This week I wrote blogs on parenting, disability, Miss America, police violence, pole-sitting (and Byzantine saints), and the secrets of my writing process. I also published an essay on Pope Francis for CNN and re-wrote a blog entry for the Good Men Project.
Thank you new readers, friends, twitter followers, and whoever else you are. Just the act of clicking “LIKE” on Facebook helps me feel more confident as a writer and activist. It’s an act of faith that not only did I write something you found interesting, you think I might do it again someday. I’ll try not to let you down.
Here’s the weekly roundup.
- Last Sunday – Gunshots in Times Square took a look at the police shooting in New York as more evidence of the failure of police to know how to respond to disability/different behavior.
- Monday turned to Miss America, race, and gender.
- Tuesday was an important blog entry to me, and not one that got as much reading as I would like (hint – please read and share on your networks if you like): I talk about the issues of agency and representation in the story of an artist with Down syndrome giving a gift to the royal family (U.K.)
- Wednesday: Deaf Boy Tasered for Being Deaf. The story ricocheted around DailyKOS and Twitter. Critics noted we don’t know all the details, and that’s right, but I have enough data to say this outrage is part of the pattern of the Cult of Compliance. I’m going to keep pushing that phrase in my writing in hopes it enters the public discourse as a problem.
- Thursday: Bullying to Prevent Bullying.
- Friday, having written the most read entry of this blog’s brief history, I turned to pole-sitting in the 1920s and Byzantine saints, just to keep you on your toes.
- Saturday, while my son was watching Elmo, I offered you my writing secrets – 63 easy steps to Op-Ed writing.