Genetically defective

Dignity Is No Accident(s)

/ Ingrid Tischer / Leave a comment
Another Excerpt From There's No Cure for Gretchen Lowe a novelThere was a remarkable lack of public debate in San Francisco — or anywhere else — on Adult Diaper Dispensation (ADD). All costs were loudly underwritten by The Dignity Foundation (TDF), a charitable body dedicated to community development, medical research, K-12 education, and, now, small businesses hit by the “squat-by defecation” of serial defecants.
Allow TDF’s VP of Communications Lucre Smoothjoy to introduce your faithful repertory character, The Poor, who will today be playing semi-malicious poopers out to get Mom and Pop, who put every dime they had into The Backbone of American Business, their head-shop on Haight Street that sells bongs, whippet cannisters, feathered roach-clips, and what appear to be a number of human bones, including a few spinal vertebrae from, not an American Business, but the backbone of an American opossum from Bakersfield.
Would you like a TDF annual report? We have one for you right here. It makes no mention of our corporate sibling and sponsor, a disposable paper-goods manufacturer that is aging out of infant goods into a more mature market. Our Dignity Initiative public information campaign takes a broad-based social education approach to bring the public up to speed on what we can do — together — through top-level messaging in high-traffic spaces with framing that deploys innocuous word-play rather that blunt fear.
This top-level messaging was visible to all who cared to look out the car window at the blinking billboard near the off-ramp at Duboce. Dignity Is No Accident(s).
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There’s No Cure for Gretchen Lowe: The List of Lives That Suck

/ Ingrid Tischer / 1 Comment

“I’m not really looking to change, Mom.”

“Your life could be easier if you didn’t have muscular dystrophy. What I would have given for this Genetic Reparative Therapy when you were little.”

Gretchen poured water in the coffee maker. “Yeah, I’m well aware that there’s a list out there of Lives That Suck and — of course! — my name is on it.”

Alice continued. “I can’t believe you would even consider not being part of this study.”

“Well, jeez, Mom, I have to consider not doing it.” Gretchen leaned against the counter. The machine hissed and steamed. “Remember when they wanted to fix my foot and didn’t mention they’d be removing half of it? Good thing we pressed for details on that one.”
Silence.
“I have to live with the results of this experiment – I will be the result of this experiment. And I gotta tell you – just because something can be done is not necessarily a good enough reason to do it.”

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TryHarder™ Magazine: Ableism Speaks

/ Ingrid Tischer / 3 Comments
TryHarder™ Magazine: The Magazine for People Who Need to Try Harder, 2 cents

Issue No. 1: Ableism Speaks 

In which The Crip gives very special ableist remarks the 2¢ they deserve

“If you’ve got your health, you’ve got everything.” 

2 cents symbolSure, health is important but if you’ve always lived with a chronic condition and/or a progressively degenerative one like I have, hearing this most common of platitudes leads to a waxy bummer build-up in the psyche. It is no pleasure to ponder the possibility that you regard me as having…nothing.  Nor do I want to reprise my role on Emotional Labor: Special Cripple Unit where I tell myself you don’t actually mean anything bad by that. I would prefer instead that people express gratitude for what health they have (I know health is a nice thing!) without making such a sweeping generalization about what a good quality of life requires.

Did You Know?

A disability does not necessarily mean “sick.” Unless you mean, “sick of discrimination.” Then — oh yeah.  #CripTips

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There’s No Cure for Gretchen Lowe: The Dignity Initiative

/ Ingrid Tischer / Leave a comment

Another Excerpt From There's No Cure for Gretchen Lowe a novelAnd she had made sure the door was locked. She stood there, watching the gray-blue paint and listening to what was happening from within. At first, nothing. Then a murmuring confusion, then a rapid rise in decibel levels, quickly becoming Frank’s singular baritone summoning Gretchen. It didn’t occur to anyone that it was anything but an accident.

She waited and then knocked to get their attention.
“Hi!” she called. She had to knock harder because, as usual, they were still talking. “Hi, everybody! Are you ready to start the meeting?”

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There’s No Cure for Gretchen Lowe: A Mother’s Day Card From Alice

/ Ingrid Tischer / 1 Comment

Another Excerpt from: There's No Cure for Gretchen Lowe, a novelAlice’s schoolteacher handwriting greeted Gretchen when she flipped through the mail that evening. It was a floridly pious Mother’s Day card with a letter enclosed. Her mother must have sent it right after Gretchen had called about the board meeting fiasco. Oh Alice, Gretchen snorted pleasurably. I couldn’t have picked a better card myself.

Underneath the card’s summary appreciation for maternal sacrifices, physical and emotional, Alice had written, “Thought you might like to see the enclosed item right now. I think it confirms that we are related. I cannot take credit for why you are who you are but I did have a hand in it. Then again, you were always a rotten child. Not that I had anything to do with that. Love, Mom.
The letter was her mother’s same handwriting.  Cheered, Gretchen set to reading it. It was dated from May 1970 and addressed to a Desmond Wallace, Chair of Fundraising Operations for the National Cerebral Palsy Association. Oh dear.

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