Category: Uncategorized

Because I have an apparent disability I’m often in front of audiences that only like me conditionally. If you have a disability and you’re in public in ways either great or small you’ll automatically know what I’m talking about–there’s an unspoken appraisal as the person with a disability begins speaking, a collective, silent, projective gentlemen’s agreement that nothing uncomfortable shall be spoken.

My friend Gary calls this the “don’t piss in the shrimp dip” phenomenon. (He’s from Texas.) You know of course what I’m talking about. We know that Franklin Roosevelt lived his post-polio life this way. The agreement is that if you never mention the profound, compensatory ardor that’s required to live, to really live, then the audience gets to imagine that living is relatively easy. Instead of “gentlemen’s agreement” we might call it “the Hallmark agreement” after the commercial greeting card company famed for its commercialization of easy sentiment.

I am invited to speak at all kinds of venues and I’m lucky to have these opportunities. But I have been trying for some time now to resist the Hallmark agreement, to simply encourage my audience to imagine that disability is easy. (That script goes like this: ‘If a person with a disability simply has the right accommodations, then disability is nothing more than a minor nuisance, etc.)

Ah but the biggest problem is that disability still troubles the public nerve. (A public nerve besotted with advertising, hence, a nerve that believes–for in America the nerves believe–that there’s an easy road ahead if we just whistle or lip synch like Beyonce.) So we are expected to say that even the most difficult and perilous things are easy. Forget that the New York City subway system is inaccessible to people who use wheelchairs; forget that the meager elevators in that system are often malfunctioning, so a man with a wheelchair will, should he actually get on the subway, find himself trapped, unable to exit. Or forget that blind people still have no access to movies or television or public performances. Or forget that the majority of American universities don’t teach sign language or, if they do, don’t recognize it as a language that might meet the university’s advertised foreign language requirement.

Each if threes failures will, in turn prevent people from getting ahead, And my job is to cheer up the audience?

Beware the Hallmark. I like uplift as much as the next man or woman but I don’t think it can come at the expense of communitarian politics.

If you create what the disability rights movement likes to call ‘an even playing field” you lift up your black brothers and sisters, and your deaf ones, and your Latino ones, your blind ones. And please stop pretending Its easy.

By Andrea Scarpino

President Obama’s second inauguration: his family’s brightly colored coats, thousands of American flags waving beyond a bullet-proof wall, the bright and open sky.

 

And a poet alone at the podium. Turning printed pages. Standing before the biggest audience he’ll ever see. A poet. Richard Blanco: the youngest inauguration poet, the first openly gay inauguration poet, the first Latino inauguration poet. Of course, there haven’t been many: Robert Frost, James Dickey, Maya Angelou, Miller Williams, Elizabeth Alexander. Only Democratic presidents and only since Kennedy.

 

As if Republican presidents can’t bear to be seen supporting the arts.

As if poetry doesn’t always belong in the world of politics.

 

A poet alone at the podium. And I thought of Robert Frost, the first inauguration poet, chosen by Kennedy. How the winter sun made it difficult for him to read from his printed page, how he stopped short and recited, instead, an older poem, a poem he knew by heart. A poem, many agree, that was much more interesting than the one he had written for that day. A poem with the line, “The deed of gift was many deeds of war.”

 

Poetry and politics. How does a poem say something as big as politics demands? How does it not?

 

As if poetry has ever been divorced from public life, from the realm of the political.

 

“The personal is political” Carol Hanisch taught us. A Latino, openly gay poet standing behind a bullet-proof wall, reading his poetry. How could that not be political?

 

The political is personal: our President behind a bullet-proof wall.

 

And Robert Frost. How old Frost had become by Kennedy’s inauguration. How suited men rise to shield his papers with their hats. A decidedly American poet at a decidedly American event.

 

Because Kennedy understood that poets bring something important to the political sphere, say something important about who we are. Who we could be. That poetry is personal and political, political and personal. That one short poem—16 lines—can say more than a political speech. That a poet belongs standing next to a president.

 

President Obama’s second inauguration. A poet named Blanco standing behind a bullet-proof wall, standing in front of the biggest audience of his life. Reading, “one sun” and “one light,” “one ground” and “one sky.” Repeating it: one sky.

 

How I love this moment, dogs at my feet, the sun not yet up, and new snow blanketing the yard. Maybe its my Finnish heritage but I sometimes feel rich in the customary, shy scarcities.

 

I’m writing to invite you (and your friends, students) to submit work for our 2013 Red Wheelbarrow.

You can e-mail submissions (see below) and we’re currently reading manuscripts. Send something today…!

See complete guidelines below and please pass along to friends and students. We’re explicitly open to both well established and less established writers. The 2012 issue has been another success with a great mix of voices, regional, national, young & old.

Thanks so much and here’s to a creative, inspirational and productive year.

Yours,

–Ken Weisner

GUIDELINES & DEADLINES/ Red Wheelbarrow, 2013

The 2013 Red Wheelbarrow National Edition submission deadline is February 15th.

As you probably know, Red Wheelbarrow, formerly known as Bottomfish, has been publishing annually out of De Anza College in the South Bay for nearly forty years and consistently featuring emerging and South Bay/ Central Coast writers alongside more established California & nationally known voices such Adrienne Rich, Lac Su, Marilyn Chin, Al Young, Ed Pavlić, Karen Yamashita, Stephanie Dickinson, Ellen Bass, Steve Kuusisto, Dorianne Laux, Joseph Millar, Francisco X. Alarcon, and many others.

Please submit up to five poems, one short story, or three short-shorts either by e-mail to weisnerken@fhda.edu (pasted and/or attached), or by post to: Red Wheelbarrow, c/o De Anza College 21250 Stevens Creek Blvd., Cupertino, CA, 95014. Digital submissions encouraged! Simultaneous submissions accepted; please indicate in cover letter. Send previously unpublished work only. See more detailed guidelines at: http://www.deanza.edu/english-writing/creative/redwheelbarrow.html

We also consider creative non fiction & short plays and seek cover art. Our normal response time is 2-6 months. Address all questions and submissions to weisnerken@fhda.edu.

Ken Weisner

English Instructor

Creative Writing Committee

Faculty Advisor, Red Wheelbarrow

De Anza College

21250 Stevens Creek Blvd.

Cupertino, CA 95014

408-864-5797

weisnerken@fhda.edu

Secrecy To Shroud School Seclusion, Restraint Use Under New State Rules

(Columbus Dispatch)

January 18, 2013

COLUMBUS, OHIO~– [Excerpt provided by Inclusion Daily Express] New state rules would require schools to keep records of how often and why educators place children in seclusion rooms or physically restrain them.

Those records would be private, the rules say: Only the parents of the child who was secluded or restrained, or the Ohio Department of Education, can know about it. Making information about seclusion private could prevent the public, including other parents, from knowing whether their schools have improperly secluded kids.

The Dispatch and StateImpact Ohio used incident reports like the ones that would be declared private in the new policy to expose the misuse of seclusion rooms in Ohio’s public schools.

The State Board of Education plans to adopt the state’s first policy governing seclusion and restraint in public schools on Tuesday. Until now, public schools have decided whether they want to use seclusion rooms — often small, cell-like spaces meant to hold violent children — and the circumstances in which they use them.

The state knows virtually nothing about seclusion in Ohio’s public schools because it never has asked which schools have rooms, how often they’re used or why.

Entire article:

Secrecy to shroud school seclusion, restraint use under new state rules

http://tinyurl.com/ide0118133

Related Series:

Locked Away (Columbus Dispatch)

http://tinyurl.com/ide0118133a

The National Association of the Deaf and the American Association of the Deaf-Blind have released a formal statement on the euthanizing of twins in Belgium who preferred death to becoming deaf-blind. 

You can read the statement here. 

Apparently the Belgians would imagine Helen Keller’s life to be of no apparent value?

 

See this article by Colleen Flaherty at Inside Higher Education. Obviously I’d be out of the running for a position at California’s Azusa Pacific University. Apparently sight is an expectation for faculty, as well as weight lifting.

 

Two days ago I wrote a fierce post about a specious and cruel article by Amy Lutz over at Slate and I’m grateful to the folks at Ollibean for reposting it. We at Planet of the Blind urge you to read Shannon Des Roches Rosa’s piece over at Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism. 

Ms. Des Roches Rosa wonders what would possess Amy Lutz, a mother of a child with autism, to attack the concept of neurodiversity and writes: 

 

Autism parent Amy Lutz did her damnedest to verbally maul the Neurodiversity movement last week, at Slate.com. I’m still trying to understand her rationale, because why would she publicly attack disabled people for the crime of appearing less disabled than her own child? Especially the very advocates who are fighting to ensure a better future for all autistic people — including her son?

I’m used to seeing questionable writing at The Huffington Post, but was surprised to see Lutz’s baldly biased reporting in the Slate.com Medical Examiner section. She only cited sources — outraged parents like herself, mostly — who also believe “…that those who argue the Neurodiversityposition do so out of ignorance.” A statement which is not merely offensive but untrue: those who support Neurodiversity tend do so because Neurodiversity is their reality, and the neurodiverse their community. 

 

Of course the answer to the question regarding Lutz’s attack lies with the discomfort that able bodied people have with non-speaking people, a discomfort that is not lessened by the act of parenting children with autism. That there is ableism in the autism parenting community is unquestionable, that there is so much of it is horrifying. 

 

 

Thomas Fuller wrote: “nothing sharpens sight like envy” an observation fueled by the emerging disparities of 17th century Britain. Last night, unable to sleep, I watched the first two episodes of season three of Downton Abbey and saw for the first time that its essentially a soap opera driven by discrete and clarifying instances of envy, jaundice and begrudgement. In turn the traction of the series depends on the accompanying fiction of compensatory generosity displayed by various characters. In this way the series is not about class disparities so much as its about sentimentality–characters acting “out of synch” with their social positions. Everyone is sharp, one feels the creases and starches. And almost everyone overcomes the weight of envy. For me, this makes the show entirely unbelievable. Give me “Vanity Fair”.

By Andrea Scarpino

 

Monday morning: exhaustion. 10 days of non-stop work for my university’s twice-yearly Residency, of faculty discussions and seminars taught, of student meetings, dinners, of answering questions, negotiating personalities, taking notes, of being attentive, expanding my ‘to-do’ list. I’m exhausted. Ready to go home. Ready for quiet. Ready not to speak with anyone.

 

In the hotel lobby, an elderly woman wears sandals despite the cold temperature, glittery gold nail polish painted on each toe. On the lawn outside the hotel: dozens and dozens of robins, red chests flashing in muddy green grass. I look across to the hillside where I saw two deer days before.

 

The airport van arrives, and the driver loads my suitcases for me. An older man, wearing a green Tartan hat and scarf. As soon as he starts the ignition, he’s talking: he used to live in a house right where the hotel is now, went to the Air Force and when he returned, his house was gone, new buildings gone up. He points to other buildings as we pass them, what this one used to be, how his high school days brought him up and down these streets.

 

A moment of flashing anger—I don’t want to talk. I don’t want to listen to stories. I’m exhausted. I want silence. But the driver’s scarf—a plaid my uncle would wear. His hat, a hat my father would have worn. Compassion, I think. And I ask a question. And the man unfolds his life: four years in the Air Force, then 25 as a firefighter, mostly in downtown Cincinnati, but later in a quiet suburban firehouse. Then early retirement before he turned 50. A second career as a college women’s volleyball coach. Then finally, his wife’s illness. How he drives the van two days a week. How he loves to see his grandchildren. A lifetime summarized in twenty minutes. His smile in the rearview mirror.

 

When we reach the airport terminal, he slows the van—we’re barely moving—to finish his final story. ‘I just want to get to the end,’ he says. Then we’re stopped, and he’s pulling out my suitcases, setting them on the sidewalk. And I want to hug him, to take his hands in my own.

 

‘I hope I’ll see you again,’ he says, and I nod. ‘I’ll keep your wife in my thoughts,’ I say.

 

And he drives away. And I think the rest of the day about this man, his Tartan scarf and hat, the cinnamon gum he stuck on the dashboard when it was clear I was willing to listen to him talk. And I think about what I would have missed if I sat stone-silent in the backseat, determined to be exhausted, determined not to engage. Compassion, I had thought. But really what I meant was, listen. Listen.

 

Nick Flynn writes, ‘Perhaps everyone has a story that could break your heart.’ Perhaps. Perhaps not. But how will we ever know if we don’t show interest enough, if we don’t step outside ourselves long enough to listen.