caption: Hope of the Crow cover art featuring crow atop book.

Elise Eystad

After seven years of blogging and a year of revising, author Dr. Katherine Schneider’s latest effort, Hope of the Crow: Tales of Occupying Aging has, as she puts it, at last “flown the nest.” This newest work comes after three other books: Occupying Aging: Delights, Disabilities and Daily Life, To the Left of Inspiration: Adventures in Living with Disabilities, and the children’s book Your Treasure Hunt: Disabilities and Finding Your Gold.

Organized into four sections—work, play, love, and pray—Hope of the Crow is a compilation of Schneider’s blog posts and other writings that center around her life as an elderly, disabled woman. With humorous chapter titles such as “Mercury and I are in Retrograde,” “Sighted People are Strange,” and “What If Wonder Woman had a Disability?”, the book is filled with fun anecdotes and musings on aging, faith, friendship, living with a disability, and much more. In addition, there are thought-provoking entries on privilege and ableism, like “Only You Can Stop Ableism,” “The Many Faces of Privilege,” and “Is Accessibility Nice or Necessary to You?” that discuss practical tips for interactions between sighted people—medical professionals in particular—and blind or visually impaired person.

As displayed in the title, Hope of the Crow: Tales of Occupying Aging, spends a lot of time focusing on the relationship between growing older and living with a disability. “Half the people over sixty-five will develop a disability,” Schneider says, “so I want to share a few tricks of the trade and give some realistic hope about the good life still being achievable.”

Included in the book are also tales about Schneider’s Seeing Eye dogs, as well as two poems: “An Anthem for the Americans with Disabilities Act” and “Hope of the Crow.”

And why the title Hope of the Crow?

“Crows fascinate me,” Schneider says. “They’re smart—the females make and use tools. They survive and thrive in many environments, which gives me hope in these turbulent times. They can’t sing (neither can I), but we still try to caw out our hope somehow.”

Not only is the current release of Hope of the Crow: Tales of Occupying something to celebrate after eight years of writing and editing, but it also comes at a culturally fitting time. 2020 marks the thirtieth anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act. According to adata.org, “The ADA is a civil rights law that prohibits discrimination against individuals with disabilities in all areas of public life, including jobs, schools, transportation, and all public and private places that are open to the general public. The purpose of the law is to make sure that people with disabilities have the same rights and opportunities as everyone else.” As a self-proclaimed “disabled elder activist,” Schneider says that Hope of the Crow was published on this thirtieth anniversary for a specific reason.

“This book,” Schneider says, “is the living out of the ADA.”

Hope of the Crow is available from www.wheatmark.com and online outlets. It is available in accessible format from www.bookshare.org. You can keep up to date with Dr. Kathie Schneider and find other writings on her blog at http://kathiecomments.wordpress.com.