Author: stevekuusisto

Poet, Essayist, Blogger, Journalist, Memoirist, Disability Rights Advocate, Public Speaker, Professor, Syracuse University

My First Minute with a Guide Dog, Recalled After Years

 

Did the man know what “safe” meant? He had to concede he hadn’t known until Corky came into his life. Before meeting her he’d been dancing on a weak floor. Really, the floor of his world had been like the planks in an old farmhouse. As a teenager, with his sighted friends, he’d break into abandoned houses and the boys would walk timidly over sagging boards. They might fall into the dark cellar with the next step or the next. He hadn’t been afraid. It was just blindness extended. If you live in the absence of safety you can’t magnify it.

 

Walking with Corky he saw he was finally guaranteed good steps. He’d never known them before. His landscape would never be the same. He saw that he would never be the same on the inside. He had a dog soul now. He and Miss Corky were twins. He understood this was real. He knew something of the ancient man who first knew how life could be more secure, more eventful, more of hope, just because of the dog.

 

 

[News from ADA-Ohio] Action Alert: Stop the Attack on the ADA

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

Begin forwarded message:

From: adaohio@aol.com
Date: April 19, 2012 6:48:31 PM EDT
To: ada-ohio@listserve.com, houstoncil@yahoo.com
Subject: [News from ADA-Ohio] Action Alert: Stop the Attack on the ADA
Reply-To: adaohio@aol.com

Action
Alert: Stop the Attack on the ADA!

 

There
is an attack on the Americans with Disabilities
Act in the 112th Congress. It is time to fight for
your rights. Tell Congress: Stop the Attack on the ADA
Now!

 

On
March 16, Representative David Schweikert (R-AZ)
introduced H.R. 4200, “To Amend the Americans with
Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990”. On March 26,
Representative Mick Mulvaney (R-SC) introduced H.R.
4256, “The Pool Safety and Accessibility for Everyone
(pool SAFE) Act”.

 

These
bills will eliminate the balance of powers and will set
prejudicial precedent by weakening the ADA.

 

The
House Judiciary Subcommittee on The Constitution has
scheduled a hearing to discuss this
legislation.

 

When:
Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Time:
4:30pm EST

Room:
2141 Rayburn House Office Building

 

Take
Action:

Come
to DC to fill the room: if you are in the area or are
able to travel to DC for the hearing, please come and
bring your family and friends!

Call
the Subcommittee: contact Majority Leader
Representative Trent Frank (R-AZ) through the
Subcommittee office (202-225-2825) and through his DC
business office (202-225-4576) and tell him to stop
supporting these bills!

Call
your representative: If your representative is a
co-sponsor on either of these bills call them
today
and tell them to remove their name as a co-sponsor!
Find out if your representative is a co-sponsor by
using the Library of Congress
website.

Contact
your representative online: find the representative for
your state and click on their contact form to submit
your letter. In your letter, identify yourself as a
constituent and urge your senator / representative to
“Please stop supporting H.R. 4200 or H.R. 4256. These
bills would start the destruction of the ADA as we
know it!”.

Then,
get your family, friends, co-workers, and other
community members to act as well. Follow us on Twitter
and Facebook for updates!

For
further information, contact Dara Baldwin, NCIL Policy
Analyst, at 202-207-0334 or dara@ncil.org.

Reporting from a Thicket of Yellow Roses: Supporting People with Disabilities in the Public Square

I will be speaking on Friday at the annual conference of the New York State Association of Community and Residential Agencies.

Here is what I plan to say:

One night many many years ago I went out and lay down in a thicket of yellow roses. The roses were in the garden of the Prado museum in Madrid. I lay among the flowers on an ordinary day, a day of overcast sun and businessmen hurrying and tall balcony windows shuttered and the streets with creeping taxi cabs.

I had gone alone to the museum because my Spanish friend could not come with me. I was too blind to see the paintings very easily. How do I explain this? Why would a person with an occluding disability undertake a solo hunt to the world of paintings? Here are some answers, offered in no particular order of importance:

•  I wanted to see paintings–up close I might have an experience of Goya.

•I thought there might be some kind of tour guide who could describe things.

•I imagined that my passion for life would be equalled by the world: a utopian position that all persons with disabilities must maintain.

The more I think about it it’s answer number three that motivated me. I thought that my desire for an inclusive life would in turn open the world before me. And I still get up every day imagining this.

The Prado museum didn’t have any special accommodations for visually impaired people. So I began walking around. How simple that sentence is! I began walking.

But there were thick ropes in front of the famous canvases. And sinister guards. And I walked from one gallery to another seeing nothing of the art. I saw beautiful mud colored walls and little high intensity lights and then I found myself trailing a group of American tourists who were being led by a woman tour guide. Frankly I felt like a man who had been walking down a mountain on a dirt road. And after great solitude  I’d found my people.  The tour guide was explaining something about Velasquez. How he used perspective–I don’t remember any more.

What I do remember is the overt cruelty of the woman tour guide who, seeing me trailing her group, chose to confront me by saying, in effect, that I was not part of her group and I should immediately get lost.

I ran from the museum and found my way to the circle of yellow roses and I wept. I cried because I was tired; because I had a disability for which I had only the most apologetic language; cried because I had no allies–my host in Spain had no time for my disability, he was tightly wound and fighting his own battles. And this is what I’m getting at: disability is always and I mean always a problem of imagination. How will I live? How will I belong? What will I do? Who will accompany me? Who will wait on the slope and cheer me on?

Continue reading “Reporting from a Thicket of Yellow Roses: Supporting People with Disabilities in the Public Square”

Leake & Watts boy's death: 'I can't breathe,' boy shouts after staffers piled onto him, witness says | The Journal News | LoHud.com | LoHud.com

http://www.lohud.com/article/20120419/NEWS02/304180105/Leake-Watts-boy-s-death-can-t-breathe-boy-shouts-after-staffers-piled-onto-him-witness-says?odyssey=tab%7Ctopnews%7Ctext%7CFrontpage

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

Fear Itself, an Unnecessary Barrier to Hiring Veterans with Disabilities

Fear Itself, an Unnecessary Barrier to Hiring Veterans with Disabilities

By Bill Lawson, National President, Paralyzed Veterans of America

Franklin Delano Roosevelt famously rallied America in very tough times by stating that the “only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” Eighty years later, fear itself is getting in the way of some employers hiring Veterans with disabilities; fears that are perhaps understandable, but upon closer examination, unfounded. As I write this blog, I am traveling across our nation to raise awareness of the issues facing paralyzed Veterans and their families during Paralyzed Veterans of America Awareness Month. From my hometown of Woodward, OK, to Washington, D.C., one of the biggest challenges facing all Veterans…

Visit Disability.gov for more employment-related resources.

On Poetry as Capacity

It’s morning in your head. Is it the same morning outside? The same for the robin? The stray dog? How about the refugee? Alright, I’m teasing. Leave phenomenology aside. Let’s say the issue–“morning ness” has to do, not with witnessing, but with capacity–the places you’ve made for the new day in your understanding. The early light is not lonely, nor does it emanate from angels, nor is it strictly about angstrom units. Inside you it’s a Rococo picture frame of competing interests, a design for optimism or joyless finger painting. Part of memory, part a direction from someone off stage, who loves you when you think hard.

 

Homage to Robert Bly

 

Nobody rests and that’s the truth, friend. I woke this morning and saw the first leaves on the apple trees. They were lit by their own stars. I stood on the lawn and played with mathematics while my dog prowled the grass. I like to count things silently because when I look at objects I lose them–do you know what that is? Who doesn’t break into pieces while watching the red winged blackbird solemnly raise one leg. He was an old Slavic dancer. I counted backwards in fractions. I shivered. Say something else. That’s all I know. Fractions. Slow at first. Then faster and faster.