From PlanetSki.eu:


The ex-wife of Sir Paul McCartney, Heather Mills, is hoping to take part in the Paralympics in Sochi in 2014 and is now training in Austria. She has been out on the Mölltaler glacier.

The news is reported in the Austrian press.

She is apparently training with her coach, according to a report in the Kleine Zeitug newspaper.

We have already reported on PlanetSKI how the 42-year old wants to represent her country at the Winter Paralympic Games.

Before she lost her leg in a road accident she was a keen skier and has since taken part in charity events in the UK as we have also reported on PlanetSKI.

"I'm training on the Mölltaler Glacier," she has said from Austria. "I came here to go skiing many years ago, before I was wearing a prosthesis. When I felt like skiing recently, Carinthia came into my mind immediately."

"I've been skiing for many years and I'm much better at that than ice skating, so I'm training hard to try to get on the British Paralympic downhill team," she said earier this year.

"Having loved sport my whole life, competing in a Paralympics would be a dream come true."

"She's incredibly ambitious. It's outstanding what she achieves wearing a prosthesis," her coach, Alexander Koll is reported as saying.

While in Austria she has also reportedly won an army shooting contest, according to a report in the Austrian Times.

Apparently locals have named her "Hedwig" because they find it difficult to pronounce "Heather".

From The Dominion Post in NZ:


Ticketek has been pressured to offer cheaper tickets to wheelchair users at November's U2 and Jay-Z concert after a warning from the Human Rights Commission.

Disability advocate Red Nicholson (pictured) wrote to organisers of the show Sept. 2 after learning that the cheapest wheelchair-accessible seating available was $179 plus booking fee, while general admission tickets started at $39.

He paid $380 for himself and a support person.

Mr Nicholson said that, although he had not been counting on getting a $39 ticket, he had budgeted on buying general admission passes for about $100 each.

"I really wanted to see Jay-Z live, so I had to use a significant amount more of my savings, but I couldn't wait around for some sort of resolution. It's about choice – one group of people, who are arguably on a lower average income, being asked to pony up $180 while everyone else has the opportunity to pay less."

After queries from The Dominion Post, concert organisers agreed to open up an allocated number of seats in the reserved section at a lower price for wheelchair users.

Ticketek has promised to move Mr Nicholson and refund part of his ticket price, and said its original pricing was "not intended to offend or discriminate".

Human Rights Commissioner Judy McGregor said it could be considered discriminatory to force wheelchair users to pay more for tickets.

"If people in wheelchairs are expected to pay more for their tickets because they can only access expensive seating, they could be being treated less favourably than others and, if so, this would effectively constitute discrimination."

The problem had been raised with the commission before and dealt with through mediation.

Mr Nicholson said he was pleased with the result but it was a problem that arose often in New Zealand.

He had been to several concerts in Europe and it was normal there for promoters to give discounts for disabled concert-goers or allow the support person in free.

"I went to a couple of shows at the West End, where normal ... tickets were 40, and I was able to take myself and my girlfriend for 20 per person."

This is not the first time Mr Nicholson has succeeded in taking concert organisers to task over discriminatory pricing.

In 2008 he persuaded the promoters of Westlife and Eric Clapton concerts to lower a small number of seat prices for disabled patrons.

"I'm not trying to be self-righteous or demanding, it would just be nice to have the same options as everyone else."

From The NY Times:


HARBERT, Mich. -- The first several minutes at a restaurant with Roger Ebert (pictured) are awkward.

It’s not that you can’t find a million things to discuss. Mr. Ebert, 68, has reviewed movies for more than four decades. He’s driven around with Robert Mitchum while the actor got stoned and lost on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. He once owned a 1957 Studebaker and still owns a Pulitzer Prize.

The thing is, he doesn’t eat and he doesn’t talk. Or rather, he can’t eat and he can’t talk. He hasn’t for four years, ever since cancer took his lower jaw, and three attempts to rebuild his face and his voice failed.

In those first few moments at the table, you try not to look at the empty place where his jaw used to be. You wonder how it feels to receive your nourishment through a tube directly into your stomach. You cringe when the waitress offers him a menu and asks if he wants something to drink.

But soon, in a flurry of hand gestures, glances, scribbles in a little spiral notebook and patient asides from his wife, Chaz, he’s having a conversation. You’re laughing. And you get to ask the question: How bad do you miss eating?

“For a few days I could think of nothing but root beer,” he said about the weeks after the surgery that removed much of his jaw. He passed through a candy fixation, romancing Red Hots and licorice-flavored Chuckles.

And he circled back time and again to a favorite meal served at Steak ’n Shake, an old-fashioned hamburger chain beloved in his part of the Midwest. When he wrote about it last year on his blog, Roger Ebert’s Journal, people saw that the legendary movie critic for The Chicago Sun-Times could also knock out some great food writing.

“A downstate Illinois boy loves the Steak ’n Shake as a Puerto Rican loves rice and beans, an Egyptian loves falafel, a Brit loves banger and mash, an Indian loves tikki ki chaat, a Swede loves herring, a Finn loves reindeer jerky, and a Canadian loves bran muffins,” he wrote. “These matters do not involve taste. They involve a deep-seated conviction that a food is absolutely right, and always has been, and always will be.”

He both writes and thinks about food in the present tense. Ask about favorite foods and he’ll scribble a note: “I love spicy and Indian.” An offer to bring some New Jersey peaches to his summer home here on the shore of Lake Michigan brings a sharp defense of Michigan peaches and a menu idea. “Maybe for dessert we could have a salad of local fresh fruits.”

“Food for me is in the present tense,” he said. “Eating for me is now only in the past tense.” He says he has a “voluptuous food memory” that gets stronger all the time.

“I can remember the taste and smell of everything, even though I can no longer taste or smell,” he said.

That is, he concedes later, a bit sweeping. He can’t remember the food at a French spa prepared by Michel Guérard, who has three Michelin stars. And he can’t recall the last meal he ever ate, because who knew then that surgeons would never be able to fix it all?

But he remembers everything about the food at the Steak ’n Shake. In the hospital, he told me, he ate Steak ’n Shake meals a bite at a time in his mind. Still, what he longs for most is the talk and fellowship of the table.

“The jokes, gossip, laughs, arguments and shared memories I miss,” he wrote in a blog post.

The eating itself is a side note, really. Anyone who has put together a winning dinner party understands that. But food — the cooking and sharing part of it — still means so much to him that he is publishing a cookbook this month. It’s based entirely on meals to be made in a rice cooker. The title is “The Pot and How to Use It: The Mystery and Romance of the Rice Cooker” (Andrews McMeel Publishing, $14.99).

How can a guy who has no tongue write a recipe?

“It’s all experience, my visuals and friendly tasters,” he wrote to me. “I’ve used The Pot so very many times I know what everything I make in it MUST taste like.”

The first rice cooker in the Ebert household was a wedding gift from the couple’s longtime friend and personal assistant, Carol Iwata. It wasn’t until Mr. Ebert became serious about losing weight and went to the Pritikin Longevity Center & Spa in Florida that he began to tinker with cooking grains other than rice. He went nerdy and deep.

“Whenever Roger learns anything, he becomes obsessed with it,” Mrs. Ebert said.

Soon, entire meals were coming out of the rice cooker. He made fruit and oatmeal breakfasts and stews for supper, figuring out how to mess with the settings and stage the ingredients so that everything didn’t turn to mush.

He took his little three-cupper to Sundance so he could march through a marathon of movies with something more than popcorn and candy in his stomach.

In 2008, long after he accepted that he would never put food in his mouth again, he wrote a blog post presenting his philosophy of The Pot as a way for all the people with not much space and not much time or money to cook for themselves.

“I am thinking of you, student in your dorm room,” he wrote. “You, shut-in. You, recovering campaign worker. You, movie critic at Sundance. You, sex worker waiting for the phone to ring. You, factory worker sick of frozen meals. You, people in Werner Herzog’s documentary about life at the South Pole.”

The post became the frame for the book. “I am a quick, direct, practical and simple cook, which is why the rice cooker had such an appeal to me,” he explained.

“The Pot” follows food obsessions that include a long affair with a wok and with a Madhur Jaffrey dish that involves sealing a chicken in a pot with flour paste. Although Mr. Ebert often doesn’t follow cookbooks, his 150-volume collection includes well-used copies of “Craig Claiborne’s Kitchen Primer,” which taught him to cook, and a later edition of “Cooking in Ten Minutes,” published in 1948 by Édouard de Pomiane.

Most of the recipes came from Mr. Ebert’s head, from friends and from a dedicated group of blog readers who started a sub-cult built around him and rice cookers. They form just one of many tribes who have recently discovered him as a prolific, post-cancer online personality.

He spends hours propped in his reclining chairs at the couple’s homes in Chicago and here in Michigan, tending his blog and his Twitter account, which has nearly a quarter-million followers.

“The blog has opened a new world just when I needed it,” he told me.

Dorothy O’Brien, who edited the book, sent the recipes to professional testers to get the unruly collection into shape. There wasn’t much to do to the copy, though. It was nearly perfect.

The book, she said, is “more about his philosophy of food and eating and why we eat.” It also includes comments from his digital followers, which makes it something of a community cookbook.

“When he says he misses the camaraderie of eating, that’s what he misses more than the food,” she said.

Mr. Ebert wisely recruited Anna Thomas, the author of the classic “The Vegetarian Epicure” and the book “Love Soup,” as his culinary ombudswoman. She decries the limits of The Pot’s two settings — “insanely high and barely warm” — and argued against the inclusion of canned soup and powdered broth in many of the book’s recipes. (She lost.)

But she salutes the spirit of one-pot cooking and contributed recipes with smart ways to coax flavors from The Pot with browned onion and fresh ingredients, like ripe tomatoes in a summer soup with farro.

Health is a sub-theme. Mr. Ebert remains obsessed with grains and sodium levels, lessons he learned when his wife persuaded him to go to the Pritikin Center to lose weight. He dropped about 70 pounds just before he got sick, and another 40 or so during his illness.

The book is funny, too. His list of meats to throw into The Pot includes chicken, pork, goat and Minotaur. In explaining how The Pot knows when the rice is done, he writes: “It is an ancient mystery of the Orient. Don’t ask questions you don’t need the answers to.”

Cooking with Mr. Ebert, who can’t speak but has a very deliberate way in the kitchen, is both a thrill and a challenge. His physical condition limits the time he can spend there, but he makes good use of it, keeping things simple and relying on the Cuisinart to chop ingredients, even for a salad.

Mrs. Ebert, a lawyer who grew up in a big family and is more used to cooking for a crowd, designed the huge kitchen in the lake house, which her husband has owned since the 1980s. It has generous counters and an oversize table that seats a dozen. They have hosted Fourth of July parties with 300 people and Thanksgiving for 30.

Since his operations, the cooking has been on a much smaller scale.

The dish we prepared one day last month didn’t have a name and wasn’t written down anywhere.

Because I had no idea where we were going as we cooked, it rendered the session something like a “Top Chef” challenge. He started by dumping water into The Pot with a store-bought blend of rice, grain and lentils called SooFoo. Then he sent me to chop some Michigan peaches. “Better use ripe peach,” he scribbled when I was slicing one that seemed a bit hard. “I handed to you.”

I had to guess what he meant when he waved off the bowl I selected to hold the yellow peppers I had chopped. Was it the bowl or was the chopping wrong?

At one point, I think he got very frustrated. He wanted to make a nice lunch, but I kept interrupting him with questions. A photographer kept taking pictures. Mrs. Ebert, who has a rare patience, was getting tired.

He scribbled a few hurried instructions for me and left the kitchen. He hadn’t taken any nourishment in a while, and his shoulder, whose muscle had been used in an effort to repair his face, had started to ache.

He eased into the big black recliner in his study, and his wife got out a can of the Isosource that keeps him alive. He takes about six cans four times a day, mixed with water. Sometimes he gets fresh fruit or vegetable juice or a little shot of Pepsi, which helps clean the tube.

While he’s in the chair, I tend to the onions and garlic in one pot and keep stirring the grains, peaches and pork in another. I mix them together, as he instructed. I peek into the study and watch him take his liquid meal, embarrassed by my curiosity.

After about 15 minutes he walks out and scribbles me a note.

“I’m sure you made certain the pork was heated through.”

Yes, chef, I say.

He scribbles again. It’s an apology.

“I come across as a tyrannical chef because I never speak and am in a hurry because of my shoulder.”

No worries, chef, I say. Then I lift the lid from The Pot.

He pours a little spicy Saigon Sizzle sauce from a bottle and stirs it in.

Then he gives me a thumbs up. It’s time to eat.

From The NY Times:

BEIJING — In what appears to be a first for China’s legal system, a court in Anhui Province has agreed to hear a complaint by a prospective schoolteacher that he was illegally denied a job because he is H.I.V. positive, the man’s lawyer said Tuesday.

The unidentified man, said to be in his early 20s, brought the case under a 2006 national regulation that prohibits job discrimination against people with H.I.V., his lawyer, Zheng Jineng, said in a telephone interview from Hefei, the provincial capital.

Mr. Zheng said the case would be heard by a district court in Anqing. The plaintiff contends that he passed a written test and interviews for a teaching job there, but that the city education bureau rejected him after a physical examination showed he was infected with H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS.

“In the past on sensitive cases like this, the court would be very reluctant to accept the case,” Mr. Zheng said. “But this time they accepted it smoothly and quickly. That means the legal system in China is making progress.”

H.I.V.-positive Chinese suffered official and public discrimination for years after the disease first surfaced in the country in 1986. Infected students were often forced to leave school and workers were shunted from their jobs.

More recently, the national government has taken a tolerant approach, offering free antiretroviral drugs and prenatal care to many people who are H.I.V. positive, as well as screening for those who suspect that they might be. Many migrants remain unable to receive the services, however, because they lack the appropriate residence papers.

The National People’s Congress, China’s legislature, has approved a law that bans employers from discriminating against job applicants with certain kinds of communicable diseases, as chosen by state regulators. But the basis for the Anhui lawsuit is a regulation issued in March 2006 by the State Council, the government’s senior management body, which states that “no institution or individual shall discriminate against people living with H.I.V., AIDS patients and their relatives.”

More than four years later, no court had placed an H.I.V. discrimination case on its docket until Monday’s decision, said Yu Fangqiang, the chief coordinator for Yirenping, a Beijing-based civil-rights advocacy group involved in the Anhui case. The group paid the court fee to file the lawsuit, and Mr. Zheng waived his legal fees for the case.

Mr. Yu said he agreed with Mr. Zheng that the court’s acceptance of the discrimination lawsuit was a sign of changing legal standards. But he added that news media coverage had probably played a crucial role in the court’s decision, which had been delayed until the Chinese journal Legal Daily ran an article about the case.

The newspaper, he said, “is a must-read for a lot of people in the legal system. I think the media played a role in the court accepting this case.”

Yirenping, the rights group, had filed as many as 15 other lawsuits similar to the Anhui complaint in the past, Mr. Yu said, but courts uniformly rejected them. Many other H.I.V.-positive citizens approached the organization for advice on suing, but later dropped the idea for fear that their confidentiality would be compromised, he said.

But the Anhui plaintiff, he said, was determined to pursue a lawsuit.

“He was born to a poor family in the countryside,” Mr. Yu said, “and a job as a teacher means a lot to him — stable pay and a decent job.”

From QMI:


QUEBEC CITY, Canada - A Quebec woman wants to launch a multi-million dollar class action lawsuit against Via Rail Canada for what she alleges are "discriminatory and abusive practices" against wheelchair-bound customers.

In a complaint filed in a Montreal courthouse August 31, Gaetane Cummings claims she wants to represent all disabled Canadians who have been affected by what she calls "inaccessible" Via Rail passenger cars.

She maintains she felt cheated by the Crown corporation on a September 2009 trip she took between Montreal and Vancouver.

The 53-year-old multiple sclerosis sufferer was travelling on a $1,666 first-class ticket she purchased after being told by a Via Rail employee her cabin would be adapted to meet her needs.

The rail company assured Cummings she would be able to move freely from one car to another and would be have full access the restaurant and bar areas.

But when Cummings switched cars in Toronto, she ran into trouble.

"An hour before the departure from Toronto to Vancouver, an employee told the appellant she had to stay in the same wagon and couldn’t move from one to the other like the other passengers, and would not have access to the showers, restaurant car, the bar or the observation car,’’ her lawyer Jean Yanakis said.

Cummings said she was forced to continue her journey confined to her cabin and her husband had to carry her to the bathroom.

She said she felt "excluded, embarrassed, saddened and weakened’’ by the situation.

According to the Via Rail website, all trains are accessible to wheelchair-bound travellers.

"However, the availability of said services vary according to the train equipment in use,’’ the site notes.

Elizabeth Huart, a spokeswoman for Via Rail, said the company offered Cummings a full refund last October.

"In the case of Ms. Cummings, we are very sorry for the experience she had on board,’’ she said.

Huart added the rail company was investing $7-million to improve mobility on their trains.

Via Rail has previously come under fire for inaccessible passenger rail cars. In a 2007 decision, the Supreme Court of Canada forced the rail company to improve access for passengers with limited mobility.

Cummings is claiming the cost of her ticket, along with $30,000 in compensation for herself other disabled passengers.

From The Day in Kiev, Ukraine:



The Ukrainian national team has won the Cerebral Palsy European Soccer Championships and will thus vie in the 14th Summer Paralympics scheduled for 2012 in London, reports the press service of the National Paralympic Committee of Ukraine.

The Ukrainian national team met August 28 with its traditional Russian adversary and beat it 9:8 (with the traditional penalty kicks), winning the European Paralympic title. None of the organizers had expected this final match to last so long.

In the first half the Russian team scored only minutes before the referee’s whistle, the Ukrainians got even in the second half: 1:1, then two additional 10-minute halves didn’t change the score. Finally, penalty kicks (eight on the Ukrainian and seven on the Russian side) named the European champion.

The open Cerebral Palsy European Soccer Championships, held in Glasgow, Scotland, involved nine European Paralympic national teams from Scotland, Russia, the Netherlands, Spain, Denmark, Ireland, Ukraine, England, and the one from Australia.

Traditionally, the Russian, Ukrainian, Dutch, and Irish teams were the favorites. Most teams had new players, totaling 67.

From The Herald in Scotland:


Phoning a bank, visiting the doctor, ordering a pizza, or dealing with tradesmen – these are the tasks which most of us take for granted, but for deaf people they can be a mountainous challenge.

In the past, deaf people who needed to communicate over the phone had two choices – hire a sign language interpreter, or use a system commonly known as Typetalk.

The former is expensive, and can be slow to arrange. The latter enables a caller to communicate with hearing people remotely, by typing their message and having it read out by a hearing person – but is slow and far from user-friendly.

Neither method copes well with modern telephone handling systems which require users to select promptly from a menu of options.

Now Scottish charity Deaf Connections is pioneering a new approach, Sign On Screen, which it believes will revolutionise communication for more than 50,000 deaf and hard of hearing people from across the UK. The Glasgow-based organisation has commissioned specialist designers to develop an alternative which uses video and laptop technology to allow deaf people to communicate with the hearing in real time.

It uses similar technology to the popular online telephone service Skype, to connect users to a British Sign Language (BSL) interpreter from their laptop or computer.

The interpreter, sitting in a video call centre, can speak to the hearing person involved in the call and translate back into BSL as needed. It sounds simple but Deaf Connections argue it will revolutionise the lives of many users.

At present, booking a BSL interpreter involves a wait of up to two weeks, and is expensive as they must usually be booked for a minimum of an hour, for what could be a five-minute conversation. Many deaf people resort to using friends and family to translate, losing out on independence and privacy as a result.

Scott Campbell (pictured) became deaf at the age of three. Now 39, he is piloting the Sign On Screen service, which is officially launched this week. Until he began testing the system a year ago, he relied on Text Direct messaging – the more recent name for Typetalk.

Mr Campbell said: “Hearing people take it for granted that they can express a thought immediately every time they speak, but unless I’m communicating with another BSL user, there’s always a delay while I wait for a translator to help me be understood.

“Typetalk has been very useful over the years but it can make those delays in conversation very long, especially when you’re trying to express something which requires a lot of back-and-forth between each side.”

“There’s another element of difficulty in that my first language is BSL, but Typetalk requires me to type in English, so it is almost equivalent to a hearing person having to conduct all their telephone conversations in a second language they’re not entirely comfortable speaking.

“Sign On Screen removes a lot of those barriers and makes conversation much more immediate. I recently used it to have a complicated conversation with a car park company which just wouldn’t have been possible using Typetalk.”

He now even uses the system to talk to family and friends. He said: “I often check in with my mum in Troon using Sign On Screen. I think she appreciates that our conversations flow more easily without the delays of Typetalk.” Mr Campbell, who has just completed an HND in photography, says the system is a significant advance. “It has the potential to revolutionise the way deaf people communicate with the hearing world.”

Gordon Chapman, CEO of Deaf Connections, hopes it will do just that: “With interpreters in such short supply, deaf people often try to manage without and frequently end up not getting what they want or need – sometimes with disastrous consequences to their health, finances or quality of life,” he said.

Interpreters sit in the Deaf Connections call centre (in private rooms – all conversations are confidential) and can help around 20 clients instead of taking two or three bookings a day.

While cheaper than booking individual interpreters, the system currently costs individuals and organisations upwards of 75p a minute, and Deaf Connections is lobbying for a new approach.

Mr Chapman said: “We think it should be free for deaf people – it is in other countries. In America, every hearing person is charged a few cents which goes into a federal pot to provide services like ours.

“We’ve been lobbying the Scottish Government and others to provide this, and we are trying to get public bodies including health boards, local authorities and job centres to pick up the cost when dealing with their clients. I think we are slowly winning the argument.”

Mr Chapman says there has been a lot of interest in the system from other agencies, including the police, to help them communicate with deaf or hard of hearing people who have been arrested, or who wish to report a crime.

Meanwhile Deaf Connections is working with partner charities in England and Wales with a view to providing similar interpreter teams in Liverpool, London and Birmingham, and offering 24/7 cover.

Ultimately the hope is that advances with video calls from mobile phones will allow every deaf person effectively to carry their own interpreter in their pocket.

From the "Handicap This!" Facebook page. Handicap This! will be performed Friday Sept 10th, 2010 8 p.m., Saturday Sept 11th, 2010 8 p.m., and Sunday Sept 12th, 2010 2 p.m. at Oakton Community College, 1600 E Golf Rd, Des Plaines, IL, MAIN STAGE. You can see its YouTube videos here.



Our mission is to further the cause of the Keep On Keeping On Foundation with educational and entertaining performance art that raises awareness about people born with severe physical handicaps and inspires individuals to achieve their own goals and dreams.

This show is not for the timid. It will stir your senses, challenge your thinking, and wake up your attitude. This is a provocative look at friendship, breaking down barriers, and living with disabilities.

CREATIVE INSPIRATION: Mike Berkson (pictured)
ARTISTIC DIRECTOR: Molly Mulcrone
MANAGING DIRECTOR: Tim Wambach

COMPANY MEMBERS: Denis Berkson, John Frisco, Vanessa Passini, Chris Bachmann, Tony Churchill, Elizabeth Antonucci, Kate Tillotson (pictured), Phil Hasso, Stephanie Murphy, Derek Werner

From The Toronto Star:

Reyal Jardine-Douglas’s family called police to get him help.

Later on, after a confrontation with officers, he was dead.

The family of the 25-year-old Pickering man fatally shot by police on Sunday says he suffered from mental illness, including paranoia, and that they had called police to get him admitted to hospital.

In a statement released Tuesday through their lawyer, Jardine-Douglas’s family said they phoned 911 early Sunday afternoon from Lawrence Ave. E. and Victoria Park Ave. to get him help. “He was not exhibiting any violent behaviours at the time,” the statement noted.

The family told 911 that Jardine-Douglas had boarded a southbound Victoria Park bus, informing the dispatcher of his mental state “on more than one occasion.” The family’s lawyer, Glenn Stuart, said they believed that message had been communicated to the attending officers.

Jardine-Douglas was shot by an officer after he fled from the bus when it was pulled over by police at about 3:10 p.m.

Witnesses said police cruisers boxed in the bus and a man bolted through the rear as officers boarded through the front door. According to one witness, three shots were fired in a confrontation.

A knife was recovered at the scene.

The revelation has reignited criticism of the police three weeks before a coroner’s inquest opens into a similar police shooting two years ago.

On Feb. 16, 2008, 28-year-old Byron Debassige, who had schizophrenia, was shot dead by police in Oriole Park after he stole lemons from a local grocery store armed with a 10-centimetre knife.

Officers were cleared of wrongdoing by the Special Investigations Unit, which said Debassige “advanced” toward them and ignored repeated commands to drop the knife. But Debassige’s family and Aboriginal Legal Services of Toronto say the officers needlessly escalated the situation.

The incident paralleled a June 2004 case, when police shot O’Brien Christopher-Reid, 26, who suffered paranoid delusions, after he refused to drop a knife when confronted in Edwards Gardens. An inquest cleared officers of wrongdoing, but recommended police receive further training on dealing with the mentally ill and de-escalation techniques.

“It’s an ongoing problem,” said lawyer Marshall Swadron, chair of Toronto’s Mental Health Legal Committee. “There’s always an inquest pending or a shooting happening.”

In 1997, Toronto police fatally shot Edmund Yu, a 35-year-old man with schizophrenia who was wielding a hammer on a Spadina Ave. bus.

A subsequent coroner’s inquest probed the police department’s approach to dealing with mental illness and led to improved officer training, the creation of a mobile task force and the reinstatement of its crisis resolution course.

That inquest came less than five years after an inquest made similar recommendations to improve training following the 1988 police shooting death of Lester Donaldson, who also suffered from schizophrenia.

“I’m worried that the investment in training is not changing police attitudes,” Swadron said. “The question is how to de-escalate these kinds of situations instead of causing these kinds of disastrous consequences, which seem almost regular.”

Spurred by the rash of police shooting deaths of people with mental illness in the ’80s and ’90s, Toronto officers now undergo mandatory training at the Ontario Police College to learn how to deal with such calls. But Swadron remains unconvinced it has helped.

“We obviously have some more lessons to learn.”

From The Washington Post:


In a study by a civil rights watchdog group, taxi drivers in the District often drove past blind people who were trying to hail a cab while accompanied by guide dogs.

The Equal Rights Center, in a report released Sept. 1, said that it conducted 30 tests this year and that in half of them, drivers passed someone with a guide dog to pick up a person who did not have a guide dog. In three of the cases in which the taxi stopped for the blind person, the driver attempted to impose a surcharge for transporting the dog, the Equal Rights Center said.

Under local and federal law, businesses, including taxis, must make reasonable accommodations to blind people and their service dogs and may not impose surcharges for transporting a service dog. But blind people in the District have complained for years that some taxi drivers flout the law.

Prompted by such concerns, the Equal Rights Center undertook the investigation, assisted by the Washington Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs and the law firm Hogan Lovells.

In each of the 30 tests, which were conducted between March and May, the Equal Rights Center placed a blind person with a guide dog and a sighted person on a high-traffic thoroughfare in the city. The blind person was placed about 100 feet closer to oncoming traffic so that he or she would be the first prospective passenger a taxi would encounter.

With a video camera rolling, the Equal Rights Center recorded 15 taxis bypassing the blind passenger for the sighted person standing farther away.

In its report, the Equal Rights Center said its findings made clear that more needs to be done to ensure that the rights of blind people are protected. Taxi drivers in the District and elsewhere have long faced scrutiny for passing up black people trying to hail cabs, and several years ago, the D.C. police conducted sting operations intended to deter discrimination by taxi drivers.

The Equal Rights Center said that the police, the D.C. Taxicab Commission and the D.C. Office of Human Rights need to adopt a more aggressive approach to addressing taxi driver bias against the blind, stepping up education and enforcement.

"The law is in place," said Ashley N. White, outreach manager for the Equal Rights Center, "but no one is really enforcing it."

Dena C. Reed, the taxi commission's general counsel, said that the actions described in the report are discriminatory and that the commission also has received complaints about blind passengers being passed by taxi drivers.

"But it probably happens more than it gets reported," Reed said.

The city, she said, can do more. "There is absolutely room to step up enforcement and education," Reed said.

Blind people, she said, aren't in a position to take down a tag number, which is how many complaints end up at the commission. But Reed also said that with only 14 or 15 hack inspectors, the commission's enforcement reach is limited. "We're a small agency," she said. "Something like a wholesale sting operation, I don't know if that one's on the table. I don't know if we even have the resources for that."

From USA Today:


Actress Angie Dickinson, 78, writes a powerful story of her only child's struggle with Asperger's syndrome, in the new Los Angeles magazine, part of a package of stories about autism.

Newsweek has a summary: "Nikki Bacharach, Dickinson's daughter with composer Burt Bacharach, was born three months premature in the summer of 1966. She weighed 1 pound, 10 ounces. The baby was immediately put into a preemie isolette and no one was allowed to touch her—a fate Dickinson believes was linked to her daughter's lifelong sense of isolation."

"Even the doctors back then didn't know the value of touch, that if you never get touched or hear a loving voice or get held in those first months, you won't ever feel real or feel connected to anything."

Dickinson writes of her battle to find a diagnosis for her demanding child, who didn't talk until she was three, but developed into an athlete and who, at 4, "could play piano like a prodigy." Nikki started seeing psychiatrists when she was about 8, but they offered little help. Meanwhile, Dickinson writes, she had disturbing behaviors — she cut the hair off her dolls and the tails of her toy horses. And she saved everything, including an old battery and dog poo, on top of a dresser in her closet.

In 1976, after 11 years of marriage, she and Bacharach split. "It's really, really hard and I don't blame anyone for leaving," she writes. Nikki was eventually sent to an adolescent psychiatric treatment center in Minnesota, where she lived for 10 years. In 2007, Nikki Bacharach committed suicide by suffocating herself using a plastic bag and helium.

From the Irish Times. Pictured is a Braille plaque on the bench.


A bench commissioned to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the National Braille Production Centre was unveiled at a ceremony in Dublin yesterday.

The bench, designed by Robert Ballagh and inscribed in Braille and in text with the Seamus Heaney poem Seeing the Sky, is located in the gardens of St Joseph’s Centre for the Visually Impaired in Drumcondra. The National Braille Production Centre, which last year produced 2,800 transcriptions of books into Braille for 492 students yesterday also launched Irish and maths text books in a computerised audio playback format.

It is the first time all primary and second-level Irish and maths textbooks will be available to visually impaired students in mainstream schools across the country. Speaking at the event, Minister for Education Mary Coughlan said “€1 billion of the €9.5 billion spent on education is spent on special needs and rightly so”.

The Minister said she hoped to “continue to work on the development of education for all children over the next two years, but especially for special needs children”.

Chief executive of the centre Brian Allen said, “St Joseph’s was hidden from view for most of its life, but now we want to show the world the extraordinary work that goes on here and the people who fight against all the odds”.

Mr Allen said that part of the unit was a converted onion shed and said “only half of our students can come through the front door as the building isn’t designed for them”.

He said, “We are having to do more and more with less and less” but it was the “school’s vision to become national centre with regional outreach services”.

Heaney who read his poem At the Wellhead, said he had written it about a childhood neighbour, Rosie Keenan, who was blind.

Heaney said “the sense of presence and beauty of a blind person in my first community was part of my making a space for art”.

Describing the bench, Heaney said “the cedar of Lebanon and granite represents the sweetness and strength that comes through in the work done here”.

The Focus Film Festival press release:


FOCUS Film Festival is pleased to announce the winners of the Third Annual Short Film Competition: FOCUS on Living with a Disability. The winning entries will be screened on October 14, at the Bell Memorial Union Auditorium in Chico, Calif. Meet the winning directors at a reception following the screening.

And the winners are….

Best of Festival: MOTHERSBANE (USA 2010, 11:30 minutes) (pictured)
Writer-director, Producer: Jason Jakaitis
A personal documentary that explores the filmmaker’s ambivalent relationship to his mother’s physical disabilities and chronicles his attempts to be at peace with her suffering and disfigurement. The film draws upon a variety of poetic evocations, including Super 8 re-creations of childhood memories, to express the love and anxiety, and the protectiveness and dread, that has defined Jason’s relationship with his mother.
($500 award sponsored by We Care A Lot Foundation)

Award of Excellence: A DIFFERENT COLOR BLUE (USA 2008, 3:59 minutes)
Editor, Director, Cinematographer: Melanie Levy
In a dusty art studio tucked away in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district, artist Charles Curtis Blackwell pours over works of beauty and remarkable spirit. The film explores the redemptive power of art, an ability to find hope in the most unlikely of places, and the courage of an artist who refuses to turn away from the thing he loves most.
($300 award sponsored by Union Bank)

Merit Award: MY NAME IS SYDNEY (USA 2009, 16:53 minutes)
Editor, Director, Cinematographer: Melanie Levy; Original Music: Joel Bravo
Sydney Edmond is a sixteen-year-old girl living with Autism. Although she lives without the ability to speak, her lyrical writing invites us into a world where senses react differently, light flickers brilliantly, and music offers a gateway to connect with the people around us.
($200 sponsored by Parent Infant Programs)

Spirit of the Festival: WHEN I’M NOT ALONE (USA 2009, 21 minutes)
Director/Producer: Rhianon Gutierrez; Editor: Zara Ahmed; Composer: Shohan Cagle
The story of Sam Durbin, who was born female but raised as a male, experienced
unspeakable abuse, never learned to read or write, and drifted in and out of institutions. Today, Sam is a published author and nationwide advocate for people with disabilities.
($300 sponsored by Richard C. Robertson in memory of Deborah L. Rowell)

Audience Pick: To be announced at the reception.
($100 award sponsored by Far Northern Regional Center)

From The NY Times:


OPELOUSAS, La. — At 18 months, Kyle Warren (pictured at age 6) started taking a daily antipsychotic drug on the orders of a pediatrician trying to quell the boy’s severe temper tantrums.

Thus began a troubled toddler’s journey from one doctor to another, from one diagnosis to another, involving even more drugs. Autism, bipolar disorder, hyperactivity, insomnia, oppositional defiant disorder. The boy’s daily pill regimen multiplied: the antipsychotic Risperdal, the antidepressant Prozac, two sleeping medicines and one for attention-deficit disorder. All by the time he was 3.

He was sedated, drooling and overweight from the side effects of the antipsychotic medicine. Although his mother, Brandy Warren, had been at her “wit’s end” when she resorted to the drug treatment, she began to worry about Kyle’s altered personality. “All I had was a medicated little boy,” Ms. Warren said. “I didn’t have my son. It’s like, you’d look into his eyes and you would just see just blankness.”

Today, 6-year-old Kyle is in his fourth week of first grade, scoring high marks on his first tests. He is rambunctious and much thinner. Weaned off the drugs through a program affiliated with Tulane University that is aimed at helping low-income families whose children have mental health problems, Kyle now laughs easily and teases his family.

Ms. Warren and Kyle’s new doctors point to his remarkable progress — and a more common diagnosis for children of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder — as proof that he should have never been prescribed such powerful drugs in the first place.

Kyle now takes one drug, Vyvanse, for his attention deficit. His mother shared his medical records to help document a public glimpse into a trend that some psychiatric experts say they are finding increasingly worrisome: ready prescription-writing by doctors of more potent drugs to treat extremely young children, even infants, whose conditions rarely require such measures.

More than 500,000 children and adolescents in America are now taking antipsychotic drugs, according to a September 2009 report by the Food and Drug Administration. Their use is growing not only among older teenagers, when schizophrenia is believed to emerge, but also among tens of thousands of preschoolers.

A Columbia University study recently found a doubling of the rate of prescribing antipsychotic drugs for privately insured 2- to 5-year-olds from 2000 to 2007. Only 40 percent of them had received a proper mental health assessment, violating practice standards from the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.

“There are too many children getting on too many of these drugs too soon,” Dr. Mark Olfson, professor of clinical psychiatry and lead researcher in the government-financed study, said.

Such radical treatments are indeed needed, some doctors and experts say, to help young children with severe problems stay safe and in school or day care. In 2006, the F.D.A. did approve treating children as young as 5 with Risperdal if they had autistic disorder and aggressive behavior, self-injury tendencies, tantrums or severe mood swings. Two other drugs, Seroquel from AstraZeneca and Abilify from Bristol-Myers Squibb, are permitted for youths 10 or older with bipolar disorder.

But many doctors say prescribing them for younger and younger children may pose grave risks to development of both their fast-growing brains and their bodies. Doctors can legally prescribe them for off-label use, including in preschoolers, even though research has not shown them to be safe or effective for children. Boys are far more likely to be medicated than girls.

Dr. Ben Vitiello, chief of child and adolescent treatment and preventive research at the National Institute of Mental Health, says conditions in young children are extremely difficult to diagnose properly because of their emotional variability. “This is a recent phenomenon, in large part driven by the misperception that these agents are safe and well tolerated,” he said.

Even the most reluctant prescribers encounter a marketing juggernaut that has made antipsychotics the nation’s top-selling class of drugs by revenue, $14.6 billion last year, with prominent promotions aimed at treating children. In the waiting room of Kyle’s original child psychiatrist, children played with Legos stamped with the word Risperdal, made by Johnson & Johnson. It has since lost its patent on the drug and stopped handing out the toys.

Greg Panico, a company spokesman, said the Legos were not intended for children to play with — only as a promotional item.

Cheaper to Medicate

Dr. Lawrence L. Greenhill, president of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, concerned about the lack of research, has recommended a national registry to track preschoolers on antipsychotic drugs for the next 10 years. “Psychotherapy is the key to the treatment of preschool children with severe mental disorders, and antipsychotics are adjunctive therapy — not the other way around,” he said.

But it is cheaper to medicate children than to pay for family counseling, a fact highlighted by a Rutgers University study last year that found children from low-income families, like Kyle, were four times as likely as the privately insured to receive antipsychotic medicines.

Texas Medicaid data obtained by The New York Times showed a record $96 million was spent last year on antipsychotic drugs for teenagers and children — including three unidentified infants who were given the drugs before their first birthdays.

In addition, foster care children seem to be medicated more often, prompting a Senate panel in June to ask the Government Accountability Office to investigate such practices.

In the last few years, doctors’ concerns have led some states, like Florida and California, to put in place restrictions on doctors who want to prescribe antipsychotics for young children, requiring a second opinion or prior approval, especially for those on Medicaid. Some states now report that prescriptions are declining as a result.

A study released in July by 16 state Medicaid medical directors, which once had the working title “Too Many, Too Much, Too Young,” recommended that more states require second opinions, outside consultation or other methods to assure proper prescriptions. The F.D.A. has also strengthened warnings about using some of these drugs in treating children.

No Medical Reason

Kyle was rescued from his medicated state through a therapy program called Early Childhood Supports and Services, established in Louisiana through a confluence of like-minded child psychiatrists at Tulane, Louisiana State University and the state. It surrounds troubled children and their parents with social and mental health support services.

Dr. Mary Margaret Gleason, a professor of pediatrics and child psychiatry at Tulane who treated Kyle from ages 3 to 5 as he was weaned off the heavy medications, said there was no valid medical reason to give antipsychotic drugs to the boy, or virtually any other 2-year-old. “It’s disturbing,” she said.

Dr. Gleason says Kyle’s current status proves he probably never had bipolar disorder, autism or psychosis. His doctors now say Kyle’s tantrums arose from family turmoil and language delays, not any of the diagnoses used to justify antipsychotics.

“I will never, ever let my children be put on these drugs again,” said Ms. Warren, 28, choking back tears. “I didn’t realize what I was doing.”

Dr. Edgardo R. Concepcion, the first child psychiatrist to treat Kyle, said he believed the drugs could help bipolar disorder in little children. “It’s not easy to do this and prescribe this heavy medication,” he said in an interview. “But when they come to me, I have no choice. I have to help this family, this mother. I have no choice.”

Ms. Warren conceded that she resorted to medicating Kyle because she was unprepared for parenthood at age 22, living in difficult circumstances, sometimes distracted. “It was complicated,” she said. “Very tense.”

Behavior Problems

Kyle was a healthy baby physically, but he was afraid of some things. He spent hours lining up toys. When upset, he screamed, threw objects, even hit his head on the wall or floor — not uncommon for toddlers, but frightening.

“I’d bring him to the doctor and the doctor would say, ‘You just need to discipline him,’ ” Ms. Warren said. “How can you discipline a 6-month-old?”

When Kyle’s behavior worsened after his brother was born, Ms. Warren turned to a pediatrician, Dr. Martin J. deGravelle.

“Within five minutes of sitting with him, he looked at me and said, ‘He has autism, there’s no doubt about it,’ ” Ms. Warren said.

Dr. deGravelle’s clinic notes say Kyle was hyperactive, prone to tantrums, spoke only three words and “does not interact well with strangers.”

He prescribed Risperdal. At the time, Risperdal was approved by the F.D.A. only for adults with schizophrenia or acute manic episodes. The following year it was approved for certain children, 5 and older, with autism and extremely aggressive behavior. It has never been approved by the F.D.A. for use in children younger than 5, although doctors may legally prescribe for any use they see fit.

“Kyle at the time was very aggressive and easily agitated, so you try to find medication that can make him more easily controlled, because you can’t reason with an 18-month-old,” Dr. deGravelle said in a telephone interview. But Kyle was not autistic — according to several later evaluations, including one that Dr. deGravelle arranged with a neurologist. Kyle did not have the autistic child’s core deficit of social interaction, Dr. Gleason said. Instead, he craved more positive attention from his mother.

“He had trouble communicating,” Dr. Gleason said. “He didn’t have people to listen to him.”

After the neurologist review, the diagnosis changed to “oppositional defiant disorder” and the Risperdal continued.

“Yes, I did ask for it,” Ms. Warren said. “But I was at my wit’s end, and I didn’t know what else to do.”

Dr. deGravelle referred her to Dr. Concepcion, who in turn diagnosed Kyle’s condition as bipolar disorder.

“Some children, when they come to me, the parents are really so frustrated,” Dr. Concepcion said in a phone interview. “Especially the mothers are so scared or desperate in getting help. Their children are really acting psychotic.”

Dr. Concepcion also spoke with Dr. Charles H. Zeanah, a Tulane medical professor, who disagreed with both the diagnosis and the treatment. “I have never seen a preschool child with bipolar disorder in 30 years as a child psychiatrist specializing in early childhood mental health,” Dr. Zeanah said.

More Pills

“It’s a controversial diagnosis, I agree with that,” said Dr. Concepcion. “But if you will commit yourself in giving these children these medicines, you have to have a diagnosis that supports your treatment plan. You can’t just give a nondiagnosis and give them the atypical antipsychotic.”

He also prescribed four more pills.

Kyle’s third birthday photo shows a pink-cheeked boy who had ballooned to 49 pounds. Obesity and diabetes are childhood risks of antipsychotics. Kyle smiles at the camera. He is sedated.

“His shell was there, but he wasn’t there,” Ms. Warren said. “And I didn’t like that.”

Dr. Concepcion referred Kyle to the early childhood support program, which has helped about 3,000 preschoolers from low-income families at risk for mental health problems since 2002.

His speech improved. He threw fewer tantrums. “They started working with us as a family,” said Ms. Warren, who also received parenting advice. “That helps.”

Kyle’s treatment was directed by Dr. Gleason, a Columbia medical graduate who had led a team that wrote 2007 practice guidelines for psychopharmacological treatment of very young children.

“Families sometimes feel the need for a quick fix,” Dr. Gleason said. “That’s often the prescription pad. But I’m concerned that when a child sees someone who prescribes but doesn’t do therapy, they’re closing the door that can make longer-lasting change.”

Off most drugs, Kyle started losing weight and his behavior improved. Ms. Warren’s life also improved. She met a man and they moved into their own house five miles out of Opalousas, a town of 25,000. They were married last Saturday.

At their home recently, Kyle and his brother, Jade, ran and played while their baby sister watched from a playpen. Their clothes were neatly folded in a shared bedroom. They often responded “Yes, ma’am” or “Yes, sir.”

“They’re respectful, but they’re hyper kids,” Ms. Warren said. “Once he came off the medication, he’s Kyle. He’s an intelligent person. He’s loud. He’s funny. He’s smart. He’s bouncy. I mean, there’s never a dull moment. He has a few little behavior issues. But he’s like any other normal 6-year-old.”

Kyle paused to show a reading report card from the end of his kindergarten year, with an A grade.

“Awesome job, Kyle!” his kindergarten teacher wrote.

From Competitor.com:


Jim MacLaren (born April 13, 1963), who at one time was the world’s fastest amputee triathlete, passed away August 30.

His life was short but amazingly impactful. After getting hit by a New York City bus while on his motorcycle back in 1985 and having his lower leg amputated below the knee , the former Yale football player reinvented himself and became the Babe Ruth of amputee athletes, running a 3:16 marathon and going 10:42 at the Ironman in Kona, Hawaii.

In June of 1993, while competing in a triathlon in Orange County, California, MacLaren was on his bike when a van went through a closed intersection, hit the back of the bike and propelled him into a pole. When he arrived at the hospital he was told that he was a quadriplegic and would never move again from the waist down.

Bob Babbitt, Jeffrey Essakow and Rick Kozlowski, three of his many friends from the sport of triathlon, created a triathlon in San Diego after the accident to buy Jim a vehicle that he could drive with his hands. The goal was to raise $25,000 and they ended up raising $48,000 through the first ever San Diego Triathlon Challenge. “At that event,” remembers Babbitt, “a number of other amputee athletes came up to us to thank us for what we did for Jim, but to also let us know that there were so many other athletes out there that needed help. Insurance would cover a walking leg, but anything having to do with sport was considered a luxury item.”

From Jim’s second tragedy, the Challenged Athletes Foundation was born and in the 17 years since, CAF has raised over $28,000,000 to help disabled athletes stay in the game of life by providing grants to help purchase the equipment they need to stay in the game of life through sport.

“CAF is Jimmy’s legacy,” continues Babbitt. “I’m proud to say that, through the athletes that we help every day, his impact will live on forever.”

From the U.S. Dept. of Defense:


CAMP PHOENIX, Afghanistan -– Army Spc. John Hanson (pictured), who has a form of cerebral palsy, spent 11 years fighting to join the military. He never gave up and now he is a soldier serving in Afghanistan.

Hanson still faces the everyday challenges of cerebral palsy – a condition that can affect brain and nervous system functions such as movement, learning, hearing, seeing and thinking. As a member of the Sioux Falls, S.D.,-based 196th Maneuver Enhancement Brigade, South Dakota Army National Guard, Hanson’s condition doesn’t restrict his ability to perform and support the mission of his unit in Afghanistan.

“When people saw me, they saw something that was not normal and they figured that I was exactly that,” said Hanson, of Sioux Falls. “Instead of finding out what I could do, they assumed I couldn’t do anything – until I proved them wrong.”

As a member of the 196th, Hanson serves as the office manager for the directorate of resource management on Camp Phoenix, which provides construction, commodity and service contract management and funding oversight for 11 military bases in Afghanistan’s capital city of Kabul.

“I am so impressed by John's determination and dedication to serve,” said Brig. Gen. Theodore Johnson, the 196th’s commander. “He plays an important role in the resource management directorate and it’s an honor having him on the 196th’s team.”

However, Hanson’s journey to being able to serve in Afghanistan was no easy task. During his first attempt to join the National Guard in 1995, he was denied eligibility by a physician at the Military Entrance Processing Station.

Hanson is affected by a specific type of cerebral palsy known as spastic diplegia, a form that impacts the lower extremities with little to no effect to the upper body. Hanson knew it would be difficult to join the military with the physical limitations his condition caused to his legs and feet. However, he was determined to join, and continue the long line of military service within his family.

“I wanted to feel a part of something that is not only a great organization, but also part of my family,” Hanson said. “My father was in the National Guard, my uncle was in the Air Force, one grandfather was a lieutenant in the Army Air Corps, and another served as a Marine. Call it not only a sense of duty and honor, but a way to live up to the example set by the people who surrounded me.”

After being denied by the military doctor, Hanson persisted, and worked with several civilian physicians to improve his mobility and become medically eligible – enduring surgeries and physical therapy – never giving up on his dream.

“After every time I went to MEPS, and I was stopped, I worked at that one roadblock until I found a way to push over it and pass it,” said Hanson. “It took lots of support from family, friends and co-workers. They all knew it was a dream of mine to wear the uniform of the U.S. Army and I was going to do whatever it takes.”

Hanson said his determination to serve also was influenced by veterans in his home community.

“The [American] Legion hall in my small hometown of Badger, S.D., is named after my great-uncle that was lost at sea after the Dec. 7, 1941, attacks,” he said. “Along with that, I grew up surrounded by the World War II veterans in town; the stories and the camaraderie was another big driving force to be a part of the military.”

Finally, in 2006, Hanson was able to join the ranks of the South Dakota Army National Guard by working with his two civilian physicians and the MEPS doctor. Hanson’s doctors were able to prove he was medically fit for duty, and eventually, the initial medical disqualification was overturned.

“I can not speculate how [my doctors] came to their reasoning. I think the fact that they have known me and have been a witness of the progress and achievements I have made my entire life might have had something to do with it,” Hanson said.

“Let's just say the feeling I had when I graduated from South Dakota State University after four years was nothing compared to the feeling the day I went to MEPS and took my oath of enlistment,” he added.

Along with serving in the National Guard, Hanson also works back home in Sioux Falls as a firefighter, paramedic and a rescue scuba diver.

“Specialist Hanson is always upbeat and ready to do whatever needs to be done,” said Army Sgt. 1st Class Paul Carroll, a member of the 196th. “When working with others he knows how to keep things fun and yet still get our job done to the highest standard.”

“I think the only issues I really had [with people,] was them ‘judging a book by its cover,’” Hanson said. “I’m just glad to show them that no matter what, if you put your mind to it and work at it, any dream can come true.”

From the San Francisco Chronicle:

The Gulf of Mexico, as the recent oil spill reminded us, is a landscape, a way of life, and an entire economy. So what happens what all of that is threatened? Researcher Deborah Du Nann Winter, professor of psychology at Whitman College, predicts a significant uptick in depression and withdrawal in a new interview with Ecopsychology.

As the journal's name suggests, a field is cropping up around the potential psychological effects of ecological disasters — which we will increasingly face as the climate unravels (today: Earl).

A study in the November issue of Psychological Medicine predicted that climate change will have serious effects on global mental health. With the rise of natural disasters such as floods — which are like the oil spill in their human effects — post-traumatic stress disorder and major depression will rise. Forced migrations will also feed mental illness.

Loss of your way of life, an abyss into which Gulf fishermen are still peering, is not easy to take.

And those who already suffer from mental illness — who may have inadequate housing and pre-existing physical conditions — will be hit hardest, according to the Psychological Medicine study.

Indeed, environmental anger, Dr. Winter told Ecopsychology is "a way of masking the really unfathomable and profound despair that is just under the surface as we watch this catastrophe unfold." She was referring to the BP oil spill, but she could just as well have been describing climate change.

From Broadway World:


An inspiring new autobiographical musical about a composer determined to keep making music even as he is going deaf, will debut this fall when Jay Alan Zimmerman'S INCREDIBLY DEAF MUSICAL is presented by The New York Musical Theatre Festival and Geoffrey Cohen, with performances set for September 30 through October 10 at The Duke on 42nd (229 W. 42 St.) in Manhattan.

Based on the real life story of composer Jay Alan Zimmerman - an author, composer, performer and filmmaker whose original compositions include the musicals "My Café Cinderella" and "HoliDaze, the song cycle "Punctuated Thoughts" directed by Tom O'Horgan and the award-winning film musicals "Love Burns" and "Pawns" - Jay Alan Zimmerman'S INCREDIBLY DEAF MUSICAL is described as a wild pop-rock-rap-dance-classical-disco-experimental-sign language-multimedia mash up.

DEAF MUSICAL follows Jay, who becomes one ticked-off composer when the noisy buzz of progressive deafness steals away his songs. As he struggles to hold on to the disappearing notes, can his wife and son convince him to strive for something other than fame or death? Jay Alan Zimmerman'S INCREDIBLY DEAF MUSICAL is a lively and heartwarming autobiography of a man trying everything he can to keep the music flying.

With music and lyrics by Jay Alan Zimmerman, based on his life story, Jay Alan Zimmerman'S INCREDIBLY DEAF MUSICAL is directed by Kristin McLaughlin, the cast of DEAF MUSICAL features Paul Amodeo as Jay, Jason Reiff, Pierce Gidez, Amber Harris, Casey Erin Clark, Howard Kaye and Tiffan Borelli. Choreography is by Derek Roland; Emily Otto is musical director; set design is by Merope Vachlloti; lighting design is by Herrick Goldman; projection design is by Michael Clark; sound design by Duncan Cutler and costume design is by Jesse Dunham.

Jay Alan Zimmerman'S INCREDIBLY DEAF MUSICAL will perform, as follows:
Thursday, Sept. 30 at 8 pm
Saturday, Oct. 2 at 5 pm
Monday, Oct. 4 at 1 pm
Friday, Oct. 8 at 9 pm
Saturday, Oct. 9 at 9 pm
Sunday, Oct. 10 at 1 pm

Jay Alan Zimmerman is the author/composer of the award-winning film musicals "Love Burns" and "Pawns." His stage musicals include "My Café Cinderella" and "HoliDaze." His dance/film scores include "Do Not Call it Fixity" (winner of a Special Music Award at the Grand Prix International Video Danse Festival). He wrote music for the plays "Booth" and "Our Brutus," both Fringe First award winners at Edinburgh Fringe and both given productions in New York and London. He wrote the song cycle "Punctuated Thoughts" directed by Tom O'Horgan, and the symphony "Roboticus" for the LEMUR musical robots. Jay Began to experience mild hearing loss in his 20's; that hearing loss has progressed rapidly in recent years.

Kristin McLaughlin was assistant director to Stanley Tucci on the recent Broadway revival of "Lend Me a Tenor." She directed a European tour of "A Chorus Line," the world-premiere of "I/O" at Festival Novellum in France, and "Broadway's Always Dying" at Stonington Opera House.

Derek Roland choreographs and creates new work with the Drama Desk nominated company Parallel Exit, including the critically-acclaimed show Time Step at the New Victory Theater.

Paul Amodeo appeared on Broadway and in the first national tour of "Dirty Blonde." Off-Broadway credits include "How to Build a Better Tulip," "Dressing Room" and "Beau Jest." He also appeared in "The Visit" at Signature Theatre.

Jason Reiff performed in the international tours of "The Who's Tommy" as Tommy, "How to Succeed in Business...," and "Les Miserables." Pierce Gidez has appeared in productions of "Music Man," "Peter Pan" and "A Christmas Carol." Casey Erin Clark appeared Off-Broadway in the musical "Frankenstein" and in "Shout! The Mod Musical." Amber Harris performed Off-Broadway in "Streetlights" and "Below the Waist." Tiffan Borelli appeared in the NYMF musical "Emma" and in "Far Out! The Sci-Fi Musical Comedy" at NY Fringe Festival. Howard Kaye performed on Broadway in "Miss Saigon" and Off-Broadway in "Little Ham," "The Little Prince" and "God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater."

From The Age in Australia:

Young people who get very little sleep are much more likely to become mentally ill, Australian research shows.

Lack of sleep might help explain the puzzling increase in mental illness among young people over the past decades, said research leader Nicholas Glozier. He said late-night Internet use might be one reason young people were sleeping less.

The study of nearly 20,000 people aged 17-24 found those who slept less than five hours a night were three times more likely than normal sleepers to become psychologically distressed in the next year. Each hour of sleep lost was linked to a 14 per cent higher risk of distress.

''Sleep disturbance and in particular insomnia is a predictor of later development of depression and possibly anxiety,'' said Professor Glozier.

Less sleep was also associated with longer-term mental health problems, he said.

Professor Glozier, of the University of Sydney, believes lack of sleep can contribute to increasing rates of depression.

Sleep problems and mental illness could exacerbate each other. ''What we are seeing is young adults who tend to start off with anxiety and body clock problems, move on to problems like bipolar or major depression.''

Along with researchers from the Woolcock Institute and the Brain and Mind Research Institute, Professor Glozier is pioneering methods to change the body clocks of sleep-deprived people.

Patients are treated with light therapy in the mornings as well as hormones such as melatonin to help them sleep earlier.

From BBC News:


Nine out of 10 people in Britain have never had a disabled person in their house for a social occasion, claims a survey from a disability charity.

Scope says the survey shows that disabled people are socially excluded.

While the survey found widespread backing for equal opportunities, in practice few people have any personal dealings with people with disabilities.

The charity's chief executive, Richard Hawkes, says disabled people are "invisible in day-to-day life".

The Scope survey, based on a sample of more than 2,000 adults across Britain, suggests public support for the rights of disabled people to be part of mainstream society is not matched by everyday experience.

It suggests people with physical and mental disabilities remain excluded from many people's social or work life.

According to the Scope survey, almost two in five people do not know anyone outside of their own family who is disabled.

And only a fifth of people in the survey have ever worked with a disabled person.

According to Scope, about one in 10 of the non-pensioner population is disabled.

The survey did not ask people why they had not invited disabled people to their social events, but a spokeswoman for the charity suggested that reasons could include worries about physical access and also an "embarrassment factor".

"It's not that people are nasty, but they might not know what to say. The less familiar they are with disabled people, the more the embarrassment. The unwillingness to offend can cause the exclusion," she said.

Mr Hawkes described the survey's findings as "shocking evidence" of the extent to which disabled people are pushed to the "fringes of society".

He warned that any government spending cuts could isolate disabled people even further.

"The government needs to carry out a full impact assessment before making any cuts to ensure they understand the full consequences of reductions in critical support such as Disability Living Allowance and Incapacity Benefit. These form a vital lifeline for many disabled people and their families."