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]
Tag Archives: Barack Obama
President Barack Obama 2009 Inauguration
C-Span: President Barack Obama 2009 Inauguration and Address See full text. See Andy Carvin’s video for a crowd’s eye perspective. See other #inaug09 content on this blog. See #inaug09 on Twitter.
Pete Seeger: This Land Is Your Land
Enough with the rockets’ red glare. Woody’s song should be the National Anthem. Hearing Pete Seeger sing it with Bruce Springsteen and hundreds of thousands of jubilant Americans gathered at the Lincoln Memorial made me weep with joy. With the … Continue reading →
Garth Brooks Sings at the Lincoln Memorial
Give me a cowboy hat and a gospel choir! Can I get a witness? Garth Brooks: American Pie & Shout. Thanks to Dookas27018 for a Shout! perspective from the crowd. See other #inaug09 content on this blog. See #inaug09 on … Continue reading →
Shakira and Stevie Wonder at the Lincoln Memorial
Stevie Wonder, Shakira & Usher sing Higher Ground at the Lincoln Memorial. Check out phatpat1523‘s perspective shot from the crowd. Shakira and Stevie Wonder. [Photo: Todd Heisler/NYT] From The Scene at the Lincoln Memorial - The Caucus Blog - NYT … Continue reading →
Renée Fleming Sings At Lincoln Memorial
Renée Fleming - “You’ll Never Walk Alone” - The Obama Inaugural Celebration Concert: Opera singer Renée Fleming performs Rodgers & Hammerstein’s “You’ll Never Walk Alone” in “We Are One: The Obama Inaugural Celebration at the Lincoln Memorial” at 18.1.2023 See … Continue reading →
