Hey look, I'm hosting a blog carnival!!!

Hey all, I am THRILLED to be hosting the January edition of the Disability Blog Carnival!!!!!!!!!! What is the DBC, you ask??? Oh, my dear, you have been deprived! The DBC is, quite frankly, a collection of posts on disability and a specific theme. The theme, and the host, changes from month to month, and I am humbled and honored to be hosting the first disability blog carnival of the new year. The theme I have chosen is LET YOUR FREAK FLAG FLY, taken from the title of a song in one of the Shrek movies, and one of my favorite songs of all time. Write about a time when you openly and proudly identified as a person with a disabilty, or, if you're a non-disabled ally, write about a time when you were proud to stand by us. Or....you could make it into a musing on the word "freak" itself, and related words. Do they help us? Hurt us? Is it wrong to call ourselves freaks, spazzes, and gimps? Or is it empowering? Or......something else!! I'm flexible - as long as you can justify it fitting the theme, I'm good. I'm aiming to get the blog carnival up on Martin Luther King day, to honor a great activist. That is January 17th, so try and get the posts to me by then. But I know as well as anybody how writer's block and other obligations can delay a post, so if you can't get the post to me by then, no biggie, I'll just add it to the lineup later. And if the muse is on your side this month, and you want to do more than one post, by all means, go for it! Post the link to your submissions as a comment to this post, or if there's some sort of problem with that, you can email me at caraliebowitz@gmail.com. Happy blogging!!!!!

"We spend our whole lives wishing,

we weren't so freaking strange.
They made us feel that way,

but it's they who need to change.

The way they think, that is.

It's time to stop the hiding.

It's time to stand up tall.
Sing hey world, I'm different,

and here I am splinters and all!

Let your freak flag wave
Let your freak flag fly
Never take it down, never take it down
Raise it way up high!

Let your freak flag fly!

Let it fly, fly, fly!"