Horrible, Wonderful

This is an essay about a lot of horrible things, so you've been warned; terrible awful things done to people with disabilities and able-bodied people whose bodies have been torn the shreds by heinous violence.

In Russia, the Malaysia Airlines plane shot down by a military rocket killed all the passengers, including children and several AIDS activists and HIV specialists headed from Amsterdam to the Melbourne AIDS Conference.

Dozens of memorials around the world have commemorated those lost. But even though it's now known that this was an intentional act committed by the military, albeit mistakenly, no international governing body has taken steps to sue, punish, or lay blame where it belongs; with the fascist Putin regime and his missile-wielding military thugs, who tried to cover up evidence, abscond with corpses, blame others, even spew out conspiracy theories about the passengers "being already dead" to the lie-filled Russian media. 

That's Entertainment

My post on arts and entertainment with a disability focus includes a dance film, naughty comics, art exhibits and the alleged "happiest place on earth."

Ballroomies

Musical Chairs

Ballroom dancing, injury and trans fabulousness fill the new movie Musical Chairs with heart, spirit and a sense of love. Susan Siedelman (director of Desperately Seeking Susan, Madonna's breakout film) brings together a diverse cast for an upbeat, sweet-natured story of a dancer whose post-injury recovery includes being coaxed into wheelchair ballroom dancing by a social dancing instructor. A group of other paraplegics join in, building up to some nice dancing and light comedy.

Oniony

Just. Too. Awful (and funny).

Nation Afraid To Admit 9-Year-Old Disabled Poet Really Bad

The good intentions of Luke's poetry, coupled with his heartbreaking illness, make it difficult for Americans to recognize and acknowledge the poor quality of his work. The poems are fraught with saccharine sentimentality, slapdash mixed metaphors, and endless clichés involving rivers and the sun.

One example from "What's Most Important," a poem in his most recent book, Offering Of Hopeweavings:

The things that are important in life / Are not wealth and fame / But the sun peering through the clouds / Its light shining on flower petals / And warming a kitten's nose / Making everything beautiful / Because that is what God wants / For us to be happy.

Today I'm going through another round of re-re-rewrites on the manuscript. A dear friend has been checking it for what I call "Cliché Alerts." Originally, I set out to make Reid's narrative voice a bit precocious, like that of a smart yet perhaps overwrought teen whose voice was a bit wordy and florid.

After several friends have read it in-progress, it became clear that some of it was just plain bad! This has all been an interesting experiment, a very different process than my others works. I just hope that in its final version, it doesn't -like the poems of this fictional child author- suck!