Thought this was an incredibly beautiful photo.
Someone playing ball with an elderly lady in a wheelchair!
Too often, I think we forget or neglect the older, disabled, and disadvantaged population.
These were once the people who cared for us!
As we grow older, life can get so much harder in terms of health, disability, finances, and even loneliness.
It is so important to show compassion, kindness, and care for the people who need us, and not to forget anyone along the journey of life! 😉
A colleague told me something really great.
Once a month she helps others in the office that are less fortunate.
She told me that the cleaning people have various disabilities, and they are underappreciated for the difficult work they do.
So once a month she treats them for breakfast!
As I got on the elevator with her, some of the cleaning people were calling to her in a frenzy asking when they were doing the next one.
She told them the date, and they seemed so happy and valued.
I thought to myself, WOW!–what an amazing gesture of compassion, kindness, and charity for others.
It’s not necessarily the money itself, but rather making a habit out of doing something good for others.
I imagined G-d looking down from Heaven at this lady and that she would never be hungry because she makes sure to feed breakfast and gratitude to others. 😉
(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
What’s the fascination with the mythical cyclops and the single eye in the center of the forehead?
If the eye represents seeing and knowing then aren’t we better off with two or even a dozen eyes to see with?
See more, know more, do more.
How about eyes in the back of the head?
Or all around the head in a cool circle–like a majestic crown of sight all around you.
Seeing is miraculous.
The beauty of the world–people, nature, and the stars above.
Seeing is function.
Being able to navigate, get around, and do things with relative ease.
Seeing is safety.
Sensing path from obstacle and friend from foe.
It’s frightening to think of not having vision–what a challenge!
One old lady is possibly legally blind, but still serves as a notary public–how does she do that?
Eyes themselves are beautiful–brown and blue and hazel, and soft and deep and mesmerizing.
Looking into someone’s eyes, have you ever seen their soul.
Show me thy ways oh L-rd and let me learn and grow in the world you’ve created for us–seeing the material and spiritual world we’re enveloped in.
I see the beauty, necessity, and lessons you have for me.
However many eyes, seeing is believing in it all. 😉
(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
Some of the best work being done in robots to help disabled people is from Dr. Amit Goffer of the Technion University in Israel.
ReWalk is a robotic battery-powered exoskeleton with motorized legs and hips that enable paraplegics to walk, turn, and even climb and descend stairs again–and is FDA cleared as of 2014.
And UPnRIDE is a wheeled auto-balancing robotic device that enables quadriplegics to stand and be mobile.
The inventor, Dr. Goffer, is himself paralyzed from the waist down due to an accident 20-years ago.
This has inspired him to create these absolutely amazing robotic devices to assist all disabled people who are wheelchair bound.
Approximately 1% of the people are wheelchair bound that’s 70 million!
And surely, many more especially in the developing world need wheelchairs and don’t have them.
So these amazing robotic devices have the incredible capacity to help so many people stand and regain their mobility and dignity again.
These are nothing short of miraculous and a new beginning for so many people suffering from spinal cord injuries, multiple sclerosis, palsy, strokes and more.
Being able to stand again is not only psychology healthy and helpful for mobility, but it may aid in preventing secondary conditions that wheelchair-bound people can suffer, such as osteoporosis, diabetes, heart disease, loss of lean mass and difficulty with bowel and urinary functions.
ReWalk has also received approval for coverage from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs for those qualifying and with spinal cord injuries.
Hopefully, this is just the beginning for helping people around the world. Mobility is life! 😉
(Source Photo: here with attribution to The Times of Israel)
There is a difference between art and politics.
Art is just brilliant and beautiful.
But politics can be insane and ugly.
(Well maybe some art actually can be that way too.)
Read today how Congressional Bills are being held up for something as fundamental as funding to fight the Zika virus that causes severe infant brain defects and life-altering disabilities. Moreover, if Congress did pass it as-is, the President has threatened to veto it!
Another no-brainer bill still not passed before Summer recess is the common sense one that would tighten access on gun sales to suspected terrorists and call for expanded background checks, including for private sales and at gun shows.
As amazing for the soul as art is, politics gone wrong can be damaging to the very people they are supposed to be protecting for national security and health and well-being.
This is a system that is either broken or have people leading it that are horribly flawed, but either way the nation’s people are being hurt, when they should be properly taken care of and governed. 😉
(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
This was really nice to see.
Someone invented a beach wheelchair.
Thoughtful for people with disabilities.
Not sure how well it actually would work to try and push this over the sand dunes.
But I credit people for trying to help other people.
Too often, we only think of ourselves.
It’s inconvenient to think of those with less or with problems and in need.
But when we come out of or own heads, we can uplift ourselves as well as others to the beach or wherever else they want to go. 😉
(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
So this is amazing Will.
He is a veteran who was disabled and is missing a leg.
But that doesn’t stop him from going to the track with his beautiful son to play ball and do some laps.
In a few short moments he switches between his regular walking prothesis and the carbon fiber running blades for playing and working out.
All I could say to Will was how amazing he is.
And he is amazing Will for what he can do despite any disabilities–he turns his disabilities into abilities!
And he is amazing Will not just because of his name and his service to his country and his devotion to his family, but because of his willpower.
Will is determined to succeed no matter what.
Not to compare, but I thought to myself what excuse do I have with my titanium hips.
Get the heck around the track for another dozen Andy!
And I did, and I am losing weight and getting back to myself.
I think the lose of both my completely dear parents the last couple of years was more than traumatic for me.
But they would want me to heal and to be me again.
I know they are watching and I want to make them proud. 😉
(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
A very important article in the Wall Street Journal by Anthony Weller about what it’s like to Paralyzed From The Neck Down.
Weller has suffered for 10 years with primary progressive multiple sclerosis.
He describes losing everything…from “incalculable personal pleasures” to being “totally helpless.”
And what’s more, you have to save your chips in asking others for things, because “you’d be asking the whole day.”
“Say goodbye to any sense of personal space, too”–in needing everything, you’re essentially left like an open book to everyone around you.
Here, I can’t help thinking about those moments of personal indignity–in caring for our own bodies–that even that someone else must be there for.
Then, there is the just sitting around and endless thinking…”There isn’t much else to do.”
I remember learning about some medieval torture methods and one involved lying a person down in the space cleaved into the stone face of the dungeon and there a person would essentially rot–not being able to move, sit or stand up, or even roll over.
How long could a person last like that before completely losing their mind?
While Weller says that he used to imagine being paralyzed as feeling like being “encased in stone,” but now he see it more that your limbs just ignore you, to me whether you are paralyzed in your own body or embedded in medieval stone, the challenges physically and mentally are as scary as anything that can be imagined.
How do you keep your sanity, let alone any hope?
Weller says, you live in the past, “happiness isn’t is, but was, [and] you try not to contemplate the future too much.”
G-d should have infinite mercy on his creations and lift up the fallen, cure the sick, and release the innocent that are imprisoned…please, please, please let it be. Amen.
(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
We can build “the bomb” and sequence human DNA, but we still are challenged in caring for and accommodating the handicapped.
Some of the major legislative protections to the disabled are afforded under:
– The Rehabilitation Act of 1973 that prohibits discrimination on the basis of disability in federal programs, and
– The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990, which covers things like employment, public programs (state and local) and transportation, public accommodations (housing) and commercial facilities, and telecommunications.
Despite these protections, our world still remains a harsh place for many disabled people–and we see it with older facilities that have not been retrofitted, broken elevators in the Metro, managers being obstinate to providing reasonable accommodations, and people not getting up from seats designated or not, for the disabled.
In yet more extreme cases, some people can show their worst and be just plain cruel toward the disabled:
On the Metro recently, there was a near fight between two young male passengers squeezing onto the train; when one tried walking away, deeper into the belly of the car, the other guy pursues him, and literally jumped over a guy in a wheelchair–hitting him with his shoe in the back of his head.
On yet another occasion, also on the Metro, there was a wheelchair with it’s back to the train doors (I think he couldn’t turn around because of the crowding). A couple gets on the train, apparently coming from the airport, and puts their luggage behind the wheelchair. At the next station or so, when the wheelchair tries to back out to get off the train, the couple refuses to move their luggage out of the way. The guy in wheelchair really had guts and pushed his chair over and past the luggage, so he could get off.
To me these stories demonstrate just an inkling of not only the harsh reality that handicapped face out there, but also the shameful way people still act to them.
Today, the Wall Street Journal (17 August 2012) had an editorial by Mr. Fay Vincent, a former CEO for Columbia Pictures and commissioner of Major League Baseball, and he wrote an impassioned piece about how difficult it has been for him to get around in a wheelchair in everywhere from bathrooms at prominent men’s clubs, through narrow front office doors at a medical facility for x-rays, and even having to navigate “tight 90-degree turns” at an orthopedic hospital!
Vincent writes: “Even well-intentioned legislation cannot specify what is needed to accomodate those of us who are made to feel subhuman by unintentionalfailures to provide suitable facilities.”
Mr. Vincent seems almost too kind and understanding here as he goes on to describe a hotel shower/bath that was too difficult for him to “climb into or out” and when he asked the CEO of a major hotel chain why there wasn’t better accommodation for the disabled, the reply was “there are not many people like you visiting the top-level hotels, so it does not make business sense to cater to the handicapped.”
Wow–read that last piece again about not making business sense catering to the handicapped–is this really only about dollar and cents or can decency and compassion play any role here?
Yes, as Mr. Vincent points out, “modern medicine is keeping us all older for longer,” and many more people will require these basic and humane accommodations for getting around, bathing, going to the toilet, and more. Let’s make this a national, no a global priority–every one deserves these basic dignities.
I am not clear on the loopholes, exemptions, deficiencies in guidelines, or insufficiencies of enforcement that are enabling people to still be so callous, cruel, and just plain stupid, but it time to change not only what’s written on paper, but to change people’s hearts too.
(Source Photo: here)
I had the opportunity to watch an absolutely brilliant movie called Aftershock (2010) about the 1976 Tangshan earthquake (7.8 on the Richter scale) that leveled the city and killed more than 240,000 people in China.
The movie is beautifully filmed and the events recreated with tremendous clarity–I could feel as if I was there and I literally cried for the these poor people.
In the film a women is saved in the quake by her husband who dies trying to go back into the falling building to save their children–twins, a boy and a girl, age 6–who themselves end up buried under the rubble.
The mother begs others to save (both) her children, but a rescuer tells her that when they try to move the concrete slab that’s pinning them down–this way or that–it will mean that one of her children will die.
She cannot choose, but at the risk of losing both children, she finally says “save my son.”
The girl hears her beneath the rubble–and tears are running down her face with the emotional devastation of not being chosen by her own mother for life.
The mother carries what she believes is her daughter’s dead body and lays it next to the husband–she weeps and begs forgiveness.
The story continues with rebirth and renewal…the boy survives but loses his arm in the quake and the girl also lives but loses her memory (first from post-traumatic stress–she can’t even talk–then apparently from the anger at her mother’s choice).
Each child faces a daunting future with their disabilities–the boy physically and the girl emotionally, but each fights to overcome and ultimately succeed.
The boy who is feared can never do anything with only one arm–ends up with a successful business, family, home, car, and caring for his heart-broken mother.
The girl who is raised by army foster parents struggles to forgive her mother–“it’s not that I don’t remember, it’s that I can’t forget”–and after 32 years finally goes back and heals with her.
The mother never remarries–she stays married in her mind to the man who loved her so much and sacrificed his life for hers. And she stays in Tangshan–never moving, waiting somehow for her daughter to return–from the (un)dead–but she is emotionally haunted all the years waiting and morning–“You don’t know what losing something means until you’ve lost it.”
The brother and sister finally find each other as part of the Tangshan Rescue Team–they each go back to save others buried in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake that killed almost another 70,000.
Some amazing themes from the movie:
– “You’re family is always your family,” even despite wrongs that we do to each other, we are challenged to somehow find forgiveness and to love and extend ourselves for those who have given so much to us.
– “Some people are living, others only suffer.” After the earthquake, as with any such disaster, the living question why they survived and other didn’t. Similarly, we frequently ask ourselves, why some people seem to have it “so good,” while others don’t. But as we learn, each of us has our own mission and challenges to fulfill.
– Disabilities or disadvantages–physical or emotional–may leave others or ourselves thinking that we couldn’t or wouldn’t succeed, but over time and with persistence we can overcome a missing arms or a broken heart, if we continue to have faith and do the right things.
I loved this movie–and the progression from the horrific destruction of the earthquake to the restoration and renewal of life over many years of struggle was a lesson in both humility of what we mortals are in the face of a trembling ground beneath us or the sometimes horrible choices we have to make, and the fortitude we must show in overcoming these.
(Source Photo: here)
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