Those of you in the Nation who have been advocating for years for closer examination of the financial picture relating to funding and operations of institutions and nursing homes probably know this. However, for the benefit of everyone else I want to make a point of identifying just how much of an economic engine locking away our brothers and sisters with disabilities has become for states across the country. In this case, its the state of Kentucky and an all to common problem. Housing people with disabilities in institutions generates revenue and jobs for areas where both are extremely hard to come by.

I think that "King of The Hill" is one of the great underrated satires on television, despite constantly losing column inches to the more gag-centered "Family Guy(although the talking dog and evil baby sometimes kill me too.)

I happened to catch one of my favorites on repeats last night, although if you are cautious regarding "King Of The Hill" and disability humor after the painfully unfunny set of ADA- mocking jokes in season 3's episode"Junkie Business" you are not alone.

I must admit to not being a disability-studies powerhouse like Miss Crip Chick.

I came late, and rather haphazardly, to anything that resembles crip theory. Maybe that's why I'm so interested in how those of us with disabilities are perceived within the larger culture; I was well into my adulthood before I realized that we had anything like a unifying culture of our own. Of course, I was seventeen before I ever got to experiment with the internet, so in many ways I already feel that my understanding is a bit...antique on many issues

. Reading last year's Telethon Blog Carnival brought back so many memories.

Last week it was reported that the National Federation of the Blind, NFB, had reached a settlement in its suit against Target Stores Inc. THe case has been going on for a few years now and, while the end result promises blind people greater access to Target's web site, the longer term impact on access to other sites in cyber space remains cloudy at best.

I'm fascinated by NY Governor David Paterson.

I'd love to interview him for this blog sometime, but I don't know him, of course. I actually had an instructor in a magazine-writing class that acted as if I should know every crip in America...it was flattering and insulting at the same time.Like I could call Steven Hawking and belt out "Yo, Steve! How's it hanging?' as if there aren't millions of us. As if famous disabled people would get so dazzled by the matching chrome, they wouldn't remember to have their gatekeepers keep me out, even if I am polite and don't say "How's it hanging?"

Pop Culture Thursday

Today I'm catching up with one of my favorite TV shows: House, MD. I missed a lot of episodes last year, due to a scheduling conflict so my loss has turned into DisabilityNation's gain, hopefully.

I can already hear Rush Limbaugh foaming at the mouth about this one. He'd probably call it another in a series of liberal-spawned "frivolous lawsuits", given that the defendant is a tourist hotel and host to baseball camps. Critics of the ADA rarely think our amusement is worth getting worked up about, especially when the State of New York orders a business to pay it back $20,000 for its access-violation investigation.

To our critics, we are seldom more than a noise to be silenced.

I read this article about the new community housing options offered in Illinois, as a response to the younger disability community, and there's a certain irony in it.

As a single woman in an urban center with a disability,I find myself searching for many things. But I face one search that Carrie Bradshaw never had to stick in her MacBook: the search for the perfect wheelchair.

You'd think the dizzying array of choices available since the Everest & Jennings dominated eighties
.(weren't those colors awful? I had most of them, too: that sickening greenish-brown, the lackluster blue, the not-really red) the lighter materials, and the zippier styles would make Wheelchair Purchase angst a thing of the past

When I was a kid I had a very complicated wheelchair with many tiny movable parts. So on our vacation to Disneyland, being that we would be riding in a friend's car, my parents decided to leave the marvel of engineering at home in favor of renting one of the Mouse's more standard models. Mom still gets emotional about what came next. Another tourist, lame Hawaiian shirt and all, mixed my party in with two little boys who were goofing off in the rental chairs.

As we draw nearer to the close of the Summer Olympics and the wall-to-wall coverage of the various events, stories of the toll these games have taken on the Chinese people continue to leak out, despite incredible efforts by the government of that nation to hide the reality of life in China. Now we read of two women in their late 70's and how they have been sentenced to a year in a labor camp as part of what the chinese government refers to as a re-education program. While you pause and wonder what threat two little old ladies could pose to China, know also that one of them is blind and has other disabilities.

In June DN brought you coverage of the investigation in to the death of Esmin Green, a patient at a mental health facility in New York. Unfortunately, another case with somewhat similar circumstances has turned up in Goldsboro North Carolina. This incident took place in April of this year, about a month prior to Green's death.

Nurses at North Carolina's mental hospital in Goldsboro walked past a patient sitting in a chair for more than 22 hours without giving him food or helping him to the bathroom before he died, according to an investigative report released Monday.

History has shown us that housing people with disabilities in institutions has resulted in abuse, neglect and reinforcing stereotypical attitudes held by many in society. Countless examples of this can be found with little effort and research. For many years the disability community has advocated for the closure of institutions and a move toward community based living. Yet, as the final institutions across the country close I'm left wondering about those who aren't getting the level of care they truly need.

Overall, I have mixed feelings about the way we die in America.

It seems that too many people die alone and in pain after losing all their resources to the Broken Health Care System.(TM) So, in theory at least, I could support a more humane solution to end-of-life concerns.

Unlike many in Disability Nation, I'm not completely opposed to assisted suicide, but I never envisioned it as a cost-saving measure.