We at POTB like this article by Johnny Punish over at Veterans Today.
Excerpt:
Mexico is now the only team in our beloved North America left in the World Cup tournament. Over the last decade or so, Mexico, the country and it’s peoples have been beaten up by many in the US Media for being a weak burden on the USA. We hear the grumblings about drug wars, immigration, and brown peoples who don’t share our values. But Mexico is changing fast and we’re missing another opportunity…
S.K.
This past week, the U.S. Senate passed a resolution submitted by Sen. Kent Conrad [D-ND] marking today, June 27, as National PTSD Awareness Day. Boy, have we come a long way. See full article at:
S.K.
Police car burning in Toronto
Photo by James Ferguson see BBC News
Violence just brings more violence,” a woman said into a megaphone as an anarchist set fire to a police cruiser. “What you guys are doing, it’s breaking my heart.”
See full story at The Star.
I am not a visionary. I claim to be a practical idealist. The religion of nonviolence is not meant merely for the rishis and saints. It is meant for the common people as well. Nonviolence is the law of our species as violence is the law of the brute. The spirit lies dormant in the brute and he knows no law but that of physical might. The dignity of man requires obedience to a higher law-to the strength of the spirit….
The rishis who discovered the law of nonviolence in the midst of violence were greater geniuses than Newton.
–Gandhi
See: http://www.mkgandhi.org/nonviolence/index.htm
Nonviolence is a powerful and just weapon which cuts without wounding and ennobles the man who wields it. It is a sword that heals.
–Martin Luther King Jr.
That’s all nonviolence is–organized love.”
–Joan Baez
See more at: Waging Nonviolence
See also: Quaker Quaker
And: Center for Christian Nonviolence
S.K.
Lately I’ve been reading the posthumous poems of Wallace Stevens. I think of them as Stevensian “out takes” or Stevens “unplugged”–they have all the oddness of French symbolism and neo-Platonism that marks the poet’s best work but the poems are,for lack of a more sophisticated word, “goofier” than even the silliest of Stevens’ poems from the published canon. And so last night as a massive thunder storm swept into Iowa City and as the tornado sirens were sounding–as I was waking my wife and gathering up loose possessions and urging my guide dog down to the cellar, well, I felt the sequenced absurdities of life and death that circulate in Stevens.
Poo Pah! Bangalore! The tornado knocks on our front door!
He’s a darkling dumbell. He’s pure gestalt!
Aptest angel, without anthem!
Yes, poor tornado. There are no rekindled lips to sing his praises. Oh but we can pull his tail. We can mutter poems in the basement. All is order there, and elegance, two candles and three sets of eyes under the stairs…
As I believe that disabilities offer ways of knowing and as I see no distinction between able-bodied-ness and bodies that are customarily thought “broken”–(for the “temporarily abled” think about disability always–fear it, pay billions in insurance, hence are socially disabled) just so, by virtue of the power given unto me I declare today “Seeing Without Looking Day”. Here are some lines from the Tao Te Ching:
Without opening your door,
You can open your heart to the world.
Without looking out your window,
You can see the essence of the Tao.
The more you know,
The less you understand.
The Master arrives without leaving,
sees the light without looking,
achieves without doing a thing.
–translation by Stephen MItchell
**
The first thing you’ll discover after you’ve tied on your blind fold is that nothing in the world prevents you from opening your heart. Sure, you will find lots of hard furniture. And cooking without looking will, at first seem impossible (though it gets better). And of course as you navigate your way down the street with your white cane you’ll meet people who want to pray for you or try to help you by grabbing your arm–hence you will have to learn an almost supernatural grace in the company of pedestrians. Ah, but you will say to yourself: “The Master arrives without leaving, sees the light without looking…”
**
I’m not a big fan of those campus events where able-bodied students get to try out a wheelchair for a day or don a blind fold or what have you. The point about disability is that its permanent and for such an exercise to have any meaning it would have to last for at least a year, thereby guaranteeing the participant the opportunity to experience disability in all seasons. Stand in the pouring rain waiting for the bus with your guide dog. Try to make your way in a wheelchair in winter in a place where there’s snow. The Tao again: “See the world as yourself. Have faith in the way things are…”
Have faith in the way things are.
**
Another way to say this is: “Have faith in the way things “are not”–this is the disability way. Perhaps you think I’m kidding, but I’m not kidding. The wheel chair user must navigate the injustices of architectures and the sloppy habits of store managers. If the wheel chair user allows her day to be ruined she will lose the wealth of her mind. Just so: if she does not protest she will lose the righteousness of her cause. What to do? Well, just as it says in the Tao: “the best General enters the mind of his enemy”. Yes. You must become the sloppy store manager. Become the lackluster university disability services administrator. Yes, the very thought is like thinking of swallowing iodine. But remember, the aim here is to not let obstacles ruin your mind. And so you say to the miscreant store manager (for thus we shall call him): “Say, good sirrah, my way is blocked in your aisles, can we work together on this problem?” Yes, sometimes you will have to call the police.
**
Yes. “Seeing Without Looking Day” will test your Tao. It well test your Tao the way a string gets caught in the vacuum cleaner and you must spend a solid hour on your knees and fumbling with your fingers imagining that failure is an opportunity. Yes. Not going mad is an opportunity. Not living your life envying others is an opportunity. If you think I am crazy then that’s also an opportunity. The world is not “blind friendly”–if you blame someone else there is no end to the blame. Therefore the Master fulfils her own obligations and corrects her own mistakes. She does what she needs to do and demands nothing of others. (Tao 79)
Do you think I’m giving up on civil rights? Not on your life. But “Seeing Without Looking Day” teaches you how to choose your fights. The lamp post is not your enemy. The lamp post is just a fact. The waiter who won’t let you into the restaurant with your guide dog seems like an enemy. But he is just a fact. To keep sane, argue hardly at all but call the police. Let them explain the matter. Do not give away your soul-power by arguing with a lamp post. The lamp post is not a comment on your life.
Do you think I’m crazy? The Tao again: Whoever can see through all fear will always be safe.”
S.K.
I received word yesterday that my friend Jeff Dunn has passed away after a long struggle with cancer. Jeff was the “Computer Czar” of Guiding Eyes for the Blind and an enthusiast of assistive technology for people with disabilities.
I first met Jeff when I attended a Guiding Eyes for the Blind “walkathon” in October, 1994 and discovered he was my “room mate” at the Marriott Hotel. Jeff was a non-stop fountain of knowledge about computers and he also knew more about science fiction than I could absorb in a lifetime. I knew instantly that I was in the company of someone who relished the idea that machines could and would change the lives of people with disabilities forever.
Jeff was tireless in his pursuit of knowledge about technologies for pwds (people with disabilities) and he knew which software patches were necessary if you wanted JAWS to work with instant messaging (though he could also tell you why you didn’t “want” instant messaging in the first place–always recommending something better).
To say that Jeff will be missed is too simple. To say that he’s in Heaven now with Charles Babbage (the Victorian inventor of the forerunner of the computer, “The Difference Engine”) is too easy. I think Jeff would like it if we imagine him in an afterlife where we get to be reunited with our loved ones and our dogs and where the machines are as infallible and user friendly as they are on Star Trek: The Next Generation.
Boy! Could Jeff talk about Star Trek! And boy did he love his people and his dogs! And boy did he love Guiding Eyes for the Blind!
And boy do we miss him.
I used to crack Jeff up with a joke about an octopus in a bar. I can’t tell it here. But I will remember most of all Jeff’s wonderful laughter.
S.K.
It was in the steam room where men achieve greatness that my friend Geronimo said that President Obama should ask himself “What would Nixon do?” as he contemplates the fate of Gen. Stanley McChrystal. I think that’s a “spot on” idea, a capital idea, a non-pareil–and I don’t mean movie candy. I call this the WWND principle.
Nixon of course would call the general to the Oval Office for a bowl of cottage cheese with ketchup.
S.K.
Cary Grant could still move pretty well for a guy his age in 1964.
A great post by Lance Mannion on the subject of aging gracefully and Cary Grant.
The following article by S. E. Smith on disability terminology and popular media comes to us via the Inclusion Daily Express. You can read the whole piece by going to Inclusion Daily.
S.E. Smith: A Starter Kit For Nondisabled People And The Media
(Feministe)
June 21, 2010
FORT BRAGG, CALIFORNIA– [Excerpt] I thought I’d write a very brief primer on some disability terminology in US English, to familiarise nondisabled readers with the language that has arisen as disability rights activists fight for the right to self identify, to resist ableist language, and to confront problematic framings of disability embedded in the way we talk about disability.
The disability rights movement is much older than many people realise and from the start, people were tackling, confronting, and challenging language. Respectful language is already here; it’s been developed, refined, and used by people with disabilities for decades, it’s just disseminating to the general population very slowly.
It’s important to remember here that self-identification trumps all — if you are talking to or about a particular person, please ask how that person identifies or would like to be referred to.
It’s also important to remember that there are different frameworks for thinking and talking about disability, not just around the world, but in the United States. While this primer is broadly useful for talking about disability in the US, because that is where I am writing, your mileage may vary.
Entire article:
Disability Terminology: A Starter Kit for Nondisabled People and the Media
http://www.InclusionDaily.com/news/2010/red/0621e.htm
Related:
The media’s struggle with disabilities (Chicago Now)
http://www.InclusionDaily.com/news/2010/red/0621f.htm
The Vatican’s official newspaper has declared The Blues Brothers a “Catholic classic.”
We at POTB asolutely LOVE learning that the Vatican has declared the film "The Blues Brothers" a "Catholic classic". Soon we predict they will add "Last Tango in Paris"!
Planet of the Blind 