Ars Vivendi E-mail Magazine No.194 (4 March 2023)

■AVJ15 Issued with ‘Living with Disability during the COVID-19 Pandemic in Japan and Australia’ by Mark Bookman and Carolyn Stevens:

Institute of Ars Vivendi, Ritsumeikan University just published the latest issue of its on-line, open, peer-reviewed journal, Ars Vivendi Journal that includes, “Living with Disability during the COVID-19 Pandemic in Japan and Australia” by Mark R. Bookman and Carolyn S. Stevens

In this article, ‘Mark recalls the waves of anxiety that flowed over him as he grappled with access to medical care in March of 2020, just as the pandemic began to pick up in Japan. Two months had passed since the failed quarantine of the Diamond Princess cruise ship off the coast of Yokohama, and the virus was on everyone’s minds as schools and workplaces went online. As an immunocompromised individual, Mark was particularly worried about venturing outside due to fear of infection and had done his best to isolate himself inside his apartment’ and ‘Carolyn is not disabled, but lives with and cares for her twenty-two-year-old daughter, Sora, who has multiple disabilities and complex medical needs due to a rare chromosomal disorder (trisomy 4p). Her lived experience of disability arises from her proximity and strong emotional ties to a disabled person. For those with significant disabilities (and especially so in the case of intellectual disability) parents are often the first and the loudest, if not the only, advocates for these people.’

The Editor-in-Chief, Prof. Izumi Otani, closes her Preface saying that ‘Dr. Mark R. Bookman, the first author of this paper, passed away on December 16, 2022. He was a friend of the Institute of Ars Vivendi, and we mourn his passing and send our deepest condolences to his friends and family’.