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I need to practice hate. I can’t keep up with the big haters. I can’t imagine voting against Obama’s economic recovery plan because a radio demagogue has excited my limbic node. I’m not properly hating able bodied people who plunge ahead of me in public and then fail to hold the door open as I approach. I need to become much much angrier. I will have to study this matter. How does one become a misanthrope? Is there a workshop somewhere I can take? You know: “How to Hate People 101”.

Having been blind since childhood I know a few things about being lonesome. And I still go to cocktail parties and feel out of the loop, standing in a corner with my dog at my side and a foggy sense of the isolato about me. Everyone else it seems has made useful eye contact. I sip a glass of wine that someone has brought me and think about the icons in a Russian church. I’m lonesome in public.

Haters don’t think about the icons in a Russian church but prefer to imagine that everyone else has something they don’t. Lost in my corner I think that everyone is likely lonely its just that my brand of it has greater evidence. I think of a weeping icon. I think of gold dust in the corner of Mary’s eyes. I take another sip of the Merlot.

Hate is dependent on abstraction. If human beings are symbol making animals as everyone from Ernst Cassirer to Foghorn Leghorn will tell you then its also patently obvious that the ability to metaphorize others is the result of what Kurt Vonnegut would say is a problem of having “a big brain”.

The big brain says that someone who is not you is getting a better deal, more land, more natural resources, more beach front property, more poems in the New Yorker, more sex, more and more. In “Hate 101” the step from envy to metaphorized hatred involves demagoguery. The anthroposophist stands on a soapbox and shouts. He has an unfortunate reedy voice. He sounds like Orville Popcorn. He says that the people in the next neighborhood are stealing the bedsheets off the clothes lines. Never mind it was the wind. Its the Poles or the Slovaks or the Finns or the Blacks or the Jews or the Arabs or the unions or what have you.

Someone yet to be named is stealing from you. But in “Hate 101” that’s just the first lesson. The next step is to imagine violence against your house, your district, your local watering hole. Imagined violence is the Big Brain’s specialty. “The Gulf of Tonkin” or “Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq” are two useful examples.

In washington the Republican’s rage concerning Obama’s stimulus    plan has much to do with the sense that the Democrats are now getting the goodies. They forget Haliburton. Forget the secret energy deals. Forget the siphoning of American wealth upwards to the top wealthiest 10 per cent.

But it doesn’t matter because the Big Brain is outraged. Someone is stealing. I’m going to hate you. I’m going to stop thinking. What a relief this will be. Hate is to  discernment as connect the dots is to designing a micro processor but what the hell.

And this of course is the problem for me. Hate is easy so I don’t trust it. Not in the abstract. The man who beats his horse in front of my house is a different matter. He’s real. He needs to be confronted. We might have to arrange to steal his horse. But that’s for another class. “Horse Thievery 101” will be next semester I’m told.

 

S.K. 

This is a national epidemic and the story here (from the Hattiesburg American) can be repeated all across the U.S.

This is our contemporary national totem of shame though its points of origin and its sources of blame are too numerous to mention in the time allotted to me this morning.

I’ll merely state that the medical industrial complex we call pharmacology which is in turn the driving force behind the toadies of private medical insurance  has created conditions that put mentally ill people (and especially young ones) onto the streets without short or long term therapy.

Local police have no training and no resources for helping people who are mentally ill and so Juvenile Hall and the local lock up are the solution when there’s no place else to go.

I once talked to a disgraceful man in Columbus, Ohio whose sinecure rested with placing the troubled children of the very rich in mountain top residential programs. When I inquired of this Dickensian character if expensive “hideaway” programs for troubled teens had any financial aid for ordinary families he sniffed: “Not everyone gets to go to Harvard.”

No, but the kid next door can go to your local penitentiary. You can thank your HMO and your local sheriff for that.

 

S.K. 

 

 

My beloved second guide dog “Vidal” (pictured here just three years ago alongside his human appendage and looking ever so much smarter than the H.A.) has passed after having been diagnosed with a massive doggy prostate tumor. He was himself to the last, talking, eating biscuits, and enjoying the attention of his entourage. I am bawling like a baby and whispering Tibetan prayers of passage and hoping that Vidal is now in the company of my beloved first guide “Corky” and my beautiful Guiding Eyes “career change “Labrador “Roscoe” and who’s to say we are not the geniuses of imagination in our despair? 

 

S.K.

 

A few weeks ago Saturday Night Live managed to outrage the governor of New York as well as many blindness advocacy groups by portraying the governor’s blindness in what was essentially a form of 18th century rural farce. Carl Augusto president of the American Foundation for the Blind quite properly said: “It is difficult to understand why ‘SNL,’ a show known for its clever, political satire, would take cheap shots at people with disabilities instead of coming up with better material – especially when mimicking a politician known for his sense of humor.” 

Last evening SNL did it again. Comedian Fred Armisenportrayed Paterson with a reprise of the offensive buffoonery they demonstrated about a month ago: Armisen stumbled and groped his way around the stage, squinted uncomprehendingly into the camera and held a pair of binoculars by the wrong end, and when his presentation was done couldn’t find his way offstage. .

I think its not difficult at all to understand why the 30Rock suits are dismissive of the outrage that’s been expressed by and on behalf of blind people. TV Land is not able to conceive of people who can’t see their cathode ray tubes or plasma screens. And as we all know, bigotry springs from the inability to conceive of others as being in any way real.

For my money this is what most offends me about Lorne Michaels and his SNL crowd (who not only refused to comment about the protests last month but have seen fit to reprise the loathsome enterprise) –to whit: they do not believe that genuine blind people who struggle daily to gain employment against nearly insurmountable odds, who are collectively disadvantaged  in wholly unacceptable ways are real human beings. The academic term for this is ohptho-centrism. Vision is the a priori assumption of importance. If you think I’m kidding just try to imagine SNL producing a “step ‘n fetch it” show about African-Americans or a bit about Indians who speak pigeon English and scalp their co-hosts on the news segment. You can’t imagine this because in fact the case for the reality of these alterities has been established. There are black and Native American TV viewers after all.

But the blind are different because they’re not culturally recognized within the bubble of TV Land. Their only place in 30 Rock or anywhere else in the media is still a matter of the grotesque caricature and the shopworn cliche.  

When NBC weatherman Al Roker heard that Don IMus had made racially objectionable comments about the Rutgers womens’ basketball team he helped to lead a protest within Rockefeller Plaza calling for the ouster of Imus from MSNBC. This was appropriate and I was in agreement with Mr. Roker’s view that there’s no place for bigotry at NBC.

Well there’s no place for ableism either but I’m not at all certain we will be hearing from any celebrity broadcasters about the matter. The “blind” are not real viewers you know. They probably don’t own property or vote or have businesses or raise families don’t you know.

And besides: its just a joke.

And we can leave it there.

Just remember that over 70 per cent of the blind who are of working age are unemployed. They are thought to be incompetent. Its in this context that the SNL farce takes on a much grimmer meaning.

 

 

S.K.

 Steve and I are a day late with this message to Jeff.  It was my fault; all week I thought today was the day.  Had it been, this Happy Birthday wish would have been on time…

Jeff –

"Here's health to the future;
A sigh for the past;
We can love and remember,
And hope to the last,
And for all thh base lies
That the almanacs hold
While there's love in the heart,
We can never grow old."

– Unknown

Happy Birthday, Jeff. 

Sent with love in our hearts for you and Clare,

Connie and Steve

Over at his blog Lance mannion has written the best rant I've seen (ever) on the predatory and cynical efforts of the neo-cons and their corporate lackys to dismember the American middle classes. Chief among the richest of the rich with the most lucre in his vault and still insane for more is Bernie Marcus the king of Home Depot who has been aggressively lobbying against the Employee Free Choice Act along  with his trough swilling corporate bailout pals who, you guessed it are fat recipients of public smackeroos but still want more. Why if employees had fair wages the top 16 per cent of the population couldn't own 90 per cent of the nation's wealth and by god then where would we be?  Etc.

I'm no pinko and by jinkies I believe in the right to make money. But the spectacle of corporate bailout recipients lobbying against the rights of workers to form their own representation is quite a big chunk of hypocrisy. The more so since these same fellows have sneeringly referred to social programs like Medicaid and Medicare and Social Security as "entitlements" ever since the Reagan years. Clearly corporate handouts are not entitlements–they're the just desserts. Yum Yum!

There sure seem to be lots of Bernies in the news these days.

S.K.

What happens is you’re planning the end of the week imagining you’re still part of the working classes who have earned their leisure time. You’re imagining this because the alternative is too grim to contemplate. You are aware that this very fear, or more properly its avoidance  is a luxury. Its Friday and you’re chewing your nails. 

Fear is on everyone’s  minds. Jobs are vanishing at the fastest rate since 1930 and the GOP has its heads in the dunes and the Dems are throwing money into the blast furnace and the jobs are vanishing and the jobs are vanishing and the jobs are gone.

To cheer myself (and because I don’t know any better) I read anything that isn’t the news.

But the problem is I am a nonfiction writer so I invariably find myself reading the kinds of true to life stories that fail to uplift the spirit.

Last night while the Iowa wind howled at the eaves I read In the Heart of the Sea the National Book Award winning history of the whale ship Essex by Nathaniel Philbrick.

The ship was rammed by a sperm whale and it sank far from land and the sailors navigated thousands of miles in their flimsy whaling boats only to starve. The survivors ate their dead companions. 

Around 3 in the morning it occurred to me that this wasn’t the right book to be reading as the economy collapses and the social safety net is imperiled.

I tried to think what I could be reading. I tried to remember what people read during the great depression. I remembered a Zen admonition: “If you have time to read, dance.” I thought of dancing. I thought of my wife who believes (with some justification) I am the world’s worst dancer. I will not dance.

I will read. I’m a professor of creative writing.

I thought of my friend, essayist and poet Peggy Shumaker whose memoir Just Breathe Normally tells the story of her near fatal cycling crash and her slow recovery–tells “it” through the gravitas of the inner life “where the meanings are” and lets the ordinariness of plot take a backseat to affairs of the spirit. I thought of how a writer like Peggy can remind us when we are tired or bowed down by the affairs of the world that its the care and nurture of the spirit that calls us to writing and to reading. This is what I was thinking at 3 in the morning.

Its too late to make a new year’s resolution but I made a promise to myself deep in the night that I would read Peggy Shumaker’s wonderful words again.

Creative nonfiction is a rich and variable genre. One can find plenty of cannibalism and there’s a place for the history of survivalist flesh eating. But not just now. Not for  me.

People in Iowa City are palpably afraid. The University of Iowa is facing a massive budget cut as are most of our nation’s colleges and universities.Shop keepers and the folks who sell cars or pet supplies–all are frightened that they too may wind up unemployed and unable to pay their mortgages.

Writers like Peggy Shumaker are not Pollyannas offering easy compensatory uplift. The writers of blurbs often tell us that memoirs offer visions of recovery. True memoirists tell us in no uncertain terms that people don’t really recover. We become strong where we are broken. This is a different thing from recovery.

Now is the time to read books that narrate how the spirit can be fed even when the times are dark. Today’s vote: Shumaker.

 

S.K.

I am not generally a dream teller though I can remember dreams and keep a dream journal on occasion. I shy from relating the mosaics of the illud tempus because we all know they can be starchy when passed along–what felt vital on the pillow turns to hardtack chewed at sullen breakfasts.

Sometimes dreams are richly and deservedly received by grateful conscious sectors of the mind as if the cavalry has arrived in the night with stores of water and good books. We were out on the frontier without poetry by god and Lo! Walter Whitman arrived with what the bible people like to call “the good news” and I don’t mind borrowing the term for what Carl Jung called jokingly “the devotional book of the subconscious”.   

Last night I dreamt of my friend Deborah Tall who was a poet and memoirist and a person of genuine ardor. Her life was cut short by cancer and the loss  endures for her friends and readers alike. And so last night it was a shy, unasked for gift from the unconscious when I met Deborah in a dream library where she was happy to show me book after book. Of course in the mysterious ways of dreams I don’t know the names of these other worldly volumes but I feel calm and refreshed withal for Deborah’s happiness was indeed a profound effect and it has followed me into this morning. 

“By God!” says the runty conscious mind. “By God! There’s something happening without my little purse.”

Deborah was alive in a great library where she had an office and poems and stars outside the windows.

Try putting that in the daytime purse ego boy.

 

S.K. 

As you can see from my wife Connie's post below Scott MacIntyre is currently a contestant on American Idol. Connie's post covers the basics: Scott MacIntyre is a professional musician with a solid following "out there" in the world of music loving people and heck he just happens to be visually impaired owing to a rare genetic form of vision loss that our friend Dr. Ed Stone is working to cure right here at the University of Iowa. As a music lover and as an advocate for people with disabilities I always poke my ears up when I hear that there's some very exciting new talent in the world and I get even more excited when I learn that the "talent" also happens to have some kind of a disability. This isn't because I think that pwds are heroic or that they're part of some kind of "overcoming" narrative but simply because I think that physical challenges are invariably incorporated into art–that is, I believe that disability is a deep and abiding form of emotional and imaginative intelligence for human beings. That this is hugely fascinating for me and for people who are interested in what is coming to be called "neuro-diversity" makes lots of sense.

So I was thrilled to hear of Mr. MacIntyre's current role on American Idol and even more fascinated to learn of his multiple accomplishments. He's a classically trained musician; a former Fulbright Scholar; he graduated from college at an age when most teens are still in high school. The man has lots of horsepower under his hood.

Connie's post points out that there's a sour comment on a blog having to do with American Idol that trots out the usual hoary bromide  that should Mr. MacIntyre win the whole shebang on American Idol this will no doubt have to do with "the sympathy vote". In her post Connie wonders what I might have to say about the matter.

First I should point out that the remark is essentially "ableism" and its no different from the casual racism that opines that so and so just got her or his job because of affirmative action. We've all heard that stuff over and over again. The late North Carolina Senator, Jesse Helms used that affirmative action gambit to get himself re-elected –his commercials would intone that "you needed that job but it went to affirmative action" etc. etc.

As it becomes harder to overtly dismiss people in strikingly racist ways I think its fair to say that bigots turn their gazes to people with disabilities. After all: someone somewhere must be getting something they don't deserve and which should be going to (insert your own group of privileged malcontents here).

Obviously if a person who has a disability also happens to have skills and talents then it surely must be the case that he or she gets the (insert item here, job, bonus, game show victory, parking space, etc.) only because there's a "sympathy vote".

What's funny about this is that only bigots believe this. If you ask a person with a disability or a member of their family or one of their friends if pwds receive unthinking and compensatory advantages in their lives they will laugh and laugh and likely fall over.

70 per cent of pwds are unemployed despite their levels of education and their evident individual talents. No sympathy vote seems to be apparent in the employment sector.

One quarter of people with disabilities graduate successfully from colleges and universities. That obviously means that three quarters don't make it through. Clearly there's an overwhelming sympathy factor working in our education system, eh?

I just have to laugh. Look on TV for successful images of pwds. You will find very few. NO sympathy vote there either.

Turns out that the sympathy vote exists only in the minds of bigots who have turned to ableism to keep their bigotry credentials active. One suspects that there's a "Bigotry General" who monitors how active the bigots are. She or he must be keeping score.

S.K.   

It's been a very long time since I (Connie) have done any blogging but tonight I stumbled on something and as a result, I just couldn't resist…

Honestly, I never watch American Idol.  Dancing with the Stars?  I love it!  It appeals to the aerobic instructor I once was…the music, the movement, the exercise…when I watch Dancing with the Stars it makes me want to get off the sofa and MOVE!  But I digress…

So it wasn't through American Idol that I happened to discover Scott MacIntyre.  I learned about Scott, and his family, by accident while researching an inherited eye condition called Leber congenital amaurosis.  It just so happens I work at the John and Marcia Carver Nonprofit Genetic Testing Laboratory at the University of Iowa where, with the help of baseball great Derrek Lee, and basketball great, Wyc Grousbeck, Project 3000 was launched.  One of the main objectives of Project 3000 is to find the estimated 3000 people in the United States who live with this form of inherited blindness and offer genetic screening as a means of learning as much as possible about this potentially treatable condition.  This evening I decided to do a little surfing in the blogosphere to see what information I might find about LCA.  Until this evening I had never heard of Scott MacIntyre.  I've since learned he sure can play piano.  Oh, and he can sing.  Randy and Paula and the new lady and whats-his-name – Simon – they all say so.  Scott is now a contestant on American Idol.

Congratulations, Scott!

I must confess, curiosity got the best of me and I did a little more "surfing".  I found a video of Scott's audition.  Where did I find it, you ask?  Would you believe I found it on a site called "Worst American Idols"?  I kid you not, there is a site devoted to this topic.  It's where I found this appalling statement:

"Scott Macintyre — the blind singer — auditions in Phoenix for American
Idol 8. This is a bit dangerous — if he makes it to the Top 36, he will
get the sympathy vote for sure. In fairness, he is a very technical
singer! His notes were very precise."

So let's see.  He is a major musical talent.  "He is a very technical singer!  His notes were very precise." 

Scott has got so much going for him and yet people are going to vote for him out of sympathy?  And that would be because….?

Oh, wait until Steve hears about this.

UPDATE: read Steve's most excellent response: Sympathy Vote Department