stevekuusisto

Could It Be?

My "baby" is all grown up now!

View this montage created at One True Media
Tara, Congratulations!

Click the thumbnail above to view montage of Tara’s graduation from the University of South Carolina, May 9, 2008. (Summa Cum Laude I might add…)

Photos are of Tara, her brother (Ross, in black), Rick (Tara’s Dad) and Jan, Tara’s grandparents (Bill and Norma), and myself. I’m sorry to say Steve couldn’t be there for the ceremony.

Needless to say, we’re a proud family.

~ Connie

*Oh gosh, I forgot to mention Tara’s beau, Ryan (in blue). He’s in some of the photos as well. Sorry ’bout that Ryan…

Blind professor helping UI students, doctors see disabilities in a new light

Steve Kuusisto, an English professor at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, Iowa, also has a joint appointment in the Carver College of Medicine as a "humanizing agent," helping educate doctors about disability issues. In this video, Kuusisto talks about his blindness, interacts with his students and discusses his current career ventures. GazetteOnline video by Michael Barnes.

LINKS:

Project 3000

May 16, 2008

EDUCATION
Opening others’ eyes
Blind professor helping UI students, doctors see
disabilities in a new light

By Diane Heldt

The Gazette

IOWA CITY — Blindness is thought by many to be a great calamity,
still viewed in 19th-century Dickensian terms, says University of Iowa
professor Steve Kuusisto.

But the reality, says Kuusisto, who has been blind since birth, is that
his talking computer, his guide dog and public transportation allow him to do
most anything sighted people can.

“It’s not an obstacle to having a good job and a full life,” he said.
“Nobody has to have a second-class life. Really, the sky’s the limit.” That
philosophy, the 53-year-old Kuusisto said, fuels a new vision of disability
that is emerging. That vision moves away from viewing people with disabilities
as “defective,” he said, to finding ways for technology and society to help
them lead the richest, fullest lives.

It’s a vision Kuusisto (pronounced COO-sis-toe) brought to the UI last
fall when he joined the faculty as an English professor with a joint
appointment in the Carver College of Medicine.

At the medical college he is a “humanizing agent” who helps educate
doctors about disability issues. UI officials hope Kuusisto bridges the goals
of disability advocates and health professionals.

“I’m probably the firstever poet named to a faculty of ophthalmology,”
Kuusisto says with a smile.

Continue reading “”

UI contributes to gene therapy breakthrough for blinding eye disease

University of Iowa News Release

April 28, 2008

UI contributes to gene therapy breakthrough for blinding eye disease

Researchers
at the University of Iowa played a key role in a landmark gene therapy
breakthrough reported Sunday, April 27, in an online article in the New
England Journal of Medicine.

The study reported
improvement in vision following gene transfer to the retina in three
patients with an inherited form of blindness known as Leber congenital
amaurosis or LCA. The study was carried out at the Children’s Hospital
of Philadelphia by an international team led by the University of
Pennsylvania, the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, the Second
University of Naples and the Telethon Institute of Genetics and
Medicine (both in Italy), the UI and several other American
institutions.

This is the first report of successful gene
therapy of an inherited eye disease in humans. Although the patients
have not achieved normal eyesight, the preliminary results set the
stage for further studies of an innovative treatment for LCA and
possibly other retinal diseases. Patients’ vision improved from
detecting hand movements to reading lines on an eye chart.

Edwin
Stone, M.D., Ph.D., UI professor of ophthalmology and visual sciences
and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator, led the genetic
testing portion of the study. Stone’s group developed a method for
distinguishing disease-causing mutations from benign genetic variants,
and this method was used to choose the patients who were treated in the
gene therapy study. The Iowa group also developed a highly efficient
nonprofit testing strategy that has allowed genetic testing for LCA to
be offered on a national scale.

"This is a very exciting
day for everyone involved in caring for patients with inherited eye
disease," Stone said. "We are very pleased that the Carver Lab at the
University of Iowa was able to contribute to this important step
forward."

Among those recognizing the breakthrough were
John and Marcia Carver, members of the family who donated $10 million
in 2005 to create and name the John and Marcia Carver Nonprofit Genetic
Testing Laboratory and the associated Carver Family Center for Macular
Degeneration at the UI. "We were very happy to hear of this
extraordinary scientific result and excited that the Carver Lab had an
important hand in it," John Carver said.

The UI is also home to Project 3000 (http://www.project3000.org),
a philanthropically supported grassroots effort to find all 3,000
people in the United States affected with LCA and to offer them a
genetic test whether or not they have insurance coverage to pay for it.

Project
3000 was created in 2006 by Stone, Derrek Lee, who is first baseman of
the Chicago Cubs, and Wyc Grousbeck, who is co-owner and CEO of the
Boston Celtics. Lee and Grousbeck have children affected with LCA.

Continue reading “UI contributes to gene therapy breakthrough for blinding eye disease”

The Basic Facts Writ Small

What do you know? Aristotle’s Ethics; Ted Williams lifetime records…

Know how fresh water salmon can be caught…

Joseph Stalin’s favorite gramophone record

Was a recording of wolves…

There are certain facts upon which you can’t improve…

They used to feed pigment through the bodies of earthworms back in the middle ages,

Just to produce a certain shine

In the paint used when making stained glass…

And Detroit automakers destroyed the world’s greatest passenger railway system in under 4 years…

S.K.

Getting Lost

The following “prose poem” is from my book in progress
entitled “Mornings With Borges” which will be published by Copper Canyon Press
in the Fall of 2010 if we are still holding our own on this mad planet. Like most
of the poems in the book this is about being lost in multiple and oddly
productive ways.

S.K.

Helsinki, Labyrinth, 1982

I got lost in the library last night and like most blind
people I touched walls and the spines of books.

“Hey Borges,” I said to myself, “Where do I find the entrance to Uqbar?”

(When I was a kid I used to climb in secret on the roof and sleep up there.)

So lost as I was, I pulled a book from a shelf and held it like a royal pillow.

I saw I was full of utility

Like a designer of fountains

Who does his best work in winter.

Flying Boogers

In his column the "Middle Seat" for The Wall Street Journal,
Scott McCartney writes about the state of the airline industry and what
that means for all of us as we rely on this mode of transportation for
business and for pleasure. Let me rephrase that. We rely on the
airline industry to take us to places for business and/or pleasure.

Today I happened to catch Fresh Air on NPR as McCartney explained in disgusting detail why to avoid the middle seat
on an airplane and were I near a phone I would have called in to state
my case as to "why to avoid any and all seats…" I was
unable to make such a call but that won’t stop me from sharing my
latest experience with all of you should you decide to continue reading
this post. Consider that a warning…

Continue reading “Flying Boogers”

Rudely Lucky

I am a lucky man because I own several rotten wood piles and an abandoned outhouse.

Yes. I’m a New Hampshire land owner and Jeezum Crow I have some God Awful things out in the woods.

I have a discarded septic tank that looks like a Soyuz space capsule.

I have a shaggy carpet of moss and a migratory flock of wild turkeys to stand on it.

I am in these ways what you might call a wealthy man.

Last summer a raccoon took up residence in the septic tank. I nicknamed him Yuri for obvious reasons.

I track the weather in New England from Iowa City. They say that today will augur fierce winds and heavy rain and I hope that my dear old outhouse will endure.

I am mindful that if my only worry is the disposition of my abandoned outhouse I’m in good shape.

I hope Yuri is okay.

Summer is coming.

A man’s thoughts turn to his outlying septic tank and spiders, mushrooms, loons, and cinnamon ferns in sunlight.

The Psychopathology of the Rotary Telephone

I recall it as an imperial thing: heavier than an encyclopedia, squat as an animal.

I remember fearing it somewhat. When I picked up the receiver there was a woman’s voice—a dark inquiry from a stranger. She said I shouldn’t play with the phone.

Now, in my fifties I dislike the damned instrument.

I see college kids walking all over town and chattering into cell phones. They seem to be nothing more than mannequins granted the gift of speech.

I understand everything!

We require the fearsome Operator more than we knew.

In the good old days the Operator kept our conversations honest and short.

Honest and short! Imagine!

Yes and in the good old days one had to have a reason for placing a call.

I heard a college student on the bus just the other day telling her friend: "I’m on the bus. I’m eating popcorn on the bus. I’m going home on the bus."

God help us!

I dial an imaginary phone with my index finger.

S.K.