Blog

Nisht Ahin, Nisht Aher: Thoughts on Racial Identity

Last week I went with my daughter to a conference on Transracial Adoptee Identity. She is adopted from China and is planning to develop, for her college senior thesis next year, an identity model for transracial adoptees (TRAs). The two presenters at the conference,...

read more

Played for Laughs

After reading a positive review, I watched the first two episodes of Patriot, a new web series streaming on Amazon about a reluctant American spy. I was sort of enjoying it until I was struck by how many “humorous” references the program made to disability. Apparently...

read more

A Classmate’s Death

Forced into this life on February 13, 1949. Left on purpose on August 22, 2013. --Obituary in the New York Times Reading the New York Times this morning I came across a review of a documentary, Left on Purpose, about Mayer Vishner, a former Yippie who committed...

read more

Dom and Dumber

We are back in Utrecht, a city my husband and I have grown to love after several visits. Our younger son now lives in a nearby town and we are visiting for his 30th birthday. Today we went on the Dom Under tour. The Dom is the 14th Century church tower, the tallest in...

read more

Giraffe Power

Recently, people from my neighborhood organized a Kids March as part of a growing, if piecemeal, movement aimed at resisting the policies and prejudices of the T… (let’s just say “new”) administration. One of the children’s signs declared “Giraffe Power.” Despite...

read more

The Yellow Brick Road to November

Today in the New York Times, Charles Blow had this to say about people who support Trump: “They know he’s lying, but they so want to believe the lies that they have pushed themselves into a universe of irrationality that is devoid of logic.” And that’s the real...

read more

Helping “Hands”

  My husband and I, along with our daughter, began to visit The Netherlands about four years ago after our younger son married a Dutch woman and subsequently moved there. He now lives in a small town outside of Utrecht, and my daughter-in-law’s parents live quite...

read more

The Deep Roots of Trauma

Yesterday, 26 years after the fact, I had a flashback to the accident in which I lost my right leg. I thought I no longer had Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Clearly, I had underestimated its persistence. I have, more or less, done well since the accident—with...

read more

Disability Dress Code

Recently, The New York Times ran a story about increased scrutiny of veterans who were running for political office. The focus of the piece was Brian Mast, a southeast Florida Republican who lost both legs in Afghanistan, and is campaigning for a House seat. The...

read more

It Wasn’t Black and White

My (Jewish) mother once told me that, some years before she met my father, an Italian (Catholic) man had proposed to her. She went to her mother to ask what she should do. My grandmother answered with an old saying—“A fish and a bird can fall in love, but where will...

read more