Why at 65 was I just discovering one of the truly significant poets of my era? Let me give two self-serving answers to justify my ignorance: we have never had an effective means to discover the best poets among us — think Emily Dickinson — and Ruth never learned how to play the game. Perhaps she took Whitman seriously when he urged the poets of the future never to humble themselves to anyone.
See full piece at NY Times:
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Tell New York to stop chemical restraint of people with disabilities:
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I saw this story on the BBC News iPad App and thought you should see it.
** Why were people once put in ‘human zoos’? **
An exhibition in Paris looks at the history of so-called human zoos, that put inhabitants from foreign lands, mostly African countries, on display as articles of curiosity.
< http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16295827 >
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Stephen Kuusisto
Director
The Renee Crown University Honors Program
University Professor
Syracuse University
There is more than one way to be blind. My pal Leo sees through his own periscope. He is the commander of a private submarine–the USN Leo Hauser and though his sighted options are limited, they're still fair. He drives his car in a gated community in Arizona largely because he can still do it. Sometimes he honks his horn. And though he's looking through a tube, the day is glossy and brilliant as a an old Kodachrome. Leo can tell you that while blindness is not always a preferred experience it's often more interesting than sighted people suppose. For some of us the colors are beyond compare.
Another friend–I'll call her Karen–(not everyone wants to be known for folly) runs through a field in Nebraska though she sees only light. But the light is so gold, so dappled and evanescent that her description makes you want to cry. The average sighted person can learn from her how daylight spins between brown and yellow tonic, the drafts she drinks between the clock and the sun. Just run beside her.
Sight is an immoderate thing, never static. It is, perhaps, the dearest sense. The flickering light of a fire, shadows on a hearthstone; the laughing element of sun on water; early morning eastern skies; the cold and steady light at mid ocean–many blind people know these things. Nowadays more blind people see something of the world than is commonly understood. When next you see a person with a white cane or a guide dog, imagine they have beauty both inside and out.
Cold air comes down from the mountain.
Keep the radio on.
Mid winter, full moon. Lots of memories.
I still love the boundless sky.
I am old. I take care of my ox.
Alright, I admit it, I’m falling in love with my wife Connie’s horse. His name is “Luiggi” which probably means that he was a Mafioso’s tax shelter in his former life as a race horse. But he comes when you call, he talks, I swear he’s part Labrador Retriever. And he eats like a Labrador!
Sad to hear of Evelyn Handler's passing.
Pedestrian killed by car was 1st UNH female head
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“Yet not in houses made by hands does the Most High dwell, even as the prophet says…. Stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ear, you always oppose the Holy Spirit; as your father did, so do you also.”
(Yep, words like that will get you stoned every time.)
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In fact, we were never there, never! “Hey W, howdya like that democracy in Iraq thingy now?”
Low key plan indeed…
From The New York Times:
U.S. Embraces Low-Key Plan as Turmoil in Iraq Deepens
President Obama says he has no intention of sending troops back to Iraq, even if the recent violence and political turmoil devolves into civil war.
Stephen Kuusisto
Director
The Renee Crown University Honors Program
University Professor
Syracuse University
Planet of the Blind 