1 My most painful experience of bullying occurred in a taxi. Each day for two years, from the age of eleven to thirteen, I shared a taxi with three or four other children to and from school. Why the taxi? We were in the first group of partially
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Moral Compass
1 The subject that afternoon, our teacher, Mr. Slater, told us, would be how to play chess. "Chess is about checkmate, about trapping your opponent’s king,” he said from the front of the classroom. “It isn't about taking pieces. Only mediocre
What Elise Stefanik’s Inquisition Actually Revealed
Freedom of speech is essential if sound ideas are to be promoted and flourish and if dangerous ideas are to be exposed and wither. It can be a difficult freedom to defend. At a Congressional hearing last Tuesday, following the terrible events of
Gratitude for My Violent Act
1 From the age of four until around my tenth birthday, my commute from the suburbs to my London school was at least an hour and a half each way. The coach, meaning a single-deck bus, ground through stop-and-start traffic along the non-postcard
Gender Tags
In the past few decades my name, Adrian, has become androgynous. The distinction used to be between my spelling, which was for boys and men, and “Adrienne” for girls and women. Often this distinction is maintained today, but often not. Combine the
If You Are Having Thoughts of Murder…
We live under such a barrage of public service announcements that they have become white noise. When a train comes to a grinding halt or my plane stands idly by the runway, I'm likely to hear the standard line, “We apologize for any
Monkey Business
Here’s something I wrote when I was seven in one of my class exercise books that have miraculously survived the years: I have been to the seaside, Shanklin, in the Isle of Wight. We stayed there for a week. We saw the only traffic lights on the
Sisyphus
Something terrible is always happening around the world. Many of us living in peaceful places can’t help but wonder at our good fortune while we seek to understand what has gone so wrong elsewhere. 1 Two mornings a week on my ninth floor terrace,
An Anthology That Leaves the Best for Last
For Artificial Divide, (2021) Robert Kingett and Randy Lacey collected sixteen stories by visually impaired and blind authors. As I lament in my essay “Twilight of a Stockbroker” (2017), there is almost no fiction created by blind authors in which
Neely and Penny: What Do We Know?
The other day, a friend was sitting in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park with a friend when a friend of the friend appeared. Somehow a recent incident came up. On May 1, a 24-year-old, white ex-marine named Daniel Penny put a thirty-year-old black man named
What Is It With the Apocalypse?
Why do I have such a visceral aversion for dystopian fantasy and apocalyptic fiction? After a friend convinced me to read Ling Ma’s Severance (2018), a debut novel that has lately garnered a lot of renewed attention, the reasons for my resistance
To Complain or Not to Complain: Ten Considerations
When do we choose to let bygones be bygones? How do we decide when to let go and when to pursue? I’m unhappy with one of the lawyers who handled my father’s estate. In deciding how to proceed, I was aided by conversations with several friends and
Fairness in Love
On April 12, the Washington Post published a questionnaire designed to show readers if they hold ableist assumptions. However, the questions reveal their authors’ own prejudices about matters of love and death. Throughout, for reasons explained in
Sunlight at Amherst?
I finally have the basic answer to the question I posed to my alma mater, Amherst College, nearly two years ago. Subscribers to this website may recall that, after being excluded from a Zoom presentation in 2021 due to the College’s reliance on an
Big Eyes
I resist the notion of “ableism” because it suggests that all nondisabled people (whoever they may be) discriminate against disabled people, which isn’t true. However, a visually impaired friend of mine, his sighted wife and sighted six-year-old
A Lexicon of Character Formation
Mimicry is one of many skills I don’t possess. Even so, the people I’ve known over the course of my life have made their mark on me, and I hear it in the expressions I’ve co-opted from them. I’ll always recall from my childhood with affection and
Disability Discomfiture
I remain deadlocked with my beloved alma mater, Amherst College, over its refusal to answer my question about how many blind and otherwise physically disabled students it has admitted in the past ten years. As I wrote in my July 5, 2021 essay
Trial by Zoom Session: A Story
Moderator: Let me introduce this month’s guest, Tom Reynolds. Tom has practiced consumer law for more than fifteen years and currently has his own law firm. We’ve invited him here today to talk to us about our rights as consumers. So, Tom, welcome to
Call for Appointment at a Doctor’s Office: A Story
Automated response system: If this is an emergency, hang up immediately and dial 911. If you are a hospital or doctor, press 1 because your call is important to us. If you are calling to make your first appointment with this office, press 2. If you
“I Think,” Therefore I Listen
A book review I just encountered from six decades ago uses the phrase “I think” not once, but twice. Such a concession to subjectivity isn’t only rare today, but even frowned on. It shouldn’t be. “I think” might make the world a kinder, gentler
Two Tribesmen, Three Allegiances
1 That societies are split by tribalism is a commonplace, but last weekend’s World Cup quarterfinal game between England and France showed tribalism in a special light. Two aspects of that December 10 game may have significance even for those who
What I Learned from a Book Club About My Own Novel
When speaking to groups about Caroline, my novel that I promote elsewhere on this website, I acknowledge that once a book is out, it’s no longer the exclusive province of the author. As I found during a recent Zoom meeting with a Florida book club,
MRI
Originally posted June 22, 2017. Last week I had an MRI, not my first. Familiarity takes some of the edge off my anxiety about it, but it still runs like a current through the weeks and days. All too soon, I’m in a dressing room at the MRI
What Do You See in a Blue Suit?
1 At a recent roundtable meeting for disability rights leaders, Kamala Harris described herself as follows: “I am Kamala Harris, my pronouns are she and her, I am a woman sitting at the table wearing a blue suit.” Harris was put in a no-win
Testy: A Story
There I was, the morning after the surgery. “Morning after” seems apt because it was like a hangover, except without the really bad headache. A staff member in civilian clothes came through the door without so much as a knock. “How are we doing,