Researching a new article.., but got distracted...

trying to answer the other million little questions that come to mind in the course of day's living.Good to know that no lesser org than the BBC found that "Disabled people face barriers using common household gadgets,"although this one found another one when her Yank self couldn't watch the video.  D'oh! Still somewhat affirming though, that I'm not just writing about me.(Also, I am a pain in the butt and attempted to start a twitter dialogue with the disability beat reporter there...will let you know when and if he responds. Would we like having a for-real disability beat in this country, or would it just compound media mistakes? Can't decide for myself...what do you think?)

Man, there are a lot of sodastream flavors...who says I can't make plans for the future anymore? Curremt favorite is lime and lemon together.
Looked up Spanish-language conversation groups for my goal to get phonebank ready in 2020... there are a lot, but they are not exactly close.  which would be a pain if I could drive--pretty limiting since I can't. Found myself wondering what it would be like to hear about a new place without worrying that  I couldn't get in or out or get seated in the sunken dining room...see what inspiring stuff abled people miss? I also thought this place was more centrally located, but what I really need is something like Springfield(either soap opera or Simpsons) with a little bit of everything not far away.

More Wedded Twist, in honor of a submission last week...

Actually, it’s not that he couldn’t do it…Billy’s a good guy, but this needs more of a…delicate touch.”

I imagined myself as Nancy Drew, finding a beribboned cache of love letters or proof that Tommy’s grandfather from Galway had owned Frederick Douglass. I needed to stop fantasizing and think about real life. More out of a desire to kick my mind into working gear rather than fears about accuracy, I pulled out a pad and pen. I probably undercut the professional atmosphere by doodling, but drawing always had helped me think things through. I drew a crooked little house that a bird wouldn’t stay in.  “You know that I work for Arizona Mutual sometimes, right?”

“Sure. Checking on claims.” I decided my ugly house needed a lawn and drew some grass blades in while waiting for Tommy to get to the point.                                                                                                            

      “Yeah, well, your neighbor, this Corinne Mathis? Has one of those lift vans and needed some body work on it. Only it’s weird—the company has hardly talked to Corrine, but her companion has all kinds of attitude and is acting funny.”

 “Funny how? I asked. “Maybe Corrine doesn’t speak clearly. It doesn’t have to be suspicious…probably just trying to be a good advocate.” Good job or not, I was in no mood to hear about disabled people faking. I had to concede that it probably happened sometimes but not as much as able-bodied people wanted to talk about it.

“Well, it’s not like they’re reporting a lost fur on their way back from Aruba, but they’re just not forthcoming. I mean, it’s just a claim on her van. Lot of cosmetic damage, but not enough for this amount of attitude from this guy, the driver… I thought maybe you could get something I didn’t.”

“Haven’t kissed a girl since college. Hope you’re not disappointed.”

“Oh, God, don’t start. I didn’t mean anything like that, for Christ’s sake.”

“Just joking to hear you squirm.” I wasn’t, but Morrigan didn’t need to know everything. A woman needed to keep some distance between her adult self and the little girl he’d consoled when the neighborhood kids took off on their bikes without her. “I’m sure it’s not you…people take mobility and independence seriously.  After all, people like us can’t just bum rides, so this van is more than Corrine’s car.  It’s almost as though it’s her life.”

He groaned. “Just, you know, befriend her. Keep an eye out. Oh, and when I said that other stuff…I wasn’t thinking.”

“It’s okay.” We’d known each other so long we didn’t have to talk much.             “It was sure easier to make friends with people when I was ten and could split my fruit roll-up, but I do know her a little. She seems nice.”

“You know that doesn’t mean she didn’t lie, right?”

Not as much as I wanted Tommy to think I was a professional, but I said “Of course, I understand.”
The next afternoon, as we were both at the communal mailbox in the bright blue light that passed for desert winter ,and she was a little ahead with a young man that might have been a relative and graciously helped me scoop up my mail after I somewhat dramatically dropped it into the drying grass.  “We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” she joked.  I really wished I had some fruit jerky in my pocket, but we weren’t ten anyway. I made a little quip about stalking, and wished it didn’t feel quite so true, but she smiled and didn’t seem to register my discomfort.

“I’m Neil,” he said. He extended a well-kept hand for me to shake.  “I’m Corinne’s attendant.”

“Allyson.” We shook hands and I waited. He did not disappoint, delivering both a half-hummed rendition of the Elvis Costello classic and some snark about my “aim being true” Sometimes I wondered what my parents had been thinking, but maybe my mother just wanted to pass on the pop-song curse, since her name was Sherry and at least once a year some grocery-store wiseass would try his falsetto out on her.  I felt relieved that it seemed like disability had been demystified for Neil enough that at least I wouldn’t have to go through the whole saga about my premature birth and all the rest of it. Obviously, I wasn’t a disability evaluator, but years of sizing people up in a flash made me think we had that in common.

“Don’t sell yourself short.” Corinne had a voice that you’d want to camp in

"When You Get Older, Your Heart Dies..."

Maybe if I'd had time to think about it, I might have written this back to the woman on twitter wondering why more women weren't more excited about so many women entering the Presidential fray. For myself, it's been exhausting watching this country lurch from crisis to crisis and news cycle to news cycle. Also, if we are going to have big midterm elections, which I hope we do, maybe there can be less of a sense that voting for President is the vote that really counts.

I hate to admit it, though, because of where my volunteer energy goes, and thinking about how excited I was to cast that first ballot, but I've gotten used to feeling ignored in elections.Don't get me wrong...it would be a big deal to know that my benefits and health care would not be under threat, but it's still somewhat of a dead end, now that I know that I didn't grow up to be one of those super-inspiring crips that ends up getting her letter read at the state of the union or something like that. In 2012, I kind of loved it when Barack Obama spoke up about his father-in-law's persistence in the face of his mobility struggles, but then again, even the most overt conversation about disability from a President in my lifetime was still about "Never let it hold you back," and all the ways Mr. Robinson didn't ask for help.This is not a narrative I can run with, as they say.I am not special, and yet, I know I'm not ordinary either.  The next time a candidate(of any gender) talks about people "who work hard and play by the rules," again I will have to decide whether to pretend she meant me or not. Because none of them will be thinking of me.I'm not sure if it matters at this point whether they will be not paying attention in a pink suit or a striped tie. I've got my favorites, of course, but I no longer have the driving sense that electing a candidate who knows what a nightmare bra shopping is would solve everything, for me or for Womankind(TM). My state has had its share of women governors, running the gamut from accomplished to nightmarish, and still remains pretty solidly antifeminist.

I don't know what I envisioned the first time I heard Ally Sheedy deliver this line...maybe workaholics or people who walk past homeless people without looking, neither of which I''ve become, and at one point, that might have been enough for me to declare that Ms. Exceptional had not entirely left the building, but I have to admit the sense of limitless possibility that I might have felt as a teen is gone. I suppose that is not something even the most determined optimist sports in her mid-forties, no matter how much  I might wish I could. So, what's next? Is rational optimism a thing? Why or why not?

Let's Pretend These Are My Final Thoughts On Representation(though they probably won't be)...

Movies have probably been too important in my life over the years, both because my early lack of access to experiences in my formative years, and, probably as everyone has, the drive to enhance the ones they've had.Also, as somebody who's spent her life trying to tell stories, I've learned a lot about what works and what doesn't from my movie habit. John Hughes opened a lot of conversational doors for me, even though the closest to repping me in one of them was probably Joan Cusack's Girl With HeadGear in "Sixteen Candles" I watch a lot of disability content that, if I had my Activist Hat on all day, I might avoid...it's an old habit of my youth like frozen pot pie. I'd been thinking I might not write about this because I've been feeling a bit "If you don't take the class, they won't let you do it," about some of my writing in here lately. But as the conversation about "The Upside" carries on a bit, I have some questions and comments.
1.  Why do women have such a problem understanding the disability rep. conversation?
I can't be the only one who gets psyched about the occasional romcom with a snarky heroine in it who wears a top kind of like something in my closet(only that costs more than my van payment) and the climax is kind of nutty and you watch the ending  and ask your friend "Who DOES that?" but movie women do. Only picture instead of being half the world, you're a tenth of the world, and a poor tenth at that, that doesn't  have its own cable channels or hair salons. Make sense now...What if there were so few women, we went back to Shakespeare style acting and plopped a wig on a teenaged boy's head?
 It's not about the famous actors.
(although they often don't help their causes by being defensive and by proving they never think about disabled people as active consumers of the stuff they make) But being frustrated about this is not about wanting to take the brie from Cranston's mouth...it's just, if America finds us so fascinating(and it seems like it does), then why doesn't it want to see and hear from us? It's not about Cranston and it's not about the next teen hearthrob in gimpface on-screen. It's about being excluded from crafting our own image, especially in one of the most persistent sub-genres in cinema. I like Cranston and Hart, and I'm human, right? My criticism might be more full-bodied if this movie featured an actor I didn't like, but the problem goes deeper than that.
3.  Abled people do not know what ableism is.
Or else maybe they wouldn't be so quick to assume that there are no talented writers  or performers with disabilities. I think, if pressed, most white Americans would agree that making fun of a disabled child on the playground is wrong. or something like that and that is pretty much where awareness of disability discrimination starts and stops. It's ableist to search our stories for post-holiday pathos and call us bitter when we complain. It's ableist to assume out of millions of Americans, there wouldn't have been one paraplegic actor that couldn't do great at playing this part, even if he didn't help us learn "Life is unfair!" back in the 90s.(Yes, Cranston is a name, and that is a foundation of the business called show, but he wasn't born that way.) Why doesn't it bother America more that there are maybe 50 bankable(bangable?) faces in TV and movies?(and that they don't look like most of us)How neccessary is it that every set put in an eighteen-hour day? would we notice, really notice, if they didn't?

Bohemian Crip Watches Movies: Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far On Foot...

Ok, before the reviewing and snark starts,I think I have some tips for screenwriters and directors in America.

-being born with a disability doesn't really mean there is no conflict or identity issues. Granted, it's not like waking up after a Volkswagen crashes into a highway pylon, but we don't have a special manual to manage our stuff(as much as people tend to want to believe "not knowing what you're missing" is a huge help or something. Also, lucky for us there are no huge conglomerates both beaming and exaggerating "what we're missing" at any hour of the day or night.  Oh, wait...)

_I don't think there was a single paralyzed actor in any of the rehab scenes...seriously?It's bad enough that lead actors tend to view disability as both award-bait and some kind of emoting decathalon,(I get the language concerns, but "Tropic Thunder" made me laugh for lampooning this.) but we can't be supporting cast in a *disability* movie. Kind of insulting, even for someone who's left a lot of her passion about representation in the keepsake box with the high school yearbooks.

All of that being said, however, "Foot" was decent flick which made good use of the Callahan memoir as source material(The chronology might get confusing if you are not deeply familiar with the book of the same name, like me.) Joaquin's performance was good, but, I don't know, for most of the movie I feel like the note he most took to heart might have been something like "He's a cripple, but, like, a *baller* cripple." although I think Van Sant is too good of a director to have really taken it there, but it made it hard to believe him till the end.I liked that some of the icky parts of disabled life appeared in this, as well as vintage chairs, etc.
While everyone will prob say how brave Phoenix was to pee in front of us,I think it was really nice to see something understated from Jonah Hill, whom I've persisted in liking as an actor without really being sure why...I'd love to tell you I'd thought he had this in him, but it's nice to get a surprise about an actor without a rogue penis, or grabby hands and stuff ,attached.

A Taste of "Twist"...

in honor of the New Year...

noticed my beautiful neighbor in a wheelchair about two months before I was paid to.  Maybe it was the novelty of not being the only chair user out and about in our complex, or maybe because the way she stopped short of imperfect perfection left me feeling love-and-hate inferior. She was neat, stylish, and even though we’d only waved or made superficial chatter at the mailbox, she had a charming but ready laugh that showed that she may have been one of the few living and breathing impaired people that had a shot at one of those great attitudes America liked us to have.  A year and a half into my flirtation with the entrepreneurial spirit, both my optimism and my haircut were both feeling a little ragged. I hated to admit it, but people didn’t really trust my investigative or researching skills. On some buried level, instead of seeing my chair as a sign of resiliency and enhanced problem-solving as I tried to do, prospective clients may have wondered why I didn’t see the oncoming car or whatever they imagined the catalyst for my condition to be. If there was one thing life on wheels had taught me, however, it was that no conversation is enhanced by pointing out the futility of planning for a birth accident.  That musing threatened to bring on a habitual wave of maudlin thoughts that made me incredibly excited to lunge at my phone before the vibration of the second ring had fully finished.  I must have been panting like Mark Wahlberg in an action sequence, though, because my mentor asked “Are you OK?”

“Yeah, sure.  Perfectly imperfect.” I willed it to be true, and hoped that I didn’t sound desperate. I also pushed my unruly bangs from my face. By the end of the week, I had to at least make ground on the haircut front.

“Whatever that means.  Look, I may have some work for you…are you interested?”

I tried to keep my expectations in check.   Cops from my late father’s precinct wanted to help me out, but they could use the internet to find their own lost dogs as well as I did, and, given the slowness of my two-fingered pecking, probably faster, if the Web hadn’t freaked them out worse than any seamy corner at midnight.  (Although I had discovered I had a knack. I’d found three and had pictures of happy canines and their relieved guardians in my home office.) “Really?”

He cleared his throat and I felt as though I could hear him thinking.  “If you’re not up for it, I understand. Billy Torres is already a PI but I didn’t show him the ropes or anything…  and you do have to work for me for three years before you can get your own license. Even so, though, I’d say that your experience is more relevant.”

 Billy was sweet, but strong as an ox and loud enough that I could hear him have a phone call with Tommy when I was seated across the room.  I couldn’t imagine what kind of job we’d both be in the running for, and it felt like it had been a long time since my experience was relevant.  “No, I don’t mean that…I’d like a chance.  I was just…thinking."