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About

Artistic rendering of a lake view with blue sky, mountains in the distance, and treetops in the foreground

30 years ago, it felt like a big event when we saw any media on disability issues. Now it’s a challenge to narrow the daily flood of disability content down to only three pieces to profile and share per day. Whatever else happens with internet culture and social media — the good and the bad — I will always be grateful for what they have done to enrich disability culture, journalism, and activism.

Disability Thinking Weekday is an email newsletter for disabled people and others who are interested in disability issues, ideas, and culture. Each weekday I share and discuss links to three disability-related items, with Fridays reserved for a video or opinion poll.

Subscriptions for regular weekday posts are free. Paid subscriptions help support this newsletter financially – $5 monthly, or $50 for a full year. On the first of each month paid subscribers receive a recap of all the past month's shared links, organized by topic, along with an original article by me on a disability-related topic.

I hope you get enough out of Disability Thinking Weekday to look forward to its arrival in your inbox!

Andrew D. Pulrang

I was born in 1967, in Plattsburgh, New York, a small city in Northeastern New York, on Lake Champlain, and an hour’s drive south of Montreal, Quebec. I lived in Plattsburgh until 1980, when my parents moved us to Tumwater, Washington. I graduated from Tumwater High School in 1985.

Later that summer I had a health crisis, which led to my starting to use a ventilator to breathe at night, which I have done ever since. A few days after having a tracheostomy tube installed so I could use the ventilator, I started Freshman Year classes at Dartmouth College. I graduated in 1989 with a major in History. Literally not knowing what to do next, I enrolled in a Master’s Degree program in Rhetoric and Communication Studies at the University of Virginia. After always avoiding involvement in disability issues, I ended up doing my Master’s Thesis comparing depictions of disability in television and movies.

During the summer between my two years at UVA, I did an internship at the North Country Center for Independence, a Center for Independent Living in Plattsburgh, which had started about a year before. Finding a disability organization that wasn’t begging for medical research funds with sad pictures of disabled kids was a revelation to me. I stuck with NCCI, and NCCI stuck with me, as I became the Executive Director in 1998. I continued in that position until I stepped down in 2012. From there I pursued a number of disability-related freelance projects, including:

  • Grant writing and social media work for the North Country Center for Independence.
  • Disability blogging at Disability Thinking, and currently a weekday newsletter, Disability Thinking Weekday.
  • Work with co-partners Alice Wong and Gregg Beratan on starting and coordinating #CripTheVote, a Twitter-based campaign on disability voting, politics, and policy.
  • Freelance writing on disability at Forbes.com and other publications — links available here on the My Published Articles page.
  • Virtual presentations and consulting work on disability topics for businesses and organizations.
  • Writing tutoring at Clinton Community College in Plattsburgh, New York.

My Disability

I have Arthrogryposis. This condition can have different causes and an assortment of affects. For me, Arthrogryposis manifests itself in:

  • Muscle weakness and stiff, less flexible joints.
  • Short stature. I am 4’1” tall.
  • Significant spine curvatures, both front to back and side to side.
  • Reduced lung capacity caused by the spine curvatures.
  • My type of Arthrogryposis is genetic, which is one of the rarer kinds.