Friday Favorites

AmputeeOT

The Lego Leg video got me. This wasn’t Christina’s first video, but it is the one that went viral for awhile last year and drew a lot of peoples’ attention to her YouTube Channel.

Christina, “The Amputee OT” posts one video every week. Most of them fit one of three main themes:

1. Information on amputation and how prosthetic limbs work:

2. Demonstrations of how amputees do everyday things:

3. Cool or funny videos that reflect Christina’s personality. The “Lego Leg” video is obviously one of these, but here’s another of my favorites:

Christina recently passed the one year mark from her amputation. And although she may never produce new videos as compelling as the ones she did right around the time of her amputation, most of her videos are still interesting and entertaining. Ultimately, what makes these videos stand out from the scores of “vlogs” by other disabled people is that Christina is both an amputee, and an Occupational Therapist. She can talk about disability from “both sides” so to speak. Plus, she does have a great sense of humor, and a cheerful but matter-of-fact approach to her disability. She also seems to have become a sort of mentor to other amputees, which is great to see.

Disabled People Are Sexy

Is it empowerment or titilation? Maybe it's a little of both?

For me, the photos posted at Disabled People Are Sexy are mostly empowerment … even therapy. It is one of a handful of disability sites that have finally  changed how I view disabled bodies, including my own. To put it bluntly, I have looked at photos of disabled people with bodies as oddly shaped as mine, and found beautiful. That has changed how I view myself. I’m not all fixed in that regard, but having spent most of my adult life at “square one” so to speak, any progress feels like kind of a miracle.

Disabled Kitchen

The genius of this recipe collection for disabled people is that in addition to the usual measures and steps, each recipe includes information on how long it takes to prepare, the kinds of physical actions required, and how much stamina it takes. It also describes the tastes and textures of the finished product, for people who have different sensory needs. I hope this Tumblr blog expands someday into a full-blown reference website, but for now, browsing the recipes is helpful and enjoyable enough.

Bonus: Washington Post Wonkblog

This is a great website to visit if you want to know more about issues in the news, not about the politicians who are for or against various policies, but about the pros, cons, and probable effects of the policies themselves. Their coverage of the Affordable Care Act, (Obamacare), has been outstanding, and I have learned a whole lot about basic economic theories since I started visiting the site regularly. That, in turn, helps me understand certain aspects of disability policy.

There is one possible problem. Several of Wonkblog’s most prominent journalists, including founder and director Ezra Klein, have left the Post and are staring their own website with a mission similar to Wonkblog’s. The new site is called Vox, and it isn’t fully started yet. But if you visit, you can see some pretty nice presentations explaining what the founders hope Vox will do. So my recommendation is that if you are a policy wonk, or want to be one, bookmark Wonkblog and Vox.