ADA Compliance Has a Long Way to Go

With the 2024 Paralympic Games taking place this summer, many formidable competitors with disabilities are being showcased for their talent, grit, and determination. But there is another side to the glory and adulation. Paralympians in Paris are having a difficult time navigating the city itself due to the lack of accommodations needed in public spaces. (“Paris Is Utopia for Paralympians Until They Leave the Athletes’ Village,” New York Times, Aug. 30, 2024)

In general I’ve noticed that the glorious old European cities, such as London, Paris, and Rome, are highly inaccessible to people with mobility challenges. The subway systems in particular are a nightmare for someone in a wheelchair. Even my husband and I, who are relatively fit and able-bodied, found it a struggle to navigate many of the Tube stations in London with our luggage in tow on a recent visit there. Similarly, the Times article singled out the Paris Metro for being especially challenging for the Paralympic athletes.

But even here in America, where the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) has been in force since 1990, those of us with no significant physical limitations take for granted our access to places and situations where those with disabilities would find barriers. A case in point for me was my recent visit to our local shopping mall. I had two large and unwieldy packages to return to a store and had parked near the mall’s Barnes & Noble, intending to cut through the store on my way to my destination (and, of course, to browse thoroughly there on my way back!) But when I approached the doors with no spare hands, I saw that there were no wheelchair accessible buttons to push to open the doors. I mentally chastised the bookstore chain while struggling to get into and out of the store. But as I traversed the mall, I realized that none of the mall stores have automatic door openers either. Why had I never noticed that detail before? I imagined someone in a wheelchair or using a cane or walker trying to shop here, and it made me angry.

People with disabilities deserve better. We need to make a substantial investment in retrofitting public places and making accommodations so that all of us are equally able to enjoy our lives in this great big beautiful world.

Democrats Need to Use Republican Playbook

I did not watch last night’s debate. This year’s presidential election is painful enough without wallowing in the essential Hobson’s choice we are facing in November. I did, however, read with horror the headlines this morning, many of which showed Democrats urging Joe Biden to bow out of the race.

Although I generally admire the tendency of Democrats to be willing to criticize their own, this is a time when we need to be taking a page from the Republican playbook: unwavering loyalty for our candidate. After all, Republicans are willing to line up behind a convicted felon, no questions asked. Trump could literally go out onto 5th Avenue and shoot somebody, and the GOP would be spouting all kinds of excuses for why the sucker had it coming.

If the Democratic Party really does not want another Trump presidency, it’s time to go all out for Biden, no matter how you feel about his age, his debate performance, or his handling of the Israeli/Palestininian crisis. It’s just that simple, and Republicans are already doing it for their guy, a man who scatters falsehoods like confetti and has total contempt for the rule of law.

Biden is not bowing out of the race. If he had had any inclination to do so, he would have done it by now. We are stuck with a Biden/Trump presidential race. Democrats need to swallow their reservations and start mobilizing to get out the vote.

I’m not sure if pundits feel Trump “won” the first debate. Perhaps simply because of his total confidence and bravado despite all of his sizable shortcomings, Trump came off better last evening.

Lately the Republicans have been throwing around the term “fascist” to describe Biden-era policies and decisions. This is their typical MO. Let’s not let their tactics bring the candidate with actual fascist tendencies back into power.

Honor Flight

On a recent trip I was waiting to board my flight when a group of elderly veterans, all dressed in yellow t-shirts and many decorated with military hats and medals, made their way through the terminal. They were mostly very old, clearly veterans of WWII or the Korean War, but there were also likely many Vietnam War veterans in the group. Many were in wheelchairs. All of them had lived a life. The group was one of many that are afforded the opportunity to go on an Honor Flight, a way to thank them for their service to the country.

In the terminal, people at the gates waiting for their own flights spontaneously began to stand and clap as the procession of veterans passed by. I was moved to tears by the sight of these patriots, both military and civilian, united in their appreciation for the sacrifices countless thousands have made to keep our democracy safe.

Our country has become very politically divisive. Almost everything that occurs is reported and analyzed through a partisan lens. Such divisiveness has made it hard for elected leaders to govern, judges to make rulings, and even for ordinary citizens to live in harmony with each other. But in the airport terminal that day, we were one. Our ages, professions, races, religions and political affiliations did not mean a thing. Young and old we applauded these hardy veterans, and you could see by the light in their eyes how proud they were to have served their country.

This fall, we will have what is likely to be an ugly presidential campaign and potentially volatile election season. Millions of people will be unhappy with the outcome, whatever it may be. Today, on Memorial Day, let us pause to remember that so many have died to preserve our privilege to argue, disagree, and, most importantly, make our voices heard by voting. I pray that all who died in service to our country will make their Honor Flight to Heaven.

Democrats, Republicans, and False Equivalencies

This morning as I read a heart-warming Washington Post story about adoption, I noticed on the margins of the article an advertisement for t-shirts. One of the shirts had a picture of Joe Biden and asserted that anyone who voted for him was a “Traitor.” The other sported an image of Donald Trump and implied that the border wall between the U.S. and Mexico should be electrified. Let me get this straight. Trump supporters in 2020 illegally invaded the U.S. Capitol and threatened the lives of lawmakers and the vice president, but a Biden supporter is the traitor. Okay. I see the logic.

As Americans face the depressing spectacle of a repeat Biden vs. Trump presidential race, many Americans will try to force a false equivalency: that both Trump and Biden are equally horrible candidates and that their supporters are at best delusional and at worse criminal. But the facts just don’t bear out such an equation. Almost immediately after the January 6 insurrection, conservatives tried to minimize the horror of what Trump supporters had done and attempted to do. Of course, criminal courts have seen it differently, and according to the Justice Department, “approximately 467 [rioters] have been sentenced to periods of incarceration.” (justice.gov) We can hardly characterize the insurrection as some sort of tempest in a teapot.

Furthermore, while Democrats often gleefully mock Trump for his unhinged rantings and his potential to someday sport an orange prison jumpsuit, they don’t advocate the kind of violence Trump supporters so casually make light of. The suggestion to electrocute migrants trying to cross the border is a case in point. During the 2016 election, Trump made a veiled reference to his supporters potentially shooting Hillary Clinton if she were elected. More recently, he shared an image on Truth Social of President Biden being hog-tied and kidnapped in the back of a pickup truck. He warns of a “bloodbath” if he is not elected in 2024. All of these comments play to his base – and I mean that term in its more pejorative sense. There is simply no equivalent to this kind of political rhetoric on the left.

And with a few notable exceptions (Thank you, Liz Cheney), Republicans have been silent when confronted with the evidence of Donald Trump’s authoritarian leanings. Although privately some Republicans bemoan the fact that Trump is the presumptive Republican nominee for president, publicly they are cowed, most likely because Trump and his supporters show such vindictiveness and acrimony toward anyone who dares to disagree with them.

As Washington Post columnist put it in his January 28 column, “It’s time for everyone, the media especially, to face up to the actual choice: Between constitutional democracy and authoritarianism. Between a normal human being and a self-involved, spiteful madman. Between a government that has performed well and a regime that would gyrate from one personal obsession to another.”

I’ll take Grandpa Joe over the would-be tyrant any day.

Human Connection

Two articles on the front page of the virtual Washington Post piqued my interest this morning. One was all about the death of fun, and the other was about aging. Although vastly different in tone – the article on fun being exasperated and critical while the Anne Lamott piece was thoughtful and meditative – the conclusion I drew from reading them was the same. Our greatest need is not being met – that is, the need for human connection.

Technology has been transformative in society both for better and for worse. The same innovation that makes it possible to attend work remotely has also kind of killed the workplace. Those water cooler conversations can’t take place without physical presence. Also, since 2020, when COVID-19 shut down schools for months, young people have been suffering the effects of social isolation and disconnection. Mental health crises are at an all-time high.

There is no substitute for day-to-day touch and human interaction. From the moment we’re born, we can’t survive without the close physical contact necessary to nurture a newborn. Yesterday my husband came up to me and wrapped me in a big hug while regaling me with a study he’d just heard about claiming that a 20-second hug lowers blood pressure. Way more pleasurable than a pill, let me tell you.

At the same time, we seek fun in grand, expensive and complicated ways. The article on fun bemoaned all the extravagant social media moments, destination weddings, and over-the-top gender reveals that seem to have become de rigeur in modern culture. You can’t even go out for a nice dinner without witnessing people taking selfies or photos of their food. In today’s culture, if you haven’t posted it, it didn’t happen.

Yet true fun usually comes when we aren’t actively seeking it. It comes from being truly connected with the people around us. The other night my sons and I jockeyed at the kitchen sink cleaning up after dinner. At one point, one of them turned around and remarked on my husband sitting at the table with an enigmatic smile on his face. Later my husband told me that he was smiling because it was clear from our interaction how much the boys and I loved each other. On another night, I hauled out the ornament boxes and corralled all four children into putting them on the Christmas tree. This activity is always accompanied by their complaints. Yet as they unwrapped the ornaments I’d picked out for each of them over the years, my kids had so much fun reminiscing, laughing, and just enjoying the act of being together in one space.

As we get older, we have so many worries: finances, health, our children’s well-being. We bemoan the state of the world, which always seems wracked with war, natural disaster and disease. The only antidote to our despair is love and connection. This Christmas Eve, I’m going to wrap myself up in my love for my family. I’m going to enjoy the laughs around the tree as the kids open up their traditional Christmas Eve gifts of pajamas and a book. I’m going to demand lots of blood-pressure-lowering hugs. I’m going to remember what’s most important in this sometimes scary and isolating world: human connection.

Skeletons Out of the Closet

It’s nearing Halloween, and along with all things pumpkin, a profusion of ghoulish decorations can be seen in front yards all around town. This year there seems to have been a run on skeletons. Skeleton chic seems to be the Halloween decor of the moment.

Everywhere I go, I see skeletons: giant ones looming over homes, skeletons in trees, on balconies and front porches, where they often stare vacantly out of quaint rocking chairs. People seem to have fun dressing up their skeletons in different roles: pirates, rock stars, soccer players and the like. I’ve even seen a photo of a Halloween lawn decoration with two skeletons posed in flagrante delicto. The caption underneath reads, “Is this appropriate?” Indeed. Try explaining that one to your four-year-old as you’re touring the neighborhood trick-or-treating.

The phenomenon reminds me a bit of the Christmas Elf on the Shelf, which has become fodder for much satire and mockery. People love to pose the elf in compromising or mischievous situations and then post photos on social media. In the case of skeletons, I think their popularity stems from their being essentially a stripped down version of the human form. You can pose them in all kinds of ways, from the silly to the ominous. (One of my favorites is an apartment building that positions skeletons climbing up on balconies and trying to get into apartment windows.) At the same time skeletons remind us of our mortality and the eventual disintegration of our flesh, they can be posed in ways that make them seem very much alive. And that meeting between the worlds of the living and the dead is what Halloween is all about.

Every season has trends, and I guess Halloween is no exception. Especially in this age of social media, where people are proudly photographing and posting their decorating feats, we have a tendency to imitate what others are doing. So if you’re looking to have the hippest Halloween house on the block, skeletons are the way to go. No bones about it!

Walking the Walk

Here’s a little parable for your Sunday morning. Johnny and Billy were lounging around on a Saturday morning playing video games when their mom popped her head into the room. “Boys, I need you to do your outdoor chores today. It’s going to rain tomorrow.” Johnny refused. “You can pay someone to do your dirty work,” he told his mother. But Billy smiled angelically and said, “Sure, Mom. I’ll get right on it.” His mother beamed at him while throwing Johnny a frustrated scowl. “Suck up,” muttered Johnny.

The boys continued to play in a desultory fashion for a while. But Johnny’s conscience started to bother him. His mom did so much for the family. And the height of the grass outside was starting to make the house look condemned. He reluctantly got up, got dressed, went outside and fired up the lawn mower. Meanwhile, Billy whiled away the hours on the couch. No matter how many times his mom reminded him, by dinner time he had still not completed his chores.

As you might guess, this is a parable from the New Testament. After telling the story, Jesus asks his followers, “Which of the two did his father’s (or mother’s!) will?” The answer, of course, is obvious. So often in life we express good intentions. We want to be good, or at least be seen as being good. We “talk the talk.” But do we “walk the walk”?

I am guilty of this tendency to talk a good game but fail to follow through. It’s easy to promote charitable works and family values. But I’m not always willing to do the hard work of actually promoting these ideals. All the talk about feeding the hungry, for instance, won’t put food in their bellies. But getting that food to them will. And as much as I’d like to think I am a kind and compassionate person, how often do I go out of my way to help the people in my life?

There is a lot of hypocrisy in society. Politicians often espouse feel-good values, but the actions they take as our government leaders often belie their words. The same is true for many companies, whose public image lies contrary to how they treat their employees or customers. And one of the worst kinds of hypocrisy is the religious kind. So many pious pronouncements mask intolerance and selfishness. It’s one of the reasons the number of people who practice any particular religion is on the decline.

The message in today’s Gospel is so incredibly simple and yet so incredibly difficult for us to follow. As the saying goes, your actions speak so loudly that I can’t hear what you are saying.

Self Disservice

At the risk of sounding like a crotchety old Boomer, I feel compelled to weigh in on the development of the self-service economy.

On a recent airport visit, I was appalled to discover that no matter where I went, I had to interact with a machine rather than a person to purchase a bottle of water. My choices were ordering from and paying on a screen or the truly frightening prospect of an Amazon-style shop that required the insertion of a credit card to enter.

The idea of self-service actually started decades ago with the automat, a nifty little purveyor of sandwiches and desserts ensconced in vending machines. To be sure, these vending machines could be helpful to the busy office worker in a hurry. But the lack of human interaction was a drawback. Wouldn’t you rather kibitz with Doreen at the diner over endless cups of joe?

Self-service gas stations appeared in the Seventies. I’ll never forget the first time I tried to pump my own gas and had no idea where the gas nozzle on my car was. How embarrassing! And how depressing for service station attendants who suddenly found themselves out of a job.

This is one of the biggest problems of the self-service economy. At pretty much every supermarket and big box store nowadays, there are perhaps one or two checkout lines with an actual cashier, yet a myriad of self-checkout terminals where a single employee does any necessary troubleshooting and checking of IDs for the purchase of alcohol. As much as I try to make a point of having an actual person check out my purchases, I’m sometimes too rushed or impatient to wait in the long lines.

Washington Post columnist Rick Reilly wrote a humorous column on the subject of this new self-service economy titled “Dear Grocery Store Owners: I Don’t Work for You!” In it, he details the annoyance and frustration of being expected to be your owner cashier and bagger, as well as McDonalds order taker and airline ticketer/baggage handler. As he humorously puts it, “I’m checking myself out more often now than a seventh-grade girl on TikTok.” (“Self-checkout is the worst,” The Washington Post, Oct. 31, 2022)

Reilly also points out that theft in self-checkout lines is rampant and costs merchants a lot of money. Why don’t they just pay that money to more cashiers and do away with the untrained ones trying to find “jicama” on the self-checkout machine product list?

Technology and social media have already done enough to alienate people from each other. We live in our little techno-bubbles and can go whole days without interacting with another human being. Sounds like a dream for a misanthrope, right? But most of us crave connection, even if it’s only to bemoan the lousy weather with the grocery checkout clerk.

Let’s face it. Self-service is a disservice to us all.

Slow Down

A young boy is in a coma after being hit by a car in my old home town. He was just meandering down the sidewalk outside the local car wash when a car came out of the bay and the driver apparently lost control, hitting the boy and slamming into a restaurant across the street, injuring four others inside. While the accident is still under investigation, it seems to me from what I know of the location that the driver pulled off the car wash tracks too quickly and slid on the wet pavement.

Every day I see cars driving way too fast in quiet residential areas. These are neighborhoods where kids are playing and people are walking their dogs. Children walk to school each day while cars whizz by, even in school speed zones. Why are we in such a hurry?

Cars are so ubiquitous that people fail to have a healthy fear of them. In reality, the average vehicle can be a 1-2-ton instrument of destruction and death. And while car manufacturers continue to make safety improvements for drivers and passengers (The driver of the accident was unharmed.), those protections don’t help people unlucky enough to be in the path of a fast-moving machine.

In our modern world, we always seem to be pressed for time. We’re running late, so we gun it down the street. And we get so used to speeding along that we continue to do so even when there is no urgency. Sometimes this is the fault of governments. The speed limit in our sleepy neighborhood near the lake is 40 mph. That’s entirely too fast and makes walking along the road much too hazardous. But in most residential neighborhoods, the speed limit is 25 mph. Even at that speed, damage can be done, of course. But drivers routinely drive 40 mph in these areas. Sure, they may be courting a speeding ticket. But local police can only do so much to slow drivers down.

My former community has united in prayer for the 14-year-old child clinging to life in a Chicago hospital. His devastated family can only wait. No doubt the driver of that car has lost sleep thinking about what they have wrought, however accidentally.

But just as with gun violence, there are things we can do to avoid such horrific tragedies. And the one action all drivers can take today is simple: slow down.

What’s in a (Boat) Name?

Last weekend I was staying in downtown San Diego right next to the marina. The Embarcadero was a great place for my daily walks, and as I strolled along, I admired the grand yachts, fishing boats, and modest dinghies harbored along the waterfront. What I found most interesting about them, though, was the variety of names ship owners come up with for their watercraft.

Traditionally, boats and ships have been considered female and given women’s names. In San Diego harbor there were numerous examples of this: the Stella, the Lady Theresa, Mariah, Lola, and Annie M., to name a few. I have to imagine there might be times when someone has regretted naming their boat for a former girlfriend or ex-wife. It can’t be the simplest task to erase and rename it.

Of course, many boats had names that referenced their sea-going connection: Aquarius, Maties, Southern Cross, and Spirit of the Wind, for example. And along those lines, many boat owners seem to have a penchant for fishing and boating puns. These were some of my favorites and included We Shell Sea, Reel Ruthless, Reel Deal, and Knot Guilty (my personal fave). Life’s Ruff was also a cute pun, if not specifically nautical. I could just imagine the captain with their first mate, a lovable golden retriever, wind in its fur as it enjoyed the salty breeze.

Many of the boats had inspirational names, such as Living the Dream, Amazing Grace, Lovely Day, True North, Live to Be Happy, and Perfect Life. There must be something about being on the water that brings out people’s hope and optimism. I guess if you are willing to deal with all that is entailed in owning a boat, you must love the sea-going life. As my husband likes to joke, “What are the two happiest days of a man’s life? The day he buys his boat – and the day he sells it!”

There were Spanish names – Trieste and Septiembre – and a couple for the Francophiles: La Vie En Rose and Joie de Vivre. Also, Prost for the cheerful German! One owner fancied their boat the Big Kahuna, another the Lucky Lady. Still another called theirs Summer Toy. There were boats that aspired to Valhalla and Jupiter. One was inexplicably named Queen Anne’s Revenge. I also wondered whether Catch Me and Dealer Ship got stopped routinely by the Coast Guard. Probably the least imaginatively named boat I saw was simply The Boat.

I think it would be great fun to name a boat. Friends of mine, who are huge Star Trek fans as well as sailing aficionados, have come up with the following Trekkie names for their watercraft over the years: Holodeck, 10 Forward, Nyota, Gallileo, and Star Gazer. My family jokes that they would name our boat the Queen Mary after me ironically since I am the most reluctant seafarer there is.

Whatever their names, I enjoy looking at boats, most especially from the safety of dry land.