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: New Orleans
Café Mouffe: Theresa Andersson
The last time I heard Theresa Andersson in New Orleans, she was singing for 10,000 people in Wollenberg Park. She rocked and the echoes rolled all the way to Algiers and back again while tankers and tugs plied the muddy … Continue reading →
Smokin’ with Some Barbecue for Mardi Gras
Mardi Gras sneaked up on me this year. Sadly, it’s felt like Ash Wednesday for months. What else can we give up in the name of austerity and abnegation? This is a sure sign that I need to second-line! Some … Continue reading →
New Orleans’ Transcendent Cultural Ecology
An 1817 plan of New Orleans, engraved by William Rollinson.[Drawing from The World That Made New Orleans/NYT] If you know what it means to miss New Orleans, you need to listen to Ned Sublette celebrate the city’s marvelous musical history … Continue reading →
Henry Butler on Blind Photography
Henry Butler promotes his latest recording, PiaNOLA Live, on NPR Music. He also plays some of the tunes on the grand piano in NPR’s Studio 4A. The best part of the interview is a 2-minute clip about Butler’s photography: “I’m … Continue reading →
Playing By Ear: Cuba And Its Music
“It was communal in spirit and participatory in nature, without a rigid separation of performer and audience,” writes Ned Sublette (left), Cuba and Its Music. “It was not something separate from daily life, but part of life, with specialized music … Continue reading →
