[Readers: Sadly, in July 2012 nothing has changed to guarantee the safety of disabled students regarding the hazards described in this photo essay written in 2006. See note at the end of the essay for more information on how this essay came to be written and why nothing has yet been done to secure the […]
scooter
Random Thoughts: January 30, 2013
Time for more random updates and personal revelations out of date to everyone but me January 30, 2013: Someone stole Goya’s head. (The fact that his happened in the 19th Century is irrelevant.) “On a November morning of 1888 in the cemetery of the Grande Chartreuse, Bordeaux, the Spanish counsel resident in that opulent city […]
Celebration of the Use of Virtual Reality to Improve Housing for the Elderly and Disabled
University Park, PA. On Tuesday, May 3, 2011 at 10a.m. Penn State’s Department of Architectural Engineering and its Smart Spaces Center for Adaptive Aging in Community celebrated progress made in a coordinated effort to reduce the cost of housing for Pennsylvania’s elderly and disabled residents today and in the future. The celebration took place at […]
My first scooter: Originally published as a Valentine to the Durable Medical Equipment Industry
[The following was originally published in the February, 2011 edition of HME News as a Valentine to the Durable Medical Equipment industry. The love continues.] I was so angry, wild with fatigue, that I lifted my ugly drug store cane intending to destroy my employer’s computer printer. This was in California’s Silicon Valley. The printer was […]
Goodbye car, you served me well
Here I am sitting at the wheel chair lift at the rear of my 1993 Buick which died this month at State College PA and is, as I write, now a paperweight-like compressed object already sold by the wrecking car company that bought the car. The odometer reading at the car’s death was 160,084 miles. […]
What’s the fuss? [Grilled 101]
What’s the fuss? [Grilled 101] I originally created this blog as a convenient way for readers to have access to my monthly column in Voices of Central Pennsylvania, published from October 2009 to February 2011. While recovering from minor cardiac surgery where the medical standard of “do no harm” was once again violated, I decided […]
Floor plan Blueroof Experimental Cottage
High-tech elderly and disability housing in the real world; namely McKeesport, Pennsylvania: McKeesport is the home of Blue Roof Technologies. http://www.bluerooftechnologies.com/ Yes, it is wheelchair accessible. This is a floor plan of the inside. I have driven my scooter through all of it, so I know it exists. I also know that right now there […]
Protect disabled, elderly from fires and disasters
From Where I Sit: My column in Voices of Central Pennsylvania, November 2010 My only experience with an earthquake was in the Silicon Valley of California. I was staring at my broken computer when the earth moved beneath me. The following day The San Jose Mercury News put the earthquake on page one because of […]