Detroit’s Greatest Generation

The week of Memorial Day over 500 WWII veterans gathered at Willow Run Airport to participate in a photo shoot for a new documentary, “Detroit: Our Greatest Generation.”

The Detroit News ran a nice article about it afterwards, with a good summary of the event.

For some terrific photos of the event, check out the special page the documentary’s production company, Visionalist, has put up about it.

For another nice photo album with some shots of the event, check this out, courtesy of the Ann Arbor News.

My SIL took my mother so that Mom could participate (thank you, Mary – all the stuff you do is so appreciated!). Mom, who is 88 and served in the Pacific Theater, says it was a wonderful event. She was one of the few women WWII vets present, not surprising as female commissioned Army officers were as scarce as hen’s teeth even during the War, much less 65 years afterwards.

The organizers asked the vets to bring a photo of themselves in uniform from WWII, if possible; wearing of uniforms and medals was encouraged. Pictures were taken of each group of vets holding up their photos, and in a few weeks each of the vets will get their own group photo from the documentary makers. The vets are also all invited to a special preview of the documentary before it airs on television in December.

There’s more information about the project and documentary at: Detroit: Our Greatest Generation. A Documentary Film About Common Folks with Uncommon Courage.

It’s always great to see our veterans honored and remembered.

Toxic Injury Awareness and Education Month

Here in Wisconsin, our Governor has proclaimed May “Toxic Injury Awareness and Education Month.” Lest you think, Oh Best Beloved, that our State stands alone in this, the Governors of at least twenty other States this year alone have also officially similarly proclaimed May as the month in which to raise awareness and provide education about Toxic Injury, Chemical Injury and Multiple Chemical Sensitivities. In the past eight years, the Governors of over thirty-five States have issued proclamations recognizing the need for education on and awareness of chemical injury, toxic injury and MCS.

If you’re not familiar with chemical injury, here’s some key points about this devastating illness:

• Toxic injury is often characterized by a heightened sensitivity to very small amounts of air pollution, mold, petrochemicals and other toxins found in our everyday environment, this sensitivity being called Multiple Chemical Sensitivity (MCS), chemical injury or toxic injury.
• Toxic injury is a chronic, debilitating and sometimes life-threatening biologically-based (i.e., physical) condition for which there is no known cure, causing serious financial, employment, learning, housing, health, social and other consequences.
• Multiple Chemical Sensitivity is recognized by the American Academy of Environmental Medicine, the Social Security Administration, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development, and other state and federal governmental agencies, which have supported the health and welfare of people with this condition. The Veterans Administration, as documented in the VA’s report on GWS, released Monday, Nov. 17th, 2008, specifically states when discussing the cause of Gulf War Syndrome that “It is well established that some people are more vulnerable to adverse effects of certain chemicals than others, due to variability in biological processes that neutralize those chemicals, and clear them from the body.”

As part of our own personal contribution to Toxic Injury Awareness and Education Month, I’m going to direct you to a new article written by Michael and I that is now on our website: What’s So Tough About Home Repairs, Maintenance And Construction? It’s not easy when you’re living with a family member who has chemical injury.”

We hope you find it both educational and informative!

217 Horses

The NY Times said in an article today that the upcoming Inauguration parade includes 217 horses.

Forgive me, Oh Best Beloved, but what came to my mind when I read this is that ANY political parade in Washington D.C. (regardless of political party) has many more horses asses in it than horses…

(With apologies to all the politicians I’ve known personally over the years who really do work hard and have my highest regard. You weren’t who I had in mind…)

Pearl Harbor

Image: The USS Arizona burning after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941. 1,177 military personnel died on the Arizona; overall 2,350 individuals died at Pearl Harbor on that day, including 68 civilians, with an additional 1,178 injured.

Mr. Vice President [Henry A. Wallace], Mr. Speaker [Sam Rayburn], members of the Senate and the House of Representatives: yesterday, December 7th, 1941–a date which will live in infamy–the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.

…we will not only defend ourselves to the uttermost but will make it very certain that this form of treachery shall never again endanger us.

Hostilities exist. There is no blinking at the fact that our people, our territory and our interests are in grave danger.

With confidence in our armed forces—with the unbounding determination of our people—we will gain the inevitable triumph—so help us God.

–President Franklin D. Roosevelt

Historic words. Worth remembering.

Thanksgiving

Amidst all the other items for which we gave thanks this year on Thanksgiving, I have a special item for which I am grateful:

Accessible books.

I can’t read printed books. I can’t repetitively flip pages, or hold a book open. Even if I could, many books are moldy or have other problems such as disgusting modern inks that give me migraines and asthma. Prior to becoming disabled, I was a voracious reader, inhaling books to the tune of one or two daily.

Since the early 1990s, I’ve read by getting “Talking Books.” The National Library for the Blind and Disabled provides the “Talking Books” service (books on tape), and has hundreds of thousands of unabridged books available to its patrons – at no charge.

It’s a great service. Truly.

But.

Imagine a world in which millions of books have been published. You, the reader, can only get books that a panel has decided should be made available to you. Resources are limited. One must understand.

One does.

Truly.

It’s like any other public library – the collection is limited by the resources at hand, and someone has to decide which books enter the collection.

Normally, when a reader can’t find a book they want at a library, they can purchase any type of desired reading. However, while both new and used books are widely available, finding an accessible unabridged copy of a book is a tad more difficult. And expensive, even if one exists.

Enter Bookshare.

Bookshare is

an online community [that] enables book scans to be shared, thereby leveraging the collections of thousands of individuals who regularly scan books, eliminating significant duplication of effort. Bookshare.org takes advantage of a special exemption in the U.S. copyright law that permits the reproduction of publications into specialized formats for the disabled.

The majority of books on Bookshare.org – over 40,000 titles now – are there because an individual with a disability – most often a volunteer – decided to share that book with the rest of the community.

Wrap your head around this, Oh Best Beloved: my friend, M, scanned over 400 printed books this last year as a volunteer for Bookshare. I could hug her to bits because a chunk of that total included books that she scanned specifically for me – books that I never would have had the chance to read otherwise.

M, by the way, is also disabled. She’s blind, as are most of Bookshare’s volunteers. She scans books using a standard flatbed scanner and then uses an optical character recognition program (OCR) to translate the books into a rich text format file. Another volunteer proofreads (or validates, in Bookshare terminology) the contents of the file. Bookshare’s staff then translates the file into electronic braille files and into special DAISY html files that both blind readers and sighted disabled readers, like myself, can download and read on any personal computer.

How cool is that?

So, on the occasion of Thanksgiving I want to say: thank you, M, and thank you, all the other volunteers and staff at Bookshare. What you are doing is amazing.

If you’d like to learn more about Bookshare, you can visit their site for more information. If you’d like to volunteer to help out by scanning or proofreading books – anyone with a computer can volunteer, although completed books are only available to the disabled – go read their page about volunteering.

It’s a good organization. Worth your time. What they do helps make the world a better place.

Trust me on this one. I know.