Five skills that are more important than "a good attitude"

I sometimes like to rant about the insensitive questions people ask about disabilities or blindness. But there is one question I recently got on an international forum, which is actually a good question that often gets bad answers:

What skills are most important for a disabled person to have? 

Creative commons image by Andrea Pavanello, Milano

Some people may take offense at this because the question somehow implies that disabled people don't have the skills that other people have, but let's take it a different way. What skills are most important for a city kid to have? What skills are most important for a farm hand to have? Now it doesn't seem so threatening after all. You don't have to see disability as a terrible lack of something in order to see that it is a specific life situation. So, is there a specific skill set needed to "do disability well," just as there are specific skills for living in the city or the country?

So, it wasn't the question that bothered me this time. It was the answers. I don't even know if the answers were given by disabled people or non-disabled people, but I have my suspicions. Almost all answers focused on attitudes or temperament traits such as "persistence" and "a good attitude." 

The question wasn't inherently problematic but it got some disturbing answers. They were primarily moralistic and aimed at traits that make someone a "pleasant and socially acceptable disabled person."

Creative commons image by vedic-words

So, it got me thinking. What if I was a parent of a kid with a disability? What skills would I want my child to learn? I've heard my own mom talk about the angst involved. Every mother wants the best for their kid. I was recently also given this question personally by someone who's grandfather was swiftly losing his sight. And even though I may get some argument from disabled people who could justifiably say that the field is too broad and there are no skills that are specifically necessary to all of us, I think I can answer this question better than the preachers of "how to be a nice disabled person."

I'll focus on skills or tools that A. can be learned and B. are essential to thriving as a disabled person in today's society.

1. The ability to create text quickly: For most this will mean learning to type. This is the primary vehicle to being able to articulate needs, deal with authorities and stand up for one's self in today's world. If you want to have a hope of advocating for yourself, this is primary. I grew up legally blind and writing by hand was a major struggle. When I was a child I went from being a C student to a straight A student in one year. The intervention was that a wise teacher intensively taught me to type. Many disabilities don't entail difficulties writing by hand but still the ability to type pays dividends.
2. Access and the ability to navigate the internet: This is both a skill and a tool. I have seen a lot of people with disabilities essentially dis-empowered through lack of access. The internet has it's evils but in terms of dealing with the inevitable social and physical issues of a disability, internet access and skills are key.
3. An understanding of social and legal systems: I suppose everyone needs to understand the mechanisms of our society, how bureaucracies work and how to work with people. But it is particularly crucial to people with any sort of disability because of the need to advocate and figure out alternative options for everyday things. Some people are naturally good at this. Others have to consciously learn it.  
4. Social skills as a tool: I hesitate to put this in here because "social skills" is term of rhetoric  often thrown at disabled people by those who have too much judgment. But there is some truth underneath the slime. The first thing to emphasize is that social skills do not make you a "better" person or more acceptable or get you more friends. Many, if not most, people will ignore people with disabilities, many dismiss or shun them, some will openly harass them, Whether or not the person with a disability has good "social skills" matters. It will change the dynamic by about 10 percent. Ten percent fewer people will shun or ostracize a person with a disability who exhibits good social skills. BUT the message that people with disabilities are routinely given is that, if they would just perfect their smile or their posture, they would be accepted. And that's a lie. Many people with disabilities spend a huge proportion of their time and energy trying to perfect these things in order to "be good enough" when the truth is that for most of society we will never "be good enough." That said, social skills are a key to success for disabled people because when you're dealing with official structures, schools, employers, landlords, media... all the people you encounter when advocating for yourself, social skills make a lot more than that ten-percent difference seen in purely social encounters.  
5. Permission to not be normal: When discussing social skills in the previous point, it must be emphasized at every turn that these are skills, not a way of being. I attended a lot of programs and summer camps for disabled kids when I was a child and I saw the huge gap between those who tried to "be normal" and those who just lived their own lives. I've seen disabled people who can't walk across a room or cover their basic daily needs because they keep trying to do it the way most people do. Many interventions for disabled people essentially hinge on trying to make you appear normal from the outside. But this is often a trap. Yes, you need "social skills" in one hand but in the other hand you need your permission to not be normal, to do what you need to do--even if that means handling your silverware with your teeth. You live with the body you have, not the body you don't have. This can mean that you attract some social judgement at times for not abiding by some social standards. But it's the difference between living your life vs. living to please others.

I'm sure there are plenty of essential skills I've missed. I'd love to hear from you. What skills serve a person best in today's world? Even if they aren't general to all types of disability, what are your favorite life hacks?  What would you advise someone newly disabled to learn|? Please comment using the comment button on the lower left and share this post with your friends using the button on the lower right.

Disability is social: Is someone else's medical condition your business?

When I was sixteen, I was travelling in Germany and I sat down on the edge of a fountain to read a book and wait for a bus. While I was reading, three other people sat down nearby. They apparently noticed me and the fact that my book was literally an inch from my nose.

One of them eventually reached over and mashed the book into my face and said, "There. You need some help getting the book close enough?" 

This was not an uncommon occurrence for me with immature peers, but that didn't make it any less aggravating. I'll admit that I have a temper and there have been times when I would have chewed the head off of anyone who did such a thing. But I was suffering under the delusion that Europe would be more open-minded than the US. So, instead of biting the head off the offending guy, I turned around and asked, "Haven't you ever heard of a person being nearsighted?" 

 "Why don't you get some glasses then?" the woman next to him said with no inflection of humor or understanding whatsoever. 

While I've had plenty of similar encounters and tossed them away into the fog at the back of my mind titled "Why lots of people suck," that one has remained clear and fresh in my mind for twenty years--down to the grain of the cement on the fountain base and the sunlight shining through the budding trees of early spring.

Maybe I remember it because that was when I first started to understand that this is going to happen, no matter what you do. If you have a disability, you will be harassed--even in nice liberal places like Germany, even when you aren't asking for help or accommodations, even when you're just minding your own business. 

Up until that point I had taken every nasty social encounter as proof that I was a social loser. But this time it was so clearly not my problem that it was a bit of a revelation to me. 

The other day, I was on a train with my six-year-old daughter, headed for her music lessons in the city. I was reading Little House in the Big Woods to her with my nose properly rubbing the pages. The train conductor came by and I bought a ticket and showed my transportation disability ID that gives me a discount on that route. The conductor made a stink about how my card must be expired, even though the date on it was clearly good for another two years. Finally, the conductor did his job and left. But then one of the passengers turned around in a nearby seat and said, "Were'd you get the fake ID? You're obviously not blind, since you can read." 

I hadn't stowed my foldable white cane and it was still propped against our seat. Sometimes I leave it out on purpose, just to scare away nosy twerps, but sometimes it doesn't work. Even without having an argument with the train conductor, I've had people stop me and demand that I surrender my cane, because they have seen me reading something and therefore they "know" I'm not "blind." 

On this particular occasion I turned to my daughter and explained again how some people don't know very much about people who can't see well. 

My daughter replied, "A girl at my school said that you look bad." 

"What kind of bad?" 

"Just bad," she said. "Anyway, I made her stop and she promised she wouldn't say that anymore. " She clenched her tiny fist and bared her teeth.

Oh gods, now my six-year-old is getting in fights over it. 

As a result, I would like to do a little bit of public education right here and now. Here are some basic facts that could resolve all of these situations and a great many others. Please pass them on to your friends.

Creative commons image by Antonio Cruz/Abr of Agencia Brasil

• First, the majority of legally blind people can see something. 
• Some legally blind people wear glasses to increase what they can see or to protect their eyes from bright light or to gain social acceptability (either by hiding eyes that appear a bit different or by simply alerting others to the fact that they don't see well).
• Some visually impaired people DON'T wear glasses. For instance, my eyes look a little odd and I would get a lot less social flak if I wore sunglasses, but sunglasses cut way down on what I can see. Some vision impairments are not helped by glasses. Some visually impaired people wear contact lenses. 
• Some people have to use a combination of contact lenses and glasses for medical reasons. Unless you're a doctor and the person is seeking your medical advice, this is not your business. (For instance, I see far better with contact lenses than with glasses--due to some complicated optical physics--but I can't wear contacts all the time for medical reasons. So, I wear contacts when I really need to see well, for instance when out in public, but I usually wear glasses at home.)
• Some partially sighted people use white canes. The fact that someone uses a white cane means they are legally blind. It does not mean they can't see anything. I for instance can see quite well at about one or two inches. I can't see other people's faces so well or speeding cars.
• Some totally blind people don't use white canes. They navigate almost entirely through echolocation and good memory. They are not in physical danger and it isn't your job to tell them how they should get around. I can get around like they do and I did for more than thirty years, despite not being able to see the ground very well, but I now choose to use a cane to avoid a lot of social flak. That is my choice and some people choose differently.
• The fact that someone's eyes move oddly does not mean they are mentally ill or developmentally disabled. Again, I don't care to count the times people have told me that they thought I was "retarded" when they first met me only to be "pleasantly surprised" to find out later that I'm only visually impaired. This is the primary reason I have used a white cane when in public for the past seven years. I traveled the world without one, worked as a journalist in war zones and some other sketchy places and so on. But small town social life is less forgiving than that and I've been beaten into submission. I now carry a white cane as a sort of signalling device because I prefer the nasty social things many people do to visually impaired people to the nastier social things many people do to developmentally disabled people. Which means...
• You'll sometimes see me using a white cane and then folding it away and not using it. You'll sometimes see me riding a bike in quiet areas without a lot of traffic. You'll sometimes see me hiking on rough terrain without a cane and then using a cane on a nice smooth sidewalk downtown. This is because the only real safety-related need for my cane is to avoid being run over by drivers who assume that every pedestrian can see them, and sure, they're supposed to stop but "just this once" the pedestrian should move out of the way or stay put or whatever (depending on the hand signal the driver is making).
• And to expand upon this, people who use wheelchairs are not all paralyzed. Many can move their legs. Many can walk for short distances.
• People who use wheelchairs can very likely talk just fine, as can people with white canes. and many deaf people can as well.
• People who use wheelchairs or other walking devices are often powerful athletes. Using a wheelchair does not make a person an invalid. I am quite a good swimmer myself and a disabled man who used two canes to walk very slowly beat the pants off of me in a swimming race when I was twelve. Arm muscles are quite a thing in the water. I became a lot smarter after that.
• Not all disabilities are visible or apparent to an outsider. 
• The people who diagnose disabilities and prescribe aids for them have years of medical training. This is the job of doctors and specialists. It is not your job to give advice or correct "unfair" use of disability devices on the subway, at school or in the workplace. 
• People who hold disability ID cards or disabled parking permits in some countries go through a long and arduous process of medical assessment. The benefits provided by such cards are not only minor but generally not of any interest to non-disabled people. So, just leave this issue alone. Unless you're a state medical assessor, this is not your business. 

Those aren't all the facts to be sure. But they all add up to the same thing. 

Please don't bug people about their glasses or lack there of or their cane or lack their of or their wheelchair or their hearing aid or any such thing or lack their of. It is their device and their responsibility. You can't possibly know enough to make a judgment on someone else's specific needs. Neither can I, unless the I'm the person in question.

If you're curious, many people with disabilities will be happy to explain, if you ask politely. Some won't. In the end, it is really their business. 

Comment below with questions and your own experiences. I love to hear from readers. Let's get a discussion going. Share this post (using the button on the lower right)  to help spread education. Best wishes!

How to live as an introvert with joy and success

Ever since the book How to Win Friends and Influence People came out in 1981 and set a slicker standard for social and business relationships, people who are not natural social rock stars have been told that they just need "better socials skills" or "more motivation" or some sort of self-help seminar. There's a book I'm going to write someday and I might just call it How to Live As an Introvert with Joy and Success.  

I was recently part of a discussion where someone asked how he could learn to enjoy being with people, even though he's an introvert. Most people in the discussion either lectured the unfortunate, self-professed introvert on how to be less self-centered and learn some social skills or recommended he read How to Win Friends and Influence People.  And as often happens, I got a little bit of fire under my skin.

And when I get fired up, I either explode or I write. So here it is, the gist of what I may someday write as my own self-help book (hopefully becoming a wildly successful bestseller, right?). 

Image by Kkmd of Wikipedia

First, let's get the terminology straight. An introvert is NOT a shy person or a person who talks little or even a person with a marginal social life. An introvert is simply a person who gets their energy from being alone. Extroverts get their energy from being with people. It is kind of like being left- or right-handed. You can be one or the other or one of the fortunate flexible few who can do both. But you don't generally get to choose. You're born that way. Like a left-handed person being forced to write with their right hand by backward pedagogues of past centuries, you can train yourself to act like something you're not, but there will be a cost in pain and dexterity. 

People often assume that all shy or awkward people are introverts and nothing could be further from the truth. I know a guy who is an extrovert, who is incredibly fun to be around and who also suffers from social anxiety disorder, so he sees almost no one socially. He's still an extrovert. He gets his energy from being with people. He runs a private preschool and has no trouble interacting socially with parents and kids. He has incredible energy with 20 three-year-olds all day. I'm in awe. He simply panics when he has to meet new people. That's all. Poor guy. "It's a hard life wherever you go." (Good point, Nanci Griffith.)

For years I had essentially the opposite problem. I was always out doing social stuff. I was an activist organizer and worked with community organizations. I talked loud and a lot. And I was exhausted and miserable. I was out doing all that stuff because I thought you had to have lots of friends in order to be "happy" or "worth something." I really didn't like being with people but I was constantly desperate to avoid being alone. I equated being alone with failure. It was miserable. I have changed my foolish ways. Now I enjoy being with people much more, not to mention I have a lot more fun and get more done in general.

So, this is my answer to the push for everyone to "win friends and influence people." These are a few of my hard-won tips for introverts on how to enjoy life and people. 

1. If you're an introvert, admit it An introvert is a person who gets their energy from being alone. Accept that this is not a failing but a blessing. You can be quite happy all by yourself doing things you love to do.

2. Figure out how you can build a life where you get to be alone a lot. Do something you're passionate about either for work or play, so that you'll be full of positive energy when you do end up around people.

3. Make time for social activities ONLY as often as you really enjoy them. Once or twice a week of social interaction outside of close family and roommates is plenty for many introverts. There should be no shame in having less social interaction, as long as it doesn't bother you.

4. Fix it so most of your social activities are with only one, two or three other people. Introverts tend to enjoy smaller groups more and have more to offer friends in small groups. It took me a long time to accept that this is normal and that it's nothing to be ashamed of. Finally accepting that I need to be seriously recharged to go to a big party was a huge step toward being a happier and better party goer. 

5. Cut out the shame. There should be no value judgement in being an introvert or an extrovert. Extroverts are a blessing to the world - able to really enjoy building community and bringing big groups of people together. Introverts are are a blessing too - possibly better at building intimacy and bringing empathy. All this lecturing about social skills makes it sound like being an introvert is an undesirable condition associated with self-centeredness. Not true. Today's business culture wants everyone to be a great networker and build a social empire, but that isn't really a recipe for success. If you think about it, you can see that it's logically impossible for everyone to be a social magnet. As an introvert, you have many other strengths. There is nothing wrong with having a few good friends, rather than many.

6. Nurture close friendships. Be a loyal friend. This isn't hard for most introverts. Help your friends out and be as flexible as you can about when you see them. Make a point of remembering birthdays and showing how much you value close friends. They won't always know unless you tell them.

7. Go to big events if you must or if you want to. If you don't want to and don't have to, just don't.  If you must go for family or work reasons, find a role if at all possible. At gathering of extended family, ask if you can be in charge of table settings or toddler care or the outdoor fire. At a professional conference, set yourself a task, such as collecting a specific type of business cards. 

8. Accept that professional networking is a job and not meant to be entirely pleasant. Do it as part of your job, if you must. And once you've lifted the expectation that you should enjoy it from around your neck, you will probably find it less grueling.

9. Learn how to network well, if you have to network. Consider even reading the book How to Win Friends and Influence People, because it does actually have some solid tips that you can use as business skills. (Yes, I just recommended you read the book I made fun of at the beginning. It's not a bad book. It all depends on your attitude toward it.) It is good to be able to ask the right questions to draw people out at parties or show interest in random strangers. These are good skills to learn, if you are unfortunate enough to be an introvert with a job that requires it. Consider getting a different job if it's really miserable, but either way, don't beat yourself up over it no matter what some self-righteous people say you "should" be.

10. If you're going to be in a large, less formal group with a lot of chatting go going on, such as a house party, bring something non-verbal to do with your hands. I do embroidery or wood carving. It dramatically increases my ability to be social and actually enjoy it. Set yourself up in a less frequented area of the party and do your activity, while watching people and smiling. The more thoughtful (and thus more fun for you) people in the group will most likely gravitate toward your little corner of serenity. 

11. If possible learn to play a musical instrument, particularly guitar. This will allow you to both have a role and do something with your hands at less formal events. It will make you sought after as a guest and yet you won't have to constantly entertain other people verbally and become exhausted.

12. Finally, charge your batteries and know that the world sometimes needs great action. I am an introvert but I have led social justice and peace demonstrations of thousands of people when I had to. Partly, I did it by recharging my energies alone, so that I would have the energy to give. The point here is not that introverts cannot do great social things. It is just that it is an outpouring of energy. As such, there may be something particularly powerful about an introvert whose energy is well built and well directed. Whether your energy is needed in work, community or social events, you will have more to give, if you live your life in a way that your introvert nature enjoys. 

I wish you much joy and success in this--a life of passion and love, free from the pressure to act like someone you are not. Feel free to comment below and share your own experiences and ideas. 

What it's like to suddenly be free for the first time

I was asked a question on Quora recently, "What is it like to be blind and take public transportation?" Oh, boy! They did ask though. I can get a little intense on this subject. And since my last post picked on the Czech Republic and trains, two things that have brought much good into my life, I feel like I need to balance the scales.

So, I'm reposting my answer here. Fair warning. They might as well have asked, "What is it like to be free for the first time?"

I grew up in a remote rural area in the US. The nearest "town" was five miles away. Population 250. My best friend lived twelve miles away. Most of those miles were rough gravel roads that make bike riding take a lot of extra energy. Riding to the nearest town on bikes was the first right of passage. My older brother did it first. Then me. 

Yup, I was legally blind. I did it anyway. I can see just enough to tell if there are large shapes right in front of my front tire. If I don't ride too fast I can follow the blurry color of the road and not end up in the ditch. If there aren't very many cars - and there was only one every hour or so - I do okay. When I was eight or nine I decided that I was going to ride to a slightly larger town, where our school was located, about ten miles from home. My brother, who was two years older, hadn't even ridden that far yet. He didn't believe I would. I got up early one spring morning, packed a lunch and set off. He caught up with me a few miles later and beat me over the line of the city limits of the town by about half a second. So, okay, he technically made it to that town first too. 

I always knew I wasn't going to be able to drive. It was like knowing if you're right or left handed. I didn't think it was a big deal. Everyone around knew I couldn't see much. It didn't matter in most things. We used to joke, "Shucks, Arie won't be able to be a truck driver or a pro-basketball player. She'll have to be lawyer instead." We were dirt poor but I was a champion debater. I almost always won arguments with adults. And we all set our sights high. 

Not driving started to become an issue when I was a teenager. I saw my brother drive off to see his friends on the weekends. I had to beg for rides everywhere and distances were large. I often couldn't get a ride and there were many lonely weekends. I wanted to join the teenage life of the nearby towns but when I was fourteen my older brother had to live with another family in order to attend a better school hours away, so I didn't have him to give me rides. I was mostly stuck.

When I was sixteen I won a scholarship to study in Germany as an exchange student. I spent a year with a German family and had my first real experiences riding buses and trains. I rode a bus from my host family's suburb into the city to go to school. But I knew there were buses in the US like that - usually one line that went from point A to point B. I had spent a summer working in Portland, Oregon and that was how the buses went. They went so rarely that you had to plan your whole day around their schedule and if where you wanted to go wasn't on that one special bus line, you were just out of luck or you ended up walking for miles through suburban streets that often don't even have sidewalks anymore. So, at first I didn't get it. 

It wasn't until a few years later that it finally clicked. I had met my first love while in Germany. He was a young man from Czechoslovakia in the old East Bloc. A few years later, I returned to Europe to study in what was then the Czech Republic on another foreign exchange program, this time for my university. I lived and studied in a town a hundred miles from the area where my circle of Czech friends mostly lived. And yet, I got to see them every weekend. I would finish with my last class, skip down the long flight of ancient stone steps from the university and right onto a waiting bus to the train station. Trains ran every hour or even more often at peek times. It was no big deal. My friends mostly lived in small villages, scattered around East Bohemia but there were always buses from the train to their houses. 

By Friday night, I would be sitting at the table with my friends drinking good Moravian wine and playing music 'til all hours. And on Sunday night I'd be back in my dorm, ready for classes. At my American university, I never left campus for months at a time. There was nowhere to go and no way to get there where I studied in Wisconsin. 

The next summer found me in Prague, working as an intern for the English-language newspaper The Prague Post. I had to learn the public transportation network perfectly. I often had to rush out to a story or track down some obscure address in an out of the way part of the suburbs. The first few weeks were disorienting. I would come up from the subway (metro) and feel like the world literally spun around me when what I thought was north turned out to be southeast. But by the end of the summer I was a pro. I could calculate complex transfers in my head and I knew where the various subway, tram, bus and train lines went and where they intersected. I could get from any place to any other place ANY TIME I wanted to. 

When I first realized that I literally started sobbing (in private, thank goodness).

I had never dreamed I would be able to get around on my own. I had buried the sorrow of it, told myself that it didn't matter. My family wanted me to be tough and never let on that being legally blind was an issue. And I had mostly done that. But it had mattered. Being trapped and unable to move in a society where everyone else can move around matters.

I have been asked many times why I moved to a country on the other side of the world when I have such close bonds with my family. I call my mom and my brother multiple times every week and we are ever so grateful for Skype and other changes in technology that have made long distance relationships easier. I miss the wild beauty and clean air of Oregon with a constant ache. I'm not really all that fond of a lot of things about Central Europe. I am a country girl and always will be. I don't like cities that much and I yearn for the comfy atmosphere of country kitchens and old friends. But I left all that. I married a Czech man (not my first love, unfortunately) and bought a house in a little town outside Prague. And I am stuck here now.

I did it primarily for public transportation. If it weren't for trains and buses, I would probably be back in Oregon, which still feels like home. We think about moving back sometimes, my husband and I, but our discussions always get stuck on that issue. The only places we could live, where I could have anything like a reasonable lifestyle or career, are the centers of a few large cities. We don't want to live in a big city and even in the cities it isn't easy in the US. I lived in Brooklyn and worked in Manhattan one summer. It was doable but the public transportation was rough and grimy and only in the city. It still entailed a lot of miles of walking. 

Early in the industrial era, the United States was an international leader in rail transportation. But the American rail companies were sold to corporations with big oil interests years ago. Some tracks remain but mostly only for heavy freight. Truly useful (defined as quick and ubiquitous) public transportation has been curtailed in the US through a combination of political, economic and geographical problems over more than half a century. As a result, I am an expat, unable to live a reasonable life in my own country. So, yeah, I can get passionate about public transportation.

The Czech Republic has one of the tightest rail networks in the world. There are stops literally everywhere. Other than a few remote areas, public transportation will take you within a mile or two of any destination, often faster than a private car will. I know some companies where the top executives take the slick, air-conditioned, wifi-enabled trains to conferences in other European countries while the lower managers are required to drive the company cars, because it's just faster, better and more pleasant than driving. 

I can go anywhere virtually any time I choose. I take my daughter to guitar lessons and international choir practice in the city just like other mothers. I visit friends in other cities or I just get outside town a mile or two to walk in a forest on a Sunday afternoon. It may sometimes take a little planning if my destination is remote or distant but it is possible. And it would simply be impossible in places without good, tight and truly functional public transportation.  

I love to hear from readers and I don't bite, even if you don't agree with me. Leave a comment below. What unlikely subjects can stir your passion?

A "strange mama" and the freight train of racism

A few years ago, I was interviewed by a parenting magazine in the Czech Republic where we live most of the time. You might think that this would be an honor, and it was… sort of.

The topic of the article was “unusual parents.”

That’s me. The strange mama. I merited an interview because my children are trans-racially adopted… and bilingual… and I’m an American living in the Czech Republic… and I’m legally blind.

That was quite enough to be going on with. I didn’t actually even mention that we partially homeschool, I make our own medicines out of herbs and we’re wild, tree-hugging Pagans.

That was the year we started what has become an annual celebration of our oddballness as a family. We went on a litter collecting expedition.

Okay, a bit of background is necessary here. The Czech Republic is a nice, quiet little country with a good standard of living, great universal health care, free university education and lots of other reasons to rejoice and relax. It does have a few knotholes, however.

One is litter. Czechs hate litter and they are extraordinarily judgmental about other nations who litter, which is ironic because they are champion litterers themselves. There is also a little, low-level ethnic conflict in this country between the Czechs and the tiny (three percent) Romani minority, sometimes called Gypsies.

For one thing the Roma get blamed for lots of things, including the country’s litter problem. In reality, there are no Roma in our town, and its a litter disaster. Roma have also been, until very recently, systematically channeled into sub-standard, segregated schools. The school segregation issue is slowly and painfully improving by inches. Romani people in the Czech Republic remain among the most marginalized groups in a developed country with unemployment as high as 90 percent and racist remarks against them common in the media and among the country’s leading politicians.

That was one reason the magazine considered me to be a unique parent. My husband and I adopted children and refused the prolific advice of social workers who advocate that adoptive families restrict their adoption applications to non-Romani children only. The choices on the official, state adoption application form are “Majority ethnicity only” “Non-Romani only” and “No restriction of ethnicity.” It’s that overt.

My husband and I didn’t necessarily want to be activist about it but we had no reason to limit which children we might adopt by ethnicity, despite the pleas of our case workers on both the local and regional levels. Fate being what it is our kids are of Romani background but they don’t look stereotypically Roma, so we’re still “flying under the radar” in terms of small town racist politics. A few people in town know the “dreadful secret” that there actually are Roma in our quiet bedroom community but most don’t make the connection.

So, the ironies are multiple when my kids bug me to pack rubber gloves and garbage sacks on the way to preschool. I promised them that we could pick up trash on the way back. Yup, my kids want to pick up trash so bad that they pester me about it.

They aren’t really perfect angels. Far from it. They can be brats to each other and their friends, and they throw tantrums with the best of ‘em.

But they do have this one angelic trait. They seriously don’t like to see litter and when the snow melts and the ground is bare and muddy in the early spring the litter is extra visible. So this is the time of year that it comes up and ever since I taught them about picking up litter, we have our early spring pick-up sessions.

This is the kind of town where you will be stared at for being the slightest bit out of the ordinary. So, when my two preschoolers and I pick up trash, people a block away tap each other on the shoulder and walk backwards they stare so hard. What they see is the woman with the long white cane holding the garbage sack while the tiny children with rubber gloves pick up trash. I have no idea what they think but I know they’re perplexed.

My daughter once asked, “Mama, why are those people looking at us so much?”

I told her, “They’re probably surprised that someone is picking up the trash.”

“But why are their mouths open like that?” she continued.

“Possibly because of Mama’s stick, honey.”

People are weird. My kids have proof.

My daughter’s six now and she knows she’s Romani. She loves Romani music and dance. She says Romani girls are the classic princesses. The teacher at our Romani culture camp is her real live hero, second only her choir teacher.

The day is coming when she will learn that Romani people aren’t treated as equals in this society. I can feel it coming like a freight train bearing down on us. I can’t stop it.

Up until now, my daughter has always thought we were “just like everyone.” She loves it when she discovers that she has the same color jacket as another kid or the same cartoon character on her toothbrush. She isn’t going to like our oddball status all that much, when she finally learns what all those open mouths and staring eyes really mean.

For now, I don’t tell her every gruesome detail.

“Mama, are you laughing or crying?” she asked as we walked away from the Pedagogical Psychological Advisory Office after she was tested for “attention problems” and “motor immaturity.”

“Mostly laughing,” I said.

“Why?” she asked.

“That I’ll have to tell you later, honey, when you’re bigger.”

The official at the meeting had tried to have my daughter sent to a segregated, inferior “special school.” She hadn’t even been mean about it. The special schools aren’t officially only for the racial segregation of Romani children. They are supposed to be for kids with developmental delays and disorders.

My daughter’s in kindergarten. She does appear to have some difficulty with attention and anxiety, and like many left-handed kids, she struggles with clutching her crayons too tightly. She’s also the only kid in her class who can read, and yet they tried to send her to “special school.”

Why was I laughing then?

Because I’m not a Romani mother living in poverty who can barely read, facing a phalanx of overconfident bureaucrats steeped in prejudice. I know my rights and, given the civil rights struggle that is going on here, this isn’t even a hard fight to win. There will be no segregated schools for my kids. The law has taken the teeth away from the officials at the pedagogical psychological office.

But I was also crying a little.

Because this is still happening. Because my daughter doesn’t want to homeschool and I can hear that freight train coming. I’ve seen the crushing force of racism break many a kid’s spirit, especially those who are sensitive to issues of “being just like everyone else.”

I don’t want that freight train to flatten my brave, bright daughter. I want to show her that different isn’t bad and when society calls something “strange,” it’s their problem not ours. I hope I can… but it feels an awful lot like standing up to a freight train.

How not to get mad

I might have been annoyed this week. But I wasn’t.
 
I live in the Czech Republic and the president is Milos Zeman. I’ve been watching his political career for nearly twenty years, since I was an intern at the main English-language newspaper here in the mid-1990s. I’ve always noticed that he has some sort of muscle anomaly in his face. I don’t agree with his politics most of the time but I did think it was refreshing that a politician with such a physical difference became president.
 
Then this week he did something very, very, very… irritating. He went to lunch in a small town and before he got there his event team went in to check out a nice restaurant. They liked the space and everything about the place, except for two of the employees. One had a visible physical disability. The other was clearly developmentally disabled. Both are regular employees of the restaurant, serving customers and earning wages and tips. But the president’s staff said they couldn’t serve the president. The restaurant was required to give the two employees mandatory leave and hire temporary workers from a hospitality school.
 
Now as many people know, I’m legally blind. So... I found this news item disturbing.
 
My husband pointed out to me that one doesn’t have to be directly associated with the irritating news of the world to be affected. He was similarly disturbed by listening to a radio program which made a case for why same-sex spouses in a legal partnership are not allowed to adopt children, including the children of their legal spouse. So, if you are gay and you are married and your spouse has a child, you are not allowed to adopt the child to ensure that the child has a parent in the event of the death of your spouse. The reasoning? Children must have both male and female influences. They apparently forgot that single women and single men are allowed to adopt.
 
Okay, our children are adopted from orphanages where many other children wait for parents who are open-minded about ethnicity. So I guess we feel associated with that issue too, but is anyone really unassociated with these sorts of issues? If you don’t have a family member who is affected, you surely have a friend who is.
 
The world can be disturbing.
 
And so it is good to have a sanctuary, some place where the world can’t intrude. Even if that’s just a corner by a window that’s well-suited to reading or a spot under a favorite tree.
 
I have always made a sanctuary for myself, even when I traveled. I’ve lived out of a backpack for years at a time and I kept a candle, a handful of pretty pebbles, some tea, a tin cup and a alcohol burning mini-stove tied up in a scarf. This I could spread out anywhere – and did – on a rock in the Himalayas and on the floorboards of a shack in the Amazon jungle. It made a place of peace.
 
Now I have a larger sanctuary. I am lucky to have a little house with heated tiles on the floors and a warm fireplace. I even have a garden outside full of maturing trees and herbs. And these days I have the luxury of being alone in this place to write for several hours a few days each week. That is a great privilege indeed.
 
And so, I really wasn’t all that irritated this week, even though I was tempted.
 
Instead I listen to my children playing in the other room. I can hear them playing with their collection of letter stamps. I can hear the soft sound the stamps make as they push them against the ink cushion and the “thunk, thunk” as they stamp them onto pictures they are making. I can hear the whack as one child hits the other with a stamp and the yowls of protest. I call a truce, backed up by Mama-power, and they sit separately for awhile until they are calm. Then they resume their pictures. All the while I am making apricot cobbler and I don’t have to turn my head to “see” what my kids are doing.
 
So, the Czech president can have his bland lunch. This time I’m not irritated because he’s got nothing on me. I am sorry that he doesn't know about the richness of all the senses of the body and all the uniqueness of the mind. I'm sorry for him. There will be days when my ire is raised but not today.
 
The peace of my writing sanctuary has brought me to the half-way point in my first draft of the Kyrennei Series Book Four. Don’t get too excited, if you’re an avid reader. It is still a rough draft. But it is coming along and the computer demons have been largely appeased.

Being a rebel with a pen is a lonely job but someone's got to do it. We're here to support each other. Keep in touch. Write a comment below and tell me what you do to keep from getting mad. I love to hear from you.
 

Secrets of the firelight writer

I suppose I could just keep it a secret and let you go on thinking that my eyes are closed in my author picture because I’m looking into the bright flames of a campfire at night.

But it’s bound to come out eventually, so it might as well be on my terms.

It wasn’t easy for me to come up with a “picture of the author” that I could use on a website, particularly a website for a book aimed at ultra-picky urban fantasy and dystopia readers. That’s because, to put it bluntly, I don’t look very cool.

For one thing I’m pushing 39, my hair is going a bit gray and I’m too eco-friendly to go in for harsh dyes. But that’s not the real problem. It’s my eyes.

I don’t personally think my eyes look that bad. But then I don’t have an eye-contact obsession, the way most people on the planet do. I have never been able to understand that common human fetish exactly. Eyes are beautiful. At least they are when I can gaze at them up close in a photograph. But I have never experienced that instant connection that happens when people make eye-contact.

That’s because I can’t see well enough. I’m not totally blind, but close enough for most purposes.

I can’t see anything but smudges of darker color where the eyes should be when I look at someone’s face during a conversation.

I’m told that the eyes are the window to the soul.

So, what does that make me? I guess I am a house with shutters. I don’t mean to be. I love intimate connection with another person on a soul level--through words and voice or through the touch of a friend’s hand. But to those who are used to reaching that connection through the eyes, I must be frustrating and off-putting.

The problem with pictures of me is that not only do my eyes not make eye-contact correctly. They also don’t open all the way. This apparently comes from a lifetime of squinting to see a world that is forever out of focus.

While I don’t think squinty eyes are that terrible to look at, I don’t want to distract people who I don’t know yet with that little detail. I want to be seen first as a whole. And I would like you to try reading some of my books, before you leap to conclusions based on one little physical characteristic.

So, that’s why I spent several hours with two photographers, a tripod and a Summer Solstice fire, struggling to catch a glimpse of me that could be authorly without being retouched in photoshop. I love the result, though whether or not it makes me look cool is a matter of debate.

Still the issue itself is on topic.

The Kyrennei Trilogy takes that murky issue of what is cool, who sets beauty standards and who makes the unwritten rules of society and pinpoints it with a laser beam.

I don’t look cool--not by the standards of 2014 pop culture, not by the even by the more middle-aged standards of parenting-as-a-competitive-sport mommy clubs, and certainly not by the hyper-beauty-conscious standards of urban fantasy.

But if you ever wondered about who makes the rules, I’ll can tell you. Read this.

The story isn’t about me anyway. It’s about you because if you read The Soul and the Seed, you’ll be going on a trip to the other side of the mirror. And I’ll be staying home in my cozy little gingerbread house and writing furiously to keep you there.

P.S. This is my first post on the Rebel with a Pen blog. This is where I plan to mouth off a bit, give good reasons to get riled up, spread the word about people doing amazing and hopeful things and find a path to spiritual healing. At its deepest, hidden core The Kyrennei Series is about healing. It is about the hard edges of the world and about how we find the strength to stand for our own souls. And so, as a Rebel with a Pen, I’m going to keep doing just that.