Shadow Puppet Storyteller

Resilience But Not Silence

A few hours ago, I sat down to make a blog entry, spurred by my personal resolve to create daily. I had a topic, but being on my computer aided me in becoming sidetracked by not one, but two shopping events (one exploratory, related to an estate auction, and one completed for items the newly set up household is needing). So, instead of giving myself two hours to a "daily" deadline, I only have four minutes.

I even sidetracked myself with a quick delve into biographic information about Diane Arbus, and I have no recollection how that happened.

My topic is one I had many thoughts about during our strictest lockdown weeks in 2020, when I realized how easily disenfranchised all of us became, but especially those with disabilities. Due to the public health crisis, public restrooms almost everywhere were unavailable. Places to sit were blockaded or removed. We were asked to resort to impossible discomfort, restriction and uncontested loss of access and/or accessibility (or at least outside the expectations of ADA compliance we'd had for at least a twenty-year comfort zone).

I do remember being in college during the first decade of global AIDS fear. I don't recall public restrooms being blockaded for that, and scientifically during 2020, it made little sense to restrict access to the degree it was, for as long as it was. Even as California has an approaching calendar date for "reopening fully," I think public restrooms will be rethought by businesses. The food services crews that have worked through the pandemic include many individuals who weren't even trained to stock and clean the restrooms, so if they do not have to, many businesses may just decide it is unnecessary, and continue to block access to everyone.

As a woman with a mobility disability, who has worked in the field and relies on highway rest stops, grocery store ladies rooms, or even the gender neutral toilet in a Jack in the Box, or Starbucks, and has found none being made available, I wonder if any dare to bring this to their government officials?

Just sitting for longer periods of time, I believe, made me lose function, muscle mass, core strength. Nations, States, and Counties really should be informed that the restrictions "for our own good," took us backwards. Many have function and confidence to regain in the world outside our own door, and most importantly, reestablish and reinforce with our leaders how easily the citizenry can lose their trust when decades-long advances in civil rights are so readily rolled back.