|
|
Tiffiny Carlson at work.
Tiffiny Carlson thought her life was over after a diving accident. In fact, it was just beginning.
By Lori A. Wood
“When life gives you lemons, you make lemonade.” It’s a phrase we all know, but few of us have lived it as admirably as Tiffiny Carlson. “I was a pretty active kid, obsessed with dancing,” Tiffiny says. “I took baton-twirling, and was in dance. I had finished my eighth grade year, and had just joined the cheerleading squad. Everything was great.”
Tiffiny, a Minnesota native, also loved swimming. “In [...]
Last winter, United Spinal Association was contracted to perform accessibility site assessments for various cultural venues throughout the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania area on behalf of Art-Reach, a Delaware Valley nonprofit cultural service organization that helps underserved audiences to experience arts and cultural programming and that serves as a community resource by increasing accessibility to cultural venues and events. Since then, United Spinal has reviewed the accessibility of a number of facilities throughout the Philadelphia area, including: The Bryn Mawr Film Institute, The Chester County Historical Society, The Mandel Theater, The Bristol Riverside Theater and WHYY Studios, to name a few.
by Kathleen M. Muldoon
When I was in sixth grade, my first homework for language arts was to write my autobiography-the story of my life so far. The teacher gave us a week to complete the assignment, but I didn’t start mine until the Sunday night before they were due. By the time I’d finished, I was surrounded with enough sheets of crumpled lined paper to wallpaper our apartment. Getting started had been the biggest problem and I finally settled on (yawn!) “I was born . . .” as my first three words.
On Monday I discovered that most of my classmates [...]
“The main theme of my music is believing that you can achieve anything you want,” says Jon Weems, a United Spinal member from Roanoke, Virginia. Lyrics from his song “Shake the World” illustrate this theme.
I want to shake the world
And I have no plan to stop
I’m gonna leave the past behind me now
I’m shootin’ for the top.
With his album, Ordinary Man, Weems hopes to do just that.
Writer Sherrance Henderson scored with her first novel based on her own experiences after spinal cord injury.
Sherrance Henderson’s first novel Sunshine Has Rain (Imperious Press, 2004) traces the journey of Channa Renée Jones, a self-absorbed, materialistic woman who must re-evaluate her life after spinal cord injury (SCI).
Coming to a theater near you: An award-winning, hard-hitting documentary on quad rugby that blows away stereotypes about quadriplegia.
The film opens on the image of a young man with close-cropped red hair and a flaming goatee in a dark sweat suit sitting on the edge of a bed. He lifts himself up by his muscular arms and transfers to a strange wheelchair with battered metallic shields protecting the spokes and begins to struggle with his pants. He slides them down long, pale legs, which he moves back and forth by hand, to reveal black athletic shorts and dark tribal-style tattoos on his [...]
Not Dead Yet and movie critics are still arguing over the Oscar-winning film from Clint Eastwood.
Some movies are designed to make audiences think. For certain members of the disability community, four-time Oscar® winner Million Dollar Baby, about a grizzled old trainer in the 1930s taking on a promising young woman boxer to mentor only to see her incapacitated by a brutal blow, brings to mind an unresolved question: Is Hollywood stacking the deck against disability?
Wanted: 50-year-old single mom with little money and no media experience-holding a full-time day job while raising an autistic child-to launch weekly radio talk show for the disabled community. Major media outlets largely indifferent, but people with disabilities likely to tune in. Exhausting hours with no assistants; blind faith and fierce determination a plus.
This imaginary classified ad is one that Monica Moshenko might have unwittingly answered last year after the owner of a small, family-owned country radio station in Lancaster, New York agreed to rent her an hour every Sunday evening for a talk show focusing on people with disabilities.
Lou Schriver, owner [...]
The ability to appreciate art is largely a subjective matter-a piece can be considered beautiful for any number of reasons. The work of paralyzed artist Dennis A. Francesconi is as beautiful for the way it is created as it is for the stunning results of his efforts.
Born in Fresno, California, Francesconi had a normal, hyperactive childhood, playing sports, being outdoors and working on his family’s ranch. “I could never sit still,” he says.
by Jennifer M. Rodriguez
The new home of Jazz at Lincoln Center (JALC) in New York City opened on Monday, October 18, 2004 with a swinging celebration. The festivities kicked off with a traditional New Orleans-style parade led by Wynton Marsalis, artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center, and consisting of members of the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra and Julliard students, who welcomed dignitaries including JALC’s Founding Chairman Gordon Davis, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and Jazz Historian Albert Murray.
JALC’s three-theater complex, including an education center and hall of fame, takes up the fifth and sixth floors of the brand [...]
by Lori A. Wood
Nancy Becker-Kennedy speaks her mind. This is a good quality if you want to be a truth-telling playwright and actor, like Becker-Kennedy.
“My childhood was messed up,” she confesses. “I was a moody kid. I came from a broken home; my parents divorced when I was 13.”
Hardly the type to avoid confrontation, Nancy was always prepared to fight for what she believed in. “Ever since I could talk, I was always sticking up for people,” she remembers.
In 1969, while studying political science at Knox College, Galesburg, Illinois, she developed a passion for activism. “I was really [...]
by Lori A. Wood
In one of John Callahan’s cartoons, a man with prosthetic arms is sitting in a bar, staring longingly at his drink. Noticing this, the bartender says, “Sorry, Mike, you just can’t hold your liquor!”
With just the right blend of sarcasm and silliness, Callahan gets to the heart of a matter, f ree from the restraints imposed by an inhibited society. While others prefer to cloak the subject of disability in vague euphemisms and speak of it in hushed tones, he faces it head-on, unafraid to speak his mind. Critics may find this sort of humor blunt-even sick-but [...]
She’s paid her dues with heartache, loss and pain, but she’s back in the saddle again.
“Dee” DeJulio calls herself a “country-folk- Western balladeer,” and she looks the part. On stage, she wears Western boots or moccasins, custom-made trail shirts with wooden buttons that she made herself, a hand-tooled leather belt with a custom-made brass trophy buckle that she’s had since 1954, and a Western-style jacket that she also made herself. But she doesn’t ride a horse anymore. She rides a wheelchair.
After a long strain of illnesses, DeJulio picked up her old 12-string [...]
Orbit introduces a series of profiles of new members with this portrait of a young “Renaissance Man” named Toby Forrest.
Tobias (Toby) Forrest is positively brimming with self-confidence. Put simply, he is a man of action. He knows what he wants from life and does everything that he can to make it happen.
Such ambition is admirable, especially when coupled with the ability to adapt to change-a characteristic that has served Toby well in life. He was born in San Francisco in 1975 and resided in several other states in his childhood. By [...]
|
|
