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The guide dog world is a small one. It surprises people to learn there are only 10,000 guide dog users in the United States. There are lots of reasons the number is small: blindness is a low incidence disability; not every blind person likes dogs; two thirds of “the blind” in America are over 65 which means, among other things, they may not be genuinely healthy enough to walk with a powerful dog. Add the indisputable fact the US doesn’t have comprehensive national rehabilitation services (providing outreach and information to newly disabled citizens) and “voila” you have the prospect that many people facing vision loss don’t know they qualify for a guide dog and they certainly don’t know guide dogs are offered free of charge.   

 

In sum there’s a lot of “I don’t know” when it comes to the blind, whether we’re talking about guide dog users or not. Advocacy organizations like the American Council of the Blind, The National Federation of the Blind, and the American Foundation for the Blind do a great deal to educate the public about the blind in particular and disability in general. But for all their work the broader view about blindness in America is largely clueless.    

 

I’m in mind of these things because a blind man named Cecil Williams and his guide dog Orlando have been in the news—rightly so—for Mr. Williams fell onto the subway tracks in New York City and his dog, ever loyal, jumped after him. This is everyone’s nightmare, whether you’re blind or not. Its the terrifying scenario of Law & Order episodes. Its the bad stuff of dreams. One can’t imagine the terror that Cecil Williams must have felt. Then try to imagine being in the crowd on the platform—seeing a blind man and his dog down on the tracks, and hearing the oncoming train. 

 

There are moments in this life that strip imagination naked. 

 

Williams and Orlando survived being run over by a train and their story invites pure, instinctive joy. All the laws of machinery and probability have been swept aside. The fact invites one to believe in miracles. God or no God—it doesn’t matter. A man and his dog are safe. In a dark time when many feel civic or existential malaise this story is more than restorative—it affirms our nation’s ethos—people care. Bystanders waved their arms, alerting the train. Police and civilians came together. 

 

Then things went a little crazy. This is the part where the public’s lack of information about blindness in general, and guide dogs in particular enters the picture. Mr. Williams explained to reporters he was retiring Orlando. Orlando is, after all, 11 years old.  Its time for him to stop working. Williams had arrived at this difficult decision long before his accident. When asked what was going to happen to his brave dog, Williams said he was returning Orlando to the guide dog school. “Why,” the press wanted to know? Enter blindness-guide dog-sub-text number one:

 

“The guide dog school must be taking the dog away!” (This narrative automatically assumes three things: the blind are entirely passive and helpless; blind people are vulnerable; and behind this there lurks a heartless “them” because that’s a story Americans have come to imagine in these benighted times. Some horrible bureaucracy, some “Bain Capital” (or as Mel Brooks would have it, some “Engulf and Devour Corporation) was poised to take the man’s dog. 

 

Does it matter that none of the above is true? Yes. The blind do not live in a Victorian world of abjection and helplessness. Nor does any professional guide dog training school “demand” guide dog owners return their dogs when they grow old. A guide dog is yours for life. The only exception I know concerns verifiable animal abuse. Guide dog schools are not in the business of taking dogs away. 

 

Mr. Williams explained he didn’t have enough money to care for a new guide dog and keep his old dog. Enter blindness-guide dog-sub-text number two:

 

Blind people and their problems are entirely matters of money. 

 

Here’s the deal: a working guide dog team can receive money to offset the costs of veterinary care. A retired dog does not qualify for the stipend. This is a big honking deal if you live on a limited income. But its also a big honking deal if you do not. Every dog owner knows that veterinary care for older dogs is a considerable expense. Mr. Williams felt (prior to his accident) that letting the guide dog school find a suitable family to adopt Orlando would be in Orlando’s best interests. But there are other interests too. Many blind people (especially those who live in apartments) find it difficult to have two dogs. And the dogs themselves—that is, the retired dogs—can have trouble adjusting to staying home alone. The best scenario is when a dog can retire and there are people at home and maybe another dog or two. 

 

What I”m getting at is that Williams was giving his dog back to the guide dog school for all the right reasons. But suddenly, in a crazy and highly charged twist, the story became a charity narrative. That’s because surely all blind people must be terribly helpless; must need help overcoming the obstacles of a cruel world. None of this obtains in Williams’ story but the narratives sure took off. 

 

I don’t know Cecil Williams. But I know he loves his dog. I know that retiring Orlando will be terribly hard. I know he will always hold Orlando dear. I also know that the decision to let Orlando go to an adoptive family was not made because of a bank book. But that’s the narrative that ballooned out of control. By the end of the day on Wednesday some $40,000 has been donated to save Orlando. This is not necessarily a bad thing, except that mainstream news outlets are now reporting that because of this outpouring of generosity Williams can now keep his dog. 

 

Lost in the midst of this is that Williams may not want to keep Orlando—his plan was always to let him go to a home where he can have fun—rather than sit around in an empty apartment while the new dog goes places. 

 

The donated money will help retired dogs and will go toward Orlando’s retirement care. There’s nothing wrong with goodness. I’m not that much of a contrarian. But I do think the press should know more about disability in the broadest sense. It should know what the dilemmas and opportunities are for people with disabilities. Instead, what usually transpires whenever a disabled person gets in the news, is this outworn Dickensian world view. That’s the way this was presented just this morning on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe”—the poor blind man gets to keep his dog. I can attest there’s much more to this story. More professionalism. More community. More and more. 

 

      

My mother was a woman of snow

My father was a man of snow

My fingers are made of snow

That is all

 

 

Äitini oli nainen lunta

Isäni oli mies lunta

Sormet tehty lumesta

Se on kaikki

By Andrea Scarpino

 

I fancy myself a non-violent/yogic/Buddhist personality—or at least someone trying to increase her non-violent/yogic/Buddhist tendencies. I meditate daily. I’ve marched for peace, written anti-war protests. I grew up deeply respectful of the Quaker faith. I grew up hearing the words ‘conflict resolution’ on a regular basis. I remain horrified that Zac’s parents encouraged him as a child to hit a tree with a baseball bat when he was angry—how could anyone hit a tree? 

 

And suddenly, I find myself boxing—a sport I would have decried as violent just months ago. I find myself paying membership to a boxing gym. I find myself saying, ‘my boxing coaches’ in conversation with friends. I find myself reading Mike Tyson’s Wikipedia page, googling articles about Mikaela Mayer, watching YouTube fights, imagining myself being hit in the face. 

 

I find myself loving the feel of my black hand wraps, how gloves fit over my fists. Loving the feel of the punching bag when I hit it just right. Loving the hook. Loving the upper cut. How I turn my body. How I try to throw my weight into it. Loving the sound the jump rope makes. Loving the weight of medicine balls. 

 

Loving the boxing gym’s teamwork, how we count stretches out loud together, how we help one another into our gloves, how we shout encouragement. 

 

How good it feels—empowering—to learn how to hit. To punch some shit. To concentrate on my body’s movement through space. To feel my body as strong, capable, able to act and react. 

 

How when class ends, I feel released. The stress of the day slipped away, anxiety, sadness. I leave the gym with a quietness. How unexpected that is: to punch some shit and find some peace. 

 

 

 

Medieval image: the blinding of Samson’

 

 

 

No. This is not a scholarly paper. Concerning the middle ages and disability I’ll say only this—prior to the Enlightenment disability was conceived as a punishment from god or a mark of  dishonesty for disfigurement or blinding was a social punishment as Oedipus well knew. Therefore laughing at the disabled was either a religious matter or a village sport. Parading cripples through the streets was a vulgar form of comedy. This comes to mind often if you have any kind of disability for the contemporary public carries vestiges of the medieval unconscious. 

 

There’s been a lot of cheap comedy following the South African sign language interpreter incident. Disabled people don’t think the sport is amusing. Bill Peace over at Bad Cripple writes about the unrefined quality of the media responses to the affair:

 

I saw Stephen Colbert mock what took place. I was not impressed. Sorry but I find absolutely nothing funny about what took place in South Africa. All I can think of is the few deaf people I know and how they struggle to communicate in the hearing world. I wonder why is ASL not taught in every elementary school in America? Most importantly, why has the fraud become a joke?

 

There are two interesting rhetorical questions here. We know why the fraud has become a joke: disability has never stopped being a joke. It was always a joke because god willed it so—the infirm, the unseeing, the deaf were put on this earth to make “fit people” count their blessings. This is why American churches are not required to conform to the Americans with Disabilities Act. Don’t delude yourself: the cripples are not among the elect. They never were. 

 

So an ersatz sign language interpreter standing behind the President of the United States and gesticulating wildly, giving the finger to the crowd and making meaningless geometries in the air—well, that’s an incitement for ancient village laughter. Normal people never make a distinction between fake disability (which is funny) and real disability (which is funny) and Praise Be to God when the two subjects are combined. 

 

That’s an answer to Peace’s second rhetorical question. His first, why ASL isn’t taught in every elementary school, has just as much to do with the middle ages as the first. The aim of public education in the US isn’t to advance communication but to diminish it. If you’re child’s fate is to be a serf, why fill her up with abstruse nonsense like language skills or art? 

 

Its been my experience that the vast majority of “normal” people have no idea what their respective degrees of physical privilege really mean—or, in turn, how much that privilege colors their understanding of society. This is why Stephen Colbert or Jon Stewart or Rachel Maddow or the Today Show are largely no better (either individually or collectively) than a village farce when it comes to understanding the social construction of normalcy and its deleterious effects.    

Free speech is a tautology. Its primary clause is comedy. In its medieval guise it reassures normal people they’re still elect. 

 

  

 

 

When the river asked me to join

wind was still. So I put half my arm 

in there—cold bone brother

and sure 

river wasn’t satisfied—

it begged for more arm. 

I plunged up to my shoulder

like a man 

who’s dropped his car keys,

reaching among reeds 

feeling my ancestors.

Grandfather was giddy

with parturition and slick. 

“God help me,” I thought, 

“letting fast river talk me 

into metempsychosis.”

Water flowed one way

and the dead the other.

 

My psyche is built of mordancy and keenness. I laugh oddly because I’m one of those souls who thinks playing chess by our own rules is truly funny. One of the highlights of my life was being allowed to spin Marcel Duchamp’s bicycle wheel in the Museum of Modern Art. That was a Rabbinic moment for me—I was aging Adam and being granted one more look into Paradise. 

 

**

 

Carl Jung said modern science tells mankind there’s no one looking after us, and so, accordingly, we’re filled with fear. I can’t explain my contrarian feeling—but I’m not afraid. I had one mother and one father and they were helpless people. I don’t need a heavenly father or mother. I’ll be happy to return to star dust. 

 

**

 

So what makes me laugh my ass off? Greek poetry! Become what you are! 

 

Some mornings I make up my own Greek poets. Here is the ancient poet “Hygiene”:

 

The drip of the bathroom tap

Morse code of a sort—

Wash your fingers separately 

the gods say

But they don’t tell us why…

 

**

 

Mistakes are funny. I once stepped on a water lily. I was four years old. Stepped right out of the boat. 

 

**

 

BTW—not very funny, but  illuminating. The Brothers Karamazov and Carl Jung’s Psychological Types make excellent paratactic reading. I love it when books go perfectly together. 

 

**

 

When the old queen dies, who will burn her secret, impious books?

 

**

 

Great moments from Auden:

 

“After Krakatoa exploded, the first living thing to return 

Was the ant, Tridomyrex, seeking in vain its symbiot fern.”

 

 

**

 

Even in winter I dream of insects. 

 

**

 

The able bodied people laugh at the infirm. This is because we’re still living in the Middle Ages. Science was working to pull us out, but the Cold War buffaloed the effort. Its all darkness and lesser darkness in the public mind. Science got slaughtered in its cradle. 

 

There is nothing funny about this. 

 

**

 

Here’s wishing you a neutralizing peace and an average disgrace, as Auden would say…

 

 

 

 

 

 

   

Photo of Stephen Kuusisto taken at Grinnell College, courtesy, Ralph Savarese

The appearance of an ersatz sign language interpreter at the memorial service for Nelson Mandela reminds me that able bodied people are fakers.

 

Who are you? Not the first question of philosophy. But the most important. 

 

Old woman yesterday in bagel shop, admiring my dog. Her face a Britannica Encyclopedia of acquired pain. 

 

A knock on the door. Oldest dramatic device. Second oldest—poisoned swords.

 

Its early and I’m drinking coffee. Typing fast. Still walking the basement of dreams.

 

Dreamt last night of a fine sailing ship. It was beautiful turning into the wind. 

 

Many years ago I went into a repair shop in Helsinki—the old man who repaired typewriters was deaf. A friend said: “He’s good with machines.” But I saw he was good with what Jung called the psyche. 

 

Good bye, Medieval God, you who rewarded goodness, punished evil. Sometimes I think I miss you. But then I read Tom Paine and I cheer right up. 

 

Here come my dogs. Its time to go out into snow. 

 

Here’s to the new Institute of Hope. I dreamt it last night. 

 

 

Because my dog loves me I’m fractionally taller than I used to be. Of course this sounds silly. But then again, it isn’t. Walking with a guide dog makes you stand up straighter. “Damn,” says my dog, “damn you look good!” 

 

We follow the twisting tracks of the day. I’m straight. She’s fast. How perfect this team is! 

 

We walk through a green plush garden. Its an amazing garden. The dog says: “You ought to smell the chickadee. Now that’s a smell!” I know this is what she’s saying. Me? I hear it. A bird like a stenographer. Happy talking bird. My dog says she loves her life. I can hear her also. I think all blind people who have guide dogs know what I’m talking about. Dog-a-sthesia. You’re just walking around and darned if you’re not connected to everything. 

 

My dog’s inner life magnifies my own. Some people would think this is nonsense. I don’t really care. More and more, by tacit consent, I ignore the able-bodied world. I know its there. But I don’t care much about what they think. 

 

I’m tall. My dog is fast. We talk to birds. Over and out. 

 

 

 

All the cautionary tales of civilization are spread out in my dreams. Up first: Charles Babbage tried to convince me, just last night, that statistics will help the poor. I really dreamt this. Later I dreamt of acorns. I woke up with the little dog kissing my face and the big dog staring at me.

 

**

 

The rocks are big and bad. America. Everyone staggers under monetized fear. All those hopeless baseball hats. Everyone needs a service animal. 

 

**

 

Ptolemaic America—what they mean by exceptionalism. We’re at the center. This is of course ridiculous. It makes my lips numb from mumbling.

 

**

 

I also mumble in my sleep. Good morning Emily Dickinson. Happy birthday.

By Andrea Scarpino

 

We’ve all seen them, the feel-good stories showcasing people with disabilities and their non-disabled benefactors. The high school football team who ‘lets’ a player with autism score a touchdown. The cheerleaders who welcome to their squad a girl with Down syndrome. The family who makes a point of adopting kids with physical disabilities. O the kindnesses of strangers. O how generous the people who open their hearts to those different from themselves. 

 

This is the time of year for these stories, of course: we all want to believe we’re a pretty good species, despite the contrary evidence. See how we help one another. See how resilient we are. 

 

But should we really be patting one another on the back for acting with basic human decency? Is it really worthy of the news when we treat one another with kindness? 

 

Or are these stories serving an important societal purpose: maintaining the hierarchy between ‘able’ and ‘disabled’? Solidifying socially-constructed difference. Supporting the supposed normalcy of the disability-free body. Encouraging the gratitude of people with disabilities for any non-malicious treatment. Because what these stories teach me is that people with disabilities are so foreign, so other, so much work that we should feel grateful that anyone without a disability pays us any attention. 

 

Clearly, the media thinks the currently non-disabled do us great favors in offering their friendship; the non-disabled deserve great praise for treating us with basic human decency. Otherwise, why would the family that adopts children with disabilities deserve columns of writing when adoption is a common and usually non-newsworthy occurrence? And why isn’t anyone writing congratulatory stories about the men who don’t abuse their female partners? 

 

I believe that disability is a social construct, that health and illness are social constructs, that everyone will experience disability if she lives long enough. And I believe that my body—physically disabled by birth and chronically disabled by a hormone-related constellation of pain issues—is just as worthy of kindness as any other body. I believe that I deserve friendship and non-malicious treatment just by virtue of being a person in the world—not because my body is so different from yours that you are doing me a favor in showing me kindness.

 

Because we all deserve kindness, don’t we? Whether or not we are currently disabled. Whether or not our bodies demonstrate difference. Whether or not a journalist is nearby, pen in hand.