Wishwars

Happy Pride!

If you want to learn more about Shakespeare’s queerness I recommend Straight Acting: The Hidden Queer Lives of William Shakespeare, by Will Tosh. I’ve just started it but so far it’s doing a great job examining what queerness looked like in Shakespeare’s time.

Ann Arbor Comic Arts Festival

I will be at the Ann Arbor Comic Arts Festival this weekend, June 13-14, at the Downtown Ann Arbor District Library. I will also be running a “how to draw stick-figures” workshop on Saturday, June 13 at 11:30am. I realize that (a) this is very late notice, and (b) most of you aren’t in the Ann Arbor area, but if you are… stop by and say hello! I will have printed mini-comic versions of the above comic available!

Shakespeare Anyone? Podcast

Like I spent years having to come up with a solution to get therapy dogs into a series of residence halls. Why years? Because we had to decide who got to stay and who got to leave: the people who needed therapy dogs or the people with severe allergies to animals. Who got the alternative housing? 

Things like fidget toys might seem great for some disabled people but having them in the room could be distracting/overstimulating for others. The same goes with stimming. It can’t be helped but neither can the anxiety that another person in the room feels as they watch/hear it. Additionally, something like a weighted blanket might immediately calm one kid down and send the other one into a panic attack due to the claustrophobia it causes. (*Points to myself*)

Every Metro bus in New York City has a series of seats at the front that can be lifted up to accommodate people in wheelchairs but if I’m in one of those spots then someone with a cane/walker has to journey even further to sit down.

The flashing lights of a fire alarm are there to help deaf/hearing impaired but if they’re not properly timed, they can also cause a person to have a seizure.

The worst part about all of these is that there is rarely a concrete solution that makes everyone happy/safe. And I’m not here to offer any because I don’t know them. I’m just here to remind you all that as you’re taking your education/health classes, as you’re reading your textbooks, as you’re preparing to go be an advocate, just remember that there is rarely ever such a thing as a one-size-fits-all solution to advocacy and that something you do that can help one disabled person might actually hinder another.

oh wow! hey if you take pills check this out. new medicine taking meta just dropped.

according to these models, out of the 4 tested postures, the best position to digest pills is laying on your right side. standing upright has a similar time to laying in your back at twice as much as laying on the right side, and laying on the left side is the slowest by far.

laying on right side: pill dissolves in around 10 minutes.

standing: pill dissolves in 23 minutes. laying on the back has a similar time.

laying on left side: pill dissolves in up to 100 minutes.

https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0096877

definitely worth a lot more research.

Langston Hughes: Beaumont to Detroit (1943)

Looky here, America What you done done – Let things drift Until the riots come

Now your policemen Let the mobs run free. I reckon you don’t care Nothing about me.

You tell me that hitler Is a mighty bad man. I guess he took lessons From the ku klux klan.

You tell me mussolini’s Got an evil heart. Well, it mus-a been in Beaumont That he had his start –

Cause everything that hitler And mussolini do Negroes get the same Treatment from you

You jim crowed me Before hitler rose to power – And you’re still jim crowing me Right now, this very hour.

Yet you say we’re fightin For democracy. Then why don’t democracy Include me?

I ask you this question Cause I want to know How long I got to fight BOTH HITLER – AND JIM CROW.

Rewatched Lord of the Rings, mourning everything they should have been

(Referencing a scene of Sam and Frodo from The Two Towers.)