One memorable year (football fans will probably remember which year it was, I don’t), we strolled down the middle of Route 123 in downtown McLean, Virginia with not a car in sight.

But it has its downside. Last year, we went out to dinner, only to find that the restaurant decided to close on the spur of the moment due to lack of customers.

Last night we wanted pizza, and we discovered that there was a new sit-down pizza place nearby. I called them. Yes, they were open. Yes, they did have a couple of small televisions, but the sound would be off (the last thing your Superbowl-avoider wants is to wind up in a sports bar with a gazillion large screen TVs going at full blast).

As promised, there were two small televisions, but the volume was on. On one of them, the volume was up to the point where my husband and I couldn’t comfortably carry on a conversation. There were no other customers. I asked the server if she would turn down the TV. Her face twisted. She hesitated. “Normally we have them on mute,” she said, “but with the big game, the staff want to be able to…”

“Maybe the staff need their own TV,” I suggested.

“Oh, no, then they wouldn’t get any work done!”

She agreed to turn it down, but I could tell it pained her. We ate and paid as fast as possible, and went across the street to Baskin-Robbins for dessert, as I’m sure they wanted me out of their Superbowl as fast as possible.

You have to make a reservation one to two days in advance. That means knowing not only when you’ll be ready to set out, but also where your first stop will be, how long it will last, where your second stop will be, how long that will last, and so on. What if the doctor is running late? Or the movie is a dud? Too bad.

Unless your doorway has a direct view of the curb, you have to wait outside. Tom Charles, the M.T.A.’s vice president for paratransit, said that 95 percent of departures are on time — but “on time” means within a half-hour. Half an hour is a long time to wait on the sidewalk. If you have a serious disability and it’s 34 degrees and raining, it can be downright painful.

Full article: A Godsend, Except When It’s Not

I scoot up, I wrassle my legs up the wall, and I’m holding them up there by pressing my palms against my knees. I let go experimentally, and my knees bend and my heels start sliding down the wall. “You’re going to have to hold my feet up,” I say.

Now I don’t know if my trainer had a bad experience with too many sexual harassment awareness classes, or something worse, but he’s very reluctant to actually touch me, even though I signed the part of the form that said that I understood that personal training might involve some actual touching, so he takes hold of the ends of my pants legs in order to keep my legs up on the wall.

I start doing crunches, holding the 12 pound medicine ball up at arm’s length, and I’m thinking that if my feet start to slide down the wall, his instinctive reaction will probably be to pull up on my pants legs, and my stretchy pants will just be whipped right off. And I’m trying to remember if I’m wearing pink underwear today (as if black underwear would somehow make me less conspicuous).

And I start laughing so hard, imagining this scenario, that I drop the medicine ball on my face.

So be careful out there – exercise can be dangerous!

We were met by another NSCD volunteer, Rick, and he and Sherry conferred about which of the available sit-skis might work best for me. The one he brought out looked good, so I transferred into it (nice and snug!), got strapped in, and off we went. Sherry showed me how to get moving by pushing off with my poles.

Sherry checking out my sit-ski

Sherry and me on the trail

It was a beautiful sunny day, in the mid-twenties, which meant that within a few minutes I was plenty hot. I shed my winter coat, my hat, my bike jacket, and eventually my gloves. Rick, who accompanied us, was soon loaded down with all my discards. The sit-ski has two skis, so it should be pretty stable, but I overbalanced on my first two turns and tipped right over onto my side (sorry, no pictures – I did tell Rick that if I tipped over again, in the interests of journalism, he should take a picture first, and pick me up afterwards). Once I’d gotten the first two falls over with, it was smooth sledding.

Out of the goodness of her heart (and desire not to make me completely crabby the first time out), Sherry chose a relatively flat course, but it still took a lot of arm power to muscle up even a mild slope. On the uphills, Rick attached a long, flexible tether to the front of my ski so that he could belay me if I started slipping back downhill (luckily, it did not come to that). On the downhills, he tethered the back of my ski, so that I wouldn’t careen out of control.

Frequent rests were key

Back at the ranch, the truly difficult part of our day awaited us – Rick brought back our chairs and we had to get across about four yards of snow to the picnic tables! Then we relaxed and had some lunch, and watched the other skiers (it was a race weekend, so there was lots of activity).

Sit-ski, poles, tether

Katja, Rick and Sherry

I already have a feed for other people’s most recent posts (see the “Currently Reading” sidebar), but thought this would be better. So leave a comment and let’s try it out.

(If you’re reading this on Facebook, follow the “View Original Post” link back to brokenclay/journal.)

So let’s start with my daughter’s school (and my own dear alma mater):

Floor seating is available for those who require the use of a wheelchair. Disability seating tickets are required for this section. One additional person may accompany a guest in a wheelchair and sit with him/her in this section. All others in the party should use the main entrances to the Hall and sit in general seating.

Ah, feeling so sad and marginalized. I will sit with my husband; our other children will be out there in the mob on their own.

Let’s continue with a few other examples:

Wheelchair accessible seating is available on the north side of the Icardo Center. This seating area is limited and cannot be reserved. Because seating is limited, one attendant per person in a wheelchair will be allowed to sit in this area during the ceremony.

Ooh, unfortunate use of the word “attendant”. And first-come, first-served. Fist fight, anyone?

Wheelchair seating tickets will be assigned and will be available for pick-up at ticket distribution. Please note, one companion ticket will be provided next to the wheelchair seating ticket. The rest of the party will be seated nearby.

Accessible seating is provided for guests with limited mobility. Accessible seating is located in rows near the section entrance that require minimal stair climbing.

Due to the limited number of seats available, groups requesting “Accessible Seating” are limited to four tickets in this area. For graduates receiving up to eight tickets, the additional tickets will be provided in the same section as the “Accessible Seating” tickets.

Here we have tiered discrimination: able-bodied? Eight of you can sit together. Limited mobility, but can climb stairs? Four of you can sit together. Wheelchair user? Sorry, you’re down to two.

Will my family members be able to sit together, or does the person with the disability sit alone?
The person with the disability does not have to sit alone. Your entire party (maximum of four) may sit together in the Disabilities Section. All graduates receive four tickets, regardless of section.

We have a winner! What a wonderful idea – your entire party may sit together. Let’s hear it for MIT!

Years after federal law required accommodations for the disabled, separation of church and state means houses of worship remain largely beyond the law’s reach. State laws and denominational measures meant to take up the slack are tricky to enforce and face resistance from churches who call them both costly and impractical.

Full article: Disabled worshippers struggle to find home in pews

I find it distasteful to compete with other disabled people (especially the very elderly disabled) for seats. In our theater they actually have a ramp down to the first row (you know, the row that seven year olds like to sit in, heads bent back at a 90 degree angle, to watch loud action movies and keep away from the grownups; the row that has driven many disability advocacy groups to file lawsuits against theater owners [link][link][link]). We went down to the first row, I got out of the chair and scooted on my butt up to the third row, and we sat in the last two seats on the aisle. My neck still hurts, and I couldn’t read the subtitles without pushing myself up with both hands to see over the row in front of me.

So this morning I exchanged our remaining live performance tickets for encore performance tickets. The encore performances are on Wednesday evenings, about three weeks after the live airing; I can only hope that far fewer elderly disabled come out for these performances.

How popular are these opera transmissions? All the live performances are sold out, and have been for months. The young ticket seller who exchanged my tickets chortled with joy; “Now I can see Carmen!” he said, planning to buy my two seats immediately after I left. What can theater owners do now to solve the access problem? In the long run, theaters will have to be built with more accessible seating!

I was driving home at about 6 pm. The sky was clear. As I headed west, I saw what I first assumed to be a plane, but it was long and skinny, almost like a lighted dragonfly. It wasn’t moving as fast as a plane.

I pulled into the driveway and called my husband and son to come look, and to bring binoculars. After we’d all stared at the wavy little lighted thing, we went inside and looked up the ISS current ground track at Heavens Above, and sure enough, it was passing right over us.

My husband asked why I was so excited. First, as an old time science fiction fan and engineer in the aerospace industry, it’s always great to find and identify an astronomical object. Second, it’s great to find and identify a human made astronomical object. And finally, it’s great to find and identify a human made astronomical object that has five human beings living and working on it.

“You’re kidding!” he said. “There are people on that thing?”

Yes, there are people on that thing. Incredible, isn’t it?

The people making decisions that will affect our day-to-day lives are people like Missouri’s junior Democratic senator, Claire McCaskill — who said a few months ago that we could save the government “hundreds of billions of dollars” by not “giving free scooters to Medicare beneficiaries who don’t really need them.”

This displays an all-too-common hostility and suspicion toward disabled people, as well as an appalling ignorance about what Medicare does — and this from one of our own public officials.

As a matter of fact, qualifying for a wheelchair of any kind in the United States is an enormously difficult process, even for those of us with private insurance. And the process of qualifying says a lot about how our citizens in general view disabled people.

Full article: Insurance may pay for your wheelchair, unless you need it to go someplace

Copley-Woods’ blog