If there is an emerging genetic underclass, I could run for class president or class clown. Read more in ![Fog at Isle Royale [Source: wildmengoneborneo.com]](../wp-content/uploads/2008/04/isle_royale_fog.jpg "Fog at Isle Royale [Source: wildmengoneborneo.com]")
"Brendan, this is what the world looks like all the time to me. Just a little fog. It’s a fine day for boating on the Great Lakes.” Without missing a stroke he turned to dart a skeptical glance at me. Brendan the Navigator. When we named him I didn’t tell his mother everything the legendary Irish name implied. But I imagined him taking on the role of navigator for me. Growing up with Coastal Survey charts and tales of Great Lakes shipwrecks, he came to know Superior as another home. He never doubted the wisdom of canoeing there with a father who was half blind. 
![Charlotte Casiraghi in a red dress. [Source: Stylophile]](../wp-content/uploads/2008/02/charlotte_casiraghi_red_dress.jpg "Charlotte Casiraghi in a red dress. [Source: Stylophile]")
When I figured out who Charlotte Casiraghi was, I realized that I once sent a poem to her mother. 
The legendary Kiki of Montparnasse posed for Man Ray’s 
![Eugène Delacroix. Liberty Leading the People. 1830. Louvre, Paris. [Source: Wikimedia Commons]]](../wp-content/uploads/2008/05/delacroix_liberty_1830_2.jpg "Eugène Delacroix. Liberty Leading the People. 1830. Louvre, Paris. [Source: Wikimedia Commons]]")
I wrote about the complex relationship between my genetic disease and its possible “cure” in Not This Pig. At my age and stage of blindness, I don’t know whether I’d choose the experimental gene therapy published Oct. 24 in The Lancet (reported below by Jocelyn Kaiser in ScienceNOW), but I can understand its prospect for young children with retina diseases.
Entries Tagged as 'blind'
Gene Therapy Helps Children With Congenital Retina Disease
2
October 26, 2023 at 12:20pm
by Mark Willis
“They also serve who only stand and wait’
2
December 9, 2023 at 11:50am
by Mark Willis
Today is the 400th anniversary of the birth of John Milton. Over the years of my losing sight, 35 years to be precise, I’ve conducted a lengthy and private dialogue with this man. Sometimes it is disputatious, sometimes profoundly loving. I cannot begin to say how I have internalized his XIXth sonnet. I like to [...]
When the Flawlessly Hip Need the Blind (to exploit)
2
October 1, 2023 at 6:33pm
by Mark Willis
Some things have to be documented, no matter how repulsive. A blogger named Spots in San Francisco linked here to snatch Paul Strand’s iconic photo, Blind. She probably grabbed it off Google Images, and certainly never thought twice about the context of its use here. She needed it to amp up a joke that wasn’t [...]
Playing By Ear: The Sound of Rain
0
May 31, 2023 at 7:00am
by Mark Willis
“Playing by ear” is my shorthand for a process of letting go of sight, or, more precisely, letting go of the will to see, so attention can shift away from the deficits of blindness to experience the richness of other sensory possibilities. I love how the process sometimes becomes play: joyous, instructive, and surprisingly [...]
Playing by Ear · blind · sense Add Your Comment
Flying On Other Vectors: The Airport Ecosystem
1
April 24, 2023 at 6:00am
by Mark Willis
I don’t mind flying, but airports oppress me. When I fly, I try to remember an epiphany I had in Atlanta several years ago: airports are complex ecosystems, and a blind traveler navigating through them with a white cane is just another bottom-feeder plying the food chain.
That day began with carefree dancing in the street [...]
blind · flying · vectors · white cane Add Your Comment
Augmented Illusions: Tapping
0
April 15, 2023 at 12:15pm
by Mark Willis
Alex de Jong recommends headphones for the full effect of tapping. The video is accompanied by this text:
Natural behaviour of blind people is all too often seen as deviant. Many who are are blind are told not to click, tap their canes loudly, or stomp slightly. These are all echolocation methods and are [...]
blind · blind photographers · disability · sense · street · white cane Add Your Comment
Brendan The Navigator: Just A Little Fog
2
April 8, 2023 at 12:05am
by Mark Willis
Fog at Isle Royale [Source: wildmengoneborneo.com]
We set a westerly course midway between Wright Island and shore. I sensed something uneasy about the way Brendan hunched in his life vest. He wasn’t talking.
“Want to go for Hay Bay?” I asked, hoping that an absurd proposition would loosen him up.
“You’re crazy, Dad. Ten miles there, ten miles [...]