Category: Uncategorized

 

Excerpt from The Inclusion Daily Express:

People With Autism Speak Out Against Autism Speaks
(The HillTop)
November 2, 2009
WASHINGTON, DC– [Excerpt] Detached from the sea of walkers at the annual Walk Now for Autism Speaks fundraiser in D.C., was a group of about 15 autistic individuals who stood protesting.

Against the backdrop of the Washington monument, they chanted “Autism Speaks doesn’t speak for us,” and “Autistic people speak. Are you listening?”

Ari Ne’eman, founder and president of the Autistic Self Advocacy Network (ASAN), led the protestors. Contrary to the mission of Autism Speaks, Ne’eman and members of ASAN allege that the organization is actually exploiting the autistic community instead of helping it.

“I saw that all too often, autistic people are kept out of the public policy discussion about us and decisions are put forward that don’t fit with our needs and don’t relate to what we want,” said Ne’eman, who, along with the other members of ASAN, is autistic.

Entire article:
Autistic Plea Less Pity
http://www.thehilltoponline.com/autistic-plea-less-pity-1.2046862
Related:
Autism Walk on National Mall Stirs Controversy (WJLA)
http://www.wjla.com/news/stories/1009/674094.html

Once while visiting the Chicago zoo I saw a very old man who was blind for he had a white cane and he was leaning close to the plate glass at the lion’s display. He was making faces at the lions, grand faces, grotesque faces like someone who could hide his appearance behind a Venetian mask. The lions for their part saw the man’s evident incomprehensibility as just another form of light. Don’t underestimate the power of a wall. That was one of my earliest lessons in art.

 

S.K.  

 

 

 

Iowa City

The University of Iowa ’s football team had an inexplicable turnaround on Saturday in their game against Indiana. Despite lackluster play and numerous mistakes, Iowa had a supernatural comeback against the Hoosiers, all after an instant replay ruling overturned an obvious Indiana  touchdown late in the 3^rd quarter. Fans at Kinnick Stadium watched as Iowa picked off a pass that actually hung in the air like a piñata, then saw hyper reality take over as the Hawkeyes scored 28  points in the game’s final 15 minutes. “Something happened,” said Ernest Dumpster, a honey dipper from Dubuque . “That was some weird shit, and believe me, I know shit.”

The explanation has to do with Iowa coach Kirk Ferentz who, according to insiders who asked to remain unnamed, sold his soul to the Devil during a television timeout late in the 3^rd quarter. Ferentz was unavailable for comment but a team insider said that a cloven hooved, humpbacked and be-horned goat-like creature with a face like former U.S. President Bill Clinton was seen escorting Ferentz into a gray van with just minutes remaining in the timeout.

Dag Darkling, a professor at Union Theological Seminary says that the game’s final score, Iowa 42 and Indiana 24 is the proof of Satanic forces being involved. “42” can be added into six, and so can 24, so that’s 66 and Iowa had five interceptions and a fumble so that’s another 6. And everybody knows what that means.”

“It’s the Devil’s odor that’s a real giveaway, he smells like burning glee,” said Darkling.

Now Halloween is over I think of autumn itself. “La Belle Dame sans Merci”–the season of language strange. Autumn who speaks the patois of the dead, who learned it from discarded long playing records, who waits for customers to depart the used clothing shops. Now she begins in earnest. Leaves fall during the night. In the morning the trees are bare. The sky settles for winter with a fast withering of fast clouds of fast grayness. Autumn with her wild eyes…

O Autumn will get you. She’ll make you hear old songs. You’ll hear them again as you fall asleep. The same songs you heard as a child when the old folks turned out the lamp. Autumn does these things though she doesn’t speak.

O the old familiar faces go.

I had been laughing. Autumn knocked.

The season is bound to traverse us.

 

S.K.

(with apologies to Samuel Johnson)

When first the blogging-rolls received his name,

The young enthusiast quits his ease for fame;

Through all his nerves the promise of renown

Sparks with glory–he’ll have a place in town;

O’er Huffington’s or Beast’s his labor’s spread,

And Cyber’s mansion trembles o’er his head.

Are these thy views? Proceed, industrious youth,

And Labor guide thee to the throne of Truth!

Yet should thy soul indulge the spurious heat,

As evidence replies with long retreat;

Should Ardor steal thee with brightest ray,

And pour on misty doubt resistless day;

Should no false Readers lure to loose delight,

Nor Praise relax, nor Difficulty fright;

Should tempting novelty thy cell refrain,

And Sloth effuse her opiate fumes in vain;

Should Beauty blunt on fops her fatal dart,

Nor claim the triumph of a lettered heart;

Should no Disease thy torpid veins invade,

Nor Melancholy’s phantoms haunt thy shade;

Yet hope not life from grief or danger free,

Nor think the doom of man reversed for thee:

Deign on the passing world to turn thine eyes,

And pause awhile from blogging, to be wise;

There mark what ills the blogger’s life assails,

Toil, envy, want, the linkings, and the wails.

See readers slowly wise, and meanly just,

To buried merit raise the tardy bust.

If dreams yet flatter, or again attend,

Hear sordid life, and Nobility’s end.

 

S.K.

Shelley: “Teach me half the gladness

   That thy brain must know…”

I thought today for the good of us all let us be Romantic poets–even if you live in Brooklyn;

Perhaps you live in Baghdad. God Almighty may you stay Romantic. Brother & Sister. May you hope that the birds have joys to share.

Surely flight is a harmonious madness.

& these last few weeks, autumn coming, I’ve been walking under the alder trees

Seeing birds for the first time in my life–seeing them risen, updraft, sincerest laughter, sincerest laughers…

Against them, and thinking of Shelley

One sees the jarring and inexplicable frame

Of this wrong world…

God Almighty may you stay Romantic. Brother & Sister.     

 

S.K.

A friend writes that my post about going out on Halloween dressed as a normal person is really funny, then adds: I was a normal person once. That got me to thinking about having a normative identity for though I’ve never been a normal person, what would I have been like had fate been otherwise? I’m forced to conclude that I would have been a real jerk. I know exactly what kind of jerk I’d have been. Yep. The fantasma-normal version of me would have been a grade A asshole.

Flashback: junior year of high school. Partially sighted. A friend tells me I should try out for the track team. The coach sez I’m too blind. Let’s me practice for a week. Gives me a uniform and sweat suit. Then, one day as I’m walking home a car pulls up at the curb. The coach is driving. Its a “Driver Ed” vehicle. He has four of my classmates in the car with him. The coach leans out the window and tells me I have to give back my uniform; announces I’m too blind to be on the team, etc. And the four guys snicker. And yes, I went home and cried alone in my curtained attic cloister. I still remember how alone I felt. God, how lonely I was.

If I could have been a sighted teenager I’d have been a thug. A kind of Robin Hood thug. I’d have let the air out of the coaches tires. I’d have pulled fire alarms and run like hell for the sheer glory of it. I’d have climbed a flag pole and refused to come down, like Jonathan Winters. I’d have driven around in a car with chicken wire for a windshield delivering stolen pies to the elderly. In short I’d have been me but sighted. And I’d still have been lonely. There’s nothing you can do about loneliness except keep moving. So I’d have moved faster perhaps. I’d have been a cross between Groucho and Speedy Gonzales. I’d have stolen and run but always on behalf of the lonely and the shut ins.

I know for a fact I’d never have been a back seat snickerer in a car driven by a smug high school track coach.  

 

S.K.

Why are “these people” still out in public? Do something about it! Get them back in their asylums for God’s sake! Otherwise we’ll be forced to fix the damned sidewalks!

Excerpted article from USA Today via The Inclusion Daily Express:

 

Sidewalks Become Battlegrounds
(USA Today)
October 27, 2009
JACKSON, MISSISSIPPI– [Excerpt] The nation’s crumbling sidewalks have disabled residents taking their wheelchairs to the streets, a potentially dangerous practice that has cash-strapped cities and disability-rights advocates at odds over how to fix the problem.

Cities across the nation are dealing with eroding sidewalks that do not meet standards set by the Americans with Disabilities Act. Under the ADA, state and local governments cannot discriminate against the disabled in providing “services, programs or activities,” including access to sidewalks.

Although there are no specific statistics on the number of accidents involving wheelchairs in streets, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Fatality Analysis Reporting System, disability was a factor in 617 pedestrian traffic fatalities last year.

Disabled residents here take their lives in their hands getting from point A to point B, says Scott Crawford, a disability-rights advocate.

Entire article:
Sidewalks become battlegrounds
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2009-10-25-sidewalks_N.htm

 

S.K.

The excerpted article below comes to us from The Inclusion Daily Express. Our nation gleefully supports the bailout of Wall Street fat cats but shuts down vital services for the poor and elderly and the developmentally disabled. This is because they no longer teach civics in junior high. It’s also because thirty years of Reaganite obfuscation has scored the intelligence of politicians, rendering most elected officials nothing more than Social Darwinists.

 

S.K.

 

Hundreds Rally For Reversing Budget Cuts
(Columbia Flier)
October 26, 2009
ELLICOTT CITY, MARYLAND– [Excerpt] Pam Matheson spoke at a community rally Thursday night from her wheelchair, her 39-year-old adopted son at her side in his wheelchair.

“Matthew has wanted all his life to be a regular guy,” she told several legislators and more than 250 people who had crammed into Ellicott City Assembly of God Church to protest state budget cuts to developmental disabilities programs.

“He hated being at Rosewood [Center] and they’ve closed it, but now they’re decimating community services,” she said, referring to the $30 million in cuts made since July 1.

“Matthew was given the right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness,” she said directly to state legislators seated in the front row. “Look Matthew and his peers in the eye and tell them why you’re taking their services away.”

Matheson was one of 17 speakers, some of them with development disabilities, to offer emotion-filled testimony about losing or not having programs they desperately need.

Entire article:
Cuts to programs for developmental disabilities protested
http://www.InclusionDaily.com/news/2009/red/1026a.htm
Related:
Advocates for disabled protest (Baltimore Sun)
http://www.InclusionDaily.com/news/2009/red/1026b.htm

 

In an effort to be truly scary this year I’m going to Halloween parties as a Normal Person. There’s nothing scarier than a Normal Person and if you’ve ever seen a photo of a fully performative “NP” you know exactly what I’m talking about. (Chief Justice John Roberts of the United States Supreme Court comes to mind–he looks a lot like a “Ken Doll” and he has that wry little “NP” smile that suggests all is well in “NP World” and by God if you don’t think all is well in NP world you should get your head examined. (Yep, that’s all conveyed by a smile. That’s one of the secret powers of the “NP” tribe.)

Of course there are hundreds of horrifying things about NPs. Here’s a brief list:

• Their shoes. Normal People have really scary shoes. Sometimes they’re called “Bankers Bullets” but whatever you call them they’re shiny as armadillos and the collective unconscious knows that such shoes date from the Spanish Inquisition.
• Their conversation. NPs say stuff like: “Let’s recalibrate.” Or: “As it was in the beginning.” Lordy! Is that Scary!!!
• Their book shelves. “Cookouts for Dummies” and “How to White Wash” are standard.
• Their beliefs: NPs believe in the omnipotence of health and believe that their survival is assured by the lives of others. This is of course the scariest thing of all…

Let others rattle as skeletons or carry on as pirates. I’m going to scare the bejeezus out of people.

Ding Dong! “Oh my God! It’s a Normal Person! What festering cruelty is responsible for this?”

 

S.K.