Year: 2011

 

 

What is the name of the house you build inside you? I don’t mean the rhetorical house–the one you speak of when called upon–I mean the pithy, timbered house of thought. Mine is cautious optimism. I am not better than the man or woman whose inner house is cautious pessimism. This is simply what I have become and neither nature or nurture can explain it. 

 

I’m in mind of this because I met someone recently who was so pessimistic he gave off a virtual odor. Worse, he tried to take me down.  Generally I think people who don’t know the names of their inner houses are more likely to try dragging you into the parlors of their psyches. Maybe this sounds like fin de siecle psychoanalysis but so be it. Post-modernism and performance theory can’t explain everything. 

 

Do we have a name for courage, declension of our social variables, consistency of progressivism, a commitment to human rights–all understood as the materials of mental architecture? It appears we do not and the daily news grows worse and worse. But I say the answer is to be “at home” in the time you live in. As the poet Robert Bly says in his poem entitled “Early Morning in Your Room”: “If you had/ a sad childhood, so what? When Robert Burton/Said he was melancholy, he meant he was home.” 

 

Sadness can be a part of optimism. The very idea is one that contemporary Americans don’t appear to understand and this has consequences. One of them is what has come to be called “neo-liberalism” –a term that stands for rhetorical progressive values that are veneer all the way through. Neo-liberalism also tends to enforce single issue political values. But sadness can be a part of optimism, can’t it?

 

It matters what you call your house. I thought Barack Obama was right to call out the GOP for accusing him of engaging in class warfare by saying, essentially, “If that’s what they want to call it, then let’s call it that.” Sadness can be a part of optimism. Neo-liberalism probably can’t. The president made his choice. I admire him for that. 

 

S.K.    

 

 

Thinking About Some Lines By Robert Bly

 

“A man I knew could never say who he was.

 You know people like that. When he met a monster,

 He’d encourage the monster to talk about eating

 But failed to say that he objected to being prey.”

 

 

(“Conversation with a Monster”)

 

I have had a disability all my life. Every now and then I meet a monster. What’s interesting about these experiences is “the monster” is always a person in conditional authority–a bag man as they say in the Mafia. Once in awhile it’s a chief, but not often. 

 

If you’re a real veteran of disability advocacy and “self-advocacy” you’ve learned how to say “I object to being eaten” and then, by turns, you make yourself inedible. 

 

It’s not easy out here in the forest. 

 

A former president of Hobart and William Smith Colleges once bullied me behind a closed door–he was trying to get rid of me–I was just an adjunct professor. He offered me a job driving a golf cart. I kid you not. He was going to take me out of teaching, and put me in charge of summer sports camps for teenagers. I would essentially hand out towels and he wanted to know if I could manage to drive around campus. I told him I was blind. (He already knew this of course. Monsters usually size up their victims.)

 

“Don’t tell me about being blind,” he said. “My room mate in college was an Olympic rower and he was blind. You’re obviously not competitive enough.”

 

The great thing about monsters is that they lack logic. They’re so hungry. As an old Finnish cook book says: “Never pick mushrooms when you are hungry. Always use great care.”

 

Real men don’t eat quiche. Real disability advocates refuse to be prey. Of monsters there are many. But you can starve them out.

 

S.K.    

 

By Andrea Scarpino

Twice this summer, Diana Nyad has tried to swim the 103 miles between Cuba and Florida without a cage. In other words, exposed to sharks and jellyfish and Man o’War (although she swam with anti-shark support staff in kayaks). In other words, without riding the draft of a boat pulling a cage. And Nyad is 62 years old. She hasn’t tried to set a record like this in 30 years. 

 

Twice this summer, Nyad didn’t quite make it to Florida. The first time, she endured 11 hours of asthma attacks before being pulled from the water. The second time, she was stung by a Man o’War and jellyfish, stung so badly her eyes and lips swelled, welts spread across her arms. At one point, her spine went numb. For many hours, she continued swimming through incredible pain—until her medical team advised another sting could be deadly, not just to her, but also to her support team, one of whom had also been badly stung as he tried to help clear her of stinging tentacles. And still, she left the water some 80 miles farther than when she entered it.

 

Of course, she didn’t finish the swim the way she would have liked to finish it. She would have liked to crawl onto that sand in Florida, to have left one country and emerged on another, having pushed her body harder than it wanted to go. She would have liked to hold another swimming record. I get all that. I get that she’s probably disappointed beyond belief—to have trained so hard, and then have two swims disrupted by unexpected, unplanned events—asthma, sea creature sting.

 

But even though she didn’t make it to Florida, were her two attempts failures? Is it true that she didn’t succeed? I’m not prone to hippydippy optimism, to trying to look on the bright side of things. But when I think about Nyad—and I’ve been thinking about her constantly since I first learned of her swim early this summer—I think of her courage, her belief in her body’s abilities, her strength. This woman, after all, is at an age when many of us talk about “slowing down,” “taking it easy,” an age when former athletes wistfully recall their glory days. Instead, she is setting nearly impossible goals for herself, she is training for hours a day, she is pushing her body harder than she could in her 20s. She is, as she says, “determining {her} own finish line.”

 

On her website, Nyad quotes a writer for the Dayton Daily News who says, “The toughest athlete in the world is a 62-year-old woman.” I hear a surprise implicit here on the part of the writer—a 62 year old! And a woman! Why that’s impossible! But that surprise, I think, is true of many of us who picture athletes as young and usually male. Who picture them as able-bodied. Who picture them as model-perfect. Nyad is breaking out of that stereotype, in so many ways. She is challenging us to rethink “athlete”—and more than that, rethink the things we’ve told ourselves we’re capable of doing. Of accomplishing. Rethink our own dreams.

 

As far as I can tell, that is success. Whether or not she tries this particular swim again, whether or not she ever crosses from Cuba to Florida, whether or not . . . I hope she sees this summer as a success. I hope the rest of us do too. This incredible athlete, doing what the vast majority of us can’t even hope to do, no matter our age or ability—I hope we think about her success and use it to motivate our own.

 

Poet and essayist Andrea Scarpino is a frequent contributor to POTB. You can visit Andrea Scarpino at:  http://www.andreascarpino.com/

 

 

Over at NPR there’s a story about General Abdul Razig, who has done America’s on the ground dirty work in Afghanistan. One may well argue that the US never learns–dirty war all the time…

 

http://www.npr.org/2011/09/26/140751605/rags-to-riches-americas-man-in-kandahar?ft=1&f=1001

 

“Gen. Abdul Raziq is the acting police chief of Afghanistan's Kandahar province. At just 33, he's a former warlord whom the United States relied upon during its 2010 "surge" operation. But Raziq is also accused of brutal abuses of power, even massacring his rivals, according to a new article in The Atlantic.”

 

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/11/our-man-in-kandahar/8653/ 

 

 

 

 

I am in cardboard hell. The moving truck arrived at our house last Tuesday. The movers were terrific. They did a great job. But now my house is filled, room by room with tall and short boxes. Did you know that cardboard boxes are odorous? They breathe and give off the damnedest odors. It’s a sour smell, made all the worse by humidity. Yesterday a friend of mine visited and turned vaguely green. “Oh,” he said. “Boxes! Oh god!” 

 

Connie and I have moved five times in the past 14 years. We move so much it’s like we’re in the witness protection program. Our latest move to Syracuse promises to be our last. We’re happy with that idea. But we’re shell shocked among our own possessions. We don’t know how to unpack. We move like robots, mechanically picking up small things and puting them down again. God Alighty! I think we need a marching band! A sportscaster: “Look! She’s picked up the soup tureen! She’s put it in the cupboard! What an AMAZING play! Can you believe it?” 

 

In a nation with so many unemployed people it’s callow to whine about stinking boxes. I know this. But I’m telling you all the same: they stink. This side up. Fragile. Send to basement. They are bad boys! 

 

 

Boys With ADD Need More Discipline For "Paddleable" Offenses, Wrote Perry In 2008 Book
(Politico)
September 21, 2011

AUSTIN, TEXAS– [Excerpt provided by http:/www.inclusiondaily.com] Between his positions on global warming and the HPV vaccine, Texas Gov. Rick Perry's views on science have been a central focus of his presidential campaign so far. 

They were also on display in his 2008 book, "On My Honor: Why the American Values of the Boy Scouts Are Worth Fighting For." Though the book is ostensibly about Perry's love for the Boy Scouts and the organization's battle with the ACLU, peppered throughout his idealized picture of rural youth are several brushes at science, including his own self-diagnosis of his own childhood troubles and defense of spanking.

"Some young boys — especially those with severe Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), as I must have had as a boy — have never focused on something for more than a few minutes until they tried to build their first fire on a camp-out or learned to tie a bowline knot with a double half-hitch knot on the opposite end of a thirty-foot rope," Perry wrote.

Later in the book, Perry comes back to the topic, suggesting that the contemporary culture has not so much made scientific advances in identifying illnesses, but rather is making excuses for problems that would have been dealt with more severely in the past.

"We have a drug for every problem and a diagnosis for every psychosis," he wrote. "We don't have children with 'ants in their pants'; we have children with 'attention deficit disorder.' That is not to minimalize such conditions. Lord knows, whether you call it a disorder or a "paddleable offense," I had it as a kid.

Entire article:
In first book, Rick Perry self-diagnosed ADD 
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0911/63922.html
Related:
ADD: Just An Excuse For Bad Behavior, Perry Suggests (Care2)
http:/

 

Sue Marsh: The Culture Of Hatred For The Disabled Comes From The Top
(The Guardian)
September 19, 2011

LONDON, ENGLAND– [Excerpt from Inclusion Daily] There is little doubt that disability hate crime is on the rise. A recent Equality and Human Rights Commission report concluded that "people with disabilities in the UK face harassment, insult and attack almost as a matter of routine, while a collective denial' among police, government and other public bodies means little is done to challenge the situation". 

This is strong language. It seems so shocking that we might decide that it cannot possibly be true. Turn then to the Mencap study that found police were consistently failing the victims of disability hate crime, or to the Scope report that concluded that "widespread casual and institutional disablism in Britain creates the conditions where disability hate crime can flourish without being recognised or challenged". 

According to a ComRes, some 47% of disabled people surveyed said that attitudes towards them have worsened over the past year while 66% claimed that they had experienced "aggression, hostility or name-calling". Taken to its extreme, this bullying leads to the tragic deaths of people such as Fiona Pilkington and Francecca Hardwick, Gemma Hayter and Keith Philpott.

But while the causes of hate crime are hard to fathom, we should look first to the attitudes of those who govern and inform us. A recent select committee report criticised both the press and the department of work and pensions over the way in which the media covers statistics on sickness benefits. Articles referring to "the shirking classes", "scroungers" and "skivers" led the chair of the committee, Dame Anne Begg, to write to the DWP urging staff to be careful how they present statistics.

Entire article:
The culture of hatred for the disabled comes from the top 
http://tinyurl.com/6f2qwwa
Related:
Disability hate crime begins with verbal abuse
http://tinyurl.com/42l82z4

 

Medicaid Disability Activists At White House Gates As President Presents Debt Plan
(ADAPT)
September 19, 2011

WASHINGTON, DC– [Excerpt provided by Inclusion Daily Express] As the President unveiled his debt plan this morning, hundreds of activists with disabilities stormed the White House to demand a voice in the structuring of Medicaid reform. ADAPT, the national disability rights directaction group, is asking the administration to work with them to ensure that Medicaid dollars are invested in cost-saving community supports. 

"The President says that he expects all Americans to share the burden of controlling the budget, but Medicaid recipients are already shouldering the burden for balancing budgets at the state level," said Randy Alexander of Memphis ADAPT. "States have already made significant cuts to Medicaid. How many more people with disabilities and seniors must lose our basic freedoms and lives in order to have done our share?" 

Bruce Darling, an ADAPT organizer from Rochester, New York, pointed out that states have already reduced or eliminated vital home care services and forced seniors and people with disabilities into nursing facilities against their will. "People are already experiencing reduced or eliminated access to basic health care, including medications. Jobs have already been eliminated for home care and direct care workers."

ADAPT recognizes the need for new tax revenue and supports the President's proposed so-called "millionaire's tax." Unlike Congressional Republicans who believe the burden of deficit reduction should only come from spending cuts to critical programs like Medicaid, the President has called for $1.5 trillion in new tax revenue.

ADAPT has reached out to the White House and Congress to offer proposals on how we can contain Medicaid spending that wouldn't negatively impact on Medicaid beneficiaries.

Entire press release:
Medicaid Disability Activists at White House Gates as President Presents Debt Plan
http://www.dimenet.com/hotnews/archive.php?mode=A&id=7409;&sort=D
Related:
Hundreds of Disability Medicaid Activists Storm Offices of House Republicans Hensarling and Camp
http://www.dimenet.com/hotnews/archive.php?mode=A&id=7410;&sort=D
Open Letter About Medicaid to President Obama from ADAPT
http://www.dimenet.com/hotnews/archive.php?mode=A&id=7408;&sort=D
ADAPT Urges Super Committee Not to Gut Medicaid 
http://www.dimenet.com/hotnews/archive.php?mode=A&id=7406;&sort=D
My Medicaid Matters!
http://www.adapt.org/freeourpeople/mmm/

 

To understand how human rights keep declining in these United States–declining as a lived and shared proposition. Our jails are filled with people who are poor, black, disabled, mentally ill, whose crimes are insufficiently dire to warrant such hopelessness–we no longer believe in rehabilitation in our criminal justice system. Just so, the death of Troy Davis signifies the intentionality of our penal system, for even a man whose crime is in doubt will be put to death without care for human rights and due process. We are not, as GOP types endlessly propose, a nation in spiritual decline, we are worse–we are a country in moral decline. I walk around. Like Pablo Neruda I hope to not become dried up, like a swan made out of felt. These are perilous times. If a writer's blog has any value it's this–to send up a cris de couer. My nation is very ill indeed.  

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