An Ironic Blogger's Resolution...

I'm usually not the resolution type, particularly since when I did it most, I was really longing to be a completely different woman, but I think I'm going to do less talking in 2019.Or, at least, weigh in when it seems like it matters, instead of pretending social media is Radio Free Europe and I'm getting dispatches over the iron curtain.. It was really important to find my voice, but I waste it sometimes.(Not by the time I write about stuff here...)
UPDATE 1/2/19
Things which I plan not to weigh in on in the future:
Super-early 2020 polling
Celebrity beefing
the latest irritating/racist ad campaign for Urban Outfitters or similar

When Memes aren't Fun...

“If money were no object where would you live?”

I’m sure the woman on twitter that posed this query was just trying to relieve the comparative slowness of Holiday Internet, as well as hearing fantasies about Vermont B&Bs and Irish pubs (both fun lives for the right person, I bet, and I wish my own escape fantasies could be that fantastic and fun) I got stuck, though.

Imagine having a choice.(Which I don’t. Not without someone’s heavy lifting, and, I don’t know, a big lottery win…the prize patrol showing up at my condo? And still I know I am closer to being free than my institutionalized peers, naturally, but I am still not free, and thinking about it bums me out.)

Same reason I don’t like those memes about “Who would you be in 1909?” Because as much as I’d like to say, you know, henna-rinsed goyischeEmma Goldman, I know the real answer is either dead, with my dead mother, or, best case, in a ward for defective young ladies.The only thing I enjoy about that game is the dark kind of street cred I get for blurting that out…less fun is realizing that my future choices don’t feel different enough.)

10 thoughts on the Senate appointment...

10.  Augh... Martha McSally?! "Let's get this fucking thing done!" McSally?! Euw.




9. Way to reward failure and a dishonest campaign(also hating people's healthcare)


8.Not sure I belong in the same party as Grant Woods, though.(Not trying to say he is a bad person, but I'm not sure we share many priorities.  Not that I want to create some big DemExit drama, but that seems like a huge tent)

7.  It wasn't Cindy's seat to give...it belongs to the people of Arizona.  But let's not interrupt the latest round of ring-and-butt kissing.
6.  I know that I generally hate Ducey's choices, including tie colors.(Except the ice cream place, I guess, although I do regret eating there.)

5. Does anyone sentient believe the "bipartisan cooperation" pitch?(Anyone but Sinema, who, bi or not, probably only really gets off when she hears the phrase "bipartisan consensus", so, it's been almost as long for her as it's been for me.)




4. I voted for Sinema mostly to keep McSally out...how can I make the "Your vote is your voice!" pitch now. Maybe my voice wasn't *silenced* but I feel like it got muffled a whole hell of a lot.

3.  Sick of Koch puppets running my state. 
2.America will be better when Mitch McConnell is a private citizen.
1.Bet the first McSally scandal will arise when she tries to thumb-wrestle all the pages.

Holiday thoughts...

-kind of doing the nostalgia trip thing, watching my favorite movies and eating peppermint-stick ice cream. Trying to feel both grateful and convivial.

-This is, however, the time of year when my singleness feels the most weird and when I feel kind of bad about never having developed skills as, say, a sparkling party hostess.Even though I know there wouldn't have been many ways to develop such talents when my wheelchair gets stuck in every kitchen I've ever had, and, in fact, kitchens are the most difficult room to modify for access, it's still hard not to take that personally. Have to admit also that it frees me up sometimes, I guess, as does getting old enough to brush aside the thoughts of "Someday..." regarding the home-and-family idyll, etc.(Although it's not like I'd say no if pelted by some kind of bliss-bomb.)

-But I have to admit I don't know what I'm doing instead, since, you know, this isn't exactly "La Vie Boheme" either, but I've revised "The Wedded Twist" to my own satisfaction, and maybe will shortly find a home for it this spring(Are these two things unrelated? Probably not, Dr. Freud.)

If you are reading this, I wish you Equality, Justice, and Peace for the holidays and for 2019.

Top Ten Reasons Why I Hate "Attitudes Are The Real Disability"

10. I really hate when boring phrases like this catch on.Able-bodied America should strike it out of banality, if nothing else, but they love it so much they want to argue with me about retaining it.
9. Because it makes disabled people into human object lessons.


8.  That there are still people that read that and go (sniff) "Really makes you think!" instead of ignoring it like a fart.
7.It makes people ignore disabled people's real problems, because we're Special.
6. Puts a lot of pressure on disabled people to live up to brightening others' lives, which we don't need. as a kid, I actually felt guilty for not being like that, but I think now disabled kids should be taught like girls are about airbrushed photos: Nobody always looks like that.

5.  Once you are no longer a cute kid, as a disabled person you can be an inspiring motivation fairy that helps strangers you don't care about start that workout they've been lying about for five years.
4.  Duh...disability(and an inaccessible world) is the "real disability"
3.  why should non-disabled people get to use us to have feels?
2.  "No amount of smiling at a bunch of stairs ever turned it into a ramp."--Stella Young
1. Forty years later, reading it, I kind of feel like Stormy Daniels must hearing some guy say...I don't know...."Some women say I'm a lot to handle," Yeah.  Right. How nice for you. Sometimes it's just really hard to whip up that womanly receptivity that 10,000th time so I kind of unloaded on Mr. Decent But Clueless...

Rewriting and"She's Having A Baby"

Sometimes it's encouraging when someone you(mostly) respect as an artist has some of the same problems as you.That is probably why I was so psyched to watch John Hughes' comedy about marriage and infertility "She's Having A Baby" when it was on cable the other night.

Granted, I am always working on a smaller scale, but I've really struggled for years with finding an adult creative voice when my life...really lacks most of the signifiers of adulthood.(Not that the suburban Shermer image of a job that forces you to grow up by being your one, well-fed, straitjacket doesn't feel sort of antique anyway, given how many side jobs people I know have just to keep going...I'm not sure how many people were living like this when he wrote like that, honestly, but very few are now.)

Anyway, I had some early luck writing about snarky teens/twenties crip outsiders and what they saw on the periphery, and blah, blah, we're all the same down deep, two parts struggle to three parts wish-fulfillment but feeling like a persecuted artiste because I had to fight for the main character's right to...I don't know, say "shit!" when she jams her thumb or something.(Like I would really do, but the most common feedback I got from my crip-focused writers' group was always that I was "comfortable with the male perspective" because of the expletives.)

  I guess I could have frozen a character in amber and eventually...I don't know, given her a you-tube channel or an instagram to post her scars on, but somehow my heart isn't with that kind of lightness anymore. I would love to have an "It Gets Better" story for the yutes, but it hasn't, at least not enough that I can place a reassuring hand on someone's spiritual shoulder and tell them how great being different is supposed to be.Everything that I have accomplished, such as it is, has taken me SO LONG that I am probably only twenty-five in work years/

Not really sure what's wrong with the movie, even when I didn't pick it out in the video store because it was the  latest from "the Ferris Bueller guy" and that meant spending a long-ago bright autumn afternoon watching a movie with sperm-count jokes with my father..The cast is pretty good, with Kevin Bacon and Elizabeth McGovern as newlyweds, and a lot of "Hey, it's that guy/ gal!" Chicago actors that you would recognize from a lot of shows in the 80s and 90s.(weirdly, including actor Dennis Dugan who made the cast of "Hill Street Blues" call him Captain Freedom all day so he didn't break character--no word on whether he expected everyone to treat him like an ad exec for this one!) Maybe it's just that they tell us Our Heroes are So In Love but what we really watch is a lot of picking each other apart...maybe it just that it never decides if we are supposed to root for them fitting in their neighborhood or not.

Sometimes I think I am(comparatively) fine...

-but the digestive distress starts again, or the skin stuff, or the insomnia.More niggling than a true disorder, but not great. Learning a lot about fiber in common vegetables, though.

-Feeling a bit better about our state since some more Dems won, I suppose, but our problems are not solved..also, getting Sinema just means we get the Heitkamp instead of North Dakota. Yes, I can vouch for her being smart and personable and *looking* modern, but her ideas about politics are old-fashioned...not really getting sucked into the Krysten Cult again.(I hope she wows me and next year at this time, I just race to take this back, but I so doubt it. I didn't give her a nickel and I feel kind of proud about that...she's too "independent "for my Dem Socialist ass anyway. Also, how much did she spend on those stupid ads about"having the desert in her blood." What?I need my money more than anyone needs to get paid to write that.

- Already feeling some good effects from the feedback I bought from "The Masters Review" as I take another look at "The Wedded Twist"

Arizona Punked Itself Yesterday-- A Screed in Many Parts

Ok, I know the drill. I have read enough posts aboutwriting and rejection to know what people expect me to say right now(this one, chosen somewhat randomly, even could have a political analogue, wherein the organizer with the holes in his shoes who gets the door slammed in his face because of his funny name and membership in a minority group gets to be(expectant pause) BARACK OBAMA.(Which has sometimes sincerely cheered me, even though I don't expect to reach his heights)

I'm supposed to say this spurs me on, and talk about working harder and faster, and do the whole recent-memory-Cubs thing(it's true that if sports had taken root in me, I probably would have been a Cubs fan both cause of ties to the region and my tendency to swing for the fences and get thwarted...cute mascot, too) and act like Arizona is a struggling franchise entitled to a few rebuilding decades.Maybe someday I'll get back to all that, but not for a while. I beat myself up for a while last night just because that's my most consistent hobby, but I did my job, you know? In my view, the electorate didn't do theirs. Even though, you know, you always think there is more time and money you could spend(although even when you win, you don't really "get it back" in the same way you put it in...that's just for utility companies.  Nope, not funny yet.)Although I don't really think I'll abandon organizing for sloth and/or a drug habit as part of me wanted yesterday.

I think even self- blame is probably going to be useful than the lesson that the party might take from this in attempting to dig up some ex-governor from territorial days to try to appeal to rural regions or something. Of course there are the consultants who see everything as a game of Risk or some bloodless thought experiment like "How many AHCCCS recipients fit on the head of a pin?"To me, even if I make money from this one day, politics will never be that. I have to live with knowing how many of my neighbors don't care about my health, at a minimum. Don't care about kids, except to demonize the ones seeking asylum...teenage me, in her pink sweater, didn't want to believe it, butPublic Enemy was right about this place.(Also, I didn't learn about labor in school...had to reclaim that history as an adult.)
Definitely faced both the power and the limitations of electoral politics yesterday. Even with good candidates and no unopposed races. Not sure I can lay the civics-fairy pitch on so easily, even though, of course checks on Cheeto Benito are essential.Arizona may have to face the kinds of crises that beset states like Michigan and Kansas to learn that low tax rates and business incentives don't save people. I'm scared about that and not sure which one it will be.

My article came out...

Doesn't really sound like me, but they've got their own style less "rooted" in my heartfelt digressions. Shared with PDA crew and have heard on social networking from the kinds of disability orgs that don't usually look at my work.(Which is nice and offers some of the pleasure I didn't get when the paperwork showed up...however, have to guard against imagining the Whole New Life I might get from this one piece...becoming the "crip voting" guru that the producers at "All In" call, or all my big important books--I guess it could happen, but I've assured myself of five "big breaks" already that didn't swing the world's doors on their hinges) After that happens, it's hard to keep doing what I do.
Read it here... and let me know what you think.  Mail your ballot if you have one...Arizona, deadline's tomorrow!

Bohemian Crip Watches Movies--Maudie, 2017

Have to admit that even increased visibility of crips speaking out about our issues has not diminished my love/hate relationship with disability cinema.*

Yes, I agree that more actors, writers, directors and others with disabilities should be allowed to ply our crafts, but this movie is like many others and does not feature that, to my knowledge. That said, it is a unique addition to the genre for many reasons.

It is as understated and unsparing as the rough mountain scenery that the story takes place among, and maybe its being a Canadian-Irish joint venture counts for the absence of inspiration-porn style hype, or maybe because I didn't know the story of folk artistMaud Lewis so my brain wasn't prompted by rising music toward an expected crypoint or anything of that sort Maud's disability, while a challenge to her family's struggle to be and stay respectable, somewhat pales compared to a teenaged indiscretion that left her pregnant out of wedlock years before the story opens.(unique enough to find a movie that starts with a disabled woman, instead of someone giving bad news to her parents.)

.Both British actress Sally Hawkins, who played Maudie, and Ethan Hawke, playing against his image as her husband with his scars on the inside, delivered strong, if patently unromantic performances.(You might not like their relationship at first...he can be rough on her, but over time, I came to believe he does it more because he doesn't trust anyone to stay around, given his lack of attachment growing up...this made me feel more sympathy, but viewers' mileage may vary on that.)

Disability, while presented as an undeniable fact in Maud's life, made obvious as she struggles to walk long distances or do household chores without modern conveniences, is not a foe for Maudie to fight, any more than her artistic talents are presented as anything more than a sort of...side-hustle that interrupts an endless round of mundane chores. I find this viewpoint, on one hand, admirable and grounding, but also slightly disappointing because nothing Sets Maud Free or transforms her life.  Maudie would probably be surprised, much like the heroine of "A Patch of Blue" that anyone thinks her life awful enough to yearn for a transformation, anyway.Read more about Maud(and see some art)

Phone Follies...

Calling again today for Florida's Amendment 4, which will, hopefully, reinfranchise over a million Floridians. People are not picking up as they had earlier in the cycle, but one South Asian man was rude about my accent, which stung a bit as he took some time to get specific. On one hand, though, I get it...he is probably in the epicenter of bitching about Indian voices on customer service lines and the like...maybe he's waited half his life to say that to someone from the dominant culture(at least, allegedly) and I blundered right in. Once the insult subsided, it reminded me of when my mom got in a car accident with a dude on a motorbike and my name was on the paperwork.
The adjuster would call me all the time, trying to psych me out about how injured the guy was, and how he had a kid, and, you know...try to get me to admit something or something like that.(Which I couldn't have even done, even if it wouldn't have been both stupid and self-demolishing...I wasn't there.) Anyway, Justin The Adjuster wasn't great at research or something, because his final gotcha was something like "Ms. JaNECKE, you don't understand...this poor man's *life's* been affected...he can barely hop."
I  wanted to tell him that would have been an upgrade for me, especially once I found out that I didn't have enough coverage to get the lift fixed(My policy on current van does...the more you know!) but I'm not sure I had the guts to say it in real life.I was a very different Crip in 2001.
If I did, I'm not sure he would have believed me, because , you know, aren't there *places* for people like that? And I made sense on the phone...surely that means I can get around, right?
Ironies aside, I feel good about this part of my work, but there were some problems. To wit:
-Restoration sounds like "registration" enough that I'm sure I said it wrong a number of times.
-Sometimes those electronic dialling programs aren't All That.
-it can be difficult to cut through 150 years of voting history in the 40 seconds the average busy American gives you before deciding if you are a pain in her ass or not. Especially if you are really trying to project and sound warm and all that, at the same time that you don't want to sound like you are selling them something.

In Which I Make A Successful Pitch...

and will be attempting to write a blog post about Vote By Mail, specifically my state's PEVL, which I love, for @RootedInRights call for posts about disability and voting...it will be due close to the end of the month, and I almost talked myself out of trying something for possibly the millionth time. I decided to follow the Olbermann-Starbucks Cup advice and not do the naysayers' job for them, which worked at least partially as advertised.

Can't really call this a revolution in thinking, exactly, though because one thing I've learned from freelance writing is that people tell you "No," a hell of a lot, and that there doesn't seem to be much rhyme and reason for why. but for today, it's Talent 1 Low Self Esteem Demons 0.

Bohemian Crip Endorses...

Not that I'm like Obama, but if any Arizona members of Disability Nation want to know what I'm thinking about races and stuff, feel free to read it here.
_Definitely all in for David Garcia for governor not only because of his background in education, his take on choice(trust women), but because he has never given an interview wanting to "phase out" Medicaid  and Ducey has. Also, I don't see David getting invited to the Koch Compound in Palm Springs. Would really hate to see some of the racist framing against him win again too.

-January Contreras looks like our state's  best shot at criminal-justice reform, which I am excited about, but mainly I find her a good choice because, unlike Brnovich, she would not be a party to lawsuits that would wreck #ACA and pre-existing condition protections.Very important topics to your Bohemian Crip.

- The Sinema thing is the biggest saga, emotionally. Because I've gone from unreserved fangirl to almost total detractor, but I don't think either one is very healthy. I've finally gotten over thinking I'm inferior for lacking her polish and bursting CV, and I really do wish the Iraq war protestor would show up for the party a bit more often...Still, I'd rather deal with her depressing bipartisan fetish, than someone with her  knives out for our benefits like McSally(whose repellent lies about Kyrsten's background make me feel better about Sinema.

Anita Malik all the way over Schewikert.

Still haven't totally decided on the mayor's race. Valenzuela may have more heart-string appeal for me, but Gallego may have a better grasp on what the job entails.  Thoughts, anyone?

a "miracle" at 45...

Between one thing and another, I never imagined I'd be this age...kind of at the same time that I thought that one lucky break could catapult me into Trend Piece America, with its fads and vague jobs in media. I'm not sure if anyone ever got to live that story(Helen Gurley Brown, maybe) but I didn't, because my birthday is also literally an accident anniversary--as the years mount, I think maybe it's weird that I've always been so anticipatory of it(although these reflections aren't really about the size of the number...29 was actually the hardest to cope with so far because whenever I gave the digit anywhere, NOBODY believed me and thought I was being Coy Lady Who Doesn't like to Give Her Age, which is, you know, the opposite of what I'm about, but also, not sure why this is a thing.  I think your favorite movie might give you away one day anyway.(Too much John Hughes and I don't want an instagram...don't think I could sell 29 now!)  But that actually happened with a cop when I was a witness to a fender bender that year...not like I tried to work up angst about it, but turning thirty was actually a huge relief and, thankfully, no longer funny to anyone.

Maybe 45 will be like that, too. I already am glad to be experiencing so much political and disability solidarity.  I know what "we" are going to do for the next year or so, but as "me", I feel a little lost. i might decide what to do with "Somebody",but I ran out of big plans when "When I graduate. I am SO GONE" didn't happen or when nobody(mostly...there were a few exceptions) printed my attempts to write like an able-bodied person to show that I had Range(TM) Some of them were cute--I've found printouts in my dresser...thanks, Mom, but I guess I can see now why Perry White's heart didn't stop for those confections of airy wordplay wrapped around decidedly softball interviews with the occasional speck of insight that I usually didn't follow up.I wish somebody could have said the right thing to push me past all that, instead of marvelling that I was anywhere at all.

I almost died when I was born...my parents, on those few occasions when they talk about it, called my survival a miracle, but I think that made me think that there would be a point to all this somewhere, maybe even that somebody would say"Wow, lucky thing we know that girl who had oxygen loss to her brain!" or that I would have the kind of disabled life that makes it seem like mobility is for suckers...SPOILER ALERT: Nothing like this happened.  Unfortunately.  And I've never been to England, but I've driven through Oklahoma.

I wrote an op-ed...

Which I hope will appear in "a slightly different form" in our local newspaper.

I’m a published writer, but lately the little I’ve been writing all contains the phrase”as a disabled person, I…”which is hardly a phrase that would gain me fame or fortune. Historically, we’ve had things decided for us without a place at the table.That’s why I must urge Jeff Flake, as my elected representative in the Senate,  to consider the brilliant testimony of disability advocate Liz Weintraub. A vote for Kavenaugh is a vote against my bodily autonomy and self-determination, whether overtly, such as deciding that someone else should make my healthcare decisions, or in more of a slow-motion manner by undermining mechanisms, such as Medicaid, that provide healthcare in the first place.

Judge Kavenaugh has shown that he does not care about the rights that so many people(including  myself in some small ways) have fought so hard for, to live and work in our communities and stay in our homes: to be full members of our families and full and equal citizens. More than lesser concerns about secrecy and the hidden elements of Kavenaugh’s life and record(such as the mysterious benefactor who paid back all he owed for buying baseball tickets…may student-loan borrowers be so fortunate one day), lack of respect for my personhood as a disabled American woman has thrust me into this fight.

I understand that the odds are long, that a lot of shadowy people with deep pockets are really hoping people like me tear our hair out for sixty days. I also understand that, as someone whose upcoming birthday is something of an accident anniversary, my whole life has  been based around facing and surpassing long odds, even if I’ve never “overcome” my impairment in the classic sense. Maybe we can defend our nation the way we defended ACA…it seems like life-and-death to me, a humble activist and ink-stained wretch…shouldn’t it to my Senator too?

quick update...

Sorry, all, that it's been so long since the Bohemian Crip checked in. I had to put on my activist hat for a while, though I'm not sure I ever fully take it off now, and a few of the books i've read thinking they would make awesome posts seem less than crucial reading for perilous times, although I may revisit them.
--If you haven't called your Senators to oppose Kavenaugh, please do.(202) 224-3121
- Fitting in my writing around other stuff...fictionalizing an old 'nemesis" at Washington Post.

Elizabeth Warren spoke to our group this week...

about hernew bill to clean up Washington. The effects are varied to sum up here, but making policy to enrich oneself, as with the tax cuts, came in for some scrutiny, as did some members' stock trades.  One thing I appreciate about being a volunteer forProgressive Democrats Of America is that volunteers get to hear the same things as paid staff. Because it's an election year, she answered a messaging question in her no-nonsense style.  "Pick one or two things you want to talk about and talk about them all the time."
She chose "Every Republican voted against protecting people with pre-existing conditions." and that the amount of the tax cut could have paid the country's student debt.

Stop Running Your E-Books Through Spell-Check And Calling It Good...

Maybe I'm a little more  sensitive about this as I'm hoping to write the Query Letter that Will Change My Life(TM) at a time when I have to fight a million other writers for a busy agent's time and every part of the process tends to remind me how disposable I am, but:
-a "complement" and a "compliment" are not the same, even though, if you have a spouse, she probably likes both.
"discrete" is not "discreet"
Don't even get me started on the dude with the legal thriller who depicted someone as "waiving her arms frantically"(I've heard a good  legal team *can* cost an arm and a leg, but I wasn't sure anyone meant it literally!)Yes, it's a word so the computer won't spot it, but it's the wrong word, so it makes you picture the wrong things.  Spend money for copy-edits or make your mom read it...get some human eyeballs on it.

This post is not about straws...

but if you are able-bodied and want to know why so many are, recently, read this reporting from S.E. Smithhere. It provides a good summary of the issues raised.

Sometimes the atrocities come so thick and fast that even a committed blogger can't keep up. Earlier in the week, I was all pleased for coming up with a post title "Meghan McCain And The Mystery of My Last Damn Nerve" over one of her nationally-televised tantrums, but really? Is anyone surprised that Meghan is a spoiled ass?I've written about her before anyway, and the only thing that I can say for the better is that she is using make-up colors that don't remind me of Miss Piggy. Oh, and every  time she complains, she makes socialism look really good!  If I were really gracious, I'd probably owe her a fruit basket, but she could buy her own orchard, so I doubt that I would really bother.(Maybe if DSA does actually reach 50,000 members this summer.)

Words, despite being my most potent tools, do not seem enough to address the climate crisis or the state-sanctioned child abuse at the border(Although I did meet some nice cricket farmers on twitter this week...we bonded over a shared disgust for Jeff Flake and they pitched me on their cookies.  If I try one, I'll blog about it. Mixing it in batter makes me feel less squeamish than, say, a cricket-salad sandwich, but that is not zero squeamish.