The Best of Disability Blogs and Banter

We Carry Kevan

“My philosophy is to just keep moving,” Kevan Chandler, 29, told CNN in March. Then, he and three of his friends were raising money to backpack across Europe with Chandler, 65 pounds, carried in a backpack-like contraption they invented so he could explore the sewers of Greensboro, North Carolina, with them.

Calling themselves “We Carry Kevan,” and alternately, “There is no I in Kevan,” the friends raised $36,575 on GoFundMe. No doubt the stories about Chandler, a sound editor with spinal muscular atrophy, appearing on CNN.com, HuffPo and other web outlets helped them surge past their $35,000 goal.

The friends spent three weeks touring Ireland, England and France this August.

He’s Famous … Kind of

“Being in a Wheelchair is (Kind of) Like Being Famous,” wrote Brian Grubb for Uproxx.

Here’s a taste of his excellent logic:

The first way being in a wheelchair is a little like being famous is that people really don’t want to say “no” to you. Famous people get this treatment for business reasons (keep the famous people happy so they keep coming and normal people will want to come to be near them) and/or personal reasons (“Guyssss Jennifer Lawrence called me ‘sweetie’ when I told her the coffee was on the house. Do you think I should ask her out?!”), whereas I get it, generally, because people do not want the person in the wheelchair to be sad. This is a problem for a couple reasons:

One, because I spent 23 years before my spinal cord injury as an able-bodied doofus who was filled to the brim with bad ideas. People told me no constantly, and justifiably, to the point that I came to rely on it as my check against doing something stupid. Without it, I’ve had to start relying on my own judgment and moral compass to help sort the good ideas from the bad. This is not a sustainable option. If I know anything about myself, it’s that I can’t be trusted.

Read it all at uproxx.com/life/being-in-a-wheelchair-like-being-famous/.

BMW Paralympic Chair

“This chair was built for breaking things,” intones the voiceover of a BMW commercial featuring field and track Paralympian Josh George wheeling down a deserted highway, “like rules, stereotypes and world records … to remind us ‘limits’ is just a little word that makes a swooshing sound when you pass it.”

View this understated, powerful video featuring the chair BMW built for the U.S. Paralympics that take place this month in Rio de Janeiro:

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