Month: March 2013

Calling stars down was easy, we believed things could be close. Today we say “closer” as myth is weak but it wasn’t so long ago we thought we’d whistle up the stars. And the cosmonoauts and astronauts waved, leaving and returning, their heroic smiles said the universe was no different than a field left unattended after the war. Go on out there, said the smiles, you will find your missing horses. 

Call the roller of big cigars, here comes another pope. I have never met a pope though once, when I was 16 I met Melvin Laird in an elevator at a Key Biscayne resort. I was sufficiently political to inform him I didn’t much care for “his wars” which earned me a frozen mackerel’s stare, which I interpreted as a victory. I don’t remember if Melvin had a cigar.

 

Of cigars and their creation Wallace Stevens had it wrong: cigars were rolled by children in Stevens’ day, even the big ones. How could he not have known such a thing? Because he was the pope of Asylum Street in Hartford. Melvin Laird was the pope of the Potomac Basin. Francis the First threw two progressive priests under the bus in Argentina back in the mid 70’s so he presumably knew a good deal about cigars and who actually made them, didn’t care, and had a conditional approach to liberation theology. The trouble always comes from the costume.

 

Here is how it began: I fell in love with a dog who could see. I imagine I may some day fall in love with a blind dog, that blind dogs are lovable–one reads about them from time to time. I even read about a blind dog who had a sighted dog as a pal. Of dogs and empathy there may be no end of stories. 

 

But I fell in love with a dog who could see and I could not and so all at once I discovered empathy and eyes. 

 

People don’t actually fathom the phrase “all at once”–it gets ruined for most by early fairy tales. 

 

All at once Prince Charming kissed Snow White and thereafter she was Lazarus and little people danced about in the town square.  

 

Corky entered my life like a sloppy clown. I was in a straight backed chair in a sunlit room and they told me to call and damned if she didn’t run full steam into my arms. 

 

She was the clown who leaps into the seats and sits on someone’s grandfather. 

 

She placed her front paws on my shoulders and washed my face and then, as if she knew the job would require comedy, she nibbled my nose but ever so gently like a horse who checks his owner’s hand for a peppermint. 

 

She gave me just the slightest touch of her teeth. Later I would learn from the family that raised her that she was famous for the “nosey nibble” but God I felt special just then and I laughed as if for the first time–it was one of those true laughs from childhood. It’s the laughing we have before cruelty has found us. As a small boy in Finland I laughed once at a reindeer wearing clothes. It was just standing on the street all dressed up. Oh Corky that was a good laugh, but not as good as the nosey nibble because, dear dog, I wasn’t lonely on the day I saw that reindeer, but on the day I met you I was lonesome as a dead man’s comb. 

 

Corky I thought I’d cry when the guide dog trainers gently said I should call you and I swear I was just on the verge of blubbering when you stole my nose. We left that room together walking side by side for the first time and you had “all at once” changed my relationship with two hard abstractions: the fear of going places alone and my depressed and solitary imagination. You, who already had ample training in guiding blind people through the streets; you who knew how to stop a blind person from stepping into harm’s way; you, dear, had comedy in your veins. 

I began the morning divesting my frail selves–I seated them in a boat of conscience, sent them out across the river of cavalier intentions, hoping to “school them” while having them out of mind. It’s a Victorian principle: one sends the kiddies off to Eton,  toughening them up. I waved goodbye to my fail innards, and they waved back from a flimsy Irish coracle, a rounded little boat, perfect for the psyche, a mandala with oars. 

“Goodbye frail selves,” I said, waving my baton. Then I went indoors with my lions. 

 

When I was in college I had a pal who liked to play what I called “comparative pain”. His life had been hard with an abused childhood, small town poverty; then, a turn of fortune that he learned to hate–a scholarship to the local private college where, among very rich students he perceived his deficiencies all the more. 

 

We used to sit up late and drink bourbon and argue about everything from the merits of T.S. Eliot’s verse to the lathered stupidities of fraternity boys who drove BMWs and spoke with diphthongs though they were from New Jersey and Long Island–they had the faux patrician accents one hears at private schools in these United States. We imagined the advent of this pretentious accent was a result of vanishing elocution classes for the rich–that in the time of Franklin Roosevelt one learned how to speak with true “back bench” verve. We decided this was another thing ruined by the 60’s. So young rich boys had to invent a patois on their own and of course they weren’t equal to the task. You can still hear this accent at America’s tonier colleges. It hasn’t gone away. 

 

So we had fun in the manner of boys with weak super-egos, or, we had fun until we had too much bourbon when we’d invariably turn our attention to “who had it hardest” and that’s when I learned comparative pain is a poor contest. I claimed that having a disability I was wretched. And my pal would relate how his cruel older brother locked him in a closet and no one bothered to find him. We’d argue until bitterness overtook us  and then we’d impeach each other’s character. We were both depressed, each convinced our problems were external. 

 

Around that time I encountered a short poem by the American poet David Ignatow. I think it was Robert Bly who brought it to my attention. Bly was a frequent visitor to our college and as many know, he has always been an inspired talker. Not all poets possess that skill. The Ignatow poem reads:

 

I should be content
to look at a mountain
for what it is
and not as a comment of my life.

 

Such lessons are not easy and where comparative pain is concerned I don’t think age offers serious educational advantages. It’s easier to forgo compassion and empathy when your own pain wraps you up.  Irony always fades with self-involvement. Neither youth nor age wins out versus bitterness and reaction formation–Freud’s term for the internalization of bad stimuli. It’s too easy to be embittered when one is seriously depressed. 

This is one reason why Jesus spoke in parables. Our grid-locked psyches need to be tricked into curiosity. You can substitute intrigue or mystery–but life is seldom what we imagine and in general I think this premise is a source of hope. I remember telling a very good psychiatrist about my fears. They were all future fears and dark. Suddenly she said: “Have these things happened to you before?” And I had to admit the answer was no–I was simply embellishing gravity according to the rankings of depression. 

Last night I lay awake obsessing about comparative pain and the supernumerary co-efficients of disability and depression. I read a column at Truthdig by Chris Hedges concerning Tomas Young, an American veteran who has decided to end his life because his disability has overtaken him. I do not know how one person can judge another’s disability-pain-index, nor do I know Tomas Young. But I do know enough about pathos in rhetoric to be very suspicious of Hedges who has entitled his piece “The Crucifixion of Tomas Young” which ought to give any sensible reader the cerebral chilblains. Here is how Hedges’ article begins:

 

KANSAS CITY, Mo.—I flew to Kansas City last week to see Tomas Young. Young was paralyzed in Iraq in 2004. He is now receiving hospice care at his home. I knew him by reputation and the movie documentary “Body of War.” He was one of the first veterans to publicly oppose the war in Iraq. He fought as long and as hard as he could against the war that crippled him, until his physical deterioration caught up with him.

“I had been toying with the idea of suicide for a long time because I had become helpless,” he told me in his small house on the Kansas City outskirts where he intends to die. “I couldn’t dress myself. People have to help me with the most rudimentary of things. I decided I did not want to go through life like that anymore. The pain, the frustration. …”

Tomas Young wants to die because his disability has progressed strikingly over the past four years. He says to Hedges:

“If I were in the same condition I was in during the filming of ‘Body of War,’ in a manual chair, able to feed and dress myself and transfer from my bed to the wheelchair, you and I would not be having this discussion. I can’t even watch the movie anymore because it makes me sad to see how I was, compared to how I am. … Viewing the deterioration, I decided it was best to go out now rather than regress more.”

 

Hedges than says:

 

“Young will die for our sins. He will die for a war that should never have been fought. He will die for the lies of politicians. He will die for war profiteers. He will die for the careers of generals. He will die for a cheerleader press. He will die for a complacent public that made war possible. He bore all this upon his body. He was crucified.”

 

One of the things I learned about comparative pain all those years ago in a stuffy little dormitory room at Hobart College is that its entire rhetorical force depends upon pathos, which is to say, a raw emotional appeal as opposed to facts. It is not, for instance, a fact that increased paralysis connotes a life that will be devoid of favorable qualities. The facts are otherwise as disability activists convincingly demonstrate. Has anyone given Tomas Young some useful books on living as a quad? One wonders if he’s read Nancy Mairs’ incomparable memoir “Waist High in the World” or if he’s encountered the amazing artistic work of Neil Marcus. One also imagines the answer is no. What is clear is that Chris Hedges is using the language of religious sacrifice as an altogether easy analect–that is, he critiques the moral condition of the American people using Young’s condition as metaphor, a thing that is detestable though not unsurprising for many liberals are no more adept with disability culture than they are with nano-flowers. Let’s just say that Hedges’ use of Christian metaphors of sacrifice depends upon hideous sentimentality and the unexamined dialectic of valued bodies vs. devalued bodies, a position that’s essentially neo-Victorian and largely uncivilized. 

I’ve long been opposed to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and I belong to Poets Against War and have written broadly about the conditions of veterans. What Hedges has done here is to reaffirm the depressing narrative about the value of life and physical wholeness, and he’s done so by the most scurrilous means, affirming a wounded warriors depression, doing so without critical irony or knowledge, and using the language of sacrifice with altogether too much frisson. 

Comparative pain is always worse than one supposes. And its always a bad bad script. In this case, when veterans are fighting the good fight for health care and psychiatric support, when they’re fighting for reasons to live, Hedges has done everyone a true disservice. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Technorati Tags: Disability Studies, New Tag, Chris Hedges, Truth Dig, Tomas Young, Medical Ethics, Bio-ethics, Wounded Warriors, Comparative Suffering

I’ve been informed by perspicacious allies that I’m in danger of becoming a Facebook “Funkmeister”, a veritable “Eyore” of “What’s on Your Mind” mechanics. The reason is rather simple: over the course of the winter, following the re-election of Barack Obama I have become a gloomy gus. This would be alright, save that like everybody on Facebook I assume my state of mind has utility. So, for instance, as the social safety net for people with disabilities and the elderly is taken apart by beltway bandits I hit the send button, letting loose my dark experctorations. 

 

The sad thing is I used to be funny. Even when I became an academic I was funny. I once told a room full of dolorous college administrators that I had to leave the meeting right away, because, I said, “I forgot about the bees!” and I ran from the room in stylized and highly convincing feigned terror. I escaped a very boring meeting. And of course for some time following I had to pretend I was a bee keeper. But the lie was worth the cost.  

It is good to be resourceful in a sub-rosa and dented way. My mother once confounded a traveling bible salesman by complimenting him on his camel hair blazer, then telling him all about the agony of John the Baptist who dressed in camel skin and, well, did he know that camel skin when wet starts to shrink, and worse, it a hot climate it causes profuse ithing? She went on in this manner, inviting the poor man to imagine John’s need to “get naked” at every oppotunity–and holding forth on the failure of biblical exegesis to put the whole matter in a proper light. On and on she went until the man ran away. He quite literally bounded across the lawn with his oversized satchel banging off his thighs. 

 

So what has happened to me? I’ve always been a progressive person–in junior high school I lectured classmates on the imbecility of voting for Nixon over Hubert Humphrey in our school’s “straw poll”–and I’ve been outspoken as an adult against every conceivalble imperial American blunder. But leave progressive politics out of the matter, I’ve become an almost irretrievable grump. 

 

Is it Facebook? Blogging? The easy megaphone of social media? Is it the natural coefficinet of aging? “The world used to be a better place, blah blah…” 

 

I don’t think so. The world is a better place today than it was during the Nixon admnistration. And its certainly better than it was in the ’50’s. 

 

Are we less civil now than we used to be? That’s hard to imagine when you think about the Civil War or the terrible sight of the KKK marching in Washington. 

 

Is it my camel hair underpants? 

 

I need to get my malarky back. 

 

Its time for me to dance in new costumes under the windows. 

 

Bring on the bible salesmen! 

 

 

(Daily Kos)
March 8, 2013

DONA ANA COUNTY, NEW MEXICO– [Excerpt provided by Inclusion Daily Express] We all know that lack of access to health care has condemned millions of children and adults in this country to jail. Kids whose parents can not afford to get them inpatient treatment for diseases like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder are told to have the courts declare them truant or unruly. Once they are locked up, the families are told, their child will be eligible for “free” mental health.

We all know that the mental health services offered to these people while in custody are poor. Sometimes, there is no mental health care at all. Getting any type of medical care while in prison requires a clear head and perseverance. If you are a bright prisoner with a bad heart, you can probably get your state penitentiary to refer you to a cardiologist by threatening to sue them if they do not. But if you are not even sure who you are or where you are or what is wrong with you, then you can never hope to jump through the hoops the criminal justice system will set between you and the medical care you need.

We all know this. But a story at ABC allows us to feel what it is like to be mentally ill in a country that is more willing to incarcerate than it is to offer medical treatment.

Jail officials, recognizing that the patient suffered from mental illness, decided that looking him up in solitary for two years would be an adequate treatment. He was allowed access to mental health treatment for a couple of weeks in those two years, immediately got better — and then was forced back into solitary as he was awaiting his trial.

You caught that last part, right. He was awaiting trial. He was never convicted of anything. Prosecutors decided not to press charges, because he was not fit to stand trial. But he was considered fit to spend two years locked in a box where his mental status and health deteriorated.

Entire article:
Prepare to Cry
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/03/07/1192429/-Prepare-to-Cry
Related:
Prisoner Left in Solitary 2 Years Receives $15.5M Settlement (ABC News)
http://tinyurl.com/ide0308137b

(United Nations)
March 8, 2013

GENEVA, SWITZERLAND– [Excerpt provided by Inclusion Daily Express]  The United Nations human rights chief today called for promoting the employment of persons with disabilities and removing the obstacles that impede them from working on an equal basis with others.

“The right to work is a fundamental human right that is inseparable from human dignity,” said High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay. “Not only does it provide individuals with the means to make a living and support their families; insofar as work is freely chosen or accepted, it contributes to their development and recognition within their communities.”

“Work carries no less meaning to persons with disabilities,” she told the Human Rights Council in Geneva, as it held its annual discussion on human rights and persons with disabilities.

Ms. Pillay noted that when the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities was adopted in 2006, it embodied an “important shift” in the way that the global community viewed persons with disabilities.

“Prior to this, they had been regarded as mere recipients of charity, goodwill or medical care,” she said. “The Convention challenges these perspectives, establishing that persons with disabilities are holders of human rights on an equal basis with others.”

Entire article:
UN rights chief stresses need to promote employment of persons with disabilities
http://tinyurl.com/ide0308132

Yesterday there was a lot of sanctimonious writing in “the spheres” about the terrible repercussions of the W Bush admin’s war in Iraq. I looked at most of the major outlets and saw lots of hand wringing about the cost of the war, the loss of American prestige, the blown opportunity to develop good relations with the broader middle east, the ostentatious and narrow ideas of the neo-cons, etc. But nowhere did I see a lament for the approximately 200,000 Iraqi civilians who were killed. Even progressive outlets managed to leave this out. Meantime, people are crowing about Rand Paul’s filibuster. How about trying George W. Bush and Dick Cheney for war crimes? And let’s throw in Henry Kissinger while we’re at it. For my money Christopher HItchens’ best book remains his Kissinger indictment which is both morally and factually unassailable.

 

 

Back in December 2012 I wrote a blog post entitled “Good-bye Little Professor, Hello Sow’s Ear” and took Issue with the modifications and deletions in the DSM-5. Accordingly I was pleased to read of Jack efforts to boycott the manual. He writes on his blog “Mad In America” about the human difficulties of standing up for people with mental illnesses. Bravo, sir!

 

Ever since we launched our DSM-5 Boycott three weeks ago, we’ve received support from organizations and individuals but have become entangled in more wrangling than I ever would have anticipated. While some folks have endorsed our approach and our immediate objective, curtailing the sales and the use of the new DSM, many others have criticized our tactics and strategy and have suggested we stop what we’re doing and start all over again.

Most of the comments have been pointed but civil, but a few have been personal and fierce enough to make me wince. My wife has helped keep me somewhat grounded, reminding me, as only someone who’s known me for thirty-five years can, “Well, what did you expect?” When a few sympathetic individuals attempted to commiserate over the barrage of criticisms directed my way, I tried to remain philosophical and remarked, “It seems some folks are unhappy because we haven’t declared the revolution and others because they’re afraid we might.” Another of our Boycott Committee members suggested I stop responding to the more provocative e-mails I was receiving. You know; what if they gave a war and nobody came?