Description: T-shirt with GOMPERS showing a tree and several children and an adult walking. Some of the children are using crutches or wheelchairs.
By Flickr user Cobalt123, used under a Creative Commons License
Disability Blog Carnival: Tell the Story!
Another awesome collection of posts in this month’s carnival!
Well, at long last here is the Disability Blog Carnival on Story. I am adding posts and such as I go… so visit often, there may be new rides!
Rolling Around in My Head will host the June Carnival – June is ‘pride month’ wherein people celebrate LGBT pride – So I thought we’d have a pride carnival, I want people to submit the blog (or even two) that they wrote that they are most proud of. Not the one that got the most comments, but the one that you felt said what you wanted to say, how you wanted to say it and you are proud of it.
Also, Penny is looking for hosts for upcoming Carnivals. Doing Carnivals can be a bit time-consuming, I admit, and can take up energy that you may want to put someplace else, but you can get a lot of help with it, too. When we did the Carnival, lots of folks emailed in links, and Penny was really generous with link-sending as well.
Also in Carnivals: The Eleventh Carnival of Feminist Parenting!
Welcome to the eleventh edition of the newly two-monthly Carnival of Feminist Parenting. It looks like my decision to make it two-monthly – and the hard work of readers plugging it in their own blogs – has paid off, because I’ve had lots of submissions for this edition!
Uh-oh. This is not good. A local autism society is requesting that my workplace participate in some sort of autism walk. There is a puzzle piece on the page. There is a breezy suggestion about who should head up the efforts, and the person named is a friend of mine. I check the autism society’s website to see how they have described the event. Although it has been publicized as a Missing Piece March, it seems that it will be more of a festival, with games for kids and information booths. I click through the site, and find no mentions of devastating diseases or burdens on society. Hmmm…the event itself is described as a place where autistic kids can be themselves without being judged. Barely a mention of the existence of adults, and of course no questioning of why autistics can’t be themselves everywhere, but I’ve certainly seen worse. On to the links page.
During my phone call with GDA yesterday, I was ensured that they are always discussing me and which dog(s) would be best. So, they will definitely keep looking for the right dog for me. However, I was also told that they would totally understand if I opted to go to another school, since I’ve been waiting so long. She said they really just want me to have a good guide dog, no matter where it comes from. So, she assured me that it’s okay to re-weigh my options (especially since nobody has any poodle cross breeds right now, which factored into my original decision last summer). And this is actually something that I have been thinking about more and more lately.
Autistic Man Tasered for Unknown Reason
The state of Georgia is getting a bad name with me for its treatment of autistic people. Last Friday, an autistic man was tasered, taken to the ground, and charged with disorderly conduct for a reason that remains unclear.
Academic Conferences: Who Can Afford to Attend?
The money I have spent is on my mind since I heard one scholar at the last conference I attended implore people with a disability to attend conferences. Great advice I thought which was quickly followed by a second thought: who can afford to attend these conferences without institutional backing? When I attend a conference all expenses come out of my pocket including registration. All academic conference are expensive and I draw the line at $200. This line eliminates many conferences I would like to attend and I will admit I make exceptions and spend more once in a while. Am I being cheap as my son would suggest? I think not when one adds in the cost to register, hotel or motel accommodations, food and transportation. For instance the conference I attended last weekend at Union College cost me almost $500. To me, that is an expensive weekend–a work weekend no less.
Headlines:
Canada: Disability group honours Tim Horton’s owners
On the academic conference thing… in my own situation, it’s often more expensive to get to the conference than it is to attend the conference. In fact, the cost of transportation generally prevents me from attending conferences more than the cost of attendance does.
I can’t drive because of neurological issues. I also live in a very transit-impoverished environment, and the major airport is about two hours away. The only way for me to even get to said airport, short of lucking out and finding a carpool, is a shuttle that costs $45 each way— on top of the airfare itself, of course. (There’s a smaller municipal airport, but there are extremely few flights to and from it– and to make matters worse, it’s neither on a bus route nor at all accessible via pedestrian routes!)