From Australia ... from the USA ... from India ... from New Zealand ... from Fiji ... from the Philippines ...
Writers and bloggers from around the world joined together to help celebrate and promote the first legally binding international human rights instrument to protect the rights of people with disabilities -- the international disability rights treaty, called the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD).
They celebrated by writing blog posts for the RatifyNow CRPD Blog Swarm 2008, which can now be read here.
What did they write about? Some of the topics include ...
... The story of one advocate who watched the birth of the CRPD among grassroots advocates with disabilities and others in the 1990s ...
... How the CRPD could deliver new hope for people in India with mental disabilities ...
... How the CRPD represents an evolution from the charity/medical model of disability to the social or human rights-based model ...
... How the CRPD could make travel go a little more smoothly for tourists with disabilities ...
... Why the CRPD matters for people who use personal assistance services or who are seeking the freedom to explore their own sexual expression ...
... An allegorical tale about farmers, spoons, and plows: Why the CRPD is well worth celebrating and why our work isn't done just because the CRPD is about to take full legal force ...
... And more ...
All at the RatifyNow CRPD Blog Swarm 2008, and all available by following this link
Celebrate and learn about the CRPD through the RatifyNow CRPD Blog Swarm 2008.
Saturday, March 29, 2008
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Secret Pleasures
Watching somebody actually get a ticket for illegally parking on the blue hatched lines next to a handicapped parking spot, effectively blocking the PWD owner of the van legally parked in the handicapped parking spot from using the van's wheelchair lift AND blocking the only ramp the PWD could use to get off the apartment sidewalk to walk to campus.
We won't tell him who called the cops on him.
We won't tell him who called the cops on him.
Friday, March 7, 2008
1888 photo depicts Helen Keller, teacher
One of my favorite books around the age of 10 was a paperback about the life of Helen Keller. I don't remember how I came to have the book, but I do remember that I devoured it in a very few days -- partly because I was an avid reader as a child, and partly because Helen's story fascinated me.
I taught myself how to sign the alphabet using pictures in the back of the book, and I taught that aphabet to my sister. We used to drive our brother nuts finger-spelling to each other. That skill (finger-spelling, not driving my brother crazy) came in handy on at least two occasions:
1. When I was in the fifth or sixth grade, a girl who was nearly completely deaf started riding my school bus. Because I could finger-spell, I could still talk with her while learning to sign.
2. At 13, I had rods put on my spine to correct scoliosis. After the surgery, I was still on the respirator for a few days -- so I wasn't able to talk. I communicated in simple signs most of the time (twirling my hand in a circle to indicate I wanted to roll over, miming giving an injection to request pain meds), but at night there was a male nurse who knew ASL. I was able to convey more complex ideas/requests to him with a combination of signs I'd learned from Kim and finger-spelling.
1888 photo depicts Helen Keller, teacher
By MELISSA TRUJILLO, Associated Press Writer
BOSTON - Researchers have uncovered a rare photograph of a young Helen Keller with her teacher Anne Sullivan, nearly 120 years after it was taken on Cape Cod. The photograph, shot in July 1888 in Brewster, shows an 8-year-old Helen sitting outside in a light-colored dress, holding Sullivan's hand and cradling one of her beloved dolls.
Experts on Keller's life believe it could be the earliest photo of the two women together and the only one showing the blind and deaf child with a doll — the first word Sullivan spelled for Keller after they met in 1887 — according to the New England Historic Genealogical Society, which now has the photo.
"It's really one of the best images I've seen in a long, long time," said Helen Selsdon, an archivist at the American Foundation for the Blind, where Keller worked for more than 40 years. "This is just a huge visual addition to the history of Helen and Annie."
For more than a century, the photograph has belonged to the family of Thaxter Spencer, an 87-year-old man in Waltham.
Spencer's mother, Hope Thaxter Parks, often stayed at the Elijah Cobb House on Cape Cod during the summer as a child. In July 1888, she played with Keller, whose family had traveled from Tuscumbia, Ala., to vacation in Massachusetts.
Spencer, who doesn't know which of his relatives took the picture, told the society that his mother, four years younger than Helen, remembered Helen exploring her face with her hands.
In June, Spencer donated a large collection of photo albums, letters, diaries and other heirlooms to the genealogical society, which preserves artifacts from New England families for future research.
"I never thought much about it," Spencer said in a statement released by the society. "It just seemed like something no one would find very interesting." Spencer has recently been hospitalized and could not be reached for comment.
It wasn't until recently that staff at the society realized the photograph's significance. Advocates for the blind say they had never heard of it, though after they announced its discovery Wednesday they learned it had published in 1987 in a magazine on Cape Cod and a half-century earlier in The Boston Globe. It is unclear whether there was more than one copy of the photograph.
D. Brenton Simons, the society's president and CEO, said the photograph offers a glimpse of what was a very important time in Keller's life.
Sullivan was hired in 1887 to teach Keller, who had been left blind and deaf after an illness at the age of 1 1/2. With her new teacher, Keller learned language from words spelled manually into her hand. Not quite 7, the girl went from an angry, frustrated child without a way to communicate to an eager scholar.
While "doll" was the first word spelled into her hand, Helen finally comprehended the meaning of language a few weeks later with the word "water," as famously depicted in the film "The Miracle Worker." Sullivan stayed at her side until her death in 1936, and Keller became a world-famous author and humanitarian. She died in 1968.
Jan Seymour-Ford, a research librarian at the Perkins School for the Blind in Watertown, which both Sullivan and Keller attended, said she was moved to see how deeply connected the women were, even in 1888.
"The way Anne is gazing so intently at Helen, I think it's a beautiful portrait of the devotion that lasted between these two women all of Anne's life," Seymour-Ford said.
Selsdon said the photograph is valuable because it shows many elements of Keller's childhood: that devotion, Sullivan's push to teach Helen outdoors and Helen's attachment to her baby dolls, one of which was given to her upon Sullivan's arrival as her teacher.
"It's a beautiful composition," she said. "It's not even the individual elements. It's the fact that it has all of the components."
I taught myself how to sign the alphabet using pictures in the back of the book, and I taught that aphabet to my sister. We used to drive our brother nuts finger-spelling to each other. That skill (finger-spelling, not driving my brother crazy) came in handy on at least two occasions:
1. When I was in the fifth or sixth grade, a girl who was nearly completely deaf started riding my school bus. Because I could finger-spell, I could still talk with her while learning to sign.
2. At 13, I had rods put on my spine to correct scoliosis. After the surgery, I was still on the respirator for a few days -- so I wasn't able to talk. I communicated in simple signs most of the time (twirling my hand in a circle to indicate I wanted to roll over, miming giving an injection to request pain meds), but at night there was a male nurse who knew ASL. I was able to convey more complex ideas/requests to him with a combination of signs I'd learned from Kim and finger-spelling.
1888 photo depicts Helen Keller, teacherBy MELISSA TRUJILLO, Associated Press Writer
BOSTON - Researchers have uncovered a rare photograph of a young Helen Keller with her teacher Anne Sullivan, nearly 120 years after it was taken on Cape Cod. The photograph, shot in July 1888 in Brewster, shows an 8-year-old Helen sitting outside in a light-colored dress, holding Sullivan's hand and cradling one of her beloved dolls.
Experts on Keller's life believe it could be the earliest photo of the two women together and the only one showing the blind and deaf child with a doll — the first word Sullivan spelled for Keller after they met in 1887 — according to the New England Historic Genealogical Society, which now has the photo.
"It's really one of the best images I've seen in a long, long time," said Helen Selsdon, an archivist at the American Foundation for the Blind, where Keller worked for more than 40 years. "This is just a huge visual addition to the history of Helen and Annie."
For more than a century, the photograph has belonged to the family of Thaxter Spencer, an 87-year-old man in Waltham.
Spencer's mother, Hope Thaxter Parks, often stayed at the Elijah Cobb House on Cape Cod during the summer as a child. In July 1888, she played with Keller, whose family had traveled from Tuscumbia, Ala., to vacation in Massachusetts.
Spencer, who doesn't know which of his relatives took the picture, told the society that his mother, four years younger than Helen, remembered Helen exploring her face with her hands.
In June, Spencer donated a large collection of photo albums, letters, diaries and other heirlooms to the genealogical society, which preserves artifacts from New England families for future research.
"I never thought much about it," Spencer said in a statement released by the society. "It just seemed like something no one would find very interesting." Spencer has recently been hospitalized and could not be reached for comment.
It wasn't until recently that staff at the society realized the photograph's significance. Advocates for the blind say they had never heard of it, though after they announced its discovery Wednesday they learned it had published in 1987 in a magazine on Cape Cod and a half-century earlier in The Boston Globe. It is unclear whether there was more than one copy of the photograph.
D. Brenton Simons, the society's president and CEO, said the photograph offers a glimpse of what was a very important time in Keller's life.
Sullivan was hired in 1887 to teach Keller, who had been left blind and deaf after an illness at the age of 1 1/2. With her new teacher, Keller learned language from words spelled manually into her hand. Not quite 7, the girl went from an angry, frustrated child without a way to communicate to an eager scholar.
While "doll" was the first word spelled into her hand, Helen finally comprehended the meaning of language a few weeks later with the word "water," as famously depicted in the film "The Miracle Worker." Sullivan stayed at her side until her death in 1936, and Keller became a world-famous author and humanitarian. She died in 1968.
Jan Seymour-Ford, a research librarian at the Perkins School for the Blind in Watertown, which both Sullivan and Keller attended, said she was moved to see how deeply connected the women were, even in 1888.
"The way Anne is gazing so intently at Helen, I think it's a beautiful portrait of the devotion that lasted between these two women all of Anne's life," Seymour-Ford said.
Selsdon said the photograph is valuable because it shows many elements of Keller's childhood: that devotion, Sullivan's push to teach Helen outdoors and Helen's attachment to her baby dolls, one of which was given to her upon Sullivan's arrival as her teacher.
"It's a beautiful composition," she said. "It's not even the individual elements. It's the fact that it has all of the components."
Sunday, March 2, 2008
Disability related? Not exactly.
But this little guy will grow up not thinking that a PWD is weird or scary. I'll just be Aunty Dawn, and he'll be my booger butt.
My "nephew" Cylis. Photo taken 16 January at almost three months old.
My "nephew" Cylis. Photo taken 16 January at almost three months old.
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