I think I’ve recovered from my Tiny Tim moment yesterday, but it got me thinking about politicians and disability issues. In my own experience, most politicians are clueless about the disability community and how to interact with them. There are some exceptions: Paul Wellstone was a respected figure in disability circles. So is Senator Jeffords. And Clinton demonstrated remarkable ease around people with disabilities. But most politicians, Republican, Democrat, whatever, probably give little thought to issues like accessibility, personal care services, employment discrimination, etc. People with disabilities are mostly viewed as handy photo ops to demonstrate one’s compassion/charity/sainthood/whatever. And I’m not sure what can be done to change these perceptions. Part of the problem is that we need more people with disabilities who are politically active, especially in the inner circles of campaigns and congressional staff. But that’s a bit difficult to ask for when almost 70% of adults with disabilities are unemployed. Every time get a well-meaning but extremely annoying “God bless you” from some stranger on the street or encounter another business owner/employer that has never heard of the ADA, I despair that things will never change. But then I look around at my own life and realize that twenty years ago, someone my age and with my disability would most likely be dead or in an institution.
So while I sometimes wish we would just hurry up and get enlightened already, I realize how far we have come in just a short while.

One of my nurses asked me to go to a Kucinich rally this evening. I’ll probably go for no other reason than that I’ve never been to a presidential rally. I think he has absolutely zero chance of winning the nomination, but I admire his passion. Maybe I can score a picture or two while I’m there.
I’m not a huge baseball fan, but even I’d watch a Cubs-Red Sox World Series. I’d be curious to hear from long-suffering fans from of both teams, unless you’re afraid you’ll jinx everything by talking about it.

I saw Kill Bill yesterday and will most likely see it again. Some of the visuals in the film are so striking that they demand a second viewing. I also fell in love with the spaghetti western overtones in the soundtrack. And the extended anime sequence was a poetic piece of filmmaking in and of itself. Like some of the critics, I wish there had been more of the verbal fireworks I expect in a Tarantino film, but I’m expecting that Volume 2 will satisfy that wish.
I spent much of the afternoon finishing a novel I’ve been reading. I can read quickly and I think I went through about 150 pages in one sitting. I remember a college class I had on the Victorian novel. If you’re looking for light reading, look elsewhere than the Victorians. We had to read massive tomes like Vanity Fair and Middlemarch. I dreaded the daily reading assignments, which were usually 50-100 pages. I actually faked my way through some of that class because I didn’t always feel like doing the reading. But now, I almost wish I could do the class over

Rush Limbaugh admitted he’s an addict. I hope he gets the treatment he needs, but I hope he recognizes that he now has a disability and stops bashing laws like the ADA. Addiction is a recognized disability under the ADA, although it only applies to addicts in recovery, which I find odd. I also find odd the reactions of many in the disability community to categorizing addiction as a disability. I once got flamed several times by people in a newsgroup discussion after I pointed out that addiction is and should be regarded as a disability. They howled that addicts choose to be addicts while they never chose to be disabled. The implied moral superiority in these statements annoyed the hell out of me. I absolutely believe in a genetic predisposition to addiction. And, as I’ve commented before, it disturbs me that an “us-vs.them” attitude persists in some quarters of the disability community.

This article summarizes the results of a survey of over 3,000 blogs. I wasn’t terribly surprised to see that 66% of blogs haven’t been updated in two months. Blogging is one of those things that’s easy to start but difficult to maintain. I suppose it can be compared to exercise or dieting. I keep waiting for the day to arrive when I have nothing new to say, but my capacity for babbling remains undiminished. I also like the article’s use of the term nanoaudience to describe the small circle of friends and family who read the average blog. I like to think I’m closer to a microaudience. And someday, if I’m lucky, maybe I’ll reach miniaudience proportions.
I’m all about dreaming the big dreams.