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: ransack
Ransacking The Archive: Edible Dramas
It’s almost time to get on my knees and grub for early wintergreen and wild mustard. These poems were written separately around 1980, when I was living out of the gardens at the Mill. Edible Dramas 1. Wild Mustard Forget … Continue reading
Ransacking The Archive: Kerosene
Lawren Harris. Ice House. A father’s rant. 1996. For Brendan. Kerosene When you need to know how to stay alive one more day find some sand, an old oil drum a gallon of kerosene. A gallon costs a buck. If … Continue reading
Ransacking The Archive: Voyageurs
Lawren Harris.Afternoon Sun, Lake Superior. For Brendan the Navigator. 1995. The hardest conversation is the one that may be the last. Voyageurs When my heart started again I was naked on a steel table. A catheter snaked through the coronaries … Continue reading
Ransacking The Archive: Whitefish Bay 1990
Lawren Harris. Clouds, Lake Superior. 1923. [Source: Wikipedia] One of many poems written on the beach at Whitefish Bay, Lake Superior, where I yearn to return like a migrating loon. Whitefish Bay 1990 My love sweeps a circle through the … Continue reading
Ransacking The Archive: The Lonely Potato Farmer
Ms. Modigliani flatly rejected the idea of wintering in Monaco after reading about Princess Caroline’s lost poem. “So now you’re sending poems to princesses?” “That was thirty years ago. I told you about that.” “You tell me lots of things. … Continue reading
