Category: Uncategorized

 

By Andrea Scarpino

Marquette, Michigan

 

The gaze. As my computer dictionary defines, a particular perspective taken to embody certain aspects of the relationship between observer and observed. The gaze has been on my mind the last few weeks as I reread What Becomes You by Aaron Raz Link and Hilda Raz. A book in part about the gaze, when the gender that one understands oneself to be isn’t the gender of the body, isn’t the body that others see. The observer—Aaron’s mother Hilda, his family, friends, strangers—saw a female body when they looked at him. The observed—Aaron, born Sarah—saw a man.

There are many ways that the gaze can betray us. That we can look upon another body and just not get it right. This is unsettling. After my father died, people told me again and again how sick he had been—that he had died after a long illness, that I must feel some relief. But I didn’t understand my father was dying until he was dead. There were signs everywhere that other people clearly saw—years of fighting pneumonia, a series of strokes and seizures, a tracheotomy, wheelchair, old age. I can’t say I didn’t know these things—I did—but when I looked at him, I saw my father as he had always been. Then, maybe—maybe—a man living with some profound disabilities. But living with are the key words here. Not dying.

There are limits to every system of inquiry, even the most progressive or radical, even the ones that try to be the most inclusive. That’s a lesson I learned from feminism and disability studies—the male gaze or the gaze of the medical profession or the gaze of society at large doesn’t necessarily tell me anything about myself, my body, my experience of the world. And my gaze doesn’t necessarily get anything right about those I observe.

I saw my father as living with; others saw him as dying. I don’t know how he understood his own health struggles—in all honesty, I didn’t ask, assumed I knew. Aaron saw himself as male; others labeled him female. They also didn’t ask, made assumptions. Until the moment when testosterone and surgery rendered him male to the gaze. Then they made other assumptions.

I don’t know what I’m getting at here. My mother is ill. I’m worried about my step-mother. In another 5 years, all of my parents (and I have many) will be in their 70s. I’m worried that my gaze is limiting, that I can’t see them as they need or want to be seen. Because I am their child, I’m afraid I have a fixed vantage point. I’m afraid I won’t ask the right questions, will make assumptions based on who they once were, based on my belief that disability is normal, that living with disabilities is just another kind of living. That I won’t understand what their changing bodies signify until it’s too late.

But maybe that’s just the nature of the gaze. It holds as much and as little as it can. It makes mistakes. Maybe the task before me isn’t to blame the gaze, to admonish my powers of perception, but to understand its limits. Because aren’t we all living with until we aren’t any longer? Aren’t our bodies always in flux, in change?

 

Poet and essayist Andrea Scarpino is a frequent contributor to POTB. She lives in Marquette, Michigan. You can visit her at: www.andreascarpino.com

 

 

The “fantods” refer to having a condition of extreme restlessness or nervousness. Huck Finn used to get the fantods and my Uncle Mert used to get them whenever clouds suddenly appeared on a summer’s afternoon. Perhaps you get them when you have to take an escalator or you see the drain at the bottom of the swimming pool. I get them whenever I hear Dick Cheney’s name.

A “furvert” is someone who is sexually aroused by furry things. One may fair surmise that a true furvert will succumb to the fantods should he or she be deprived of “Mr. Binky” but we are now out of our league and accordingly we are unprepared to make any additional statement at this time. We suspect that Donald Rumsfeld is a perfervid furvert who is susceptible to having the fantods when deprived of “Mr. Binky” but again we cannot prove the point and the entire matter may well be a state secret.   

The finest instance of a fantoded furvert is of course the scene in “The Producers” in which Gene Wilder (as Leo Bloom) is momentarily deprived of his blue blanket by Zero Mostel (as Max Bialystock). See link:

 

http://www.evtv1.com/player.aspx?itemnum=1447

 

 

S.K.

On the wall at the Ice Cream Cafe.  Orleans.  After mini-golf.  Saturday night.  July 24, 2010.

via lancemannion.typepad.com

Make mine a double Americano…

 

There are such mornings, gleaming with sun in the spider webs, clouds like dazed sheep, the neighbor’s houses like Fairy Tale castles, by Jove what felicities of miasma arise before us. We step into the morn, fresh as clean linoleum and admire the works of majesty, ineffable quotidian miracles. And such admiration causes us to sing. Thank you Tom Lehrer, Thank you. We have an anthem for our day and now we can go onward and outward in fulsome praise of all the wee things that fly or crawl.

 

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Though most know Tom Lehrer for his darkly lovely songs, many do not know that he invented the Jello shot. There are some gaps in cultural literacy that we hope to fill here at POTB.

 

S.K.    

Drove over to Yarmouth Port to visit the one-time home of writer and illustrator Edward Gorey and if I was clever enough the following notes would be presented alphabetically and in rhymed couplets as an homage to one of Gorey’s most famous books, The Gashlycrumb Tinies, kind of like this:

via lancemannion.typepad.com

We love this post by Lance Mannion about the home of Edward Gorey. We love knowing that the first book Gorey ever read was "Dracula" and that he worked while kneeling on the floor.

 

The photo above demonstrates that Iowa Senator Tom Harkin knows when to wear shirt sleeves and that I do not.

Senator Harkin’s abiding interest in helping people with disabilities is indeed legendary and it was an honor to have the opportunity to shake his hand. Indeed, it was an honor to hear him deliver remarks on the historical significance of the ADA, and of the ADA Restoration Act of 2008. Perhaps the most important thing the Senator shared with his Iowa City listeners was the absolute importance of continuing the fight for equitable health care and social services.

Amen to that.

 

S.K.   

The number of soldiers forced to leave the Army solely because of a mental disorder has increased by 64 percent from 2005 to 2009 and accounts for one in nine medical discharges, according to Army statistics.

See full article: http://www.veteranstoday.com/2010/07/24/one-soldier-in-9-exits-army-for-mental-disorder/

You don’t need to be a student of disability studies to know that people returning from war zones with serious psychiatric disabilities face the general public’s incomprehension of of invisible disabilities. In turn, soldiers with traumatic brain injuries or post traumatic stress disorders or severe depression can be denied the help they need just at the very moment they are transitioning into civilian society with all its attendant stress. Moving, find a job, reuniting with family are all “major stressors” –now factor in having a disability that people don’t understand.

One of the best short stories on this subject is Ernest Hemingway’s “Soldier’s Home”. Krebs comes home from WW I and all the folks in his little Oklahoma town wonder why he isn’t a social guy anymore–why he can’t get out of bed–why he takes no interest in girls. Where has Krebs been? He’s been in Beleau Woods watching human faces explode. The baseball scores don’t seem to mean as much anymore.

The neo-cons prattle about how service men and women are faking psychiatric injuries. I have a fine solution for them: they should enlist.

 

S.K. 

Later today I will be speaking in downtown Iowa City at an ADA 20th Anniversary Celebration which will feature Senator Tom Harkin (who co-sponsored the ADA in the Senate) as well as Iowa Governor Chet Culver. Several others will also be speaking including my friend Georgina Dodge, the University of Iowa’s new Vice President for Diversity.

We all know that the ADA has made a great difference in the lives of people with disabilities. Whether the subject is the accessibility of public facilities, the availability of reasonable accommodations in school or the work place, or the remedies offered by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Department of Justice, the past 20 years offer ample evidence that the lives of PWDs have been positively affected by the adoption of civil rights legislation. I intend to celebrate these two decades today even as I continue to remain aware that disability is still a cultural problem that threatens to grow much worse in these dark economic times. But today I will celebrate. I will tip my cap (a figurative cap) to the allies of people with disabilities–important friends who have never once forgotten the harsh social realities that those of us with physical or mental impairments inevitably face every day.

Thank you Senator Harkin. Now we must fight to ensure that critical public health programs and social services remain intact in the coming years.

 

S.K.

The article below is from the NY Times, and excerpted by Inclusion Daily Express.

 

Cuts To Community Supports Put Seniors And People With Disabilities At Risk Of Institutionalization
(New York Times)
July 21, 2010
HILLSBORO, OREGON– [Excerpt] As states face severe budget shortfalls, many have cut home-care services for the elderly or the disabled, programs that have been shown to save states money in the long run because they keep people out of nursing homes.

Since the start of the recession, at least 25 states and the District of Columbia have curtailed programs that include meal deliveries, housekeeping aid and assistance for family caregivers, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a research organization. That threatens to reverse a long-term trend of enabling people to stay in their homes longer.

For Afton England, who lives in a trailer home here, the news came in a letter last week: Oregon, facing a $577 million deficit, was cutting home aides to more than 4,500 low-income residents, including her. Ms. England, 65, has diabetes, spinal stenosis, degenerative disc disease, arthritis and other health problems that prevent her from walking or standing for more than a few minutes at a time.

Through a state program, she has received 45 hours of assistance a month to help her bathe, prepare meals, clean her house and shop. The program had helped make Oregon a model for helping older and disabled people remain in their homes.

But state legislators say home care is a service the state can no longer afford. Cuts affecting an additional 10,500 people are scheduled for Oct. 1.

Entire article:
Cuts in Home Care Put Elderly and Disabled at Risk
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/21/us/21aging.html
Related:
Cuts to home care services devastating for people (Associated Press)
http://www.InclusionDaily.com/news/2010/red/0721c.htm
In-home caregivers, clients get more time (Statesman-Journal)
http://www.InclusionDaily.com/news/2010/red/0721b.htm
Oregon legislative leaders announce plan to restore some cuts to senior, disability programs (Oregonian)
http://www.InclusionDaily.com/news/2010/red/0721a.htm

I am hardly the first to opine on the Baby Reaganites who have matriculated into the media and who now smirk and shrug their ways before the cameras. I was reminded of the matter this morning while drinking coffee and watching Baby Reaganites Par Excellence on the morning news. The B.R. squad is working hard to convey the view that the Democrats are the makers of our nation’s disastrous deficits and that by turns, any effort to help the poor and the dying middle classes represents a flagrant and irresponsible extension of our national debt.

Yesterday while riding a bus in Iowa City I overheard a graduate student explain to a fellow rider that the Obama administration will, by the time it finishes its first term have created the largest increase in our national debt in history. I couldn’t stand it. I turned around and told him that this was absolutely untrue and added that the greatest increase in our nation’s national debt has occurred under Ronald Reagan’s watch, with W. Bush in second place.

OF course facts are stupid things. What’s the point? The point of course is that real working class people are starving right now. And our social services network has collapsed. People with serious disabilities are facing the very real prospect of being thrown into the streets. The heartlessness of the GOP is unparalleled in modern history. But you wouldn’t know this by watching the Baby Reaganites on TV. Their rotor-beanie are powered by Quinnnipiac Polls and whoever paid for their lunches.

We at POTB are fans of Will Bunch’s book Tear Down This Myth: How the Reagan Legacy Has Distorted Our Politics and Haunts Our Future 

Here’s a little video segment of Mr. Bunch:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/mpd/permalink/m21XM8ZOMICNOS

 

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I was a graduate student in Iowa during Reagan’s first term. I remember his heartlessness toward the family farmers who were going “under” during the early 80’s recession. Reagan observed that inefficiency had to be weeded out, etc. etc. The Gipper was nothing more than a corporate shill for General Electric. Even the Tin Man had a kinder heart than Reagan. He wasn’t my grandfather I can tell you that.

 

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Yet the veneration of the old phoney grows in our media. As Huck Finn would say, its enough to give me the fantods.

 

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Nearly 14% of children in the state of Iowa are living below the poverty level.  How’s that legacy Mr. Reagan? 

 

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It is estimated that 51% of Americans will live in poverty at some point before the age of 65.

 

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Take a look at Derrick Braziel’s piece on Rand Paul’s insensitivity to the poor entitled: Rand Paul to the Poor: Cheer Up, It’s Not So Bad!

 

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From Nader.org:

 

Here is the briefest of lists to illustrate — under Reagan there was a record near-tripling of the national debt to $2.7 trillion, record annual budget deficits, record trade deficits, record transforming of America into a debtor nation, record giveaway of public land resources, record decline in low income public housing starts, record homelessness, record Pentagon waste, fraud and abuse, record corporate crimes, record corporate mergers and acquisitions, record skyrocketing corporate executive salaries along with stagnant or declining real wages for workers, record salary hikes for top government officials, record-long freezing of the federal minimum wage, record export of jobs overseas, record selling of America cheaply to foreign investors.
Continuing … record complexity in federal tax and pension laws and in the forms people have to fill out, record cuts in food stamps, medicaid and the ‘social safety net, record ten year poverty rates, record deregulation of banks, record government bailouts for crooked or speculative banks, record number of bank failures, fifty year record number of farm foreclosures and bankruptcies, record amounts of hard drugs imported, record brazenness in pushing through Congress the abolition of the $ 1 20 per month minimum social security for 3 million Americans (later repealed under a wave of elderly protest), record denials of Social Security disability payments and record number of federal judges condemning these denials.
Continuing … record low in issuing of OSHA lob safety standards, record low in issuing NHTSA auto safety and fuel efficiency standards, record debacle in mismanaging the nation’s nuclear weapons’ plants and radioactive contamination, record denigration of federal solar and energy conservation programs since they got underway in early Seventies, record share of the taxpayer’s dollar going lust to pay interest on the national debt, record reliance of a debt-burdened government on foreign financiers, record resignations of shady, high government appointees (the sleaze phenomenon), record number of government civilian employees, record reduction planned for continual meat and poultry inspections, record low in significant antitrust law enforcement, record number of attempts by Reagan to destroy the legal services for the poor program, record tax bonanzas for six years given to major corporations.
Continuing record government secrecy, record insensitivity to civil liberties and enforcement of the civil rights laws, record prices for government publications and information thereby undermining public’s right to know, record hypocrisy between what a President says regarding the rights of government whistleblowers and ethics in government, compared to his vetoes and ‘look the other way’ behavior.
Continuing… record postwar high in the number of children living in poverty, record declining rate of student loan availability, record funding of chemical and biological warfare programs (since Nixon stopped them 28 years ago) and… oh, yes, a record number of speeches and statements against federal deficit spending.
Reagan has told us how he brought down inflation. But the record shows that the world oil glut, The Federal Reserve’s high interest rate policy and the worst postwar recession (1981- early 1983) produced that result, not Reagan.
Reagan says that his administration was responsible for creating over 1 7 million jobs. That is a strange thing for a supposed free enterpriser like Reagan to claim. Maybe he is referring to his massive
prime-the-pump red-ink spending. In any event, there was a record number of lower-paying jobs created in industry and commerce thereby requiring more members of the family to look for paying work.

 

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More members of the family who can live in poverty…

 

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Whatever happened to the funny version of Stephen Kuusisto? There are conflicting reports about his sense of humor. Some say they’ve seen it while camping in Maine. Others think they saw it on the subway in Manhattan. Wherever his humor has gone, we might reflect on his favorite graffito of all time. It was from the Nixon years. It was written on the wall of a bathroom stall. It said: “If you voted for Nixon in ’68 you cant’ shit here. Your asshole’s in Washington.”

 

S.K.