Jonathan


    Location:
    Charlottesville, Virginia
    Your Disability Right leg hemipelvectomy
    How long have you been an amputee? 20+ years
    How did you become disabled? Extreme surgery.
    What type(s) of prosthesis do you use? None
    About Me Enough about me.
    Music I like it!
    Movies I don't go to the movies anymore. I watch plenty of them on DVD, though.
    TV I have one and, unlike my faux intellectual friends, I'll admit I watch it.
    Books I have entirely too many of these. Never have thrown one away. The only time I get angry about one is when someone borrows it and does not return it...even if I don't much care for the borrowed book.
    Likes Aviation. People who rarely repeat themselves.
    Dislikes People who confuse anguish with action.
    Hobbies None.
    Vices Every damned one of them except gambling, and sexual interest in minors.
    Virtues Few.
    Heroes Jack Knight, Abraham Lincoln, Barney Frank, Don Sheldon, Jonathan Winters, Bob Dylan.
    Relationship Status Not Secified
    Orientation Straight
    Children Not for Me
    Body Type Some extra baggage
    Height 6'0"
    Religion Agnostic
    Ethnicity White / Caucasian
    Smoke No
    Drink Socially

    Something Short This Time

    Thursday, November 8, 2007, 09:37 PM [General]

    This evening I was smoking an 18 year old cigar and read about aviators who flew before the Wright Brothers. They were called Balloonists back then. Nowadays they have have the dull distinction of being pilots with lighter than air ratings.

    The author was probably long dead before much of a fuss was made about flying, but it meant something to him, and to the Bride and Groom he took aloft because they did not want to get married on the earth. Love transcends the earth, they felt. The Balloonist wrote:

    No more, no more, the worldly shore

    Unbraids me with its loud uproar

    With dreamy eys my spirit lies

    Beneath the walls of paradise

    0 (0 Ratings)

    Has it Really Gotten Easier?

    Monday, November 5, 2007, 12:26 PM [General]

    I got into a bit of a row with Josh during that CNN Hero voting. This site has done a lot of good and needed things for people too often forgotten, and Josh has my praise and admiration. But I felt strange voting more than once. I'm not from Chicago after all. Also, the prize, for this forum, was live chat, or some forum enhancement...I forget.

    Was the site indeed the best cause among those open to voting? Was there some bigotry of a different sort reflected in the small number of votes for the fellow who helps Afghan widows? Do I even want anything to do with CNN - a once formidable pioneer in journalism now reduced to a 24 hour tabloid? They can call it 24 hour news, but it's the same hour of something less than news, broadcast 24 times. Yet the best things often happen for the wrong reasons. CNN may be a soulless husk of something worthy long ago, but it was the vehicle that brought most of us here.

    All of that was reduced to nonsense though when our discussion took an unexpected turn. What is true heroism in getting the public to see people where they now see disabled people? I became an amp in '67, and those were times of protest. Vandalizing AB's (Able Bodied people) cars in handicap parking spots was normal for us. Protests were normal for us, as were public rallies. This became the 504 regs on handicap access, with enough loop holes to make the regs useless.

    But this was Boston, Massachusetts, a state where Civil Rights protests received television coverage, at a time when Civil Rights were more than getting some schmoe fired or have to publicly apologize ad nauseum because he or she said something some group or another did not approve of. I was working on the Hill and felt fine standing up in a gathering of SSDI honchos and asking, "Why am I the only disabled person in the room?" In those days I was among the mild ones. The heroes were far more radical and I admired them.

    Then Josh said the strangest thing in our email exchange. "I'm fortunate to have my disability now because it must be easier than when you were young." I didn't want to say it, but I had to be honest. Nothing has changed.

    Yes, we had the Americans With Disabilities Act, but the percentage of disabled folks with jobs has not grown from the 30% it was before the act. It would be one thing if we were hated like the gays, lesbians and blacks, but our treatment is getting killed by kindness. We are eternal children; people who need help and compassion forever. That manner of bigotry remains. Matters of social justice have been abandoned for the past quarter decade. Protesters are depicted as strange fringe dwelling outcasts - losers - by the media today.

    As the Black Community suffers from a lack of leaders - or heroes if you can get your mind comfortably around that word - so do we. So do the former middle class, displaced by the new Guilded Age, where the victims are blamed for not having gotten more education twenty years ago.

    The genuine conflicts are buried beneath fictitious conflict fabrications like Red States and Blue States. These states don't exist but they create the illusion of division - a false struggle designed to preempt genuine issues.

    These are neither the best of times, nor the worst of times. But if anyone supposes that the situation of anyone treated badly for wholly irrelevant reasons has improved over the past twenty years, perhaps then it's time once again to yank the antennas and windshield wipers off the AB's cars parked the wrong spaces...and let the air out of their tires again too. It's time, once again, to make a scene, and plenty of noise. Perhaps it can begin right here, right now in the corner of the World Wide Web.

    Jonathan

     

     

    0 (0 Ratings)
  • Josh, 24
    Josh

  • Jimmy, 42
    Jimmy

  • Staci, 40
    Staci

  • Tara, 32
    Tara

  • Andy, 24
    Andy

  • Ashley, 26
    Ashley

  • JO, 44
    JO

  • Daniel, 49
    Daniel

  • Cali, 43
    Cali

  • Holly, 60
    Holly


    Leave a Comment | View All Comments

    Jonathan,

    I have loots of people who love me. Thank you for the note.

    I have 2 quickie wheelchairs. One is folding to fit in my BMW, and the other is rigid.

    What kind of wheelchair sports have you participated in? I haven't been able too find any that I am comfortable with. I played softball for years before I lost my leg, and I'm not sure I would like to play with an 11" softball, in a wheelchair. You know?

    Tara

    Tara
    September 24, 2007
    09:17 PM CST

    Hello Jonathan, a big "thanks " for contacting me, I came accross this site on CNN and did not know what to expect. Unfortunatley I can't upload any sort of sound on my computer. Even though I have had a computer for over 5 years , I'm still a novice. Pretty cool plane you got their " fella ". I see you are in Va. I moved to Miami from Bowie , Md. 24 years ago.contact me when you can.

    KEN
    September 24, 2007
    11:47 AM CST