Silent Witness: The Untold Story of Terri Schiavo's Death will be released on June 28th
Link to Harper Collins Publishing here
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.
Ping to the Terri June running thread.
most of my contact was with the jack booted thug with the gestapo hair and shades. I think he was in the he-man women hater's club. He was smart alecky to Suzanne who is such a sweetheart. He lied too. I have his picture, I'm sure you do too. I believe he hates women and that made it easier for him to lend himself to the death camp for two weeks.
If we stood still, they would get in our faces and tell us to keep moving. If we walked around, they would tell us to stand in one place.
They tried to tell us "no talking" one evening when a drunk, pro-Michael tart showed up and was very loud. After we said "you're kidding", they backed off. They tried to take away our free speech and the only loud person was the drunk tart.
It wasn't all bad, but mostly it was pretty bad. We were labelled insurgents by Judge Greer. That alone goes beyond his jurisdiction but I guess he has powers we didn't know about and never will.
"Insurgents", just like they call terrorists who are blowing up people in the middle east. This insurgent was either checking on my friends, listening to the radio, holding signs, sitting in a beach chair or talking to the media.
It was all unfreakingbelievable. How can a probate judge turn a street into a fenced off death camp, seal off 66th St, a major thoroughfare, direct the police and sheriff's dept. and declare that people assembling outside were "insurgents"? How? Because NOBODY STOPPED HIM.
THE MEDIA LIED: There wasn't going to be a showdown with Jeb's law enforcement. That is the spin. They would have let Jeb's forces come in and get Terri. That's just the way the media is spinning it to protect the status quo.
There is a rush to judgment to declare people brain dead when they are in early recovery from a "beating" or an accident.
Ping
Weren't we shown on the evening news somewhere, you and I, labeled insurgents or terrorists or something sinister? I never saw the clip but heard about it.
Wow, I couldn't even spell it before and now I am one.
8mm
I could not get them to understand how moral issues are tied together like the war on terror, abortion and homosexuality.
They accused me of changing to irrelevant subjects when I talked about the connections. They just would not discuss it.
That was a very loosing strategy as it turned out for the Dims.
It looks like euthanasia will the big moral problem to deny in '08.
I say more power to 'em and keep on loosing to the party of death.
"Our society is gradually changing from a Culture of Life to a Culture of Death where death, the termination of life, is being more widely accepted in a multitude of forms, including abortion, euthanasia and suicide. Even infanticide is promoted by academics."
"Islamic terrorists such as Amrozi, who is condemned to death, promote a culture of death as they randomly murder hundreds of innocent persons as occurred in Bali on 12th October 2002 and recently at the Marriot Hotel, Djakarta, Indonesia. The Islamic suicide bombers also throw their lives away in a hopeless, misguided cause – they are not martyrs but murderers..."
http://www.pastornet.net.au/fwn/2003/sep/editorial.html
Yes, he was. Jeb made us all think he would step in and he ended up being nothing more than a coward.
Some station did a closeup of us standing around but the voiceover called us something we're not. I remember that now. I think I said to my tv "Hey, wait a minute." That's what happens when they edit raw footage. They make the news instead of reporting it sometimes.
Link to Harper Collins Publishing here
I plan to buy SILENT WITNESS as soon as it hits the bookstores. The case is not over.
Well, rats. Then how do you know they would not have backed down if Terri's family, the entire family, had just picked her up and carried her in their arms out of there? They could not have shot unarmed people. That would have been murder.
theempirejournal has 3 new Terri articles. Thank God for them!
Fundamental Islam sees us as weak and corrupt, and in a way they are right. We are partly responsible for fueling their incredible hatred of the West. Good read, and thanks for the ping.
I thought MS bought a Mercedes or a Beemer? Jodi and MS have interesting driving records. Thanks for posting this. Check out: www.justsaynotoaddicts.com
I hope that is the right link. Driving habits can be a clue towards other behaviors.
Does anyone know what happened to Scott Thomas, the 34 year old Floridian whose wife wanted to starve him at a hospice?
He made me sick.
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