ADA Anniversary; 25 years of progress, but still a long way to go

By setting my last two novels in the early 1980s, I gave myself an advantage (age-wise, I knew how to place the characters' similar life events) and a disadvantage (the Americans with Disabilities Act would be years to come, not enacted until July 26, 1990). But it's still worth noting what could –and might– happen to Everett, the paraplegic character in these books, in his years ahead.

Robert L. Burgdorf, Jr. wrote a lengthy article in The Washington Post about how he (and others) wrote the Americans with Disabilities Act and worked to get it passed.

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. 

What the Traffic Will Allow

As any blogger does, I'm interested in which topics interest my readers. I should not be surprised that one post, "The Body Electric," that continually gets the most views is about hunks, particularly model and veteran Alex Minsky.

Not surprisingly, when a man poses nude or nearly nude, as Minksy has done (repeatedly, thank goodness), I should also not have been surprised that the top search phrase for my blog, most recently, has little to do with my novels about a gay couple, one of them who is a paraplegic, but about the hottie.

For the record, and the guys who keep typing "Is Alex Minsky gay?", no, he is not. He is hot, and a self-described "modely model" who appreciates his gay fans.

Minsky has also generously shared info about another handsome veteran, Christopher Van Etten, a double amputee who has posed nude for photographer Michael Stokes. Check out more (possibly NSFW) photos on Stoke's Tumblr.