Disability Futures

But Mr. Bock’s group found that technical expertise — the ability, say, to write computer code in your sleep — ranked dead last among Google’s big eight. What employees valued most were even-keeled bosses who made time for one-on-one meetings, who helped people puzzle through problems by asking questions, not dictating answers, and who took an interest in employees’ lives and careers.

“In the Google context, we’d always believed that to be a manager, particularly on the engineering side, you need to be as deep or deeper a technical expert than the people who work for you,” Mr. Bock says. “It turns out that that’s absolutely the least important thing. It’s important, but pales in comparison. Much more important is just making that connection and being accessible.”

Interesting take on management by a tech company

Access to Faith Communities

Project Summary

People with disabilities want to be part of their communities. They want meaningful activities and social networks. They want to belong to community groups. But it isn’t always easy to get access to community life.

The Access to Faith Communities project will help people with disabilities connect to synagogues, churches and mosques. Faith communities offer more than spiritual growth, worship, faith and purpose for people's lives. People who are part of faith congregations find activities, friends, social support and genuine relationships.

Mosques, churches and synagogues are an important part of life for many people. Some reasons people attend are spiritual; for worship, faith and to find and purpose for their life. People who are part of faith congregations find activities, friends, social support and genuine relationships. People with disabilities want to join a faith community for these same reasons. But there are barriers that can make it difficult.

“Access to Faith Communities” will help find ways to overcome the barriers. United Cerebral Palsy of Michigan (UCP) is leading the project team. The team includes leaders and people with disabilities from the Jewish, Moslem and Christian faiths. It includes disability groups like the Capital Area RICC. (Regional Interagency Consumer Committee.)

Workshops

In the spring of 2011, the project will hold a series of workshops. 20 to 30 people with disabilities, their allies and faith community members will meet weekly for 6-8 weeks. People will be expected to attend all sessions.

Together the group will:

• Hear all participants’ stories, struggles, and successes in inclusion and finding meaningful roles for people with disabilities in faith communities.
• Explore disability culture and the disability rights movement.
• Learn about ableism and exclusion, and how those are often experienced in faith communities.
• Share tools and practical ways to promote inclusion, access and participation.
• Explore interpretations of disability in theology, sacred texts and congregation practices.
• Develop strategies for working together after the workshops to promote inclusion.

2011 Session Dates:

Sunday, May 15, 1:00-6:00 PM

Thursday, May 19, 6-8 PM

Thursday, May 26, 6-8 PM

Thursday, June 2, 6-8 PM

Thursday, June 9, 6-8 PM

Sunday, June 12, 1:00-6:00 PM

Lansing, MI

Location to be determined.

Procedures for helping people with disabilities find a faith community of their choice

People who have high support needs are often very isolated. They need allies who can help them find a faith community and learn how to be active members. The workshops will help locate allies and prepare congregations to include people with high support needs.

Often agency staff are the main allies of people with high support needs. Agencies have concerns about assisting a person with a disability with faith-based activities. We will develop and field test procedures that agency staff and other allies can use to connect people to the faith community, and to assure that the individual's choice is being honored.

This project is funded in part by a grant from the Michigan Developmental Disabilities Council.

"The poems in Spark before Dark are not 'about disability.' They are about life in a complex world,"  writes Jim Ferris, poet and Chair of Disability Studies at University of Toledo.

Poet Jenny Factor describes Hershey's work as "linguistically-potent" writing that allows the reader to "feel her voice intimately inside us as a real and sympathetic presence that made us braver and smarter. Laura Hershey's sinewy, elegant, and whipsmart poems, stuffed with humanity, are here in your hands. Buy this book. Read this book."

Laura Hershey was a Colorado-based writer, poet, activist, and consultant, as well as a 2010 Lambda Fellow in Poetry. She was nationally recognized for her activism and advocacy on a wide range of disability rights and social justice issues. Her poems and essays explore many diverse topics, including body, nature, community, activism, and social justice. She earned a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Antioch University Los Angeles, and a Bachelors of Arts in History from Colorado College.

This case advises that a history of traumatic events, particularly suffocative events like near-drowning, could lead to panic and posttraumatic flashbacks in a subject without any former or current posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms or anxiety symptoms. This case emphasizes that the biological underpinnings of flashbacks might be similar to panic attacks and that CO 2 -induced panic could reactivate traumatic events.

It was a lot of CO2, like 30%, as compared with the 5% or so that we usually breathe. But the flashback was very quick.

Thanks and a Hat Tip to Mr. Exercise, Joe S.

For the last three years, Gallup has called 1,000 randomly selected American adults each day and asked them about indicators of their quality of life. Responses are converted to the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index. Here are the 2010 results, sorted by Congressional districts.

Lots of interactive maps.

The researchers found that the people with full bladders were better at holding out for the larger reward later. Other experiments reinforced this link; for example, in one, just thinking about words related to urination triggered the same effect.

“You seem to make better decisions when you have a full bladder,” Tuk says. So maybe you should drink a bottle of water before making a decision about your stock portfolio, for example. Or perhaps stores that count on impulse buys should keep a bathroom available to customers, since they might be more willing to go for the television with a bigger screen when they have an empty bladder.

Another cup of coffee?

A RECENT essay in Boston Review by historian William Hogeland pondered a perplexing political question: Why haven’t populists and liberals been able to make common cause? They seem like natural allies. They both rail against economic inequality. They both are skeptical of America’s financial masters of the universe. They both believe that government has an obligation to help the country’s working men and women. They are both angry about the direction the country has been taking.

I would like to take some time today to post a few other resources that can help with a Holistic Mental Health Recovery.

Here are two established blogs that I like to read:

Thanks and a hat tip to Marty

Here is one bit from a very good Robert Gordon essay (which I will cover again in a while):

...if one starts down the road of comparing changes in life expectancy, the yearly rate of increase in life expectancy at birth during 1900–50, resulting in substantial part from the inventions of the Second Industrial Revolution, was 0.72 percent per year, the 0.24 percent annual rate during 1950–95.