The Best of Disability Blogs and Banter

Ten Years Ago My Life Was Totally Changed by a Person Who Was Not Acting Responsibly
… However, being committed to getting better and not being bitter, I want to focus on the positive aspects of what the trauma brought.

1. A deeper, stronger faith that is not based on everything going right; rather, an ongoing inner spiritual experience and the inner strength that comes from God through faith to help us through anything.

2. New community of friends. I have learned that there are many people that live with a great deal of pain and suffering. I knew this from a distance but I now know this in a deeper more experiential way. I have also received a great deal of help and support from those who work with people experiencing a traumatic [SCI].

3. A new direction. I was in a job that I was not happy in; it has taken me this long, but I recently graduated with a master’s in mental health counseling and am now doing psychotherapy as a career. I have also been able to write two books, tracking the recovery process maze, including the inner faith struggle and some conclusions drawn in the process.

April 26, 2002, no matter how hard I try to ignore it, it remains. … There is a verse that says we should “overcome evil with good.”  That is what I intend to continue to do.
— Brad Erlandson, via his Facebook Status

Cinderella Rides Pseudotransit
So suppose Cinderella was crippled and lived in Chicago in the 1980s before the Americans with Disabilities Act.

How will she get to the ball? Well, the opulent palace where they’re having the ball is right off the number 151 city bus line. It’s a snap!

Oh but wait a minute. None of the city buses have wheelchair lifts. All she can do is call paratransit. (I don’t know why they called it paratransit. It should have been called pseudotransit.)

The pseudotransit bus may well first take her to the other side of town to pick up three more cripples and drop them all off before taking her to the ball.

Screwed out of her one and only chance to hook up with a flawless man, Cinderella would have been steamed.

Today, crippled Cinderella could get to the ball on the regular city bus. And if you think a woman in a wheelchair dressed in a zillion-dollar ball gown would stand out as the biggest weirdo on a big city bus, you’ve obviously never ridden a big city bus.
— Mike Ervin, smartasscripple.blogspot.com

11 Disabled Athletes Who Competed in the Olympics
Oscar Pistorius makes history Saturday when he becomes the first double-amputee to compete in the Olympic Games. As impressive as that is, the South African runner isn’t the first disabled athlete to compete in an Olympiad.

At least 11 disabled athletes have participated in the Games over the years. [One of them is] Neroli Fairhall, New Zealand, Women’s Individual Archery, 1984. Finishing in 35th place, Fairhall [was] the first athlete to take part in the Olympics after previously competing in the Paralympic Games. Paralyzed from the waist down after a motorbike accident, she competed while seated in a wheelchair.
— David Wallechinsky and Jaime Loucky, www.wired.com/playbook