Last week, I wrote about some music James Baldwin liked and I wanted to give credit to Frank Leon Roberts. I finished reading Baldwin's "Another Country". The "other" country, I get the feeling, is love. It's about unconventional morality and the uncertainty of life when men decided to love each other, a married woman with children decides to leave her marriage and a young, hurt black woman decides to love a white man. It takes place in France and New York, I believe in the 50's.

I found this site, http://www.disabilitynewsservice.com/norwich-wheelchair-murders-will-alert-readers-to-scary-disablism-author-hopes/
Is it a new genre of writing, "crip-noir"? Love it. Needs to go on my reading list. 

Sometimes I walk my dog on a leash while I'm in my power chair, but I don't recommend it. He's almost tipped me over to dash after a squirrel and came close to a vet visit after fighting a loose pit bull. I'm only staying close to my house now. Away from all the weird possibilities.

I've been having to do some access advocacy. Anyone who has a disability knows what I'm talking about, it goes with the territory. My latest skirmishes are with DSS's inaccessible front door and the Town Square's crappy curb cuts. I'm in exchanges of e-mails and calls with the local contacts. They'd like to make appointments with me to discuss it more in depth. I'm trying to keep it at the email level because where do they think people with disabilities come up with all this free time to bring all these things to their attention and keep on it until there is some action? Isn't that their job? Aren't they supposed to inspect these things and stay on top of them? OK, before I start ranting, suffice it to say it is a good thing to learn to advocate because people will come after us. I'd just like to find one other person in my area (or more) who want Disability with Dignity. 

I came across this commencement speech by Adrienne Rich, just a short take out; "there is a more essential experience that you owe yourselves, one which courses in women’s studies can greatly enrich, but which finally depends on you in all your interactions with yourself and your world. This is the experience of taking responsibility toward yourselves.  the most important thing, which is that clear thinking, active discussion, and excellent writing are all necessary for intellectual freedom, and that these require hard work."  I want clear thinking, more focused, discussions about current events and free intellectual expression. Easy to say, hard to do.

In my personal life, I've spent time worrying about finances while living on Supplemental Security Income and SNAP. I'm still working with Voc Rehab to find work, specifically adapting my resume to include, or work around my disability and the years spent as a stay-at-home mom. I have a rear power chair carrier for my car in the works.  I'm better off than a lot of people, with my extended family, the wisdom and experience of my years and my degree.

So, another interest over the last week has been to settle into some deeper study of critical thinking. I'm using this:
http://www.criticalthinking.org/pages/how-to-study-and-learn-part-two/514
and this:  Socratic questioning series, disk 1 part 1, YouTube

My DD and I have cooked some wonderful food and I've finished Twain's "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn". Fun reading and insights into the human heart from our American history.

One more little gem: "The Disability Studies Reader", free to read online;

 https://books.google.com/books?id=IzBtbhdu68MC&printsec=frontcover&dq=disability+studies+reader+4th&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CDAQ6AEwAGoVChMIn7a5sr3lyAIVRhs-Ch2eRAxN#v=onepage&q=disability%20studies%20reader%204th&f=false

 

ALWAYS BEHIND

I'm desperate to get this on my blog. It should have already been up, or at least I wanted it to be.
If you believe in time, as I do because it doesn't believe in me and goes on anyway, I wanted to be regular about publishing.  Maybe it's because I'm learning how to pay my dues. All my learning leads to more questions and more understanding that this is something I've got to do because I want to. For me. Wanted it to be more polished. Without further ado; literature, music and current events.

What do I need to be doing? Writing needs to be universal, that's what Azar Nafisi says. This writing is art. What did James Baldwin say? Go back to your roots, the beginning and tell the truth the way it should be.

Azar Nafisi wrote “The Republic of Imagination”. In it, she forms a river tributary that shows her love of learning about Life and her love of books folding in some literary criticism. What is literary criticism? When you talk about books with conscience and heart.

This month, we had our 1000 year heavy rain storm, my step-dad Bob just came over with the 20 ft. ladder, leaned it against my back porch and climbed onto my roof to look for any damage. He's 84. 

He's crotchety and hard to talk to, so I don't talk that much. Just wondered out loud if the roof was steel. He says it is. “That's a roof on a roof”. I asked if it was about 20 yrs old, he says no, more near 12 or so. He climbed down shakily, moved the ladder down onto the ground, picked it up and walked around the back of our places behind his fence to his back gate to get the ladder home. He carried it in his right hand and I know that ledge behind our places isn't that wide so I worried about him sliding down into the drop off into our swamp. But he was ok. I found out later that he'd built up the ledge, making it more of a wide walkway. 

Music that James Baldwin liked. Bessie Smith was his all-time favorite muse. Her voice carries him through the writing of "Go Tell It on the Mountain" and "Another Country". He was also quite fond of Billie Holiday, Miles Davis and John Coltrane. He and Ray Charles performed together once as well, on a one-night only Carnegie Hall event.

Https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7m7Pn1KNdo Music James Baldwin was involved in.

Ever noticed how Baldwin's voice sounds like Maya Angelou's at times?

Letters to a Young Contrarian” by Christopher Hitchens. There was a good line last night; ...the moment of near despair is quite often the moment that precedes courage rather than resignation. (pg.86) 

Any way, I'm very unsatisfied with this as it comes out of 25 other pages for October. And I left out credit to the name of the man I met on FB who took the time to share Baldwin's musical tastes with me. Thank you. But I've learned that I need to focus my writing down onto things I'm reading, watching, and listening to and how it comes out in my life. Further credit to my friend Trisha Geiger who helped with editing. It's not her fault I jump around so much.