Category: Uncategorized

Since I won't have time to blog tomorrow I'm posting this wee announcement that I will be reading tomorrow evening at Austin Community College in Austin, Texas. I'll be reading along with the writer Maxine Beach and here's a link that will give you the low down and the skinny if you're in the area and would like to come.

I had the privilege of speaking at ACC last year and found the students, faculty and staff to be marvelous to talk with and break bread with and I'm looking forward to visiting with these fine folks again as a guest of the spring carnival of arts.

"Y'all come on by if you're in the neighborhood!"

S.K.

 

I know my friend Tom

Isn’t “wheelchair bound”—

A book has a binding

And when he, Tom,

Loans me money

Our repayment

Is binding…

I write sometimes

In third person plural

When I mean

Myself, I want

The maximus

Of private selves

To be inclusive

When I say

For instance,

“I am blind”

Or “I can’t see.”

We say Tom

Is a “user”

Of wheelchairs,

He’s vigorous,

And I am a user

Of guide dogs.

We are customers.

We pass money

Back and forth.

We move together

Past the houses

They’re starting to build

At the outskirts

Of town, houses

That are dun-colored

And unfinished.

Someone has written

“Make Love Not War”

On the front

Of a future dream house

And Tom says “Let’s be makers

And not users”

And this is

Almost binding

But there are no curb cuts

Yet

In this part of town.

 

S.K.

Tonight I have to risk sounding like a Holy Roller. I don’t think this will hurt anyone.

Someone asked me recently how I can write and speak almost daily about civil rights violations and social inequities and I said that there are words inside me stronger than the ones I give away. Mahatma Gandhi called this principle “swaraj” –its a prayerful and yet intellectual strength. 

Colossians 3:16, ”Let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly, in all wisdom; teaching and admonishing one another. . . .”

What does the word “richly” meaning this instance. And how does a word “dwell”? 

Words dwell in us when they are like living beings inside a house.

Good words are inside. And like good householders those words look after their neighbors, children,animals–the term best suited to this is lovingkindness and it denotes love without expectation.

Words dwell inside us richly when we are living the richest life of all which is a life of service to others.

I’ve been in mind of this passage a great deal lately. The news on the radio is distressing and walking around one can feel the palpable economic fear     from friends and acquaintances. People are saying “How will we live, what will we do?”

When words dwell in us richly the substance of what surrounds us is of less importance. We’re concentrating. Something more powerful than the TV news is going on inside us. We’re giving away parts of ourselves and there’s no I.O.U.

The more you give away the more you have. Lovingkindness works that way.

Ephesians 3:17, ”That Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; to the end that ye, being rooted and grounded in love. …”

 

S.K.

There's a good book by Sharon Snyder and David Mitchel entitled "Narrative Prosthesis" which argues that disability is often used as a device of characterization in literature and film.

The fact is that all too often disability is utilized as a rhetorical crutch by able bodied people when they want to create a dramatic effect : disability becomes a pejorative and often terrifying symbol. Disability is almost never used as a symbol of empowerment. 

I was put in mind of this last evening at a meeting of the Iowa City school board when a trend emerged during a community pow wow about the local schools. One of the subjects being discussed by the citizens in attendance was the potential relocation of enrollment boundaries for the two city high schools.

I was flat out "gob smacked" by what came next.

More than one of my neighbors stood up and said with a straight face that asking kids to go to another school would induce depression, stress, and perhaps even more severe forms of mental illness.

"There it is," I thought. "Another instance of disability as a pejorative spectacle for the already terrified masses."

When disability is a narrative prosthesis we're never talking about the disability itself. We're instead being asked to "feel the pain" and experience fear.

At last night's meeting it was suggested that kids who might have to relocate from one local school to another within a small town would suffer substantial depression and in turn could conceivably become seriously impaired.

Disability should never be used in this way. Narrative prosthesis demeans the accomplishments of those who have surmounted obstacles and it obscures the more complex human issues under discussion.

Can kids who are asked to relocate from one school to another become anxious or depressed? Yes.

Can children who do not relocate from one school to another become situationally depressed? Yes.

Can we prevent anxiety for our kids. Sometimes.

Is the idea of relocating kids to meet the goals of parity within a school district the best idea for kids. Probably not.

Would such a policy if adopted cause a flood of mental illness. Decidedly not.

Human beings are tremendously resilient. As the Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Jung famously remarked: "consciosness itself is painful."

S.K.

 

Here we go again. A man in Texas with a service dog was arrested while visiting a court house to do some research in the state archives. Daily it seems we are reading about the low  road in Texas. The story above suggests there was  insufficient training for police officers. What a sad story. What a disgrace. How does the Lone Star state hope to accommodate returning veterans? One wonders.

 

S.K.

 

I wonder since the Irish poet wrote of trust

If he owned a dog? I look in the biographies

But there’s no mention.

I picture the old Yeats

Half awake in the bottomless night

Hand trailing under his chair,

a wolfhound looking up.

All dogs are creatures of sound,

Which is how they love us

Hearing things unseen.

So here’s to Yeats and his dog,

And the gibbous moon

Rising at the half blind window…

 

S.K.

At times if you’re lucky

You find yourself reading in a dream,

And in the circle of light

A cricket appears

From inside

That unreadable poem.

 

 

S.K.

He is eating two small wings, eating without mercy

In the way of God’s creatures, eating fast,

Looking up from time to time.

I hunch into my brain, saying

I don’t want what he has.

Though I too look up

Just after saying so…

 

 

S.K.

In keeping with our avian theme (see Lance Mannion below) one can read a “lie down and prepare for your maker” laugh out loud post over at Michael Meteyer’s blog.

I’ll reveal no more save that if you’re familiar with William Butler Yeats’s famous poem “Leda and the Swan” you may have an inkling of the narrative inter-species wanderlust that’s in store at Mr. Meteyer’s blog. And that ain’t the only lust my friends.

S.K.

March is going out like a lion as wind forces snow into the corners of flower boxesand Iowa retains its grip on winter. I walked just an hour ago with my friend Gary in  the falling snow  as the two of us tried to distribute fliers about an upcoming school board meeting. We walked into the teeth of the wind, our eyes tearing, hands raw without gloves, traipsing through an unfamiliar neighborhood and after half an hour we were both covered with icy pelts and we could feel the pavement becoming dangerous. We barely got home in the car. Despite our contrarian and wilfull hopes we were forced to concede that its a real Iowa winter’s day. Somehow the return of winter feels like a rebuke from a mean old man. Winter is yelling at us. We’re being told to go back inside where we belong. I resent this old man. I think like all kids that someday I will run this place.

 

S.K.