About the Flaneur
![Gustave Caillebotte. Paris Street, Rainy Day (La Place de l’Europe, temps de pluie). 1877. Oil on canvas. Art Institute of Chicago. [Source: Wikimedia Commons]](../../wp-content/uploads/2009/02/gustave_caillebotte_paris_street_rainy_day_1877_wiki.jpg "gustave_caillebotte_paris_street_rainy_day")
I walk through my blindness the way I wander down streets in Paris: unfettered and alive, alert to the raw material of the senses. I am a flaneur. Come along with me. Just don’t try to take my arm, unless I ask. What’s a flaneur? Read the first post, Return of the Flaneur to Galerie Vivienne. After that, try Foot Rage and the Blind Flaneur. Then stay tuned.Letting Go of Sight
![Fog at Isle Royale [Source: wildmengoneborneo.com]](../../wp-content/uploads/2008/04/isle_royale_fog.jpg "Fog at Isle Royale [Source: wildmengoneborneo.com]")
I’ve canoed on Lake Superior for almost as many years as I’ve been losing eyesight. I return year after year like a migrating loon to learn the other side of a slow, uncertain process that we could call “going blind.” After 35 years with the lake as my teacher, I know what lies on the other side. I call it letting go of sight. Read Big Water. See more about the Great Lakes.Not This Pig
If there is an emerging genetic underclass, I could run for class president or class clown. Read more in Not This Pig (2003).Media in Transition @ MiT
Disabled Americans today have to negotiate for the kinds of accommodations made for FDR, and the caveat “reasonable accommodation” is built into the law. President Franklin Roosevelt did not have to negotiate. He could summon vast resources of the federal government – money as well as brains – to accomplish the work of disability. And it was accomplished with such thoroughness and efficiency that its scale could be called the Accessibility-Industrial Complex had it been directed toward public accommodations and not solely the needs of a single man. Read FDR and the Hidden Work of Disability [MiT8 2013]
Shepard Fairey claimed that his posterization of a copyrighted AP news photo of Barack Obama was a transformative work protected by the fair use doctrine. In other words, it was a shape-shifter. I claim fair use, too, when I reproduce and transform copyrighted works into media formats that are accessible to me as a blind reader. Read Shape-Shifters in the Fair Use Lab [MiT6 2009]
The social engineers who created a system for licensing beggars in New York never imagined that a blind woman had culture or could make culture. She herself may not have imagined it, either. In the moment when Paul Strand photographed her surreptitiously on the street in 1916, he could not have expected that one day blind photographers would reverse the camera’s gaze. Read Curiosity & The Blind Photographer. [MiT5 2007]
Category Archives: Edible Dramas
Asian Carp: If You Can’t Beat Them, Eat Them
While environmentalists in the Great Lakes region worry about the spread of Asian carp, Louisiana chef Philippe Parola says we should relax and think of new ways to eat the invasive species. The first step is the golden rule of seafood marketing: change the noxious name. Silver fin gumbo goes great with kudzu salad. Continue reading
The King Is Dead. Long Live The Herons!
The statistics are staggering for the wine auction at La Tour d’Argent, the venerable Left Bank restaurant with a 27-room wine cellar [left; photo by David Queen/Wikipedia]. The auction fetched more than a million euros, according to AFP. A bottle … Continue reading
Carpool Conversations: Foodies n San Francisco
Whenever I climb in a car, a carpool is formed. So I’m charmed by the concept of Carpool Conversations by the video producers at Pink Cloud. Give me a ride — I can’t guarantee viral marketing, but you’ll get great … Continue reading
Grabbing a Bistro on the Postcard Side of Paris
Gendarmes hold back people at a street corner in the 7th Arrondissemen as the Obamas arrive for dinner at La Fontaine de Mars on June 6, 2009. [Photo source: Associated Press /NPR] According to Obama Foodorama (no kidding, there is … Continue reading
Flaneur’s Gallery: The Peanut Butter Mona Lisa
Vik Muniz. Mona Lisa in Peanut Butter & Jelly. [Source: Divulgação/globo.com] Call it synchronicity. I’d just read the Mona Lisa chapter in Charles Nicholl’s biography of Leonardo da Vinci before falling asleep, then I awoke to a BBC interview with … Continue reading
