It’ll be another year of changes: I’m turning 30 next week, I need a new job and (as soon as I know where that’ll be) a new flat. One where I’ll hopefully be able to live for a while, actually put down roots, make an actual home for myself. So really, I don’t need any resolutions. 🙂
But, resolution or no, a friend posted about NaBloPoMo, where you post once a day for a month – so you might see a bit more of me for the next 31 days:
The fact that I’m posting this means that it’s been a year since I started seriously educating myself on disability activism in general and the disabled blog community in particular. It is part of my journey to better educate myself on a variety of issues (most notably LGBTQ rights, feminism, racism and, obvious from this post, disability rights) in order to become a better ally to marginalized groups and a better advocate for those groups that I’m a part of myself (as you can tell, I believe strongly in intersectionality). While with most minorities it is easy to decide whether I am on the inside or outside, reading and thinking about disability and disablism has not been quite that clear cut.
I’m a straight, white woman – and I consider myself at least disability-adjacent, so to speak, because I have a mental illness.
The outpour of support of the internet community has pretty much blown me away. I’ve donated to the Swiss Red Cross and Glückskette, but it doesn’t seem enough in the face of all that suffering.
And then there was the lovely Kelly Diels, who writes an excellent blog on Cleavage:
Like you, I’m all torn up about Haiti.
But I haven’t said a word about it. To anyone.
There’s a reason why.
Talking Gets In The Way of Action
I think complaining and venting can be enervating. You’ve got this uncomfortably hot issue simmering and boiling and producing steam…and then you vent. All that energy dissipates into the atmosphere. You’re comfortable again. And so you carry on.
And nothing changes.
So these are my offers:
1. Hosting on one of my domains in exchange for your donation of at least $5. Fannish and personal sites welcome. I’ll be glad to help set you up in any way I can. (Obviously no illegal content.)
2. Snail mail from Switzerland. Depending on the size of your donation it’ll be a postcard or a care package.
3. English – German / German – English translation of any text, 2 hours work for every $10 donation. I’m a native German speaker with a German literature minor at university – not a professional translator, but I did get full marks in two different English exams and have been writing in English, both privately and at university (including my MA thesis in Switzerland and a graduate diploma in New Zealand) for years.
Donations should go to a reputable charity like the Red Cross or Doctors Without Borders.
After enjoying church and a nice Easter meal with my parents, I came back online to find that Amazon.com had removed sales rankings from many LGBT-themed books, making it impossible to find them with a normal Amazon search. An automated response to complaints stated that those books had been removed because of “adult content” – however, not only did many sexually explicit heterosexual books keep their ranking, but completely non-explicit books like lesbian parenting guides, LGBT- themed books for young adults or autobiographies by gay men and women didn’t.
Needless to say, my head exploded with RAGE. 🙂 By now Amazon has backpedalled, stating the whole thing was caused by a “glitch”. I find it quite reassuring that online outrage (for example, we google bombed the term Amazon Rank, making it #1 in Google search results) resulted in an immediate reaction.
The image links to an overview of the whole issue by an author who was affected by this all the way back in February. I also found this recent AfterElton blogpost summarising quite nicely what bothers me so much about the whole thing, glitch or no glitch. And now I’ll go back to enjoying my day off…
Can I live this year again, please? Seriously, I don’t know how I got to be so lucky.
1. What did you do in 2008 that you’d never done before?
Many things, but the big one: Lived abroad, both by myself and in a flatshare.
I enjoy the LOLcat macros a lot – they never fail to make me grin. Basically they’re funny pictures of cats (and other animals) captioned using really bad grammar and spelling. Several internet speak phrases have been coined on that site (like the ‘let me show you it’ used in the subject line).
Anyway, I found a cute picture of a porcupine I took at Basel zoo a while back and decided to try my hand at creating my own macro. A friend provided the caption, because I’m just not that funny. 🙂
moar funny pictures
From here, International Bloggers’ Day for Burma on the 4th of October.
About “Free Burma!”
International bloggers are preparing an action to support the peaceful revolution in Burma. We want to set a sign for freedom and show our sympathy for these people who are fighting their cruel regime without weapons. These Bloggers are planning to refrain from posting to their blogs on October 4 and just put up one Banner then, underlined with the words “Free Burma!”.
Take part in this action for a Free Burma!
Taking part in the Free Burma! campaign is as simple as possible:
If you are a website owner or blogger you just have to post one entry on the 4th of October 2007 on your website/blog with the title/text Free Burma! and include one of the graphics from this page or from our Flickr group to sync our global voices. Please use the tag “free burma” if possible. For bloggers, our slogan is: “One blogpost for Burmaâ€, for website owners: “One text for Burmaâ€.
If you have no website or blog we need you even more: Please help us to spread the word while commenting on other blogs with our message/link, posting on forums, guestbooks and message boards, tell your neighbours, friends or kids and first of all: Sign our list of participants! Furthermore you can visit our Wiki for more information and organisation.
Further links:
http://www.avaaz.org/en/stand_with_burma/t.php
http://www.bpf.org/html/whats_now/2007/burma_peace.html
This sounds like a good project for 2006…
Read 26 books in 12 months by authors you haven’t read before. One for each letter of the alphabet (going by the first letter of the last name of the author).
I’ll add to the list in my reading log as I get recommendations for writers I don’t know already!
In life update news: Yesterday I finally showed my family (and my brother’s girlfriend) the photos from my Japan trip. Afterwards we went to dinner at the only ‘real’ Japanese restaurant in Basel, where the manager was a bit too much of a snob but the food was excellent (and prepared right at the table):
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Tomorrow I’ll get some driving practice in: Our neighbours are on vacation, so we have the use of their car, and my parents suggested that we do a daytrip, to the Papilliorama. Looking forward to it, although I’m a bit nervous, as always when I get a chance to drive.
So normal life has me again… All my classes have started and it looks to be a good semester. Don’t have a lot of hours anymore – I only needed four to fulfill all requirements but took 12. Because I’m a good student like that. 😀
Good thing about the few hours is that it gives me time to think about the last two papers I have to write as well as give some more thought to my thesis topic. This uni thing is going pretty well at the moment. I have to do some small things for several classes, but managed to have them either now or at the end of the semester, giving me free time for when my friend Bronwyn comes to visit for two weeks in May. That’s going to be so much fun! 🙂
Anyway, here’s this week’s Unconscious Mutterings: