Month: March 2011

By Andrea Scarpino

Paris’ Notre Dame is my favorite place in the world. I have studiously walked the church’s circumference outside and in, crossed the Seine dozens of times trying to take in the enormity of its stone walls. I have cried in the monument for those deported by France in WWII, eaten pain au chocolat sitting on a bench outside the front doors so early in the morning visitors weren’t yet allowed to enter. I have sat in a pew on Christmas Day, listened to the priests singing hymns in Latin and French, smelled the evergreen tied to each pew, the hundreds of lit candles, incense.

I love to feel small and unimportant in Notre Dame’s beauty, to stare in wonderment at its stain glass windows, wooden doors, to listen to my own footsteps, my own breath, as I walk its floors. I love to think about the hundreds of years it took to construct, the generations of workers and Parisian citizens who never saw the finished product—and revel in my luck, my privilege. In Notre Dame, I come the closest that I’ve ever come to feeling something divine, something magical. I’m not sure what it is, but it’s the closest I come to believing in something spiritual.

Usually, I have to try really hard to look contemplative when someone begins discussing religion or spirituality. I don’t know what spirituality means, in all honesty, and every time I’ve pressed people for answers, I’ve felt only dissatisfaction with their replies. In the US, I can rarely be bothered to peek inside church walls, even when traveling. There’s something so piddly about most American churches, something so beige and small and, well, human.

And that may be the heart of it, I’m beginning to realize. American churches wear their humanness on their sleeves—what with their all-purpose rooms and industrial carpeting, expansive parking lots, grape juice glasses, neon signs, AA meeting announcements. They feel like any other building on the block, their windows and walls of a scale I recognize. I don’t feel anything magical within.

I’ve been to American synagogues and felt that same humanness, and the Moroccan mosque I visited was impressive but so modern (the floors heated from underneath, the roof able to be opened and closed electronically) that it was hard for me to see it as magical. The closest I’ve felt to the magic of Notre Dame was visiting Buddhist temples in South Korean, and standing among redwood trees in Northern California. There, again, that quietness, that feeling of something special inhabiting a place, something magical I can’t quite understand. Among the redwoods, especially, I felt almost a beating heart, almost a breathing.

When I’m asked about my religious inclinations, I always stumble around for an answer. Saying I’m atheist or agnostic misses the point entirely—it’s not that I do or don’t believe in a god; I just don’t think about him. I don’t pray to a higher being, but I do talk to my father and hope he hears me, I send out wishes to the universe, thank planes for landing safely, thank the ocean for a beautiful day at the beach. And in Notre Dame, I feel something. Something magical, unable to be named. Something that makes me weep. So I guess that would be my religion, my spiritual pursuit—moments of magic. Moment when I feel the universe somehow beating inside me. When I feel small, in wonderment. When I feel the greatness of our lumbering earth.

Poet and essayist Andrea Scarpino is a frequent contributor to POTB.

(SEE VIDEO AT BOTTOM)The victim of a gay-bias attack in the West Village spoke out Wednesday about growing violence against members of his community.Damian Furtch, 26, was pummeled early Sunday by two suspects shouting anti-gay epithets, police said.The beating was the third bias attack in the neighborhood since October."The attack against me is part of the larger issue of violence against gay and transgender people in New York City," Furtch said in a statement."This has to stop. Under no circumstance should a person be attacked for their sexual orientation."City leaders were also outraged over the hate crime. "We are sickened by this hateful attack on our streets and will not stand for it," said City Council Speaker Christine Quinn (D-Manhattan), who handed out flyers condemning the assault.Furtch said a group of men first harassed him and a friend about their bright-colored clothing while they ordered food at the McDonald's at W. Third St. and Sixth Ave."I stepped outside . . . in an effort to avoid the tension in the restaurant," Furtch said.But two of the men – believed to be between 18 and 20 years old, one with a tattoo of a cross under his left eye – followed Furtch to the sidewalk and set upon him, police said.The crime comes months after two similar attacks.In October, Frederick Giunta was busted for beating a bartender inside Julius Bar on W. 10th St.Days earlier, Matthew Francis, 21, allegedly shouted homophobic slurs and assaulted a man in the Stonewall Inn.Police ask anyone with information on the most recent attack to call the Crime Stoppers hotline, (800) 577-TIPS.jkemp@nydailynews.comAll News: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ny_crime/2011/03/30/2011-03-30_damian_furtch_victim_of_manhattan_gaybias_attack_says_its_part_of_larger_problem.html

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CHICAGO, ILLINOIS– [Excerpt] A federally backed watchdog group says it has identified at least five more deaths involving poor care at a troubled Chicago nursing facility for disabled children and young adults, as well as a pattern of the home destroying evidence of medication errors.

The group, Equip for Equality, found that illnesses at Alden Village North were improperly treated, doctors failed to return pages, lab results were ignored and internal investigations into deaths were superficial, incomplete or inaccurate.

The state already has moved to close Alden following revelations in the Tribune about deadly neglect at the North Side facility.

Chicago-based Equip for Equality was able to begin its own inquiry because it is part of a nationwide network of advocacy groups granted broad powers by Congress to help protect people with disabilities.

Entire article:
More deaths identified at North Side nursing facility for disabled kids
http://www.InclusionDaily.com/news/2011/red/0329a.htm

Excerpt provided by Inclusion Daily.

S.K.

I put my hopes in the blinder and turn the dial to the cellular setting. When my aspirations are properly atomized I put them in the crackpot for slow cooking. Add sleepless nights, moribund social workers advice, nutmeg, and all the solidified tears from all the institutions in the world. Set crackpot to the lifetime setting. Meanwhile put the sermon on the mount in the bardo-matic food processor and hit the pulse button to produce an excellent garnish.

Serves billions…

**

Of course the point is that disability is not what we first perceive it to be. Additionally it is a manufactured circumstance much like all aspects of human well being. Now Barabas was a chef.

**

Just to clarify things, on a personal note, our friend Leslie B is correct: I turned 56 yesterday. How one loses track of time in the industrial human subjectivity kitchen!

S.K.

 

In this moment of severe budget cutting people with disabilities do not have time for everything. Ecclesiastes goes back on the shelf. This is not a season for every purpose–rather it’s a time for laughing and crying simultaneously. The hands of the clock are absurd right now for people with disabilities, the numbers appear like obscure writing in a foreign phone book. Let’s say that time doesn’t seem to be on our side; let’s say that time will come around for us in the long view. Certainly this is a good moment for pwds to gather our wits.

 

The Tea Party impetus to slash government spending has lead to what I believe is a wilfully anti-intellectual revisionism about our nation’s social history. You would never know that the arts or rehabilitation programs for the poor have been remarkably successful in generating income; you’d never know that the middle class owes its emergence to beneficent governance. Not if you’re reading the utterances of contemporary pols who have bought into the idea that cutting spending is all that matters. In Kansas where a Tea Party dominated Governor has slashed arts spending to the bone there will be no state wide forum on disabilities and the arts–a program that was scheduled for next week (and where I was to speak). Hope is in short supply for the dominos are falling in the direction of budget cuts that will harm the poor. In New York Andrew Cuomo has opted for cutting aid to the state’s poorest school districts. His rhetoric misses the point, gets muddled in the stampeding syllables of cutting the abstractions. This is my point: whatever cannot be seen (whatever is not a bridge or a road) must be cut. Slashing education and the arts are no joke in a nation that’s falling behind the rest of the developed world in critical thinking.

 

We’ve written before about New Jersey Gov. Christie’s antipathy to funding programs for blind people in the Garden State. One is reminded of Lou Reed’s song with the refrain:”Get ’em out on the dirty boulevard…”

 

The hands of the clock are pointing to the place where there’s time for nothing. No books. No hope. Not even basic training for a blind kid who wants to learn how to walk safely. What have we come to?

 

The ADA will protect some services. This is a nation of laws and there are certain guarantees. The budget cutters are not operating in a vacuum. It doesn’t take a visionary gleaming to see that certain human rights in this country are guaranteed. But the programs and services that pwds have traditionally relied upon are under savage attack.

 

As the poet Donald Justice once wrote: “the hands of the clock are sad”.

 

S.K.      

  We like this Huff Post article and recommend it…

An American Industrial Renaissance?

In the sorting out of the wreckage after Japan's earthquake
and tsunami, many Americans have begun paying more attention to a phrase they had barely known — "supply chains." The outsourcing of so much production, combined with lean and supposedly more efficient "just in time" inventories, leaves companies vulnerable
to supply disruptions half a world away. Does it really make sense for China to import coal and iron ore from Australia, so that it can fabricate giant wind turbines and send them by ship to the United States? Labor cost savings no longer justify the epidemic
of outsourcing, given all of the vulnerabilities that it entails.

 

Sent from my iPad

EEOC Announces Final Bipartisan Regulations for the ADA Amendments Act
(U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission)
March 25, 2011
(Excerpt provided by Inclusion Daily Express)

WASHINGTON, DC– [Excerpt] The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s final regulations to implement the ADA Amendments Act (ADAAA) are now available on the Federal Register website. Like the law they implement, the regulations are designed to simplify the determination of who has a “disability” and make it easier for people to establish that they are protected by the Americans with Disabilities Act.

The ADAAA went into effect on Jan. 1, 2009. In the ADAAA, Congress directed the EEOC to revise its regulations to conform to changes made by the Act, and expressly authorized the EEOC to do so. The EEOC issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking seeking comment on proposed implementing regulations on September 23, 2009, and received well over 600 public comments in response. The final regulations reflect the feedback the EEOC received from a broad spectrum of stakeholders.

The ADAAA overturned several Supreme Court decisions that Congress believed had interpreted the definition of “disability” too narrowly, resulting in a denial of protection for many individuals with impairments such as cancer, diabetes or epilepsy. The ADAAA states that the definition of disability should be interpreted in favor of broad coverage of individuals. The effect of these changes is to make it easier for an individual seeking protection under the ADA to establish that he or she has a disability within the meaning of the ADA.

The ADAAA and the final regulations keep the ADA’s definition of the term “disability” as a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities; a record (or past history) of such an impairment; or being regarded as having a disability. But the law made significant changes in how those terms are interpreted, and the regulations implement those changes.

Entire article:
EEOC Announces Final Bipartisan Regulations for the ADA Amendments Act
http://www.eeoc.gov/eeoc/newsroom/release/3-24-11.cfm
Related:
Regulations To Implement the Equal Employment Provisions of the Americans With Disabilities Act, as Amended (Federal Register)
http://tinyurl.com/62hmmnw

Fun.  We live in a country that would prefer to close libraries than ask millionaires to pay a little extra in taxes or multi-billon dollar corporations with whopping big government contracts to pay any taxes at all.

via lancemannion.typepad.com

Pish Posh! Who needs books?

I was messing around with my BlackBerry while waiting for a phone call. Why would anyone take a picture of him or herself? Vanity. But in my case it had more to do with the fact that I now can see just enough with one eye to aim a phone camera. My right eye can’t see but the left is doing a good job of tracking where the phone is located. I’m sending this phone photo into the multiverse. My twin brother is alive somewhere on the far range of the dark matter sluice that bridges our simultaneity. Hi brother. I’m still here. I like to think I don’t look like I’ll be 55 on Tuesday. Still happy brother. Still singing to the crickets…

S.K.