Year: 2011

There’s a poem under my left shoe. Yesterday the shoe was in a stable. And yesterday the shoe was riding at sixty miles per hour in an automobile. The shoe has crossed over many word sources in the last 24 hours. It has been to an Indian reservation and a middle eastern restaurant, a library and a movie theater. Little Heraclitus, talk to us. O you can’t step twice into the same shoe…

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Instead Of Extending Tax Cut For 160 Million Americans, House Commissioned Bust Of Winston Churchill

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/12/20/392382/payroll-tax-winston-churchill-bust/

(Sent from Flipboard)

Stephen Kuusisto 
Director
The Renee Crown University Honors Program 
University Professor
Syracuse University

“You were my person to pick on,” wrote a girl named Mary, (I no longer recall her) who added, “I hope you’re not sick as much next year.”

At 15 I was bullied for my blindness in school and I found every way possible to stay home.

I read Machiavelli that year. Also “Leaves of Grass” — all alone. Thanks Mary.

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Someone will quote Heraclitus, the way up and the way down…

Sorting the apples: for cider, for the horses, good for cooking…

Write some lines in your notebook, live for a time, after all…

Nietzsche: All truth is simple… is that not doubly a lie?

Glad today that Nietzsche wasn't my friend. Here's a vote for simplicity.

In general terms prefer Buddha: Chaos is inherent in all compounded things. Strive on with diligence.

It is better to travel well than to arrive.

O Buddha…

 

& so we built a ship, filled it with flowers–perhaps they were abstractions, flowers from memory but alright the ship would sail on dreams as the sailors told us 

 

Call me out pay good attention to the stars

 

Many years have we still to travel

 

& lit beneath our hearts a half moon I think it was

 

Interminably erotic on the river early

 

Time cannot be traversed with sails but we throw coins into the water

 

Me? Just fixing the syllables in song of ocean

 

I dreamt last night in the winter dark

Of houses beckoning, lamps at their windows,

As if asleep one starts it all again, arriving 

 

To be welcomed among strangers,

A fools paradise of birth as we slept. 

Then the waking, early, pre-dawn, a grainy whiteness

 

One knows well–the obituary light of custom,

The hazy sadness of slippers,

And in the yard, the black, bare limbs of a lowland birch…

 

This morning was cold and my dog scented the flattened grass where the deer nested last night. The grass and the dark earth and the trees were all the same color, a pre-dawn tint of the crow’s wings. I stood a short time between a spruce and birch. The morning star was up. The windows of my neighbors’ houses were still black. “The boy inside me has survived,” I thought, “though he’s a factor of the northern wind; though he lives among the equinoctial apple trees of late December.” 

 

(National Autism Association)
December 19, 2011

WASHINGTON, DC– [Excerpt provided by Inclusion Daily Express] A federal bill introduced Friday to protect school children from dangerous, and sometimes deadly, restraint and seclusion practices has the support of the National Autism Association. 

The Keeping All Students Safe Act, introduced by Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA), provides long-overdue protections to students across the country by prohibiting restraint and seclusion techniques that compromise health and safety. 

It's estimated that over the last five years, more than 200 students, many with disabilities, have died due to seclusion and restraints being used in schools. A 2009 Government Accountability Office investigation reported that thousands of students have been physically injured and emotionally traumatized as the result of restraint and seclusion in public schools, and noted specific cases where students died from "mechanical compression to the chest," or "smothering."

The study outlined a sampling of other cases, including one schoolchild who died from hanging himself in a seclusion room, a four-year-old girl who was tied to a chair and abused, five children who were duct-taped to their desks, and a ten-year-old boy who was put in a seclusion room "75 times over a 6-month period for hours at a time for offenses such as whistling, slouching and hand-waving."

"Students with autism and other disabilities are at significant risk for regression, emotional trauma, injury and death as a result of these harmful practices," states NAA President Wendy Fournier. "Aversive interventions, restraint, and seclusion carry no therapeutic value, and basic protections are a must. We applaud Senator Harkin for introducing this critical piece of legislation."

Entire article:
National Autism Association Applauds Harkin Bill to Protect Students from Restraint and Seclusion (National Autism Association)
http://tinyurl.com/7ww9pp6
Related: 
Chairman Tom Harkin Introduces Keeping All Students Safe Act (Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates)
http://tinyurl.com/7ue9s6a
Keeping All Students Safe Act
http://www.copaa.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/RSLegLang12-16-111.pdf

 

Photo taken by my stepson Ross who is visiting Amsterdam. I know just how this bird feels. Cruesli is no substitute for Cheerios.