Profile

As I'm growing older, the issue of Disability Rights has been of deepening importance to me.

Ever since I attended the local "celebration" of the 20th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act in 2010, only to find disappointment that the celebration was confined to the basement and grounds of the regional Independent Living Center, instead of out in the public, I've wanted a Disability Pride Flag.

After the massacre at the Tsukui Yamayuri En care home in Sagamihara, Japan, six years later, when nineteen disabled inmates were murdered and twenty-six injured (because they were disabled, by the killer's own confession), I was driven to design an actual flag, instead of just wishing we had one.

This is the version I came up with; I have officially waived all copyright claims to this flag, and registered it under International Public Domain.:


[Image description: a “Straight Diagonal” version of the Disability Pride Flag: A charcoal grey flag with a diagonal band from the top left to bottom right corner, made up of five parallel stripes in red, gold, pale grey, blue, and green Description ends]

To the extent possible under law,

Ann Magill
has waived all copyright and related or neighboring rights to
Visually Safe Disability Pride Flag.
This work is published from:

United States.

"To do is to be" -- Socrates.

I do be a writer. And now, some of my writing is tangible. After two years, my debut poetry chapbook, The Monsters' Rhapsody: Disability, Culture, & Identity is now available for purchase at Lulu.com:


[Image description: thumbnail of the front cover for Monsters' Rhapsody]

Buy this book at Amazon.com

For the Record: My Subscription "Policy":

I LIKE meeting new people. I'll probably subscribe to you in return, if I don't already, if only to see what sort of person you are. I'd also appreciate a note in my inbox saying what prompted your subscription, because otherwise my curiosity will make my brain itch.

I use a wheelchair. I say that first, just to get it off the table, and we can get to more interesting stuff. I am not "bound" to, or by, it. And it's not permanently bolted to my rear, despite whatever impression you may get from watching TV or movies. I use a chair because I have cerebral palsy. Here is an explanation of what that means.

If you were spying on me right now, you'd see my computer table is a mess -- it's piled high with books and art projects -- both old, and still-in-process. You'd see an old Yamaha Digital Midi Keyboard behind me, that I use for doodling around with music. Even though I have almost no formal musical training, I like to make up simple, folk-like songs, often childlike and nonsensical (but sometimes serious, too), just for fun.



What I see when I look at myself:



Between 8 December, 1989, and 24 November, 2012, I was a regular contributor to The Art Garden: A Literary Magazine for the Stage.

Here are links to a couple of the Art Garden pieces I've written, in the past:

Why I did not go see "Arachnophobia" (YouTube video ~5 mins.) (June 1991; theme: Animals)

Father Christmas, Father Wind (November 2004; theme: Flight)

The Barefoot Queen (May, 2006; theme: Shoes)

The final Art Garden was held on 24 of November, 2012, with the theme of "Harvest," and this was my contribution:

This Poem is a Trick

Just like the garden, this poem is a trick.
What seems, at first, so natural and free
Is just the clever artist's sleight-of-hand.
With all the awkward phrases weeded out,
And punctuation paving stones swept clean.
Just turn your back a moment, then you'll see:
True Nature has a way to claim her own.

The poetry they handed you in school
To memorize, and analyze, recite,
Will cross pollinate and then, bear fruit
And Dickinson and Shakespeare will entwine
And you'll forget--
Who wrote the one about the hen and the wheelbarrow?
Scraps of conversation overheard
Will drop, like seeds, from a passing bird
Onto the farmhouse roof,
And Virginia Creeper, like illuminations
In the margins of the page
Will curtain down your windows and frame the scene
As garden transforms to enchanted wood
Where tadpoles, covered in fur, and web-footed mice
Swim in the frog pond,
And men sprout beards of leaves
And goat beginnings end with fish's tails
Like the punch-line to some joke.
And Red Riding Hood seeks flowers that never grew
On her mother's windowsill

Where, once upon a time,
Rapunzel, her hair cropped short,
Banished from her tower, built a house of her own.
And did just fine.
With her son and daughter toddling at her heels,
She harvested acorns for their bread
Until the blind, despairing, Prince
Stumbled to her door,
And carried her home to a royal garden
Always tended, never free.

I wonder: did she ever crave a taste (as her mother had)
Of her own green namesake,
That grows, unbidden, amid the stubble of last years wheat?

...Do you?

---

I have, as of 2024, set myself the goal of writing an original fairy tale with a protagonist with cerebral palsy, because, once upon a time, someone told me that "C.P. doesn't belong in fairy tales." And so I've taken that as a challenge.