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I don't even know what to do with this New York Times article, which has got to be one of the more nauseatingly patronizing pieces I have seen in a while. Maybe I just haven't been reading enough in the internet. Anyway it's about the Pearls Project which involves several young people with disabilities having their pictures taken and then blogging about their lives so that non-disabled teenagers can read their blogs and look at pictures of them and send them questions about what it's like to have a disability. Which is all very well and good and presumably the young people in question want to be doing this except, you know, there are students with disabilities AT THE SCHOOL IN QUESTION and no one has suggested that maybe they should be invited in to talk about their experiences with the very students who are supposed to be learning to be all empathetic and shit. Instead, you have a group of strangers, and "Teachers created assignments requiring students to get to know the Pearls subjects — read their blogs, watch their videos — and to put themselves in their places. The students were encouraged to ask questions, which their teachers passed along via e-mail." So first we make sure there's no ACTUAL contact between the people with disabilities and the students. The students are encouraged to behave like visitors at a zoo, staring at the people with disabilities but not interacting directly with them, and to pretend to be disabled themselves. All contact is carefully moderated, presumably so that one of the PWD can't say something uninspiring. Because what did the students actually get out of this? Well, "Amanda Muccio, 15, a ninth grader in a biology class, said she asked Ashley, also 15, whether she was embarrassed to meet boys because she had muscular dystrophy and used a wheelchair. Ashley replied no, that if boys saw only the wheelchair, that was their problem. “I’m so happy for her that she can be so confident in herself,” Amanda said. “I envy that.”" Oh and then there was the poet: Creative-writing students who had signed up to write about their own feelings found themselves trying to write poetry about strangers. “It kind of took me awhile to get into it,” acknowledged Tony Boniello, a senior. “Maybe subconsciously I didn’t want to give writing about someone else a chance.” Then Tony started reading the musings of Rebecca, 21, a college student with arthrogryposis multiplex congenita, a rare condition that can cause joints to be stiff and crooked. He fashioned a poem out of the sights that she found most beautiful: a sunset, the ocean, dolphins, a rainbow, a person who takes time to interact with someone with a disability. Can I just repeat that last? "A person who takes time to interact with someone with a disability." What. The. Shit. Sorry, people who charitably interact with me on a daily basis, you are not beautiful snowflakes for doing the decent thing and interacting with the angry cripple. You do not get brownie points for not being an asshole. Not being an asshole is the default fucking state. But it seems like whether or not these kids learned empathy, they have certainly successfully learned to be patronizing fuckers. Probably they learned it from the guy who started this crap, a fashion photographer who says "It’s our responsibility to steady our gaze to see beauty, and not look away because we’re told not to stare.” 1) Don't stare. Seriously. Do not "steady your gaze" in an attempt to find beauty. For one, with me it's easy to spot because beauty weighs 75ish lbs and has a glossy black coat and is walking on my left wearing a mobility harness. Me, I'm just fucking cranky. 2) I am not, we are not, your fucking object lessons. It's not our job to fucking inspire and uplift and motivate and make you see beauty in common fucking human decency. 3) Dear New Jersey Students: maybe instead of treating a group of strangers with disabilities like zoo animals at the behest of your teachers, you could get to know some of the students with disabilities who are actually going to school with you and have probably had to put up with you popular poetic types bullying them for the last few years. I'm just sayin. I know how kids with disabilities were treated at my highly average midwestern high school: they were invisible, or they were targets. Maybe, kids, you should work on changing that at home and not work on othering, objectifying, and being inspired by total strangers. |
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Today, Adventure!Dog Sid the SDIT got to go to the car dealership to drop the car off for service, Panera for breakfast, and WalMart for buns for sloppy joes and bratwurst. Not only did Adventure!Sid do really really well himself, but there were exactly 0 incidents of service-dog-related stupidity. In fact, the woman at Panera who checked me out then brought my food out (I expected her to send it out with Daniel) and I guess assumed I was blind, because she set the stuff down in front of me and then said "There's a fork there on the left, and your drink is to the right." which gave me a warm fuzzy. Much like the nice woman at Borders the other day who totally ignored my dog, and then without making a fuss held the receipt for me so I could sign it without awkwardness. In chicken hatching news, 10/11 eggs I had in the incubator have hatched, and Number 11 is working on it. |
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Many people I know and love seem to be having a rough time of it today. I cannot fix the world, and so instead I give you Belphegor the baby chicken:  As to Belphegor's name, well. Let me just quote Wikipedia: "In demonology, Belphegor (or Beelphegor) is a demon, and one of the seven princes of Hell, who helps people to make discoveries. He seduces people by suggesting to them ingenious inventions that will make them rich. According to some 16th century demonologists, his power is stronger in April. Bishop and witch-hunter Peter Binsfeld believed that Belphegor tempts by means of laziness. Also, according to Peter Binsfeld's Binsfeld's Classification of Demons, Belphegor is the chief demon of the deadly sin known as Sloth in Christian tradition. Belphegor may also represent Vanity." The other baby silkies (six of Belphegor's crew and the five who were more recent acquisitions) are Amon, Asmodeus, Astoroth, Ayporos, Baal, Beelzebub, Leviathan, Lucifer, Mammon, Pymon, and Valefor. I will leave the googling to you but suffice to say that I did indeed name twelve adorable baby chickens of great flooftasticness after princes and dukes of hell. If I'd known in the beginning I'd end up with twelve, I'd probably have named them for the apostles. |
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Spurred by discussion else-web I have been deeply pondering conflicting accessibility needs for people with disabilities, especially in terms of what my obligations may be as a service dog handler. Because while for me, my dog is the key to independence and being able to do things I want to do (as opposed to having to stick to only what I really NEED to do), for other people he is a large hairy walking allergen who endangers their ability to breathe or a possible trigger for e.g. PTSD after a bad dog attack. I mean, I am pretty unwilling to cater to someone who just doesn't want to be around dogs, because Sid will not be interacting with them anyway. And except in an exceptionally small and confined place, they wouldn't be forced to be near him. But what happens when it isn't someone who merely doesn't want to be around dogs, and is someone for whom a dog is going to trigger a vicious panic attack, or a vicious asthma attack? What happens when a dog who has an overwhelmingly positive impact on my health has an overwhelmingly negative impact on someone else's? There's already my obligation to make sure that my dog is as well-trained as I can make him and that he is therefore as unobtrusive as a really big[1] black German Shedder can be. I have an obligation to make sure he is clean and healthy so that he does not overwhelm the room with dog, and he's as low on allergens as he's ever going to get. But I don't know what my obligation is in more specialized circumstances, and there's not a lot of guidance out there for anyone who is concerned about conflicting access needs, because it's not a conversation that gets had a lot. And when people do try to have it, things get heated and emotional and often nasty really fast. So I just don't know, but it's something to continue to ponder. [1]  goingferal thinks that the question nowis not whether Sid will hit 90lbs at full growth, but whether he will hit 100. He's a big guy. |
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1) Did I mention I'm going to WisCon next year? Cause I am. I has a room and I'm registered and everything. 2) Took Sid out on a training run today. We practiced restaurant behavior at Panera (because we could sit outside, and the food was paid for already, so if he started being an idiot we could leave with no trouble), then hit Borders, and finally made a stop at PetCo on the way home to pick up aspen shavings for the chicks. He has good focus for 60-90 minutes, which is sterling for an eleven month old just starting out, and most of that we spent at Panera where he did very well. I actually think it might have been easier on him if we'd gone inside, where there were fewer little birds and passers-by. By the time we were leaving Borders he was pretty distractible although not out of control, just pulling dorky adolescent dog things like forgetting where his butt was in relation to the furniture. Lesson learned: shorter trips, lower-distraction environments. I think if we'd started in Borders he would have been golden there but then he would have probably been a real shit with the birds outside at Panera so, y'know. 3) These are the coolest lookin chickens on the face of the planet. Seriously, you guys, they are jet black. Skin, feathers, everything. They look like someone spraypainted chickens black from top of comb to tips of toes. If Death owned chickens, it would be these. Unfortunately they don't appear to be in the US. Sigh. But I may be able to recreate them in bantie size with the breeding stock on hand. Silkies have black skin! Although if I did manage to recreate them, would you want Death Bantams roaming your yard, or should I find a better name? |
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Room reservation made for WisCon36. Also, registration for WisCon36 procured. wootwoot! |
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1) CHICKENS. Lots of them. I am looking forward to when I know what sexes I have on the Ameraucanas and the silkies so I can pare down my stock some to what I need, probably via chicken swaps. 2) Hotel rooms open up for WisCon36 tomorrow morning at 1000 eastern time so I am RESERVING A ROOM oh hell yes. WisCon36, I will be there or be square. Sid will be there, too, I expect, unless he does something horrible in the meantime and washes himself out of service doggery. Which I highly doubt, because he is fuckin brilliant, yo. He worked the Farmer's Market today on a training run and you would not have known that he is in training unless you were watching closely. So anyway, if you're going to be at WisCon36 you should probably stop and say hi. I'd go into describing what I look like and shit but why not make this easy? I'll be the one with the big black German Shepherd holding me upright. |
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I try to keep MoMB upbeat and family friendly. So there's no way I could post this anywhere but here, really. I wish I'd had a camera -- we were finishing up Bantytown and it was just one of those moments. I don't know how else to describe it to you so I'll just be up front: there was hot rooster threesome dust-bathing action. |
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So there's this woman at work. She asks invasive and inappropriate questions, like "What's wrong with you?" and a couple days after I finally caved and said "Fibromyalgia." she told me about her sister (or possibly sister-in-law) who "claims" she can't work because she has fibro and Inappropriate Woman told her "I work with a girl who has fibro so you could work too!" Ugh. So 1) it's wildly inappropriate to refer to a 34-year-old woman who pays her own goddamned mortgage as a "girl" and 2) Do not fucking use me as a stick to beat someone up with. I know what the "good crip" response to this story is: "that slacking bitch! How dare she not work! MY GOD REPORT HER FOR WELFARE FRAUD RIGHT THE FUCK NOW!" but just no. The first time she told me that little anecdote, I went with non-commital grunts. Apparently this wasn't a good enough response because the next day she told me the story AGAIN. Jesus. Anyway, the second time she told me the story I said, "Don't use me as an example. If I didn't desperately need health insurance, I wouldn't be working either. There's too many days when my entire life is wake up, eat breakfast, go to work, come home, eat dinner, go to sleep because I'm in so much goddamned pain. If your sister has found a way to not work, then more power to her, I'm jealous." I guess that got SOME kind of point across because she has not regaled me with the story again. Anyway, this weekend I got about 2 1/2 feet of hair cut off, which has resulted in me having chin-length curly hair. Prior to this I kept my waist-length hair braided and folded up in a bun and usually covered, generally speaking. This morning I did not feel like figuring out a covering with short hair, so it's all hanging out. Inappropriate Woman sees me and says, "You cut your hair! You were supposed to wear it down before you did that so we could all see it!" ...really? REALLY? I was "supposed" to? I am obligated to satisfy the curiosity of my co-workers by displaying for them any bits of my body they'd like to see? What the fuck, seriously. I was too flabbergasted to come up with something clever so settled on "Ha. Ha. Ha." and a blank stare. Just what the shit, people, seriously. |
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I looked up my final grades for last semester. Straight B average, despite the feeling like I was drowning. Which is not bad at all, and my overall GPA is a very nice 3.5 (on a 4.0 scale). And maybe I'll go back fall semester and take Writing Fiction or something. And just that. Because I can't even think about a full schedule again yet. |
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