Composite

If you’re out on the street and your wheelchair breaks down, you need immediate help. (You can’t always rely on Love and Magic!) And similarly, if you’re stuck in your house because of a fl...

https://bookmaniac.org/2024/04/22/san-francisco-wheelchair-repair-program/

Are you working as part of a U.S. nonprofit, on disability, justice, and tech? Read this to find out how to apply for DIFxTech grants! The deadline to apply is May 29th. About the ideas behind DI...

https://bookmaniac.org/2024/04/20/funding-for-disability-justice-tech/

I’ve been going through old playlists and this morning’s was the album Book of Love (by Book of Love) which I found I could sing along to in the shower when I wasn’t laughing at how bad the...

https://bookmaniac.org/2024/04/19/thoughts-on-a-silly-song/

Morning reading: The Unquiet Grave by Palinurus (aka Cyril Connolly). A little treasure chest by a thoughtful, neurotic slacker, reader, and writer, a sort of miscellany as he muses on the proble...

https://bookmaniac.org/2024/03/23/the-unquiet-grave/

I did a lot of trying to say no to things and step down from things I wasn’t doing (well enough, or in some cases, at all) which was kind of my therapy homework and which was very difficult. Wh...

https://bookmaniac.org/2024/01/18/weird-sf-and-a-kids-book-binge/

I didn’t do a year in review for 2023 and I hope I will do something like that. But it’s too much for this morning and I feel like just starting fresh with a diary of this first week. On Sund...

https://bookmaniac.org/2024/01/06/happy-2024/

I took the 49 and the 30 buses across town to the Palace of Fine Arts for the International Hip Hop DanceFest – its 25th year! If you can, grab tickets and go tomorrow, it was an incredible tri...

https://bookmaniac.org/2023/11/12/hip-hop-and-a-party/

People come to San Francisco, still, in pursuit of the technoutopian dream, but also they like to pay homage to an idea of “Silicon Valley”. Now that the Mozilla monument has gone to storage,...

https://bookmaniac.org/2023/10/03/geek-tour-of-the-san-francisco-bay-area/

In high school in Texas the 80s (Cypress Creek) I wrote two articles for the school newspaper that were banned. I was just thinking about this as I looked at the totally bonkers list of books ban...

https://bookmaniac.org/2023/09/21/my-high-school-banned-books-article-banned/

I had to laugh yesterday at myself for being outraged, when someone maybe 15 years younger than me was shocked that a GenXer would say “chonker”. I can fucking say “chonker”!? Is that not...

https://bookmaniac.org/2023/09/01/who-gets-which-words/

I was thinking about event accessibility today and events I’ve been to as a wheelchair user. There are bare minimums of accessibility that mean I can get in the door, and usually that’s what ...

https://bookmaniac.org/2023/08/17/what-makes-access-amazing-for-you/

The SF Bay Area has another maker space and hackerspace!

https://bookmaniac.org/2023/08/15/new-makerspace-in-hayward/

As I read Erin in the Morning today citing a lot of pearl clutching freakouts by Republicans about “sex change surgeries on children” (which, by the way, isn’t a thing) in order to drum up ...

https://bookmaniac.org/2023/08/10/a-thought-on-current-trends-in-transphobia/

When I am skimming through the various San Francisco related subreddits, there’s one kind of post guaranteed to get me commenting. It’s when someone asks for tips on where to bring their rela...

https://bookmaniac.org/2023/03/31/pet-peeve-about-local-tourist-advice/

Anxiety and hypervigilance are weird survival tools that help you get through situations where you don’t have much control. For example if you are a small child in the 1970s freaking out about ...

https://bookmaniac.org/2023/02/05/things-that-could-be-in-my-mailbox-in-order-of-horribleness/

San Francisco’s original City Hall was built (on top of a cemetery!) starting in 1872 and finally opened in 1879, to be actually completed in 1899. (You can see some interesting photos and more...

https://bookmaniac.org/2023/02/03/historic-bricks-from-san-francisco-city-hall/

I am back to walking a little and we went ahead with our planned vacation. We tried to plan it so that even if I wasn’t doing too well it would still be enjoyable and relaxing. So for me that m...

https://bookmaniac.org/2023/01/04/the-slowest-nice-vacation/

I am in a flare up of my mobility and pain issues (arthritis/joint pain) which means I cannot really do much, am using my manual wheelchair in the house, need to rest quite a lot and am not exact...

https://bookmaniac.org/2022/12/19/power_through_vs_healing/

I gave a short talk at the Aaron Swartz Day Hackathon about my new project, Disability Technology Foundation. Its goal is to open license assistive tech of all kinds; to archive and share plans o...

https://bookmaniac.org/2022/11/23/disability-technology-foundation-plans/

Every once in a while I think of this poem by Nicanor Parra, and want to find my translation again. So here it is! I think it is weirdly compelling and it also makes me laugh even if it is a some...

https://bookmaniac.org/2022/11/13/a-translation-from-a-while-back/