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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]
Tag Archives: global citizen
Café Nouffe: Sussan Deyhim
I wasn’t aware of Sussan Deyhim until I heard an interview with her on PRI The World’s Global Hit. I had heard a shard of her haunting voice before, as I learned, on U2’s Sunday Bloody Sunday. Now Deyhim has produced her own song – Neda’s Eyes – in tribute to Neda Agha-Soltan, the non-violent protester whose tragic death in a Tehran street became the iconic symbol for Iran’s Green Revolution in 2009. Deyhim’s dramatic vocal range makes me think of Diamanda Galás. Just listen to Glyphs of the Horizon. Continue reading
And the Winner Is – The Dictator’s Speech!
Forget dancing with the stars. Now you can rub elbows with the autocrats at the Academy Awards, via Zapiro’s latest political cartoon. The irreverent South African satirist appears on Al Jazeera’s Listening Post, which features his latest seditious venture – ZA News. I was pointed to this panel by AJE’s Libya live blog.
Al Jazeera: “Social Networks, Social Revolution”
The second part of “Empire” is an excerpted panel discussion held at the Columbia Journalism School in New York City on Feb. 14 in the heady aftermath of Hosni Mubarak’s downfall. The moderator is Al Jazeera’s Marwan Bishara; the panelists are Amy Goodman, Clay Shirky, Carl Bernstein, Emily Bell, and Evgeny Morozov.
Imtiaz Dharker’s Blessing: “Voice Of A Kindly God”
The voice of Imtiaz Dharker, lyrical, precise and earthy, came to me between sleep and waking. That’s the liminal state in which I listen to the BBC at three in the morning. The poet was being interviewd on a BBC program called Heart and Soul. Dharker describes herself as a “cultural mongrel” – “a Scottish Muslim Calvinist, brought up in a Lahori household in Glasgow.” Now she lives in London and Mumbai. In the interview she says that religion is “a misuse of the name of God” and poetry is a moment “when everything else falls away” [listen now]. Dharker recites poems from her latest book, Leaving Fingerprints (including “Spire” and xxx) as well as “Blessing” (which has been required reading in U.K. schools for over a decade ).
A Cautionary Tale for Blind Flaneurs
An accident in Jilotepec, Mexico. Traffic injuries are the ninth leading cause of death worldwide. [Photo by ]Juan Garcia/AFP/Getty Images/NYT] A new report issued by the World Health Organization confirms what every blind flaneur knows. It’s a dangerous rat race … Continue reading