What Katy Did and Disabilities

I'm working on blog entries today as I'll be away for a couple of days so the the time I'd normally use will be taken up making arrangements and all that.

A favourite novel of mine is What Katy Did by the American authoress Susan Coolidge which was written in 1872 that I've had my current hardback copy from 1989 if I remember correctly although I sure had and read it during my childhood.

I wrote a little about the series in the early years of this blog but today we're going more into depth.

Lots of editions have been produced but I love the simple unaffected illustration on the front of this one because it's inviting but clearly is of the era showing Katy Carr outside the picket fence with the traditional timber framed house in the background.

I have been re-reading this because this is book that spoke very directly to me as a disabled child where generally speaking we were not inked in the world that children saw so it was this book and the English (they'd never say British) satirists Flanders And Swann that showed we had place people could accept.

Chunks of Katy, the twelve year old, struggling at 'self-improvement', having grandiose aims and rather dashing them badly not really a bad girl but carried away at times was and indeed is me all over: Mischievous boy in a dress, getting into trouble but remorseless upon being found out, it's just so familiar because it's not that you don't have a conscience, you do, but it kicks in too late!

The other thing is really from the second half of the novel, something truly awful happens to Katy very much by accident as she goes in the Swing that she was told not to go on by her Aunt Izzie  who just expected a child to just follow the instruction rather than saying it was unsafe.

The line comes out from the staple that was designed to secure it as she soars, so she falls at speed to the ground striking her spine. It leaves her unable to walk and more or less confined to her upstairs bedroom  for a long period whereupon she is visited by her family.

Re-reading that moved me because it's similar to what happened to me just a couple years older than Katy where something went wrong with a swing and I hit the asphalt beneath with speed and at force. 

It didn't paralyze me although I was bruised but it left me drifting in and out of consciousness for about ten hours living permanently with significant brain damage where head struck the surface.

Part of the novel talks about how that experience affected her being in pain, feeling bitter and about how she adapts to becoming disabled when her beloved cousin Helen who also is disabled comes over explaining to her she needs to adapt, making the most of the situation she is in or risk losing the love and affection of her family though her own attitude.

Some have criticized the emphasis around her learning patience, learning to be cheerful, having hope, trying to keep things neat and getting on life as it as part of the "sainthood" attached to disabled people as if that's their only value.

To me it's to miss the point entirely which is life as a disabled person is harder, comes with disappointment, doesn't exempt you from general expectations and in my experience and a few others you just have to adapt to what is. It's a brutal truth.

It is certainly the case in the novel the idea Katy could of been looked after downstairs wasn't looked at nor is any kind of physical therapy (UK: physiotherapy) looked at which today we sure would because that was too new in the late nineteenth century.

We learn later on, Katy after Aunt Izzie dies, does begin to learn to walk again, taking on the running of the house which to me then was a sign at least you *could* have a life where you did contribute.

To me although criticized for what is seen by some as late nineteenth century (UK:Victorian) moral instruction, it's a enjoyable inspirational story whose values do align more with the 'real world' when it comes to offering the disabled reader some comfort and life lessons.

That's why I always loved it.

Wednesday media round up

There's a few things I'd like to talk about before my next entry sometime next week and I think the first thing is I enjoy light hearted social interaction, it may be a laugh and a joke on a Status update, a journal or say in a chat room.
This week I've been enjoying writing and taking turns in a role play story exploring an imaginary world we're based on  with friends having an adventure we make up as we go along letting our inner child talk and play in much the way in real life as children we would of done which is more my idea of fun than anything more grown up and what this age regression thing is about in all honesty.
I sometimes like to write short stories or extracts  of a fictional regressed persons life or a few others sharing time together pretty much for the same reason, exploring what  it means, finding it it very calming.
I saw something earlier this week on Tumblr that caught my attention that can be paraphrased as why do you make a point of looking at another possibly an ex communities site when it irritates you and there is nothing you can do about it?
It's a fair question given how things with one community got with me. You may think maybe they'll change almost miraculously with a message saying everything is back to where it  was before or what it was that irritated you but in reality that isn't going to  happen.
I'm stopping obsessing over that communities  home page as it just isn't healthy for me and instead focus on going forward with the community I'm a part of instead, a community that has given me a second chance and hope when I so badly needed some.
I have what I need at hand, I just need to engage more with it  and learn to leave the past behind.

Snowed in musings

It's a bit of a snowy day here so while I had anything in particular mapped out for today's entry I thought I might as well make use of being stuck indoors.

There are a few things I am going to be talking about, one is how comments and entries not just on my blog, although as ever so long as they're fit to be printed I'm always happy for people comment on it.

I think there's a difference between talking about something, it might be drawing , an article or a story and what you feel about it and where it is about some technical aspect of it such as missing a small matching bit off a picture or perhaps not the ideal shade of a colour  in picture or a spelling or punctuation mistake in a written piece.

I think we're familiar enough  being set a task at school or college, handing it in  and being graded on it perhaps to the point of a written comment being made the sorts of things I can think of would be "Needs new paragraph", "Should be in red" or even as I had in school "See me" when I didn't really feel like putting much effort into things and things came out of draws *cough*.

Anyway that's fine and dandy for formal learning and yes even I increasing recognize the value of that and being expected to put more thought into things so we go improve in what we're doing but when we do things just for ourselves as shared "For fun" thing is that the right way to go about it?

Rather than leaving a string of comments about technical errors we can easily correct forever marring it, shouldn't we message or email any  points or suggestions that that person can put aright so while they do learn as we need to from our mistakes, our masterpiece isn't left  cluttered up by them?

The other really is how the age dysphoric side of my life runs in tandem with being a feminine gurl so they way in which I present as that gurl comes from that past, being as a schoolboy in the school system but more able than I was at the time to let it all out.

It can be in things such as wearing school uniform but with a pleated skirt more than short trousers although I don't have big issue with them but back then they were all you had, my play clothes or in say my interests such as say colouring in my Frozen colouring book or re-reading some of the classic girls school stories.

Everything in this life connects to those days of yore even if some of way we do things like using mobile phones to let friends know we are there rather than red telephone boxes and using computers to access the internet  are different.

The basic purpose is the same it's just that time has moved on and you can't live in 2016 as you did in 1977 totally.

It's just that you're living more in tune with the spirit of that age and making new childhood memories that help overcome some of the not so great ones of the past. 

Fur limed reading

 I did get the second Valerie Hastings piece of classic G.O (Girls Only)  fiction in a 1968 hard back edition

You know all about me and G.O fiction, the stuff I read at school, especially boarding school so I was super pleased about that.

It's really about the strange goings on at Hazelmere, Jill's boarding school where it transpires an arts competition is being used to smuggle out two stolen works of art from a local art collector and the perils for Penny Maxwell of having her Mum on the school's governing body interfering  in the Fourth Forms lessons like the music lessons topics and the Horse Riding plus wanting to fix things for Penny where this will only undermine the sense of fairness seen by the remainder of the form.

I don't think I mentioned for a good while I do have a number of Angela Brazil's masterpieces of the genre in Armada paperbacks, the copies I had living as a child (well we can't truthfully say growing up!)

I wrote about this several years back , a gripping tale of intrigue, inheritance and the lives of schoolgirls and recently re-read it.

I did mention about having some things at Christmas  and these were the fleecy booty slippers I had from Mummy which are a snug fit being UK size three through five  and I'm a five having relatively small feet and small paws too!

They're not to be honest big in support like a traditional plimsoll type usually is which is what I was brought up with but they are as warm as toast once on you.

New Year reaffirmation

 Seeing this is the start of New Year one might begin this New Year looking at resolutions which we have talked about at various sites, certainly at SN, not just the more usual things around positions, material things and pay for those that are employed but more around the things we find difficulty with and in a less overtly religious way, our moral and behavioural traits not just in how they leave us but especially the impact on others of when get it wrong.

The following is the emotional age appropriate standard for me as a child/adult hybrid expressed in a way I can understand easier

Now that isn't too tall an order for me get to grips with so keeping to it is one of my most important things this year.

What I really want you all to do is help hold me to all five points of this over the year be it in a chat room, on the threads of a forum or social media and especially face to face.

I want you to be to be fair but very firm with me being prepared to chastise me as and when I deviant from such basic social norms, learning to own the consequences of my actions to help me be as responsible as I can even with my learning and developmental disabilities.

Another area that may not come up for most is really around identity, specifically gender identity which has sometimes been difficult no just for issues in society for those of us who do fall between the binary gaps but sometimes complicated by those who would claim us for their own campaigns.

Contrary to what some transgendered people have tried to make out I'm not a girl trapped in a boys body looking for permanent transformation but a gurl who likes hur body who is not socially male and a good deal more feminine than girls.

Tammy is a Sissy Gurl and is to remind everyone of hur gender this year

This is what matters the most for me in Twenty-seventeen. Being honest about and the best me.