A Rhyme of Centrist Fantasy
You can take the middle of the road
If no one's breathing down your neck;
But truckers are on the left and right
and They're out of road kill–so what the heck?
You better hit the gas my friend,
you chose the center path.
There's only one way you can fend–
Hit it man and don't look back
We stood on a quay talking of illness,
Of a friend’s discomfort, the long solo of our age
Now people have the luxury of slow death.
A wooden shack leaned on the sea wall
Like something one finds after walking
All night—the house in a Russian tale,
Its windows open to admit souls.
Anyone can talk of dying, the measure
Of tongue and footfall, of boats in darkness.
But groaning, incapable as men are
We talked in the rhythms
Of singers from Tallinn:
Men who stayed up all night,
Turning their sleighs into coffins.
S.K.
Autumn and the bees
Flying among roses
Are like men working without guilt–
Prisoners all the same
Beneath their darkening windows.
S.K.
Half in the manner of St. Augustine and half in the sotto voce of Linus Pauling who hoped to live forever the clock hints of lives unfulfilled. The northeast window takes it up: these asides and hand wringings until dull matter reflects our wishing like a Mexican mirror. There’s nothing we can do to hurry ambition. Tonight my good friend Dr. S goes to bed thinking about post-molecular medicine. All day he has seen children who are going blind because there are pin-point spots in their respective genes. We are so close to curing blindness. We have advanced one hundred years in the past decade. We need only five more to restore sight. The FM says the world is ending. Everywhere evidence mounts for the end of culture. The great laboratories will be overrun by looters like the libraries of Mesopotamia. And while the winter stars rise fat and imperfect war merchants are planning the destruction of hospitals with American taxes. We are so close to making the young firm; the old see; the broken mind calmed; the old Rosicrucian marriage of light and dark; the very promise of matter; soul clap its hands; going to sleep is like rolling up a scroll, hiding it among stones for the ones who surely will arrive. Tonight I say they will come: the builders and doctors; the mathematicians and young artists from the orchards. 11 O’clock at night & we have work to do. Let it be said we stood upright in our age.
S.K.
I met a man recently who was twice divorced and recounting his woes he allowed that when his first wife left him he inherited her cat. As I endeavor to pose as a moderate man I withheld my approbation for privately I saw that the possession of a cat was simply another straw on the camel’s back. I kept mum. I held my measure. I made no moue of disgust. Oh but inwardly I thought of the injustice of the matter. In fact I thought of the terrible affliction that’s represented by leaving a cat to anyone–whether you like that person or not.I shall stand firm with this view no matter the tidal wave of feline hysteria that will assuredly come my way. Oh yes.
S.K.
Testing the new TypePad post creation settings…
why is it that even though I've published two posts today, they are not showing up on my blog?
Testing, testing, testing
Who tell me not to despair, that America hasn't become a vast, anti-intellectual morass despite evidence to the contrary. Thank you my dear pals who remind me that America has always been a rude, rootin' tootin' frontier where the arrogance of the angry mob has often been successful, except to say that on occasion our nation elects Jefferson or Lincoln or the two Roosevelts or J.F.K.–that yes, just so often our better natures do prevail. Oh my friends from your lips to God's ears. May it be so.
S.K.
So it was a rainy day in Iowa City and I was late for a meeting and I ran through the wet streets with my guide dog and we got to the fancy coffee and take out food emporium just a little late. The people we were to meet had gone. Speaking for ourselves the guide dog and the man were drenched. I made my way to the coffee counter hoping to discern whether there might be another seating area where my friends might be waiting.Now here’s the strange thing (or one of them) about being blind. You can sometimes see just enough to know you are being dissed.
The girl behind the coffee counter stared at me. She just flat out locked her eyes right at me and she
did so as if I was a mannequin. The counter was high enough that I suppose she might not have seen my guide dog. But a customer, sighted or not should be addressed I would imagine. Was her silence a reflection of the fact that I was standing there and not making eye contact save that I was holding my head up and first in line and surely that ought to be enough for a minor acknowledgement? Yes? I decided to seek out the manager and to politely suggest that blind people are customers too.
Ah but the manager upon being ever so politely summoned was also rude. “Yes,” he said, standing suddenly in front of me.
“Hello,” I said, I’m Steve–what’s your name? He told me he was Jim but not without some radiance of malediction.
So I told him I’m not certain that the folks at the coffee bar know how to be polite to a blind person–and before I had a chance to continue he turned on his heels and muttered something about having a talk with them and he walked away as fast as he could.
So needless to say I’m not shopping anymore at the Bread Garden in downtown Iowa City.
IN my world view, two strikes and you’re out.
S.K.
Note: I wrote this piece over a year and a half ago andI still think it’s worth reading, particularly if you’re blind and a guide dog user.
SK
If you visit the blindness blogosphere you will quickly discover anecdotal postings about the failings of the major guide dog schools in the
U.S.
The reporting is of course subjective and the anger bubbles over into some pretty hard hitting assertions. One reads for instance that guide dog schools are patrician, dismissive of blind people in general, dishonest in their granting of services, even capricious—as you read these posts you’d be tempted to think you were reading about Oliver Stone’s version of the Nixon administration
I worked at Guiding Eyes for the Blind as the Director of Student Services from 1995 to 2000 before taking a job as a professor at The Ohio State University. I left Guiding Eyes because I was longing to return to college teaching. As it happened,
Ohio
State
was developing a new disability studies curriculum and I was offered the opportunity to be part of some exciting academic initiatives. Yet I left the world of the guide dog schools with mixed emotions. I consider the American guide dog schools to be remarkable institutions and I count friends among staff at many of the programs.
Still the blogs tell a story and I want to think aloud about what these narratives may tell us about the guide dog schools and the contemporary world of blind Americans. As they like to say in the public relations business: perception is everything.
It’s clear from the blogosphere entries that many blind people consider the guide dog schools to be out of step with the times. This may be an unavoidable offshoot of two factors: 1. Guide dog schools are essentially residential rehabilitation associations which are strongly reminiscent of 19th century institutions; 2. as disability rights have expanded some blind people may forget that having a guide dog is not a right but a privilege: one that results from demonstrating that the client can look after a dog with discipline and adhere to the training principles that are essential to guide dog work.
These two factors appear to be irreconcilable until you consider the possibility that not all institutions are bad and that not all rules are devised to harm historically marginalized groups, even those who experience blindness or low vision. While many blind people argue that the guide dog schools are mostly run by sighted people and offer this as proof of a kind of institutional infantilization of the clients, its also true that guide dog schools are extremely interested in the views and ideas of their alumni. To read what’s on the blogosphere you’d imagine that the guide dog schools are operating as medieval fortresses with all the peasants locked up inside.
Still it’s true enough that the guide dog field should pay closer attention to important changes in blind culture. Many of today’s blind college students are not at all interested in taking time out from campus life to attend an isolated institutional setting.
Additionally it would be very useful if the guide dog schools stopped imagining that the provision of a guide dog is heroic work. Old fashioned sentimental rhetoric that still lurks behind some of the guide dog industry’s fund raising should be updated now that almost 20 years have passed since the ADA was adopted. Times change.
What’s wrong with the guide dog schools? Not much. But they need to pay more attention to today’s blind customers.
Planet of the Blind 