I’ve been very quiet on this blog because I’m focusing on other projects, but I still receive emails from people asking to post things. One of them was from Redfin, the real estate website. They’ve written an interesting report on the most accessible cities of 2018. I was a bit late on Global Accessibility Awareness Day (which was May 17), but hey, better late than never. Here is the Redfin report in full: With Global Accessibility Awareness Day this month, we took a look at the most accessible cities throughout the country. The Social Security Administration estimates that one in five Americans is living with a disability, which can pose a specific set of challenges during everyday life. Although legislation exists that requires accessibility in public housing like hotels and university dorm rooms, the Americans with Disabilities Act doesn’t require all community features to be accessible. Accessibility: How Did We Get Here? The Americans with Disabilities Act and the Fair Housing Act – both pieces of federal legislation – mostly apply to public housing, multi-family dwellings and public spaces. …

When you suffer from a chronic illness like arthritis, lupus or CRPS, every day can be a real struggle. Some days will be worse than others, so it helps to devise some coping strategies to help you through the roughest days. This may mean having to turn down social invitations or skimp on preparing a ‘proper’ dinner, but only you know how your body feels, so looking out for yourself in these situations is not selfish. Another challenging aspect of chronic illness is trying to make others appreciate the pain through which you’re living every day. There are cynics out there who routinely accuse invisible illness sufferers of being melodramatic in describing their pain, but there is no call for such ignorance. Sometimes, it takes more than words to truly get a message across. That’s what inspired Christine Miserandino to come up with the Spoon Theory, a metaphor that is now used across the world by chronic illness patients to communicate their struggles. She devised the theory in 2003 when she was asked by a …

Originally posted on Sonic Geography:
Click to watch at PechaKucha.org Pecha Kucha Knoxville recently uploaded the PowerPoint and Audio from my November presentation about my great-grandfather. This was a 6 minute, 40 second truncation of archival work I’d been doing about over a thousand postcards he sent from the road in the 1930s and 40s. It is an ongoing project that has been as rewarding as it has been educational and surprising regarding both my family history and a different era in American cultural life. Here is my respectful sales pitch: If you enjoy what you see above, let me know. I am always happy to bring this lecture (in any reasonable length) to present at your company, school, civic organization, for any interested parties. Feel free to contact me at sonicgeography [at] gmail. I presented an hour-long version of this talk, which included a handful of his original song lyrics, more news clippings, and personal history at the Kimball Farms Lecture series in Lenox, MA in November. I have an audio recording available for anybody interested…

There’s something so strange about walking into a room where everyone already seems to know you. That’s what happened when I arrived at the NeuroMetrix office. It’s where they make the Quell device, which I first wrote about back in 2015 when they launched their KickStarter campaign. My contact there, the lovely Emily Adekore, rescued me from wandering around the building like a homeless person and brought me to meet the rest of the team. The idea behind the day was a Meet and Greet for local Quell users — a luncheon for us to meet with the company, to get to know the people who actually make the device, and to ask any questions we might have. Some of us did on-camera testimonials for promotional purposes. I use this thing every day, so why not help out? It was a swirl of people when I first walked in, and many of them said they’d read my blog, which was like, What? Wow. WOW. I mean, it makes sense, but wow.  I’ve been with them since the beginning of their product launch …