bookmark_borderDeaf Awareness Week

From CripHumor:

Old Interpreters [for the deaf] never die, they just sign off

[thanks to skulkingdawg for this one…]
I came out of a convenience store the other day and some seedy looking guy walks up to me and holds up a little sign: “DEAF & MUTE … Can you spare $10?”

Wow! What happened to a dollar or two? So I reached into my pocket for my wallet, opened it, took out a folded piece of paper and handed it to him.

It said: “I CAN’T READ” and I walked away.

Call 1-800-HEARING for free information on deafness.

Karaoke is Japanese for “tone deaf drunk with a microphone.”

The deaf cowboy rode with his dog and herd.

>From TV’s M.A.S.H., “How can you eat this slop, Radar?” “My mouth is tone-deaf.”

The dialog from a Frank and Ernest cartoon by Bob Thaves…
The scene is a health club. The sign on the wall says ‘Weight Room. Improve Your Muscle Tone.’ A muscular guy with a sleeve less shirt that states ‘Trainer’ says to a shaking and worn out looking Frank [who is struggling to lift weights] ‘Apparently your muscle tone is deaf.’

A nurse places her stethoscope on an elderly and slightly deaf
female patient’s posterior chest wall. “Big breaths,” instructed
the nurse. “Yes, they used to be,” remorsed the patient.

bookmark_borderUnsupervised…Again

Lorna left this morning for another trip up Nawth. Her folks are on the list for a, well, not exactly assisted living. Not sure what to call it, really. Anyway, they are on the list and the place is having an Open House this weekend. Lorna thought it would be nice to see the place. She rented a car, a Honda Civic, because the truck still needs that wheel bearing assembly bought and put on. It was cheaper to rent a car than get the truck fixed. The truck is driveable, just not 1400+ miles highway driving.

So it is just me and the dogs. And cats. We are fostering a cutie-pie 10-mos old puppy. His name is Bodie (odd name, yeah) and he is probably around 80-90 lbs. That’s right. Not even a year yet and he is as big as Joella. He is part shepherd, part some sort of hound, part something else because he has blue eyes. Adorable pup. But an 80 pound pup is a little different than the normal pup. He is such a freakin’ klutz! He and Joella are in love and play constantly. I timed them yesterday – for an HOUR they were either running in and out the back door, wrestling on the floor, or playing King of the Hill on the bed. So if any one is looking for an adorable, um, puppy, let me know.

I keep the current WIP open all the time and I write a paragraph to a page or two every few hours or so. I hope to get a lot done while Lorna is gone.

Speaking of WIPs, we were in the car rental place and the young thang that waited on us became my mental image of Nikki, the main character in BG2. I watched how she moved, how she looked, and how she acted professional, yet, not so much since our mutual gaydars were in hyperdrive. Nikki is much taller than this thang but in my mind, they match. I needed that, you know?

Reminds me of a t-shirt Vada Foster (Vada is the mean twin, Verda is the nice one. :D) had on at the GCLS Conference in Atlanta: Careful, or You’ll End Up in My Novel!

image of Verda's t-shirt

bookmark_borderBanned Books Week

logo for Banned Books Week

From the American Library Associations website on Banned Books Week:

“Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us.”—Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas,” The One Un-American Act.” Nieman Reports, vol. 7, no. 1 (Jan. 1953): p. 20.

Banned Books Week: Celebrating the Freedom to Read is observed during the last week of September each year. Observed since 1982, this annual ALA event reminds Americans not to take this precious democratic freedom for granted. This year, 2006, marks BBW’s 25th anniversary (September 23-30).

BBW celebrates the freedom to choose or the freedom to express one’s opinion even if that opinion might be considered unorthodox or unpopular and stresses the importance of ensuring the availability of those unorthodox or unpopular viewpoints to all who wish to read them. After all, intellectual freedom can exist only where these two essential conditions are met.

The top 10 for 2005:

The ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom received a total of 405 challenges last year. A challenge is defined as a formal, written complaint, filed with a library or school requesting that materials be removed because of content or appropriateness. According to Judith F. Krug, director of the Office for Intellectual Freedom, the number of challenges reflects only incidents reported, and for each reported, four or five remain unreported.

The “10 Most Challenged Books of 2005” reflect a range of themes. The books are:

* “It’s Perfectly Normal” for homosexuality, nudity, sex education, religious viewpoint, abortion and being unsuited to age group;
* “Forever” by Judy Blume for sexual content and offensive language;
* “The Catcher in the Rye” by J.D. Salinger for sexual content, offensive language and being unsuited to age group;
* “The Chocolate War” by Robert Cormier for sexual content and offensive language;
* “Whale Talk” by Chris Crutcher for racism and offensive language;
* “Detour for Emmy” by Marilyn Reynolds for sexual content;
* “What My Mother Doesn’t Know” by Sonya Sones for sexual content and being unsuited to age group;
* Captain Underpants series by Dav Pilkey for anti-family content, being unsuited to age group and violence;
* “Crazy Lady!” by Jane Leslie Conly for offensive language; and
* “It’s So Amazing! A Book about Eggs, Sperm, Birth, Babies, and Families” by Robie H. Harris for sex education and sexual content.

Off the list this year, but on for several years past, are the Alice series of books by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor, “Of Mice and Men” by John Steinbeck and “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” by Mark Twain.

Be sure to also check out their Office for Intellectual Freedom.

Head nod to Georganna over at Writer’s Edge. In her post, she quotes someone else and asks if the quote is true: Would you refrain from writing a book becaue you feared censorship? If so, why? Well? Would you?

bookmark_borderPiece of (Ancient) History

As a member of National Geographic Society, I get regular emails from them about varous stuff from news to (mostly) stuff on sale. I got one today regarding the Wollemi Pine.

Exclusively from National Geographic, this survivor from the age of the dinosaurs is one of the greatest living fossils discovered in the 20th century. The Wollemi pine is one of the world’s oldest and rarest tree species, belonging to a 200-million-year-old plant family thought to have been extinct for more than two million years. Previously known only from fossil records, it was presumed extinct until a single tree was found in the Wollemi National Park, Australia, in 1994. Subsequent research discovered 100 adult trees that have survived in a single canyon in this wild and rugged area.

Listen to more information about the Wollemi Pine

You can assist in the conservation effort and enjoy the unique opportunity to ensure the continued survival of this rare species by giving the tree as a gift or growing your own. Suitable for indoor container gardening or as a landscape tree in certain areas of the U.S. Comes with a care manual with the full story about the discovery and fascinating history of the Wollemi pine. Comes in a copper-colored container and will be approximately 10”H when shipped. A portion of the proceeds from the sale of these plants will fund ongoing conservation research.

The “owner’s manual” for the tree is available in a .pdf file.

Isn’t it cool about this tree? We’ll be getting one fer shur.

Linkage:

Wollemi Pine websitePhoto Gallery
Wikipedia – Wollemi Pine

bookmark_borderAbuse Must Stop

I saw a banner ad on a website that basically said “To stop an abusive man, teach him violence is wrong when he is a child.”

So I went to the site and wandered around a while. Family Violence Prevention Fund works to prevent violence within the home, and in the community, to help those whose lives are devastated by violence because everyone has the right to live free of violence.

They have a program called “Founding Fathers” and this pledge:

We call ourselves Founding Fathers because we intend for this crucial beginning to give way to a new kind of society – where decency and respect require no special day on the calendar, where boys are taught that violence does not equal strength and where men stand with courage, lead with conviction and speak with one voice to say, “No more.”

Domestic violence is not fiction.

  • Estimates range from 960,000 incidents of violence against a current or former spouse, boyfriend, or girlfriend per year to three million women who are physically abused by their husband or boyfriend per year.
  • Around the world, at least one in every three women has been beaten, coerced into sex or otherwise abused during her lifetime.
  • Intimate partner violence is primarily a crime against women. In 2001, women accounted for 85 percent of the victims of intimate partner violence (588,490 total) and men accounted for approximately 15 percent of the victims (103,220 total).
  • While women are less likely than men to be victims of violent crimes overall, women are five to eight times more likely than men to be victimized by an intimate partner.

Perhaps what I found most disturbing was an article from June:

12 Nations Cited for Human Trafficking
June 29, 2006

The U.S. State Department’s 2006 annual Trafficking in Persons Report estimates that 800,000 people, most of them women and children, are victims of human trafficking. This year’s report looks at slave labor as well as sex trafficking, noting that a child trafficked into one form of labor may be further abused in another. “The brutal reality of the modern-day slave trade is that its victims are frequently bought and sold many times over,” it says.

(snip)

This year’s congressionally-mandated report looks at 149 countries; others were omitted because not enough information was available. To produce it, the State Department examined concrete government actions, rather than statements and plans, and divided nations into three tiers. Tier 1 countries have governments that comply fully with the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000. Tier 2 countries do not comply fully with the Act, but are making an effort to do so. A Tier 2 Watch List includes weak Tier 2 countries that are in danger of falling to Tier 3 — countries that are failing to make significant efforts to stop human trafficking.

The new report places 12 worst offender nations in Tier 3: Belize, Burma, Cuba, Iran, Laos, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Uzbekistan,
Venezuela and Zimbabwe.

The State Department dropped Indonesia, Malaysia and South Africa from Tier 2 to the Tier 2 Watch List this year. The Watch List includes 32 nations in all, including Brazil, China, Egypt, India, Kuwait, Mexico and Russia.

full article

Slavery is a common theme in fiction but most of us here in the US believe it is just that in this modern age – fiction.

bookmark_borderWriting and Shoes

Since it was Saturday, Lorna was home. We made a long list of stuff we wanted to do and headed out the door.

First we went to Redneck Cheers (aka Waffle House) and filled ourselves up on laughs and semi-decent food.

Then we went to the car parts place to price, duh, a car part. ($185 for a wheel bearing hub)

Then we hit the highway and crossed the county to go to a place called Discount Shoes. It is a huge place and was quite crowded. Lorna needed a new pair of sneakers (I still call them tennis shoes though) for work. She got a cool pair of Saucony’s, a brand she loves. While we were there, we headed over to the men’s dept. to find me a pair since all I have are my leather Thom McCanns. I love my shoes. I’ve had them for years. I used to go through two to four pairs of shoes a year until I found the McCanns. Then I just went through one a year, sometimes more depending on what I was doing. But I got this pair shortly after getting my first wheelchair so they are in great shape. I am so hard on shoes due to pronation (?).

Anyway, we found the men’s dept. to be gloriously empty of other customers and with the help of a salesman, we found me some shoes in just a few seconds. I have wide feet, width 4D, whatever that means. He never questioned why I cared about how my shoe felt. He helped me to stand then knelt to make sure my feet were properly aligned. I liked him! His only problem was that he believed shoe laces should be so tight that the toes turn blue. I got a pair of New Balance, a brand I don’t think either of us have had before.

We decided we both wanted slippers now that the mornings are so cool. Lorna had to go to the truck for something so Joella and I, with two shoe boxes on my lap, headed back over toward the women’s section. We came around a corner and met about fifteen people coming in the opposite direction. If people would just pass me just like they do anyone else, it would be all right. Noooo. They come to a stop and plaster themselves against a wall or shelf. Sure, your upper body is out of the way but what about your feet??

I also had a minor panic attack because of the crowd, the very high shelves, and the lack of decent lighting. By the time Lorna got back, I was on my way to surviving but there was no way I could stay there. Instead, we headed back over to men’s dept. and got me a pair of slippers. I am always warm but my feet get cold and take forever to warm back up. We didn’t want the overly fluff filled slippers or my feet would cook. We found a good leather and fleece pair that will do great. By this time, Lorna had had enough and said she didn’t need slippers at the moment, dammit, and would get some at Kmart later. We paid for our shoes (which cost more than the wheel bearing hub will) and headed out.

Lorna checked our long list, folded it and put it away. “Let’s get the dog food and go home. I’m beat.” So we did. When we got home, she napped while I kicked back in my chair and kept the dogs quiet. Crowds just do us both in.

Once we recovered, Lorna read some on a book and I worked on a book. I actually wrote just over 1400 words tonight! Whoo Hoo! Felt good, it did it did. Currently, I am trying to make some sense out of Simple Sarah. I’m not giving up. I need to make some headway before November.

bookmark_borderCool Image

The Cassini space craft has captured images of yet another ring for Saturn. While that is exciting enough, it also took a picture of Earth. I think it really puts into perspective just how far into space it is.

Linkage:

NASACurrent MissionsCassini-Huygens
Planetary SocietyPlanetary NewsCassini Discovers New Ring at Saturn and Looks Back at Our Pale Blue Earth
BBC NewsScience/NatureNew ring discovered around Saturn