Spirit in Action
Katherine Schneider - Adventures in Living With Disabilities
Katherine is retired from her career as a clinical psychologist and author of To The Left of Inspiration: Adventures in living with disabilities. Blind from birth, Katherine has powerful insight into the dynamics of disabilities in our society.
- Broadcast on:
- 17 Nov 2007
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- other
[music] Let us sing this song for the healing of the world That we may hear as one With every voice, with every song We will move this world along And our lives will feel the echo of our healing [music] Welcome to Spirit in Action. My name is Mark Helpsmeet. Each week, I'll be bringing you stories of people living lives Of fruitful service, of peace, community, compassion, Creative action, and progressive efforts. I'll be tracing the spiritual roots that support and nourish them In their service, hoping to inspire and encourage you To sink deep roots and produce sacred fruit in your own life. [music] Let us sing this song for the dreaming of the world That we may dream as one With every voice, with every song We will move this world along My guest for today's Spirit in Action program is Catherine Schneider Her memoir, "To the Left of Inspiration, Adventures in Living with Disabilities" Addresses important issues surrounding how our society deals with disabilities A subject that she deals with knowledgeably given that Catherine has been blind from birth She is now retired from her career as a clinical psychologist Allowing her increased time for her writing and advocacy work In 1998, Catherine received the Philips Award from the Minneapolis-based Courage Center And she is the founder of the Schneider Family Book Awards for literature dealing with disabilities Catherine, thanks for joining me for Spirit in Action My pleasure! First of all, I'd like a testimonial You've heard my program via the radio and became a listener, didn't you? I did! I listened several times and I was so intrigued that I then got on the website With my talking computer and maybe we'll demonstrate that later And tracked you down because I was in hopes that maybe I would have something to add And here we are! Actually, when you say "we are here", do you care to name all three of us in the room? Well, you're here, I'm here and on the floor is my black lab seeing eye dog named Ivana Which means "gift from God" And probably she won't have much to say since she just got fed Feeding me is a good way to get me to be a little quiet or two So, I'm speaking to you in part because you produced a book recently Last year called "To the left of inspiration, adventures in living with disabilities" But that's not the only thing you did Care to tell us about your professional career? I am a retired clinical psychologist I worked as a clinical psychologist for four different universities Including UW Eau Claire for 14 years And I taught, counseled and administered small counseling centers in my career And how is it that they came to allow you to retire? I mean, don't they need to keep you on? I mean, I think the psychological health of our world needs as many workers as possible Well, I slipped out of the work in gear Because there are just so many projects and so many volunteer opportunities And I wanted to finish my memoir and get it out there And there are just so many things I want to do Including reading novels, which I didn't let myself do much of before I retired I just had to retire It's my understanding that you serve, I think, to help enlighten people about what we consider disabilities In your case, blindness, but certainly there's a lot of other disabilities That either many people have stereotypic ideas about Have prejudices about, have fears of What's been your experience with people dealing with your blindness? Well, I grew up as a person who was blind So right from the get-go, I learned to advocate for my needs And then pretty quickly learned that I wasn't the only person with a disability Who had some needs and so I've enjoyed over the years Doing a lot of public education and advocacy around disability issues And it's my feeling that most people, if they don't know what to do around Somebody with a disability, there's a level of discomfort or fear People will stand back because they don't want to do the wrong thing When in fact, what they need to do is step out of their comfort zone And just make a reasonable effort and things will work out in the interaction For example, in a church setting, people are hesitant to pass me the plate Now, you might say, "Hey, that's a good thing" You don't get the collection plate passed to you But I think it's because they're afraid, "Well, how are we going to get it from hand to hand when she can't see?" Or maybe it's an assumption that, "Well, I don't have anything to contribute So they don't want to embarrass me by passing it to me" But in either case, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out Touch my hand or say, "Here's the plate," or "There are ways to make the interaction happen" I'm a little cookie, yes I am, but I wasn't made by a cookie man And I'm my way from the cookie pan A little piece broke off of me A little piece broke off of me, a little piece broke off of me, a little piece broke off of me, a little piece broke off of me And I can't taste 'cause it's good or hard, as a regular cookie can Now I'm a little chocolate bar, I am, but I wasn't made by the chocolate bar man And I'm my way from the chocolate stand I got a little bend in me I got a little bend in me, ah-huh I got a little bend in me, ah-huh But I can't taste just good or hard, as a regular chocolate bar can [Music] Now I'm a little cookie, yes I am, and I was made by a cookie man I'm my way from the tootsie rollers I got a little twist in me, you know I got a little twist in me, ah-huh I got a little twist in me, ah-huh That I can't taste just good or hard, as a regular tootsie roll can Now I'm a little gum drop, yes I am, and I was made by the gum drop man And I'm my way from the sugar pan I got a little dip, I got a dip, I got a little bend in me, ah-huh I got a little bend in me, ah-huh But I can't taste just good or hard, as a regular gum drop can [Music] Oh I'm a little cookie, yes I am, and I was made by the cookie man I'm my way from the cookie pan, little piece broke off of me Now I ain't as round as I might be, but I taste good just wait and see And I can look back, white as hard as making a cookie can [Music] That was "I'm a Little Cookie" done there by John McCutchen He's one of my favorite musicians and I invite you to check out his website He undoubtedly got his website way before a lot of other musicians Because his personal website is folkmusic.com And of course there's a link to it on my northernspierradio.org website We're visiting today with Katherine Schneider, author of "To the Left of Inspiration Adventures in Living with Disabilities" Clinical psychologist and blind from birth Katherine received the Philips Award from the Courage Center in 1998 And she's founded the Schneider Family Book Awards for books inclusive of people with disabilities You also served your PhD in clinical psychology You also served teaching students at the university for instance Both undergraduate and graduate if I understand correctly Was this moving a mountain in order to have a system that would accommodate your different abilities? No, actually we had to figure out a couple of things First day of class I told students don't raise your hand when you have a question Because I'm not going to see it So you got to wait till I pause and then just jump in And if two people jump in at the same time the earth won't fall down It'll be fine and the other thing I had to work out was how I was going to test and grade And what I did for the testing was have a sighted proctor Marching around glaring at them to make sure that they were as honest as they could be And then as time went on more and more of the work could be emailed to me And I could read the journals or correct the essay exams myself that way Tell me a little bit about the miracle of computers and how they interface to help you read Ah, computers are great, I'm hooked In the mid 1990s I got my first program on a computer that read out loud Everything on the screen and those days it was DOS But now it's gone on from there so that I can do e-mail, surf the internet Read newspapers online, waste way too much time out there improving my mind It's slow in that instead of pointing and clicking I have to tab through every link on a page until I find what I'm wanting But it's very satisfying to have that kind of access Because there's so much more out there than is either in braille or on tape So essentially you move to some text and the thing reads it aloud Is there some signal you have to give to it to say I want you to read what I'm pointing at? Yeah, you just start going down it with the arrow keys and it reads out loud Then you can stop and make it spell a word if you don't really understand what word it's saying Because it has a distinctive machine kind of a voice And then I type, oftentimes people say well do you talk back to it? No, I don't talk back to it other than saying words that we probably can't say on the radio to it occasionally But I type and it talks Can we take a little walk over to your computer? I'd like to have our listeners Hear what it's like to have a computer talking to you We're going to listen to Catherine's computer And here she is, she's getting ready to open up Internet Explorer and go to the Northern Spirit radio website Compo, 85, double, double, double, period, N, O-R-T-H-E-R-N-S-P-I-R-I-T-R-A-D-I-O Period, O-R-G, about Lane Microsoft Internet Explorer Loading page, load then 26 links one table Link comments are questions V2.0, Table 1 and Visited Link and V2.0 Top, top, Northern Spirit Illuminating the connections between the roofs and roofs of the Spirit Remote Clear, Wisconsin Link Home, Link Search, Link Programs, Visited Link Spirit in Action Links on your Link Waker Quotes, Link Desert Quotes, Link Waker Quotes One of the links we came to here was Quaker Quotes And I would like to point that one out because That's especially helpful to have quotes from books that may not be available Either on tape or electronically And to have some quotes is a very nice thing Link Desert Quotes, Visited Link Spirit in Action Calendar, Link was popular Links objects, Link ways to health Link contact us, Link comments Home of Northern Spirit Radio These programs, Produced for Radial, are prepared by Narch Jekins Health Manager The care of, Link co-clear grants meeting As the Northern Spirit Radial Project, they are broadcast on Sunday to go clear Wisconsin's Low Power FM Station, Linkwise Radial, 96.3 FM and is now being syndicated The intent of these programs is to provide religious and spiritual radio programming With an aim to identify and nurture progressive living to create a culture of mutual Growth for those working hard to heal the world and the religious communities In such work, we intend to shine the light with folks who seldom look at it Encourage your identity for the physical work of bringing divine love to the planet Steering in Action, 1028, 2007 Link walked with a strip like was 13 turns to white women who tanked along Elizabeth Gordon Your computer talks kind of fast Do you set it at a higher speed so that you don't have to wait real long for it to give you an idea where it's at? Yeah, I try to get it as fast as I can Because sometimes when you get to a page There are 250 links on one page And so that I can go through that and not forget what I'm looking for Before I get to it, I try to listen to it as fast as possible But when I first got it, I certainly didn't have it cranked up to this speed Because it took a long time to get so I could listen to him that fast When you say listen to him, have you given a name to this computer program that talks to you all the time? No, I think there is a name on that particular voice It might be perfect Paul. It has several different possible voices But that one seems to be the clearest to me Well, can you tell me just in general from a theological point of view Why should we care? Why should the average person in the world care? I mean, if we're going to have a level playing field Some people would just say, well, people compete at the level that they're at And if you don't have the ability to read, if you don't have the ability to run Then obviously we're not going to, you know, give you something in the Olympics Why should we care in general and as a society? Well, I think numbers is one reason we should care Something like one out of seven of us has a disability More as we age Having a disability as a joinable minority group Over 65, something like half of people have disabilities Specifically, as Christians, I think the body of Christ is incomplete If all members aren't there Being there involves more than just the ramp to get into the door For example, less than half people with disabilities in a survey attend church monthly compared with 57% for non-disabled So there are things that are getting in the way of people with disabilities Being full parts of their worshiping congregations Whether that's -- the buses don't run on Sunday, so they can't get there Whether that's -- they don't have access to the text of the sermon If they're a person with a hearing impairment and they can't really understand the minister There are a lot of lacks of access other than just to kind of ramp and parking place Access that we think about And even within the church Oftentimes people say, "Oh yeah, our church is accessible." You can get there Okay, if you're a wheelchair user, can you get to the fellowship hall? Can you use a bathroom? Can you get up to the altar and to where you would preach the sermon? These are all physical access kind of issues that, for example, a wheelchair user would face Were you raised religiously yourself? I grew up in a congregational church, which is now part of the United Church of Christ And then when I was about 13 years old, I decided that people in church were a bunch of hypocrites So I cut it loose for about 10 years, and then toward the end of grad school And I think I realized that psychology didn't make a very good God So I went looking around and kind of belonged to the Church of the Month Club for a while Went through a lot of different phases I continue on the journey to this day I'm a back row Catholic, as I describe it Got one foot in, one foot out And the back row is where all the kids and other interesting people sit They're Cheerios, and it's a lot more exciting in the back row anyway Are those Cheerios more exciting for you or for Ivana? Oh, it's more fun watching her interact with the kids She grew up in a family with eight kids So she just loves going to church and watching kids and have them watch her You made the statement that psychology didn't make a very good God And I have a feeling some people think that as they go into a science Whether it's physics or psychology That there's no need for God anymore What role does psychology not fill in back your religion and spiritual base fill for you? Yeah, that's hard to put into words for me But I think psychology is great at understanding why we do what we do And for helping change parts of what we do But at the same time when you realize that you didn't make the universe or creation And that it's not always going to work out well And you need somewhere to go is in a community to both worship something bigger than yourself And also find comfort for the hard times I guess that's some of the things I get from my faith You said when you were around 13, Catherine, that you left the Congregational Church And what you said specifically is that you were disappointed with the hypocrites there Was that related to your blindness that you're speaking of? Or was it in other ways that you were experiencing the hypocrisy? I think it was probably related to my blindness Because I was the only blind kid in the confirmation class And kids being kids were kicking under the table And talking about lofty things above the table And that just didn't work for me And now 40 some years later when I think about the hypocrites inside the church I say yeah and me too Having realized that gee I'm not without hypocrisy either So nowadays even when I think somebody in the church is a hypocrite I guess I don't say I'm out of here because of that Because I know as somebody said it's a hospital for sinners more than a museum for saints or something Your memoir is called "To the left of inspiration" Adventures in living with disabilities "To the left of inspiration" what does that refer to? Well there are a couple of reasons it is that title One of which is I was looking for some kind of a title And I went into a bookstore and asked where the books on disability were And they said oh over there to the left of inspiration Also so often when I give talks people have said oh you're so inspiring I don't quite buy that I mean it's a nice thing for them to say But the way I figure it we're all inspiring from time to time And then we're just regular most of the time So putting myself to the left of inspiration Also I guess I would admit I'm politically typically to the left of whatever So it just fit for me Some people have attributed I think fairly that I'm a little bit to the left of center I'm just curious if I wanted to put out a sign or a banner for braille people How would I do that effectively? First of all do you really want to do it for braille readers Which is a minority of blind people Most people become blind as they age and do not learn to read braille So if you want to catch more visually impaired and blind people I think you'd put something on your website in text You wouldn't put it in a graphic you wouldn't put it in a picture of text Because a screen reader can't read graphics But you'd put something up in text and you'd probably catch more visually impaired people that way Like your sermon text or your church bulletin or your congregation's newsletter That kind of thing you'd put it on your website if you wanted to make it available to the visually impaired One of the things that you write about in your memoir is theodicy Which is the theology of why people suffer Tell us first of all what your experience is of people talking about theodicy And specifically how that impacts people with handicaps I think other people trying to tell me why doesn't cut it for me For example, way Job's comforters kind of told him and explained everything to him He didn't particularly like that and I feel like that when people, well, you know, God made you blind One of the more benevolent ones is because then you can be an inspiration to other people One of the nastier ones that occasionally comes up is if you had enough faith You could just pray and you'd be healed So obviously you don't have a whole lot of faith Or sometimes people even come and say let me pray over you and you'll be healed Those kinds of attempts of theodicy don't work well for me As I've lived with the frustrations that come with being visually impaired in a sighted society I think there are positives that it's developed in me For example, a appreciation of an accomplishment like when I found your website And tabbed around until I found how to contact you and then shot you an email And it took a while, but boy, I felt satisfied when I had done that I think also there's a lot of funny things that happen because of my visual impairment For example, one time I was going to a little southern Methodist church And I'd been with that community for several years and it had really been a good place for me And I was well involved in the church and it was all grand The first time I'd gone up to communion, it was kind of a odd thing Because you knelt on the altar steps and the minister came along with a plate of bread So I was up there kneeling and my seeing eye dog was beside me And along came the minister, this nice man with this nice plate of bread And my dog's neck got longer and longer as the plate of bread right at nose level got closer and closer First thing I did was I lied to her, I said that's not bread That's about it, right, so it's not bread And she looked at me like yeah, right, that's not bread Okay, so, then he got closer and closer, finally I just sort of took my elbow and knocked her down And took my communion and thought oh, God's got to be up there laughing Because he made her and she's good and he made the bread and it's good And so anyway, when I got ready to leave that church two years later A little old lady came up to me and said well, we're going to miss you And I said yeah, I'm going to miss being here and she said The first time your dog took communion, I was offended And I almost stopped her and said, whoa, my dog did not take communion But I thought, I'm going to see where she's going And she said, but then I went home when I prayed about it And I realized that that dog was a gift from God for you And it's okay that your dog took communion I never did disillusion that woman because I thought she had grown so much in her understanding And that kind of thing I see people grow as they move to accommodate me in their world Also, I know some things about human nature that I wouldn't know if I could see The only way I know a $1 bill from a $5 bill is ask I've been cheated once and once in 58 years is not bad I also know a whole lot about interdependence Yeah, we all talk about that about needing other people and needing God and all that good theory But for me, it's on a daily basis And also, I have some empathy for other people who struggle Which was probably one of my assets in being a psychologist That people kind of know that I understand what it's like to struggle to get where you're going So I think there are gifts from my blindness that doesn't mean that I always say, oh, thank you God Because when I get frustrated and can't get done what I need to get done And that even has become a gift. I have become a more patient person When I go into a restaurant and somebody says, no dogs And I have to work through the whole thing with them This is a service animal and it is loud And would you like to see the law and know they don't want to see the law? Because one gal said, no, I don't want to see the law because I can't read Okay, well, you think you're right. I think I'm right Call the police because they know the laws and, you know, work through this whole thing When I was younger, I wanted to get in their face and scream But as I've grown older, I have no Gandhi But I have developed a degree of patience of, okay, we're going to work this through But we're going to end up with two winners, not one winner and one loser We're going to end up with them feeling good about having done the right thing When you were talking earlier, Catherine, you said In a younger day you might have gotten out there and protested Did you do that kind of thing? Did you get out there with your signs or your chance And that kind of activism as well? Well, I lay down in Washington with some friends of mine back in the early 70s But most of my work on disability issues has been with lawmakers Trying to get laws established or with individual organizations Trying to get them to make changes to be more accessible So not so much of the protesting anymore Didn't the Americans with Disabilities Act, didn't that solve all the problems? Oh, yeah, laws are great And they give you a floor beneath which people shouldn't go But it's really the people that solve problems For example, last summer I was in Washington DC with a friend of mine going to a convention And a taxi wouldn't pick me up, wouldn't pick us up because of the dog Now, if I'd been there by myself with my dog, I couldn't have seen that he didn't stop So there's no way, and even with a sighted person, there was no way to aggressively pursue that Because if you want to take them to court, you have to come back and all that stuff We went to the next taxi in the line That gentleman said, "Sure," he got out He went forward and cursed out the guy that wouldn't take him and shook his finger And said, "You know that's wrong, it's the law you have to," and then after he educated him He came back and we got going where we needed to go But it was sort of fun to see somebody else doing the educating for me When I was asking you earlier, Catherine, about theodicy The theology, the religious reasons we have why people suffer I'm not sure if I heard what you think is the reason that people suffer Of course, there's suffering happens in an infinite variety of ways You know, you were talking about Job's suffering and what that taught us about God Do you have a theological reason why you think that you were given this disability? Is something that makes sense of it for you? As close as I can come is in John 9, verse 3 Where people are asking, "Jesus, why was the man born blind? Was it his parents sin or his sin?" It says no, it's not sin, but that the works of God might be made manifest in him And I think from time to time, God's works are made manifest in me as I am With my particular limitations, with my particular gifts I think St. Paul said something about that God's power is made perfect in weakness There's something like that that God shines through this particular cracked pot from time to time You alluded to something earlier, but you didn't expand upon it You mentioned that someone who might feel devout might be concerned for your blindness Might choose to pray over you to cure your blindness Did you actually have that happen to you? Yeah, several different times I understood that they meant the best They wanted to make me sighted because they enjoyed being sighted and wanted me to have that And they were wishing the best for me, but it wounded me deeply because it seemed like it was saying You were not okay the way you are You were not good enough God doesn't want you to be this way It just hurt badly enough that I never really said anything to them To answer them because it was one of those ouch I don't want to even open my mouth because I'm afraid I might be offensive kind of situations Which is one of the reasons that I wrote that particular chapter in my book about beyond amazing grace Because I think church people want to do the right thing But praying over until you're sure that that person, once that particular prayer, isn't the right thing As you mentioned from the title of the chapter Beyond Amazing Grace, in it there's the line "I was blind but now I see" Is that a bad thing to have that kind of, I guess, metaphors and images in our songs? And of course it's not only seeing, it's hearing, it's being able to speak It's perhaps being able to pick up your palate and walk All of those things are part of it Is this bad stuff to have in our religious imagery and in our songs and in our sermons? Well it's a beautiful hymn and I feel like a crab grousing about it, but I will grouse Because I know what they mean with blind but now I see meaning I did not understand but now I understand But when blind is used to mean not understanding, it kind of gravitates to blind equals stupid And not that I can't be stupid from time to time But when words like that or God heal us from our blindness Meaning he lives from our stupidity, that's offensive to me If it said was bound but now I'm free it would still rhyme And it wouldn't be trashing my particular minority group Which is why I like a lot better than him We walk by faith not by sight Because that is so very true I guess it's true at a lot of different levels for you But it's true for me at another level I don't walk by sight, I do walk by faith Faith in my guide dog, faith in the person I'm walking with, faith in God, not by sight I wanted to share with you a story that was passed on to me I would like to hear how it sounds from your perspective I knew a professor, a physics professor who amongst other things His specialty was optics And in one optics class along came a student who was blind taking an optics class Obviously, since you're talking in optics about the things of sight You're talking about light and perception of light This presented some difficulties Of course, school systems have learned to adapt to people who are not seeing or hearing He gave his lectures as well as he could When you're writing on the blackboard, it doesn't convey as well But you can work around that too, and they did all those things You can read it out loud, but when you're trying to show how angles equal and opposite There are some challenges here, some special challenges as there are in many fields My first college major was physics, so I know about ways of doing that It is challenging What he did with this blind man who was in his class, he adapted the test Instead of drawing ray diagrams, he had to work alternatives to that In the end, he ended up giving this blind person a C in the class That's what the person achieved This professor's wife reacted indignantly and said This is amazing that this blind person was able to achieve what he could in this class Anyone who can do this level of work that he was able to do and his blind deserves an A And the teacher said, the professor said No, I think that's the wrong way to think about it Anyone who is blind and can achieve a C in this class deserves significant recognition So how do you think about their two different perspectives? I'll mention that the wife, by the way, was a therapist I agree with the faculty member, and I'm very grateful that I can only remember one occasion Where anybody tried to give me a better grade than what I had earned I told him to forget it, and I think that was in the days when I was young And not particularly polite about telling him to forget it About giving me the benefit of the doubt because I couldn't see No thanks, that is worse put down of somebody in my view Than give them the C they earned You must know someone like him, he was tall and strong and lean But he'd like a gram, I am so sharp and keen But his heart, just like a laurel, grew twisted on himself Till almost everything he did brought pain to someone else It's not just what you're bored with, it's what you choose to bear It's not how large your share is, but how much you can share It's not the fights you dream of, but those you really fought It's not just what you're given, but what you do with what you got For what's the use of two strong legs if you only run away What good is the finest voice if you're nothing good to say What good are strength and muscle if you only push and shove What's the use of two good ears if you can't hear those you love It's not just what you're bored with, it's what you choose to bear It's not how large your share is, but how much you can share It's not the fights you dream of, but those you really fought It's not just what you're given, but what you do with what you got Between those who use the neighbor, and those who use the cane Between those in constant power, and those in constant pain Between those who run to evil, and those who cannot run Tell me which ones are the cripples, and which ones touch the sun It's not just what you're bored with, it's what you choose to bear It's not how large your share is, but how much you can share It's not the fights you dream of, but those you really fought It's not just what you're given, but what you do with what you got That was Saikon, a fine singer with lots of message in his songs Including that one, what you do with what you've got I'm Mark Helpsmeet of Northern Spirit Radio And what we've got today is the privilege of visiting with Catherine Schneider Talking with us about the experiences of people with disabilities Including herself in our society and in our churches She's founder of the Schneider Family Book Award and author of To the left of Inspiration Adventures in Living with Disabilities And she's my guest today for Spirit in Action You're clearly not only by being a professional person as you've been But by your side work, you're speaking, you're writing Have attempted to move our country in a healthy direction With respect to our attitudes towards disabilities What would you describe as your overall goal that you've been aiming for? What change are you hoping to bring about through that work? At the basic level, I would like people to take a chance On reaching out to somebody with a disability Whether that's offering them help Whether that's sitting next to them at the church potluck Whether that's asking them to serve as a greeter at church But to make a contact because what makes life interesting is people interacting with other people And to take that risk to draw your circle may be a little wider So it includes somebody with a disability that initially you would be worried about dealing with While surfing out there on the internet, I ran into something called the Schneider Family Book Awards Is this something that comes from you and what's this about? Yes, that is my family and that's me As my dad was dying, he was talking about what both of us kids would do with our inheritance And he said, well, you're probably going to give it to some do-good cause And I think he was afraid that it was a cause that might be to the left of causes That he thought were good ideas And I thought about it and said, well, let me see if I can come up with something that you would approve of When I was growing up, there weren't a lot of books about people with disabilities for kids Yeah, there was Louis Braille and Helen Keller and they were dead people And they were amazing, but that was about it So I said to my dad, well, what if we came up with awards for kids' books about kids with disabilities? That that was somehow a part of the story And he thought that was okay So I approached the American Library Association, told them what I was thinking and set it up And now, every year for the last four years, three awards have been given One for a book for little kids, one for grade school, and one for teen books In addition to providing awards That are sort of like New Berries or Caldecott's or those kinds of awards Except these are Schneider Family Book Awards The author gets a hefty check, but it has accomplished something that's dear to my heart Which is they're starting to be more and more books written That have characters with disabilities as part of the book Because kids like to see themselves as they grow up And they like to see books about people like them That's maybe one of the major accomplishments of my life Is having that idea and being able to carry it out That does sound like a creative way of moving things forward, Catherine Can you remember any of the recent titles? One of the titles that won this year was a book called Rules And it's about what it feels like to have a sibling with autism Another one is called Deaf Musicians And it's by Pete Seager and another author and illustrator And it's about a guy who was a musician who was going deaf And still wanted to do that and people say that's not going to happen And it ended up happening and being a good band Here's a pile of the winners And as you can see there's lots of different disabilities pictured there There's my 13th winner that's by a gal with a learning disability There's holes that's about emotional disabilities There's dad Jackie and me about a deaf guy who wants to take his son He's hearing to a ballgame and is taking him to see Jackie Robinson And is trying to kind of explain to the kid that his life in some ways Because he's a deaf man, has been sort of like Jackie Robinson's who was an African American Because he's experienced discrimination And then there's looking out for Sarah about a blind gal who walked from He was Boston to New York with her guide dog The guide dog was a black lab, Ivana wants me to point that out And what is my pal Victor Miamigo Victor about? That's a book that's both in English and in Spanish And it's about two very young children enjoying life together going to the playground And getting snow cones I think And at the end you notice that one of the kids is a wheelchair user And I think one of the reasons they picked that in addition to the fact that it was bilingual Was that the disability wasn't the center of the story Just like it's not the center of anybody's life, it's part of the life Yeah, it impacts how the life is lived But it's not just a book about "Oh, here's a kid in a wheelchair" It's a book about a friendship between two kids You mentioned Catherine that a book by the musician Pete Seger topped the awards for 2007 And I'd like to share an excerpt from a recording by two of my favorite musicians Peter Alsop and Bill Harley The CD is called "In the Hospital" and includes some of Bill Harley's famous story telling This one about Peggy the Quadropus Way down under the ocean, there lived an octopus whose name was Peggy Peggy was different Octopus means you have eight legs, but Peggy didn't have eight She only had four When she was a little octopus She'd gotten too close to a giant clam shell And that clam had bitten three of her legs off and hurt another one And that one got so infected that the doctor had to cut it off You know, amputated And so she only had four left She hated having four legs and made her sad and miserable and hurt and confused Some of the other octopuses made fun of her Hey, yeah, you look like a table Hey, look, it's Peggy She can't be an octopus, she's only got four legs She must be a Quadropus That'd make Peggy mad She'd squirt ink in their faces, they'd just laugh It seemed like the matter she got, the more they made fun of her I can't help it, she'd scream at them There were a lot of things that she could do, just like other octopuses But she hated being different She hated looking in the mirror too, because it just reminded her she was different Peggy did have one friend, whose name was Gus Gus was an octopus too, a little bit older than Peggy He was her friend He only had six legs, it'd been born that way Gus had been most of his time in a huge abandoned shell Peggy used to go visit him, he'd make her feel better Hey Peggy, don't be sad, I love the way you laugh I love the way you smile I love the way you act You got your own style I love the way you laugh I love the way you smile I love the way you act You got your own style Let's face it Let's face it You're feeling blue, cause you look different It's no fun when you get funny looks But life is not a beauty pageant And pretty covers don't make good books Let's face it I love the way you laugh Let's face it I love the way you smile Let's face it I love the way you act Let's face it You got your own style Let's face it Let's face it Now everybody gets embarrassed Well that's just the way we are If we're alive then we're not perfect Everybody's got some scars So come on let's face it Sometimes you're feeling great Let's face it Sometimes you want to die Let's face it You're feeling sorry mate Let's face it Yeah that's where the problem lies Let's face it Do you love the way you laugh Let's face it Love yourself with all your heart Let's face it Do you love the way you act Let's face it Don't you think it's time to start Come on, you've got strength and courage You've got personality You've got great taste and friends you know And you're humble just like me Let's face it Sometimes you're feeling great Let's face it Sometimes you're falling apart Let's face it Sometimes you hesitate Let's face it Do you love yourself with all your heart Let's face it Don't worry about what you're not Let's face it Do you think about the things you got Let's face it He loves the way you laugh Let's face it And she loves the way you smile Let's face it We love the way you act Let's face it And you've got your own style Let's face it Everybody loves your style Let's face it Well, almost everybody Let's face it There's this one dude I know Let's face it Who is so into being cool and acting hot Let's face it That he doesn't know what to make it you, yeah Let's face it I mean, you bust his marvels, yeah Let's face it He's like checking you out, checking you out Let's face it Look at that style he said Let's face it He doesn't have his own style Let's face it He's afraid to be himself Thinks no one will like him, you know Let's face it Yeah, let's face it It's just great being our set Let's face it Peter Alsop and Bill Hardley collaborated on Peggy the Quadrupus And let's face it The topic being acceptance of disabilities And my spirit and action guest today Knows a thing or two about that Having recorded some of her experiences in the book To the left of inspiration, adventures In living with disabilities I think I want to come back and ask again The question I asked earlier I asked you before Why we should care as a society About those with disabilities And you gave me some answers And I'm going to ask the question Just a little bit different way And see if that makes a difference to you Catherine, even if there's not a material advantage Which there probably is But even if there's not a material advantage To society Not just our churches, not just our schools But to society as a whole Why should we be caring about People who are relatively disadvantaged In this way that have disabilities Whether it's seeing reading All those mentioned in the books That you just shared with me To be selfish, it could be you tomorrow So pay forward, care today There's one way of looking at it Also, you're losing a richness If you don't get to experience How I experience the world You're losing some things For example, I notice When the Blue Jays are yelling And they've realized that usually When a bunch of them are yelling It means it's going to rain You know, this may be something That you just hadn't noticed Because you got all those visual things That you're noticing You may not have noticed that And if you don't talk to me You wouldn't learn about what the Blue Jays Are talking about As I've been talking to you Catherine I've been aware that There might be words that I use That hit you positively Or negatively depending on your point of view on this Are there special disability words That strike you as better or worse than others? Yeah, you've been doing a good job In my opinion, because you've used Just the plain words Like blind or have a disability Rather than trying to pussyfoot around And say visually challenged Or rather than using blind, I mean stupid You get high marks for just using plain old words Also you have avoided offensive terms Like homebound Or confined to a wheelchair Or those kinds of things Because people who use wheelchairs They're not tied to them Like we have a delivery service here in town From the library that takes books to people That can't get to the library very easily And it used to be called Delivery for the homebound I got that renamed to Home delivery service Because very few people are tied out on their porches Or not homebound They just don't get out Are there some other accessibility issues Beyond ramps? And which ones do you see as of specific importance? Well, I think it's people taking risks People asking, may I help you? People asking, those of us with disabilities To be active parts, for example, of the faith community Rather than saying, what can we do for you? Also saying, what can you do for us? Would you like to be involved in teaching Or the worship service, or what do you want to do To become an active part of this congregation Rather than just treating us as objects of charity? You said, Catherine, that you're a back row Catholic these days Hanging out back with the Cheerios and other things In the last row Is there something about Catholic theology That feels more accepting to you Than perhaps the other places you've been Or is there something else just about the atmosphere That's a church that makes it a seat that welcomes you better? Well, there's a little more room in the last row So my dog can lie in front of me That's a physical part of the back row piece One thing that I like a whole lot about the Catholic Church Is they publish the scripture readings for each Sunday In a braille booklet that they send out from their office in New York And that way I can read scripture Which is not something that every church does They also have a large lending library for Catholic books that are in braille or on tape To me it says we want you to be an active part of the church And that means a lot to me just like when I was a Methodist The Methodist said they're hymnal in braille And it was huge, it was eight volumes I just went ahead of time and it was like a loose leaf notebook And I snapped out the hymns we're going to sing But it said we want you to be an active part of the congregation And that's what I look for in a church I'm glad you found that acceptance People who are willing to both welcome you in and listen and learn from you I'm glad that you've been doing your teaching out in the world To raise people's awareness of these things So much learning that we have yet to do And I'm glad that you're part of bringing it to the world And thanks for joining me here for Spirit in Action My pleasure That was Katherine Schneider, author of To the left of inspiration, adventures in living with disabilities My guest for today's Spirit in Action program The theme music for this program is "Turning of the World", performed by Sarah Thompson This Spirit in Action program is an effort of Northern Spirit Radio You can listen to our programs and find links and information about us And our guests on our website, northernspiritradio.org Thank you for listening. I am your host, Mark Helpsmeet And I welcome your comments and stories of those leading lives of spiritual fruit May you find deep roots to support you and grow steadily toward the light This is Spirit in Action With every voice, with every song We will know this world alone And our lives will feel the echo of our healing And our lives will feel the echo of our healing