One of the quotes that I found very intriguing from the introduction is "I do not give diagnostic categories for myself and my own physical and mental differences" (6). This immediately brought me back to my Mental Affliction class last Fall, where the first thing our professor said was that this was not a class focused on nosology, or trying to define the narratives by their diagnosis. Instead we were to look at the pieces as they were, a subjective or fictional sharing without the medical or psychological stigma associated with diagnosis. When Kuppers proceeded to do the same, it got me thinking about labels, diagnoses and how they relate to disability culture.

It was amazing to see how the disability community has worked their way into arts (especially visual arts). When society expects these people to move a certain way, I expect that it would have been an extremely difficult process to integrate themelves in what they truly call art. I definitely agreed with Kupper's statement that disability culture is a process because it relies on the experience. "To me, disability culture is not a thing, but a process." "I used 'culture' here more like a verb than a noun, more like a process than a state, more like a form of attention than a fixing container. " Kupper really was able to connect with disability culture through her 'dancerly experience' and in writing the book. 

What is disability culture? Is there one, are there many? Who calls culture into being? (Kuppers, 3)

“In virtually all my interviews, guilt was the elephant in the room [. . .] 'Bad conscience' can become ‘torture without end,’ undoing any prospects for happiness” (Sherman 2010). 

As such, there's been a video with Olivia Wilde floating around that's stirred up controversy (what else?). This is a really reasoned take on it that illustrates issues of representation.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/03/21/olivia-wilde-s-down-syndrome-psa-gets-it-so-wrong.html

1. Today when I walked in, the kids were finishing up lunch. They were really quiet and calm for the first few minutes and I just walked around, observing them clean up.
2. I went into the block room where a couple of the girls were playing with plastic straws. One of the girls exclaimed, "I know you!" and they asked me for my name again. We had a conversation about my name and them they continued to play with their straws
3. One of the boys (Bob) came in with an easter egg hidden in his pocket. He kept taking it out at random points and showing it to his friends and teachers.
4. After a little while of playing indoors, the teachers decided that the weather was good enough to go outdoors.

"A lot of disabled dancers I know are glad for the opportunity to dance with other dancers to whom different forms of embodiment are not strange, but familiar in their individual strangeness" (Kuppers 2).

This past Wednesday at the center, we met in the woodshop to continue our white oak box project. Because it was snacktime when we got there, we headed over to a different part of the center, where we checked out a petri dish paint project some partcipants had been working on (playing on the science/bacteria themes we had begun to explore in the labs at Haverford). Returning to the woodshop, we began by heating a small block of wax, which, once liquified, was collected in small tools we could use to draw on our wood pieces. Carl and I each took two sides of the box and drew wax designs on them. We then brought our pieces over to another part of the room, where we sprayed them first with black tea, and then once that had dried, with some liquid rust.