The TruthAbout Sarah Palin and Special Needs

 

AlaskaDuring last night’s presidential debate John McCain repeated one of the oft-pronounced assertions of his campaign: namely that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin will be a great supporter of special needs children should their ticket be elected. IN point of fact Gov. Palin has a woeful record of budget slashing for educational programs for kids with disabilities in Alasaka

 

For more information on this matter check out this post on MOMocrats.

 

I am perhaps too sentimental when it comes to old fashioned images of horse drawn sleighs and farmhouses decorated for Christmas but my sensibilities as a disability rights advocate are sorely abused by the kinds of falsehoods that John McCain and Sarah Palin are employing by suggesting that the Alaska governor is a genuine disability rights advocate. Nothing is so false as this canard and I point it out because this claim by the McCain team uses disability as a “feel good” opportunity—and alas the good feelings are entirely unwarranted.

 

S.K.  

Don't Hold Your Breath for Human Rights

What does it mean to witness if you’re an artist? IN the 1980’s the poet Carolyn Forche associated the craft of poetry with the political act of becoming a moral witness. Forche’s work in the arts of poetry and political witnessing lead her to edit an important anthology of political poetry which remains the standard volume on the matter.

I remain troubled by the absence of moral conversation in our current presidential campaign. IN fact it’s possible I think to view the antics of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as a kind of anti-witnessing. She has recently been attacking Senator Barack Obama for having raised the issue of our military’s frequent involvement in incidents that have led to civilian deaths in Afghanistan. Obama was citing the U.S. military’s own findings that suggest that a lack of troops on the ground in Afghanistan has caused the U.S. to rely on air strikes against suspected Taliban and al Qaeda strongholds. In turn more civilians are killed than might otherwise be the case.

Senator Obama’s assertion was not unpatriotic or "anti-military" as Sarah Palin has loudly claimed, but rather an assessment drawn from our own top military leaders. It is fair I think to remind ourselves that in general terms the U.S. military does not like to kill innocent people. If you are on the left you may well laugh at my assertion; if you’re on the right you will quite possibly sneer at anything the military has to say—after all, that’s what the past 8 years have been about eh bien?

And so in this instance I am a witness to a mealy mouthed and unethical attack by Sarah Palin on the decency of our own military. And as seems to be the case so often, she is willing to confuse the messenger and the message for political gain while ignoring the real human rights issues.

And that’s my point of course: there have been no human rights issues in this campaign. I’m not holding my breath that we’ll hear about human dignity and freedom tonight.

S.K.

How Many Stories Am I Holding Up?

The film "Blindness" which is now in theaters offers the latest instance of what scholars David Mitchell and Sharon Snyder have called "narrative prosthesis" where in effect, disability is used as an artificial device to help what is otherwise a weak story line.

Blindness remains a frightening disability in no small measure because the literal condition, the disruption of the physical eye is invested with outworn symbolism that still resides in what the psychoanalyst Carl Jung called the cultural subconscious. People may know next to nothing about eye diseases but they know deep in their bones that there’s something suggestive and darkly portentious about the blind.

In literature and film the blind have often functioned as a form of narrative prosthesis: their presence in the story is designed to deflect the reader’s attention from the fact that the narrative is essentially uninteresting. Stevenson’s "Blind Pew" is a classic example of the technique. Aside from evil blind figures there are hundreds of stories in which a blind man or woman is victimized. Never mind that blind people are no more likely to be victimized than anyone else–the imagined scenario is all that matters. Fear sells a bad story every time a strong imagination isn’t doing the typing.

For more information about how the blind community is responding to the film visit this excellent link at the American Council of the Blind:

http://www.acb.org/press-releases/press-release_Blindness_the-movie.html

There are of course real lives in the balance. As I have said many times previously on this blog the unemployment rate for the blind remains unacceptably high in the United States and around the world. The film "Blindness" or the execrable novel that birthed it are guilty of false disability figuration–aesthetic choices that can only further harm real people.

S.K.

Note It in the Log

Just moments after the R.M.S. Titanic struck an iceberg Captain Edward Smith told first officer Murdoch to "note it in the log"—a command that presumably linked the idea of posterity alongside the written word. & of course the Titanic’s log went down with the ship.

"Note it in the log" is such a serious tip of the hat to faith. Write a sonnet. Someone will be around ages hence to read it.

Where do sonnets reside? In books. & books live in the libraries. & libraries depend on funding. & funding depends on the global economy.

Note it in the log

& I saw no difference between the right wing of the GOP as its membership sought to derail the bailout of Wall Street & their disdain for books. They’re all so busy imagining the rapture they don’t have time for sonnets or your child’s education or anything that might look like the future. Of course they’ll say they don’t think the government should save private capital. But that’s not their real objection to the emergency legislation being debated now in Washington. The ultra ultra right wingers of the Republican party believe this world is mostly toast. They also think they can take their money with them to heaven which of course looks like Dubai.

Note it in the log, Mr. Murdoch.

S.K. .

Essay: Summer Solstice

In the old days at the edge of the Finnish woods my father’s father and in turn, his father

Raked the dry weeds and lit a bonfire but they went about their work so cautiously

One might think they were burdened by superstitions.

& yes they kept a spare coffin in the house, eating off of it, using it for a table.

“In these dark times,” they would say. “In these final days…”

& though my father’s father’s father was a Christian

Though he believed in the life everlasting

Hhe was afraid of willful nature.

& while praying they burned that unused coffin.

& the sun dipped to the dark horizon …

S.K.

The Confession

I wasn’t myself today and without forethought of any kind I walked into the tall grass and lay down. Add gold and acid & I’d have an engraving: Hermes Trismegistus dreaming; Carl Jung on holiday—who knows what to call it…"This isn’t me," I thought. "What kind of person lies in the uncut grass in America? Isn’t lying down a confessionof sorts?"

& I lay there sloped in the odors of vegetation unable to imagine my confession. What had I to confess? My foolishness perhaps but even the god inside me was tired of that story. Autumn & the crickets singing during the day. Autumn; crickets; the god inside me; tall grass; foolishness without conceit; a simple half hour while my country wages war & about that time I sensed that I have said all the prayers I have ever known.

S.K.

Walking Swiftly with Robert Bly

In those days I had these coke bottle glasses & I could see a pine cone or a Chinese fan

When I raised them straight to my nose & yet I walked as fast as a man can walk

& no surprise: the body was not afraid of zeroes or empty rooms;

It didn’t see the cloud that resembled a mountain

For when our footing is uncertain men and women see nothing at all.

We were walking beside a lake

& Robert said the shadows cast by the pines

Were like the silences of families

But we were moving quickly

In several darknesses—too many

For a human frame—please understand

The body is pure uncertainty

& its shadows are unobserved

Though we make all the world an algorythmn

Lining up the churches and jeweled caskets, the eyes of animals,

Occidental numbers,post mortems of the heart

The body enters the ocean without claim

Without thought— we have been poor always—

Walking swiftly we are the poorest things in nature.

You who love the bitter seeds in bread and poetry…

You who never believe in devils…

You who laugh at the felicities of Russian rhymes that stay in the ear for a lifetime…

No one calls us

But walking swiftly

The house stands among thorns.

"I will come again to this poorest of houses," the body says. "But not this morning."

S.K.

ADA Alive and Kicking

Yesterday the U.S.Senate Passed the ADARestoration Act.

See this article at Civil Rights dot org:

http://www.civilrights.org/library/features/024-senate-adaaa.html

If you are a person with a disability or you’re a friend or family member of a pwd you will be disappointed by some of the compromises that came about during the long struggle to introduce, debate, and pass this legislation. Yet it is undeniably true that the act, which President Bush is expected to sign into law, will reinvigorate civil rights protections for people with disabilities who may experience discriminatory actions by employers or yes, even educators.

If you were channel surfing yesterday you would not have seen any coverage about this remarkable triumph of bi-partisanship.

But there it is.

I for one will be popping a cold bottle of Italian fizzy water.

S.K.

Big Ten Network Supports Project 3000

Logo: Project 3000Derrek Lee of the Chicago Cubs and Wyc Grousbeck of the Boston Celtics share an uncommon bond.  Each has a child with a rare genetic eye disease called Leber’s congenital amaurosis, otherwise known as LCA.  Rare as this condition is, these two devoted fathers would probably not be aware of their similar experiences were it not for the efforts of Dr. Edwin Stone and his research team at the University of Iowa’s John and Marcia Carver Nonprofit Genetic Testing Laboratory.  In their view, it is Dr. Stone who represents hope for the future of their children, and others like them.  It is Dr. Stone’s powerful message that "there is something we can do" that has inspired the Lee and Grousbeck families to combine their talents and their resources to support the research that is currently being done.

The
initiative spearheaded by Derrek Lee and Wyc Grousbeck is known as Project 3000, named as such to reflect the estimated 3000 people in the United States living with LCA.  One of the major goals of this ambitious effort is to find, and test, these 3000 people in order to advance the research.  Research points to hope in terms of treatment and a possible cure, not only for LCA, but for other inherited eye diseases as well.

An informational video, produced to raise awareness and help spread the word, has been aired on the Big Ten Network.  It has also been made available for viewing here.

To Learn More visit:

Derrek Lee’s 1st Touch Foundation
Project 3000: Believe the Unseen

A Question as Autumn Arrives

This is the season of crickets: early autumn and the nights turning cold. We think of them as musicians of small disasters even though this is patronizing and humanly imperial. But children know the truth. The crickets are singing in dark houses with the windows flung open to the night.

The thing about children and crickets is that their hearts have not been hijacked by esoterica. The Gods live inside a child and a cricket without fanfare or holy books. And just so: the gods, children, and crickets are not thinking about the pale ministers or the farmers.

They sing to the astronomy of bodily pain and the unredeemable knowledge of no body at all.

Was it a child or a cricket invented the shakahachi flute?

S.K.