Month: October 2012

I spread the papyrus across my table and see four words. I know the fifth must be conjectural. 

Today I am the strongest man in the kingdom. Strength is a proposition. 

So many clouds of dust are behind these words. 

 

Although it has no name we call it sorrow. This morning sorrow was at the windows and high in the branches. Sorrow was in the branches tipping like a basket, a remnant from a storm. It’s strange that this thing is much larger than us.  It has passed through two hundred winters. It has eaten blood meals. It knows your weakness is no easy matter.

The first guide dog trainers devised a rolling cart which they dubbed the “artificial man”. They attached it to dogs in training and, given its essential dimensions, the cart was believed equal to the height of a man and to the width of a man and dog. Pulling these rolling machines, dogs would learn what “not” to do–not to try and pass through spaces too narrow for a team, not to walk beneath a low hanging branch, never to navigate the edge of a ditch. 

 

I picture the dogs, mostly German Shepherds, and their trainers, German officers fresh from the trenches–a terrible earnestness to their shared activities, and that strange machine like some remnant from the Ardennes.

 

From What a Dog Can Do: A Memoir of Life with Guide Dogs

Stephen Kuusisto 

Forthcoming from Simon and Schuster, 2014

 

Dear cripples and friends of cripples: breath a bit, imagine a moment when contrarian intellectual principles stood for possibility (as opposed to post-modernity’s dystopia and suspicion.) Theodor Adorno: “Intelligence is a moral category.”  One’s stance toward the function of thought shouldn’t be overlooked. If you’re a person with a disability its important to hold some ideas about human progress.

Here I’m thinking of Walter Benjamin’s assertion: “The adjustment of reality to the masses and of the masses to reality is a process of unlimited scope, as much for thinking as for perception.” 

In the US we are witnessing an election in which neo-conservative rhetoric about the provision of social services, especially for the elderly and people with disabilities, has been presented as the main ingredient in the Republican party’s reaction against taxes and the role of government. In this way the GOP is arguably the most post-modern political party you can find, for its embrace of trans-national capital, deregulation, the shipment of jobs oversees, and of union busting at home are built on dystopic visions of capital–that is, capital must always be in the hands of those who will grow it–government intervention on behalf of the poor and the infirm is now officially a matter of suspicion.

For suspicion one may substitute cultural relativity–you see those people over there? They’re none of our business. Or, conversely, they’re our business only if they get in the way of business. Bush’s war in Iraq was about business, and Christopher Hitchens got it wrong. It was never a war of liberation. If Adorno was right, and I think he was, the moral category must include an appreciation of people who cannot rightly speak for themselves–especially in the age of trans-national capital and reductionist rhetorics about human progress. In our post-modern age capital is largely concerned with gobbling up the planet’s resources (China in Africa, America at the North Pole).

Against this stands the movement toward human rights–concurrent with the United Nations charter on the rights of people with disabilities. And here at home, tied to the Americans with Disabilities Act. It is unlawful to throw people with physical or mental disabilities into the streets though the people behind Paul Ryan’s plan haven’t fully conceived of the matter. The GOP’s plan to lop 30% off the top of Medicare, slash Medicaid, and then give the rest back to the states is likely illegal. 

And so my argument is that people with disabilities may be holding the moral cards in what is otherwise a dark time. I am not sentimental. I do not believe the goal of life is to lose teeth and still smile. But this is a time when groups like ADAPT and NAMI and Blinded Veterans of America, and Paralyzed Veterans of America, the AAPD, and many other groups, can drive a moral conversation in a cynical age.

 

 

 

  

HBO Documentaries

Monday, October 29^th, 2012

7:00 pm

The Big Picture: Rethinking Dyslexia

 

Showing how the disorder can be a gift as well as a challenge

 

http://www.hbo.com/#/documentaries/the-big-picture-rethinking-dyslexia

 

Though up to 20% of students are dyslexic, many pass through school unidentified, misunderstood, and performing below their potential. Paradoxically, these disorders are often found in highly intelligent, creative minds, and can also be seen as a gift, because many people with dyslexia naturally think outside the box and see the big picture, finding alternative solutions to problems that others might not see.

 

Directed by James Redford, THE BIG PICTURE: RETHINKING DYSLEXIA is a personal, touching, and sometimes humorous look at this developmental reading disorder, offering a broader and clearer view of the minds of people with dyslexia. Spotlighting a cross-section of individuals, including Redford’s own son, Dylan, and featuring interviews with notable dyslexics, including investment pioneer Charles Schwab, business magnate Richard Branson, high-profile lawyer David Boies, and California Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom, the film reveals how an individual’s unique strategies for coping can help lead to success in life.

 

Chronic Illness and the Academic Career
The hidden epidemic in higher education.
By Stephanie A. Goodwin and Susanne Morgan
One of the things I find difficult is that many of my colleagues do not know of my illness. I can only assume what they might think privately about my tiredness and various energy levels. I try to be “on” at work, but some days are better than others. . . . Even the people who do know that I have medical problems do not always get what that means. . . . It seems to be a losing battle. Trying to educate others rarely seems to make much of a difference, since I look fine.

—contributor to Chronicle of Higher Education forum on chronic illness and academia

The academic quoted above is not alone; he or she is experiencing dilemmas familiar to the thousands of faculty and staff members who manage challenging academic careers along with the challenges of a chronic illness. Recent research by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation indicates that more than half of Americans experience at least one chronic illness—a longterm health condition that persists over time, has recurring (often “invisible”) symptoms, and requires  long-term medical intervention. Aside from a 2008 National Science Foundation report in which 7.3 percent of science and engineering faculty members reported having disabilities, no large-scale studies have tracked chronic illness among faculty members. The National Science Foundation’s data likely underestimate the percentage of faculty with disabling illnesses, given the challenges of documenting disability and the fact that the data were collected prior to changes that broadened the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

http://www.aaup.org/AAUP/pubsres/academe/2012/MJ/Feat/good.htm

You know the story: you’re minding your own business when the doorbell rings and a stranger proposes that you buy a bible, or purchase some candy for charity. Many years ago, when I was a graduate student at Chapel Hill, a representative from the Jehovah’s Witnesses knocked on my door. I was recovering from an ophthalmic procedure and was wearing dark wrap around sunglasses and all the window shades were drawn. I opened my door only slightly, peered out from the interior darkness, all bearded and blind looking, and told the JW I had a “private and terrible God” and he should beat it. And he ran down the stairs.

The anecdote displays me as clever and mischievous but it doesn’t say a thing about my beliefs. Most Americans tend to avoid talking about belief unless they’re trying to sell you something or, yes, rob you. I call this avoidance of religion the Las Vegas Effect, since the majority of people in the US love the prospect of easy money, glamour, and anonymity more than anything, especially the people who make their desperate living by means of the Christian Industrial Complex. Viva Las Vegas.

Most Americans prefer Las Vegas to church. And then, along comes Elmer Gantry:

“The Maker of the universe with stars a hundred thousand light-years apart was interested, furious, and very personal about it if a small boy played baseball on Sunday afternoon.”

What I’m suggesting is that Americans will always go to Vegas, then give their left over guilty cash to their industrial churches.

 

 

By Andrea Scarpino

 

Sometimes when I get tired of working at home, I go to school with Zac, sit in his fourth floor office while he’s in class. Windows line one wall of his office, three fat panes overlooking a parking lot and silver-white hospital. Overlooking sky.

 

Sometimes when Zac is in class, I sit in his office and watch the sky. I’m supposed to be working, of course: my to-do list stares at me from his desk, poems I’m trying to write, books I’m trying to read. But the sky. This morning: white-out fog. I could barely see across the parking lot, sky enveloping everything. Then downpour rain that blew into the glass, rattled the panes. Fog become concrete. Then white clouds moved in, and between them, glimpses of sun, sunlight, blue streaks. A jay flew from the trees past the glass. A flock of gulls in their V. Then dark clouds layering the sky in swathes of gray: lighter, then dark, white, black. Movement, always, toward the lake.

 

Sometimes, the sky a symphony of change. Sometimes I watch it.

 

There’s a story about Jane Hirshfield trying to write the history of Buddhism, and finally landing on this haiku:

 

Everything changes,

everything is connected,

pay attention.

 

The lesson of the sky: pay attention. Everything changes, is connected.

 

Sometimes, I watch the sky from Zac’s fourth floor window and remember this.

In general, power relations are best treated with irony and accordingly I’ve always been fond of Gramsci’s assertion that his own practicality consisted “in the knowledge that if you beat your head against the wall it is your head which breaks and not the wall – that is my strength, my only strength.”

Again with the “R word” from Fox commentator and arch conservative pundit Ann Coulter. The following excerpted article comes to us from Inclusion Daily Express and it expresses the proper measure of dismay and disappointment from people in the disability rights community concerning Ms. Coulter’s strategic use of retardation as political metaphor, tricked out with overtones of racist irony. Beyond that. I think Coulter’s name calling has strayed glibly into fascist rhetoric, a matter that stands at the core of her very deliberate decision to insert retardation as a political trope.

 

Parents, Special Olympians Respond To Ann Coulter’s Use Of “R-word”, Again

(CNN)

October 24, 2012

FAIRFAX, VIRGINIA– [Excerpt] Parents of children with special needs are demanding an apology from conservative political pundit Ann Coulter for tweeting after Tuesday’s foreign policy debate that she approved of “Romney’s decision to be kind and gentle to the retard.”

It appeared to be a response to critiques of Mitt Romney’s debate performance, but it wasn’t the first time Coulter used the “r-word” during this election season. And, it’s not the first time blogger Ellen Seidman has called her out on it.

“At this point, I’m thinking the woman must surely be aware that the word is offensive, and she chooses not to care. That’s pretty vile and heartless,” said Seidman, the mother of a special needs child who shares her world on the blog “Love that Max.”

“You want to slam the president, go ahead. But you can’t think of any other word to use? Come on.”

In an open letter directed at Coulter posted Tuesday on the Special Olympics blog, John Franklin Stephens, a 30-year-old Special Olympian with Down syndrome, described what the word meant to him: “I thought first of asking whether you meant to describe the President as someone who was bullied as a child by people like you, but rose above it to find a way to succeed in life as many of my fellow Special Olympians have.

Entire article:

Ann Coulter’s backward use of the ‘r-word’

http://tinyurl.com/ide1024123a

Related:

Ann Coulter’s ‘retard’ remark: Special Olympics competitor pens open letter (The Guardian)

http://tinyurl.com/ide1024123c

An Open Letter to Ann Coulter (Special Olympics)

http://tinyurl.com/ide1024123b

Spread the Word to End the Word

http://www.r-word.org

“It appeared that even in Barcelona there were hardly any bullfights nowadays; for some reason all the best matadors were Fascists.”

George Orwell, Homage to Catalonia

 

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