meekie, can you Monday ping your Florida list?Sure. Here you go. :)
Please let me know if you want ON or OFF my Florida ping list!. . .don't be shy.
Posted on 06/05/2005 11:45:26 AM PDT by 8mmMauser
"Too Late To Die Young: Nearly True Tales From a Life," by Harriet McBryde Johnson.
About two years ago, Harriet Johnson appeared on the cover of The New York Times Magazine. If you saw her portrait, you probably haven't forgotten it.
A thin woman in a wheelchair leans forward, a purple shawl draping one shoulder. Johnson describes it this way in her new memoir: "The portrait has been described as beautifully disturbing, and most nondisabled people seem to see it that way. I'd prefer to call it disturbingly beautiful, but I'll take it the other way around if I must."
Johnson has an unnamed muscle-wasting disease, but don't dare say she "suffers" from it. She insists on being her own complicated person, a Southern lady, for instance, as well as a socialist, an atheist, a lawyer and a born storyteller with a wicked sense of humor.
She eschews pity and sentimentality. She supports the work of Not Dead Yet, a group of anti-euthanasia activists who demonstrated outside Terri Schiavo's Pinellas Park hospice earlier this year, dramatically sliding out of their wheelchairs and lying on the ground.
And though Johnson hates the hackneyed trope of triumph in the face of disability, she nevertheless has a string of interesting adventures. She runs for elected office. She travels to Cuba to discuss disability rights. She protests the Jerry Lewis telethon annually in her hometown of Charleston, S.C., and she bribes her friends to join her with promises of free food.
Her gripe with the telethon is its grim prognostications. When she was 30, her mother became ill, and Johnson had to accept for the first time that, contrary to all expectations, she might indeed outlive her parents. "While anyone may die young, it's not something you can count on," she writes. "You have to be prepared to survive." It's that angry, proud but utterly normal brand of survival that is at the heart of Johnson's memoir.
The most fascinating chapter is her encounter with the philosopher and animal rights activist Peter Singer. (It was this encounter that rated The New York Times Magazine cover.) Singer believes that in some cases it is morally acceptable for parents to kill severely disabled infants. Johnson disagrees, so much so that she fears even debating him would dignify his ideas as socially acceptable. Nevertheless, she meets him, travels to Princeton University to debate him and ends up with a great story about it.
The best memoirs don't necessarily tell every event in a person's life, but they do capture the voice and the emotional feel of the author. Yes, it's impossible for a nondisabled person to fully know what Johnson's life is like. But her writing is so vibrant, so interesting and so funny that you can't help but feel as if you're in her world, sitting beside her and hearing her story for yourself.
I agree!! I am hoping voters have long memories. It is imperative the subject remain on the American consciousness. It will never leave mine.
meekie, can you Monday ping your Florida list?Sure. Here you go. :)
Please let me know if you want ON or OFF my Florida ping list!. . .don't be shy.
http://www.christianpost.com/article/editorial/390/section/the.culture.of.death.%96.looking.back.at.terri.schiavo/1.htm
I will continue to bash rogue judges and fat cat politicians though. They are ruining our country. (and those jurors in Ca in the Jackson case, imo they were wacko.) This one guy who was a loser, said "I made 19 new friends." Well, he didn't have any before. The mom juror said "who in her right mind would allow that to happen, just freely volunteer your child to sleep with someone?" So, they blamed the mother. If the child was really molested, poor kid.
If a child victim has a bad mother, then that victim is doubly victimized.
http://www.theempirejournal.com/613053_nysba_addresses_war_on_ju.htm
Thanks for the crosslinks.
GREER, A PLAYER, SHOULD BE IMPEACHED.
Thanks.
Hi, fv. Thanks for the post and the ping. Hope you are well. Got your 'cane supplies at hand?
" The trouble with a living will is that many lawyers, hospitals and some doctors will encourage a person to "err on the side of death," according to articles that I have read. "
I've read similar things, Sun. Seems the primary purpose of Living Wills is to eliminate more people. Recently I read about the origins of Living Wills. They were pushed in England in the 60's or 70's by the Euthanasia Groups. Nice huh.. grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
Sorry to read about your own experience with a family member and doctors trying to stop food and water. Hopefully there are still many Doctors and Nurses who still value life and spend their energy saving people. Our eyes have been openned and we now realize we have to be on our guard and protect our loved ones from those who agree with the Culture of Death.
As I've posted before, my friend's grandma was dehydrated to death in the 70's - AGAINST HER WILL. The Grandma cried for water, but was denied by the doctor. Because her daughter was a nurse and didn't dare go against the god like Doctors of the hospital, she (my friend's mom) allowed it to happen. Even the death certificate lists the cause of death as - DEHYDRATION~!!!! Unbelieveable, huh. :( :(
I was watching the news this past morning. The Senate is going to issue some sort of an offical apology to those who were Lynched in the South many years ago. What a horrible thing. One of the reasons the Senate of *old* used for not stopping the lynching way back then, was ...get this..They didn't want to interfere with States Rights. Hmmmmm.. where have we heard that before??
I felt sick hearing how people were lynched in the south for doing nothing other than being black. Hedious!! Due Process should be every American's right. Those in the south didn't get it years ago and Terri didn't get it, just months ago. I love our country and want so desperately for us to again, be that Shining Light on a Hill, like Reagan spoke of.
" "There is no such law in the country. I have heard that the USA is thinking about it," the Chief Minister told reporters at the state secretariat here."
Real nice - NOT! What are we doing now - exporting Euthanasia? Good grief. May God have mercy.
" The worst I've ever heard him say is "The law of the case is that she will die." What an evil doer he is! What about all the laws he has broken and goes unchecked???? It's sickening. "
It is sickening, FV~!!! Didn't Bobbie and Terri's sister loose their visitation rights because they wanted to try and feed Terri baby food during one of the first removals of Terri's tube? Unreal and beyond words.
The true and ugly face of raw evil unmasked, time and again.
8mm
8mm
Silent Witness : The Untold Story of Terri Schiavo's Death
Amazon.com Sales Rank: #881 in Books
I never had a family member that was withheld food and water; perhaps I was quoting someone else, & that's where the confusion was.
However, my father was overmedicated, not intentionally, but would not eat because he was "snowed under," with the drugs.
My mother told them to cut his meds, and his appetite came back, and my father is doing well, two years later.
Doctors often overprescribe through ignorance and incompetence, as well as intentionally, so family members have to keep an eye on their loved ones.
I was reading that one year 126,000 people died because of LEGAL drugs (and that's the ones they know about).
You are correct about states' rights. States' rights is going overboard, to say the least, when it allows killing. States' rights should not allow killing innocent people - how evil!!
The government's first duty is to protect it's citizens, not kill them.
Ted McGowan, featured speaker Bobby Schindler and Matt Schellenberg
Terri Schiavo’s brother thanked The Justice Coalition and founder Ted Hires on Thursday for offering support during his sister’s right-to-life struggle that turned into a national political controversy.
Speaking at the Coalition’s “Together We Can Breakfast” at the San Jose Country Club, Bobby Schindler said Hires had helped tell the family’s side of its legal struggle to keep Terri alive by publishing numerous stories in The Victim’s Advocate, the Coalition’s paper.
“Those stories helped get the truth out there when people couldn’t get the facts from the Associated Press,” said Schindler.
The Coalition also helped rally political support among area legislators to help pass “Terri’s Law,” a bill passed during the October 2004 special legislative session that temporarily kept Schiavo alive until a court order removed her feeding tube, said Schindler.
The breakfast was a fundraiser for The Justice Coalition, but Hires wasn’t the only one there trying to raise money.
Florida gubernatorial candidate Tom Gallagher, currently the state’s chief financial officer, sat at Hires’ table. He said fundraising was his early preoccupation as he prepares to try to replace Gov. Jeb Bush, who has reached his two-term limit for the office.
“We’re moving rapidly to shore up financing and settle on the issues that I plan to emphasize,” said Gallagher. “I think I’ll do well in Duval County, I’ve always received fantastic support here.”
Click here for the report.
I didn't know about the Justice Coalition! Thanks. They will receive a donation in support of the new gubernatorial candidate. It would be great if the next governor of Florida had an interest in investigating the Medicaid/Medicare practice of hospice!
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