We have tried petitioning Congress. Perhaps it's time for some of us to petition a higher power.
Reader Katie writes to suggest that those of us who are so inclined unite in prayer today, spending some focused time praying for the repeal of this bill- I would add prayers for the repeal of HR 875 as well, which is like the CPSIA for food, only ten times worse.
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Kneesocks. I've been thinking about kneesocks the last couple of days. Kneesocks are something we need that other people don't, and that most people, if they thought of it at all, would think of as wants, not needs. But we need kneesocks, and so for me they are something of a metaphor for allt hose glorious, quirky, individual differences between human beings.You see, the Cherub wears what most people call a leg brace. Technically, it's an AFO- ankle foot orthosis. (I believe medical equipment is not covered by the FDA and not the CPSC, or else I should be very, very annoyed).
The AFO is plastic, and it goes all the way up the back of her leg- from her toes to just behind and below her knee. When she was fitted for her first one, the technician told us that she would need to wear stockings or knee socks all the time or else the device would chafe her leg, rub blisters, and stick in a most irritating fashion during hot weather. Stockings we could find, but knee socks were not easy to locate. Somebody else pointed us to soccer socks, which are not as cute, are much thicker (and thus hotter), but are more readily available and do come up high enough to keep the AFO from chafing. Knee socks seem to be back in style at the moment, but who knows when they will go out again. And who knows what the CPSIA could have done to the prices and availability of this item of limited interest to the general public?
Had the CPSIA made knee socks go the way of the dodo bird, most of the public would shrug and dismiss it as a matter of little moment- 'who cares?' people would say. "We don't wear knee socks, and you don't need to, either." But they would be wrong. My daughter needs knee socks.
Knee socks are a metaphor for me today for all the other products I haven't thought of that other special needs children use on a daily basis- the specialized equipment, toys, clothing, grooming supplies, school supplies, and more that simply can't be mass produced because there's no market for it- thousands of children don't use those items. Hundreds, or perhaps dozens do.
My Cherub and other special needs children need many items you cannot imagine because you do not need them or use them. And there's no reason in particular you should imagine them. You find important uses for many objects that I cannot imagine needing or using- because we are not clones. We are unique individuals, dappled things, pied beauties:
PIED BEAUTY
Glory be to God for dappled things --
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches' wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced -- fold, fallow, and plough;
And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauthy is past change:
Praise him.
(Gerard Manley Hopkins)
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches' wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced -- fold, fallow, and plough;
And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauthy is past change:
Praise him.
(Gerard Manley Hopkins)
Congress, on the other hand, appears to have little liking or appreciation for dappled things. They want things regulated, conformed to a single standard, identical. Recently when reading Madeline L'Engle's Wrinkle in Time I was reminded of Congressional acts of mandated conformity when the children arrived at the planet Uriel and in the uniform city of Camazotz all the children are bouncing a ball or jumping rope in precise rhythm. Each mother comes to the door at the precisely same moment, claps her hand, and as one unit, the children turn and go inside.
As representatives of each of us (at least in name), Congress has a duty to grasp something of that glorious variety each of us has the right to produce, to consume, to live. They have a duty not to imagine one size fits all, not to micromanage and regulate a uniform conformity in the people they purport to represent, and yet they seem not to be aware of that. They seek to legislate us all into homogenized cookie cutter conformity. They write detailed, micro-managed legislation that sweeps everybody up into its net, and yet they know nothing about everybody, and certainly not enough about any non D.C. residents to justify controlling our lives at this level.
They had no idea people still read and sold pre-1985 books. They had no idea that the handcraft industry was even out there. They didn't realize how thrift shops would be effected by the law. They didn't realize how many of us shop at thrift shops. They don't know that ball point pens, paper, and mini bikes were covered by those nasty three letter words 'all' and 'any,' or so they claim. They didn't know that PIRG and Public Citizen were lying when they said (originally) testing was about 25.00 (they increased that to fifty eventually, without explanation). They don't know how my life works and what my children require. They are bonded at the hip with special interest groups and have no clue how their actual constituents live and work or who they are- and they really do not seem to care.
I'm thinking about the books, too, of course. They are never far from my mind. Sunday afternoon we went to a library booksale. Every time we've gone to this sale there have been at least a dozen tables piled with older children's fiction. This time there were perhaps two tables and the offerings were paltry and of very recent vintage. It was sad.
There's a Flickr group with over four hundred vintage illustrations from books Congress is happy to see flushed down the memory hole, disappeared, banned, piled by the boxload in the dump.
The AP reports that two lawmakers have come up with yet another proposal to 'fix' the law- it's only a band-aid. It will exempt the mini-banks and thrift shops, but makes no mention of books, ball point pens, expensive phthalates testing for fabric products like bibs and blankets that can't possibly have any plastics in them...
I am thinking of mini bikes and bmx bikes- neither sports I am particularly interested in for my family, but thousands of other families enjoy weekends riding together at off road sites on trails they create- friends of ours in Washington created just such trails on their own property and invited local bike clubs out every weekend.
They have every right to choose recreational pursuits that suit their tastes rather than mine, and there ought not to be anything illegal about it- and certainly not it should not be banned because of lead in a tire valve.
I'm thinking of all the makers of hair bows, buttons, barrettes, shoes, socks, toys, bibs, blankets, bikes, bonnets, jackets, skates, ball point pens, and more.
The mini-bike industry had two weeks notice that their business was destroyed. The ALA learned in January, so far as I can tell, that the bill they had supported applied to books, too. Multiply these stories by a thousand businesses, thousands of customers, millions of products, lives, stories- this Congressional act of theft and vandalism must be stopped. Pin It
