Archive: February 2004
Making Churches Accessible
Via Scott, Making Churches Accessible: Activist Asks Houses of Worship to Open Their Doors.
I have to give NPR an Obfuscated Website award, though - their search feature seems to be hopeless. Even if you use the exact title and date of a story from their website, their search function won’t find it. Even if [...]
Convenient Broomfield!
Be still my beating heart!
Yesterday in Broomfield I discovered:
The library has a drive-up book return.
The Shamrock gas station at the corner of 287 and 10th Avenue has pumps with reachable call buttons and credit card reader things.
Church of the Holy Comforter is almost entirely wheelchair accessible, including the choir loft, but not including the chancel.
Which Came First?
The immune response or the myelin deterioration?
New Data Challenge Theories of Multiple Sclerosis
St. Martin’s Chamber Choir
Attended a St. Martin’s Chamber Choir performance at St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in Denver last night.
The programming was wonderful - settings of the Magnificat and other Marian hymns from Gregorian chant to the present day. Director Tim Krueger is an Anglican choirmaster, and he placed the pieces in the context of the Office, particularly Vespers [...]
ADA Checklist!
Americans with Disabilities Act Accessibility Guidelines Checklist For Buildings And Facilities
Finding an Accessible Hotel Room
Twelve Tips for Finding an Accessible Hotel Room
Trinity Lutheran
The new choir (well, half of it, anyway) provided the anthem at Trinity Lutheran Church in Boulder this morning. Trinity seems to be a very disability-friendly church - I counted 3 wheelchairs (including me), many elderly worshippers using various mobility devices, and several people using the audio enhancement system.
Wheelchair Kneading
It’s just like wheelchair dancing, except with less tripping and more bread.
Here’s how I knead bread: I have a large bread board, about 14×24 inches. There’s a gap between my cupboard drawer front and the cabinet door front at about 27 inches above the floor (if I ever get the frameless cabinets I’m lusting after, [...]
Third World Wheelchairs
New Scientist: Meet the people shaping the future of science
The chair I’m sitting in now, which is one of our Whirlwind designs, weighs 12.5 kilograms and costs between $100 and $200, depending on where it is made. Compare that with a chair from a typical manufacturer in the west which weighs around 21 kilograms and [...]
Rolling Rains
I’m so pleased to see Rolling Rains online - navegar ? preciso.
When Disability Simulations Work
Fresno Official Awareness
A Board of Supervisors member was asked to leave the lobby of an office building; she and other wheelchair users were accused of interfering with a postal worker’s ability to deliver the mail!
Airline Lawsuit
Time for Airlines to Stop Abusing Our Civil Rights
We want to be treated with dignity and respect — not as a burden that the airlines carry with resentment. Not left sitting on an empty airplane for 30 minutes. Not having to go without water for hours before flying from fear that there will be no [...]
Disclosing
CNN.com - Comedian turns multiple sclerosis into a laughing matter - Oct. 10, 2003
One of the reasons I disclosed my condition is because it is much easier to live with MS than to pretend you don’t have it. If I could convince everyone of that, my job here is done.
Cellphones, Captioning
From the New York Times, A New Cellphone Nods to the Needs of the Disabled.
From Mark Siegel, Arbitrary & Capricious : bad closed captioning decisions.
Interesting side note to the cellphone story: in the Denver Post version of the article, the complainant is initially referred to as “Bonnie O’Day”, and subsequently as “O’Day”. In the New [...]
Brilliant
Kate goes speed dating:
Being a disabled woman and a feminist has led me neatly to the conclusion that disability is liberating because it excuses me from ever having to attempt to replicate unrealistic Western ideals of womanhood. If I diet myself into oblivion, I still won’t look like a Supermodel because Supermodels don’t wobble. I [...]
Getting Out
Government Workers: some comments on disability/emergency evacuation in the workplace.
This is to confirm that I will not comply with the CHP suggestion that I remain in the building at the top of the stairs in the event that there is a fire that is not a “raging inferno”.
More Desserts
Swimming Daughter made two State times! But this means she a) swims the State Meet this weekend, and it’s not as though she isn’t worn out enough, what with choir and advanced placement and volunteering and the talent show and … and b) she has to come up with gifts for all the other State [...]
Always Ranting
What she said: Dear Just Mouse.
Womanpower
misbehaving.net: Even a woman…
I don’t find it demoralizing; I think it’s funny and great that Bräuner sold the misogynists on Linux the way he did.
It’s also neat that Schwäbisch Hall has gone open source.
Unjust Desserts
I keep forgetting to post this proof that I can be trained (by Patricia, based on her comments on the pie debacle).
We had friends over for dinner, and I made trifle for dessert, as follows:
Buy 1 angel food cake, two bags of frozen fruit, 4 vanilla pudding snack cups, and one can of Reddi-Whip (YES! [...]
History of Heaven
From the new choir (and I had nothing to do with the wheelchair access bit at the end):
A HISTORY OF HEAVEN - A Journey to Paradise with the Angelic Voices of ASTER Women’s Chamber Choir, March 19th & 20th, 2004
For the final concert of its fourth season, ASTER Women’s Chamber Choir explores the journey to [...]
mobilewomen.org
mobilewomen.org looks like it may have some potential - someone should tell the webmaster that frames are passé, though.
Gimp Eye
Blog-E-Views Blog Interviews: Gimp Eye for the Clueless Guy
Access to the Body Politic
According to a letter in today’s Daily Times-Call, the new Longmont office of US Representative Marilyn Musgrave (R-Fort Collins) is not wheelchair accessible.
The office was opened to provide Musgrave’s constituents better access to her and her staff, according to an earlier article.
Pity.
A friend just attended a Longmont Area Democrats workshop on political involvement, focusing on [...]
Leaping Mice
Seen in a discussion about YAMSRB (Yet Another Multiple Sclerosis Research Breakthrough):
I don’t want to throw cold water on optimism, but those damn mice have been leaping out of their wheelchairs for years now without it translating to human success.
Ouch! Falls
Very apropos for yesterday and today:
A User Guide To Falling Over
Your Top Ten Falling Over Scenarios
Guilt Trip
A friend from the (on-hold) choir called me today. She is dismayed and disappointed at my disappearance, since they are working hard on getting moved to an accessible location by next week. Why would I quit just as they’re about to Do The Right Thing? Why am I taking one person’s objections personally, especially since [...]
Riding Made Easier
Helping Special Transit customers learn to ride the regular busses in Longmont (the Daily Times-Call does not archive, so the entire article is reproduced here):
Ambush?
I’m in remission and doing really well and have no reason to think this, but I feel like I’m about to be ambushed by MS. Everything seems just a teeny bit off-kilter. I hope I’m wrong.
Headlines
Still battling barriers: Costs, intricate rules make goal of 1990 disabilities law elusive:
If there is an employment complaint, it goes to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) or a local Fair Employment Practices Agency. Transportation issues are supposed to be voiced to the U.S. Department of Transportation, and problems with government buildings have to [...]
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