Late in the Day

 

—In late September many voices

  Tell you you will die.

  The leaf says it. That coolness.

  All of them are right.

 

–Robert Bly

 

 

I am troubled as shadows lengthen under the apple trees in my yard. It’s a kind of princely trouble, associational, a problem from the back of the head. According to what little I understand, the problem has nothing to do with success or failure. It’s just something that uncoils in my eyes. Then I carry it away from the window and into my house where it rests, filled with transfiguring omens among the books. This unnamable iteration is like the many armed figure of Durga waving her axe, riding a lion over a mound of skulls–but it’s the smallest Durga in the world, small and yellow as the end of September. 

 

Tenderness is not in the light. The air smells of fading chrysanthemums. I walk the dogs around the trees heavy with apples. 

 

Fathoms down, walking beneath the waves. My long, informal apprenticeship.        

What do dogs who guide the blind have? Placidity in the face of tides, knowing how to move the boat among rocks, landing softly on the shore just as we had wished.  

 

One night when I was visiting an artist’s colony in the woods of New Hampshire I went to a cottage with a group of writers to hear a talk. When the talk was over it was richly dark outside, a night without stars, the pine trees close as statues. No one had a flashlight and there was the kind of mild panic that always happens when people face an unpleasant option. And I said follow me, and guide dog Corky took us down the obscure paths all the way back to the big house where lights were blazing at the windows. It was just as we had wished. And those who trailed us learned a little something about trust. 

 

 

 

 

death has ten fingers over his face 

waggles them according to algebraic principles

it’s a dull job a human resources stinker

he doesn’t remember how he got it

and human longing is a storm at the window

and his neighbor, birth, sings 

behind the hedges old Viennese love songs

poor bastard, hands covering his eyes

hearing always the Merry Widow Waltz

 

 

President Obama Engages with Youth with Disabilities | The White House

http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2012/08/24/president-obama-engages-youth-disabilities

President Obama Engages with Youth with Disabilities

As President Obama has so often said, change in America happens from the bottom up. It happens when people organize, speak out, and have a seat at the table. 

Recently, President Obama met with some youth with disabilities. He wanted to hear their thoughts about the future of disability policy. So, he sat down with participants from the American Association of People with Disabilities internship program. These future leaders spent their summer in DC, interning with various organizations. 

Today, we are pleased to release a video that recaps that meeting. Watch it on YouTube here.

These young people are passionate and strong representatives for millions of people with disabilities across the country. They represent a brighter future for America. President Obama is ready to stand and fight alongside them each and every day.

Kareem Dale is the Special Assistant to the President for Disability Policy

Related Topics: Disabilities

One day I received a phone call from a professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology. His class had been given an assignment–to develop a robotic guide dog. He was calling to find out what this would entail. I knew he was ahead of himself. He imagined that a guide dog is just an obstacle avoidance pulling mechanism. So I told him the story about the bird trainer who also thought he could guide blind people with birds attached to strings. (I swear it’s true!) This bird trainer demonstrated to a group of guide dog trainers that a bird would fly, attached to a string, and avoid a tower of bricks in the middle of a warehouse. “That’s  pretty good,” said the guide dog trainers, as they left. 

 

So I told the engineer in Rochester that guide dogs stop for curbs. Stairs. Both up and down. 

 

“Yes,” he said, “I think a robot can do that.”

 

“They also take into account low overhanging objects, branches, awnings and the like and guide their blind partners around these things.” 

 

“Okay,” he said.

 

“When a blind person commands the dog to cross the street it will refuse to go if it’s not really safe,” I said.

 

“Oh,” he said. “Oh.” 

 

“You want poetry, I’ll give you poetry,” says my uncle, who, when alive, drank vodka and welded steam radiators. This morning he is on my left shoulder and waving an obscure farming implement–a farrier’s lightning rod–I don’t know what the hell it is. So I ask him. The answer is obvious. Projective verse. 

The Justice Department announced today that it has entered into an agreement with the state of North Carolina to ensure the state is in compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the Rehabilitation Act. The agreement will transform the state’s system for serving people with mental illness. Under the settlement agreement, over the next eight years, North Carolina’s system will expand community-based services and supported housing that promote inclusion and independence and enable people with mental illness to participate fully in community life.

See today’s settlement agreement, fact sheet, and complaint.

To learn more about the Department’s efforts to enforce the Supreme Court’s decision in Olmstead v. L.C. and about the Americans with Disabilities Act, go to www.ADA.gov  or call the ADA Information Line at 800-514-0301 (voice) or 800-514-0383 (TTY). 

 

 

Song at a window

and night coming fast,

the score 

hard to read–

my grandmother sits 

in that other dark

where 

all that is empty 

waits for revelation. 

Singing  

is always a discovery. 

 

 

NCD Recommends Phasing Out Subminimum Wage Payments

Baltimore, Maryland (August 23, 2012): The National Federation of the Blind, the nation’s leading advocate for fair wages for workers with disabilities, today applauded the National Council on Disability (NCD) for recommending a phase-out of the practice of paying wages below the federal minimum  to workers with disabilities.  The NCD, an independent federal agency that advises the President, Congress, and the federal government on matters of disability policy, has released a report calling for a phase-out and repeal of Section 14(c) of the Fair Labor Standards Act, which exempts certain employers of people with disabilities from paying their workers the federal minimum wage.

Dr. Marc Maurer, President of the National Federation of the Blind, said: “We applaud the National Council on Disability for its strong affirmation of the value, equality, and dignity of workers with disabilities, and for its recommendation that Section 14(c) ultimately be repealed.  We will thoroughly review the NCD report and its forthcoming legislative proposal in order to find ways to work toward our common goal of eliminating the unfair, discriminatory, and immoral practice of paying workers with disabilities less than the federal minimum wage.”

CRPD Ratification Social Media ACTION ALERT

#CRPD ACTION ALERT!

Use Social Media to Secure YOUR Senators’ Support for U.S. Ratification!

 

After an exciting spring and summer that has now delivered the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities to the Senate floor for one final vote, the Senate is out on recess and the Senators are back in their home states.  We’ve asked you to call and write, visit and go to events and do anything you can to secure both of your U.S. Senators’ support for the CRPD for when they return September 10th.  We thank all of you for all the hard work you have been putting in!

 

But we can’t quit now!  The opposition is gearing up and using social media to inundate the Senators with misinformation about the CRPD.  The disability community needs to answer back, and in greater numbers!  You, your family and friends can use Twitter and Facebook and any other social media you belong to in order to spread the word about supporting the CRPD!

 

Here are some useful tips to help you with Twitter and Facebook:

 

• Important: Use #CRPD to weigh in on your message of support for the CRPD!
• Tweet directly  to your Senators by using the @ symbol and their twitter address. You can find your Senators’ twitter address by going to their website (found here) and looking for the Twitter symbol, or searching for them on directly Twitter.  And remember every state has 2 Senators.  Tweet to both of them! 
• Keep your message short, to the point and POSITIVE!
• Don’t know what to write? Follow USICD on Twitter and get ideas for new CRPD tweets!
• Don’t just post once and walk away – come back again later that day and for days after and keep tweeting! It only takes a few seconds but the impact is tremendous!
• Ask your friends and family to tweet and re-tweet!    
• Re-tweet your friends and family!
• Ideas for messages:

1. Dear @(your Senator’s twitter address here) Please support ratification of the #CRPD!
2. @(your Senator’s twitter address here) Support the #CRPD.  This is a #disability issue!
3.  @(your Senator’s twitter address here) I am a (describe your connection to the community ex. parent of a child with a #disability, person with a #disability, friend of people with #disabilities) and I support the #CRPD.  Please do the same!

 FACEBOOK  

• Visit your Senator’s Facebook page and post positive messages about supporting the CRPD.  You can find your Senator’s Facebook pages on their websites, and you can find their websites by clicking here.
• Choose a time when you know a lot of your friends and family are on Facebook to post so that more people have the chance to share.
• Ask people to Share and Like your links to spread the word about supporting the CRPD.
• Link to USICD’s CRPD Updates page and choose the CRPD “Ratify Yes!” sticker as the image.
• Look through the USICD CRPD Updates page and check out some of the letters of support on the right side of the page, “News and Calls for Ratification” on the bottom of the page, and video clips in the middle of the page.  Write your positive comments about them and share them as a link.    
• Keep your messages positive!

Finally, be sure to let us know what you’re hearing as you activate your Twitter and Facebook accounts  – email Esme Grant (egrant@usicd.org)  with important updates.

    

Most importantly, get out there on the web and show your support!  We need 2/3 of the Senate to ratify and we can’t do it without the whole community!