How leaders prevent social exclusion: Raw experience and practical tips

I'm sitting on the hard bench of a cafeteria table on the ground floor of my elementary school where the cafeteria is. There's a pock-marked wall. Dark green.

Weird details stand out. I have a vague impression of plastic trays, the light from the kitchen and the voice of my second-grade teacher who has pigs at home that eat our leftovers... And the big table where I sit alone. 

There are several tables in the lunch room. All of them packed. Except mine. 

I was seven or eight, nine or ten that day. Hard to say. It went on for years.

The memory of pain is distant. I have to focus to perceive that my chest feels tight, my heartbeat has sped up, there's a loud ringing in my ears that drowns out present reality and my nose stings as if I've just snorted up chlorinated pool water. The mental image of that cafeteria automatically sends my body into overdrive--ready to fight for survival. If I'm with someone else when this memory surfaces, chances are that I'll suddenly find myself screaming, crying and/or fighting with them--having blacked out for a moment, unable to understand how I ended up acting like this. 

Classic trauma response, as if I was a vet with PTSD.

Creative Commons image by Martinak15 of Flickr.com

But there wasn't even very much violence involved. I was only beaten up a handful of times on a playground as a kid (that I remember). 

So, what are the PTSD symptoms from? 

A few years ago an adult friend told me she'd visited my old elementary school before it was torn down. She said she was shocked to hear kids daring each other to touch the diseased "Arie hole" in the wall of the cafeteria. She described the pock-marked wall I remember exactly. This new generation of kids had hear of my mythical cooties.

And I'd left that elementary school fifteen years earlier. 

Because I don't remember much of those years, I have only the facts I have been told by witnesses to go on in trying to trace my traumatic responses to their source:

• I had no friends at school. None. Even though I tried to be friendly. I shared things freely. I was never intentionally mean or unsocial..
• I made deals with my friends from outside school to pretend we didn’t know each other in school in order to protect them from being ostracized by association.
• I wasn't just picked last. I was never allowed to join in games at recess. 
• I sat alone at lunch every day, even though other tables were crowded..
• I cried and argued when I was rejected. I was not the quiet suffering type.
• I often sat in the classroom during recess, because I was no more popular with the teachers and I was always in trouble.
• I asked too many questions in class and interrupted to ask if I could get out of my seat to try to see the blackboard closer. I annoyed and frustrated teachers.
• Kids my age never came to my birthday parties. Except when I was seven my mother made a great effort to make sure other girls came to my birthday party. She cajoled other parents into it. I remember the pretty napkins and party favors, the outdoor fairy tea party table we set up. It was a once in a lifetime opportunity and even so I was largely left out while the others played. But at least I remember that day, unlike most of the others, which are blank holes.

Those are the things I’ve been told. In essence I was shunned. That may even be all, nothing worse than that,. It doesn’t sound that extreme when written down that way. It sounds like I should have just been more sociable and everything would have been fine. At least that’s what people would like to think.

Creative Commons image by  CileSuns92 of Flickr.com

Why was I isolated in elementary school? Does the specific reason matter? There is often a kid like this--if not in every classroom than at least in almost every school. I've seen them. The ones no one will touch. Sometimes teachers try to help them and some times teachers dislike them as much as the kids do. They're chosen last again and again or not chosen at all if that's an option. They always have to partner with the teacher on projects and sometimes even the teacher resents it. These kids have disabilities or they're overweight  or they are visibly different in some other way or their parent's are poor or they're foster kids or they come to school dirty and hungry or they're just "a bit odd."  

It seems like every time I hear a discussion about bullying and social exclusion these days the whole thing gets bogged down in, "Yes, everyone is bullied at school. These mean girls called me..." 

I'm sorry to draw a line, but no, that isn't actually the same thing. Being teased or beaten up or harassed by some mean kids occasionally is not the same. It isn't okay either. It hurts and kids should be protected from that sort of thing. But it isn't the kind of bullying that we need to be talking about most. The kind that causes PTSD-like symptoms. This is social exclusion and it's a kind of bullying that 90 percent of the population, both children and adults, perpetrate--often without realizing it.

Social isolation - social exclusion

Unlike the inspiring stories on Facebook about a kid who is bullied and then the whole town comes out to support him, those who suffer from social isolation are almost entirely voiceless. They don't have a fan club. They aren't good looking or inspiring. They are the ones who make you uncomfortable, so you move across the room at a party without even consciously registering that you’re doing it.

And adults do it as much, if not more than kids. In fact it's becoming a hot-button topic in leadership training and all types of organizations interested in social cohesion and productive group dynamics.

Here's a real-life example of how social exclusion happens among adults.

I recently attended a week-long retreat in the mountains. It was my second year at the retreat but most of the people had been there longer, for as long as eight years. Most of them had formed strong friendships over the years. The group is interested in being mutually supportive for people with a particular family issue to deal with. The first year I attended I had high hopes for finding some friends.

By the second year, I knew not to expect much. But I went because there were things there that my kids needed.

I'm not a small child anymore and I know that the people at the retreat didn't mean to be cruel or even intentionally exclude me. And yet it happened. Again.

The first day, I made a huge effort to remember people's names. I wrote down and memorized the name every time I met someone new. But most people had been there the year before so they didn’t introduce themselves. They just called out greetings in a swirl around me. I may have heard everyone’s name once in a circle, but I couldn’t see the faces as the introductions were happening. I can’t see faces further away than four inches and they were sitting across the room.

I’m legally blind. And because I couldn’t see faces when I was an infant either, I never acquired the neurological hardwiring that allows people to easily remember the nuances of faces, so even photographs are only marginally useful. I don't have a problem remembering names, like a lot of people with that legitimate problem. I have a problem registering faces.

I know it seems like people would be understanding about the fact that a blind person doesn't recognize people's faces. But they usually aren't. I have been shocked time and again when people act offended at my assertion that I simply can't recognize them, while I'm holding a white cane. I've had people say openly, "That's no excuse. Don't you recognize voices?" or "You just don't care to try hard enough."  

Well, yes, after several longer conversations when I know who the person speaking is, I do eventually recognize voices. But when I'm in a group introduction situation, I only have that one brief sentence of introduction that is connected to the name. After that, it's just a jumble. There is no way I can connect a particular voice back to that name that was mentioned once at a distance.

So, by the second day of the retreat I had a list of names. And I had a few people who I could recognize by their voices. But I still had no idea which name belonged to which voice. And most voices were still a jumble because the others rarely conversed with me.

So, let me get down to why a little. My eyes look strange and that's off-putting. Subconsciously. They're squinty and the move strangely. I also can't do those basic social things like smile at a person in a group to show that I recognize them or use another person’s name and make eye contact when I say hello after all. Sometimes I don’t even acknowledge a friend's presence with a polite hello.

As so many times before, my fellows at the retreat soon thought of me as aloof and somewhat antisocial. They began to ignore me. Those few particularly thoughtful souls who initially made the effort to greet everyone they saw in the morning or at meal times stopped saying hello to me.  

Is this hard to believe? I’ve tried to explain it before and friends often shake their heads and say that surely people are not so quick to judge. But I’ve seen it happen over and over again and again, every time I join a new group. My friends ask me why I don’t just tell others that I can’t see them and can’t recognize them. And yes, I do that sometimes. I used to do it more. But it almost always backfires and creates even more severe social problems. People don't understand why I am telling them this when we first meet.

And it isn't primarily a conscious judgment people make. For adults, it is a function of the business of life and the fact that social situations are chaotic. They simply prioritize those they connect with more easily. And then when there is a connection with me and I then say I don't know their name, they are a bit offended.

I would bet you don’t think you would be offended by a person with a white cane if they asked for your name after several days of intense conversations. And maybe you are the exception.. But I have seen it happen more times than I care to count. When I come to the point when I can actually recognize a person's voice after either several days of close-quarters contact at an event or several months of occasional contact among neighbors, I have asked for a reintroduction with a name and people go cold with shock. They have known me for a long time, by their reckoning, and the idea that I was "faking" that I knew them all this time is very disconcerting. They feel betrayed and used.  The budding friendship ends. So, I have learned to keep my mouth shut and hope for a clear mention of their name by someone else in a situation where i can tell who is who just from listening. 

At this retreat, I vowed that I would do things right. I wrote down names and notes about people. I forced myself to focus on pretending to make eye contact by looking joyfully into the blurry dark spots where people’s eyes usually are. I greeted guests at the mountain lodge brightly and ended up with several quizzical responses from people who were not part of our group. But it wasn’t enough. Plenty of times I felt someone brush past me when I had not been quick enough to greet them in the hallway. By the second day, none of our group said “hello“ or “good morning“ to me anymore.

I could hear conversation going on all around me at meal times, but I was outside of it. When I tried to participate the effect was awkward and I often ended up interrupting people anyway because I couldn’t see them taking a breath or see the the focused look in their eyes that people know means someone is about to speak.

On the fourth day, I was sitting next to two other women at the outdoor fire, listening as one questioned the other on a point about a new law that would affect our group. Interested, I leaned into the conversation and asked a question of my own. The woman who had been holding forth turned on me and demanded “What?” with irritation in her voice. It was clear that she had considered their conversation to be private, even though we were sitting close together.

I was gradually falling out of the group. I’ve seen it happen time and again as an adult. Everyone else knew everyone else's name. This was a group that prides itself on being inclusive and friendly. They all greeted each other on the garden walkways outside or in the common room both with words and eyes. They noticed that I didn’t do these things, but they didn’t make the connection to the fact that I couldn’t see them, partly because I walk and hold myself like sighted people do. I have learned mobility well, in some ways too well.

Toward the end of the week-long retreat, I was having a particularly difficult morning. I felt isolated. No one had spoken to me the day before. And that morning the group  activities were impossible for me to participate in. One involved remembering some words the presenter wrote on a flip chart at the front of the room. Except the presenter didn't mention that there were words on a flip chart because everyone could see them and we were half-way through the activity before I realized what I was missing. By the time I went up to the chart and copied down the words the activity was over. 

The next activity was a dance workshop. It was supposed to make us feel good, creative and free, while we learned specific dance steps. Everyone was up in the middle of the circle. The music was lively. Most people had seen these dance steps at previous retreats. I remembered the painful dance workshop from the year before too. I like to dance and would have loved to know the steps, but the presenter simply demonstrated the steps in the middle of the group without words or description. She emphasized the steps once for the group slowly and then moved faster.

Even the slow demonstration was a blur to me. I had made sure I was standing near the presenter but I still couldn’t see her feet beyond the blur. I could hear the rhythm and I tried to guess. If the presenter had gone slowly three or four times and described the steps, I could have done the rest by listening to the rhythm. But there wasn't time. Many of the participants were kids and they had to keep things hopping. Most people already knew those dances from previous years anyway. I was the only odd one out.

So, I didn't ask for help. It would have disrupted the whole group. And that was why my nerves were raw as I came into the cafeteria of the retreat area for lunch with my four-year-old son.

I approached two places at one of the tables that seemed to be free. “We’re sitting there,” a woman’s voice came from behind me as I pulled the chair out. I looked around. There were clearly no other places left inside the cafeteria, maybe one alone in a corner but not two for me and my son.

A few people always had to sit outside in the direct sun with swarms of wasps at every meal, because the cafeteria is too small. That was hard on me. The bright light is very uncomfortable for my eyes and I can’t see the wasps, so the chances are very high that I’ll be stung, particularly on my mouth or tongue, while eating.

Trying to sit inside, I had been asked to move at every meal. Each time the reason was something like, “We want to sit here with our friends,” or “We’ve been sitting here all week. This is our table.” By this time late in the retreat, all the places inside had become someone’s “regular spot.” And I was in no regular group of friends. I had no regular place. As usual, I was being pushed out.

And it was a cafeteria again. Is there anything more hardwired in our DNA when it comes to social exclusion. There literally was no place at the table for me. I noticed that someone had in fact reserved these places with spoons, in order to go get the food.

"Fine. You all have your places and your friends. There's no place for us." I turned and snapped at the woman. She carried an infant in her arms and clearly didn't want to sit outside either. 

The room went dark around me. The roaring in my ears blocked out sound. The cascade of trauma response had started and I couldn’t think straight. My heart was hammering and I was filled with seething fear, anger, shame and grief, beyond anything that is bearable. Certainly beyond any normal response to being asked to honor a seat reservation. 

I whirled away then and tried to run out of the room. Some small voice of reason at the back of my mind was urging me to get away, not to have an emotional meltdown in front of people I wanted to befriend. But I couldn’t get through the crowd. The tenuous hold I had on my emotions slipped and I was crying, sobbing in front of everyone.

The woman who had sparked my reaction was shocked. She had simply been asking for the place that she had reserved and she had an allergy to wasp stings that could put her in the hospital if she sat outside. Others clamored around me, disapproving of my outburst and interpreting it as simple willful desire for that chair.

“What is such a big deal? Just go sit outside.”

“For heaven’s sake, you’ll get to eat too. You don’t need to force your way into everything."

"You're a bit overweight anyway.”

“You could try thinking of someone else for a change.”

I could only cry harder. How could I explain? They were already convinced that I was aloof. I didn’t know their names and they all knew mine and each other’s. This was so much bigger than not wanting to sit out with the wasps that I couldn’t see.

How can organizers foster inclusion in a group?

That sort of social disaster is usually where this sort of episode in my life ends. People feel that I have acted badly, selfishly and with too much emotion. I apologize profusely and flee. If I have to continue to be around that group for some reason, the relationship is strained and cold. Otherwise, I never see those people again. And the next time I try to make friends the same thing happens. No matter how hard I try to make it come out differently.

But this wasn’t the average situation. The organizers of the group had a deep interest in social inclusion. They didn’t notice the warning signs of social exclusion in the group, but once the meltdown happened they stepped up to the challenge. We worked out a plan together for how to prevent these sorts of problems, not just for me but for others as well. 

And the very first bit of the plan implemented on the last day of this retreat had immediate and tangible results. The group was asked to break up into groups for a project. I dread such scenarios because the groups are always formed by preexisting friendships. I end up either the odd person out or in a group of those who are lackadaisical or disinterested in the project (those being the reasons why they didn’t manage to get a place in a “real” group).

But this time the organizers tried my first suggestion for fostering social inclusion, and the effect was that all the groups--not just the one I was in--were extraordinarily successful in their projects. The cooperation in my group was vibrant and one of the members of the group who had seemed most irritated with me led the group and included me fully.

Creative Commons image by Grupo Emaús F.S

Working with groups of children might be a bit different, but this time I'm going to focus on tips for teachers of adults, event organizers, teen camp counselors, social groups, working groups, professional teams and activist organizations who want to truly ensure that no one is excluded. Ensuring inclusion in a group, not only is the right thing to do and avoids social unpleasantness, it also clearly boosts the work of any group and ensures that teams reach their goals more effectively. 

 For now, I suggest five areas of focus for group leaders and event organizers: 

• the language of inclusion,
• access to information and spaces,
• introductions,
• relationships and
• effort

Within those topics here are specific tips and ideas:

Creative Commons image by HA1-000974 of Flickr.com

1. One of the easiest and most concrete ways to ensure inclusion is to moderate the forming of sub-groups. When something requires the large group to split up into smaller groups either A. split up the group randomly by counting people off, B. assign groups based on the known strengths and weaknesses of participants in order to ensure all groups will have the skill sets needed to succeed or C. ask group participants to consciously attempt to join a group with those they have not worked with before or don’t know well. (Each of these methods has its advantages and disadvantages depending on the size and type of group you’re working with, but if employed well they will vastly improve group dynamics.)
2. Include the “language of inclusivity” in promotional and organizational messages for your group. When you write an email to remind participants what to bring or similar details, don’t consider it corny to mention your hope that everyone will be included. Ask participants to be conscious that some people will know each other and others won’t know anyone in the group. Ask them to reach out to those who are new as one of the ways to support the goals of the group (even if and possibly especially if those goals are simply to have fun).
3. When you make introductory remarks in front of the group, emphasize inclusion and the need for participants to help one another with details and include those who tend to be on the margins. State your intentions and make social inclusion an open goal of the group. It will support all other goals, including professional and technical objectives.
4. When you print out schedules or programs include a note on them about who to ask if you need assistance due to a disability or language difficulty as well as an upbeat note asking participants to lend a hand when they see someone who is lost or having difficulty. These notes may seem like pro forma political correctness (and they can be just that if organizers don't follow through with other measures), but wide experience of professionals in social work and psychology shows that the goals and intentions we state do have an impact. Not everyone will heed your reminders, but some will and that will often be enough to ensure that your participants aren’t excluded and your goals are reached more effectively.
5. Try to ensure that there is enough space/chairs/tables/materials for everyone registered for your event or meeting. It may seem like a small thing that someone has to go without and it is small, IF it happens to that person only once. But the fact is that the last person in any line and the last person materials are handed around to is very often the same person again and again. People hand materials to people they know. And the reason a person is last in line (such as mobility or sensory problems) will often make them last in every line. I have been the only person without a seat or an information packet when such things were handed out at conferences and meetings more times than I can count.
6. If you do have a shortage, make a specific effort to make sure that the most socially vulnerable people are not those left without. Those who are friends of the organizers can often help by accepting whatever shortfall happens by accident, because you know they will not be the ones excluded regularly. Like most people, I would be happy to stand or share materials with someone else as long as I am not made to feel excluded by consistently being the one left out, I feel honored to help a friend who is organizing a group by accepting a shortage.
7. You can also often get around a shortage by coordinating. If you realize there aren’t enough information packets for everyone (and you should definitely have someone count before handing them out), ask for volunteers who can share a packet. Many people come to groups and events together, some dislike information packets and know they’ll just lose it anyway. You should have no trouble coming up with several people who sincerely don’t mind.
8. Places to sit at meals are specifically sensitive to the human psyche. It probably comes from some prehistoric evolutionary pressure in which those who were not given a place to sit at meals were less likely to survive. In any event, not having a place inside the circle at a common meal brings up intense fears for those who have been excluded in other social situations. If you find yourself in a situation where places at meals are insufficient or clearly unequal (with some outside or at makeshift places), consider one of these alternatives to combat social exclusion: A. stagger meal times and let people choose between lunch at 12 or 12:30, B. assign places based on specific physical needs (some people may need regular chairs due to mobility disabilities or small children, those with allergies or other disabilities may need to be ensured a place away from hazardous insects, as in my previous example), C. specifically mention to the group that there is a shortage and ask those who can take the possibly problematic alternative to do so automatically (ask that those who can easily sit on the ground do so at a picnic with an insufficient number of chairs or benches), D. assign seats and rotate them to encourage participants to get to know each other or E.  ask participants to ensure that they sit with different people at each meal, mentioning that meal times are one of the best times to get to know others and exchange ideas, as well as one of the keys to the inclusion that will make your group successful in its specific endeavors.
9. Hand out schedules and materials for your event, email them to participants and/or have them available for those that want them. It is amazing how many complex events, such as our week-long retreat with several workshops each day only post one copy of a printed schedule or have none. Certainly, plans will change, but the more your participants know about the schedule you are shooting for the more confident and included they will be. Information will always tend to flow more easily to those who know organizers personally and to those who have a lot of friends within a group. If schedules and plans are not circulated carefully, those who are already on the fringes will become truly excluded.
10. Announce schedules as well. Repeatedly. If there is no one time when everyone can be expected to be present, announce schedules and changes at various times, keeping in mind that not everyone is able to stay up late at night and some may miss the first morning announcement. Announce scheduling changes at various times of the day. Be aware that large portions of humanity have difficulty assimilating written information and other large portions have difficulty with oral information. Sometimes this is due to a specific disability, but often it is just learning style. Use both print and oral announcements to ensure a greater possibility that information will reach everyone. If a participants roll their eyes over repeated announcements, as them to ensure that those on the fringes get the information. Information is a large part of inclusion.  
11. Ask presenters to make handouts of what they plan to write on a board or flipchart or project as a PowerPoint presentation. Either distribute them or announce that they are available to those who need them, if you want to save paper. Don’t wait for participants to ask for help with this. Most people who truly need handouts won’t ask either out of a desire not to disrupt the work of the group or due to previous experiences with exclusion. There are a great many types of people (all those with visual impairments, those with reading disabilities and other sensory difficulties, those with small children or medical needs that may require them to leave a presentation for a moment and so forth) who will benefit greatly from having handouts of what may be displayed in front of the group. I have read posts by presenters who specifically say they don’t want to give hand-outs in order to ensure that participants have to give them full attention. So, you may run into some resistance from presenters. Simply mention that visually impaired people can’t see the front of the room and you are very likely to have visually impaired participants (as you are if your group is more than twenty people). Most people can understand this simple connection, even though many others will benefit.
12. Make every effort to make spaces and materials accessible to those with mobility and sensory disabilities. Effort counts here because clear effort toward accessibility sends a message of inclusion. I know many wheel-chair users who would feel excluded in a venue that had stairs at every entrance, even if they could theoretically get someone to carry them up and down. They would not be able to go outside on a short break with everyone else and they would have to undergo a public and often humiliating process to get access to the building. If you’re running an event for a public agency or large business with the resources to afford accessible venues, sign interpreters and Braille materials, you must ensure these things, regardless of local laws, or you can’t be considered an inclusive organization.
13. However, if your organization is small or your event is ad hoc real inclusion can be achieved with handmade ramps and volunteer readers along with other creative ideas. Even if the solutions may not be perfect, the point of accessibility is inclusion. Effort is paramount because 90 percent of inclusion is about social relationships, rather than physical barriers.
14. I propose a rule for introductions and helping participants get to know each other. Always make formal introductions if A. your group is smaller than 20 people and the event or meeting will go for more than an hour, or B. your group is smaller than 50 people and the event or meeting will go for at least one day.
15. If your event goes for more than one day, it is highly recommended that you use some sort of a game or ice breaker activity to help people get to know a few others in the group (ideally those they don’t already know). This can be done in even very big groups, although the goal in a large group is not to introduce everyone to everyone else, but to allow people to meet a few others and have some meaningful exchange.
16. Repeat introductions on the second day of a multi-day event with more than ten people are also a very helpful. Use humor or use the opportunity to help yourself or other organizers remember names. Go around a circle and call out names again. This not only makes people feel included and recognized, it helps the organizers to know names AND it helps participants memorize names as well. Using another person’s name in conversation is a well-recognized key social skill that means the difference between connection and the lack thereof. If you want your participants to be included and to form meaningful connections and thus do good work, your goal should be to increase the likelihood that most of them will know each other’s names.
17. That reminds me. Use humor, not only about forgetting people’s names. Use humor about lots of things involved in inclusion. When integrating the vocabulary of inclusion into your materials and introductory remarks, use humor to indicate that you know these things can sound like empty phrases and to prove that you value them at the core.
18. If you must use name tags (which I have to admit are probably helpful to a lot of people even if they are the bane of every blind person’s existence), you might joke about your own difficulties with name tags in order to point out to the group that some people can’t see name tags at all. That is often all it takes, a minor mention, and people will be more aware and less likely to exclude those who can’t read the name tags for whatever reason. Humor can be used in many ways to both lighten an atmosphere and to remind people of truths they already know and might otherwise be offended at being reminded of, even though they actually do often need reminders when it comes to inclusive group dynamics.
19. You may feel that some of these tips don't apply to high-level professional, technical or financial meetings. Of course you have schedules and your presenters don't need to copy things for everyone. Disabled people, non-native English speakers or people with family obligations don't work in your field anyway. Consider the fact that this may be precisely why people with specific differences don't work in your field. By assuming everyone can navigate these issues without being connected to the group, you severely limit the pool of talent you can work with. I have intentionally limited these points primarily to things that take little extra time and only a bit of specific attention. This is not about making cumbersome or expensive changes. It is primarily about reaching your group goals. When all is told, well over half the population falls into some category that can be inadvertently excluded. And these talents can be activated with minor changes that promote inclusion. 
20. Finally, expect mistakes and shortcomings. No organization is perfect and leaders can do a lot to help a group become more inclusive, but they cannot force it entirely. Accept that sometimes exclusion will happen anyway and be on the lookout for it. When I was excluded at my mountain retreat, the exclusion didn’t end just because organizers took note and took some hasty steps to try to mitigate the problem. But it did improve, and more importantly, I became included by the mere act of openly addressing the issue. Don’t be discouraged by the impossibility of perfect inclusion. This is one area where the old A for effort you may have sneered at in elementary school is actually a well earned and perfectly honorable accolade. 

Inclusive group dynamics is a hot topic in business and public administration in some countries and the skills to lead a group in this direction are in demand. I hope I can use experience to help leaders develop ways to make events and organizations more inclusive. 

I’m sure my list of tips isn’t comprehensive or universal. There are probably plenty of things I missed. Please feel free to add to the discussion with your own ideas and tips to help others. Post ideas and questions in the comments below. Many thanks for reading and discussing!

I developed these tips as a volunteer because I care about people. It's my way of giving back for all the good things in life. My job is writing though. Here is what puts dinner on the table: my dystopian thriller The Soul and the Seed, which tackles social exclusion in a dark alternative reality that reflects uncannily on our world.  It relevant to the topic at hand but mostly it's a story you won't want to put down.

Would you hire a blind babysitter?

I have the same nightmares other parents do. When my daughter was three, I had a nightmare about her running out in front of a truck at night with her purple coat on and being hit. I got rid of that coat and I was paranoid about her being near roads after dark for at least a year after that. 

But I have a special nightmares too--those involving newspaper headlines. And that's not because I've been a journalist (except possibly because my brain knows all to well how the media works). My nightmare headlines say things like:  "Child drowns in river while blind mother is oblivious" or "Community shocked to learn mother of hit-and-run victim couldn't see the car coming."

Because there are a few facts are simply unavoidable:

1. A few children will die or be horribly injured in tragic accidents ever year.
2. Some of these accidents are due to parental neglect. Many are not. Helicopter parents are not all that much less likely to lose their child to a terrible accident. 
3. Most people, including most journalists, wouldn't think a blind person could safely keep track of a toddler.
4. I'm legally blind and I have two young children.

On number 3, I know this because blind parents who go out in public with a white cane and small children all get asked the same questions over and over again, such as "Why did you get pregnant and risk passing that on to your child?" and then "Aren't you afraid they'll get hurt if you aren't looking?" I've been on the receiving end of those questions and I know plenty of other visually impaired parents who've heard them too.

That's why I have extra nightmares. The irony is that I am not really worried that my vision impairment could specifically cause me to miss preventing an accident.

Here is just one example of why I think my kids are just as safe (and as unsafe) as any others:

When our daughter was two and a half, we adopted our second child. He was ten months old and he was extremely emotionally needy due to experiences in a not-particularly-progressive orphanage. As a result, our daughter became a bit more independent. 

A few weeks after we brought our son home, we went to a park by a river for a picnic. It was early in the day and there was no one else there. Our daughter was playing by a tributary stream, throwing pebbles into the water; my husband was reading a book; and I was changing the baby's diaper under a shade tree. I mentioned to my husband that he really needed to watch our daughter if she was going to play close to the river and he assured me that he could see her while he read. I don't have a real concrete idea of how fully sighted eyes work, so I accepted this, though I've since been told it isn't really possible. 

I remember looking up and catching a glimpse of the blur of my daughter's white shirt near the stream a few times. I can't see much beyond about ten feet, but I can pick out bright contrasts of color. Still, I was nervous. I didn't know why at the time, though I have since realized that I was subconsciously uneasy because the noise of the river made it so that I couldn't hear what my daughter was doing, which is how I normally keep track of her.

Once I looked up and didn't see her white shirt by the stream. I looked around and saw the splotch of white on the other side of me, about twenty feet away, near the steep river bank. My husband was facing that way though and I thought he was watching, so I went back to changing the diaper.

She ran back and forth between the stream and the river several times. There were bushes and trees around as well. If I had looked up and not seen her, I wouldn't have panicked. My husband later said he felt the same way, except that he wasn't on edge at all. He was reading his book and casually glancing up and down from it to keep track of our daughter's whereabouts. 

When I had  finished with the diapering process, I started  putting stuff back into our backpack. I happened to be looking up, watching our daughter by the river in a relaxed, summertime way.

And then she disappeared. 

It was silent. Or at least I couldn't hear a sound over the rush of the river. Not a splash. Not a scream. Not a peep. The splotch of her shirt was just there one second and then gone.

I leaped up, left the baby laying on the blanket and raced across the grass. Right by the  river, I could hear her flailing in the water. It was so cold that she couldn't scream. She had already been carried downstream a few feet by the strong current and was now hidden by bushes. I jumped into the river and had her in my arms in the space of three heartbeats. My husband was still putting down his book, looking dazed and alarmed, when I scrambled back to the bank. 

What did I learn from this experience:

1. Children can fall into a river much more quickly and unobtrusively than new parents usually think.
2. If children are by a river, an adult needs to be paying full attention at all times. 
3. If there is more than one adult, there needs to be a designated person to pay attention to children by water because relying on the idea that more adults will mean enough safety doesn't cut it.
4. Sighted people often take their ability to see where a child is for granted.
5. Being fully sighted isn't necessarily a great advantage in this situation.

We discussed this (at length) later. My husband agrees that if he had looked up and not seen our daughter by the river, he would have looked over by the stream. If he had still not seen her, he would have gotten up and gone to look behind the bushes by the stream. By the time, he determined that she wasn't there, at least 30 seconds would have passed and she would have been swept well downstream in the swiftly flowing river. She fell where she was immediately out of his line of sight, obscured by the bank and dense brush.

Parenting 101: We weren't close enough and neither of us was paying enough attention. It was only because I happened to be looking directly at her that disaster was averted. Overconfidence in one sense is dangerous.

I have learned a lot since then and I know many experienced parents (both sighted and blind) who know better than to make those mistakes in the first place. You don't have to be a helicopter parent to know that toddlers and swift water are a bad combination. 

Since then I have learned a lot about how blind parents do what they do as well. Under normal circumstances, I can hear very precisely what toy my children are playing with in the other room and what they're doing with it. They have asked me, when they got in trouble for messing with forbidden items, "Mama, how did you know?" For now, I just let them think Mama has eyes in the back of her head, because... these are trade secrets. 

But I also know what I can't see. If I'm with small children by a river without other adults, I will be physically right with the children. I won't be watching from a distance, if the water is noisy. This comes from experience of children and flowing water more than anything and my approach wouldn't be that different even if I was fully sighted. I know how easily accidents can happen.

A few years ago, a family member told me that I couldn't be safe watching small children because of my vision impairment. As it happened, a year later I was put in the situation of watching that relative's child plus my two children by a river alone for two hours. I had agreed to watch the three children by myself in that situation for only fifteen minutes. But the person who was supposed to arrive to help me, didn't show up for some time. And it turned into two hours.

That time, everything went fine, but I was still stressed out. I am reasonably confident that I can watch children by water, but three preschoolers on one adult (at a swimming hole where a child drowned the year before) isn't a great ratio in general. And this was made worse by the doubts some relatives had already expressed about my ability to watch children. I was uncomfortable with this situation because I knew that if a child slipped on a wet rock, I wouldn't be judged the way other parents are judged. I am inherently suspect.

That's where the nightmares about newspaper headlines come in. As much as I'm afraid of my children or other children I care for being hurt, I'm also nervous about the community wrath and lack of understanding that is likely to result if my child even suffers a common childhood injury.

In the light of the neon fact that I'm legally blind, some other facts that might well be overlooked. Those are:

1. My children have never broken a bone or been to the Emergency Room... yet. (Lucky dog. Could happen, just hasn't yet.)
2. My concerned relative's child has... both things, several times. (Not an extremely risky lifestyle. It just happens, but no one ascribes any special meaning to it because this parent has no disability.)
3. I taught preschool-aged children for ten years and never had a safety problem.
4. I've pulled a silently drowning child out of a swimming pool twice when no one happened to be looking. The first time I did it, I was twelve. (And, yes, I was legally blind then too.)
5. I am as careful or more careful than other parents when it comes to dangers like water and traffic without restricting children's play.

 It's never fun to know that you might be judged more harshly than others if you make a mistake. Granted, sometimes that's just life. But this prejudice raises other issues as well. Many parents won't let their children come to my house for a playdate. Might that be because they are nervous about the same things? What happens if someone brings up these kinds of issues in a custody hearing? What if a legally blind person wants to work as a preschool teacher?

I've discussed these issues with skeptical parents a lot, and it has often come down to a deceivingly simple question:

Would you hire a legally blind babysitter?

Believe it or not, I worked as a babysitter as a teenager. I'm not sure if the parents knew I was legally blind. My career wasn't very illustrious anyway... but for other reasons. One set of parents came home to find me leading their children on an adventurous expedition on their shed roof. If I hired a babysitter who did that today, there would be stern words.

And so it comes down to this. I'm not saying you should hire a "blind babysitter" because blind people always make great parents and childcare professionals. I am saying, hire a babysitter with a good track record, period. 

If he or she doesn't have a reference--not even from their own cousin or aunt who has kids, then I probably wouldn't hire that babysitter, unless I know them well personally and was prepared to be that first reference. (I'd also be careful of babysitters who take children on hikes on the shed roof, even if they might mature into good parents someday.) 

If you ran into an experience babysitter who has an excellent track record and references and also happens to have a disability, would you hire them? Does it depend on which disability they have? Do you have any chilling tales of water hazards to share? I love to hear from you. Comment below using the bubble icon on the lower left. Share this post using the icon on the lower right.

Five skills that are more important than "a good attitude"

I sometimes like to rant about the insensitive questions people ask about disabilities or blindness. But there is one question I recently got on an international forum, which is actually a good question that often gets bad answers:

What skills are most important for a disabled person to have? 

Creative commons image by Andrea Pavanello, Milano

Some people may take offense at this because the question somehow implies that disabled people don't have the skills that other people have, but let's take it a different way. What skills are most important for a city kid to have? What skills are most important for a farm hand to have? Now it doesn't seem so threatening after all. You don't have to see disability as a terrible lack of something in order to see that it is a specific life situation. So, is there a specific skill set needed to "do disability well," just as there are specific skills for living in the city or the country?

So, it wasn't the question that bothered me this time. It was the answers. I don't even know if the answers were given by disabled people or non-disabled people, but I have my suspicions. Almost all answers focused on attitudes or temperament traits such as "persistence" and "a good attitude." 

The question wasn't inherently problematic but it got some disturbing answers. They were primarily moralistic and aimed at traits that make someone a "pleasant and socially acceptable disabled person."

Creative commons image by vedic-words

So, it got me thinking. What if I was a parent of a kid with a disability? What skills would I want my child to learn? I've heard my own mom talk about the angst involved. Every mother wants the best for their kid. I was recently also given this question personally by someone who's grandfather was swiftly losing his sight. And even though I may get some argument from disabled people who could justifiably say that the field is too broad and there are no skills that are specifically necessary to all of us, I think I can answer this question better than the preachers of "how to be a nice disabled person."

I'll focus on skills or tools that A. can be learned and B. are essential to thriving as a disabled person in today's society.

1. The ability to create text quickly: For most this will mean learning to type. This is the primary vehicle to being able to articulate needs, deal with authorities and stand up for one's self in today's world. If you want to have a hope of advocating for yourself, this is primary. I grew up legally blind and writing by hand was a major struggle. When I was a child I went from being a C student to a straight A student in one year. The intervention was that a wise teacher intensively taught me to type. Many disabilities don't entail difficulties writing by hand but still the ability to type pays dividends.
2. Access and the ability to navigate the internet: This is both a skill and a tool. I have seen a lot of people with disabilities essentially dis-empowered through lack of access. The internet has it's evils but in terms of dealing with the inevitable social and physical issues of a disability, internet access and skills are key.
3. An understanding of social and legal systems: I suppose everyone needs to understand the mechanisms of our society, how bureaucracies work and how to work with people. But it is particularly crucial to people with any sort of disability because of the need to advocate and figure out alternative options for everyday things. Some people are naturally good at this. Others have to consciously learn it.  
4. Social skills as a tool: I hesitate to put this in here because "social skills" is term of rhetoric  often thrown at disabled people by those who have too much judgment. But there is some truth underneath the slime. The first thing to emphasize is that social skills do not make you a "better" person or more acceptable or get you more friends. Many, if not most, people will ignore people with disabilities, many dismiss or shun them, some will openly harass them, Whether or not the person with a disability has good "social skills" matters. It will change the dynamic by about 10 percent. Ten percent fewer people will shun or ostracize a person with a disability who exhibits good social skills. BUT the message that people with disabilities are routinely given is that, if they would just perfect their smile or their posture, they would be accepted. And that's a lie. Many people with disabilities spend a huge proportion of their time and energy trying to perfect these things in order to "be good enough" when the truth is that for most of society we will never "be good enough." That said, social skills are a key to success for disabled people because when you're dealing with official structures, schools, employers, landlords, media... all the people you encounter when advocating for yourself, social skills make a lot more than that ten-percent difference seen in purely social encounters.  
5. Permission to not be normal: When discussing social skills in the previous point, it must be emphasized at every turn that these are skills, not a way of being. I attended a lot of programs and summer camps for disabled kids when I was a child and I saw the huge gap between those who tried to "be normal" and those who just lived their own lives. I've seen disabled people who can't walk across a room or cover their basic daily needs because they keep trying to do it the way most people do. Many interventions for disabled people essentially hinge on trying to make you appear normal from the outside. But this is often a trap. Yes, you need "social skills" in one hand but in the other hand you need your permission to not be normal, to do what you need to do--even if that means handling your silverware with your teeth. You live with the body you have, not the body you don't have. This can mean that you attract some social judgement at times for not abiding by some social standards. But it's the difference between living your life vs. living to please others.

I'm sure there are plenty of essential skills I've missed. I'd love to hear from you. What skills serve a person best in today's world? Even if they aren't general to all types of disability, what are your favorite life hacks?  What would you advise someone newly disabled to learn|? Please comment using the comment button on the lower left and share this post with your friends using the button on the lower right.

Disability is social: Is someone else's medical condition your business?

When I was sixteen, I was travelling in Germany and I sat down on the edge of a fountain to read a book and wait for a bus. While I was reading, three other people sat down nearby. They apparently noticed me and the fact that my book was literally an inch from my nose.

One of them eventually reached over and mashed the book into my face and said, "There. You need some help getting the book close enough?" 

This was not an uncommon occurrence for me with immature peers, but that didn't make it any less aggravating. I'll admit that I have a temper and there have been times when I would have chewed the head off of anyone who did such a thing. But I was suffering under the delusion that Europe would be more open-minded than the US. So, instead of biting the head off the offending guy, I turned around and asked, "Haven't you ever heard of a person being nearsighted?" 

 "Why don't you get some glasses then?" the woman next to him said with no inflection of humor or understanding whatsoever. 

While I've had plenty of similar encounters and tossed them away into the fog at the back of my mind titled "Why lots of people suck," that one has remained clear and fresh in my mind for twenty years--down to the grain of the cement on the fountain base and the sunlight shining through the budding trees of early spring.

Maybe I remember it because that was when I first started to understand that this is going to happen, no matter what you do. If you have a disability, you will be harassed--even in nice liberal places like Germany, even when you aren't asking for help or accommodations, even when you're just minding your own business. 

Up until that point I had taken every nasty social encounter as proof that I was a social loser. But this time it was so clearly not my problem that it was a bit of a revelation to me. 

The other day, I was on a train with my six-year-old daughter, headed for her music lessons in the city. I was reading Little House in the Big Woods to her with my nose properly rubbing the pages. The train conductor came by and I bought a ticket and showed my transportation disability ID that gives me a discount on that route. The conductor made a stink about how my card must be expired, even though the date on it was clearly good for another two years. Finally, the conductor did his job and left. But then one of the passengers turned around in a nearby seat and said, "Were'd you get the fake ID? You're obviously not blind, since you can read." 

I hadn't stowed my foldable white cane and it was still propped against our seat. Sometimes I leave it out on purpose, just to scare away nosy twerps, but sometimes it doesn't work. Even without having an argument with the train conductor, I've had people stop me and demand that I surrender my cane, because they have seen me reading something and therefore they "know" I'm not "blind." 

On this particular occasion I turned to my daughter and explained again how some people don't know very much about people who can't see well. 

My daughter replied, "A girl at my school said that you look bad." 

"What kind of bad?" 

"Just bad," she said. "Anyway, I made her stop and she promised she wouldn't say that anymore. " She clenched her tiny fist and bared her teeth.

Oh gods, now my six-year-old is getting in fights over it. 

As a result, I would like to do a little bit of public education right here and now. Here are some basic facts that could resolve all of these situations and a great many others. Please pass them on to your friends.

Creative commons image by Antonio Cruz/Abr of Agencia Brasil

• First, the majority of legally blind people can see something. 
• Some legally blind people wear glasses to increase what they can see or to protect their eyes from bright light or to gain social acceptability (either by hiding eyes that appear a bit different or by simply alerting others to the fact that they don't see well).
• Some visually impaired people DON'T wear glasses. For instance, my eyes look a little odd and I would get a lot less social flak if I wore sunglasses, but sunglasses cut way down on what I can see. Some vision impairments are not helped by glasses. Some visually impaired people wear contact lenses. 
• Some people have to use a combination of contact lenses and glasses for medical reasons. Unless you're a doctor and the person is seeking your medical advice, this is not your business. (For instance, I see far better with contact lenses than with glasses--due to some complicated optical physics--but I can't wear contacts all the time for medical reasons. So, I wear contacts when I really need to see well, for instance when out in public, but I usually wear glasses at home.)
• Some partially sighted people use white canes. The fact that someone uses a white cane means they are legally blind. It does not mean they can't see anything. I for instance can see quite well at about one or two inches. I can't see other people's faces so well or speeding cars.
• Some totally blind people don't use white canes. They navigate almost entirely through echolocation and good memory. They are not in physical danger and it isn't your job to tell them how they should get around. I can get around like they do and I did for more than thirty years, despite not being able to see the ground very well, but I now choose to use a cane to avoid a lot of social flak. That is my choice and some people choose differently.
• The fact that someone's eyes move oddly does not mean they are mentally ill or developmentally disabled. Again, I don't care to count the times people have told me that they thought I was "retarded" when they first met me only to be "pleasantly surprised" to find out later that I'm only visually impaired. This is the primary reason I have used a white cane when in public for the past seven years. I traveled the world without one, worked as a journalist in war zones and some other sketchy places and so on. But small town social life is less forgiving than that and I've been beaten into submission. I now carry a white cane as a sort of signalling device because I prefer the nasty social things many people do to visually impaired people to the nastier social things many people do to developmentally disabled people. Which means...
• You'll sometimes see me using a white cane and then folding it away and not using it. You'll sometimes see me riding a bike in quiet areas without a lot of traffic. You'll sometimes see me hiking on rough terrain without a cane and then using a cane on a nice smooth sidewalk downtown. This is because the only real safety-related need for my cane is to avoid being run over by drivers who assume that every pedestrian can see them, and sure, they're supposed to stop but "just this once" the pedestrian should move out of the way or stay put or whatever (depending on the hand signal the driver is making).
• And to expand upon this, people who use wheelchairs are not all paralyzed. Many can move their legs. Many can walk for short distances.
• People who use wheelchairs can very likely talk just fine, as can people with white canes. and many deaf people can as well.
• People who use wheelchairs or other walking devices are often powerful athletes. Using a wheelchair does not make a person an invalid. I am quite a good swimmer myself and a disabled man who used two canes to walk very slowly beat the pants off of me in a swimming race when I was twelve. Arm muscles are quite a thing in the water. I became a lot smarter after that.
• Not all disabilities are visible or apparent to an outsider. 
• The people who diagnose disabilities and prescribe aids for them have years of medical training. This is the job of doctors and specialists. It is not your job to give advice or correct "unfair" use of disability devices on the subway, at school or in the workplace. 
• People who hold disability ID cards or disabled parking permits in some countries go through a long and arduous process of medical assessment. The benefits provided by such cards are not only minor but generally not of any interest to non-disabled people. So, just leave this issue alone. Unless you're a state medical assessor, this is not your business. 

Those aren't all the facts to be sure. But they all add up to the same thing. 

Please don't bug people about their glasses or lack there of or their cane or lack their of or their wheelchair or their hearing aid or any such thing or lack their of. It is their device and their responsibility. You can't possibly know enough to make a judgment on someone else's specific needs. Neither can I, unless the I'm the person in question.

If you're curious, many people with disabilities will be happy to explain, if you ask politely. Some won't. In the end, it is really their business. 

Comment below with questions and your own experiences. I love to hear from readers. Let's get a discussion going. Share this post (using the button on the lower right)  to help spread education. Best wishes!

What it's like to suddenly be free for the first time

I was asked a question on Quora recently, "What is it like to be blind and take public transportation?" Oh, boy! They did ask though. I can get a little intense on this subject. And since my last post picked on the Czech Republic and trains, two things that have brought much good into my life, I feel like I need to balance the scales.

So, I'm reposting my answer here. Fair warning. They might as well have asked, "What is it like to be free for the first time?"

I grew up in a remote rural area in the US. The nearest "town" was five miles away. Population 250. My best friend lived twelve miles away. Most of those miles were rough gravel roads that make bike riding take a lot of extra energy. Riding to the nearest town on bikes was the first right of passage. My older brother did it first. Then me. 

Yup, I was legally blind. I did it anyway. I can see just enough to tell if there are large shapes right in front of my front tire. If I don't ride too fast I can follow the blurry color of the road and not end up in the ditch. If there aren't very many cars - and there was only one every hour or so - I do okay. When I was eight or nine I decided that I was going to ride to a slightly larger town, where our school was located, about ten miles from home. My brother, who was two years older, hadn't even ridden that far yet. He didn't believe I would. I got up early one spring morning, packed a lunch and set off. He caught up with me a few miles later and beat me over the line of the city limits of the town by about half a second. So, okay, he technically made it to that town first too. 

I always knew I wasn't going to be able to drive. It was like knowing if you're right or left handed. I didn't think it was a big deal. Everyone around knew I couldn't see much. It didn't matter in most things. We used to joke, "Shucks, Arie won't be able to be a truck driver or a pro-basketball player. She'll have to be lawyer instead." We were dirt poor but I was a champion debater. I almost always won arguments with adults. And we all set our sights high. 

Not driving started to become an issue when I was a teenager. I saw my brother drive off to see his friends on the weekends. I had to beg for rides everywhere and distances were large. I often couldn't get a ride and there were many lonely weekends. I wanted to join the teenage life of the nearby towns but when I was fourteen my older brother had to live with another family in order to attend a better school hours away, so I didn't have him to give me rides. I was mostly stuck.

When I was sixteen I won a scholarship to study in Germany as an exchange student. I spent a year with a German family and had my first real experiences riding buses and trains. I rode a bus from my host family's suburb into the city to go to school. But I knew there were buses in the US like that - usually one line that went from point A to point B. I had spent a summer working in Portland, Oregon and that was how the buses went. They went so rarely that you had to plan your whole day around their schedule and if where you wanted to go wasn't on that one special bus line, you were just out of luck or you ended up walking for miles through suburban streets that often don't even have sidewalks anymore. So, at first I didn't get it. 

It wasn't until a few years later that it finally clicked. I had met my first love while in Germany. He was a young man from Czechoslovakia in the old East Bloc. A few years later, I returned to Europe to study in what was then the Czech Republic on another foreign exchange program, this time for my university. I lived and studied in a town a hundred miles from the area where my circle of Czech friends mostly lived. And yet, I got to see them every weekend. I would finish with my last class, skip down the long flight of ancient stone steps from the university and right onto a waiting bus to the train station. Trains ran every hour or even more often at peek times. It was no big deal. My friends mostly lived in small villages, scattered around East Bohemia but there were always buses from the train to their houses. 

By Friday night, I would be sitting at the table with my friends drinking good Moravian wine and playing music 'til all hours. And on Sunday night I'd be back in my dorm, ready for classes. At my American university, I never left campus for months at a time. There was nowhere to go and no way to get there where I studied in Wisconsin. 

The next summer found me in Prague, working as an intern for the English-language newspaper The Prague Post. I had to learn the public transportation network perfectly. I often had to rush out to a story or track down some obscure address in an out of the way part of the suburbs. The first few weeks were disorienting. I would come up from the subway (metro) and feel like the world literally spun around me when what I thought was north turned out to be southeast. But by the end of the summer I was a pro. I could calculate complex transfers in my head and I knew where the various subway, tram, bus and train lines went and where they intersected. I could get from any place to any other place ANY TIME I wanted to. 

When I first realized that I literally started sobbing (in private, thank goodness).

I had never dreamed I would be able to get around on my own. I had buried the sorrow of it, told myself that it didn't matter. My family wanted me to be tough and never let on that being legally blind was an issue. And I had mostly done that. But it had mattered. Being trapped and unable to move in a society where everyone else can move around matters.

I have been asked many times why I moved to a country on the other side of the world when I have such close bonds with my family. I call my mom and my brother multiple times every week and we are ever so grateful for Skype and other changes in technology that have made long distance relationships easier. I miss the wild beauty and clean air of Oregon with a constant ache. I'm not really all that fond of a lot of things about Central Europe. I am a country girl and always will be. I don't like cities that much and I yearn for the comfy atmosphere of country kitchens and old friends. But I left all that. I married a Czech man (not my first love, unfortunately) and bought a house in a little town outside Prague. And I am stuck here now.

I did it primarily for public transportation. If it weren't for trains and buses, I would probably be back in Oregon, which still feels like home. We think about moving back sometimes, my husband and I, but our discussions always get stuck on that issue. The only places we could live, where I could have anything like a reasonable lifestyle or career, are the centers of a few large cities. We don't want to live in a big city and even in the cities it isn't easy in the US. I lived in Brooklyn and worked in Manhattan one summer. It was doable but the public transportation was rough and grimy and only in the city. It still entailed a lot of miles of walking. 

Early in the industrial era, the United States was an international leader in rail transportation. But the American rail companies were sold to corporations with big oil interests years ago. Some tracks remain but mostly only for heavy freight. Truly useful (defined as quick and ubiquitous) public transportation has been curtailed in the US through a combination of political, economic and geographical problems over more than half a century. As a result, I am an expat, unable to live a reasonable life in my own country. So, yeah, I can get passionate about public transportation.

The Czech Republic has one of the tightest rail networks in the world. There are stops literally everywhere. Other than a few remote areas, public transportation will take you within a mile or two of any destination, often faster than a private car will. I know some companies where the top executives take the slick, air-conditioned, wifi-enabled trains to conferences in other European countries while the lower managers are required to drive the company cars, because it's just faster, better and more pleasant than driving. 

I can go anywhere virtually any time I choose. I take my daughter to guitar lessons and international choir practice in the city just like other mothers. I visit friends in other cities or I just get outside town a mile or two to walk in a forest on a Sunday afternoon. It may sometimes take a little planning if my destination is remote or distant but it is possible. And it would simply be impossible in places without good, tight and truly functional public transportation.  

I love to hear from readers and I don't bite, even if you don't agree with me. Leave a comment below. What unlikely subjects can stir your passion?

How not to get mad

I might have been annoyed this week. But I wasn’t.
 
I live in the Czech Republic and the president is Milos Zeman. I’ve been watching his political career for nearly twenty years, since I was an intern at the main English-language newspaper here in the mid-1990s. I’ve always noticed that he has some sort of muscle anomaly in his face. I don’t agree with his politics most of the time but I did think it was refreshing that a politician with such a physical difference became president.
 
Then this week he did something very, very, very… irritating. He went to lunch in a small town and before he got there his event team went in to check out a nice restaurant. They liked the space and everything about the place, except for two of the employees. One had a visible physical disability. The other was clearly developmentally disabled. Both are regular employees of the restaurant, serving customers and earning wages and tips. But the president’s staff said they couldn’t serve the president. The restaurant was required to give the two employees mandatory leave and hire temporary workers from a hospitality school.
 
Now as many people know, I’m legally blind. So... I found this news item disturbing.
 
My husband pointed out to me that one doesn’t have to be directly associated with the irritating news of the world to be affected. He was similarly disturbed by listening to a radio program which made a case for why same-sex spouses in a legal partnership are not allowed to adopt children, including the children of their legal spouse. So, if you are gay and you are married and your spouse has a child, you are not allowed to adopt the child to ensure that the child has a parent in the event of the death of your spouse. The reasoning? Children must have both male and female influences. They apparently forgot that single women and single men are allowed to adopt.
 
Okay, our children are adopted from orphanages where many other children wait for parents who are open-minded about ethnicity. So I guess we feel associated with that issue too, but is anyone really unassociated with these sorts of issues? If you don’t have a family member who is affected, you surely have a friend who is.
 
The world can be disturbing.
 
And so it is good to have a sanctuary, some place where the world can’t intrude. Even if that’s just a corner by a window that’s well-suited to reading or a spot under a favorite tree.
 
I have always made a sanctuary for myself, even when I traveled. I’ve lived out of a backpack for years at a time and I kept a candle, a handful of pretty pebbles, some tea, a tin cup and a alcohol burning mini-stove tied up in a scarf. This I could spread out anywhere – and did – on a rock in the Himalayas and on the floorboards of a shack in the Amazon jungle. It made a place of peace.
 
Now I have a larger sanctuary. I am lucky to have a little house with heated tiles on the floors and a warm fireplace. I even have a garden outside full of maturing trees and herbs. And these days I have the luxury of being alone in this place to write for several hours a few days each week. That is a great privilege indeed.
 
And so, I really wasn’t all that irritated this week, even though I was tempted.
 
Instead I listen to my children playing in the other room. I can hear them playing with their collection of letter stamps. I can hear the soft sound the stamps make as they push them against the ink cushion and the “thunk, thunk” as they stamp them onto pictures they are making. I can hear the whack as one child hits the other with a stamp and the yowls of protest. I call a truce, backed up by Mama-power, and they sit separately for awhile until they are calm. Then they resume their pictures. All the while I am making apricot cobbler and I don’t have to turn my head to “see” what my kids are doing.
 
So, the Czech president can have his bland lunch. This time I’m not irritated because he’s got nothing on me. I am sorry that he doesn't know about the richness of all the senses of the body and all the uniqueness of the mind. I'm sorry for him. There will be days when my ire is raised but not today.
 
The peace of my writing sanctuary has brought me to the half-way point in my first draft of the Kyrennei Series Book Four. Don’t get too excited, if you’re an avid reader. It is still a rough draft. But it is coming along and the computer demons have been largely appeased.

Being a rebel with a pen is a lonely job but someone's got to do it. We're here to support each other. Keep in touch. Write a comment below and tell me what you do to keep from getting mad. I love to hear from you.