Yearly Archives: 2007

Ableism?

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David Hoggard posted a piece on his blog about his 16 year old daughter’s experience at the National Conference for Community and Justice Anytown residential summer program at Blowing Rock.  Since my oldest is 15 I thought I should check it out and see if it’s something of promise for him.  When I checked the Anytown website I came across this paragraph:

With a diverse group of about 70 delegates, 13 peer counselors, 12
adult advisors and 3 directors spend a week at the Blowing Rock
Conference Center in Blowing Rock, NC exploring issues such as racism,
homophobia, interfaith respect, prejudice and discrimination, ableism,
culture and sexism. (Emphasis mine).

I’d thought I’d heard of all the "isms" but "ableism" was a new one to me.  So I Googled the term and found this Wikipedia page which offered this explanation:

Ableism is a neologism of American coinage, since about 1981. It is used to describe inherent discrimination against people with disabilities in favor of people who are not disabled. An ableist
society is said to be one that treats non-disabled individuals as the
standard of ‘normal living’, which results in public and private places
and services, education, and social work that are built to serve
‘standard’ people, thereby inherently excluding those with various
disabilities.

Though the proper formation from the nominal stem would be abilitism (compare ageism, a 1969 neologism, the correct Latinate form of which would be aetatism), the term ableism is the term in use.

The presumption that everyone is non-disabled is said to be
effectively discriminatory in itself, creating built environments which
are inaccessible to disabled people. Advocates of the term argue that ableism is analogous to racism and sexism
in that it is a system by which mainstream society denigrates,
devalues, and thus oppresses those with disabilities, while privileging
those without disabilities.

Uh, doesn’t every group of people have what could be termed as the "average" or "norm"?  Without a "norm" we’d have no cause to recognize the exceptional or the disabled.  I’m not saying that we shouldn’t do whatever we can to accomodate the disabled, but to say that recognizing non-disabled as a society’s norm strikes me as absurd.  I also take umbrage with the first sentence of that last paragraph.  Just because a society recognizes the non-disabled as standard doesn’t mean that society identifies everybody as non-disabled, rather the society is merely recognizing that the vast majority of its members are non-disabled. 

The article goes on to discern between societies that are inclusive of the disabled versus societies that are isolationist and paternalistic towards the disabled.  That part I buy, but to say that a society is inherently  discriminatory towards the disabled simply because it recognizes the non-disabled as the norm strikes me as plain wrong.  Maybe I’m reading it wrong, but if I’m not then I think they need to consider a philosophical readjustment.

Greensboro Man’s Battle With Cancer and How He Shared His Journey via His Blog

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A Greensboro man named Brian Stoll, whom I never met and had never heard of until today, lost his battle with cancer and passed away on July 15.  I’m not sure how I came across his blog but when I did I was captivated by how he shared his experiences from the original diagnosis until two days before his death.  His family wrote a final post on the 15th.

The blog is difficult read when you know that Brian has already lost his battle with cancer, but I think that by sharing his struggles he created a valuable resource for people who are just beginning their battles with cancer or those with a loved one recently diagnosed with cancer.  If nothing else they will get an idea of what lies ahead for them and perhaps they won’t be blindsided as often as they would have been without reading his blog.

Brian was a man of great religious faith so his writing alternates between being a straightforward account of his deteriorating health and an account of how his faith is an integral part of dealing with it.  If anything his faith got stronger as his body got weaker.  Here’s a sample from a post titled "Give me some oxygen, PLEASE…":

The outpouring of response from my Preparing to Die post has
been overwhelming. I haven’t been able to respond to everyone yet. My
lung capacity continues to shrink, making simple conversation a
difficult chore. Thank goodness for email and this blog. It is so easy
to communicate with everyone via the written word versus having a
conversation. This brings me to my next update. My physical ability is
so limited now. How so? Walking up a flight of stairs is darn near
impossible. I now have to sit on the bottom step, with my back facing
the steps, and “rear end” my way up the stairs over a two or three
minute process. Walk outside to get the newspaper? Thank goodness my
driveway is only about 50 feet long. Run around the house terrorizing
the dogs while everyone else laughs? No more. Go hiking with Brookie in
the mountains. Unfortunately, those days are gone. Play a round of golf
with friends? Never again. This has been one of the difficult mental
obstacles to overcome. I have so much time on my hands now, so I tend
to sit and think about all the fun stuff I have done in my life. Brooke
and I love to go hiking. It is classic daddy/daughter time, plus we
both love nature and the outdoors. I can’t do that anymore. Dammit,
that thought makes me very angry and sad at the same time. I am being
robbed of my ability to enjoy my family. That’s not fair! BINGO! Poor,
pitiful me. You selfish idiot. Why can’t you relish the fact that you
WERE able to enjoy these things in your life? Do you not understand
there are some people who will never go hiking, who will never see a
beautiful mountain stream, and never be able to enjoy God’s wonders?
Sometimes I feel so stupid. I really do have to work on getting away
from the selfish junk and being thankful that God has blessed me in so
many ways. The reality angel that sits on my right shoulder can really
give it to me sometimes.

Another mental obstacle that I have
finally succumbed to is the fact that I need a wheelchair to get
around. Truth be told, I simply cannot walk more than 50 feet without
getting winded. The wheelchair makes it so much easier to get around,
plus it’s a real snazzy new model. Lot’s of bling,ya know? I also got a
handicapped placard for my Suburban. Although I may not live to be 90
years old, I sure do feel like it now! I’m also very dependent on
oxygen. When your oxygen content in the bloodstream gets below 90% you
become oxygen starved. This causes panic, anxiety, disorientation,
restlessness, shakyness in my speech, etc. When this happens, I feel
like a fish out of water. Panic is the first thing to set in, and then
I realize I can’t do anything to help myself. This turns into a very
precarious situation resulting in a panicked frenzy. Kimberly will get
the oxygen machine turned on and puts the tubing in my nostrils. Then
she sets up the morphine nebulizer. Ah yes, the morphine nebulizer.
It’s a little machine that takes small amounts of morphine and saline
and turns them into a mist, which is then inhaled through a pipe. This
is starting to sound like illegal drug activity, eh?!? The morphine
calms down the lungs by changing the way it processes oxygen. Simply
put, it helps me to breath once again. Lately I have been taking 3-4
morphine treatments a day. The events leading up to the treatments tend
to be very frenzied to say the least. Never a dull moment.

In his last post Brian lamented about how he was no longer able to provide for his family and he quite openly discussed the financial devastation wrought by his cancer treatments.  I can easily imagine the frustration he felt and I’m sure it was extraordinarily difficult for him to write and ask for help, but that’s what he did with his last post.  His childrens’ college funds were spent on his treatment so his family set up a fund called "Breanne and Brooke’s Future" at Wachovia so that people who want to can help out (just visit any Wachovia branch to make a donation if you want). 

It takes a very big man to put aside his pride and ask for help and by doing so I think Brian showed exactly what kind of man he was.  After spending just a few minutes reading his blog I truly regret that I never had the chance to meet him. 

His family wrote, "Keep the family in your thoughts and prayers and remember that we were
blessed to have had him but Heaven is in Awe at what it has received."  The man obviously left a great legacy.

It’s Not the Razor, It’s the Blades

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Gillettefusion
The week before last I received a Gillette Fusion in the mail as did Lenslinger (that’s him to the left).  At first I thought, "Holy crap, how can they afford to send me and every other male in whatever demographic I’m in a free blade?", but then I remembered the old adage about Gillette making their money on the blades and not the razors and it made sense. 

I gave the Fusion a spin just to compare it to the Mach 3 that I received in the mail a year or two ago.  I liked the Mach 3 when I first tried it and held onto it figuring that the blades would go down in price once it had been around long enough for Gillette to develop their next-generation face scraper and for Target to start carrying generic versions of the blades.  Now that the Fusion is out and Target does indeed have generic Mach 3 blades my patience has been rewarded. Even better is the fact that I like the Mach 3 better and so I won’t have to clutter my medicine cabinet with the Fusion while I wait for its blades to come down in price.  For what it’s worth I think the Mach 3 is better for me than the Fusion because it has fewer blades spread farther apart.  Since my beard grows like a Chia pet on steroids, as does all the hair on my body besides the hair on my head, I think the six blades on the Fusion just don’t have enough space between them to get to my skin. 

Something’s Gotta Give

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Last night we rolled back into town after spending a week at the beach in Corolla, North Carolina.  Corolla is part of the northernmost developed stretch of the Outer Banks (OBX) and is very popular with folks from Washington, DC and points north.  Most of this area has been developed only in the last 20 years and judging from the traffic on Rt. 12 it doesn’t look like the area can handle much more, but that may not be an issue at least for the short term.

Now that the real estate market in the US is cooling down it will be interesting to see what happens to places like Corolla because I can’t imagine that the current situation can be sustained for much longer.  We saw one 1/2 acre empty beachfront lot next to the beach access we were using that was selling for over $2 million.  That’s just for land.  Across the street from that lot was another that was selling for $800,000.  The houses in that area are built so that multiple families can share the space which means they usually have enough sleeping capacity for 30 people and you aren’t going to build a house that size for much less than $500,000. If you’re spending $1 million for land and another $500,000 or more to build a house then you’re looking at $1.5 million minimum to get into that market.  We (our friends and ourselves) were speculating that over the last 10 years people in the northeast have been leveraging the skyrocketing value of their primary residences in places like the DC metro area to finance their beachside McMansions in OBX.  With those markets now hitting the skids there will probably be a corresponding slow down in places like OBX.

As I’ve written before I’m no economist, thus it’s dangerous for me to write about things like this, but I just can’t see how the current situation in OBX can be sustained.  I guess I’ll just have to sit back and wait for folks like my brother and David Boyd to come embarass me with obvious arguments for how it can.

Winston-Salem Journal Needs to Edit Email a Bit More Carefully

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Journalemail
Long ago I signed up for the Winston-Salem Journal’s email alert service.  I don’t know if I also signed up for their advertisers’ messages or if it’s part of the package when you sign up for the alerts, but a few months ago I also started receiving those alerts.  Well, a couple of minutes ago I received one of their advertising messages for Harris Teeter and there’s a slight problem.  They apparently forgot to change the "From" field of the message because instead of saying something like "JournalNow.com Special Harris Teeter Prize Offer" it says "JournalNow.com Breaking News: WFU coach Skip Prosser dies".  (Click on the image to the left to see a screen shot of the email).

The death of Skip Prosser was a big and tragic story here last week and it’s unfortunate for the folks at Harris Teeter that their ad message is being associated with a mistake that I think everyone will find tacky at best.  More likely Journal readers will find it highly insensitive and the kind of mistake that just shouldn’t happen.

Update: I just received another email from JournalNow apologizing for the first.  Here’s the text:

Moments ago, you received a very unfortunate e-mail from JournalNow.com.

The e-mail was supposed to contain an advertising message sent by JournalNow for Harris Teeter.

While the message did contain the Harris Teeter information, it also came to you using a “From” line that had been used last week on a Breaking News message: the death of Wake Forest coach Skip Prosser.

This juxtaposition was completely inappropriate and inexcusable, and I’d like to personally apologize for the mistake. No disrespect was meant to Skip Prosser or his family.

JournalNow, not Harris Teeter, takes full responsibility for the error. I will assure you that every effort will be made not to have anything like it happen again.

Mark C. Anderson
General Manager
JournalNow.com

I received the first email at 12:39 and the apology at 1:08.  That’s some good response time, which leads me to believe that they probably caught their mistake even before the first complaint hit their email server.

Oh, and Esbee points out in the comments that the contest ends December 26, 2006.  That means that either the Journal ran the wrong ad art or the ad rep for Harris Teeter is in seriously deep doo-doo.

10 Kids and 6 Adults

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We’re spending this week at the beach with two other families in one house. A total of 16 people, ten kids and six adults, in one house sounds like a recipe for disaster but it actually works out quite nicely. The kids entertain each other while the adults sit around and complain about the kids while drinking foo-foo drinks and beer. I can think of a lot worse ways to do a beach trip.

BTW, some lessons learned this week:

Sunburn hurts more the older you get.

Letting 13 and 14 year old kids jump waves off of your shoulders hurts like hell.

I need to buy stock in whoever manufactures Aleve. Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

What’s My Responsibility? What’s My Role?

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There’s an ongoing issue at Lewisville Elementary that I’ve written about a couple of times (most recent here).  I could be wrong but I think the comments on those posts are the only real ongoing public dialog about the situation, and the evolution of those comments have caused me to question my role or, more accurately, the role of my blog in the community.  Let me explain. 

So far I think the commenters on the posts have been polite, and the comments not particularly confrontational.  I honestly think that the commenters have the best intentions and even if they may come from different sides of the issue they also want the same things: better communication from the school and the conclusion of the investigation of the teacher who has been suspended.  That said, here are my concerns:

  • This blog is a personal endeavor of mine, something I do for fun and to feed my writing jones.  Normally most of the stuff I write about is inconsequential and goofy, but when issues like this arise I feel compelled to write about it.  Is that something better left to "mainstream media"? 
  • So far I think the comments on the posts have been good and in some ways helpful in revealing the viewpoints of some folks within the Lewisville School community.  But I worry that the comments could turn cruel or vindictive and that I’d be facilitating more harm being done.  Do I have that right?   I would certainly delete any bad comments as soon as I saw them, but the cat would be out of the bag for the few people who might see them before I do so.  I could also change my blog’s setup so that I moderate all comments before they’re published, but somehow that just doesn’t feel right.  I’ve never had cause to worry about it before, so this is new territory for me.  And here’s the key question: if someone does write something really negative am I responsible, are they responsible or is it a shared responsibility?  I’m not talking in the legal sense, but in the moral sense.
  • As a member of the community I’ve heard lots of rumors and different sides of the story.  All of this information comes from sources I trust and in a private conversation I’d feel fine in sharing it, but I wouldn’t feel right sharing here.  Am I being overly cautious or is this the right approach?
  • I’ve been thanked on more than one occasion for providing this outlet for people to write about the issue.  I’m glad some see it that way, but I worry that others might think I’m doing a disservice to those involved in the issue.  The last thing I want is to add fuel to the fire and I hope that’s not what I’m doing, rather I hope that by having a forum to look at this situation we are illuminating it.

The funny thing to me is that when I started this blog I figured maybe some friends and family would read it occasionally. I never dreamed it would be read by others or that it would be used in this way.  On the one hand I’m glad that it is, but on the other hand I’m humbled by the prospects.

Fec Obviously Married Above Himself

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I’ve met Fec and his wife so I can attest that he did indeed marry above himself, as have I.  From his blog:

The Wife and I ran outside this
morning in response to cries for help and screams from a dog. We
arrived in the street beside our house to find an elderly neighbor
walking his small dogs. A large tan pit bull was attacking a small
white terrier. The Wife pulled the pit bull off the terrier. I got
between the pit bull and the neighbor as he and his pets returned home.

The Wife dialed 911 and a GPD officer arrived momentarily. He called
in an Animal Control Officer. These two brave souls armed with a
shotgun entered the yard and had the owner barricade the pit bull in a
fenced patio behind the home…

BTW, heroic behavior from the Wife is nothing unusual. I approached
at a trot as the Wife sprinted past me. I was wondering which forearm
to sacrifice for the terrier. Apparently, no such thoughts plagued her,
as clad only in a kimono, she was on that Pit Bull and it was over
before I arrived.

The Wife once rescued a swimmer caught in a riptide and has
successfully performed the Heimlich maneuver several times. God only
knows how often she’s saved me from injury or death without my
knowledge.

So You Want to Put Your Google My Maps on Your Blog

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So you’re a geek like me and you’ve started using Google’s My Maps function and you think, "Gosh darnit I want to put one of my maps on my blog" but you don’t see one of those convenient "embed" buttons like they have on YouTube and other Web 2.0 sites.  What to do?

Well, you can visit My Maps Plus, sign up for a free account and before you know it you have your embed code.  One caveat: when you update your Google Map you need to go back to My Maps Plus and update it there too, but until Google adds the embed feature themselves I think this is the best you’ll be able to do.

Here’s an example on Triad Eats, a new blog we’re developing to subsidize our rather ludicrous eating out habits.  FYI, if you’d like to be a correspondent for Triad Eats just shoot me an email at jon.lowder AT gmail.com.  We don’t pay but if you feel like sharing your opinion on area restaurants we’d love to hear from you.

There’s Only One Way?

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I was reading the July issue of Direct Magazine and came across Ray Schultz’s column, "Sweetening the Pot", which stopped me cold.  Here’s how he starts his column:

It’s been said by everyone from Don Peppers to Fred Reichheld: Customer satisfaction starts with a company’s employees.

But how do you make sure that your staff fully supports your objectives?

There’s one way.

Incentives.

Yes. Companies of all types are using incentives to motivate employees, above and beyond bonus compensation.

First,
it’s always dangerous to say "there’s one way" or "the only way to" do
anything.  Not much in life is so cut and dry and when you’re talking
about directing human behavior you can be pretty sure you’re going to
be wrong to say "there’s one way" about how to do it.

Now maybe Schultz means that there’s one kind of internal marketing
program to implement to incentivize employees to further a specific
program or goal, but that’s not how the column reads.  Later in the
column he writes:

Many people have opinions on this, but only a few of these thinkers
really count. One is Don Schultz, professor emeritus-in-service at
Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism.

Schultz feels that incentives are an element
of internal marketing, the science of getting employees to buy into
“programs and processes needed to achieve organizational goals and
objectives.”

Another is Reichheld, author of “The Loyalty
Effect” and other seminal works on customer relationship management. He
believes that “you must have loyal employees if you want to build
customer loyalty.”

Mind you, we’re not talking about cheap pens
with company logos on them. Incentive programs work best when the firm
gives away luxury items like gift cards, electronic devices and travel.

And there has to be a trophy element to them. A cash reward, easily spent and forgotten, doesn’t cut it.

So
it seems that he’s talking about motivating employees in general, about
creating loyalty to the company and by extension to the customer. Given
that I’d say that this is a much more complex issue than creating a
trophy award system.  Things like creating an environment of mutual
respect between managers and employees, offering flexible schedules for
employees with difficult situations at home and providing good health
benefits are among the many basic business considerations that are no
longer a given in today’s workplaces. 

Schultz later points out that you need to focus on the ROI of
incentive programs and he’s absolutely right, but more importantly you
have to realize that no matter how nice the trophy for exceeding a
sales quota it won’t make up for a hostile work environment or a
personal financial crisis caused by an extended illness not covered by
a company’s lousy health plan.  Simply put, creating loyal employees
isn’t so simple.

Cross posted on LowderEnterprises.com.