It seems like only a year ago that I wrote a review of the television program American Horror Story on this very blog and indeed it has been nearly a year, but American Horror Story is unlike most television series which follows a line of continuity from year to year. Every season of American Horror Story is a self-contained unit, with many of the same actors, but an entirely distinct plot.
Cruelty because of disability is the unfortunate, de facto, standard of living for anyone who dares to live outside the mainstream of the able-bodied merely by purchase of birth. Janna, a Deaf Woman, and my wife, feels the sting of that cruel indignity every single day with impatient people who refuse to acknowledge her Deafness and who force her to read lips or to use her voice because they don’t feel like writing or finding a common cure that will enable a fair communication dyad that can be understood by all parties.
That inevitable cruelty is part of the daily station of the Disabled, and those of us who love and care for our Disabled friends and family feel that cruelty, too, by proxy, and we do our best to help create a cure of basic human courtesy. We are often unsuccessful.
What fascinates me, in a maudlin and depressing way, is when families of the disabled place politics above doing the right thing. A glowing example of a family member standing up and doing right is found in David Axelrod, one of President Obama’s dearest friends and campaign managers, and the fact that Axelrod is willing to shave off his 40-year-old mustache in order to raise a million dollars for epilepsy research. Axelrod’s oldest child has epilepsy.
The day after it was declared that President Obama was re-elected, I stopped getting e-mails from family about why he shouldn’t be re-elected and started getting e-mails about why it just wasn’t fair that he was re-elected — that it was only because the race was about “unimportant” issues like rape and women’s rights instead of the only important issue — the economy. If the race had only been run on the basis of the economy issue, I believe that President Obama still would have won, because he had an economic plan that was not the exact same one that got us deep in trouble in the first place.
Many years ago, people scribbled on cave walls — the bison they hunted, and the experiences they shared. Years later the scribblings were made on papyrus, and eventually printed with a printing press, which eventually evolved to include color photographs. What all of these things had in common was that in order for anyone to take part in these shared experiences, they had to go to where the written experiences were or to get a copy of the experience somehow — subscription or otherwise.
One good thing about Hurricane Sandy is that we had plenty of notice she was coming. That meant we could stock up on munchables and charge all our battery powered devices. We plugged in two 3G iPhone 4S devices and two 4G LTE iPads and crossed our fingers it would all work out if we hit the dark as we maxed out each device to 100% capacity.
We also filled up the bathtub with water in case we would not be able to flush our toilets manually. If you live in a building with more than five floors and you lose power, you will not have water to flush your toilet because the electric water pump for the building will be inoperable. You’ll have to “scoop and dump” water a gallon at a time from the bathtub to the toilet bowl to flush.
Continue reading → Smartphone Battery Management During Hurricane Sandy
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