My copy of @drchucktingle’s book Camp Damascus has arrived! (The publishers were kind enough to send me an advanced copy when I mentioned that I had ordered a copy but time was not kind to me as it was Finish Good Omens and Wrap Things Up Before the Strike world, and I had no personal reading time. So I’m really looking forward to settling down to read it.)
let it be known that @neil-gaiman has been a true buckaroo from DAY ONE. always accepted my unique way and understood the sincerity of my trot and my art. thank you neil i appreciate you so much bud. i am humbled and honored by your support through the years. a buckaroo legend
Your mom and aunts aren’t on tumblr. Please warn them about this as well.
[Image description: Two smartphone screenshots of a Facebook post by a person named Sheila Toll posted 2 Sep. It is black text on a white background and the post is public. The post reads:
I am a Family Doctor and I want to keep a promise made to a patient.
Julie was a healthy, post-menopausal woman in my care who came in for a periodic health examination. One of my routine questions, in what is called the “Review of Systems”, was to ask if she had experienced any vaginal bleeding.
She said “No” but then laughed and added, “Other than when my period came back for a few months last year”.
All health care professional are taught early on that ‘vaginal bleeding in a post-menopausal woman is Cancer of the Uterus until proven otherwise’. This comment by Julie was, therefore, a red flag (no pun intended) prompting further questions, an examination and an ultrasound of her pelvis.
Julie was surprised to see me so concerned, especially since the symptoms had not recurred over many months.
Sure enough, a pelvic ultrasound and tissue sampling confirmed Cancer of the Uterus.
Julie underwent a hysterectomy and radiation therapy. She is now healthy, cancer-free and is expected to stay that way.
After all this was done, Julie sat ME down for a talk. She told me she’d had no idea a ‘short return’ of her period after menopause was a danger signal. Furthermore, she addressed the topic with friends over coffee and discovered that, out of 20 women, NONE of them knew this symptom was abnormal! She admonished me to “Tell women this! Don’t assume we know it!”
From that day on, I have kept Julie’s advice in mind when talking with post-menopausal patients. But recently my wife suggested that I should take this to a wider audience.
So, Julie, this is for you:
If you are a post-menopausal woman and your period ‘comes back’ or you have even one episode of vaginal bleeding, TELL A HEALTH CARE PROFESSIONAL and insist on having it investigated!
Wishing you all good health and long lives. End image description.]
its like a real life version of that children’s song with the magic bridge that you had to dance across
Highlights:
–all the old people –one dude who starts doing the Cotton-Eye Joe and has the steps on lock –quinceañera girl with a dress bigger than the circle –lots of kids but particularly the dude who’s doing the helicopter with his little girl –an entire section of Millennials doing dance moves I recognize, oh the nostalgia
Did you know that after they switched to blind auditions, major symphony orchestras hired women between 30% to 55% more? Before bringing in “blind auditions” with a screen to conceal the the candidate, women in the top 5 major orchestras made up less than 5% of the musicians performing.
so I believe it was actually more complicated than that, in interesting ways. Because at first, when they did blind auditions, they were STILL hiring more men.
…Then they put down a carpet, so that high heels didn’t clack on the floor, and BOOM women were suddenly getting hired.
The testers didn’t even know that’s what they were picking up on, which just goes to show how tiny of a cue it takes for misogyny to kick in.
The case of blind auditions for orchestras and how it dramatically changed the gender makeup of orchestras is a very illuminating example of gender bias, and an interesting possible way of countering it.
You can be sexist without knowing it. You can be racist without knowing it. This is not a moral failing; it is a moral imperative to remember that you are fallible, and take steps to limit the damage your squishy ape brain’s foibles can cause.
The final chapter in Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink (2005) describes this in detail.
What you don’t usually hear about when discussing this blind audition process is that after the blind auditions were implemented, when women had gotten many positions in the orchestra, men no longer saw being a member as prestigious and the salaries for the entire orchestra dropped.
This. Is my pride and joy. A gift for my dad, who played Zork with me when I was a kid, and with his dad when he was a kid. I designed this pattern myself and had a great time puzzling out how to hide the glow in the dark letters!
Pattern: “West of House” by me Fabric: 2x1 on 18ct Blue-Grey Aida Started: 11/27/2021 Finished: 12/25/2021
Not the “oh Einstein was probably autistic” or the sanitized Helen Keller story. but this history disabled people have made and has been made for us.
Teach them about Carrie Buck, who was sterilized against her will, sued in 1927, and lost because “Three generations of imbeciles [were] enough.”
Teach them about Judith Heumann and her associates, who in 1977, held the longest sit in a government building for the enactment of 504 protection passed three years earlier.
Teach them about all the Baby Does, newborns in 1980s who were born disabled and who doctors left to die without treatment, who’s deaths lead to the passing of The Baby Doe amendment to the child abuse law in 1984.
Teach them about the deaf students at Gallaudet University, a liberal arts school for the deaf, who in 1988, protested the appointment of yet another hearing president and successfully elected I. King Jordan as their first deaf president.
Teach them about Jim Sinclair, who at the 1993 international Autism Conference stood and said “don’t mourn for us. We are alive. We are real. And we’re here waiting for you.”
Teach about the disability activists who laid down in front of buses for accessible transit in 1978, crawled up the steps of congress in 1990 for the ADA, and fight against police brutality, poverty, restricted access to medical care, and abuse today.
Teach about us.
Oh! Oh! I got one! Meet Edward V. Roberts-
Ed Roberts was one of the founding minds behind the Independent Living movement. Roberts was born in 1939, and contracted polio at age 14, two years before the vaccine that ended the polio epidemic came out (vaccinate your kids). Polio left Roberts almost completely paralyzed, with only the use of two fingers and a few toes. At night, he had to sleep in an iron lung, and he would often rest there during the day as well. Other times of the day, he breathed by using his face and neck muscles to force air in and out of his lungs.
Despite this being the fifties, Roberts’ mother insisted that her son continue schooling. Her support helped him face his fear of being stared at and ridiculed at school, going from thinking of himself as a “hopeless cripple” to seeing himself as a “star.” When his high school tried to deny him his diploma because he had never completed driver’s ed, Roberts and his mother fought the school and won.
This marked the beginning of his career as an activist.
Roberts had to fight the California Department of Vocational Rehabilitation for support to attend college, because his counselor thought he was too severely disabled to ever work or live independently. Roberts did go to school, however, first attending the College of San Marino. He was then accepted to UC Berkeley, but when the school learned that he was disabled, they tried to backtrack. “We’ve tried cripples before, and it didn’t work,” one dean famously said. The school tried to argue the dorms couldn’t accommodate his iron lung, so Roberts was instead housed in an empty wing of the school’s Cowell Hospital.
Roberts’ admittance paved the way for other disabled students who were also housed in the new Cowell Dorm. The group called themselves “The Rolling Quads,” and together they fought and advocated for better disability support, more ramps and accessible architecture like curb cut outs, founded the first formally recognized student-led disability services program in the country, and even managed to successfully oust a rehabilitation counselor who had threatened two of the Quads with expulsion for their protests.
After graduation from his master’s, he served a number of other roles- he taught political science at a number of different colleges over the years, served on the board for the Center for Independent Living, confounded the World Institute on Disability with Judith E. Heumann and Joan Leon, and continued to advocate for better disability services and infrastructure at his alma mater of UC Berkeley.
Roberts also took part in and helped organize sit ins to force the federal government to enforce section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, which stated that people with disabilities should not be excluded from activities, denied the right to receive benefits, or be discriminated against, from any program that uses federal financial assistance, solely because of their disability. The sit-in occupied the offices of the Carter Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare building in San Francisco and lasted 28 days. The protestors were supported by local gay rights organizations and the Black Panthers. Roberts and other activists spoke, and their arguments were so compelling that members of the department of health joined the sit in. Reagan was forced to acknowledge and implement the policies and rules that section 504 required. This national recognition helped to pave the way for the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990.
Roberts died of cardiac arrest in 1995 at the age of 54, leaving behind a proud legacy of advocacy and activism. Not bad for a “hopeless cripple” whose rehab counselor thought he was too disabled to ever work.
Here is a great online course for disability history!!
“Black Panthers saved the 504 sit-in.” – Corbett O’Toole, participant in the 1977 504 protest in San Francisco
”Along with all fair and good-thinking people, The Black Panther Party gives its full support to Section 504 of the 1973 Rehabilitation Act and calls for President Carter and HEW Secretary Califano to sign guidelines for its implementation as negotiated and agreed to on January 21 of this year. The issue here is human rights – rights of meaningful employment, of education, of basic human survival – of an oppressed minority, the disabled and handicapped. Further, we deplore the treatment accorded to the occupants of the fourth floor and join with them in full solidarity.” – Black Panther Party media release on the protest, from website Disability Social History (click thru to see pictures of BPP news about the success of the protest!)
According to disability rights activist Corbett O’Toole, these advocates “showed us what being an ally could be. We would never have succeeded without them. They are a critical part of disability history and yet their story is almost never told.”
They were running a soup kitchen for their black community in East Oakland and they showed up every single night and brought us dinner. The FBI [guarding the building entrance] was like, “What the hell are you doing?” They answered, “Listen, we’re the Panthers. You want to starve these people out, fine, we’ll go tell the media that that’s what you’re doing, and we’ll show up with our guns to match your guns and we’ll talk about who’s going to talk to who about the food. Otherwise, just let us feed these people and we won’t give you any trouble” – and that’s basically what they did.
Please read up on the Black Panthers’ involvement in the 504 movement, they were integral to the occupation lasting as long as it did and were INCREDIBLY ACTIVE PARTICIPANTS! They are more than a footnote in that part of disability history, and I want more people to know this part of their legacy!
Read about Bradley Lomax (and his aid and fellow organizer Chuck Johnson, who I’ve struggled finding sources on outside of articles on Mr. Lomax :( ) here and here! Together the two were integral in bringing Black Panther Party organizing and activism to the disability rights movement!
I wish there were more information on Mr. Johnson, as his work is dear to my heart as someone who also requires caregiving. ;3; <3 Considering how little information there even was available online for Mr. Lomax just ten years ago I am hoping we get more coverage of Mr. Johnson’s contributions to this important part of disability history sooner rather than later. I do not want his activism ignored!
Do not let the full richness of our history be whitewashed! The Black Panthers kept the protestors fed, they HEAVILY publicized the protests in their paper The Black Panther and agitated on the protest and protestors behalf, and paid organizers’ way to Washington to pressure the HEW secretary to actually sign the damn act. In turn, the Panthers did this because the Oakland ILC did outreach to them, and helped Mr. Lomax with transportation. This is solidarity buried under focus on the white organizers. Please please please cherish it. Keep it close to your heart, read about it, celebrate it, share it!
Obviously there were more Panthers who helped but I have already lost the first draft of this and I’m starting to fade – here’s two more detailed sources to read for more, and I highly recommend you do!
As we now know, Tumblr is $30 million dollars in debt. Oops. Tumblr has announced some major (and unpopular) changes to the site in their attempt to get back above water. The alternative is that Tumblr ceases to exist. But maybe we can change that…
How:
There are 327 million unique tumblr visits per month, and almost 500 million active accounts. If 10 million unique users (or less, if we bought more than one) bought or gifted Crabs from the Tumblr store, we could knock out Tumblr’s debt easily. Buy crabs!
When:
July 29, 2023 is Crab Day, running through August 5 (for anyone who can’t log on that day) as Crab Week!
Who:
Everyone!! If you truly can’t afford to participate with a $3 crab, (or other item from the shop) post crab memes!
Time for Tumblr users to rise again and surprise everyone…
Anonymous
