Ronniecat is a pal of mine from Usenet, where she is an affable, Canadian (but I repeat myself) presence. I’ve chatted with her on and off for a couple years, appreciating her wit and lefty politics.
Indicative of just how close attention I pay to my pals: I poked my head into Ronniecat’s website a few months back and found a link to a blog called “hearing/loss.” Turned out Ronnie had been going through a long, depressing and annoying period of losing her ability to hear. File it in the “it can happen here” folder: her disability stems from the side-effects of antibiotics taken for what was an unrelated complaint. The old saw in Berkeley in the 1980s was that “disability is the minority with an open admissions policy.” Ronnie’s writing brings that home forcefully. She is now profoundly deaf, going through the long process of obtaining a cochlear implant (an unimaginable task were it not for the Evil Socialist Canadian Health Care System) and living with a host of obstacles. And it sounds like she’s got a couple devoted, helpful friends for each obstacle.
I’ve been meaning to link to her for some time now, and an innocent question from Ronnie about when I did prompts this belated recommendation. Go. Read the whole thing.
http://sciencepolitics.blogspot.com/2005/01/next-tangled-bank.html
Thanks for the link, Chris. I’m now up through July and will be spending time the next few days catching up with Ronnie’s posts. She’s a terrific writer.
Ya know, you’re absolutely right. I’m curious, though: had you been one of the inhabitants of that village, what would you have done?