You can sing a long time when alone. I sang once to the plum colored sky at a window in Helsinki. I was singing to the future, that army of empty high rises. Really, you can sing to anything. Today I will sing to a stand of bicycles. I’m going to sing a song called, “After the Attack” because there are children in _________.
–For Ken and Kit
When I was very small I thought there was a man inside the window. He was frosted like the glass and more than once I knew he was the one doing the talking. I think he’s asleep now in the apportioned mansion of collective childhood. Meantime I try to think what I knew back then, not as a Romantic, but because a blind child hears in the humming of houses an “echo game” –a left-brain/right brain link between facts and bigger abstractions.
Example: today snow fell from the roof and I thought, “international date line”–somewhere a ship was crossing to yesterday. Bang. A timpani. A thing pops up. All poets do it. But kids with disabilities, they do it even more. Bang. A dragon glitters in a hedgerow. Bang.There’s your father’s whisky in a glass, the sun shining through. Bang. There’s your blue-scarf whisper of quiet amusement because they left you alone. I didn’t want to be forgiven. I didn’t care much for games. Bang. There was a fiddle. It must have belonged to my grandfather. He didn’t like music, but he left it for me. Bang. Whenever I was in danger I saw that old violin.
Here comes a dog who knows something big. She’s a “distraction dog” and today is “distraction day” at Guiding Eyes. At Guiding Eyes everyone has a job, dogs and humans, even this hyperactive Jack Russell Terrier with big eyes. Her name is “Daisy”. Her assigned duty is to leap, twirl, stand, lick, bark, and of course, act larger than she really is.
She’s joined by several canine comic actors. “Moose” a chocolate Lab, who looks hungover, like he had a few too many Brandy Alexanders last night at the Kennel Club; “Maxine” a Rottweiler, graceful and wide awake; “Leah” a Golden Retriever who started as a guide dog but was released because of noise distraction–to spare her feelings they call her a “career change dog” and her new role requires her merely to look good, something all Goldens can do. There’s “Simon” another career changer with the tallest ears of any German Shepherd you’ll ever see. And there’s a Lhasa named “Bingo” who spins around and around, waiting for the big show.
Everyone, dogs and dog trainers, has a position–this is like gym class in school–in a moment the action will begin but now positions are being parceled out and a few basic rules are revisited. There’s a line of folding chairs in the middle of a great room and portable fencing affixed alongside, effectively dividing the space into two zones. The distraction dogs are on the east side, running up and down the fence, happy at their unbelievable luck. Their job is to make noise, leap and romp, but above all, to try with every canine guile to trick working guide dogs into losing their focus. What a great job!
In the wild dogs play when the world allows it–when the pack has been fed and the fields are safe. So this isn’t just an exercise, not to the distraction dogs, this is a signature moment of collective goodness. The game means its a good life.
Now come the guide dogs wearing their brand new leather harnesses. Each works beside her trainer, alert, wiggling just a little, because pandemonium is just two feet away on the far side of a temporary fence. Guide dog one is leading her trainer, head up, tail wagging. Daisy the Jack Russell is hopping up and down like her paws are on fire and she’s yipping at the top of her voice, the Jack Russell way of saying “No one gets out of here alive!”
And because Daisy is on fire, the others perk up. Moose shakes off his hangover and barks as if a miracle is occurring. It’s the surprised bark of a Lab, a little bemused. And he follows Daisy up and down the fence. If he was a man he’d be clapping his hands. And Leah the Golden gets the scoots–she runs up and down without paying any apparent attention to the guide dog–she’s going as fast as she can straight toward a far wall. Then, like an outfielder, she hits the breaks, spins, and runs as fast as she can in the opposite direction. Sheer joy has overtaken her. Then in the middle of the room she just throws herself into spinning. She’s officially become a dervish. Simon the shepherd looks concerned as if this might be catching and then he starts barking as if issuing orders.
And our guide dog is walking her side of the fence like a true stoic, never breaking stride, even when Bingo the Lhasa goes stumbling into a chair, knocks it, then backs up and issues a stream of ancient invective–a shouting, tiny, hairy little savant with beady eyes and a lot to say.
More dogs are introduced to the distraction side: beagles, a poodle, a few undefinable ones, and the pandemonium is fair wondrous. Noses are sharp, eyes are sharp, barks and yelps and open field running and across the fence the guide dogs and handlers walk the gauntlet like officers of the deck, so poised and focused its unlike any dog-work you’ve ever seen. Distraction day, the pure Apollonian-Dionysian game that shows all the glories of dogs at work and play.
The blue house stood at the end of a dirt road. It was the home of eight dogs, a kind of Pippi Longstocking affair, no humans, just dogs. No one knew how they came to live there or what happened to the original owners. And no one knew why the town didn’t come and tear the house down, except the town had two policemen and a creaking fire truck and the dog house caused no problems–it was far away and anonymous both as structure and habitat. If the dogs came and went it was their own business. People understood the dogs had business. This was in the last days before television. People understood many things about their ambient atmosphere. The blue house was just the leftover of a local oddity. And the dogs went in and out of the windows and were untroubled.
They used to argue about the origins of socialism in the old worker’s bar I loved when I was in my early twenties–nights, an accordionist, true mist from the canal, and hot tempered beer soaked legerdemain viz Babeuf and the Society of Equals. Now I’m nearing sixty and I live on books, alone in a covert. Soon I’ll drink the potion of the old. It is terrible to have no one to talk to. As for the accordion, its a real Marxist music box though they won’t tell you so on National Public Radio.
(Oakland Press)
February 28, 2013
PONTIAC, MICHIGAN– [Excerpt provided by Inclusion Daily Express] Americans with disabilities will lose educational, housing, job search and food assistance benefits under the automatic sequester cuts that will take affect Friday.
The cuts totaling $1.2 trillion during the next decade will be split between defense and domestic discretionary spending but will have a “severe impact” on those with disabilities, one disability rights agency said.
The National Council on Disability late Thursday urged President Obama and Congress to “find a responsible alternative to sequestration to prevent potential harm to Americans with disabilities and their families.”
For the 57 million Americans with disabilities, the cuts will impact “everything from special education to transportation, to housing and health care programs,” the Council said.
To people with disabilities and low incomes, staff time and resources are likely to be compromised with regards to welfare, food stamps, unemployment benefits and caregiver provider benefits.
Entire article:
Federal spending cuts will have ‘severe impact’ on disabled
http://tinyurl.com/ide0228131a
Related:
What Will Sequestration Mean for People with Disabilities? (National Council on Disability)
http://www.ncd.gov/newsroom/022813
Education Secretary Says Special Education To See Cuts Under Sequestration (Education Week)
http://tinyurl.com/ide0228131b
Sequester Could Leave Special Education Kids Without Important Services (Huffington Post)
http://tinyurl.com/ide0228131c
A few days ago I wrote on Facebook that the pdf conference schedule for the upcoming Associated Writing Programs conference is inaccessible for people with disabilities. A friend forwarded my post to AWP and I received a very gracious note from Christian Teresi who is the conference organizer. She wrote:
Hi Steve,
I saw your post on Facebook and wanted to take a minute to get in touch.
There are actually three versions of the schedule on the website.
There is an HTML version here: https://www.awpwriter.org/awp_conference/schedule_overview
This is the most up to date version.
But there is also both a PDF and HTML version here: http://www.pageturnpro.com/Progress-Printing/48749-2013-Conference-Program/index.html#1
Both HTML versions should be accessible by any screen reader.
I’m guessing that you were looking at the version of the program that defaults to the PDF that is not accessible, but please note the problem is easily resolved by clicking on HTML button at the top of the screen. This button is tagged and any screen reader should be able to see it.
The PDF/HTML version of the schedule is really just to supplement the main, most up to date, HTML version on the website.
If you are using a reader that cannot access the HTML programs please do let us know. Even though we make efforts to ensure that they are accessible we have no way of testing compatibility with every kind of reader here.
We work hard to make the schedule accessible to everyone, and it is a great help to us to hear from our members when problems arise so we can work on a resolution.
Let me know if you have any questions. We’re looking forward to see you at the conference again. Best, Christian
**
I am certain that Christian Teresi is a good hearted person, but In point of fact the second link highlighted above leads blind readers to an entirely inaccessible website. The first link is also inaccessible. What’s interesting to me is the idea that some things should be inaccessible, that it’s ok.
About six or seven years ago I had such a bad experience at AWP (inaccessible podiums, hotel annexes without wheelchair ramps, etc.) that I decided to stop talking with AWP about issues of accessibility. I’m not fond of being the accessibility guy.
But AWP has goofed. The stuff posted can’t be read by people who use assistive technologies. I wasn’t wrong in this.
SK
I decided to send all my dreams back to the department store. The clerk looked like Dan Blocker, the big guy from Bonanza. He was big, but sounded a lot like Walter Brennan. To confirm it, Dan said: “Was you ever stung by a dead bee?” The Macy’s of the unconscious looked like Madame Tussaud’s meets the aircraft carrier Lexington. Then I realized it was Detroit. A saint made of wood was smiling beside a painting of a wheat field.
In nine days I will pack up my dirty laundry and go home, after a glorious five weeks at the oldest residential arts colony in the United States. I have spent my time writing both poetry and prose–mostly prose, parts of a new book about guide dogs. Tomorrow night I’ll even read some of this work in downtown Peterborough, New Hampshire. It’s important to have time alone to create art but its also extremely good to have a community and I think that’s one of the most remarkable things about MacDowell. You leave your studio after hours and hours of solo flight, hard thought, wrestling with ideas and music and architecture and film and language rhythms, with sculpture, with myth–and then, Lo! You’re in a room with people who have worked assiduously alongside you, fighting and glorying in the same rough and powerful mysterious ways of art. I don’t know about you, but I seldom have this sense of almost mystical solidarity in proximity to other human beings when, say, I go to the shopping mall or the dry cleaner. I am grateful to this nurturing place, not merely for what they’ve done for me but for what they give to so many. Art comes from here. It goes on and out, like birds rising, circling over northern Finland. By this I mean, beauty stirs in the world, surprises us, even in lunar places.
I remember the snow was waist high in Iowa City. I had influenza. I had an apartment that always smelled of cooking gas but the gas company couldn’t find anything wrong.
I had a headache that wouldn’t go away. I didn’t even own a radio. I got dressed, badly, the way you do when you’re ill, and went out into the slanted gray winter streets, walking the unshoveled sidewalks, all in search of a radio. There was still a “mom and pop” television repair shop on Linn Street, a quarter of a mile from my place. The kind of store with a bell on the door; with a yellowed flag in the window: “Zenith, the quality goes in before the name goes on.” I had the chills. I was pretty sure I was walking straight, though I felt like I was tilting sideways. My hair appeared electrified. The man behind the counter looked askance, a pawnbroker’s stare–I’m sure he thought I wanted to pawn some silver. But all I wanted was a radio. He told me the hard truth: “We don’t have no radios. Only TVs.” His televisions were displayed like second hand furniture, they even looked like second hand furniture–old cabinet jobs, big as “family style” electric organs. I was sweating. I thought about having a TV that doubled as a musical instrument. I was staring at a murky lakebottom. I had the flu. I was legally blind and on the verge of fainting among boxy television sets. I asked for a chair. The proprietor hastily produced a metal folding chair. I was feeling like Typhoid Mary. I sat down. Told the man I would take a portable TV. He brought out a weird Bakelite black and white job with a leather strap on top and a pair of bent “rabbit ears” and I gave him $30 and staggered out the door. The thing was heavier than it looked. It weighed as much as a bushel basket of apples. I staggered, stopped, wheezed, clutched the thing with all my strength–there was nowhere to put it down in a world of snow. Walked achingly, nauseous, step by step through drifting snow with the TV in my shaking arms. And home again in my gassy atelier, I plugged it in, adjusted the bent antennae, and “saw” the way blind people do, a report from Tehran, the Ayatollah triumphant in a sea of people, an ocean of the black garbed in the mid-day sun. There was a stubborn humming from the TV that obscured any words the announcer may have spoken.
Planet of the Blind 