Those of us who live alone while totally blind must find and encourage people to assist us with tasks that involve reading print or driving.
Since January, my guide dog and I have been living together in an apartment, and Carol has been buying me groceries, writing the occasional check, sifting through my mostly junk mail, and performing other quirky tasks. We had gotten to know each other as she drove me to and from Choral Union rehearsals during the…..
Put people with visible disabilities in a room together and, sooner or later, we will start grumbling about how strangers tell us how “inspirational” or “amazing” we are. This phenomenon is a reoccurring theme in my memoir “Breaking Barriers: Working and Loving While Blind.” Consider the following passages:
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While growing up, both strangers and social workers would talk about how amazing my mom and I were because I could walk, get dressed, or do other mundane things……
“What’s good for GM is good for the country.”
Growing up, that mantra served as the starting point for most political discussions, and remained constant throughout the 1980s and 1990s as I attended college and graduate school; prowled the streets of New York City; and traveled throughout the country encouraging organizations to work together to accomplish something positive. In the late 1990s, NAFTA, the first major trade deal, sailed through Congress. Other trade deals soon followed.
But towards the end…..
Businessman Donald Trump lost big to Senator Ted Cruz in the Wisconsin Republican primary, in large part due to well-publicized gaffes from The Donald.
First, he criticized the Geneva convention, which, he claimed, makes our soldiers afraid to fight. “We can’t waterboard, but they can chop off heads,” he continued. “I think we’ve got to make some changes.”
To which Senator Cruz and Gov. Kasich waggled their tongues in disapproval. But Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hanity, and other neoconservative hawks have…..