The 2015 Winner of the Felix Awards: Maysoon Zayid!

Maysoon Zayid grew up in Cliffside Park, New Jersey, the fourth of four daughters, in a close-knit immigrant family.  She speaks fondly of her childhood and her hometown.  Her cerebral palsy did not incite bullying, nor did her Palestinian background. Her neighbors may not have caught on to their roots.  Her family could have been taken for a darker shade of Italian.  Yet as she reveals in her immensely popular TED Talk, there was a difference.  All her friends got to go to the Jersey shore for summer vacation.  Her family took her to a war zone, where her father tried to cure her palsy in the magical waters of the Dead Sea. 

The Felix Awards were conceived as a way to honor individuals who are using the arts to change the public perception of disability, and Maysoon Zayid is the very embodiment of this idea.  In her routines, she turns her cerebral palsy into a subject for laughter, pointing out that it’s just one of her many problems: she’s a woman, she’s Muslim, she’s Palestinian, and she’s from Jersey.  She helped introduce stand-up comedy in the Middle East, even though her condition will not allow her to stand up for more than three minutes.  She co-founded the New York Arab-American Comedy Festival, and she has challenged mainstream America’s understanding of disability by contributing to  “Countdown with Keith Olbermann,” appearing on ”The Queen Latifah Show,” and starring in ”In Deep Shift” on the Oprah Winfrey Network.

Like many people in the disabled scene, Maysoon does not like the term “inspirational.” Stella Young, a wheelchair-bound Australian journalist and comic who died last year at 32, coined the term “inspiration porn” as an antidote to those who get misty eyed at the mere sight of a person with disabilities. 

I think I understand.  After I started Extreme Kids, a surprising number of people called me an inspiration. I tried for polite puzzlement, but inwardly I bristled.  Maybe some image you’re projecting of me is inspirational, but the real me? That cauldron of black humor that keeps me company as I walk down the street?I’m not a ray of invigorating sunshine, people.  My discomfort stemmed from the sense that I was being awarded more than my fair share of praise.  I had the time, resources, and obsessiveness to lay the groundwork for Extreme Kids. These qualities were not all within my control. Further, the project would have gone nowhere without the encouragement and participation of dozens, and then quickly hundreds, of other people.  The culmination of a great many people’s yearning and will made Extreme Kids work, not me and my circumstances alone.  

But that’s how we operate. We take individuals and pull them away from the clusters of other organisms and people they are bound up in, the generations of family struggle, the oak tree in the back yard. The complexity of life gets simplified so that we can function, and we find ourselves symbols, standing in for much more than we are.

For years, the core of Felix’s exercise routine revolved around him climbing up a flight of stairs.  When his energy was bright, his face would glow with determination and pride, and everyone in the house would gather around, cheering each step. Once, on a particularly good occasion, he managed to do four or five steps all by himself, just him on the banister and the rails, with no adult help.  Gus, my friend’s teenage son, steeped in his own miseries, watched, his eyes clearing.  When Felix attained the top step, Gus said, “That’s enough to get me through the week.”  Felix did not mean to lift Gus out of his blues, but he did.  Is that such a bad thing? 

Maysoon Zayid inspires me and a great many others whether she wants to or not.  She does not inspire because she has cerebral palsy--she inspires because she has the guts to get up on stage and playfully examine the reality of her condition--and ours.  She does not know if she would have had the ambition and strength to do this were she to grow up today.  As a girl, she was unaware of the rancor, brutality and prejudice directed against people with disabilities, immigrants, and Muslims—a sort of innocence that is no longer available to those with access to the internet.  In an attempt to create a similarly encouraging environment for today’s children, she rallies against on-line bullying, but my favorite of her projects takes place outside of virtual reality.  Her non-profit, Maysoon’s Kids, helps to build wheelchair-accessible playgrounds in Palestine.  She has my gratitude and respect for her art, and my undying love for building playgrounds in a war zone. 

Come see her yourself at Extreme Kids & Crew’s Wonderland Gala, which, by the way, is being sponsored by Matt Stone and Angela Howard. Yes, that Matt Stone, co-creator of South Park and the fabulous wheelchair bound Timmy.  For those of you who are out of town, or who have a very good excuse for not attending, you can watch Maysoon's TED Talk and catch up on her latest work at her website www.maysoon.com.  

Tickets for the Gala are free for all those who donate to Extreme Kids & Crew’s A Ball Pit in Every Borough Spring Campaign.  You will get your invitation as soon as you donate.

As you’re stretching those generosity muscles, please consider contributing to Maysoon’s Kids, too!

I think of soul as the feeling of unfettered life that we have within us.  Felix embodies this feeling so fully that he can seem like the soul exposed in all its fury and exaltation. Because of this, I sometimes attribute an age to him that he has not attained. 

The soul is ageless.  My father put it well when he remarked that he sometimes feels as he did when he was a seven year old boy, wanting to jump up and touch the branch of the overhanging tree, other times he feels as cocky and lusty as he did at twenty, or as old and reflective as his current, silver haired age allows. 

Because of Felix’s soulfulness, I forget sometimes that he is a boy with a slapstick sense of humor who laughs when we trip.

Interview #5, Emily Holl

It started when Miranda, Felix’s younger sister, was about six months old.  She would be strapped to my chest in the Baby Björn, her back to me, her arms and legs jouncing in the beguiling way of a typically developing baby.  Felix, then four, would be in his stroller, whooping or wailing or jingling a jangle, his feet encased in braces, his walker precariously balanced on the handlebars. More than a couple of people, people I had not met before, complimented me on my children and then, after excusing themselves for their presumption, begged me to have another.  They would explain that they grew up with a disabled brother or sister, whom they loved, but who made everything difficult. They would express gratitude for their other, typical, brothers or sisters, who understood the strangeness of their family.  If they didn’t have this other brother or sister, they told me, they had always wished for one.  I did not usually appreciate unasked-for advice, but it was hard to take offense at these people.  They spoke from their own histories, their voices often quavering.  

That was my introduction to the passion of siblings, which in the disability world refers to the neurotypical brothers and sisters of people with disabilities. Much has been written about the emotional, physical, and financial strain a child’s disability can cause his or her parents.  Less attention has been paid to the complex and shifting net of emotions experienced by siblings.  This is beginning to change, partly because people with disabilities are living longer, and are more often outliving their parents. Siblings are thus increasingly looked to as the next generation of caregivers.  

In 1990, the Sibling Support Project was founded to help connect the millions of brothers and sisters of people with special health, developmental and mental concerns. Perhaps the most well-known initiative of the Sibling Support Project is Sibshops, a peer support program for school-age siblings, which now has 475 groups in eight countries.  Older siblings can connect on SibNet, an online community that counts thousands of members from around the world.  And now Don Meyer, the creator of Sibshops, and Emily Holl, a founding member of sibsNY (a local chapter of the Siblings Leadership Network), have co-edited a handbook intended to help siblings at every juncture of their lives.  The Sibling Survival Guide  addresses issues that come up in childhood, adolescence, and adulthood, including “the g word” (guilt), caregiving and self-care, dating, starting a family, future planning, the end of life, and everything in-between.  The handbook aims to give siblings both practical advice and emotional support.

My friend and collaborator Julia Rothwax--herself a sibling--and I interviewed Emily Holl in December in her cheerful little office at the New York League for Early Learning, a YAI preschool on the West Side Highway in Manhattan.  

  

Working definition of disability:  We all have disabilities and we all have abilities. We’re all good at some things and not so good at some things.    

Entrance into the world of disability:   Peter, my older brother, is diagnosed with Fragile X Syndrome.  I did not realize that he was different when I was young.  He could ride a bike before me.  He could shoot hoops before me.  He was my big brother, my first friend. It wasn’t until I went to the same public school as he, and saw that he was given extra supports, and that the kids teased him, that I understood.   It was a horrible experience.  

Your disability: I am terrible with direction: north, south, left, right. . . huh?  I have a tendency to automatically turn right.  Peter could look at a map from the time he was five years old, and could tell exactly where we were. 

Recent wonder:  It’s more of a constant wonder.  Over the years, just working at YAI, I’ve seen people get involved at YAI who have no connection with disability.   They haven’t lived with it.  It hasn’t affected someone close to them.  I often wonder why. What enables certain people to have that sense of graciousness, and compassion, and giving?  Why are they the ones who step up and make a difference?  They just get it. Somehow they just get it.

Current project: Why, The Sibling Survival Guide! Which I co-edited with Don Meyer.  All proceeds of the book will go to the Sibling Leadership Network.  For those of you interested in purchasing a copy, the best way to buy the book and simultaneously support the Sibling Support Project (at no extra cost) is to order it through its A-Store http://www.siblingsupport.org/publications/sibling-related-books-and-movies.

Thanks to Julia Rothwax, who has become my co-interviewer and sound person, you can now listen to Broken & Woken interviews!     

And don’t forget to SHARE!

Funding Streams

If you start a nonprofit and you live in New York City, you will probably find yourself attending your fair share of charity galas. Some are in support of an organization you love. Sometimes you are currying favor.  Always you have the fantasy that you will find yourself chatting with a kind, thoughtful multi-millionaire who grasps the subtle power of your organization and is eager to help. 

From time to time I buy tickets to these galas.  Sometimes they are given to me.  Occasionally Jason gets me into galas that would normally not be on my radar.  So it was last week.  Jason was asked to a black-tie dinner-dance at the Grand Hyatt, hosted by a consortium of New York real estate and construction interests.  Tables cost from $7,500 to $50,000, and the proceeds were to go to a charity called National Jewish Health. 

We arrived late, as I had been trying to get a stain out of Jason’s tuxedo shirt, which may not have been laundered since college.  Cocktail hour was in full swing.  We mingled with the crowd, trying to fit in, observing their behavior.  One of Jason’s colleagues greeted a real estate mogul by saying, “The last time we met, you told me to go fuck myself.”  No offense was taken.  Someone pounded on a xylophone.  We were herded towards the elevators like a group of well-dressed cattle. 

The last time I’d been to the Grand Hyatt had been for the Brooklyn Community Services gala, an affair that featured earnest speeches about poverty in Brooklyn, radishes done up as flowers, and Mayor Dinkins.  I expected more or less the same thing, if from a different political slant: Larry Silverstein instead of David Dinkins.  Health instead of poverty.  Kosher instead of crustacean. 

That’s not exactly what I got.  The elevator doors opened to a corporate Hyatt hallway, resounding with music as warped and insistent as the bass from a muscle car. We wondered if we were on the wrong floor, but we were caught in a sea of dinner-dance guests, most of whom looked as bemused as we felt.  Dotted around the hallway were Lycra-clad dancers vamping on platforms, their faces painted with glitter, their scalps topped with shag carpet wigs in yellow and orange.  A guy in a darkly mirrored body suit jumped around a fake manhole in a vaguely sinister manner.  Silver spray paint on black banners proclaimed Anarchy! Chaos! Lunacy!  Could this scene possibly be self-referential? An acknowledgement of the disruption that can be caused by development? No. We entered the ballroom, disco balls everywhere, strobe lights flashing, women dancing in cages. Jason saw my face. 

“Relax,” he shouted over the beat.  “You are supposed to think Studio 54.”

Fuck Studio 54. I don’t like seeing men behind bars, either.  We found our table near the back, decorated with a heap of silver and black disco paraphernalia, plates with thinly sliced beets, and sardine tins stuffed with lobster salad.  So much for kosher.  Apparently, National Jewish Health was Reform. 

I felt like an extra in American Hustle, but this was real.  Seventy or so tables were arranged around the room, around each of which sat real guys from the construction industry, with real wives in sequins, eating real lobster salad.

At least the lobster salad was good.  And I got to sit next to a friend from Jason’s firm.  Only a third of the people there were in construction, he told me. The rest were in real estate and law.  No one wants to go to these things, he explained. You just do. It’s the price of doing business. Their law firm had coughed up $10,000 or $15,000 for the table.  Not enough, apparently; their name was misspelled in the brochure. 

Up at the podium, Mr. Silverstein, whose company owns the World Trade Center, thanked person after person.  He was followed by the organizer of the gala, and then a representative from National Jewish Health, which we discovered was a hospital.  In Denver.  It had been founded in 1899 to serve the poor.  Now it is a world-class institution specializing in asthma and other inflammatory diseases.  We watched a five minute movie demonstrating how the hospital had cleared a child of disfiguring eczema, how it had helped a firefighter with a puzzling respiratory ailment breathe again, and how it had helped a middle-aged woman with acute asthma live a life outside of respirators.  I have asthma.  I understand the visceral joy of lungs opening up, allowing oxygen in.  I’m grateful for any institution that’s trying to make breathing easier.  But it was hard to breathe in that ballroom.  

The band began to play.  I will survive.  People got up to dance.  I was surprised.  It’s hard to get people to dance.  Then again, the dance floor was filled with young people in Lycra and rhinestones, paid to shimmy and smile.  And they were handing out glowing rubber rings and flashing plastic necklaces, which the crowd eagerly snatched up. The party painter, behind his easel, captured the scene in oil. He couldn’t tell me how much he was getting paid, he said, but he’d charged less, due to it being a charity event.

A couple of real estate guys came up and introduced themselves.  Here was my chance.  One of them might have had a kid with disabilities.  One of them might have been a multi-millionaire.  They might have been kind and thoughtful.  But in that atmosphere, I didn’t have the energy to find out. I told them I was married to one of the lawyers at Table 40. They walked away. 

What if Extreme Kids lasts 100 years? Will our funding streams resemble those of National Jewish Health? It’s already happened on a smaller scale.  A couple of years ago, the Aqueduct Racetrack tossed us some change.  We were grateful for it.

Outside the hotel, Santa Clauses taking part in Santa Con stumbled about drunkenly.  We saw an empty cab and grabbed it.  The cabbie was a young man with delicate features and a shaggy blond beard.  “Fort Greene,” Jason said.   The cabbie giggled, his voice high and piping, shot through with tremors.  Jason and I put on our seatbelts.  The cabbie kept giggling, his thin shoulders trembling.  But his tremors seemed to be contained in his shoulders and his voice.  He drove with a steady hand, and spoke with an openness and sweetness that made me think he might be on the spectrum.  My lungs opened up.  There was that oxygen that had been missing during the gala. We talked about Fredericksburg, Virginia, where he’d grown up and where I’d gone to state fairs as a kid.  He’d moved to New York, drawn by the art, and now was driving a cab six days a week, and sending $300 a week back to a woman he’d married in India.  It had been a mistake, he said, marrying her. He drove us across the Manhattan Bridge, musing about a friend from Sudan, and the possibility of reinstating peace after the civil war.  He drove us down Myrtle, remarking that he had picked us up by the statue of Cornelius Vanderbilt, and that now we were approaching Vanderbilt Avenue.

Jason gave him a big tip, though he doubted the cabbie would be able to keep it for very long before someone took it away from him. Which was funny, because I’d been thinking: God, I wish he was a millionaire.  He’d fund Extreme Kids & Crew.

Back at home, Jason made me guess the contents of the swag bag that we’d picked up as we left the Hyatt.  “Lotion,” I said. I was wrong, again.  Inside: socks decorated with a marijuana motif, presumably a reference to the pot-happy laws in National Jewish Health’s home state.  Plastic martini glasses.  And finally, something useful: a lava lamp!  A sensory treasure for Extreme Kids & Crew. 

Then inspiration hit.   I packed the lamp and the rest of the swag back in the silver sequined bag from which it came. I’m auctioning it off.  Come on guys! Make me an offer worth my while.  I’m starting the bidding at $100. But if you happen to be a billionaire with ties to National Health, we’d take a cool million for the lava lamp alone.

Fabric Art on the Subway

     Kate asked if I could lead a family art project at Extreme Kids, and for once I knew immediately what I wanted to do: textile art inspired by the Judith Scott show at Brooklyn Museum. Judith Scott (1943-2005) was an internationally celebrated fiber artist who spent 30 years of her life in a state institution because she was deaf, mute, and had Down’s Syndrome. Her twin sister Joyce, who got her released and enrolled in an art center for people with disabilities, is now the guardian of the work she left behind.
     I am perhaps particularly drawn to Scott’s work because of Felix’s jingle-jangles. Felix’s jingle-jangles usually begin as key chains. Over time, they grow, acquiring new attachments: multiple key rings, ribbons, bells, beads, tangles of yarn. He can focus on these for hours, swinging them, frowning at them, creating knotted forms and unnamed shapes that don’t conform to conventional measures of beauty, but that nevertheless attain visual and tactile qualities that are mysterious and

Eliza's egg carton construction

compelling. I have long dreamed of creating an installation that would consist of enormous jingle-jangle-like forms that droop from the ceiling. People could walk amidst them, feeling them, swinging them, knotting them more. The dangling forms would be so large that the people investigating them and moving between them would be like unstuck insects within a bulbous and spectacularly irregular spider web. Leading a Judith Scott textile art workshop seemed to me like a first step in this direction.    
     Scott’s work is based on household objects wrapped in scraps of cloth and yarn, so a few days before the workshop, I began ripping up old tee-shirts and trying to figure out how to wrap them around an egg carton. My idea was to create a soft, woven object with twelve cozy fabric nests. But as I went about poking holes in the bottom of the egg cups, seeking passages through which the tee-shirt shreds could pass, the project took on new and strange dimensions. I soon found myself working with an intensity I had not expected, impatiently ripping more tee-shirts when my scraps ran out, fascinated and eager to see how they could be knotted, wrapped, twisted, and looped.
     I realized that I was late for an appointment in Manhattan. Unwilling to leave my project, I stuffed the egg carton, fabric scraps, tee-shirts and scissors into a bag and hurried out the door. I could do it on the subway! When I lived in France, a great number of people, men and women alike, used to knit on the bus. I had thought that they were terribly productive, but now I understood that it was just a compulsion, similar to the urge to whip out a smart phone and check email messages, but much more

Another finished piece

satisfying. As I waited at the 2/3 platform at the Atlantic Center, the digital sign informed me that my train would arrive in two minutes. But I couldn’t stand still. I put down my bag, found my scissors and started shredding a green tee-shirt from the clearance bin at Target. Felix had grown so fast that he’d never gotten the chance to wear it. It would finally be put to use.
     A 2 train arrived. I slipped the scissors into my bag, wondering for a guilty moment if scissors are legal on the subway. The car was sparsely populated. I surmised this was due to the homeless person encamped on the far end, his or her scant possessions piled in a dingy baby stroller. I was not sure of the sex of this person as he or she had draped a tattered, off white blanket over his or her head. I assumed that the blanket was for privacy. In my present state of mind, however, I could not help also seeing a living example of textile art. It was a good car, with enough room to shred tee-shirts without
elbowing anyone in the nose. I soon became engrossed in my work, surreptitiously pulling out my

Workshop participant

scissors to start a new tear, weaving and poking, delighting at the knots of blue and braids of green emerging.
     By the time we reached lower Manhattan, the car was becoming crowded, and the homeless person had revealed himself to be a man. He had not removed his blanket, but he had begun talking. I could hear the rise and fall of his voice, deep, affable, and masculine. The rest of the people in the car were very quiet. As I yanked and knotted, my immediate neighbors edged away from me. I realized that my pulling and twisting at the increasingly knotted-over egg carton might be more peculiar than the behavior of the man under the blanket, now busily debating himself in a pleasant and fully engaged tone.
     It probably is peculiar to be happy at the way a torn tee shirt slips through holes in an egg carton, to be utterly focused on creating an object that will not generate income or reviews. Perhaps, the silence of the rest of the car was due to the uneasy feeling of being caught in an underground capsule with two weird people, both unusually immersed in textiles, one wielding a pair of scissors.
     The silence broke at the next station when a woman of some years, who used a walker to get around, struggled to get into the car. “Excuse me,” she said to the homeless man with the stroller. “Would you please move this….this… thing so that people can get by?” The sentiment was evidently shared by not a few others, for there was a general murmur of assent. I am a professional friend of people with walkers and wheelchairs, and I am impressed when I see anyone dependent on wheels brave the chancy and difficult terrain of the subway. So I was pleased to hear this old lady, so mobile and assured of her rights, but I did wince at her tone. This thing, as she put it, appeared to be someone’s home. But the man didn’t take offense, so why should I? The train lurched on.
     The car was now too crowded for me to see the blanketed form of the homeless man or the lady with the walker, but I could feel them, their presence as insistent as my egg carton. We were points of an ungainly and ill-behaved triangle, connected for a brief instant deep below the prosperous streets of Manhattan. I do not always enjoy the subway, but when I do, it often is due to these unspoken alliances and allegiances that can pop into being, only to disperse when the train reaches its station. But do they disperse? Days after my train reached 14th Street, I’m still mulling over my triangle-mates, the three of us bound through fabric, wheels and disruption. I did not see their faces, and most likely, they did not notice me. Yet there they are, entrenched in my mind, making me grin, part of me now.

Interview #4, Victor Calise

    Victor Calise remembers racing down a hill in Forest Park, Queens, out in front of his friends.  His bike hit something.  He flew over the handlebars, and woke up in Jamaica Hospital.  He moved his fingers.  He tried to move his toes.  "Oh crap, I'm paralyzed.  I asked my friend for a gun.  I didn't think I wanted to live.  We had a friend who had a spinal cord injury a couple years before, and I thought it was the worst thing on the face of the earth."

    He was twenty-two, a Queens kids who grew up in Ozone Park and became a plumber.  Twenty years later, he's the NYC Commissioner for People with Disabilities.  He lives with his wife and two
daughters on the Upper West Side.  On the wall of his office, there's a picture of him, looking ridiculously young, in the boxy gear of a hockey player, shaking hands with President Clinton.  He toured Europe on the United States Sledge Hockey Team and competed in the 1998 Paralympics in Japan.

    I met Victor in 2012 when Extreme Kids & Crew needed a space in which to create an indoor play environment for kids with disabilities.  By this time, I had a fair amount of practice knocking on the doors of officialdom, and I knew what to expect: I would be greeted warmly, told that I was a great person, then kindly ushered away, with vague promises for future meetings.  Perhaps some forms that I could fill out would be slipped into my hands.  But when I told Victor that the City should give us space, he swiveled his wheelchair to his computer, and immediately began calling and emailing people.  I watched in astonishment.  A few months after this meeting, Parks allowed us to convert a little brick house in a Clinton Hill playground into CAP House: the cozy home of our bubble tube, ball pit, and squeeze machine, and the site of many a happy playgroup.

    Victor can also jump up curbs on his wheelchair.  He played sports when he was able-bodied, and sports integrated him back into his life when he became disabled.  To help kids with physical disabilities enjoy the confidence and sense of belonging that sports can offer, he and Bill Greenberg founded a kids sled hockey team a couple of years ago--the WSF New York Sled Rangers.  The team has grown quickly, and now has thirty children.  The Sled Rangers' traveling team just came back from competing in Minneapolis.  Victor's face lights up when he talks about the trip.  Some of the kids are from lower-income neighborhoods in the Bronx.  They'd rarely left their borough.  "Now they're on an airplane! Leaving the city! Their self esteem is through the roof."


Definition of Disability:

Someone who needs a little help.

What drives you nuts about disability?
People.  People with disabilities let able-bodied people into their world.  You get a temporary disability, you get all the perks--parking, speedy wheelchair through airport security.  Able-bodied people take advantage of these conveniences.  But they don't let people with permanent disabilities into their world.  There's an enormous lack of access for people with disabilities, whether we're talking about buildings, transportation, or jobs.

Current Project:
Meeting with DeBlasio's new commissioners and pushing the disability agenda.  A bunch of these new commissioners are into equality and they get it.  The Department of Transportation just hired an ADA coordinator, which is great.

Recent Wonder:
We hired a new counsel with 27 years of experience with ADA, Kleo King.  She's general counsel with a background in stadium design and housing.  She's going to be talking to the general counsels of all the other agencies, changing the infrastructure, making NYC a better place for people with disabilities.

Here's the interview, conducted by Eliza Factor and Julia Rothwax.

Interview #3, Christopher Noel

     Christopher Noel (38) grew up in New York City.  At 6'5", he's a big guy whose sport, growing up, was basketball.  He studied business management at Amherst, then returned to the city to begin his career at a publishing firm.  But when he was 28, he fell.  His spinal cord was injured, and he lost the ability to move his legs.  After ten years in a wheelchair, he might still consider himself a "newbie" in the world of disability, but he has made his mark.  As he became more aware of all that was inaccessible to him due to his wheelchair, he became an advocate.  He was on the team that sued the state for more accessible voting booths, and served as a plaintiff in the suit that made the NYC Taxi and Limousine Commission provide more accessible taxis.  This last initiative was one that the Bloomberg administration fought, but is now finally being implemented.
     Chris still enjoys playing basketball, along with football and polo, but he's taken a temporary leave from sports to focus on his job.  Since May of 2013 he's been the ADA Accessibility Coordinator at the Department of Parks and Recreation.  He works on capital projects, conferring with and educating landscape architects, engineers and construction managers on ways to make playgrounds and parks more accessible: more ground-level features, more sensitivity areas, more ramping.  He also develops partnerships between parks and disability groups, creates new adaptive sports programs, and works with members of the general public who have questions about disability.  One of the perks of his job is a nifty adaptable car, emblazoned with the maple leaf Parks Department logo.  It has a hand brake and accelerator instead of foot pedals.  He hops into the driver's seat, folds up his wheelchair and is off.

How would you define disability?

Something that limits you due to x, y or z.  Everyone has a disability of some sort.  No one's perfect.  Everyone has a flaw of some type.  In terms of ADA, we should all be treated the same, because we are all disabled.

How did you get involved in disability?
I was injured in a slip-and-fall accident.   Boom! You become disabled one day.  I went to therapy, therapy, therapy.  After a while I didn't see the return I expected.  I said, let me learn more about disability.  I went to peer sessions, clinics, started speaking to people, even people who didn't have spinal cord injuries, people more in tune with the disability world.  If this is the world I'm going to be in, let me learn more about it.

What drives you nuts about your disability?
The walking aspect.  I was an athlete.  I used to be able to dunk the basketball.  The walking, that's the only thing I would say.

Recent wonder:
Chris used to do outreach at ICS, a nonprofit that manages long-term care for seniors and people with disabilities.  He recently bumped into some old co-workers who told him how much he was missed, and reminded him of this story:  When ICS first hired him, the company was under pressure to expand or lose its funding.  It was a home-grown nonprofit, more like a family than a corporation, and people were crying, afraid that they were going to lose their jobs.  Chris's task was to increase membership by 1000 plus.  He was given a staff of five, all of whom had disabilities: cerebral palsy, spina bifida, spinal cord injury.  None had been to college.  Not all had been to high school.  They were "the disabled people."  They got a part-time paycheck and that was it.  Now they were told to save the company.  They were scared.  They hadn't been given this kind of responsibility before.  They didn't have confidence.  Chris organized them into a team and explained that they'd all take the blame or the credit together.  They got ICS to buy them tables and materials and they went out into the streets.  They chose highly trafficked areas near where Medicaid is, projects and low-income housing and shopping areas around the five boroughs.  They set up their tables and the numbers started coming in.  They saved the company.  "Who would think a group of 5 or 6 people with disabilities would keep people's jobs that weren't disabled?"

Current project:
I've got two favorites:
1. The adaptive hubs.  Last year, Queens was the only borough that did adaptive sports.  Now we have at least one recreation center in each borough that has adaptive sports or programming.  We've got wheelchair basketball in every borough, flag football in two boroughs, softball in three boroughs, wheelchair yoga.

2. The Fifth Annual NYC Parks Paralympics Track and Field Open coming up on Friday, October 17 at Icahn Stadium in Randall's Island.  This is for kids of any ability and should attract 150-300 kids. Parks and the schools work on this.  School buses provide transportation and the event is treated as a field trip. Interested parents should contact christopher.noel@parks.nyc.gov or 646-632-7344 for more information.