Sandra Gail Lambert

Say It.

Alice Wong says "This video is a response to the current political rhetoric around low-income individuals on programs such as Medicaid who are often seen as passive recipients to services rather than people with something to offer. I believe when people are provided basic support services that allow them to live with autonomy and dignity, society is stronger and more vibrant as a result."  Here's her video.

The History of My Van

In 1997, I bought a 1992, already w/c lift-equipped, van.  The man who owned it had died.  His mother sobbed when she handed the keys over.  His sister whispered that the first day he drove it, he came by her house and said "Get in, drunken road trip to the Keys."  And she did.  And off they went. 

And off I've gone.  Many years it's to the Everglades.   Natural disasters have interfered - Hurricane Wilma, my mother's illness, times when my equipment (manual wheelchair to scooter to power chair) hadn't yet caught up to what I needed.  But this year I took along a friend and I managed.  

We kayaked among orchids and crocodiles.  We took long walks past bushes covered in a snow of butterflies.  We (not really me, actually) pulled my chair through the sea wrack thrown up from the Florida Bay.  Rafts of shorebirds flew past us at eye level.  And I wrote.  I wrote with a thrilled satisfaction I've not had in a while. 

The van has 145,000 miles on it now which by my calculations is just a little older than me in my human mileage.  More road trips are in our future.  I can still smell rotting seaweed in the wheelchair's axles.  So, despite my lack of drinking, the best I can, I figure I've been doing right by the spirit of the van.      

   

Lives Worth Living - A Story of the Disability Rights Movement

The opening scene of this trailer, that little half-naked child with under arm crutches and strapped-on braces, could be a picture right out of my family album.  Here's one that actually is.  

Lives Worth Living is an upcoming Independent Lens film about the early disability rights movement.  Here in Gainesville, it first shows on Thursday, October 27th at 10pm on PBS. 

Visitable Housing

 
Visitable housing means you have a basic no-step entrance, doors wide enough, can get into a bathroom home.  When my book is (ever) published and you want me to come to your living room for the book club meeting (or for dinner, or to a party, or to bring a casserole when you're sick) you'll need to have a visitable house. 

Here's a Washington Post article that sums things up nicely.  And here's a link to Concrete Change, an organization run by my old friend Eleanor Smith.  She is the grand pooh bah and founding instigator of all things visitable in the United States. 

T4 by Ann Clare LeZotte

T4 was the name for the Nazi program charged with the killing of disabled children and adults.  Hundreds of thousands of German citizens labeled "useless eaters" were rounded up into hospitals where doctors and nurses starved, poisoned, or gassed them in the first of the fake showers. 

I've known about this.  It's part of my cached pool of nightmare images.  So it makes sense that I was up all night after reading Ann Clare LeZotte's young adult novel in free verse about a German girl of those times who is deaf and hiding from the authorities.  But the novel is lyrical and lovely and healing.  There is no minimizing of the horror, but the girl is young and, as young people will, finds love and adventure and delight even in the hardest of situations. 

Now, here's how I found this book.  I have a friend Mary who lives in the same retirement community that my mother used to live in.  Besides telling tales of each of our wheelchair-using adventures, we always share our current reads.  Mary had just finished this book which had been passed on to her by another resident because the author lives right here in Gainesville. (I've just sent a Facebook friend request to her.) I wrote down the title, ordered it from my public library, and was reading it within the week.  Yay to friends.  Yay to public libraries.  Yay to this world of internet connection.                 

People with Disabilities and Their Aides/Caregivers

On Tuesday a friend was lamenting about how there wasn't much written (in an authentic way) about people with disabilities who use personal care assistants.  She must have called something forth, because in the three days since I've come across the following. 

Eva Sweeney's Beautiful Interdependence, a proposed documentary by a woman who has full time aides to assist her about the relationship between people with disabilities and their caregivers.  Here's her fundraising trailer.    

Another perspective is offered in Swear, the short story in the current Hayden's Ferry Review by Sally Bellerose - a fine, fine writer. 

And I saw an announcement or call for submissions or something about an anthology on this subject.  But I can't track it down.  Does anyone know? 

It's Our Story - Disability Activism

 
Here's Jennifer Keelan's story of the day this iconic photo was taken.  It's just one of the many oral histories of disability activism that the It's Our Story project has gathered. 

Saga of a Wheelchair Repair - Part One

On Saturday my wheelchair stops working.  (I do have a rickety spare).  On Monday I begin my calls.  

8:02am – Call repair shop.  "Sally" (not her real name) says she will send a fax to MD right away to get a RX for wheelchair repair.  She will not set up an appointment until it is signed.  I have done business here for over 20 years.  

8:30am – Call MD's office to give them a heads up about the incoming fax.  They will look for it.

11:10am – Call "Sally" at repair shop back.  They have not received the return faxed RX yet.  

11:12am - Call MD's office back.  They say they have not received the fax from the repair shop. 

11:16am - Call "Sally" at repair shop back.  She says she sent the fax out at 9:10am. She has the correct number.  She says they don't need her fax, that I can just have them send a sheet that says "repair to chair." 

11:19am - Call MD's office again.  Give all my personal info again and the repair shop's fax number and what the RX needs to say.  

1:45pm – Call "Sally" at repair shop.  She says she has not received RX yet.  It's obvious she's tired of my calls. 

1:48pm – Call MD's office and give all the info over again to a new person

2:22pm – MD's office calls and says they had sent the RX before lunch.

2:24pm – I call repair shop back and ask for Lydia.  The person on the phone asks me what it's about.  I say "a wheelchair repair order."  There is hushed talking.  I'm told that they've already received the RX.  I say that's good because when I called a little while ago you couldn't find it.  She hangs up. 

Stay tuned for Part 2 which is no, not getting the wheelchair repaired, but getting an appointment to get the wheelchair repaired. 

Laura Hershey - In Memoriam

I'm in a sort of shock that Laura Hershey - poet, disability activist, essayist, mother, lesbian, beloved of Robin Stephens and so many others - has died.  Here's the first thing I remember reading by her.  I think I still have the button they made from the title. 

You Get Proud by Practicing
by Laura Hershey

If you are not proud
For who you are, for what you say, for how you look;
If every time you stop
To think of yourself, you do not see yourself glowing
With golden light; do not, therefore, give up on yourself.
You can get proud.

You do not need
A better body, a purer spirit, or a Ph.D.
To be proud.
You do not need
A lot of money, a handsome boyfriend, or a nice car.
You do not need
To be able to walk, or see, or hear,
Or use big, complicated words,
Or do any of those things that you just can’t do
To be proud. A caseworker
Cannot make you proud,
Or a doctor.
You only need more practice.
You get proud by practicing.

There are many many ways to get proud.
You can try riding a horse, or skiing on one leg,
Or playing guitar,
And do well or not so well,
And be glad you tried
Either way.
You can show
Something you’ve made
To someone you respect
And be happy with it no matter
What they say.
You can say
What you think, though you know
Other people do not think the same way, and you can
keep saying it, even if they tell you
You are crazy.

Helen Keller On Film!

Author, suffragette, socialist, disability activist, pacifist, and recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom. (And she's responsible for introducing Akita dogs to the United States.)  I'm so glad to lay eyes on her.  

Paragliding

Jessi and I want to do this.  Anyone else?

This is better than Dancing With the Stars

 
Sins Invalid, GIMP Project, Dancing Wheels, DanceAbility - these are the physically integrated dance companies that Jodie Byzek reports on in New Mobility.  Some of these pictures are me, inside my brain, when I'm writing.
 

Deny God Exists. Enter a Quiz Show. Sleep with Footballers. Disability Bitch just wants some good publicity.

Disability Bitch, from her weekly BBC column says - 

"Readers, I'm on a mission. We all know disabled people have been having a hard time in the popular press lately, what with all this talk of benefit fraud and prostitution. We all badly need some decent PR."  

Read the rest for her guidelines on how to achieve this.   

The American With Disabilities Act - 20 Years Old Today

 This civil rights law has changed my life.  But still.  For instance, yesterday, trying to plan for a trip, I called five hotels whose staff told me they had no wheelchair accessible rooms or if they do it is only for their most expensive options.  And it would cost me $125/day to rent an accessible van.  And there is no real accessible public transportation.  And all the "courtesy shuttles" are not accessible.  

I know these are high-faluting problems in the whole range of access issues.  But really, all I want to do is come to your city and spend money.  Lack of access means you lose out economically.   

Arnieville Update

That woman there, narrating this video, is Jean Stewart.  She's the author of The Body's Memory, a novel that since 1989, through all of my book purges/letting goes/passing ons, has held its place on my shelves.  It is dear to me.  When the protagonist makes a list to break down all the steps required to go on an excursion, I still remember thinking "Other people do that too? It's not just me?" To have those parts of me right there on the page, to be part of the written word - it has meant so much.

 
 
 

Beyond Pity

This is the trailer for the It's Our Story Project: Answers From America's Disability Activists.  I was proud and crying by the end. 

And it's just the oral history project's beginning.  One of the sponsors is the Pineda Foundation - an organization that promotes the rights and dignity of young people with disabilities.   

People With Disabilities Fight For Their Lives

A Piece of Our History

Building Better Neighborhoods

Things change and they don't.

The Miracle Worker? Or Annie Dearest?

Yes, one can be horrified and laugh really hard at the same time.  The co-producer and co-director of this Faust Films Production of Annie Dearest is Terry Galloway.  Her memoir Mean Little Deaf Queer is due out in paperback soon.