I am speechless upon learning that two undergraduate students who are friends of mine are respectively having problems with their academic institutions because they need accommodations for their disabilities. Owing to the sensitive nature of their stories, and the unresolved problems each is having I will not say more. But their stories prove once again just how far Higher Ed still needs to go even some twenty plus years after the Americans with Disabilities Act. In each case there are sub-altern administrators involved, and in each case they’ve been permitted to occupy bureaucratic positions without any cognizance of the law. Amazing. And trust me, each of these young men is attending a name brand institution. I’m aghast. Flabbergasted I assure you.

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"Partisan politics, so wrapped up in creating an antagonism between capitalism and government, misses the point. If we are to maintain ourselves as a republic, certain foundational principles of a republic must be upheld regardless of our economic structures.
They are: popular sovereignty (power to the people, not Wall Street or Washington); resistance to corruption (placing special interests ahead of the common good); a sense of the common good (all those things that we own and hold in common); and most of all
civic duty, citizen responsibility, and citizen participation."

Welcome to the American Republic, Mr. Eastwood

Partisan politics, so wrapped up in creating an antagonism between
capitalism and government, misses the point. If we are to maintain ourselves as a republic, certain foundational principles of a republic must be upheld regardless of our economic structures. They are: popular sovereignty (power to the people, not Wall Street
or Washington); resistance to corruption (placing special interests ahead of the common good); a sense of the common good (all those things that we own and hold in common); and most of all civic duty, citizen responsibility, and citizen participation. Mr.
Eastwood, being a dramatist, could have made quite a discussion with that chair concerning these qualities and whether we all, not just the president, live up to them. The convention arena would have been even more dumbfounded, doubtless to the point of silence.

I want to be the kind of poet who can change seasons at will,

for whom the houses and trees keep affection.

End of day, swallows darting before the owl,

love revealing its true ambitions, 

I want to give celestial kisses to the animals,

to the horse especially

because he too is a philosopher. 

I try to think, where is my uninhibited side?  Is it attracted to coloratura snippets and therefore has to do with birds? Is it like a Russian chorale, a hundred fragments singing before a mirror? Damned if I know. My louche, unbuttoned, acerbic, free wheeling side pops up all the time. Says what it wants. Says what it wants. Said once: the enemy stars are the same as ours–said it to a military recruiter and why not? And said once to a government agent who was photographing a protest against Ronald Reagan’s involvement with the suppression of freedom in El Salvador: you know there are honest jobs, ones where you can make humble and lasting discoveries. And he of course photographed me.

The whole night world was making sense, the way it does 

When Sirius and Venus are low

And September’s wheat sighed in the wind.

I thought of the solo clarinet that Bartok stole 

From Sibelius who stole it from 

The summer weeds—one quick cry.

Issue Three of the Canadian Journal of Disability Studies is now online.

http://cjds.uwaterloo.ca/index.php/cjds/issue/current

Check it out and share it widely!

Featuring:

The Construction of the Disabled Speaker: Locating Stuttering in Disability Studies  

Joshua St. Pierre       

Paging Dr. Economicus: The Economics of ‘Obesity’ in the Canadian Medical Association Journal    

Angela Eileen Wisniewski

Creating a (More) Reflexive Canadian Disability Studies: Our Team’s Account           

Valorie Crooks, Sharon-Dale Stone, Michelle Owen

Climate Change, Water, Sanitation and Energy Insecurity: Invisibility Of People With Disabilities   

Gregor Wolbring, Verlyn Leopatra 

The “Slow Learner” as a Mediated Construct       

John Williamson, Jim Paul

Creation of a Canadian Disability Studies Program: A Convergence of Multiple Pathways    

Irene Carter, Donald R. Leslie, G. Brent Angell, Shelagh Towson, Debra Hernandez Jozefowicz         

what is said is: a poetic and oblique re/presentation of disabled women in a Canadian shelter

Nancy Viva Davis Halifax

Review: Titchkosky, Tanya and Rod Michalko, Eds. Rethinking Normalcy          .

Morgan Holmes        

Review: Murray, Stuart. Autism.     

Sarah Gibbons          

Review: Rioux, Marcia H., Lee Ann Basser and Melinda Jones, Eds. Critical Perspectives on Human Rights and Disability Law.    

Morgan Rowe

I wonder if I can stick to one thought, like a small hunting dog? Riding the train to New York, looking at the spoiled factory towns, the haunted river, can I hold with one thought?  I think I can be allowed a murmur. There has to be music in human silence. There may be music after this. Shadows fall together in the tall grass of a railroad siding.  Night crosses the desert of my understanding. I wonder if I can stick to one thought, like a small hunting dog?

It is late. The day was like a forest of stone with stringent ballads. Some sang the songs, some did not. Most tried to navigate between lithic trees. I have been in more than one ossuary on my travels. Skulls lined up like nouns for school children. Don’t look at me ironically with your post-modern peepers. The falling we will do ere long will be without end. 

Check out this video on YouTube:

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

Library Will Deploy Accessible E-readers to Blind and Print-disabled Patrons

Baltimore, Maryland (August 30, 2012): The National Federation of the Blind (NFB), the nation’s leading advocate for access to information by the blind and other people with print disabilities, announced today that a complaint filed by the NFB with the United States Department of Justice, Office of Civil Rights, against the Sacramento Public Library Authority has been resolved.  The NFB filed the complaint last fall because the library was lending NOOK e-readers preloaded with e-books to its patrons.  Unlike some other e-reading devices, the NOOK, which is manufactured and sold by Barnes & Noble, cannot be used by blind and print-disabled readers because it does not have text-to-speech capability or the ability to send content to a Braille display. 

The goal of the agreement is “to provide a library e-reader circulation program where library patrons, with and without vision disabilities, are able to access and use the same technology to the maximum extent possible.”  Under the agreement, the library will “acquire only technology that does not exclude persons who are blind or others” who need accessibility features such as text-to-speech or Braille output and the ability to access the device’s menus and controls independently.  The library’s commitment is also in line with a resolution passed in 2009 by the American Library Association entitled Purchasing of Accessible Electronic Resources, which urged “all libraries purchasing, procuring, using, maintaining and contracting for electronic resources and services” to “require vendors to guarantee that products and services comply with Section 508 regulations, Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0, or other applicable accessibility standards and guidelines.”

Dr. Marc Maurer, President of the National Federation of the Blind, said: “We are pleased that the Sacramento Public Library Authority is showing leadership by ensuring that the e-books that it lends will be accessible to all of its patrons, including those who are blind or have print disabilities.  E-books represent an opportunity for the blind to have access to the same books at the same time as our sighted friends, family, and colleagues, but sadly most e-book vendors have not designed their technology so that it can be used by the blind, despite the fact that it is not difficult or costly to do so.  Libraries, schools, and other institutions have a legal and moral obligation to make sure that the content they deploy is accessible to the blind and print-disabled.  If they meet these obligations by demanding accessibility from their e-book vendors, then accessibility will happen.”