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About the Flaneur
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
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: Russians
William Hurt Listens To Stanislavski: “Breathe The Ethic Into The Play”
I paid attention to a Fresh Air interview this morning when I heard William Hurt talk about an ethical approach to the craft of acting. He described the process he followed to prepare for a single scene in the film A History of Violence, which he resists calling a cameo, for which he received an Oscar nomination in 2005. In the interview he quoted Russian director Constantin Stanislavski on the core ethos of method acting. Continue reading
Nuclear Winter: When Life Imitates The Movies
It’s an unexamined myth today among many Americans that Ronald Reagan single-handedly won the Cold War and engineered the collapse of the Soviet Union. This narrow-minded notion gives no credit to the people of Eastern Europe who resisted Soviet oppression for decades until they succeeded in outlasting it. In a new book about the nuclear arms race, The Dead Hand, journalist David E. Hoffman argues that Mikhail Gorbachev had as much to do with backing up from the brink as Reagan did. In an interview with Terry Gross on NPR Fresh Air, Hoffman explains that Reagan needed to see a made-for-TV movie about nuclear armageddon before he decided to get serious about trying to prevent it.
Would Babushkas On Red Square Call It Snowmageddon 2.0?
Even weather wants brand loyalty these days. “Blizzard” isn’t good enough. Wags on the east coast are working overtime to coin catchy names like Snowpocalypse and Snoverkill for the latest storms. I have to admit, I liked the sound of … Continue reading
Anna Akhmatova in the Modernist Moment
Nathan Altman. Portrait of Anna Akhmatova. 1914. The Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia. [Source: Anna Akhmatova Foundation] Anna Akhmatova had become a cultural icon by the time Nathan Altman painted her in 1914. Her bangs and shawl, her regal bearing … Continue reading