Peek at the Past: Racing Wheelchair (via Katja at BrokenClay)
At the beginning and for many years racing wheelchairs were nothing more than a street wheelchair modified by athletes who spent as much time with a welding torch and wrench in their hands as they did with their hands on the push-rims.
They were forever working on improvements that would give them that bit of advantage. All of that changed dramatically with the introduction of specialized racing wheelchairs and even more so with the introduction of the Halls Wheels Racer.
Some links to cool trans stories
I never asked for much
Just your understanding
Understanding
That I am not an aberration
Danger of Overhangs to the Blind
One of the most dangerous things that I face as a blind person are obstacles that are either just above my head or right in line with my face. Having a guide dog makes these objects slightly less dangerous if my guide sees them and warns me,, but guides are not always perfect and sometimes they don’t see the obstacle in time. For my guide dog Midge, this is not one of her strong points, but it wasn’t until just recently that this problem ended up causing me injury. On our way home from a walk I ran into a piece of wood that was sticking out into the sidewalk, and it hit my eye. To be fair to my guide dog, the board was being held by one of my neighbors and he neglected to warn me or ensure that I wasn’t in harms way. I could say that this really was human error, but the fact is that my guide should have stopped me before I hit the obstacle.
My dear sainted mother probably has many (un)fond memories of getting me to try new foods. Between the ages of 3 and… let’s say very recently *cough* I was an obscenely picky eater. My favourite foods were pizza, pickles, frozen blueberries, and frozen peas, and I would often turn up my nose at the meals my mother cooked, and then, to her exasperation, I would switch my interest to raw flour or kool-aid powder. With that in mind, I think the only thing that this article missed the target on was a chance to mention that pica can also be a sign of autism at an early age. Pica and picky eating for me went hand-in-hand, so I believe it warrants a mention in an article about the connection between food, nourishment, and autism.
The article makes a note on how this can affect the overall health of autistic individuals. Of particular concern seems to be a possible lack of nutrients due to a picky eater’s distaste for certain foods:
Where Ableism Leads TRIGGER WARNING for murder of autistic children
This is the kind of rhetoric that our mainstream autism advocacy organizations give us. Maybe they don’t always put it in such naked terms, but the underlying feeling of entitlement to a “normal” child, and the feelings of victimization upon having an autistic child, is a staple of autism rhetoric. This kind of rhetoric really is dangerous.