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.Kiki: Man Ray’s Dada Muse
The legendary Kiki of Montparnasse posed for Man Ray’s Le violin de Ingres (1924). See more from Imaging Paris.Lee Miller: Surrealist Muse
Lee Miller traced a meteoric trajectory from flapper fashionista to surrealist muse. She played the Statue in Jean Cocteau's first movie. Picasso painted her portrait. She apprenticed with Man Ray and later became a noted war photographer for British Vogue. Read more.Miss Tic: Paris Street Art
Poet and street artist Miss Tic isn't exactly a kid in a hoodie with a can of spray paint. Maybe she can still run like hell when the police show up, but can she sprint in high heels? Well-known in international avant-garde circles, her work is exhibited now at the Venice Biennale as well as the alleys of Paris. Read more. See Ethics of Love for a video montage of Miss Tic's provacative poetry. More Paris Street Art.
The Lake and the River
![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.
What is a village? A small place, yes, as wide as the world, layered with histories and stories, where you can walk wherever you want to go. My vision of that place is Yellow Springs 2.0.
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).Blind Photographers
In the moment when Paul Strand photographed her surreptitiously on the street in New York, the social engineers who created a system for licensing beggars never imagined that a blind woman had culture or could make culture. She herself may not have imagined it. Paul Strand probably didn’t give her much credit for making culture, either. Read more: Curiosity & The Blind Photographer [MiT5 2007] See more on blind photographers.
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Tag Archives: genome
Internet Flaneur - September 7, 2023
Wired For Culture | Ideas with Paul Kennedy | CBC Radio [MW: Intrigued by concept of "cumulative cultural adaptation" & its implications for cultures of #disability] Human beings have a unique evolutionary history. We are at the mercy of neither … Continue reading
Technological & Genetic Determinism: If It’s Feasible, Is It Inevitable?
Since MiT7 I’ve been musing about the confluence of two powerful streams of thought that I will call technological determinism and genetic determinism. While these ideas are not necessarily the same thing, they are mutually reinforcing. One is used to corroborate the other. Both express a futurist perception, a kind of faith, that if something can be done, sooner or later it will be done, and it’s futile to try to stop it. Continue reading
After 150 Years, Charles Darwin’s Still Got My Back
I had to laugh out loud this morning when I heard an NPR announcer quip that today is the 150th anniversary of Charles Darwin “going rogue.” He meant the 1859 publication of On The Origin of Species, of course, but … Continue reading
Gene Therapy Helps Children With Congenital Retina Disease
I wrote about the complex relationship between my genetic disease and its possible “cure” in Not This Pig. At my age and stage of blindness, I don’t know whether I’d choose the experimental gene therapy published Oct. 24 in The Lancet (reported below by Jocelyn Kaiser in ScienceNOW), but I can understand its prospect for young children with retina diseases. Continue reading
One More Worry: Gray Hair & Genotoxic Stress
I’d hoped my gray hair was a mark of distinction, like ripening into Walt Whitman or some other venerable old geezer. Grecian Formula 44 never tempted me. Now it seems that stem cells are the answer. According to Gisela Telis … Continue reading
