This reads like a poem, Dalton!!! You give the picture images that encapsulate the facts.
Throughout my many discussions and meetings on the transportation issue here, I like to pull out as to how the suicide rate here is higher than in New York City… No one has to think about the disabled because they don't see the disabled and they like it like that. I've already lived through various folks' awakenings as their aged parents or mentally challenged kids need to get around somewhere or do something and they can't. And the person can't always be the chauffeur… then i get the note or the call…. Or as the annoyingly chipper woman did, failing to find a solution, just quit her job as the mobility manager. She had been, as some here have, insulting about my perspective on the obstacles and barriers. (she'd been hired to get organizations to pool their resources and create a paratransit solution). I never knew teen suicide was an issue until i moved here, when one spring in the bucolic hills, 5 kids killed themselves…. and these were the middle class, the better off, the able bodied. It is that lack of empathy or understanding that kills. Thanks so much for the affirmation! Akua On Apr 1, 2012, at 6:44 AM, Dalton Garis wrote: > There is a vast, vast difference living in the well-off countryside, the > bucolic countryside, of beautiful sunsets and fond remembrances … > > and living in the poor countryside, stuck in a country where white bread > wrappers blow in the wind and get snagged by low branches; > And where used pampers litter the yards and old appliances are thrown down > the hill behind the houses; > And where no one has their own teeth after age 37; > And where the only books for sale are Harlequin novels; > And where women wear facial bruises on Monday's; > And where you need three cars, so that one might start; > And where seeing a doctor means bringing some trinket he might want in > exchange for services rendered; > And where the "man of the house" spends all his money on chroming his truck, > while his wife and kids live in a trailer; > And where the downtown has been gutted, borded-up and "Wal-Marted." > And where Monday mornings in March see the most suicides. > > That countryside is the daily reality of the country's poor. That > countryside is rarely referenced or discussed. As a sawmill and woods worker > in Maine, Vermont, Massachusetts, Montana, Colorado, New Mexico and > Washington State, I knew that countryside well. Being a part of that > countryside is disability enough. That countryside is a bad place to be if > you are even more disabled. > > Dalton > > From: <[email protected]> > Date: Sat, 31 Mar 2012 21:41:37 -0400 > To: <[email protected]> > Subject: [TMIC] Blown Away > Resent-From: <[email protected]> > Resent-Date: Sat, 31 Mar 2012 18:45:43 -0700 > > i'm dumbstruck at the question "why do I stay" coming from this group. > > I am paralyzed -- i would think folks here at least might understand what > having a disability thrust on them late > in life would mean. > > Or maybe i just didn't know that there were services that buy one's home, > pack one up, and relocates them to more congenial > and supportive communities. > > I never found such, but it could just be the limits of my imagination. > > Or maybe i'm the only person here without the money to just buy myself the > solutions i need. > I am obviously wrong on many counts. >
