Planet of the Blind

Personally, I think this number is too conservative. But see this important article.

SK

(AAPD)

May 11, 2012

WASHINGTON, DC– [Excerpt provided by Inclusion Daily Express] As conferees begin debating how to move forward with the federal transportation reauthorization, two civil rights organizations are highlighting massive disparities in transportation access for people with disabilities.

"Equity in Transportation for People with Disabilities," a report by The American Association of People with Disabilities (AAPD) and The Leadership Conference Education Fund, documents the lack of funding, enforcement, and oversight of transportation programs that allow people with disabilities the opportunity to participate fully in community life.

The collected findings demonstrate that federal and local policymakers have failed to fulfill the promise of the Americans with Disabilities Act and provide equal access to affordable transportation for all communities through federal surface transportation legislation.

Mark Perriello, president of AAPD, commented that "access to transportation is a prerequisite to full civil rights for people with disabilities. The goals of the Americans with Disabilities Act — economic power, independent living, political participation, and equal opportunity — can only be realized with affordable, accessible transportation systems."

Entire article:
People with Disabilities Still Left Behind In Transportation Debates
http://tinyurl.com/ide0511121a
Report: 
Equity in Transportation for People with Disabilities (AAPD & The Leadership Conference Education Fund)
http://tinyurl.com/ide0511121b

Disability activist and poet Neil Marcus writes:

“How can I speak of cripple and not mention the wind.
How can I speak of crippled and not mention the heart.
Heart, wind, song, flower, space, time, love. To leave
these absent is to leave cripple in stark terms.
As if we were made of medical parts and not flesh and bone.

There is always wind in my cripple….

Cripple is not extraordinary or ordinary.
Cripple is a full plate….”

I was thinking of Neil’s lines this morning–in fact I was talking to myself like one of the old savants of Lapland and I felt gratitude that Neil had written these lines.  

So I’m sharing my gratitude! Thank you Neil Marcus! 

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/05/14-0

Stephen Kuusisto
Director
The Renee Crown University
Honors Program
University Professor
Syracuse University

"Before I decided to write this book My Twenty-Five Years With Gertrude Stein, I had often said that I would write, The Wives of Geniuses I Have Sat With. I have sat with so many. I have sat with wives that were not wives, of geniuses who were real geniuses. I have sat with real wives of geniuses who were not real geniuses. I have sat with wives of geniuses, of near-geniuses, of would-be geniuses, in short I have sat very often and very long with many wives and wives of many geniuses. Fernande, who was then living with Picasso and had been with him a long time that is to say they were all twenty-four years old at that time but they had been together a long time, Fernande was the first wife of a genius I sat with and she was – not the least amusing. We talked hats. Fernande had two subjects hats and perfumes. This first day we talked hats. She liked hats, she had the true french feeling about a hat, if a hat did not provoke some witticism from a man on the street the hat was not a success. Later on once in Montmartre she and I were walking together. She had on a large yellow hat and I had on a much smaller blue one. As we were walking along a workman stopped and called out, there go the sun and the moon shining together. Ah, said Fernande to me with a radiant smile, you see our hats are a success." from The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas by Gertrude Stein

From The New York Times:

OPINION: Capitalists and Other Psychopaths

Wall Street is capitalism in its purest form, and capitalism is predicated on bad behavior. This should hardly be news.

http://nyti.ms/J8DpWp

For the dead are not far

Nor are they neighbors

In fashions

Of ease. Instead

They speak

Like working men

Or the women

Who saved Finland,

Voices resolved

Still to love, half

Of unreason

For when alive

They were fluent with sadness

but never fooled.