If the author L. P. Hartley lives on, it is for the opening sentence of his 1953 novel The Go-Between: “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.” A parallel line for disabled people might be: Disability is an alien land: the
Journalism and reporting
The World in a City
Our driver for a recent Uber ride was Tunisian. Her English was perfect and pleasant to listen to, and she said she also spoke Arabic and French. She was proud that Tunisia, a small country on the Mediterranean’s North African coast, had sustained
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
September 11 and the Hazards of Writing About a Friend
1 A recent experience has caused me to consider yet again the difficulties inherent in writing about someone else, above all a friend. An essay I worked on for two weeks caused such distress to a good friend that I abandoned the project before
The House Takes an Ax to the ADA
Yesterday, the House of Representatives voted to put obstacles in the way of disabled people seeking freedom of access under the Americans with Disabilities Act. See these articles from The Hill and the Washington Post. I’m re-posting the article I
Journalism and Disability
Media coverage of visually impaired people can distress its subjects. It can’t help journalists that visually impaired people disagree among themselves about the best ways to write and talk about their experiences and how they feel they’re perceived