the posts were almost exclusively about medications being taken, dosage, side-effects, effectiveness, etc. I wanted to hear whether or not their apartment was accessible or if coworkers were cutting them some slack when they were weary, if they were passing as nondisabled or revealed their condition at work and to family. If the diagnosis was accepted and believed.
But writing about many of those details presumes that the writer connects their illness or condition to the state of the environment around them and not just to the imperfect state of their body. And that doesn't always happen, or doesn't happen for a long time, for a number of good reasons. Often it's not the most pressing, consuming issue. It can take some time out there on the ground, in the streets, to notice what the social/political dimensions of disability are, especially if you are passing fairly easily. And many people (maybe most) resist joining up as one of "the disabled" because of what it means to their self-perception. There are quadriplegics out there who are okay with talking about social discrimination and the limitations of their physical bodies, yet they deny being "disabled," either semantically or categorically. I don't understand that latter, but I've also never been interested in arguing the point with those folk, so they tend not to make the blogroll either.
So, for those reasons and also my own blogroll-building shortsightedness, my blogroll is pretty lacking in some areas. Cancer blogs is one of those areas, though there is some scant representation:
Two of my favorite bloggers (and favorite online people), Sara of Moving Right Along and Jana of Pilgrim Steps each have amputated limbs because of cancer. You can see how my bias works right there -- they're part of my blogroll and daily reading because I relate to how they write about mobility issues and the social aspects of that. It just happens -- to me, though it's quite central in the story to each of them, I am sure -- that cancer was their path to disability awareness.
Now I think on it, I'd be pressed to name the diagnoses of most people on the blogroll, if it isn't clear in their blog's name. I'm more aware of particular impairment details of who uses a wheelchair or prosthesis, is autistic or blind, is bipolar or otherwise focused on mental health issues. I'm not uncaring, though clueless might be an apt accusation. The philosophy behind my sidebar means it's not particularly useful to anyone looking for a blog about a specific impairment or medical concern.
Another of the many failings of my sidebar is that it was set up to privilege the voices of disabled people writing about disability, and generally places nondisabled bloggers who also write on disability in a separate listing ("gimp parades" and "other parades"). Except for some nondisabled people who focus solely on disability issues and come to the topic as parents or college students. It's a muddy plan that fails to acknowledge Daisy or Feministe, for example. I'm not sure what to do about that because the list is too long to not categorize it in some manner, and since I won't divide people up by diagnoses (that won't happen), commitment to writing to the issue seems best.
Yet another sidebar dilemma, by the way, is my atrociously disappointing index. It's workable in a limited sense, but I hate having terms like "amputee," "blind," "dwarf" there. Is this a necessary evil to make the archives here accessible? Any suggestions on how to create a useful index that feels less like reducing people to diagnoses or labels would be appreciated. If someone has an index you like, leave a link to it, please.
Anyway, back to Amanda's comment. Here's a little link love for four blogs of people who have or have had cancer and are already on my sidebar:
As The Tumor Turns -- No longer being updated because of a successful prognosis.
Moving Right Along -- I can't say Sara writes about cancer, but she writes about her life and the four-year ride since it entered her life. She specifically began her blog because when she faced amputation of her leg, she went looking online for reasons to do the surgery and keep living. (That's the basic exploration of all disability blogs, imo: How do we, individually and as a society, do... all of this?) Also: bundt cake recipes and the occasional Mad Science Sunday.
My Private Casbah -- Bint has written some about cancer, though perhaps significantly, there's no clear path to that topic in her indexing. What she excels at most is intersectionality, ally-work and writing critically about the social justice issues of disability, race, sexual orientation and gender while generously engaging opposing viewpoints in comments.
Pilgrim Steps -- Again, cancer is not the point of the blog but part of the writer's history. Jana also takes incredible flower photos. And recently she's written eloquently about her Mormon heritage and Prop 8. And this is a must-read on how some Mormon elders equate homosexuality with disability because both groups are just too broken to marry and attain full stature in heaven.
And I'm adding these two cancer blogs to my sidebar. Other recommendations welcome:
The Assertive Cancer Patient
Not Just About Cancer
My sidebar needs a lot of updating, but here's a start. Ten new links:
Amber Tracker
Autist's Corner
DeafRead
Inside the Little Plastic Castle
Laura Hershey: Writer, Poet, Activist
Life of John
Media Dis&Dat
PhilosopherCrip
Special Needs Truth '08
Suela
This winter has been longer than I could stand, but spring seems to finally have taken over. The subzero weather and endless snow has kept me indoors much more than I expected, and I stopped blogging for a while there as a way of spending less time in my own head while cooped up indoors.
Thanks to the people who emailed me with concern for my absence here. I'm good, and I promise to not go missing again without noting I'm on hiatus.
So, my computer didn't make it to 2008. I'm hoping to be back online by week's end, posting, responding to comments and answering email.
See you then.
Well, that's over.
Image description: The black-and-white photograph is the upper back of a man with a tribal art tattoo across the shoulders and the following "tattooed" just below: "NaBloPoMo '07 Mission Accomplished" with a little skull image after the "'07". Sara made this and the one from the beginning of the month, which I will leave in the sidebar at right for a while because it's cool. Cooler than me, actually.
So. One mission accomplished and another about to begin. Tomorrow I will begin blogging at Alas, A Blog on a regular basis. I've guest blogged there before for a month-long stint, and now Barry (AKA Ampersand) has asked me to be one of his regular co-bloggers. I'm excited about this for a variety of reasons, and I'll say more about it tomorrow, but two things for now:
First, everything I post over there that is disability-related will also be posted here, and some of the sillier stuff here won't all appear over there. The Gimp Parade won't change except that a couple times a week I'll make a point of writing something that will hopefully be interesting for the larger audience over there to read and maybe even discuss. Content here might possibly improve. Plus, I will be able to keep the focus here on disability and use Alas for occasional writing on non-disability stuff that I am often itching to talk about but don't want to use The Gimp Parade for.
And second, I know that some of my strongly anti-porn radical feminist friends won't want to click over there to follow discussion and might be upset I'm contributing there. (No, Amp isn't in the porn business and you won't find porn at Alas, but about a year ago he did sell his domain name in order to pay some bills. The buyer does link to porn, and you can read more about all that here.) I'm not categorically against porn, and while I could say much more about that, I won't just now. But I hope those uncomfortable with participating at Alas will continue to do so here.
What I will say is that Amp has always been committed to inclusion of disability issues on his blog and in discussion of diversity generally. He and I don't agree on everything about disability. For example, there've been long threads on personhood and Terri Schiavo at Alas that made me want to scream and tear my hair out, partly for Amp's contributions and partly for the tone of many commenters. Step outside the disability blog niche and many (if not most) discussions of disability are much more contentious and not as crip-friendly or nuanced to our experiences. I don't expect this will have changed and while I will personally find it very challenging -- partly because I lose patience and interest when thread comments run into the hundreds -- I don't think it has to be a bad thing.
Amp and I have been discussing disability and other things in various online forums for about eight years now, beginning at the long-defunct Ms. Magazine Boards. That predates this blog by about four years. So, I have trust in Amp's commitment to disability issues and inclusion of the disability perspective in any and all debates at his place, though as I've noted the community of people who comment there are not all of like minds. I hope readers will join us over there to enrich the discussion of disability. It's bound to be interesting.
I've been working on my sidebar blogroll links, adding both sites I've recently found and I've followed for a long time. I also tried to delete a few bad links, but Blogger doesn't seemed to be letting that happen. Let me know if I've screwed anything up or missed someone relevant, particularly to the disability blog section. Thanks.
Accessible Everything
ADA Restoration Act of 2007
Bad Cripple
Biodiverse Resistance
Bipolar Chicks Blogging
Charlottesville Prejudice Watch
Chronic Holiday
Day in Washington
Gary Presley
I Have Rocks In My Head
Justice For All
Mental Disability Law
Miss Crip Chick
Pitt Rehab
Reunify Gally
Scott Sands Alive
The Amazing Adventures of Team Coco
The UnderRepresented
Through Myself and Back Again
Coffee And Gender
Cure This
Daisy's Dead Air
Double Consciousness
Feministing
Five Before Midnight
I Can Has Cheezburger?
Mind The Gap!
Photography is not a Crime
Renegade Evolution
Texas And Egypt
The Valve
This Is Not My Country
Truly Outrageous
WIMN's Voices
In the past two days I've gotten two emails because of what the senders said is this blog's "health-relatedness." One invites me to participate in a Brown University research study survey in "the area of health and medicine," and the other informs me that The Gimp Parade has won a 2007 Health Leader Award from the Irritable Bowel Syndrome Treatment website.
I haven't taken the survey yet, but I expect the questions about blogging on "health and medicine" will be as imperfect a fit as other health blogging surveys I've taken in the past. But I'll take the survey and hope my participation makes some tiny difference amidst all the "health and medicine" blogging by smarmy and/or compassionate doctor blogs, weary and dedicated nurse blogs, insurance and managed care blogs, and whatever else qualifies. And I will graciously accept any award from a site or organization that says it seeks to honor those who "are squarely on the side of the patient."
But, you all know that "health and medicine" are not the topic of this blog, right? This blog is about social issues, culture and politics relating to disability rights. I realize there's some crossover that may be confusing, especially when I relate specifics of my impairments, hospital visits and such, but those are the details of how social issues, culture and politics come into play. They're the evidence of why disability rights is important. "Health" and "medicine" aren't even in my sidebar index (except as "health care" and "mental illness/health") because I don't perceive my writing here as promoting either health or medicine. Then again, neither "justice" or "respect" are in the index and they're what I think I'm writing about here every day.
This isn't the first time I've gotten email that I feel may or may not miss the point. I've gotten offers for free accessibility software or discounted accessible bathtubs if I blog about the product. I've gotten link requests from health care corporations and, most amusingly, for President Bush's New Freedom Initiative, which I recall saying critical things about at least once prior to the request. When I hosted Disability Blog Carnival #2 and the theme was "the cure" I turned down one doctor's submission on bowel health. (Apparently, my audience includes those concerned about poo, which is possibly everyone.)
Either through poor emailing habits or formally declining, I've opted out of several writing opportunities to new sites like [with]tv, Wikis on dis rights, and Disaboom, mainly because I don't want my primary goals for this blog to be used for someone else's corporate gain. And I don't want obligations to produce content to go beyond my having something relevant to write. Well, and also I am lazy.
I often wonder how the bigger bloggers field their email requests. Do they answer all or ignore most? In my worst nightmares I cannot imagine the in-boxes of Echidne or Jill at Feministe. I get a couple nice emails from CNN and I sort of freak out, you know? Though it did end well for me.
I've gotten some truly amazing emails, as well. A couple heartbreaking letters were sent from formerly institutionalized disabled people touched by my one-time CNN blog. The lawyer for Emilio Gonzales' mother thanked me for my coverage and support. One of Ruben Navarro's caregivers wrote to thank me and share that Ruben had a great sense of humor and has inspired her to persist in the field of mental health and disability. And the back-channel camaraderie with fellow dis bloggers that I love so much.
I don't really have any problem with this blog being categorized as about "health and medicine" so long as that never disqualifies it for the "social justice" or "politics" categories. I don't consider myself a "patient" or a "client" or a "customer of health care services" here, so much as a writer and activist. And hopefully a pain in the ass. But I will concede I am definitely "squarely on the side of the patient."
Image description: A small graphic banner reads "Health Leader 2007" with the date bracketed by gold stars.
If you got an email from me to join something called Yaari, please ignore it. I got that same email, explored it and gave out a bit too much info before bailing out myself. Yet it seems the site has spammed everyone in my email files (like, a week after the fact) despite me expressly saying not to do so and having changed my passwords. Sorry for the trouble. And thanks to those who emailed me to ask what was up, otherwise I would not have known this was happening.
Or, you know, get out there and do your thing. . . .
Image description: A beautiful color photo of a blue-skied day off the coast of Alaska. Picture is taken from the upper deck of a cruise ship in a fjord, the white-capped mountains in the background and the water a vivid shade of aqua. The length of the ship can be seen in the middle-ground, and in the foreground by the railing of this upper deck are a couple in the shade of a bulky apparatus on the deck. One sits in a manual wheelchair, and they both look at the incredible view we see. Flickr photo credit to Todd Sheridan, tud5000.
Image description: A colorful photo from the 2007 Toronto Pride parade of a middle-aged white guy wearing just sneakers, shorts, a baseball cap and carnival beads as he rides a red four-wheeled electric scooter that is decked out in rainbow fabric and rainbow flowers. There's a large beach umbrella above him covered in the rainbow fabric, as is the front and back baskets of his scooter. Everything is trimmed with flowers in colors of the rainbow. The crowd watching the parade lines the street in the background. Flickr photo credit to hypersapiens.
Image description: Two women sit in power wheelchairs at the edge of a lake holding fishing rods. The sun is shining, the water is a vivid blue and there are trees lining the water's edge in the distance. Flickr photo credit to Karva Javi.
Request for technical help: I may have asked this before some time ago, but while I look back for that discussion, can anyone tell me how to use alt tags for photos in Firefox? I've tagged the first two of these three pics, but it only shows up using the Explorer browser. It doesn't show at all in Firefox. Any expertise appreciated.
It's time for a summer vacation from blogging for me, quick before I burn out completely. I'm not going on any big trip, but I'll be taking a break from blogging for at least two weeks (maybe four). Yep, I had this planned before CNN contacted me for a comment on their latest disability story, and while the attention might force me to moderate commenting here more than I planned on I'm still taking that holiday. (Damn ye, thwarted vacation plans!)
I might not even read other people's blogs for a little while, though that's sort of like saying "I'm taking a break from chocolate." Inconceivable! If I do comment elsewhere, you can join me at those conversations by checking the CoComments linking to them on my sidebar, far below at right. (CoComments seems a bit buggy today, but they say it'll be better soon.)
In the meantime, use the comments for this post to link to anything disability-related that you think other visitors here should see. Like, the next Disability Blog Carnival scheduled for August 9 at Andrea's Buzzing About. See you soon!
My friend Trudi Evans has a magazine, As We Are, that's been up and running online for a while now and I haven't plugged it even once. This despite health and disability being a presence at the site, partly through "Vibrating Liz" a.k.a. Lymphopo of blog As The Tumor Turns writing there. The mag is still shiny new, but knowing Trudi and several of the women writing for it as I do, I know disability is considered a feminist issue by them and I suspect that'll be evident as time goes on.
I'm too late for the magazine's blogging contest for those who bleg a bit for the magazine. But I don't care. It's a great online site for feminists, including disabled ones. As We Are is added to the sidebar as well.
I can't find my "list o' links I intend to add" but I did cobble together this many from my extremely disorganized files. New to the More Gimp Parades blogroll:
[with]tv
Asperger Square 8
Chronic Pain Lifestyle
Disapedia
Hop Bloody Hop
Illin n' Chillin
Journal of Literary Disability
Kids On Wheels
Retired Waif
Tremors of Intent
Wikibility Rights
I've added some new blogs to the sidebar:
Andrea's Buzzing About
Big Noise
Bums & Bellybuttons
Rolling Around Life
The Seated View
Witticisms
Also, I've changed my name under my Blogger profile. It has read "Blue/Kay Olson" and now reads simply "Kay Olson." I'll answer to either still, or Blue Lily, which is the longer version of my feminist bulletin board name over the years. I was also Blue Girl at the Ms. Boards before they were deleted.
Finally, summer is here and the weather is mostly quite fine. I smell increasingly intermittent posting coming on, but that's a good thing. It means I'm out enjoying life.
Tireless feminist blogger Echidne at Echidne of the Snakes has enlisted me and several other folks to keep her place busy while she takes a short break. I'll be cross-posting a few of my entries over there between now and next Wednesday, and since her readership is much, much larger than mine you might pop over and read any comments there. Join in discussion. Enjoy the change of scenery.
Welcome to the hundreds of visitors following the AOL links here through the news story of Emilio Gonzales. There's not really much original content from me specifically regarding that story, but feel free to browse these related categories: Ashley Treatment, children, choice, health care, and Medicare. My indexing doesn't cover most of my older posts yet, but the past six months or so are included.
Feel free to comment, though I have disallowed anonymous comments. Also, since I'm away from the computer for most of the next day, I've enabled comment moderation. That will delay appearance of comments until at least Tuesday evening.
Finally, I've added a few links to my sidebar under "More Gimp Parades":
Fate is Chance
L'Azile
Fey Stranger
Disabled Christianity
Screw Holland
The Adventues of Leelo and His Potty-Mouthed Mom
ADHD & Me
Life Sat Down
Enjoy.
Or stand by, if that's your thing. There are a couple dozen emails from readers that I'm not ignoring -- if they seem to be a topic of mutual interest to me and the sender, that is -- but have put on the back burner for a couple days. I'm putting together the next carnival, which should go up as scheduled tomorrow. And I'm trying to follow the recent discussions of the Ashley Treatment. There's a lively discussion on that in the post just below.
In other news, the weather is unbelievably beautiful today, and probably for the next few days. I intend to enjoy all the pre-mosquito outdoorsiness I can, and I expect that to impact the rhythm of posting here. All summer long, if I'm lucky. In the meantime, feel free to comment on old posts or keep the Ashley X discussion going. Or visit these fine folks:
As The Tumor Turns
Diary of a Goldfish
The Perorations of Lady Bracknell
PilgrimGirl
The 19th Floor
Wheelie Catholic
Although some of these used to inhabit my blogroll before the great sidebar catastrophe of January, I've just added the following under "More Gimp Parades":
40 Million, Blind Bookworm, Chewing The Fat, Croneway, Diabetes Mine, Disability Culture Watch, Eschara, Funky Mango's Musings, Lisa Bufano, Modus Vivendi, Screw Bronze!, Selectively Bossy, The Adventures of a Paperback Princess, Peter Tan's Digital Awakening, The Future Doc Wilson, The Opposite of Tragic, The Rettdevil's Rants, and Wordgathering.
I learned recently from Skippy's posting about the technical side of blogrolling that my vast list of disability bloggers will rank lower on Google the more I add to it. That's unfortunate if it makes it harder for people to find each other, but it doesn't change my plan to add any gimp blogger to my roll who writes on the social aspects of living with impairments. Actually, I judiciously add sites that are not blogs too, and there are several new examples of that above.
First, the tweaking of my blogroll continues since I switched to the new Blogger version in early January (and inadvertantly lost the whole list) and I keep finding gimp sites that were delinked and I've forgotten to relink. For Maude's sake, just last week I realized I had overlooked New Mobility magazine when I rebuilt my blogroll! If you've got a disability blog that used to be linked here, is reasonably active or has good archives, and are no longer linked, please let me know! It's an error, not a dismissal.
Second, when I did switch to the new Blogger version, it began telling me on my dashboard page that I have 19 comments in moderation. Since I've never moderated comments (I delete spam as it shows up and am so far not popular enough for it to be more than a couple per day to archived posts), this has puzzled me. And try as I might, I couldn't make the new improved version of Blogger show me these 19 comments.
Until now! When some random button pushing to turn on comment moderation allowed me to view the comments I am not trying to moderate. Isn't Blogger swell? Anyway, there are 19 comments -- all from May and June of 2006 -- that have finally been freed from their mysterious prison. I apologize to those who made them, especially since some of them merited further discussion or responses I'll be attempting shortly. Go check them out.
Or stay here and mock this delicious comment, one of the Liberated 19:
William Peace's "Protest from a bad cripple: The Ashley Treatment and the making of a pillow angel" in CounterPunch:
Doctors have established a precedent with Ashley—it is ethically and socially acceptable to mutilate the bodies of disabled people. What Ashley and her doctors have failed to grasp is that all disabled people share a common bond. In my opinion there is no difference between myself and Ashley despite the great disparity in our intellectual abilities. If you doubt this let me relay one story from my childhood. In 1972 I was a 7th grade student at a Catholic school in New York. The school was not unusual but I was. I had a rare neurological condition that was beginning to take its toll on my ability to walk. Shortly after school started I vividly recall homework being handed out and the nun came over to me and said, “You no longer need to do homework because you are one of God’s special children”.A thorough collection of the disability community's responses to The Ashley Treatment.
Disability claims filed by National Guardsmen and Reservists are denied at twice the rate of active duty troops, he said. Guardsmen and reservists in college sent for full-time training earn just $297 per month, while active duty soldiers earn more than $1,000, he said.The South Dakota Argus Leader reports on the unusual motions filed in the murder trial of deaf defendant Daphne Wright:
In addition, wounded guardsmen and reservists often must recuperate at medical facilities far from home, he said. They are tied to units scattered throughout the country.
The Guard and Reserves have been used more in the Iraq War than in any prior conflict. At one point, half of the deployed troops in Iraq were with the Guard or Reserves.
"They are risking the same amount of danger," said Schumer (D-N.Y.) at a news conference at Hofstra University Monday, surrounded by cadets with the school's ROTC program. "They should be given the same benefits."
The lawyers requested the victim's friends and family be prohibited by the court from acting out or displaying emotion during the trial. They also requested the court not allow "gruesome or inflammatory photographs" from the crime.
Wright, 43, is accused of kidnapping, killing and dismembering Darlene VanderGiesen, 42, in February 2006. Wright and VanderGiesen were both deaf, which has become an issue in the court proceedings.Prosecutors have indicated they will seek the death penalty if Wright is convicted on the charges she faces: murder and kidnapping.
But Wright's lawyers say that because she is deaf, it would be cruel to execute her.
And to my Malaysian friend who sent me a link about disability news there, I have lost that email. Please resend the info and other news in the future.
Dear Lady,
I feel sorry for you...and not for the reasons you think. Your disabilties are of no importance to me. One of my good friends is a quadrapoligic. My sorrow is for your sorrow. You are very angered at all the people who have hurt you over the years. Most articles you have are not for the fight or movement of disabilities yet for the emptiness and loniness of them. I will pray for you and want you to know that if you need someone to chat with please write. My email is apighin@wowway.com and my name is AJ. Have a blessed day and please do not hesitate to write.