If you haven’t checked out “Downton Abbey,” the smash English drawing room drama now in its second season on PBS, you might want to give it a look. Set in and around a humungous country manor house in the early decades of last century, it is what you might call British upper-class porn. Tune in and indulge in a luxurious existence where lords and ladies dress for dinner served by a staff of solicitous servants and life is just one refined pleasure and which-pearls-to-wear quandary after another. If the Great Depression had Busby Berkeley movies as escapist entertainment, The Great Recession of today has “Downton Abbey.” Read More

Since the day I became paralyzed for life fifteen years ago last month, I, like you, have railed against the stereotypes more or less thrusted on my new, now old, self. Obviously the ones I saw first grew out of my immediate experience. Out in the world, I was either ignored like an outcast or patronized and talked down to like an feeble-minded octogenarian. “Oh, dearie, let me hold that door for you?...Is that book too heavy for you? Let me carry it… You know, God only gives us what we can handle…By the way, you are doing a super job with this horrible thing!” Read More

In my dotage, I’ve come to enjoy reading peer-review medical research papers with titles like “Psychologic Factors and Risk of Mortality After Spinal Cord Injury” or “Comparison of the influence of different rehabilitation programmes on clinical, spirometric, and spiroergometric parameters in patients with multiple sclerosis.”

Okay, these titles don’t shout, “Read me now!” nor is the prose the heart-pounding John Grisham variety. Read More

You may have read about this – it made the news about three weeks ago – but I found it to be a very telling story about disability in our times and I can’t stop thinking about it. New York mayor Michael Bloomberg announced that he was rabidly opposed to more taxi cabs in his city that are equipped to handle disabled passengers. They’re too expensive, he said, too heavy, and have crappy suspension. Ergo, “the average person riding in them finds them really uncomfortable.” Read More

In the September issue of New Mobility magazine, I wrote a long piece on a subject that's intrigued me for years – wheelchair pretenders. If you're not aware of this very active subculture, these are perfectly able-bodied people who love to roll around in wheelchairs, in private, and if bold enough, in public. Read More

The purpose of a personal blog like this is to write about what’s on your mind. What’s been on my mind lately is the rest of my life. From the moment I became paralyzed via transverse myelitis fifteen years ago this December, I asked the question: does this mean that my life will be automatically – or statistically -- shorter than the ambulatory bloke next door? Read More

We live in an era of perpetual distraction. Between Arnold’s indiscretions and Weiner-gate and Casey Anthony’s poor mothering skills and “Carmageddon,” the closure of an LA freeway for 52 hours, and sports TV and lurid cable offerings and Face Book and Twitter and, hell, even blogs like this, it’s like the whole world is a fascinating train wreck and we are all rubberneckers at the scene. Read More

After recent stay at the hospital in February, I began asking questions about how health care really works in this country. It seems like valuable information to me. Read More

A couple of weeks after I first got out of Cedars-Sinai Hospital in LA, reeling from the ugly truth that I was paralyzed for life, I got a call at eight am one morning from a very nice young lady in patient financial services. Read More

Those of us in Disability-ville who are lucky enough to have comprehensive private insurance, or Medicare backed by private insurance, live in a fantasy world. We have little or no idea what health care really costs. I get these complicated EOB’s (Explanation of Benefits) from my secondary insurer, the Writers Guild Health Fund, and after Medicare and “discounts” weigh in, I am left with co-payments of the magnitude of $6.35 or $11.36. Read More

My wife read in the LA Times that the revised ADA rules that took effect last week mean that, from now on, miniature golf courses must be accessible and disabled fans at sporting events must be able to see over people standing and cheering in front of them. I consider this some serious fine-tuning of the law. Read More