1960 - 1958: July Daily Songs

When I was a kid I used to conflate 50s and 60s music, lumping 20 years' worth of music together. 

As I work on this, the distinctions are becoming clearer. I suspect it would be even more clear if I were working forward instead of backward.

While I have referenced the superiority of Domenico Modugno's "Volare" to Bobby Rydell's, I have both of them featured in July. 

This is the time period of my parents' courtship and marriage. It's not just that the songs my mother would talk about come up, but two of my favorite records growing up were At the Hop and Cruisin' 1956. Those albums were released in 1975 and 1970, respectively, but I understand their appeal to my parents better now.

1958 was the first year where Billboard did a hot 100. Prior to that there had been three years of a hot 50, and then just a hot 30 before that.

In my listening I just finished 1950 and for posting I just started 1955.

One change coming up is that when we get into the hot 30 years, I am only picking five songs instead of ten. That is partly an issue of availability, but also as we get less rock, the music becomes less fun. I will write about that more when I get to those posts.

For now I want to mention it because of two things. 

After the 1958 songs had all been posted (so, 2 - 3 weeks ago), a song I had not chosen, "Chanson D'Amour" started playing in my head. Written by Wayne Shanklin and recorded by Art and Dotty Todd, part of the song's success was due to a lot of DJs not wanting to play rock.

They were wrong for that. They were right that the song is not rock. I like it anyway, though I guess it took a while to grow on me.

Then we ended July with "Rumble" by Link Wray & His Ray Men. It is a good song, which is reason enough to play it. However, while it did make it to number 16 on the pop charts, and number 11 on the R & B charts, it did not spend enough time there for it to be on the year-end hot 100. 

That happens to lots of songs, but in this case I can't help but think that part of it was many stations refusing to play it because the term "Rumble" was associated with street fights. 

Now, that might be interesting on its own, but let's add to the story that Link Wray originally named the song "Oddball"; Phil Everly suggested the title when he heard it, as he thought it sounded like a street fight.

Okay, he kind of has a point, but it appears he didn't do Wray any favors. 

1960 

7/1 “Stay” by Maurice Williams and the Zodiacs
7/2 “Wonderful World” by Sam Cooke
7/3 “Image Of A Girl” by The Safaris & The Phantom’s Band
7/4 “Theme from A Summer Place” by Percy Faith
7/5 “Only the Lonely” by Roy Orbison
7/6 “Devil or Angel” by Bobby Vee
7/7 “Georgia On My Mind” by Ray Charles
7/8 “Tell Laura I Love Her” by Ray Peterson
7/9 “Volare” by Bobby Rydell
7/10 “Beyond the Sea” by Bobby Darin

1959

7/11 “Lonely Boy” by Paul Anka
7/12 “Sleepwalk” by Santo & Johnny
7/13 “Donna” by Ritchie Valens
7/14 “The Happy Organ” by Dave Cortez
7/15 “There Goes My Baby” by The Drifters
7/16 “A Lover’s Question” by Clyde McPhatter
7/17 “A Teenager in Love” by Dion & the Belmonts
7/18 “Only You (And You Alone)” by Franck Pourcel
7/19 “It’s Late” by Ricky Nelson
7/20 “Sorry (I Ran All The Way Home)” by The Impalas

1958 

7/21 “At the Hop” by Danny & the Juniors
7/22 “Get a Job” by The Silhouettes
7/23 “Twilight Time” by The Platters
7/24 “Yakety Yak” by The Coasters
7/25 “Rockin’ Robin” by Bobby Day
7/26 “Rebel-‘Rouser” by Duane Eddy
7/27 “The Stroll” by The Diamonds
7/28 “Endless Sleep” by Jody Reynolds
7/29 “Peggy Sue” by Buddy Holly
7/30 “Volare (Nel blu dipinto di blu)” by Domenico Modugno

7/31 “Rumble” by Link Wray*

Some health care problems, part 3

On August 5th the US Department of Health and Human Services announced it would wind down mRNA vaccine research, terminating 22 contracts.

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/mrna-vaccines-diseases-tech 

That was focused on infectious diseases, so there are some arguing that it will not affect cancer research. 

(I think there are signs and signals that they are going to ruin everything, but it will take more than one announcement. There's a lot of stuff to wreck, no matter how fast you go.) 

It is still worth noting that mRNA research is one of the most promising areas for cancer. I will also note that around the time of that announcement, I learned of two friends with cancer diagnoses. Two other family friends with cancer died.

I know enough people who have had cancer -- many of whom did not survive the battle -- that I did not need those four people for it to feel terrible, but I really think that news did make it worse.

Well, humans aren't always logical. I mean, the HHS decision cited many research studies that were not well-designed or even applicable while ignoring a lot of other studies that would vehemently contradicted the decision; I am not the only one going on emotion here.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/politics/government/hiltzik-rfk-jr-s-cancellation-of-mrna-vaccine-research-is-even-worse-than-it-first-seemed/ar-AA1KmQ5x?ocid=BingNewsSerp 

I should also point out that mRNA was really showing promise for curing AIDS.

It is true that people can live pretty well with HIV currently due to treatments for that. It is also true that there are a lot of countries where HIV positive people do not have access to those medications. In addition, AIDS is an infectious disease where prejudice and devaluing human life did a lot to impede treatment and prevention efforts.

That seems relevant in COVID times; it would matter on its own, but we should acknowledge these patterns.

Now, you can reasonably say that before this accursed administration pharmaceutical companies focused their efforts on long-term treatments rather than cures. That is one reason that having government and academic research was so important.

About those terminated contracts...

I already tend toward tired, but this cycle of rage and despair is really not helping with that.

I don't have anything useful to say here. I could spend a lot more time on health problems, so I will probably get back to it, maybe with better post titles. There are other bad areas that I will probably address first.

What I want to stress is that this is bad, but also that we don't get here without devaluing people first. 

That's what we need to keep fighting, over and over again.  

Some health care problems, part 2

One of the most frustrating thing about this time politically is knowing that there are people who chose it and are gleeful about it. Yes, there are also people who are starting to have bitter regrets about choosing it, but still that they could have chosen it in the first place is very discouraging.

Yesterday I wrote about COVID reducing the work force. That temporarily gave some people better work options, and we are seeing a serious backlash against that now.

That backlash -- which I will get to at a different time -- is partly about a rejection to valuing people. That had been around for a while, but things that happened during COVID reinforced it.

I will also spend more time on dominator culture later, but one thing about it is that it works better if you have different forces that can play off of each other. I think that is because when you face it head-on it becomes very hard to maintain any illusions about how wrong it is. However, when you have capitalism reinforced by ageism or racism, it's like the different forces blunt the awareness.

Therefore, while there was always the capitalistic desire to get back to business as usual, the path to enabling that included Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick saying seniors were willing to die for it and white people becoming less vigilant about the virus as they found it was affecting Black and Latinx people more:

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/texas-lt-gov-dan-patrick-suggests-he-other-seniors-willing-n1167341  

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/study-covids-racial-disparities-made-white-people-less-vigilant-virus-rcna22613 

(Let me just throw in a reminder that racial disparities are rooted in structural inequalities in access to work opportunities, health care, and environmental stressors. So, that's an indictment.)

I am never not thinking about COVID, but I am thinking of it more now.

I have already been thinking about how having such an anti-vaccine person in charge of health, I expect COVID rates to rise and a worse than usual flu season that will probably also see spikes of measles. whooping cough, and other diseases.

That was in the back of my mind as I was putting on my mask before entering my mother's memory care facility Sunday. 

I could get a lot more flak for mask wearing, but I do get some. Regardless, I was thinking that for all the things that I can't control I will not carry disease to my mother.

Then I had a flashback to a conversation I had with one of the workers, about how there is a COVID outbreak after every holiday.

Well, I had already noticed; that's why we were talking about it. Sure, it's kind of true with 4th of July, but you really see it around Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's.

It suddenly occurred to me that my mother is probably not going to outlive this holiday season. 

There are things that could be worse about that. Her cognition has deteriorated a lot, and it could be around then anyway. There is a real way in which it could be a release and actually allow the start of some emotional healing.

It still makes me mad. 

Maybe she would not be quite as deteriorated yet if she had not already been infected every year. 

Losing her will be hard no matter what, but if instead of passing peacefully her passing is wracked with coughing or fever, I am going to be really angry about that.

For whoever it is who brings it back there each time, okay, the families that have the big gatherings without taking precautions may very well not even know my mother or have any reason to think about the effects on her. I have chatted with some of the other residents and sometimes their family members, but we don't all know each other.

Maybe they are okay with their loved one getting it; probably they just aren't thinking about the risks and ignoring that kind of information, but hey, maybe there is a part of them that wants the end hastened.

A problem with that is that while you can influence things, that is not the same as controlling them. In the same way that you don't control whether my mother gets it, you don't control whether other family members get it. You can't control whether the care staff gets it, leading to staff shortages that affect the quality of care.

Yes, back when it started old people died and Black and Latinx people died, but a lot of young people did too. 

A lot of white people died. 

A lot of essential workers died, with ripple effects beyond the grief of their families. 

And the majority are apparently still in denial about it, because wearing a mask is itchy and having to think about other people sucks.

That commitment to denial (ignorance) and not caring is not something that can be harnessed to save democracy.  

Related posts:

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2024/12/wear-damn-mask.html  

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2025/02/im-not-swearing-at-you-this-time-but.html 

Some health care problems, part 1

I know a few people who have cataracts they need removed. One of them is actually getting it scheduled now; that is going to take 7 - 8 months.

One consequence is that a person whose ability to drive at night is being affected will not be getting it done before it starts getting dark before she leaves work.

Well, maybe if someone cancels.

This is not merely about the surgeon's availability; it also goes to how many rooms they have available and nurses too. With an aging population you are going to have more need for that particular surgery as well. For the available equipment and personnel that this particular health plan has, there is 7 - 8 months' worth of demand.

About a year ago I started a post called "The coming collapse of health care". Part of not finishing it was that I thought I was going to write about staffing issues and inefficiency, but then I got hung up on prescription drug costs and pharmaceutical company efforts to keep them high.

(Part of that was the manufacturer of Eliqis managing to get a three-year patent extension; so many seniors take that one.) 

Pricing was a problem. The Inflation Reduction Act was starting to help and was going to continue to do so, but of course the One Big Beautiful Bill Act is repealing a lot of that, because too much of the US population is hateful.

Regardless, the thing that was making my job worse -- and has continued to do so in my absence -- was that things were getting more confusing and difficult. While business was growing, staffing was not.

To be fair, a lot of that was caused by COVID. The workforce lost people, and people got sicker, and we have not really recovered from that. In many ways it got worse for the workers, but it was worse for the plan members too.

It wasn't just harder to get answers to your questions about what was covered; it was also harder to find available health care providers. Call centers weren't the only work force that lost people. Some were lost to death and disability, and there was a lot of burnout.

For the job I had, training was about two months, then about another month to get comfortable. That's at least for how I started. We kept getting different business lines added where we needed to learn new things. Then, because it is new, you don't have the same depth of knowledge across the team.

If you think three months is bad for getting new call center workers spun up, well, it takes a lot longer to get a nurse ready to go, or a doctor, or a pharmacist.

Part of that is the length of the training, but also, if tuition keeps going up and student loans keep becoming more predatory, you have fewer people who are even going to be eligible. 

I was talking with a graduate student in a demanding program a while back. She said the ones most likely to complete it were not the smartest or the hardest-working, but the ones with the most money behind them. It makes sense, but is that how you get the best medical force?

No. It's not.

This is a problem that you could consider to be a convergence of some different problems. That would be one thing, but there are many other problems rushing in as well.  

Less

There was an interesting Twitter post today from @KevOnStage:

People who grew up poor. What’s something you STILL do that you can 100% attribute to growing up poor.

https://x.com/KevOnStage/status/1956350710355771638 

I don't think I have an answer, because even though there are a lot of familiar things in the replies, I would do them anyway for the environment. I don't doubt that my horror of waste has some connection to money worries -- my glee at the change in the total when coupons are applied confirms that -- but anything that reduces and reuses (recycling too, but those first two are more important) seems like a good idea to me. 

There was a common thread in last week's books that came up in an additional two books: 

The Art of Frugal Hedonism: A Guide to Spending Less While Enjoying Everything More by Annie Raser-Rowland and Adam Grubb

No Impact Man by Colin Beavan

For those two, just let me say that when you have people writing about cutting back and opting out and and how much better it was, there can be some reader rebellion with some of the extremity that can be almost unbearable when the writers are inordinately pleased with themselves.

Frugal Hedonism was a lot worse on that count. I do not recommend it.

Beavan was better.

From last week, both Humes and Freinkel interviewed people who had made substantive changes in their lives. Some of it does not appeal to me, and some does. Some would be hard but I could be open... ultimately that is a very personal thing.

Often the starting point was looking at the impact. Freinkel had a day where she tried tracking every piece of plastic that she touched. The number rose so quickly that the goal needed to be amended. 

Beavan and his wife wanted a week where they were going to go through all of their garbage, immediately complicated by their daughter's diapers.

Regardless, there was some way in which they would come to grips with their impact on the environment, the neighborhood, the atmosphere... somehow dealing with their output. Feeling the weight of that (which is always more than they thought it was going to be, even when they were expecting it to be high), they started to think about what they could do.

In every case, there were things that they loved about it. They ate better, they were healthier, they enjoyed their time more and were more relaxed... there were wonderful options that had been there all along but where other, easier things distracted them.

Conscious choosing led to greater satisfaction. That sounds logical, right? But it is easy to just get led.

I will add that pretty much everyone here was coming from a place of privilege. Part of choosing to eat locally involved having access to farmers' markets and farms. For someone living in a food desert, that's probably not an option. However, once you start thinking about it, maybe there is something you have overlooked or someone who can help. Maybe you can start a program that will benefit other people too. 

It starts with moving away from the easy and automatic.

I suppose that's part of why algorithm pushing bothers me so much. That's going to come up again.

It also goes along well with some of my thoughts about gracefully withdrawing from capitalism. There may be limits to the possibility, but there are options that can be done and they will take very conscious thought. 

They may all seem to involve taking less, something the planet desperately needs. That is also something that capitalism does not support, in ways that damage us.

It also involves that less feeling like more. 

Auughhhh!

Based on the subject matter, maybe that should be a primal scream, but it is really more of a Charlie Brown scream.

Maybe I should have said "Good grief!"

We have been thinking about the Great Pumpkin recently.

I am not doing worse than anyone else.

I have fallen behind on blogging; that's for sure.

It is only partially being busy. There is also just a level where being able to write coherently is a lot to ask because there is too much going on, with worse news happening all the time and knowing that various things are going to be bad but not knowing when they are going to hit or how they will hit or how they will interact with the other things, with caring about others and selves and so much dishonesty and viciousness but also so much that it's not so much vicious as really ignorant and petty, but there could be a good person inside there if they hadn't gotten so much caught up in the wrong understanding of a reasonable concept....

It's tiring, you know?

I know I am not the only one going through this.

My desire to be Ms. Fix-it is not particularly useful right now.

I mean, I learned a while ago that sometimes people need you to listen more than they need solutions, because really they have to make their own solutions; they just need to feel supported.

Okay, but...

1. A lot of this doesn't really have solutions, so they can't get there on their own.
2. There is still some mental load, except maybe that's because we have the same concerns and so there's this cycle going on.

What to do?

Lots of things, depending on which you need most, which can vary greatly from moment to moment.

For me, a part of the frustration is that there are a lot of things that I have already written about, except they keep coming together in new ways, but also it is all just a lot. 

1. Can I make something coherent?
2. If I do, will it matter?

I don't usually do lists on my blog. I do them on paper all the time, and also sometimes in text files, documents, and spreadsheets, depending.

Part of that is removing items from your cognitive load, and it is valuable.

There's one tip for you: write things down!

Insight in to me: I really want to be helpful and I have severe doubts about the amount of help that is possible and that can be possibly done by me.

For what it's worth, all of those feelings and pulls have some grief in them too, though I am not sure if it is good. Maybe that's just a question of what I do with it.

Anyway, that is disjointed and I know it, but I am still here.

There are things that are good. My sisters and I have some fun things coming up. I love my cats. I think one of the pumpkin plants is pretty sure to live and another one might. (Long story there.)

I am making reasonably good progress in school, though graduating by the end of the year will still take a lot of work.

This money I have been waiting on appears to be on the way (though probably not before I accrue another late charge). 

And so much of that would have been the case anyway if we as a nation had not had the worst, most corrupt, narcissistic, spiteful, incapable of any intellectual exertion and racist president and then put him back in office. 

But he still makes it so much worse. 

Saving the planet reading list

I wrote about science-related reading in June, mentioning that there were other books that were more environmental, but they had been going to go together.

The way that happened was that -- back in 2019 -- Congresswoman Suzanne Bonamici held a town hall with Betty Shelley of the Reduce Your Waste project.

So, yes, that has been a while. There are links that don't work anymore, though sometimes they have moved to other sites.

Regardless, there were two books that were added to the list that I knew I would get to:

Plastic: A Toxic Love Story by Susan Freinkel

Garbology: Our Dirty Love Affair With Trash by Edward Humes

As should surprise no one, there were some other books that had ended up on my reading list in other ways but that I thought would relate. 

More surprising was that when I looked up Garbology Humes had written two other books that seemed completely relevant:

Door to Door: The Magnificent, Maddening, Mysterious World of Transportation

Total Garbage: How We Can Fix Our Waste and Heal Our World

(He's also written some true crime books, so I may not be done with Humes yet.)

There was a common thread with all of them that relates to other books. I will get to that next week, but first a few things about waste.

The first thing was from Betty's talk. She mentioned them looking in a garbage dump and finding a hamburger that was very old but still looked... maybe "edible" is not the right word, but it hadn't decomposed. 

That makes sense; to avoid contamination of the soil and water table, dumps are set up so that the waste is not going to break down and return to the earth. That's as it should be, but if you are buying something biodegradable and then throwing it in the trash, you may not have accomplished anything.

If it was made with recycled materials or used less resources in some other way, that may be the better choice, but it requires some thought.

Part of the Shelley family's claim to fame was that they reduced their waste enough that they had to take a little bag to the dump about once a year. That's incredible, but it doesn't happen easily.

From the reading, there were three other things that were important.

Don't take things for granted:

It's easy to think that other people are doing the same things, but that may not be true.

Aluminum is remarkably recyclable and because of its source, there is a strong return on investment with recycling. The US still doesn't recycle nearly as much as they should, so much so that to make new cans from 70% recycled material, we need to import used aluminum from other countries. 

That is different in states with a bottle bill. Oregon's was enacted the year before I was born, so I have never known anything else.Those ten states do great, but it's only ten.

It's similar to the issue with plastic bags. I am so used to taking reusable totes that I don't even think about it, but it's not like that everywhere. Part of that is... 

Companies fight those laws hard and they lie:

I remember seeing things saying that one reusable bag does more environmental harm than X amount of plastic bags, except that it was assuming you used the bag once (as if it were not reusable), except there were still other problems with the math.

It appears that law that deals with trash or recycling or saving the Earth is similar to laws about tobacco or really so many things. If it might add to some corporate obligation, they don't want it, no matter how much good it could do.

A lot of it comes down to transport:

Door to Door was especially strong in this area, though it wasn't the only place it came up. 

A lot of recycling does work well, but if it is not affordable it is because it is costing more to send it to other countries where they pay people low enough wages to make the sorting worthwhile and transportation costs are going up. It could be done here with decent wages, but then that would affect corporations who are subsidized by our throwing things out and paying for trash pickup, but we don't think of it that way. They make the waste, sometimes more than necessary, but at an advantage to them that everyone else pays for.

You can bet they are going to lie about that.

The lie is mainly that things can't be any better. We can't do any better.

It is a lie. Don't fall for it.

And all four of those books are really worth reading.  

 

Fine, let's talk about "woke"

I put a note on the original post, but since writing about Sydney Sweeney and jeans, Rachel Bitecofer has called her a "butterface" and Chris Cuomo has reacted badly to a deepfake of AOC trashing Sweeney.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/aoc-roasts-chris-cuomo-for-believing-obvious-deepfake-of-her-trashing-sydney-sweeney/ar-AA1K2T1g? 

It all seems to undermine my point about Sweeney not really being attacked by the left, though the article confirms that no Democrat officials or lawmakers have commented on Sweeney. 

I suspect if Cuomo called Sweeney ugly, those defending her would interpret it as an attack from the left. With a defense for the fake attack by someone more clearly left, does that make Cuomo not left, or neutral, or do you have to quibble about the defense to maintain the sense of being attacked by the woke?

Which one is more woke?

(Mostly kidding there; that's probably AOC.) 

There is a part of me that finds this all ridiculous and irritating, but another part of me that really wants to get some definitions out there.

As it is, I did post about two years ago on "woke" and how people were using it. Ironically, it happened because of a person on the right who wrote a whole book criticizing wokeness but then couldn't define it, which meant that the journalist who asked was mean.

Journalists and their questions, right?

I think there could be an interesting post about what various political terms have historically meant and how they are being used and how Republicans have become such psychopaths that there is a pretty broad range of what constitutes "left" of that. Maybe someday.

Right now, I didn't even post yesterday because the reading for the section I am working on his heavier than usual and things are so stupid with so much to react to that I can't even. However, I am going to say this:

Currently, the people who are using "woke" the most are primarily using it to mean "I don't like this."

Whether that dislike is a vague sense of discomfort or an informed anger, it comes from a challenge to white supremacy, so does not bear close scrutiny, leaving them to use the word as just meaning stupid and bad.

This is why I don't take people using "woke" as an insult seriously; I don't know where you fall on the spectrum between ignorant and malicious, but I know you are there.

Here's the really important thing, though, and it cuts to the heart of the disagreements between progressives, leftists, liberals, socialists, third-party voters. and Democrats.

If you do become aware of the structural racism and colonialism and all of the problems with all of the suffering they have led to... if you have become aware of that and your response is not to focus on healing and repair, but to focus on directing your anger to everyone you blame for not fixing it, you are definitely not woke. 

You should try getting that way. 

If you believe something fake, criticize someone because of it, and then when called out on it just continue the criticism as if you were correct, you are not woke and your unwillingness to learn from your mistakes is going to be a serious impediment to becoming so.

You are part of the problem. 

Please, if you find it possible to care about anyone other then yourself, get woke. 

Related posts: 

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2023/03/waking.html 

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2023/04/dunking.html

Don't go with the flow

I'm apologizing in advance because this post has a lot of quote marks. It feels excessive, but is a combination of some wordplay and that I can't take "woke" being used as an insult seriously.

If you have not heard, there is some controversy about a recent American Eagle jeans ad featuring Sydney Sweeney. 

While conservative-leaning men had been calling her "mid" for quite a while, the tables have turned. Now that they see her as under attack by the "woke mob", Trump has called Sweeny "hot" unlike Taylor Swift (whom he is apparently still obsessed with), Vance has defended her, Watters is fantasizing about her marrying Barron, and American Eagle stock has risen. 

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2025/08/04/american-eagle-stock-trump-sydney-sweeney/85515756007/ 

It seems like an overreaction, but that's just how things go now. 

From what I saw, the "woke" attack on Sweeney was pointing out the optics of an ad with a blonde woman talking about "jeans" but punning about "genes".

Discussion about Sweeney herself on the "woke" side at its meanest was that some people pointed out that she has been kind of marketed as lower class, taking any kind of ads without looking for prestige. They thought this could affect her career longevity but attributed it to her parents' bankruptcy. That's not really vicious, though I think it could correlate with why the right was calling her "mid" before and with her being embraced so quickly by them now. 

So let's get back to that pun. 

First of all, I would like to say that back in 1991 I drew a cartoon showing an approaching sperm being asked by an ovum if those were Bugle Boy jeans, spoofing an ad series that was everywhere back then. It was rejected because the editor thought it was pointless, so I submitted a much less sophisticated one about taxes and that was printed. It was at this point that I kind of understood where the literary magazine staff who took themselves too seriously in high school went next, though also that they would think I did not take them seriously enough. I digress.

As homophones that are spelled very differently with very unrelated meanings, that pun is low-hanging fruit. 

Beyond the lack of originality, the real criticism was that we are in the middle of a eugenics resurgence -- to the extent that eugenics and Nazis ever went away -- and are we going to just combine "blonde" and "good genes" as a marketing tool?

The common denials you will get in cases like this is that it's not that deep; American Eagle says they were only talking about jeans, not genes.

Maybe, but part of running successful ad campaigns is having your finger on the pulse. You can take advantage of bad trends, but it is reasonable to call that out. 

Remember, I just wrapped up Disability Pride Month. I focused on positive articles, but I knew some really negative stories for most of them too. For most of those people, there are other people who say their lives have no value and are gleeful imagining their deaths.

I was also writing last week about valuing people. The trend is away from that now. 

The trend is away from valuing people in business and government and health care. Some of it is more in  your face than others, but there is a constant bleating. If you do not make the effort to be aware and actively reject it, you may find yourself cheering and defending it, sure that it's not that big a deal.

Don't go with the flow. 

ETA: A few hours after I posted this, a leftist did make a response (not to me) with a fairly stupid but yes, mean, joke about Sweeney's face. Still not a mob attack, but also not worth making. It did not clarify or edify and now the right is all going on about how fat she is. 

Disability Pride Month 2025

I saw that July was Disability Pride Month on July 1st and had to do it. So, I started with Judith Heumann, whose book is on my to-read list but whom I see referenced frequently when reading about disability rights.

Then I started thinking.

I am afraid there are a lot of actors. There's anything wrong with being an actor, but it's so much easier to know about them that it almost makes me feel shallow. I nearly included Gary Burghoff (Radar from M*A*S*H) too, but all of the articles that referenced his polydactyly were kind of click-baity.

Some things felt more personal than others. I learned about Temple Grandin in a Psychology class really early in college and it made a strong impression.. I have interacted with Alice Wong (and spotlighted her books) and Keah Brown through Twitter, and participated in a Kickstarter for Tee Franklin. I actually know Barry Wilcox from church, though I haven't seen him for ages.

Kevin Kling was from a film we saw when visiting the Mill City Museum in Minneapolis. I started following Halli Thorliefsson when he was feuding with Elon Musk (that's a good story there). And of course, Serge Kovaleski is the Pulitzer Prize winner mocked by Trump.

I know about Shane Burcaw and Hannah Aylward because of an article about people sending them hate. That happened this month. 

Obviously I knew about Rene Kirby from seeing Shallow Hal, but there was no knowing that he would die a day after I posted about him. 

I suppose my biggest achievement is that after five of these months, there are still no repeats. Two months left in this year, unless there is something else that is going to surprise me. (That is completely possible.)

The most important thing about this list is probably the variety. Besides differences in how they present, these conditions are congenital, or from accidents, or from illnesses, or issues where the roots may have been there earlier but they did not show up for a while. Some conditions come with age.

One of the things the article on Adam Pearson discusses is how the same condition presents differently in his twin brother. 

You being completely without disability now is no guarantee it will stay that way. 

That is worth keeping in mind.

7/1 Judith Heumann: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/disability-rights-activist-judy-heumann-dies-at-age-75-180981752/

7/2 Temple Grandin: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/as-autism-ignites-a-national-conversation-temple-grandin-has-something-to-say/ar-AA1EWZjs

7/3 Louis Braille: https://www.icoe.org/news/story-louis-braille-inventor-braille-code

7/4 Harriet Tubman: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-asylum/202411/harriet-tubmans-disability

7/5 Alice Wong: https://www.kqed.org/arts/13965935/alice-wong-san-francisco-disability-advocate-2024-macarthur-genius-grant-winners

7/6 Sudhaa Chandran: https://www.bollywoodshaadis.com/articles/sudhaa-chandran-opens-up-on-losing-her-legs-in-1981s-accident-24633

7/7 Helen Keller: https://www.afb.org/about-afb/history/helen-keller/biography-and-chronology

7/8 Daryl Mitchell: https://hollywoodmask.com/entertainment/daryl-mitchell-motorcycle-accident-in-2001-wheelchair.html

7/9 Thomas Davila: https://csulauniversitytimes.com/spina-bifida-essay/

7/10 Marlee Matlin: https://apnews.com/article/marlee-matlin-documentary-not-alone-anymore-e94e58db30b4ce27c3187aa629e44ea2

7/11 Kevin Kling: https://onbeing.org/programs/kevin-kling-the-losses-we-grow-into/

7/12 Michael J. Fox: https://www.michaeljfox.org/michaels-story

7/13 Laura Hillenbrand: https://phoenixrising.me/myalgic-encephalomyelitis-chronic-fatigue-syndrome/laura-hillenbrand-on-mecfs-her-formerly-athletic-life-and-how-she-gets-by-the-si-interview/

7/14 Mitch Longley: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2000-apr-18-ca-20670-story.html

7/15 Keah Brown: https://www.elle.com/culture/books/a32983436/my-joy-is-my-freedom-keah-brown-essay/

7/16 Beethoven: https://www.californiasymphony.org/composer/beethoven/the-whole-story-of-beethovens-deafness/

7/17 Tee Franklin: https://disabilityvisibilityproject.com/2023/07/17/disabled-creatives-in-comics-interview-with-tee-franklin/

7/18 Stevie Wonder: https://www.redsharknews.com/production/item/1283-stevie-wonder-s-brilliant-electronic-soundtrack-to-an-almost-secret-film

7/19 Christopher Reeve: https://www.biography.com/actors/christopher-reeve-horseback-riding-accident

7/20 Shane Burcaw, with Hannah Aylward: https://evoke.ie/2025/07/16/life-style/couple-narrative-disability

7/21 Halli Thorliefsson: https://www.bosshunting.com.au/hustle/elon-musk-firing-halli-thorleifsson-twitter-100-million-mistake/

7/22 Serge Kovaleski: https://www.wm.edu/news/stories/2009/serge-kovaleski-84-earns-pulitzer-prize-123.php

7/23 Rene Kirby: https://www.sevendaysvt.com/arts-culture/rene-kirby-84-2291401

7/24 Stephen Hawking: https://hiehelpcenter.org/2018/03/19/stephen-hawking-normalized-disability-spoke-not/

7/25 Millicent Simmonds: https://variety.com/2021/film/features/quiet-place-2-millicent-simmons-john-krasinski-1234977160/

7/26 Adam Pearson: https://brightside.me/articles/the-journey-of-adam-pearson-an-identical-twin-with-a-rare-disease-who-rose-to-stardom-819760/

7/27 Barry Wilcox: https://www.usparacycling.org/news/2025/june/09/a-world-cup-sweep-has-barry-wilcox-riding-high-now-with-an-eye-to-the-world-championships

7/28 Disability representation in dance: https://dancemagazine.com/disability-dance-representation/

7/29 Murderball: https://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/other/they-call-it-murderball-wheelchair-rugby-isn-t-for-the-faint-of-heart/ar-AA1pDigq

7/30 Invictus Games: https://salish-current.org/2025/02/25/invictus-games-a-celebration-of-inclusivity-in-sports/

7/31 Paralympics: https://www.paralympic.org/ipc/history