Last evening I spoke with several scholars who are researching histories of confinement among the disabled. This morning I’m reading about the latest failure of the AWP (The Association of Writers and Writing Programs) which just concluded its annual national conference having once again treated disabled attendees miserably. Confinement means the asylum or special hospital but it is also the product of disdain—find a conference site with insufficient elevators, no shuttle service, make sure no one answers the accessibility helpline, make public your indifference to disability inclusion and you’ve got what the leading consortium of academic creative writing programs thinks is OK where the cripples are concerned. Maybe they’ll go back to the institution—and we don’t mean the Ivory Tower.
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“Imagine that you can perform a feat of which I am incapable. Imagine, in other words, that you can picture an infinitely benign and all-powerful creator, who conceived of you, then made and shaped you, brought you into the world he had made for you, and now supervises and cares for you even while you sleep. Imagine, further, that if you obey the rules and commandments that he has lovingly prescribed, you will qualify for an eternity of bliss and repose. I do not say that I envy you this belief (because to me it seems like the wish for a horrible form of benevolent and unalterable dictatorship), but I do have a sincere question. Why does such a belief not make its adherents happy? It must seem to them that they have come into possession of a marvelous secret, of the sort that they could cling to in moments of even the most extreme adversity.”
Excerpt From: Christopher Hitchens. “God Is Not Great.” iBooks. https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/god-is-not-great/id357657047?mt=11
I’m a fan of Hitchens’ book “God is Not Great” as it forces me to play with aspirational circuits in the spiritual Neo-cortex. The “SNC” is where creative optimism fires its fastest signals—listen to Beethoven’s sixth symphony for an example of its art—so here, thinking of the above, lets just say that Christopher Hitchens has planted a red herring and I suspect he knew it. In truth all people are sad. It’s possible melancholy plays a role in human evolution for no matter what you may say about it, it’s the precursor for growth. Religious people are human too—their sadness is in no way different from the miseries of atheists. Thank you Mr. Hitchens for reminding me of this. There’s no secret among the sincerely religious—only what I’ll call muscular hope and a willingness to not give up on decency. And you bet there are bad Christians.
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You see, I’m able to say, though it may be un-American, that I often wake up unhappy. My job as I see it is to work it. I say un-American with irony, as I think Jefferson’s pursuit of happiness long ago morphed into the expectation of happiness. I’m in the Jeffersonian camp. And you bet: I won’t mind the help of others as I lift my portion of weight.
ABOUT: Stephen Kuusisto is the author of the memoirs Have Dog, Will Travel; Planet of the Blind (a New York Times “Notable Book of the Year”); and Eavesdropping: A Memoir of Blindness and Listening and of the poetry collections Only Bread, Only Light and Letters to Borges. A graduate of the Iowa Writer’s Workshop and a Fulbright Scholar, he has taught at the University of Iowa, Hobart and William Smith Colleges, and Ohio State University. He currently teaches at Syracuse University where he holds a University Professorship in Disability Studies. He is a frequent speaker in the US and abroad. His website is StephenKuusisto.com.
Have Dog, Will Travel: A Poet’s Journey is now available for pre-order:
Amazon
Barnes and Noble
IndieBound.org
(Photo picturing the cover of Stephen Kuusisto’s new memoir “Have Dog, Will Travel” along with his former guide dogs Nira (top) and Corky, bottom.) Bottom photo by Marion Ettlinger
Planet of the Blind 
Given what a hypocrite Thomas Jefferson was, writing about all men being created equality ( or did he mean all men of property) while screwing his fourteen year old slave, i would completely leave him OUT of any conversation regarding disability or social change, thank you very much. As for AWP blind spots, they have more than a few; some are not spots but more like gofer holes/
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