D. H. Lawrence
The youth walks up to the white horse, to put its halter on
and the horse looks at him in silence.
They are so silent they are in another world.
PBS Documentary On Disability Rights Movement To Air Thursday Night
(Independent Lens)
October 24, 2011
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS– [Excerpt] People with disabilities are one of the largest minorities in the United States. But for most of American history, they occupied a sub-class of millions without access to everyday things most citizens take for granted: schools, apartment buildings, public transportation, and more. Some were forcibly sterilized under state laws. Others were committed to horrifying institutions where they were left and forgotten.
After World War II, however, things began to change, thanks to a small group of determined people with an unwavering determination to live their lives like anyone else, and to liberate all disabled Americans of the limitations their government refused to accommodate.
Lives Worth Living traces the development of consciousness of these pioneers who realized that in order to change the world they needed to work together. Through demonstrations and inside legislative battles, the disability rights community secured equal civil rights for all people with disabilities. Thanks to their efforts, tens of millions of people's lives have been changed.
This film is an oral history, told by the movement's mythical heroes themselves, and illustrated through the use of rare archival footage.
Entire article:
Lives Worth Living
http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/lives-worth-living/film.html
Related:
Documentary details disability rights movement (by WLS-TV disability rights reporter Karen Meyer)
http://bit.ly/ptmg4F
I learned yesterday while nosing around the internet that the Finnish poet Jarkko Laine passed away five years ago. I knew Jarkko only slightly, our paths having crossed when I was a Fulbright scholar in Helsinki during the early Reagan years. Once upon a time when Jarkko was visiting the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa I went with him to Moose Lake Minnesota to visit Robert Bly. Later Jarkko wrote a short essay about the trip for the Finnish magazine Parnasso. (He wrote touchingly of Bly’s affection for the poet David Ignatow, but left out the funniest thing for Bly told a cafe filled with hunting jacket clad Minnesotans that Jarkko was from Russia and was going to steal their blue jeans.)
Jarkko was an inventive and touching ironist–his poems tackled the runaway freight train of the sixties, all that cascading pop culture, but unlike the American “beats” he had a wonderfully Finnish sense–what you might call a homemade depth psychology. He could write lines like: withered leaves fly above the street, death’s butterflies, or, how sad! Everything! And how cheap to say it out loud!
Americans don’t think that way. I had planned long ago to translate Jarkko’s poetry into English as I admired his sang froid mitt tenderness. But my own blindness and daily struggle to live kept me from doing that. Then the years took the carriage.
But I will miss him. He would appreciate this little Chinese translation by Kenneth Rexroth:
A Sorrow in the Harem
Withered flowers fill the courtyard.
Moss creeps into the great hall.
On both sides everything was said long ago.
The smell of perfume still lingers in the air.
Wang Chang Ling
SK
There are some stories which can't be improved. A story at YLE begins with the following:
Marshall Mannerheim celebrated his 75th birthday in 1942 in the eastern Finnish city of Imatra, with Adolf Hitler also in attendance at the festivities. This event has now been reconstructed in Lego form and put on display in a book shop in Imatra.
I for one, am not so weary of the world that I require a Lego Hitler.
Jo Caird writes about theater in the UK. She recently wrote the following:
There are plenty of reasons to champion disability theatre and the inclusion of deaf and disabled artists in mainstream theatre practice. From the importance of equality of access to artistic professions; to the benefits that involvement in the arts can bring to deaf and disabled people; to the fact that wider audiences are currently missing out on the wealth of talent within the UK's disability arts community because so little of this work and so few of these artists ever break into the mainstream: as far as I'm concerned, it's a no-brainer.
See her full post here.
SK
CONTACT:
Chris Danielsen
Director of Public Relations
National Federation of the Blind
(410) 659-9314
(410) 262-1281 (Cell)
Anna Levine
Disability Rights Advocates
(510) 665-8644
Federal Judge Issues Permanent Legal Resolution for Blind Law School Graduate
Who Paved the Way for Blind Test Takers
Berkeley, California (October 26, 2011): On Monday, October 24, the Honorable Judge Charles R. Breyer ended a two-year legal battle between a blind law school graduate and a national testing corporation over the graduate’s right to use a computer equipped with assistive technology to take the California Bar Exam. Granting Stephanie Enyart’s motion for summary judgment, Judge Breyer found that Ms. Enyart is entitled to take the bar exam on a computer equipped with text-to-speech screen reading and visual screen magnification software, as the method that will best ensure that she is tested on her aptitude rather than her disability.
Stephanie Enyart, who graduated from UCLA School of Law in 2009 and first sought to take the bar exam that same year, was forced into court by the refusal of the National Conference of Bar Examiners (NCBE) to allow her to take the bar exam using her primary reading method, a computer equipped with screen reading and screen magnifying software. Ms. Enyart, who became blind in her early adulthood as a result of macular degeneration, has relied on screen reading and screen magnifying technology to read since college, through law school, and in her professional career.
Although Ms. Enyart won a preliminary injunction in early 2010, ordering NCBE to provide her requested accommodations, the case has remained in court for almost two years, as NCBE unsuccessfully challenged the district court’s preliminary injunction order first to the
Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and then to the United States Supreme Court. NCBE argued that it fulfilled its legal obligations to Ms. Enyart by offering accommodations such as Braille or a human reader—notwithstanding evidence that these alternatives do not work well for Ms. Enyart.
The courts resoundingly rejected that argument, holding that licensing examinations must be administered to exam takers with sensory impairments in a manner that “best ensures” that they are tested on what the examination purports to measure, rather than on the exam takers’ impairments.
Dr. Marc Maurer, President of the National Federation of the Blind, said: “Although blind people have practiced law successfully throughout history, we still face unreasonable and unwarranted barriers to entering and achieving success in the profession. Judge Breyer’s decision is a tremendous step forward in granting blind Americans seeking to enter the practice of law full and equal access to the process of acquiring their credentials. We applaud this common-sense ruling and expect full compliance going forward from the National Conference of Bar Examiners.”
Anna Levine of Disability Rights Advocates, an attorney representing the plaintiff, said, “Judge Breyer’s decision vindicates Stephanie Enyart’s request to take the bar exam on a computer, so that she can be tested on what other examinees are tested on, rather than on how well she uses an unfamiliar reading method. We only wish that NCBE had not fought this simple, justified request so aggressively over the past two years.”
The suit was filed on November 3, 2009, and charged that the NCBE violated the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and California’s Unruh Civil Rights Act by denying accommodations on the Multistate Bar Examination and the Multistate Professional Responsibility Examination, two components of the California Bar Exam controlled by NCBE. The State Bar granted Ms. Enyart’s request to use a computer on the essay portions of the bar exam, but was unable to grant her request on the portions controlled by NCBE.
Ms. Enyart was represented with the support of the National Federation of the Blind (NFB) by Brown, Goldstein & Levy, LLP, in Baltimore, Maryland, and the LaBarre Law Offices, P.C., in Denver, Colorado. The plaintiff was further represented by Disability Rights Advocates (DRA), a national nonprofit law center that specializes in civil rights cases on behalf of persons with disabilities, with offices in Berkeley, California, and New York City.
###
About the National Federation of the Blind
With more than 50,000 members, the National Federation of the Blind is the largest and most influential membership organization of blind people in the United States. The NFB improves blind people’s lives through advocacy, education, research, technology, and programs encouraging independence and self-confidence. It is the leading force in the blindness field today and the voice of the nation's blind. In January 2004 the NFB opened the National Federation of the Blind Jernigan Institute, the first research and training center in the United States for the blind led by the blind.
There's an interesting Op Ed piece in today's NY Times by Kathryn Marie Dudley. She discusses the Lacey Act which seeks to assure that wood entering the US is legally obtained within its country of origin. The substance or inciting principle of the Lacey Act is laudable inasmuch as the world's forests are facing severe dangers–some types of wood are on the verge of extinction, others have already vanished. The intent of the act is clear: if you're importing rare wood into this country you must ascertain that it was legally harvested. Ms. Dudley's editorial rightly points out that the Lacey Act may well hurt independent or small guitar makers and that the act needs to be reexamined to protect luthiers who are not big time makers of instruments. A further analysist of the issue (and a particuarly good one at that) comes from Bob Taylor of Taylor Guitars whose comments on the act can be read here.
I support the Lacey Act, and agree that it needs some thoughtful ammending. I am also a proud owner of three Taylor guitars.
S.K.
I dreamt last night that I was having a complicated surgery–something to do with my back. Perhaps I had this dream because a dear friend recently underwent a similar procedure. Maybe it was because I recently read a book about the dreadful medical treatment that President Garfield underwent after he was shot–it was the treatment that ultimately killed him and not the bullet wound.
One scene in the dream had me seated in a classroom with my wounds open. I had parts of my body but not my whole body. I think anyone who has a disability knows this classroom and this chair. Later I was in some kind of utility closet where parts of my body kept falling off. I needed to go to the bathroom but there was no toilet. A voice in the dream told me that the hospital used to be a nunnery, hence no toilets.
What does it mean to be a person with a disability in a time of heartless politicians and ugly theocrats? It means you may have a dream like the one above, or worse, you may be living it.
Toward the end of the dream I found I had many unreadable notebooks and no one to help me find the information I needed. It was obviously an old dream. At least I had some semblance of clothing. The worst dream is where you’re naked and there are nuns about.
SK
All afternoon I have found myself wondering where that cruel schoolteacher who made fun of my eyes is now. Did she continue in education, espousing brittle normativity with the smug cocksure ness of able bodied culture? Is she still in a classroom? How scary to imagine! Where are you, you callow, mean spirited teacher? Do you ever imagine the harm that’s yours?
– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Location:Syracuse
I remember the pain as if it occured just yesterday: a teacher in my 8th grade math class made fun of my blind eyes in front of the whole room. Because I have bad muscular control my eyes dart and wander and the teacher (who was barely out of college and a young woman who ought to have known better) said: "What are you looking at?" And then she crossed her eyes to make her point cruelly comedic for all the other 14 year olds in the room. I was so ashamed I got up and left. I wandered the hallways of the school with tears in my eyes–my apparently apalling eyes. I remember feeling the heat of embarrassment in the roots of my hair. And so of course I have just read the following excerpted news article from Inclusion Daily Express with deep distress. Shame on Jeremy Hollinger.
Teacher Allegedly Degrades Students On Facebook
(WALA)
October 20, 2011
MOBILE, ALABAMA– [Excerpt] A Mobile County Public School teacher is accused of making a spectacle of special education students. A mother transferred her child from Eichold-Mertz Elementary School after she said he was made fun of by his second grade teacher.
Teachers should be helpful, uplifting and positive toward their students, but a parent claims a picture is showing the exact opposite.
Celeste Dennis said, "It hurt. It genuinely hurt me."
Dennis was outraged after seeing what her child's teacher, Jeremy Hollinger, posted on Facebook.
She added, "My son wears a helmet for seizures during P.E. He had a picture of himself with my son's helmet on making fun on him like that was some type of a joke."
What upset Dennis even more were derogatory posts about children in her son's special education class.
Entire article:
Teacher allegedly degrades students on Facebook
http://tinyurl.com/3bx9zhl
Planet of the Blind 