Yesterday my friend Michael Meteyer and I visited the Kansai Guide dog Association near Kyoto, Japan.
Their dogs are related to my dog through breeding cooperation with Guiding Eyes for the Blind.
Thanks to Mr. Yoshi FUKUI, director of KGDA’S breeding program for giving us a tour of his lovely facilities.
(BBC News)
January 11, 2013
CHORLEY, ENGLAND– [Excerpt provided by Inclusion Daily Express] A blind man Tasered by a policeman who apparently mistook his white stick for a samurai sword has lodged a claim for damages from the Lancashire force.
Colin Farmer, 63, was stunned by an officer who was responding to reports of a man walking through Chorley with a sword on 12 October.
His solicitor said a claim had been registered for false imprisonment, assault and breach of human rights.
Mr. Farmer, who is registered blind and has suffered two strokes, said he had thought he was being attacked by thugs.
Entire article:
Tasered blind man Colin Farmer seeks damages from Lancashire Police
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lancashire-20966632
Related:
Blind man seeks Taser compensation (Shropshire Star)
“Does a dog have Buddha nature?” “No,” said a great master to a student. And to another student with the same question the master said “yes.” Who has compassion understands compassion. Who transcends sorrow lives “now” and dogs and humans do or do not know this according to their lights.
Ah but there are dogs who possess tremendous capacities for empathy. Studies at universities from Portugal to Sweden to North Carolina and Japan tell us that some dogs not only experience the emotions of their human partners, they also understand those emotions. And when human beings are anxious or sad, dogs will endeavor to ameliorate those same emotions. This isn’t new news to dog owners. But what is new is a growing understanding that dogs are far more sophisticated than human beings have customarily thought. Dogs possess empathy.
Did human beings some ten to fifteen thousand years ago see team work and empathy in dogs and in turn become their students and not their masters? This is what I’ve come to think after living these past twenty years with three soulful guide dogs.
Here in Kyoto, right next door to my hotel, is the Sanjusagendo temple containing a thousand statues of Kannon, the Buddha of compassion. I plan to go there today and sit and breathe in the sweet, invisible tinctures of caring. I remember how my first guide dog Corky once barked at the compassionate Buddha in the Cornell University art museum. Corky was not known for barking. She fixated in the Buddha, her body suddenly rigid. And she barked once.
Sometimes the miracles of life are just beyond the rules of logic.
When we change our perspective, we just might let a little magic into our life!
Please help me welcome new author and CNY neighbor Sheila Applegate to the Planet of the Blind. Sheila is hosting a virtual book tour, assisted by my wife, Connie, via Authors' Virtual Solutions. In her guest post below, Sheila brings a fresh new perspective to this planet of mine.
Tell me, have you ever had an experience like this? If so, please feel free to share it in a comment below.
Perception
by Sheila Applegate
How we perceive the world around us has everything to do
with how we experience this world.
Have you ever been faced with a frustrating situation that
no matter how hard you tried to solve there just seemed to be nothing you could
do to change it?
Finally there is the moment of surrender in which you give
up because you do not know what else to do.
Then out of nowhere you are presented with an alternative that you never
would have believed possible. A simple change in perspective seems to create an
opening for a magical solution.
I experienced this in the middle of an apple orchard on a
beautiful autumn day just this past September.
Image: photo taken looking up at branches of an apple tree highlights ripe red apples against a bright blue sky
The leaves were just beginning to change, radiating warm
colors against a crisp blue sky. As soon as my kids got home from school, I
piled them into the car for our first apple-picking excursion of the season.
We arrived at the orchard just in time to hop onto the wagon
for a ride deep into the orchard. My 7 year old niece was with us. She was
filled with such excitement that even my teenage children were as giddy and excited as they were when they were her
age.
As we arrived at the designated section the tractor driver
instructed us to stay within the two red flags, giving us about 5 rows to pick
from.
It was a picture perfect day as we picked apples and nibbled
on a few as we went. My kids showed their younger cousin how to take a bite of
an apple while it remained on the tree, a favorite prank their dad had
taught them when they were young.
It was a perfect afternoon.
Once our bags were full we piled them onto the wagon and
climbed up for the ride back to the parking lot. By now we were hot, thirsty and ready to head home. I reached into my
pocket for my keys, only to find an empty pocket. After a long search at the
car we all piled back onto the wagon, explaining to the perplexed driver why we
were heading back into the orchard.
This time, as he told the newly arriving apple pickers to
stay in between the flags he also announced to the group that we had lost a set
of keys, asking people to keep their eyes out for them.
Walking up and down the lanes of trees over and over we
could not find the keys anywhere. Wagonloads of people came and went. Each new group was instructed to keep an eye out for our lost keys.
Nothing.
The kids reached their limit. So I called for help. My
sister came to drive the children home. My friend brought me the spare key I had
at home. Unfortunately, the spare key did not have a computer chip and was
limited to opening the doors. So it was of no use in starting the car.
A call to AAA informed me that a locksmith would be sent to
the orchard to make a new key for a mere $200! My bagful of fresh apples was starting to look
very expensive!
As my friend and I
waited for the locksmith we decided to walk into the now-closed orchard for
one more look. My friend threw his keys onto the ground in front of me.
Pointing out how easily it should be to
see my lost keys in the grass
I was shocked. As the
search had drawn out for so long, I was now starting to feel like I was looking for a needle in
a haystack. How on earth could I be missing something so easy to spot?
We reached the
familiar red flagged area and as my friend began his search I felt like I was past
my limit.
The thought of walking down this same grassy tree line again
gave me a stomachache. It was as if I could not look for one second longer.
Then I heard a voice from within, "change your perspective".
A little intrigued, I lifted my gaze from the muddy earth
and once again noticed the incredible view of the horizon that had filled me
with such surrendered joy only a few hours earlier.
I felt my body begin to relax. As I scanned the horizon, breathing the beauty
in for the first time in hours, I suddenly caught the shimmering silver of my
keys!
They were chest high, hanging on a branch, five trees away from where I stood, deeper into the
orchard than I even believe I had gone!
I actually paused before going to them as my brain
recalculated the impossible.
There is still no logical answer for how those keys got into
that tree. Everyone has his or her own idea of how this happened. Not one of them
seems logical.
Sometimes the miracles of life are just beyond the rules of
logic.
When we change our perspective, we just might let a little
magic into our life!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
As a clinical therapist, motivational presenter, author & teacher, Sheila's passion is to provide a forum for people to process emotion & integrate spiritual understanding into their daily lives. Her new book, Enchanted One: The Portal to Love, provides readers with a guide to embracing love in every moment. www.sheilaapplegate.com
In celebration of the release of Enchanted One, Sheila is offering this raffle contest for multiple chances to win one of two Amazon Gift Cards.
TAKE NOTE (if I may be so bold)! PLEASE… Share your thoughts and comments below and to show my appreciation and support I am making this special offer (in addition to the raffle contest offer above!).
(Click all links for details).
“In late September many voices
Tell you you will die.
The leaf says it. That coolness.
All of them are right.”
–Robert Bly
Shadows lengthen under the apple trees. It’s a princely trouble I’m feeling–a problem from a thousand years ago. Something uncoils and I carry it into the house where it rests among my books. This presence, this siren is like a many armed figure of Durga waving her axe, riding a lion over a mound of skulls–but she’s the smallest Durga in the world, small and green as the inch worm I discover scaling the Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens.
Fathoms down, under the waves, my long, informal apprenticeship.
“Memory is not an instrument for exploring the past but its theatre. It is the medium of past experience, as the ground is the medium in which dead cities lie interred.”
–Walter Benjamin
Ruminant cold; clouds like machine parts, nothing fancy, a set of gears low on the horizon, gulls walking sideways in the market square.
My childhood wasn’t magical.
There were reindeer and old men and drunken sailors.
There were trolley cars filled with tough old Finns who had survived two wars with Russia and now retained entire dissertations on hunger in their heads.
Lights came on early. Helsinki. A darkness inside a darkness–weather “became” philosophy.
“Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.” (Kierkegaard) Snow comes like a sequence of mathematical ideas.
The cold is numerical tension.
“Don’t spoil my circles,” said Archimedes. I see a very old man making circles on the esplanade–looping circles built by oversized feet in the Finnish twilight.
“Nothing exists except atoms and empty space; everything else is opinion.” (Democritus)
Look! A city of opinions!
Architectures of opinion!
But like Einstein, the snow does not believe in mathematics.
The city of my boyhood is a great polyhedron of shadows.
I have found in general that shadows are more reliable than ideas of heaven; more of scale with mathematics and poetry; shadows are the daughters of time.
Winter in the far north is a miracle multiplied beyond necessity.
Leibniz wouldn’t like it here.
Even the ravens of Helsinki know the unconscious arithmetic of winter.
This is no joke or conceit.
I once saw a raven standing in an empty baby carriage.
This was just outside a downtown department store.
The raven was lifting one foot, then the other, carefully, as though composing a stationary dance.
The mind is a question, asked of another question, the imperative, shadow asked of shadow.
When the parents came out with their baby the raven was gone.
Frank Gardner: Gorilla Spotting From A Wheelchair
(The Telegraph)
January 3, 2013
KIGALI, RWANDA– [Excerpt provided by Inclusion Daily Express] In the damp, cool air halfway up a volcano in equatorial Africa, I smelt an odor I had never encountered before. Musty, pungent, tangy, hard to describe yet definitely overpowering. “We are close now,” whispered Augustin, the khaki-clad ranger assigned as our escort. “Please be very alert.” Every one of us who had trekked up the valley that morning was on tenterhooks, aware that something big was about to happen.
We had flown into Rwanda the day before from London, an exhausting 15-hour journey via Nairobi. My wife’s friend Karen had bid successfully at a charity raffle for a three-day gorilla trek, so my wife said, “Go on, you’ve always wanted to see the mountain gorillas; and let’s face it, this is not one for me.”
It was one of those insane now-or-never moments, blowing more than £2,000 on a mad 72-hour dash to a country that deserves weeks of anyone’s time, if not more. But back in the dark days in hospital after I was shot and disabled eight years ago, I remember thinking, “Damn! I wish I had gone to such-and-such a place before I lost the use of my legs.”
And here it was, a dream on a plate, a chance to see the world’s largest primate in its remote natural habitat with a tour company that commendably made light of my disability. “We’ll get you up there no problem,” I was assured via email. I was curious to see how.
Entire article:
Rwanda: Gorilla spotting from a wheelchair
http://tinyurl.com/0103136
Hollywood Tackles Sex And Disability
(The Independent)
January 2, 2013
HOLLYWOOD, CALIFORNIA– [Excerpt provided by Inclusion Daily Express] It’s long been said in Hollywood that portraying someone with a disability fast-tracks you to Oscar glory. Yet show them having sex, and film executives squirm. But A-listers such as Helen Hunt and Marion Cotillard — in films funded by some of the world’s biggest studios — are debunking the myth that disabled people can’t have sex on screen, heralding a new cinematic sexual revolution.
The award-winning The Sessions, which opens in the UK on 18 January, is one of the first Hollywood films to explore the subject of a disabled person losing his virginity. The film follows the real-life story of the American poet Mark O’Brien – a polio survivor who uses an iron lung. At 38 years old he sought the help of a sex surrogate, someone who helps people with sexual problems explore their bodies, played by Helen Hunt.
The film, which won the Special Jury Prize and Audience Award at the Sundance festival this year, is written and directed by a polio survivor, Ben Lewin, but is based on the late O’Brien’s account of his own story. “I was taken by the frankness and explicitness of it — which is rarely associated with discussions of sex,” Lewin said. “When I was a kid, we didn’t talk about sex and disability. I get the impression people are more open-minded now. There is an interesting disability-chic movement, and a number of movies looking at similar themes.”
One of these was this year’s Untouchable, which tells the story of a quadriplegic and his carer, who encourages him to pursue love. And Rust & Bone, which won the top prize at the London Film Festival, stars Cotillard as a double amputee who embarks on a sexual relationship.
Entire article:
Hollywood tackles sex and disability
http://tinyurl.com/ide0102136
I love it when the press invents a term that doesn’t actually describe what’s happening. The “fiscal cliff” is just the latest example. Do you remember “mop up operation” during the Viet Nam war? Or the “Gulf of Tonkin Incident”?
It’s entirely possible that what we’re watching in Washington right now is a fiscal mop up incident disguised as a cliff operation. Another way to say this is that the rich will inevitably come out ahead, and the middle classes and the poor are going over the edge. And this is hardly a histrionic statement–the proposed cuts to social programs that the Obama administration have placed on the table will inevitably be exceeded whether there is a deal or not. The name of the game is really darker than “the fiscal cliff”–especially since the “cliff” doesn’t really exist but the poor will in fact go under the bus.
Patricia Wright’s excellent article “The Fiscal Cliff Impacts People with Disabilities” pinpoints how proposed cuts to IDEA and Medicaid will impact education for children with special needs. Even job programs for people with disabilities in the department of defense are at risk.
This is not a fiscal cliff: it’s a “defund education and send them into the streets to beg” “Les Miserables” Redux. That is, of course just me being uncharacteristically polite. Here’s an excellent snippet from a fine article by Steve Vogel
In the end it probably doesn’t matter what we call it–this is just cruelty, aided and abetted by irresponsible mainstream reporting.
My friend and colleague William Peace writes about bioethicist Art Caplan over at Bad Cripple in a post about an elderly man who had a series of debilitating strokes and decided he wanted to die of bedsores–in effect he instructed his nurses not to turn him over in bed. Caplan argues that the man should have the right to demand withholding medical treatment–though he spends a good deal of time arguing that the process of letting a patient die of bedsores inevitably affects the morale of caregivers. Caplan argues that there’s a delicate balance between end of life decision making and the morale of caregivers but in the instance above, the old man’s wish to die should trump the feelings of the nursing staff. It’s interesting to assess Caplan’s argument because its a palimpsest of philosophical assertions and I must confess I like a good palimpsest as much as Umberto Eco. Caplan writes:
If I thought the care of others was being compromised by these morale issues and staff problems, I might override a patient’s wishes. I might not honor his request in the name of other people’s rights. In my opinion, there may be limits to what you can request when it affects the care that others can receive. That is a tradeoff that has to be weighed at all times. As tough as this case was, it provides lessons to take home. Autonomy and patient rights may have some limits when they begin to affect others and the care that others can get. It may be important to think about this kind of dilemma in advance, and be ready to say as soon as a request comes that this is the patient’s right, but it is not something we can accept at this facility.
This is a tautological argument driven by good old fashioned Freudian “reaction formation”–“these morale issues and staff problems” are not consequential to Caplan because they are simply emotive and the role of a philosopher is to embrace logic. And all looks well enough until one considers what is not being said: the patient in question has asked to be allowed to die in terrible pain, to die slowly, and by extension, to ask a staff of trained medical professionals to bear witness with no more feeling or morality than an encyclopedist might possess while erasing a word.
Human beings cannot be erased in secret. And whether Caplan likes it or not, medicine, even hideous, post-modern, corporatized, neo-utilitarian “hospitalist” driven medicine is still a community. The passive acceptance of pain in others undermines not only medicine but civic life itself, a matter that Franz Kafka underscored famously in his story “A Hunger Artist”.
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