These Boots are Made for Walkin'

My new guide dog "Nira" has been navigating the campus of the University of Iowa and she’s been sporting her red, velcro and nylon snow boots. Today’s guide dogs are trained to tolerate footwear since icy sidewalks are often covered with corrosive salts and chemicals that can harm feet. Obviously the sight of a big yellow Labrador in harness trotting along with her red booties is remarkable, particularly for college students who are delighted as Nira prances down the sidewalk like a circus pony. It has been below zero in Iowa all this week and the doggy boots have been valuable as we’ve marched along the banks of the frozen Iowa River. I hope to have some photos to share with you soon.  Avanti!

S.K.

Why Some People Still Can't Find Work

A friend writes to ask why it remains so difficult for people with disabilities to find jobs and in particular why this is so hard for blind people in an age of technology and the ADA.

My friend is a scientist. He understands how things actually work.

Of course the problem for people with disabilities regarding employment has nothing to do with "how things work"—in reality the problem has to do with symbolism.

Here is what I wrote to my friend early this morning:

Dear (Name Withheld):

The answer to this question is relatively simple though like most easy things it’s also discouraging. Disability functions in general as a series of metaphors or "sign systems" as the French scholar Roland Barthes would put it. The study of signs in culture is known as "semiotics"—and without giving a treatise the crux of the biscuit is that everything we can see is culturally embedded with variegated meanings that are the product of history. This is true of everything from a "stop sign" to your mother’s wedding dress.

Disability has functioned historically in stark metaphorical terms: the blind for instance are identified in Greek mythology as being either monstrous or irrational figures or, prophetic souls who have been given a compensatory gift from the gods. In the ancient world criminals were routinely "blinded" to serve as constant reminders of criminality as they begged in the streets. Accordingly there is a several thousand year period in western cultural history when blindness has been semiotically designated as an exemplary and unhappy figuration. Drama, fairy tales, kid’s books, movies, all reinforce this signifying process. I wrote a little bit about this in my book "Planet of the Blind". The writer Georgina Kleege has addressed this subject in her book "Sight Unseen" and now in her new book of imaginary letters to Helen Keller.

These pejorative ideas about blindness were so pervasive that it was believed impossible to teach the blind to read until the early 19thcentury.

Again, as I say, these old fashioned notions are not sensible but they exist in what Carl Jung would call the "cultural or universal unconscious" of civilization.

Changing this kind of thing is obviously not so much a matter of technology but really a matter of public education.

I am typing right now without the benefit of sufficient coffee so I hope this makes sense?

Steve K   

As I think about these matters I’m often reminded of the up side of symbolic or figurative dynamism in culture. When human beings understand how symbols can assist their social and political goals then transformation can happen very quickly within society. Rosa Parks comes to mind. James Meredith.

We need more competent disabled people in our nation’s television and movies. We needed this about two decades ago.

I hereby volunteer to be a TV detective. Along with my amazing dog I will have Confucian poetry and logo-rhythmic dancing in my arsenal.

Written in Snow

My brother is out here. Yes, yes, I haven’t seen him since the Eisenhower administration

But holy Giacomo Bala, he’s up there with the streetlights, circumflex and mercury,

Quicksilver in the sub-zero Iowa night. Don’t give me that look—

I can’t help it the alphabet is insufficient to your utter joy.

S.K.

Tabloid Politics

Today on NBC’s “Meet the Press” Tom Brokaw observed that we may be in a new political era in the U.S.— an age that might be characterized as representing “the end of dogma” as we have known it.

I liked Mr. Brokaw’s optimism since his remark was contextualized within the broader assertion that voters in both the GOP and the Democratic party may be less inclined to vote for a candidate merely because they embrace the traditional polarizing political rhetoric of the past thirty years.

As “The Buffalo Springfield” once sang: "Something’s happening here…”

Meanwhile it’s clear given the percentages for each candidate in recent primaries that no one has the affection of the majority in either party.

In turn we have a great opportunity to debate ideas.

And this is where my optimism breaks down. The political coverage in this country is so poor and the lurid ambulance chasing of the press is so rampant that the substantive differences between the candidates on everything from how to fix social security to what we ought to do to repair our international diplomatic and economic status remains woefully under reported.

And so we have moved away from dogma into something like disaffected chatter. Here’s what the various TV political talk shows have focused on over the past week:

Bill Clinton got red in the face while scolding a reporter in Las Vegas. He looked really angry and kind of old. Old Bill was looking uncool. That Clinton was talking about the failure of the press to report on the dirty tricks of local labor unions was of no consequence. Why should it matter that union members who wanted to vote for Hillary were being threatened by union bosses? That’s no story! Look how red Bill has gotten! And he’s shaking his finger! Remember the last time old Bill shook his finger? Isn’t it time for Bill to disappear? Who cares what he’s saying? Aren’t we tired of him? Yeah. That’s right. He was the most effective bi-partisan president in recent history but who cares? Look! He’s red as a lobster!

Barack Obama said something that’s historically accurate about Ronald Reagan, namely that he represented a period of genuine change in the country. Yes! That’s right! Barack Obama said something factual about President Reagan. But you’d think what he really said was: “Ronald Reagan came down to earth from outer space and I’m one of his pod people!” The scouring that poor Obama has taken for saying something absolutely benign is astonishing. And that’s the problem of course. Barack Obama is one of the most reasonable people to run for the presidency since Abe Lincoln. This requires the tabloid press to stretch the senator’s features out of shape. Lost in all this is the fact that Obama was talking about the fact that this election may be a different political moment for our nation and that a smart candidate should recognize that. God almighty! You’d never know what the poor man was saying. Newsroom! Newsroom! Hold the presses! Obama said “Reagan” out loud in front of a camera and he didn’t demonize him. Yep! That’s right! What a scandal! Let’s show the film clip over and over as if it’s the Zapruder film.

Notice any substance here? I didn’t think so.

Mitt Romney got angry at a reporter who confronted him about his assertion that he had no political lobbyists in his campaign. When the reporter said this wasn’t true, that one of Romney’s top advisors is a noted Washington lobbyist, Romney argued that his campaign manager isn’t a lobbyist “so there” Nah Nah Nah! Then the reporter was confronted by Romney’s chief campaign strategist who dressed him down for confronting “the candidate” and Lo and Behold! The coverage on MSNBC was about whether or not that reporter was actually wrong to have asked the question. I swear on my Little Orphan Annie decoder ring that this is true! And the talking heads argued back and forth about whether a reporter should ask a tough question like that and lost in all of this nonsensical palaver was the fact that Mitt Romney has a genuine aura of unreliability when it comes to certain facts. If the current reporting trends continue Romney doesn’t have much to worry about. I think he can count on the press to fixate on the dropped scraps of butcher’s paper. In short, you can say what you want nowadays so long as you look good doing it.

Obviously these are just a few recent examples of what I like to think of as the post-dogma tabloid trivialization of our political reporting.

Perhaps the most egregious thing I heard today on “Meet the Press” came from Peggy Noonan (who else?) who in a neat bit of sophistry argued that the sight of Bill Clinton fighting on the front lines for his wife’s candidacy is essentially an “anti-feminist”position. Apparently Ms. Noonan has forgotten all those solo campaign stops hosted by Nancy Reagan who did her level best to get angry for her Ronny whenever she could.

Is it possible that we’re in the post-dogma era but there’s no one left in the fourth estate to report on it?
S.K.

Hats off to New Jersey

Watching Governor John Corzine of New Jersey attempting to modernize his state’s highways and bridges should tell us a good deal about the future of the United States. It’s altogether possible to miss this story in the flux of substandard reporting about the presidential campaigns. But this story "is" the story of our nation’s fast approaching decades.

Governor Corzine’s problem exemplifies the dilemmas of leadership in post-Reagan America when the idea of taxation is triangulated in the public imagination with waste and inefficiency. The Reagan shtick was always built on the idea that the government was big and wasteful and if you just kept starving the government the wondrous world of the private sector would step in and take over and everything would be more efficient and cost-effective.

I’m all for the private sector. I love my kitchen appliances. Who would want a government built toaster?

(The government built toaster is powered by a recumbent bicycle which is also hooked mysteriously to your neighbor’s electric garage door opener.)

Governor Corzine’s problem is that the Reagan revolution produced unimaginable consequences. The Federal government that was built by FDR and was perfected by Eisenhower, the government that John F. Kennedy inherited—a government that could imagine sending people to the moon within a decade has been largely destroyed. The federal government can’t rebuild New Orleans or even build a fence along the Mexican border without Haliburton and a thousand lobbyists and hangers on who work for the lobbyists and who used to be known as "loan sharks" but nowadays are called "public policy advisors".

The Reagan legacy is both a tale of privatization and deregulation of commerce and the successful misrepresentation of government as a problem.

God help the politician who would step to the microphone and tell the people that schools and roads and bridges and water treatment and meat inspection and the center for disease control cost money. These things don’t run on private donations.

Both FDR and Eisenhower understood that these things must necessarily be paid for by taxing the wealthy more than the middle class. And the wealthy disliked these men. Reagan was the political son of Senator Barry Goldwater who was the GOP’s reactionary answer to Eisenhower.

Say what you will but President Eisenhower understood how FDR had saved America from foes both foreign and domestic. God how the right wing wealthy hated the old general.

How will our nation build new bridges or clean our water supply?

Will we hold a bake sale?

Will we have special TV telethons depicting collapsed bridges and calling on the good hearted public to phone in a generous donation?

Governor Corzine has proposed a comprehensive plan to save New Jersey’s transportation infrastructure because everyone knows that we’re in a crisis.

The plan calls for some substantial tax increases. All of these are staggered over time and they are carefully indexed to cost-effective public management of capital resources.

(People forget that FDR’s "New Deal" was not wasteful. An efficient government working on behalf of the public can account for every dime. We forget this at our peril.)

While the respective presidential candidates talk about change in vaporous terms and when the Bush administration is calling for more tax cuts to stimulate an imperiled national economy, only Governor Corzine has had the courage to step forward with a proposal that reminds us of FDR and the old general.

Will we pay taxes in order to remain a first world nation?

I for one am praying that the people of New Jersey will show the courage to do what’s right. The people of the garden state must return our faith to accountable and democratic government.

The private sector ain’t gonna fix the roads. They can’t even run an airline.

S.K.

Back in the U.S.S.R.

Nira earned her wings today on American Airlines. We flew from LaGuardia to Chicago and then onward to Iowa. She took it all in stride and worked between flights as if she’s been in O’Hare airport a thousand times before.

Now that we’re back in Iowa City we find of course that the temperature (with wind chill) is 20 below zero. Compared to this, Yorktown Heights New York is almost Montego Bay.

Yah Mon! It’s colder than Sibelius’s head back here in the Hawkeye state.

Now that Nira has left the hallowed halls of Guiding Eyes I know that this will be a year of "firsts" for her: first crowded airplane flight; first grumpy ticket agent and cluster of irate passengers; first opportunity to take a whiz in perma frost; first semester watching her immoderately eccentric human partner teach his classes at the university; and then, henceforward, we can scarcely imagine all the firsts. There will be for Nira many new friends and places over the coming years.

I am a better traveler in the company of my guide dog. Guiding Eyes has given me three intrepid guides and together we have visited 43 of the U.S. states and four foreign countries.

But it’s not the travel that’s so uplifting: it’s the expectation and imagination that relates to traveling. Together Nira and I will travel far and safely and with the joy of discovery.

And just think! Guiding Eyes does this for everybody who is legally blind and wants a superb canine traveling companion. And because the average blind person can’t easily afford a forty five thousand dollar guide dog, they do this remarkable work free of charge.

So there are a lot of people to thank.

Thanks.

The Spanish poet Unamuno once wrote that "we die of cold and not of darkness"–which I take to mean that human indifference is much worse than any near gloom.

But metaphorical assertion aside, it’s really cold in Iowa and if you are coming this way I’d suggest you pack your long johns.

S.K.

Partners

View this slideshow created at One True Media
Partners

Click the link above for some great photos of Steve and guide dog "Nira".  Photo credits go to Graham Buck of Guiding Eyes for the Blind.  Graham, we’re delighted with the photos and again, thanks for the walk down memory lane!

~ Connie

Photo descriptions: The photo link above shows yellow Labrador, Nira, guiding Steve down the sidewalk.  Open the link and there are several photos of Steve and Nira doing obedience, as well as several photos of their working together "in harness".

My Theory Du Jour

These days in the United States there’s a backlash against complexity. I won’t trot out the "founding fathers" (Jefferson with his home made bible; Franklin’s personal library) but I think it’s safe to say that the contemporary disdain for complexity is not an 18th or 19th century American characteristic.

Ronald Reagan said famously, "facts are stupid things" and by saying it he was merely articulating what Americans had come to feel by the 1980’s—the facts may well be against us. Let them go.

I was put in mind of this today because I can’t help but wonder if Senator John McCain may have lost the Michigan primary because he strove to tell voters that there are jobs "that won’t be returning to Michigan".

Senator McCain likes to characterize himself as a straight talker and unfortunately for him post-factual America doesn’t like complexity.

During last evening’s democratic presidential debate in Las Vegas it became clear that there’s a substantial difference in management style between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Hillary is a gatherer of facts; a sifter. Barack Obama doesn’t like to be inconvenienced by the details. He has suggested that if elected he will surround himself with good advisors because he sees his primary strength as being a motivator of people.

I can’t help it: I’m detecting the ghost of Reagan in this campaign. Complexity is to be eschewed or ignored.

We can assemble the usual suspects. TV and commercial culture; sound bytes and pixels; disposable conveniences; geographical illiteracy…

If this was simply a matter of complexity’s downfall I’d be okay. The problem lies with the red herring of post-factual politics, which is to say that Mike Huckabee tells America we need "the living God" in our Constitution and it seems to me you can only make a nonsensical proposal like that when people aren’t capable of telling the difference between logos, ethos, and pathos.

If John McCain and Hillary Clinton prevail then perhaps I’ll reconsider my anti-complexity reaction formation theory.

A guy can dream, can’t he?

S.K.

Don't Sentimentalize Your Dog

Yesterday without warning I was laid low by a 24 hour intestinal virus. I will say no more. But lying there in my fever and chills I found, all of a sudden, my new guide dog Nira was halfway up on my bed and licking my face. "Hey Pal," she almost seemed to say , "Why are you so negligent? You could be going places with me."

I’m not one of those dog sentimentalists who believes his dog was checking to see if I had a pulse. Nira was bored and she was letting me know about it. I was the only game in town and the game wasn’t going so well.

Later, as the chills got worse and I lay quaking under several blankets I was deeply grateful for Nira’s top notch training. She lay on her bed and worked on her dog bone and stopped worrying about me.

That’s the point of course. Sometimes we need to be worried over and sometimes we don’t. The guide dogs at Guiding Eyes are self reliant and confident. Nira had been hoping I would get to my feet and go someplace with her. When she saw that this wasn’t in the works she was able to find her own place of contentment.

Of course today when we went out again she was moving like a rocket sled. It’s good to be back.

S.K.

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“Who’s Who”?

The next Disability Blog Carnival is scheduled for January 24th at Ryn Tale’s Book of Days.  There, Kathryn has indicated her theme will be "what professionals should know about disability".  Below is Steve’s response to that thought.

Who decides that one group is “professional” while another is “disabled”? The very question: “What professionals should know about disability” is discouraging since it replicates the cultural dissociation between the working class and the physically modified class. This disparity began with the first wave of the Industrial Revolution when factory work demanded a singular kind of human body and it’s of some interest that the term “disability” enters common English usage at that same time period. The economist Karl Marx used the word disability to denote people who were rendered unemployable by means of industrial accidents.

What’s in a word? Plenty. The term “disability” carries the early 19th century notion that a physically challenged person has no utility or worth. That the idea continues to linger well into the information age is of considerable interest.

Disability is a cultural construction. If architecture or technology is built for everyone to use “disability” disappears. IN this way disability differs from other historically marginalized social conditions.You will always be a Finn or an Apache, but you need not be disabled if you have the proper tools to get around with.
People who employ other people should be aware that there’s no such thing as disability. They should be aware that accommodations to make the work place accessible are inexpensive.

Employers who have figured this out have reliable and enthusiastic employees.

In any case, people who have disabilities are already “the professional class” and in my view the only “unprofessional” class would be any potential employer who would bar the door to a person with a physical or learning difference.

S.K.