Hi, Mike!  Recently you wrote in a message to All:

MP>  Kennedy Space Center is joining the National
MP>  Disability Mentoring Day observance


         Interesting... as a Canadian, I hadn't heard of this event.  I
think there is a need for "Awareness Days" although they may seem
rather contrived. Awhile ago one of our correspondents in SURVIVOR
mentioned, for example, that when she went shopping with her husband she'd
be asked what he wanted.  As it happens, he uses a wheelchair.  He also has
a university degree & earns sixty thousand dollars a year... but people
make assumptions because he can't walk. They did the same when Nora broke
her ankle too.  People who knew her, people who used to talk to her
directly, would talk over her head... people who used
to hand her the menu in a restaurant & who'd had ample opportunity to see her
reading it "forgot" when she was in a wheelchair.  I felt like
saying "Excuse me, it's her ankle that's broken... her brain works
fine!"  Instead, I smiled sweetly & responded with "Why don't
you ask her?" or "Could Nora have a menu, please?" just as
our friend did.  I understand Franklin Roosevelt didn't want
to be photographed below the waist, BTW, because others might think he wasn't
capable of running the country.  That's history now, but I can relate.  A lot
of consciousness-raising occurs via personal relationships, anyway....    :-)




--- timEd/386 1.10.y2k+