Author: stevekuusisto

What happens is you’re planning the end of the week imagining you’re still part of the working classes who have earned their leisure time. You’re imagining this because the alternative is too grim to contemplate. You are aware that this very fear, or more properly its avoidance  is a luxury. Its Friday and you’re chewing your nails. 

Fear is on everyone’s  minds. Jobs are vanishing at the fastest rate since 1930 and the GOP has its heads in the dunes and the Dems are throwing money into the blast furnace and the jobs are vanishing and the jobs are vanishing and the jobs are gone.

To cheer myself (and because I don’t know any better) I read anything that isn’t the news.

But the problem is I am a nonfiction writer so I invariably find myself reading the kinds of true to life stories that fail to uplift the spirit.

Last night while the Iowa wind howled at the eaves I read In the Heart of the Sea the National Book Award winning history of the whale ship Essex by Nathaniel Philbrick.

The ship was rammed by a sperm whale and it sank far from land and the sailors navigated thousands of miles in their flimsy whaling boats only to starve. The survivors ate their dead companions. 

Around 3 in the morning it occurred to me that this wasn’t the right book to be reading as the economy collapses and the social safety net is imperiled.

I tried to think what I could be reading. I tried to remember what people read during the great depression. I remembered a Zen admonition: “If you have time to read, dance.” I thought of dancing. I thought of my wife who believes (with some justification) I am the world’s worst dancer. I will not dance.

I will read. I’m a professor of creative writing.

I thought of my friend, essayist and poet Peggy Shumaker whose memoir Just Breathe Normally tells the story of her near fatal cycling crash and her slow recovery–tells “it” through the gravitas of the inner life “where the meanings are” and lets the ordinariness of plot take a backseat to affairs of the spirit. I thought of how a writer like Peggy can remind us when we are tired or bowed down by the affairs of the world that its the care and nurture of the spirit that calls us to writing and to reading. This is what I was thinking at 3 in the morning.

Its too late to make a new year’s resolution but I made a promise to myself deep in the night that I would read Peggy Shumaker’s wonderful words again.

Creative nonfiction is a rich and variable genre. One can find plenty of cannibalism and there’s a place for the history of survivalist flesh eating. But not just now. Not for  me.

People in Iowa City are palpably afraid. The University of Iowa is facing a massive budget cut as are most of our nation’s colleges and universities.Shop keepers and the folks who sell cars or pet supplies–all are frightened that they too may wind up unemployed and unable to pay their mortgages.

Writers like Peggy Shumaker are not Pollyannas offering easy compensatory uplift. The writers of blurbs often tell us that memoirs offer visions of recovery. True memoirists tell us in no uncertain terms that people don’t really recover. We become strong where we are broken. This is a different thing from recovery.

Now is the time to read books that narrate how the spirit can be fed even when the times are dark. Today’s vote: Shumaker.

S.K.

I am not generally a dream teller though I can remember dreams and keep a dream journal on occasion. I shy from relating the mosaics of the illud tempus because we all know they can be starchy when passed along–what felt vital on the pillow turns to hardtack chewed at sullen breakfasts.

Sometimes dreams are richly and deservedly received by grateful conscious sectors of the mind as if the cavalry has arrived in the night with stores of water and good books. We were out on the frontier without poetry by god and Lo! Walter Whitman arrived with what the bible people like to call “the good news” and I don’t mind borrowing the term for what Carl Jung called jokingly “the devotional book of the subconscious”.   

Last night I dreamt of my friend Deborah Tall who was a poet and memoirist and a person of genuine ardor. Her life was cut short by cancer and the loss  endures for her friends and readers alike. And so last night it was a shy, unasked for gift from the unconscious when I met Deborah in a dream library where she was happy to show me book after book. Of course in the mysterious ways of dreams I don’t know the names of these other worldly volumes but I feel calm and refreshed withal for Deborah’s happiness was indeed a profound effect and it has followed me into this morning. 

“By God!” says the runty conscious mind. “By God! There’s something happening without my little purse.”

Deborah was alive in a great library where she had an office and poems and stars outside the windows.

Try putting that in the daytime purse ego boy.

S.K. 

As you can see from my wife Connie's post below Scott MacIntyre is currently a contestant on American Idol. Connie's post covers the basics: Scott MacIntyre is a professional musician with a solid following "out there" in the world of music loving people and heck he just happens to be visually impaired owing to a rare genetic form of vision loss that our friend Dr. Ed Stone is working to cure right here at the University of Iowa. As a music lover and as an advocate for people with disabilities I always poke my ears up when I hear that there's some very exciting new talent in the world and I get even more excited when I learn that the "talent" also happens to have some kind of a disability. This isn't because I think that pwds are heroic or that they're part of some kind of "overcoming" narrative but simply because I think that physical challenges are invariably incorporated into art–that is, I believe that disability is a deep and abiding form of emotional and imaginative intelligence for human beings. That this is hugely fascinating for me and for people who are interested in what is coming to be called "neuro-diversity" makes lots of sense.

So I was thrilled to hear of Mr. MacIntyre's current role on American Idol and even more fascinated to learn of his multiple accomplishments. He's a classically trained musician; a former Fulbright Scholar; he graduated from college at an age when most teens are still in high school. The man has lots of horsepower under his hood.

Connie's post points out that there's a sour comment on a blog having to do with American Idol that trots out the usual hoary bromide  that should Mr. MacIntyre win the whole shebang on American Idol this will no doubt have to do with "the sympathy vote". In her post Connie wonders what I might have to say about the matter.

First I should point out that the remark is essentially "ableism" and its no different from the casual racism that opines that so and so just got her or his job because of affirmative action. We've all heard that stuff over and over again. The late North Carolina Senator, Jesse Helms used that affirmative action gambit to get himself re-elected –his commercials would intone that "you needed that job but it went to affirmative action" etc. etc.

As it becomes harder to overtly dismiss people in strikingly racist ways I think its fair to say that bigots turn their gazes to people with disabilities. After all: someone somewhere must be getting something they don't deserve and which should be going to (insert your own group of privileged malcontents here).

Obviously if a person who has a disability also happens to have skills and talents then it surely must be the case that he or she gets the (insert item here, job, bonus, game show victory, parking space, etc.) only because there's a "sympathy vote".

What's funny about this is that only bigots believe this. If you ask a person with a disability or a member of their family or one of their friends if pwds receive unthinking and compensatory advantages in their lives they will laugh and laugh and likely fall over.

70 per cent of pwds are unemployed despite their levels of education and their evident individual talents. No sympathy vote seems to be apparent in the employment sector.

One quarter of people with disabilities graduate successfully from colleges and universities. That obviously means that three quarters don't make it through. Clearly there's an overwhelming sympathy factor working in our education system, eh?

I just have to laugh. Look on TV for successful images of pwds. You will find very few. NO sympathy vote there either.

Turns out that the sympathy vote exists only in the minds of bigots who have turned to ableism to keep their bigotry credentials active. One suspects that there's a "Bigotry General" who monitors how active the bigots are. She or he must be keeping score.

S.K.   

It's been a very long time since I (Connie) have done any blogging but tonight I stumbled on something and as a result, I just couldn't resist…

Honestly, I never watch American Idol.  Dancing with the Stars?  I love it!  It appeals to the aerobic instructor I once was…the music, the movement, the exercise…when I watch Dancing with the Stars it makes me want to get off the sofa and MOVE!  But I digress…

So it wasn't through American Idol that I happened to discover Scott MacIntyre.  I learned about Scott, and his family, by accident while researching an inherited eye condition called Leber congenital amaurosis.  It just so happens I work at the John and Marcia Carver Nonprofit Genetic Testing Laboratory at the University of Iowa where, with the help of baseball great Derrek Lee, and basketball great, Wyc Grousbeck, Project 3000 was launched.  One of the main objectives of Project 3000 is to find the estimated 3000 people in the United States who live with this form of inherited blindness and offer genetic screening as a means of learning as much as possible about this potentially treatable condition.  This evening I decided to do a little surfing in the blogosphere to see what information I might find about LCA.  Until this evening I had never heard of Scott MacIntyre.  I've since learned he sure can play piano.  Oh, and he can sing.  Randy and Paula and the new lady and whats-his-name – Simon – they all say so.  Scott is now a contestant on American Idol.

Congratulations, Scott!

I must confess, curiosity got the best of me and I did a little more "surfing".  I found a video of Scott's audition.  Where did I find it, you ask?  Would you believe I found it on a site called "Worst American Idols"?  I kid you not, there is a site devoted to this topic.  It's where I found this appalling statement:

"Scott Macintyre — the blind singer — auditions in Phoenix for American
Idol 8. This is a bit dangerous — if he makes it to the Top 36, he will
get the sympathy vote for sure. In fairness, he is a very technical
singer! His notes were very precise."

So let's see.  He is a major musical talent.  "He is a very technical singer!  His notes were very precise." 

Scott has got so much going for him and yet people are going to vote for him out of sympathy?  And that would be because….?

Oh, wait until Steve hears about this.

UPDATE: read Steve's most excellent response: Sympathy Vote Department

My retired guide dog Vidal has cancer. I learned of this last night when my friend Barbara (who adopted Mr. V as a family pet) called to say  that my old buddy is in the vet hospital with some serious problems.

More exactly he has one problem, a big one. He has a tumor that’s constricting his urethra. This is apparently limited to just this location and presumably the tumor can be surgically removed but the issue has to do with the enormity of that operation. To get where they need to go they will have to break his pelvic bone and with an 11 year old dog there’s no telling whether he would recover from that.

So right now we’re waiting to hear whether they think they can just shrink the thing with meds or what.

I know that Vidal has become an inseparable family companion for Barbara and her daughter Zoe. They have been loving him like the prince he is (though he’s naughty and likes to steal food whenever he can grab it) and they’ve learned to love his bark and his eagerness for walks and for romps in the backyard.

I’m just sitting in the University of Iowa library feeling a horrid gray net fall over me. I need to accomplish several tasks today and doubtless I’ll get them done but I want to weep openly and I’m putting the majority of my energies into holding my face tight as a screw.

Vidal I love you.

S.K.

Governor Blogo resisted the invitation to do his Nixon impersonation on yesterday’s broadcast of The View. That’s of course his own affair.

You can watch me make a different choice over at the Prairie Lights Bookstore site.

See Kuusisto Does the Kennedy-Nixon Debate just for the sheer brio of the enterprise.

SK 

We were sleeping and then we were awake. We saw the governor of Illinois declaring he was Jimmy Stewart although owing to our sub-lucid condition we could not remember a film wherein Mr. Steward played a souped up criminal narcissist with a Beatles wig atop his noggin but we tried to remember. We recalled successfully that Jimmy Stewart wasn’t a progressive guy off camera. We faintly remembered that Mr. Steward liked airplanes. He played a bad guy once or twice but not very convincingly–a fact that stands in unambiguous opposition to “Blogo’s”situation, that of a bad man trying to play a good guy.  

We were only half awake. We tried to recall the F.B.I. planting evidence on innocent people and we could remember lots of stuff but we couldn’t recall the F.B.I. doctoring wiretaps of politicians who were trying to sell a senate seat.

We imagine such things are possible. Maybe “Blogo” is wondrously innocent.

Maybe.

But we think he has to get a better story. Here are some suggestions:

He needs to hire Oliver Stone. Stone can craft a conspiracy theory that will make “Blogo’s” innocence or guilt completely irrelevent because we will be forced to conclude that anything destructive in the governor’s life is just more cultural pressure. See “The Doors” for example. 

He should hire Karl Rove. Rove will put out the story that the F.B.I. is in league with the Taliban and make this pronouncement stick by claiming to be shielding a Fox news personality who he can’t name. This actually could work.

In the meantime we think the only actor the governor reminds us of is Robert Blake. Its the hair and the talk. The unfaltering and aggrandizing declarations of pure innocence while reeking of powder burns. You don’t need Frank Capra for that.

S.K.  .

Emmanuelle Goodiern has an excellent editorial over at Mothering Magazine about the biz of hooking little kids with “Brats” dolls and other useless junk. Her main point is that anorexic fashion plate girl dolls create what we in the disability studies world call the “social construction of normalcy”–in other words, they promote a destructive fiction about human bodies.

“Why,” you might ask “is Steve Kuusisto reading “Mothering Magazine”?”

Because I think children are our future. Because I care about kids with disabilities. Because I was one of those kids once. Because I care about culture.

No. I’m not in the market for a breast pump.

Kidding aside, the commodity fetishism of anorexia and hooker fashions is relentless and you can check out the link on this blog to Gigi Durham’s excellent book “The Lolita Effect” for a deeper read into the industry that stands behind this social travesty.

When four year old girls come home loaded down with “Brat” gear and are swept up into the egregious and demeaning semiotics of pathetic misrepresentations of real bodies then its time to talk back to the damned culture.

Of course you can talk back and often nothing much happens right away. But things do eventually happen. Consciousness is impossible to stamp out. Gandhi said that first and he said it better. He was also a better dresser than I am.

I think I tell better jokes than Gandhi.

Still the commidification  of childhood is no joke.

S.K.

If you visit the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s ADA website you can read the followingdisclosure: 

In Fiscal Year 2007, EEOC received 17,734 charges of disability discrimination. EEOC resolved 15,708 disability discrimination charges in FY 2006 and recovered $54.4 million in monetary benefits for charging parties and other aggrieved individuals (not including monetary benefits obtained through litigation).

So I admit it’s early in the morning here in Iowa and I’m likely to be insufficiently caffeinated for the looming day and I have never been much at arithmetic (though I do know the difference between arithmetic and mathematics) and I therefore have a very primitive sense of scale.

Okay. But one thing leaps out at me: its estimated there are 54 million people with disabilities in the United States. The number is not solid and in truth its nearly impossible to know how many pwds there really are. But I think this is a good guesstimate.

So if you’re still with me this means that 1 million dollars was awarded for every person with a disability but of course the money went to something like 15,000 claimants.

Now I know and you know that the money is linked to penalties and damages–fines, governmental recovery costs, attorney’s fees, box lunches, cab rides in the rain, postage due, etc. 

But 54 million divided by 15,000 comes to 3.6 million per claimant.

I will argue for the sheer glory of it that for 3.6 million you could employ all the unemployed people with disabilities here in the state of Iowa.

Now we all know this isn’t real money.

Or is it? 

Hmmmm.

I better get a cup of coffee.

SK

The Supremes those enlightened and humane arbiters of civil rights for all have agreed to hear the case of an Oregon teen’s family vs. the Forest Grove school district–a case concerning the lower courts badminton over whether the public schools should have to pay for a private education when  they have failed miserably to accomodate and educate  a student with a learning disability. There are several features to this story that are achingly familiar: the public school officials who blame the student for her failures by pointing out that she was a marijuana user. The loud insistence that despite their failures to help the student get properly diagnosed and accommodated, they are just terrific at what they do. Its an old story.

Sometimes in creative writing classes I point out to students that the hardest story to write is the one in which everyone is a villain. I also suggest that these types of stories are quickly “dated” like those anti-heroic movies from the early 70’s that no one watches anymore. (Remember Ratso Rizzo?)

All stories about really bad people behaving badly and then more badly are always about money. I like to call this “the Bleak House Effect” and you can call it whatever, say something like “The Uncle Johnny Effect” or whatever you like.

The Supremes actually heard a case like this one back in 2007 and the creeps couldn’t come to a decision on the matter, splitting 4-4. But now they have their “Ken doll ultra conservative plastic   hair right wing Stepford husband Chief Justice who Can’t Administer the Presidential Oath of Office” so we can count on a ruling against the student and for the school district.

You can count on Judge Scalia to say: “Why doesn’t this student just drop out and go work in a lead mine?”

You can count on  Alito to say: “I’m not certain, but I believe I read in the Bob Roberts Medical Journal that marijuana causes learning disabilities…”

You can count on Clarence Thomas to snooze. When he wakes up you can count on him to doodle on his blotter.

The real crime here is that local school districts are often permitted to underfund their special education programs. Real lives are in the balance as we like to say over here at the POTB.

The fact that the Forest Grove school district had to pay for its failures is justice and you can count on the 5  clowns to administer the coup de grace. to our old blind lady.

P.S. I smoked marijuana in high school and it made the miserable hours spent in quasi suffocation go more gracefully upon the cherished inner life where the meanings are.

S.K.