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  These highlights of Ginsburg's decisions and dissents on the SCOTUS are a joy to read. I used two sources, and decided to keep the overlap. Many highlight the reason she was affectionately known as the Notorious RBG. United States v. Virginia , 1996 In United States v. Virginia,   Ginsburg  wrote the majority opinion that would serve as a milestone moment for women’s rights and university admission policies. The case challenged a policy by the Virginia Military Institute that barred women from being admitted to the institution. Although the state of Virginia said it would create a separate educational program for women for the military institute, Ginsburg questioned its merits, writing that “Women seeking and fit for a VMI-quality education cannot be offered anything less, under the Commonwealth’s obligation to afford them genuinely equal protection.” “Neither federal nor state government acts compatibly with equal protection when a law or official policy denies t...

The 2015 Pan Am Games and Parapan Am Games were held in Toronto and the GTA this summer. Although I regard these events as a ridiculous waste of money, a very bad deal for residents of the host cities, there was one very bright upside for me: the opportunity to see some disability sports, nearby and at a very high level of play. Mississauga hosted wheelchair rugby and goalball. I saw goalball at the 1996 Paralympics in Atlanta, and it is a unique and thrilling sport, played by blind athletes. Wheelchair rugby is irresistible, as millions have discovered through the excellent documentary "Murderball" . I couldn't get to goalball, but I snagged good seats to the wheelchair rugby finals, which eventually sold out. I went with a friend who had never seen - or even thought about - wheelchair sports before. When we got to the arena, we learned that the gold medal game was between the US and Canada, the same teams that face off in Murderball. Bronze medal game: Colombia vs. Braz...

One of our regular Readers' Den customers approached me with her usual long list of movies. She researches movies online, prints out lists, and comes to the desk to see what we have in our collection. Anything we have, we place on hold for her. She's a great customer, in terms of library use. She has an intellectual disability, and sometimes helping her can be a bit of a challenge.  This customer talks very fast, and a little too loudly. While you're searching for one item, she's rattling off the next few, so after placing each hold, you must ask her to repeat the next title. Because she's reading from a list, the effect is a constant stream of chatter, from which you must pick out the movie titles. After we had exhausted her movie list, she asked, "Is there a way I can do this myself, put on holds, from home?" I know she uses a computer to research movies, and I know she checks her library account online to see which holds are available. I told her, yes, ...

It's so hard to talk when you want to kill yourself. That's the first line of Ned Vizzini's excellent 2006 youth novel, It's Kind of a Funny Story . By the time I read the book this year, the author was already dead. Vizzini committed suicide last December; he was only 32 years old. Those facts alone are tragic. But now that I've read this book, I find Vizzini's death even sadder. On some level, I chide myself for that: every person's life is of equal value, and every early death is a loss. But we feel the way we feel, and Vizzini's suicide feels, to me, inexpressibly sad, a monumental loss. Vizzini wrote youth fiction in a natural, straightforward voice, with deep insight and wry humour. It's Kind of a Funny Story is a slightly fictionalized account of the onset of the author's depression as a teenager, and the five days he spent in the psychiatric unit of a hospital in Brooklyn, New York. It's a funny book, often poignant, sometimes very ...

I am in the middle of reading The Fault In Our Stars by John Green, a book almost too painful to read but impossible to put down. It's achingly funny, profoundly insightful, and utterly heartbreaking, all at the same time. The Fault In Our Stars is supposedly a youth novel, but please don't let that stop you from reading it. It is simply a wonderful book. Hazel has cancer, and her life expectancy is short. Augustus is a cancer survivor, and has the prosthetic leg to prove it. Hazel and Augustus, two smart, funny, and otherwise ordinary teenagers, fall in love. How do you cope with cancer as a teenager? How do you cope with love when you have cancer? How do we humans love when we know that our loved one will one day die? Why are we so helpless when our loved ones are in pain? Hazel and Augustus live through all the universal questions of love and loss, and all the universal questions of adolesence, all at once, and with a pronounced urgency. If that sounds sad, it is. But it...

I was in the middle of writing a post about my plan to get back into an exercise routine... when I broke my foot. Doing almost nothing. Walking along in the mall, on my way to get my hair cut and then go to work, my ankle turned over sharply. I was horrified, thinking it was yet another ankle sprain. But no... turns out it's a three-part fracture in my foot. I was worried at first: if I could break a bone just by walking, is there a problem with my bone density? Are my bones becoming fragile? But I've learned that fractured foot bones are very common among people who have a history of ankle injuries. Every time your ankle turns over, a ligament pulls at those small, friable bones in your foot, weakening them. This was an accident waiting to happen. I was very sad and frustrated at my ruined plans to be more physically active. But before long, those feelings were replaced with relief that this happened after our trip to Spain and not before. I'm in a walking cast, like a sk...

This is the final post of my notes from the 2012 Marxism Conference. This was the first Marxism conference to include a talk on disability, an exciting development full of potential. I wanted to blog about it in great detail. A friend was recording the talk, so I stopped taking detailed notes... and then the audio didn't come out. Melissa Graham was kind enough to give me her notes, but the others didn't have anything written to share. What follows, then, is the general idea. What does disability have to do with capitalism and socialism? Where do disability and socialism intersect, how do they relate to each other? * * * * From Each According to Their Ability: the Role of Socialists in Disability Movement May 25, 2012 Melissa Graham, Michele Macaulay, Patricia Reilly Melissa Graham Member of IS Canada, Social Worker, Disability Rights Activist, Wheelchair User Melissa began by praising Marxism 2012 for being the first of the annual conferences to include a talk on disability, b...

Back in May, I blogged about a family in my area who faced a nightmare: social services had threated to remove their child from their home. Both parents have disabilities, and although they had proved themselves completely capable of taking care of a baby, Children's Aid said they must hire round-the-clock assistance, or the family could not stay together. When the story came to light, there was a huge outcry, not only from the disability community but from the general public, too. Children's Aid backed down, and, according to this follow-up story , has become their support and their ally. Today, because reason won out over prejudice, the family celebrates its first Christmas together . I wish them a beautiful day.

Oscar Pistorius' historic run as the first double-amputee Olympic athlete has revived the ongoing discussion of whether or not the Paralympics should be integrated into the Olympics. (Stories in The Guardian , Slate , and on CBC's The Current .) Integration sounds like a great idea, and on the surface, the fierce opposition of many athletes with disabilities may seem purely self-interested. The issues, however, are far more complicated than most mainstream media is willing to take on. I wrote about this issue when I covered the Atlanta Paralympics in 1996, and I thought some readers might be interested. I uploaded one story through Google - Change, Growth and Exclusion: A Paralympic Identity Crisis - and a second story I found archived on the New Mobility website: Where are the Paralympics going? Both are written from the perspective of athletes with disabilities.

Friends, if this post sounds like a conversation we've had, please don't take it personally. I've had the same or similar conversations with many people. This is a subject that seems to arise periodically - here, on Allan's blog, on Facebook, in any forum I frequent. That's why I thought it was time to gather my thoughts and put them in a post. The conversation is about the illness known as depression - also called clinical depression - and the treatment of that illness with anti-depressant medications. Every so often, an athlete or an artist will go public about their struggles with depression, or a new study about either the good or evil of anti-depressants will appear, and I find myself having this familiar conversation. Often, I agree with many of the arguments, but disagree with the conclusion. I don't use anti-depressants myself, but many people I love do. I've seen anti-depressants, especially the class of drugs known as Selective Serotonin Re-uptake ...

This story makes me so angry and frustrated. I can only imagine how the parents feel! I've reached out to some activists I know who are people with disabilities for suggestions on how we can support this family. A disabled couple in Mississauga are fighting to keep their newborn son after social workers threatened to take the boy away unless he receives round-the-clock care from an “able-bodied attendant.” Maricyl Palisoc and her partner, Charles Wilton, are the parents of a healthy month-old baby boy named William. Both parents have cerebral palsy, a disorder that limits their motor skills and slurs their speech, but has no effect on their cognitive abilities. However, the Peel Children’s Aid Society is concerned about the couple’s ability to take care of their son and has expressed an intention to remove William from their home unless his parents secure 24-hour care from an able-bodied person. The boy’s mother told CBC that she and her partner do not want to lose their son. ...

In the March issue of New Mobility , I have a cover story about Canadian musician Justin Hines. You can see it here. I wrote this over my winter break - just as the library job came through! Not exactly the restful vacation I was hoping for. Fortunately I had a lot of help; Allan should really have a co-byline on this one. The print edition looks terrific, full of great photos. It was a pleasure to interview Justin, he seems like a terrific guy. I add this to my profiles of interesting Canadians: Chantal Petitclerc , Stephen Fletcher , and the great Alyssa Manning . For those of you who can't get enough of my scintillating prose, I posted this with the Children's and Youth Advocacy group at the iSchool: A View from a Children's Library .

Just another story of more undeserving immigrants trying to sneak into the promised land. This one is a particularly sneaky ploy. Here's how you do it. First, emigrate to Canada, a process that takes a minimum of two years, often twice that or longer. Then, live in Canada long enough to become a citizen, a minimum of three years. Then have a car accident in order to become quadriplegic. Yay, free health care! That was easy! Next, find two family members willing to uproot their lives and start over in a foreign country in order to be serve as your full-time caregivers. Can't you just see them high-fiving? "Whoo-hoo, we're scamming the system, taking care of our quadriplegic cousin!" I suck at this satire stuff. Al Weisel , a/k/a Jon Swift , is sorely missed. All I can say is: Really, Jason Kenney? Really? A Toronto woman paralyzed from the chest down is worried she will be forced back into a nursing home if immigration officials go ahead with plans to deport her co...

On the off chance that I was not the last person in the world to find out about this, I'd like to highlight some stories about Roger Ebert , the famous film critic. Since 2006, Ebert has been unable to eat or speak. His lower jaw and part of his throat were removed during cancer surgery; several complicated surgeries to rebuild his face and vocal cords failed. I'm not sure how I missed this, but no news of Roger Ebert reached my island until this past weekend. Ebert now blogs and has an extremely popular Twitter feed . He writes about politics and social issues, and movies, and culture - and he cooks, and writes about food. Like any really good writer, Ebert can write about nearly anything that interests him and make it a good read. So the man is missing part of his face, and he doesn't eat, and he doesn't speak. What does that mean? How does he live? One can get nourishment through a stomach tube, and many people communicate without verbally speaking . But the mechani...

Ah, the dangers of taking a break from the news and Facebook. I missed the passing of John Callahan, now more than two weeks ago, and only found out inadvertently as we were throwing away an bit of old newspaper Allan picked up somewhere. Callahan, as he was always known, was a cartoonist whose irreverent, sometimes morbid humour laughed at the world of disability, and at the public's response to disability. He was intimately familiar with that world, having lived as quadriplegic since the age of 21. Callahan was an alcoholic, and an adoptee, and I think he was deeply compassionate in a way that many people could not understand. I constantly think of the line that he used for the title of his autobiography: " Don't worry, he won't get far on foot. " His humour wasn't the pablum of "laughter is the best medicine," nor was it the trite self-deprecation of identity-standup. He just wasn't afraid to find humour in everything, and he didn't think ...

Other than repeating WTF WTF WTF over and over, I post this without comment. US school for disabled forces students to wear packs that deliver massive electric shocks Mental Disability Rights International (MDRI) has filed a report and urgent appeal with the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture alleging that the Judge Rotenberg Center for the disabled, located in Massachusetts, violates the UN Convention against Torture. The rights group submitted their report this week, titled "Torture not Treatment: Electric Shock and Long-Term Restraint in the United States on Children and Adults with Disabilities at the Judge Rotenberg Center," after an in-depth investigation revealed use of restraint boards, isolation, food deprivation and electric shocks in efforts to control the behaviors of its disabled and emotionally troubled students. Findings in the MDRI report include the center's practice of subjecting children to electric shocks on the legs, arms, soles of feet and...

I love the Paralympics! For me, this is the real Olympics - amateur athletes, ordinary people who compete because their talents and drive compels them to. Inevitably, some of the problems I have with the Olympics have crept into the Paralympic Games, but to much lesser and more tolerable degree. Shortly after we moved to Canada, I watched much of the Torino Olympics, and first learned that "Olympics" in Canada means the winter Games. It was also my first live exposure to a country that understands the Paralympics as great sport, not a giant pity party. I had always heard from athletes that this was the case in Canada, Australia, Germany, Japan, and other countries, but seeing it for myself was very exciting. (Another thing I discovered during those games: Newfoundland! It was the advertising blitz during Torino that eventually led to our trip to The Rock in 2008.) At the 2006 closing ceremonies, I was awed to see Sam Sullivan, then mayor of Vancouver, wave the Maple Leaf. I ...

I don't know the back story to this, but I love it. I like it so much, I'm breaking my usual shunning of all things Palin to post it. Andrea Fay Friedman, the voice actress who played the role of "Ellen" -- the character depicted as having Down syndrome on the Valentine's Day episode of Family Guy, has responded to the criticism of sometime-Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. Of special significance, Friedman herself has Down syndrome. Palingates has Friedman's complete response: My name is Andrea Fay Friedman. I was born with Down syndrome. I played the role of Ellen on the "Extra Large Medium" episode of Family Guy that was broadcast on Valentine's day. Although they gave me red hair on the show, I am really a blonde. I also wore a red wig for my role in "Smudge" but I was a blonde in "Life Goes On". I guess former Governor Palin does not have a sense of humor. I thought the line "I am the daughter of the former governo...

Do you need any more proof that "security theatre" - the appearance of increased security measures, which do nothing to make us safer - is out of control? That airport security and border control are merely opportunities for power-mad brownshirts to have fun at our expense? Philadelphia TSA screeners forced the developmentally delayed, four-year-old son of a Camden, PA police officer to remove his leg-braces and wobble through a checkpoint, despite the fact that their procedure calls for such a case to be handled through a swabbing in a private room. When the police officer complained, the supervising TSA screener turned around and walked away. Then a Philadelphia police officer asked what was wrong and "suggested he calm down and enjoy his vacation." Ryan was taking his first flight, to Walt Disney World, for his fourth birthday. The boy is developmentally delayed, one of the effects of being born 16 weeks prematurely. His ankles are malformed and his legs have lo...

Many people think it would be terrible to need a wheelchair. But when you know a lot of people who use wheelchairs, it's just another way of getting around. This is not to say that losing the use of your legs would be easy, or wouldn't be traumatic. And of course a permanent disability is a completely life-changing event. But wheelchairs are an everyday fact of life for millions of people, and often a completely unremarkable fact of life. But imagine needing a wheelchair and not having one. Now that would be horrible. People all over the world face that confinement and dependence. And I know someone who's doing something about it. * * * * A couple of years ago, I wrote a story for Kids On Wheels magazine about young people with disabilities who are activists. I didn't intend to focus only on disability-related activism, and I have no doubt that there are kids with disabilities active in the environmental movement, in politics, in animal welfare, what have you. But my ...