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: ebooks
Project Gutenberg Founder Made eBooks As Free As The Air
Michael Hart, inventor of the ebook and founder of Project Gutenberg, has died at age 64. His vision of freely accessible digital texts curated on the Internet, in the public domain, has had a defining influence on my life as a blind reader. Continue reading
Billy Collins Prescribes iPoems for Attention Deficit
Poet Billy Collins had an unsettling experience when he downloaded his latest book of verse on an Amazon Kindle. The e-reader squished his lines to fit the screen.
The Most Over-Hyped Tablet Since Moses Came Down From The Mountain
As one who has lost the ability to read printed books, I’m always searching for that richer context when the text itself is inaccessible to me. I thrive in the proliferation of book excerpts and videos, reviews and interviews available now on the Internet. I have more ways to learn about books than ever before. In the end, though, what I want is the book itself in an accessible format. Given Apple’s penchant for imperialistic control of devices and DRMs, I doubt that the latest tablet handed down from the mountain will reach me as a reader.
Ray Kurzweil Will Offer Free EBook Software For Universal Text-To-Speech (UTS) Reading
Calvin Reid reports in Publishers Weekly from the Frankfurt Book Fair that Ray Kurzweil is bringing free software with Universal Text-To-Speech (UTS) technology to the ebook market: Baker & Taylor announced a partnership with acclaimed scientist, inventor and futurist Ray … Continue reading
