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: flowers
Black Irises: Flânerie in the Garden
Flânerie reaches beyond the street, as Bill Cunningham reveals when he travels to Old Westbury, Long Island for a garden party celebrating the 50th anniversary of the public gardens there. The rhododendrons were in full bloom, and so were the … Continue reading
Ms. Modigliani’s Garden: Laburnum
Laburnum, the Golden Chain Tree, blooms spectacularly in Ms. Modigliani’s garden on her birthday. [Photo by a blind flaneur] Sylvia Plath referred to the image of the Laburnum tree and “its blond colonnades” in her poem The Arrival of the … Continue reading
Hiatus: Stop and Smell the Roses
Mary Rose (above) vied with the climbing Colette as the first rose of the season. I’ve tried a variety of David Austin’s line of English roses over the years, and this is one of the few to thrive in my … Continue reading
In the Company of Irises
Two companions have led me astray this week as I swore off blogging so I could work on restoring my gardens. One is this startling white iris, which I’ve waited three years to bring again to bloom. The other is … Continue reading
In the Glen: Solomon’s Seal, True or False?
Updated 030210: False Solomon’s Seal (Smilacina racemosa) blooms in the Glen beginning in mid-May. [Photo by a blind flaneur] As a kid I learned to distinguish two flowers called Solomon’s seal, one identified as “True” and the other “False.” The … Continue reading
