The “Inspiration Derived from Disabled People” Checklist

15th March 2012 By 2 Comments

While writing my previous blog post, “On ‘Transcending Pain’”, I came across this article in The Globe and Mail. It contains a recurring theme in the media when writing about disabled people, and especially, disabled children.

 

Ian Brown, fhe author of the Globe and Mail article has hit all of the necessary components:

1) Parent(s) “coping” with raising a disabled kid? CHECK.

Bonus points awarded if parent is single. Extra special SPARKLY bonus points awarded if parent is widowed.

2) Kid is a “disruption” in the family (an extension of #1)? CHECK.

3) Kid is “inspiring” despite #2, and is there to elevate able-bodied parents’ self-esteem/increase understanding of humanity/enlighten people lucky enough to spend time with him/bless with presence/teach us ______? CHECK.

4) Parent invents cutesy patronizing name for disabled kid (not as bad as “pillow angel”, but bad enough)? CHECK.*

The Ashley Treatment promulgated for these “pillow angels” makes me sick (and thankfully, is not yet mandated by law). I probably didn’t need to explicitly say that; if you read my blog regularly, you will have discerned my feelings about such things.

Thanks to the Disabled Feminists for referencing stuff. 

Inspire THIS!

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The Works of Vincent Bugliosi

6th February 2012 By Leave a Comment

Vincent Bugliosi is the American prosecutor who put Charles Manson, and three of his followers, behind bars for the murders of Sharon Tate, her houseguests, and Leno and Rosemary LaBianca on two broiling nights in August, 1969. The case was said to be so untenable that all the prosecution had was “two fingerprints and Vince Bugliosi”. In other words, diddly squat.

Eat your words, Mister District Attorney!

 

I have 4 of Mr Bugliosi’s books:


 

I really enjoy rereading them, because there is so much complex information that it’s difficult to retain all of it each reading. The detail of explanation is not difficult for a layperson to understand. Particularly, “Outrage” does feel, as Bugliosi intended, like an extended personal conversation with the reader, which makes it that much more enjoyable to read.

Does this qualify me as an obsessive fan?

I haven’t yet read And the Sea Will Tell – possibly because I am as yet unfamiliar with the case. But it’s sitting on our bookshelf.

I haven’t read his books about the assassination of John F. Kennedy, yet. I had to cease and desist reading Reclaiming History because of its physically gargantuan size. Its heaviness made it painful to hold for long periods.

However, his Four Days in November, a smaller volume that deals only with the four days around the assassination, is lighter in weight and might be more comfortable to hold.

I haven’t finished The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder yet, and I’ll have to start it over because it was a long time ago that I read it. Very sad, from what I remember. I’m a Canadian living in the UK, so my perspective of events is likely a little different from American readers. I have no love or loyalty for the former American president – indeed, he made a hash of his tenure. The book merely confirms and explains the reasons behind my suspicions. It is rather hard going because of my lack of extensive knowledge of American jurisprudence…

But that’s why Bugliosi is a great writer. He has that rare ability to make complex legal issues and matters readable, even enjoyable to learn about – for the lay reader. A good sense of humour generates the unexpected laugh while reading about very serious events. 

For example, in “Helter Skelter”, Bugliosi related the question an inept defense attorney asked one of the witnesses during the Manson trials:

Paul Fitzgerald: Have you, or any member of your family ever been the unfortunate victim of a homicide?

The judge interrupted this scintillating line of questioning to remark that, if the witness had, they probably would not be sitting on the witness stand.

Read and enjoy!

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Putting a New Book about Mahatma Gandhi on My Reading List

27th January 2012 By 4 Comments
I must admit, I haven’t heard this one said about Mahatma Gandhi before. I came across it in a Wikipedia article.
Some people who have read this book, Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle with India by Joseph Lelyveld
are claiming, or at least asking, whether he was gay, just because he had a close friendship with Hermann Kallenbach.
Um, people of the same sex can be friends without getting into each others’ pants!
That said, I am interested in what the book has to say. Leave it to some people to jump to odd conclusions based on their own obsessions with who does what to whom, and how they do it.
His experiments with challenging his celibacy in the 1940s were way over the top and extremely creepy to boot; those experiments ceased in 1947. I do not know how old the women were that were involved in the experiments; even if they were adults, it’s still creepy particularly because of the age difference between the participants. Because of Gandhi’s stature as a historically important figure at the time of the events, I have to wonder: if they were adults, did they freely give consent to these activities, or could they have felt they had no choice because of Gandhi’s social status as Indian’s national hero?
It doesn’t make it all right that he did it, but at least he had sense enough to listen to whoever told him to stop. I just wish he’d never done it at all. It’s something Richard Attenborough’s film conveniently overlooks. It really doesn’t look good for your hero to admit he’s an ephebophile.

Further Reading

  • The biography by Ved Mehta is a short and small book, but packed with lots of interesting information. It is told from various points of views of the people who knew Gandhi during his life. I was drawn to it because of the first chapter, which describes a typical day in his later life.
  • The biography by Louis Fisher is what inspired Attenborough to make his film. Another small and readable book. I don’t think I’ve read it all the way through yet.
  • Richard Attenborough’s own book about his research and making of the film. I read this as a library book sometime in the late 1990s, and would like to have another look at it sometime if I can get a copy.

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“Holocaust Memorial Day – Black Triangle” by BendyGirl

27th January 2012 By Leave a Comment

http://benefitscroungingscum.blogspot.com/2012/01/world-holocaust-memorial-day-black.html

Today, Holocaust Memorial Day, this article by BendyGirl highlights something very important for me: that disabled people were the first to be targeted by the Nazis. Her eloquence is superior to mine today, but I will try and give a brief summary, and you can click on the link above to read the article.

The “black triangle” mentioned in the title refers to the concentration camp badges that the Nazis designed. Disabled people and “asocials” wore it.

Different colours designated the prisoners in whatever way Hitler’s regime had marked them as “undesirable”. The large variety of different combinations and colours boggles the mind – a testament to the Nazis almost compulsive need to label everyone and to keep records of the atrocities they committed.

Yellow Star/Yellow Triangle: Jews – this is perhaps the most familiar one. The yellow star was created by superimposing one triangle over an inverted one.

Pink Triangle: Homosexuals – the movie Bent (with Clive Owen and Lothaire Bluteau) tells the story of a gay man’s ordeal at the hands of the Nazis, and of how he falls in love with another prisoner when he’s thrown into Dachau concentration camp. (“Bent” was a slang term for gay people.) He denies his sexuality by identifying himself as a Jew and wearing the yellow star instead of the pink triangle, believing it will make it possible that he might survive longer. Horst, the prisoner he falls in love with, wears his pink triangle with pride. The ending ripped my heart out.

Dachau is also one of the camps that had “the most elaborate system” of branding the prisoners with these labels.

Black Triangle: “Asocials” – this broad category included the disabled, lesbians, and the “work shy”.

If you were unlucky enough to be in more than one category, one triangle would be superimposed over another. More information about them can be found here.

Although today, the disabled are not forced to wear identification badges, we’re still singled out and cannot be invisible much of the time due to the nature of our individual disabilities. We’re immediately identifiable to the naked eye if we limp, use a cane or wheelchair. For those of us with “invisible disabilities”, it’s more difficult because we’re in some way expected to “prove” that we are disabled because there may not be readily identifiable characteristics to our disabilities.

I was at the doctor’s yesterday, and I was finally put on extended-release morphine for my severe, chronic headaches that are caused (probably) by low intracranial pressure secondary to hydrocephalus. I was very nauseated as I walked into the consultation room with my husband, and as we entered I told the doctor this because I wanted to know where I should throw up if I needed to: in the sink or in the garbage bin. I’d had a very severe headache for most of the morning that continued through the appointment.

After my husband’s appointment, I went next.

As I sat down next to her desk, the doctor’s first words were, “Well, you look healthy.”

Disabled people are not invisible even if you can’t see their pain.

Some days, I wish that I could be.

As BendyGirl ends her post, so will I:

To mark World Holocaust Day, please remember,

“First they came for the disabled people
And I did not speak out because I was not disabled.”

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Book Review: “The Escape of Alexei, Son of Tsar Nicholas II: What Happened the Night the Romanov Family Was Executed”

1st January 2012 By Leave a Comment

This book was ghostwritten by someone hoping to make a name for himself, and he tells the story of one Vasily Filatov, who claimed to be Tsarevich Alexei Nikolaevich of Russia.

The Tsarevich Alexei died, along with the rest of his family and their servants, by firing squad in the basement of the Ipatiev House on the night of 16-17 July, 1918.

There’s only one word to describe this travesty of a book:

Ridiculous. 

…especially in the light of discovering the remains of the last two missing Romanov children – Tsarevich Alexei and one of his sisters in 2007.

Although this book was written before that discovery, the premise that a sickly haemophiliac thirteen-year-old boy could have survived being shot several times and then finished off by a shot directly into his ear (see Robert K. Massie’s “Nicholas and Alexandra” or his follow up “The Romanovs – The Last Chapter” for further, infinitely more accurate information*) could have survived the massacre of his family in the basement of the Ipatiev House defies credibility and common sense.

I hope that the authors feel significantly chastised, or at least regret being pulled into ghostwriting this nonsense. There have been many pretenders, over the years, claiming to be one or more of Nicholas’ children that “survived”, and now, at last, those stories can be put to rest. This book only adds fuel to the fire of the extremely bad taste of people who have wanted to capitalize on fame at the expense of historical accuracy.

Here is a picture of where the Romanovs’ bodies, along with that of their faithful servants and doctor, were thrown down into a mineshaft on the night of 16-17 July 1918. Five churches have now been built there in memory of them, all without the use of nails.

It’s pretty hard to claim you’re still alive when your bones are lying buried in a shallow grave.

Alexei Nikolaevich’s remains, and those of one of the missing daughter’s (I believe it was Grand Duchess Maria Nikolaevna), have been re-interred with the family’s at the Peter and Paul Cathedral in Saint Petersburg.

I’ve been there, and it’s a moving place to visit. All of the tsars and tsaritsas (empresses) are buried there, beneath the floor. Over each grave is a massive marble block that resembles a coffin. When I saw them, I assumed first that the bodies were actually inside those structures, but I was told that the bodies are under the floor.

Here is a photo I took of the tomb of Peter the Great.

He was seven feet tall. You did not mess with this tsar.

Something amused me greatly while I was there in 2003: I noticed that Tsar Peter III is buried next to his wife, Empress Catherine the Great.

They hated each other in life; she is rumored to have ordered his execution soon after she seized power from him. Now, alas, they are lying next to each other for all eternity. I wonder what they'd have to say about that?

Nearby is the tomb of Empress Elizabeth, aunt of Peter III, who doted on Catherine.

Nicholas and his family are interred in a separate room from the main hall; you can’t actually go in because it’s cordoned off, perhaps out of respect, or perhaps because the room is so small.

The plaques on the wall list the family members' names and perhaps also some religious dedication or blessing. The servants' names may also appear; I remember reading somewhere that it was decided that since they died together in the service of their sovereigns, it was deemed appropriate that their remains stay with them.

(*So far as I’m aware, when “The Romanovs: The Last Chapter” was written, Alexei Nikolaevich’s and Maria Nikolaevna’s remains had not yet been discovered, and at the end of “Nicholas and Alexandra”, Massie addressed the “Anastasia controversy” as well. Since all the remains have now been identified, we can now say for certain that none of the children ever survived. Anyone claiming to be the Grand Duchess Anastasia, or any of the Imperial children, was either delusional or a liar.)

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Nadezhda Krupskaya

2nd December 2011 By Leave a Comment

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krupskaya 

Nadezhda Krupskaya, Lenin’s wife, was more than just his soulmate in political ideology.

She did a lot of work to improve how libraries after the Russian Revolution were more accessible to the common man, more well organized and better stocked (they were in a poor state), and she thought that librarians should be better educated so they could better assist their patrons. However, I can’t confirm whether her ashes are interred in an urn situated at Lenin’s Mausoleum like I thought. This is a vague memory of something a Russian professor may have mentioned during the course of my undergraduate degree.

Anybody know?

 

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Nanotyrannus rex and the CT scanner

24th November 2011 By Leave a Comment

 

This beastie lived during the late Cretaceous period.

When I was little, I remember watching a TV program about when the skull of this dinosaur was put into a CT scanner to determine whether this was an adult or juvenile; if the plates were fused, it would indicate that it was an adult; if they were not fused, it would indicate that it was a still-growing juvenile when it died. At the time this program aired (around 1988), the scan found that it was an adult, and then it was classed as Nanotyrannus, meaning “dwarf giant”.

But in 2001, a more complete skeleton of a juvenile “regular” T. rex was uncovered (nicknamed “Jane”), may shed more information on  whether it simply represents a juvenile T. rex, or whether it is a new species of a previously identified genus of tyrannosaur.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanotyrannus

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Book Review: “Not Without My Daughter”, Islamophobia, and Unanswered Questions

17th November 2011 By

Today I bought a Kindle.

I was searching around for a kindle copy of “Not Without My Daughter” by Betty Mahmoody (I own a paperback copy of the book). Some time ago, we watched the Finnish documentary “Without My Daughter” – it’s the other side of that story, her ex-husband, the father’s side – he died in 2009. You can find the documentary in several parts on Youtube, and there’s a website, too.

I wonder if anyone has written a book in the father’s defense? It’s a “he said, she said” case, in 1984, set just after the 1979 Iranian revolution when the shah left Iran, and was replaced by the Ayatollah Khomeini.

There is substantial Islamophobia in the book, and it goes on and on. In some places, Mahmoody (as the ghostwriter has made her the first-person narrator) attempts to backpedal and repair her “all Iranians are evil” stance, but it doesn’t really work, even though there are very obviously good people in all countries, particularly since it is Iranians who eventually help her escape.

It continues to not work, especially not when you’ve read her follow-up book, For the Love of a Child - which details numerous stories of other parents who are victims of international kidnappings, as she and her daughter were. It’s not always “dad is the bad guy” – sometimes the mother is the one who takes away the kid.

Parts of the book detail the writing process of Not Without My Daughter, and the making of the film starring Sally Field. I found those bits interesting – how does a book actually get written? It seemed to mainly consist of endless interviews, tape recordings and discussions.

The real daughter, Mahtob Mahmoody (who is of course, much older than her character in the film at the time) even has a cameo in the film – she is dressed as an Iranian female student in a scene where the character Mahtob becomes upset at having to go to Iranian school and be separated from her mom (she was four years old at the time). All of the female students at the school are dressed in a uniform of grey headscarf and trousers, so I have no idea which one is the real Mahtob.

It was mostly shot – ironically! – in Israel, which at the time the events in the book took place, was an enemy country of Iran. Serious mindfuck. Mahmoody and her daughter were invited to the home of Sheila Rosenthal, the little girl playing Mahtob, for a Passover seder.

But speaking frankly, I like Not Without My Daughter, and I return to read it often – not for its content (which is at times very disurbing), but for the excellent writing quality of the ghostwriter, William Hoffer. His choice of varied words, his descriptions of environments, are all evocative, and you feel as if you’re there with Mahmoody and her family.

Whether or not what she says is completely true is left up to you to decide. I just enjoy the book for its style, and I have to admit, its wonderful descriptions of various Iranian food dishes:

Lavash – unleavened bread.

Taskabob – a spicy meat casserole, heavy on the curry.

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Say What You Mean And Mean What You Say

28th October 2011 By Leave a Comment

Arguments over use of language continue. It would be much simpler to invent new words for these concepts. This Wikipedia article discusses the use of the adjective “Polish” in reference to the Nazi concentration camps in World War II.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_death_camp_controversy 

Offense has been caused because Polish officials are (rightly, in my opinion) dismayed to be referred to in media as the architects and purveyors of the “Polish death camps” that were located within the borders of their country. However, they argue that these camps were conceived of in Nazi Germany, and run by the Nazis, while the Nazis occupied their country.

It’s a no-brainer: Poland itself wasn’t responsible for genocide. But it’s still less of a mouthful to say “Auschwitz” than it is to say the more politically and ideologically correct “Auschwitz Birkenau. German Nazi Concentration and Extermination Camp (1940-1945).”

Then there’s the trouble with the word “German” and the stigma attached to the country and its citizens because of the two World Wars. Not all Germans were Nazis. Not all Nazis were Germans. Hitler was Austrian. There are good and bad people everywhere – it makes no difference what country they are from.

(And what was with Hitler’s “Aryan, blonde hair, blue-eyed” obsession? That’s still something I don’t understand. Hitler was dark-haired ad dark-eyed. Wouldn’t that mean he’s effectively sending himself to the gas chambers because he doesn’t fit the arbitrary mold of idiotic physical perfection that his Party has cooked up? But sanity is not what was going on there. Maybe he’d taken too much meth to make any sense to himself. Too bad all those assassination attempts failed. But Valkyrie is still a good film.)

English is a particularly problematic language when it comes to adjectives and demonyms. There is often only one word to describe both – which makes them visually identical – but they mean quite different things.

English language

English literature

English people

English cuisine

An adjective is a word which describes, or qualifies, a noun or noun phrase.

A demonym is the name for the resident of a locality. A demonym is usually – though not always – derived from the name of the locality. Thus, the demonym for England is English; the demonym for Italy is Italian, but the demonym for Netherlands is Dutch. [source: Wikipedia: "demonym"]

Russian, on the other hand, has different words for these things. Let’s look at the adjective “Russian”.

(Now, I’m going to assume that some of my readers can’t read Russian, so bear with me, and I’ll talk you through it, OK? This is the language I studied for my undergraduate degree, so it’s the one I feel most qualified to use as a tool for demonstration. What you’ll be able to see is that the letters of the different words in Russian – which uses the Cyrillic alphabet – don’t look the same. It would be like me writing two English words: house and catastrophe, and even if you didn’t know the language, you could probably suss out that these words aren’t the same.)

Russian language  = русский язык

Russian economics = российская экономика

Russian citizen = россиянин (Russian man); россиянка (Russian woman)

See how those words are all different? 

 

One last thought. from the film The Last Emperor (1987):

Reginald Fleming ‘R.J.’ Johnston (played by Peter O’Toole): ”Words are important.”

Emperor Pu Yi at 15 (played by Tao Wu): “Why are words important?”

Reginald Fleming ‘R.J.’ Johnston: ”If you cannot say what you mean, your majesty, you will never mean what you say, and a gentleman should always mean what he says.”

 

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