activism, Choices, community, Determination, disability, Learning, long covid, Mindfulness, Take Action

Chronic Resistance: Notes on Surviving the Horrors

Photo by Majestic Lukas on Unsplash

Half the US reels from this first week of mayhem. A good portion of the rest of the world too. As always, Democratic party leaders are unwilling to make the radical changes necessary to produce a coherent strategy. Grassroots organizers are paralyzed by attacks on multiple fronts at once, scrambling to serve already vulnerable communities now facing direct threats to their existence. And the failure of mass protests over the past decade to sway policy in a more humane direction has left many without a collective mechanism for voicing outrage.

Just as in the first sickening months of His Monstrosity’s first term in office, the goal is to keep us off-balance. To make us so dizzy with fear and confusion that we end up like Oz’s scarecrow: stuffed full of the shredded hopes of 100 million people, stuck in place and pointing in every direction at once.

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Choices, disability, Learning, long covid, Music, Poetry

Goblin Polyphonic

Photo by Santi Bentivegna on Unsplash

for the times we ignore the price tag, may we forgive ourselves


He strides up the steps
in his purple velvet coat,
trailing the welcome stink
of burnt sugar
and rosin, 
a gait so light even the oldest boards
hold their breath. 
He closes the distance 
before you clock his game,
pulls a quarter from behind your ear.

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disability, health, Learning, long covid, Reading, Writing

Chronic Illness Storytime: Sick Lit Memoirs

The Authors. Top L-R: Lunden, Mailhot, O’Rourke, Jaouad; Bottom L-R: Foo, Ramey, Henley, Chong

To become chronically ill is not only to have a disease that you have to manage, but to have a new story about yourself, a story that many people refuse to hear—because it is deeply unsatisfying, full of fits and starts, anger, resentment, chasms of unruly need. My own illness story has no destination.

Meghan O’Rourke, The Invisible Kingdom

Imagine falling into a well, tumbling deeper until you crash down into the ghostly ballroom of a towering manor. You come to in the middle of what appears to be a murder mystery party you definitely did not RSVP to.

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body, Brain, disability, health, Learning, long covid

Enough Already: Notes on Sensory Overwhelm (part 2)

Image source: The Inspiration Room

Why is it not enough to just be a gas station? Why does it also insist on being an entertainment platform, an advertising space, and a point of sale? All I’m asking from the Shell station is a fill-up on my little Prius. But as I stand there, pump in hand, the doors to the convenience store scream with images of Lottery jackpot numbers, cryptocurrency, Marlboros, and every flavor of beverage. Then, as soon as I’ve activated the pump, an upbeat voice starts speaking to me. About what now? The latest fashions on the red carpet? Yes, right at eye level, an entertainment “news”cast video selling more more more. More products, shows, celebrities, a car wash, and an upgrade to premium gas. 

Enough already!

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body, disability, health, Learning, long covid

Maintenance Required: Notes on a Crash

Photograph of an old rusted out car sitting on a dirt driveway near a fence and some run-down houses. A cactus is growing next to the car.
Photo by Angelique Downing from Burst

In a Disney princess bag behind the passenger seat lives the crash kit. Here is what you’ll find inside:

  • One basic medium pillow
  • One fuzzy neck pillow
  • One blackout eye mask
  • One pair of Loop earplugs
  • One packet of electrolyte powder
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activism, Children, Learning, Writing

freedom as we have yet to know it

Urvashi Vaid

Progressivism is a spectrum; it’s not an ideology following one leader saying one thing. It’s many people who have very wildly diverging opinions about many things. But, as progressives, if we could commit to a general frame of reference that we are about improving the quality of life for a lot more people, we’re about helping working and middle-class people, and we’re about taking care of poor people, we could really make some inroads in political power in this country. But, if we choose to be purists, if we choose to be arguing for a consensus we will never reach, for agreement on every point, it’s never going to happen.
My son is drawing on a portion of this quote for a 7th grade English project. He is parked at his laptop, wrestling with his thesis statement. The current iteration goes something like this: Urvashi Vaid is dedicated to expanding LGBTQ activism to improve equity and justice for all marginalized groups, and this dedication is evident through her speeches, writing, and activism.

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Brain, Children, Determination, Learning, Parenting

How to Grow a World

mossy-tree-bark-texture

Old shortcuts lead to dead ends. Minor annoyances to major road blocks. Drifting off during the boring parts of class, crumpled papers forgotten in the bottom of the backpack, goofing off in the hallway. D grades. Closed doors.

As he fails, his world shrinks.

Only the first quarter of his first year of middle school, and hard lessons are giving my boy’s psyche a good scraping.

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Brain, Career, Learning

Outgrowing Grades: The Mindset of an Emerging Scholar

dariusz-sankowski-map

It happens several times a year. A student is struggling in her graduate program. A grade on an assignment or exam has tipped the balance so she comes to my office. She describes difficulty connecting with a professor, failing to engage committee members, or unwelcome feedback on writing projects. Not too far into the conversation, the student discloses what she perceives as the true insult at the heart of the matter.

“But I’m an A student!”

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Art, Learning, Letting Go, prayer, spirit

Say What?

Alice Donovan Rouse - Reykjavík, Iceland

 

I believe in living a poetic life, an art full life. Everything we do from the way we raise our children to the way we welcome our friends is part of a large canvas we are creating.
– Maya Angelou
In college, I filled a general ed requirement with intro 3-D design. As a lifelong lover of poetry and dance, I had appreciated visual art only from a distance. I was itching to get in closer. This queer, feminist, antiracist, tree-hugging campus agitator had Things to Say, and my art was going to say them.

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