As I sit here today...

-Our national appetite for gun violence(and elected officials' inaction) have  claimed more lives, this time at a local newspaper in Annapolis, MD. Recent years have been some of the most dangerous for reporters in history--show your local paper some love...

-Jeff Flake still remains a disappointing cowardly   Senator who gets a lot of credit for making the right noises that he does not deserve...counting days till he scurries back up North, perfect smile and all.

-And the thing I was planning to write  today...if you like documentaries, and/or disability rep matters to you, rent "Dealt". It is a documentary of an exceptional person that does exceptional things, but in the reversal of the established trope, his life begins to get better when he stops letting "never let it hold him back,", uh, hold him back.  Also, fascinating to see someone who took Jim Garner's "Maverick" as a role model."Leverage" fans might especially like his dissection of card illusions.

A Civil Plea For Radical Incivility...

On some level, I've always had a problem with manners.  Not that I think it's wrong to thank people when they help you out and things like that, although I have had some lapses, more from exuberance than coarseness.But manners have also meant that I have to be patient with Products of Their Time(TM) saying hideous things in front of me because the wheelchair means I don't understand.My whole life, I've been told I  "have to understand" people that do this, that when they were young crips were shut away, and blah blah, so relating to me with courtesy is some kind of insurmountable etiquette challenge.I have learned to accept that people do that, but I still don't understand.  For instance, I don't really understand marriage, being that I've been a girlfriend for a lifetime total of about twelve minutes. But if I went up to some old couple and said, under  the guise of "curiosity" or "trying to learn" and said "Hey, how long after you got together did you start  letting yourself go?", they'd treat me like I was rude, and I would deserve it.(or worse, they could treat me as a non-threatening repository for their secrets and tell me---I get that a lot, too.)



We face a crisis in our national moment.  This is a disturbing realization, which might make it easy to be comforted by pattern and ritual.  We have to resist this impulse, especially since the institutions, and the highly-paid spokespeople doing all the tsking, are not doing their jobs right now(Maybe they've never done what we needed, but let's take time to ponder that on another day.) Definitely vote and step up your volunteer commitments.  Give up a creature comfort or two to donate--it helps a worthy cause, and, as a secondary benefit, allows you to step off the hamster wheel of acquisition for a bit.(Some of you can do one of these things, some can do both...mileage may vary. We all need to do what we can while we can. But if you have a word or two for Mitch McConnell in whatever despotic Cracker Barrel the traditional Supreme Court-seat-stealing bastard likes his cream gravy from, know that  I'm here in the desert cheering you on(try not to physically hurt him, even though  turtles tend to live forever.) Give Meghan McCain the "View" from the ground--some exposure to the little people and our problems is vastly overdue. Let's not just slip gently into a fascist state...our forebears are fighters and radicals...let's pretend that Glinda, the Democratic Socialist Good Witch, showed up in her pink dress with the red roses on it(or maybe it's red white and blue) and tells us the power was in us all along--let's fucking click our heels together, shall we?

Nothing Ventured...

Made some comparatively long-shot submissions that might have been inconceivable when I was trying my hardest to show my range by not writing about disability topics.(I've looked over a printed cache of those articles recently, and there are bright spots about them: decent quotes or quips and whatever, but they were almost determinedly non-consequential attempts to erase my real life and history and remake myself as the local version as a trend -story yuppette, or "Just Shoot Me" cast member.
 It was hard for me to see at the time because the submission/ pitch process took so much from me every time, but now I can see that it would be better to have worked hard on one piece that really mattered, versus six pieces of glittery, nothing bullshit that came from what I saw on other media.
(Yes, I really wanted to be one of those women, and not what I really was.  Especially then.)
Even though I like my stories, I do think they are long shots, because one is to Mystery Magazine Everyone Wants In(Not their name, obvs) and a disability anthology out of Canada. 
I'm still not Canadian, as much as I might wish sometimes. 

I had a brief e-mail conversation...

While a plan for a full interview didn't come to full fruition, I did have a brief  e-mail conversation with publisher  Lisa McCormick following her unexpectedly robust showing against embattled two-term Senator  Bob Menendez.  McCormick is eyeing a 2020 Senate run, and expressed intentions to "push the Senator to adopt a progressive platform" which I hope will still include increased options for New Jerseyans with disabilities.
Donate to Lisa McCormick here!