Lieslmcq

Leave me alone, I'm busy

2008-08-20T15:51:00Z

Defeated

2008-08-15T04:27:00Z

I'm a member of The American Association of People With Disabilities (AAPD). As a member I get news and action alerts from them informing me of issues related to people with disabilities. The last few I've received have all been about the protest over the new movie Tropic Thunder. I admit, when I saw the first alert, I cringed. I knew what was going to happen and how it would play out to people who couldn't care less about people with disabilities. I was right. Here are some of the comments I've seen on youtube:

"How do you think they bribed the retards to go to the protest? You know that they're not there for any cause - I bet their handlers told them they were going to McDonalds... but first they had to hold up a stupid sign and walk around in a circle 50 times."

"that RETARD says he wants to "ban that word from everybody's vocabulary." the RETARDS are trying to take away our civil liberties. United States Bill of Rights 1st amendment to the constitution. Read it RETARD."

"I think most people that have a disability should be dead- the ones that contribute nothing, they are like that cause they have bad genes (recessive genes), and keeping them alive and letting them breed is stupid- and- Tropic Blunder... what a retarded slogan"

"Suck it up, TARDS!!!"

These things make me feel so utterly overwhelmed. I realize that the people who made the above comments would be quailing little mice in person too afraid to speak much less use such offensive language, but that doesn't seem to matter when you are confronted with such hate and ignorance. I'm left to wonder why we even bother anymore. I honestly don't have anything else to say... I am feeling that defeated.

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Addendum

2008-08-14T01:53:00Z

As an addendum to my post earlier today, another example of how treating people who have immigrated like criminals has tragic consequences, this is from tonight's Countdown. The story in questions starts around 1:30:

Link

If that doesn't sound bad enough, the New York Times article that broke the story gives more information:

"In federal court affidavits, Mr. Ng’s lawyers contend that when he complained of severe pain that did not respond to analgesics, and grew too weak to walk or even stand to call his family from a detention pay phone, officials accused him of faking his condition. They denied him a wheelchair and refused pleas for an independent medical evaluation.

Instead, the affidavits say, guards at the Donald W. Wyatt Detention Facility in Central Falls, R.I., dragged him from his bed on July 30, carried him in shackles to a car, bruising his arms and legs, and drove him two hours to a federal lockup in Hartford, where an immigration officer pressured him to withdraw all pending appeals of his case and accept deportation."

The man was dying when this happened. Dying of a cancer that had spread to his liver, lungs and bones and had fractured his spine. This is also a man who owned a home, was married to a United States citizen and had two sons. He was 34 years old! And he was not alone. The article continues:

"In March, the federal government admitted medical negligence in the death of Francisco Castaneda, 36, a Salvadoran whose cancer went undiagnosed in a California detention center as he was repeatedly denied a biopsy on a painful penile lesion. In May, The New York Times chronicled the death of Boubacar Bah, 52, a Guinean tailor who suffered a skull fracture and brain hemorrhages in the Elizabeth Detention Center in New Jersey; records show he was left in an isolation cell without treatment for more than 13 hours."

I had a student with a name almost identical to one of those names. He was sweet and smart and funny and tried so hard in my class to impress me and do well. He could be one of these men; this could happen to any of them. Last year the government held 300,000 people; how many of them are going through this right now? how many of them are treated as less than human because they had the audacity to be born somewhere else and want to do all they could for a better life? How dare those people think they deserved that, right?

Shame on all of us for allowing these things to happen on our watch. You are responsible for it. I am responsible for it. We have failed as human beings who are supposed to have respect for basic human life. We have failed and it is shameful and we do not deserve forgiveness.

Discrimination is illegal

2008-08-13T17:44:00Z

Let's talk about immigration: Why is it that we have begun to refer to people as illegal rather than referring to their actions as illegal?...(read more)

Everything matters

2008-08-10T04:41:00Z

It will not be surprising to know that I have seen The Sound of Music many, oh so many, times. It's not just that I was named after it and that it's still unusual to hear my name spoken on screen, but I do love it. The production is beautiful, the acting is great and the idea of resisting evil through a thing so sublime as music is something I love. My favorite song in the movie isn't the one you will think; I like Sixteen Going on Seventeen, but it lacks true relevance in my overall life. The song I love the most is Something Good. I understand that song intimately. There is sweetness here: "Nothing comes from nothing; nothing ever could. So, somewhere in my youth or childhood, I must have done something good."

It is that time again: another semester has ended. As usual, it is bittersweet because, as usual, I had such phenomenal students. I am forever humbled by them and I cannot help but wonder what I ever did to deserve them. As I have begun to do, I gave them each a personal note to tell them how much I value them and to make sure they understand that they will forever be a part of me. It took me five hours to write fourteen notes; it takes me that long every semester, though I usually don't do it all at once as I did this time. It is always easy to express how dear they are to me, but it isn't always easy to find the right words to make sure they understand their tremendous value. They are more valuable than they know.

I worry about my students and I wonder if they will be OK. I would have them never feel pain, never want for anything in life, as silly as that is. They are not, after all, my children; they have parents of their own. Yet, I believe I have a part in their growing, if only a small one. The kicker is, they have an equal part in mine.

There will never be a time when knowing that I had given a student the nicest card he had ever received is not profoundly meaningful. It hurts me to know that he has reached his late teens? early twenties? and has not had the simple kindness of supportive words. In fact, it pained me so much that I cried when I told my mom about it an hour later and my husband two days later. The tears didn't last, as they should not have; for, those were tears of recognition of what was, not what is. I am simply the taste of what he will and should have in life from anyone who is able to recognize his tremendous promise. The truth is, all of my students deserve that recognition. I'm trying really hard not to go on and on (too late) about them, but it's simply unrealistic to expect anything else.

The thing that really gets me is this: what could I have possibly done to deserve these students? I can't quite wrap my head around that idea. It reminds me of the Sound of Music song, of course. I have not always acted as I should, as we all do not; but I have had some tremendous luck in my life. Luck that I did nothing to deserve, frankly. I suppose it's true that there is no such thing as "fair" when so much is left to chance. Justice would really be a human construct, then, and all of our entitlements nothing more than what we choose to make of them. I choose to make the current generation my project and my hope.

Let me make something clear: all of this gushing about students over and over and the harping on their promise might be maudlin and sappy, but it is tremendously important to me that the world understands the resource we all have in the current generation. My students are representatives of what is best in their generation and what we could all benefit from in public and private life. I trust them to carry on our world and to make it better, make the progress clean. I want people to realize that in recognizing these people, we recognize ourselves. We allow for them to be as brash, elastic and fertile as we once were. We allow them to be the spring in our forward motion and we trust them to know the correct direction. We owe them that for bringing them here in the first place.

Damn, I miss them already.

I wrote the above two days ago when the semester ended. I have to add one more note: Two students who have both taken other classes from me just called me from the Metallica concert to let me hear a bit of it. It was great! They were screaming and singing along while I was screaming with them. How could you not love kids who do such a thing?!

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Marks-a-lot

2008-08-05T01:56:00Z

I want you to take a moment to consider a dollar amount. I want you to stop yourself and think about what this amount could and does mean to you. The amount I want you to consider is $2,000. What would you do with $2,000?

It's less than our mortgage payment, taxes included. It would buy five of the classes I teach. It would buy two pairs of Christian Louboutin shoes, maybe three. It's more than the monthly amount earned for a family of four
living above the poverty line in the United States. It's more than the monthly salary a new teacher received in Montana in 2002-2003.

Here's the really astounding part: With $2,000, you could change the lives of thousands of people in Africa, South America, Central America and Asia by building potable water wells. Through organizations like The Water Project you could literally provide safe drinking water, therefore less disease, therefore less death, for thousands of people. According to the strictest numbers, you could give 100 people access to potable water for 15 years. What happens if we change it a bit and say that the $2,000 is a monthly expenditure? it adds up to 12,000 people a year, each continuing for 15 years. As that number grows, the ripples would be astounding. It would take very little time for the number to have rippled into the millions, perhaps even billions. All from $2,000, initially and $24,000 annually. Imagine the ripples you could create with that amount of money. Imagine.

Did you know that over 27,000,000 people are enslaved in the world today? Did you also know that the number of people enslaved on the earth today is largerthan it has ever been? Not all slaves are children, but the majority seem to be since children are unable to care for themselves. There are sex slaves and there are workers slaves, though the two are often combined. One thing all enslaved people have in common is their vulnerability to forces that seek to profit from their degradation. Yet, you could buy 40 enslaved children in Haiti with $2,000. That equals 480 children a year you could liberate from a life of rape, work, disease, and malnutrition. Children. Imagine the childhood you could restore with that gift. Imagine.

Have you considered what $2,000 means to you?

This is what it means to me: Between my insurance company and my copays, we pay $2000 a month on prescriptions for me. That's $24,000 a year. Three fourths of that amount is spent on one medication. It happens to be the one that keeps me alive, but it is only 90 mg a month of fluid. That's 0.003174656575462237 of an ounce. Let's say you wanted to spend that amount on Chanel No. 5 perfume, instead: you could buy 5 ounces of it with $2,000. That's just short of half a can of Coke! (I may be really off in my calculations. I am, ahem, not that good at that math stuff.) Admittedly, I don't know how drug prices are calculated and where the true cost lies, but I do know that there are reasons why some drugs remain exorbitant and others do not: demand. My example is perhaps not the best example because the drug I take is very rarely used and the problem I take it for is rarer, still. However, it is an indication of what it means to live the life of a woman in the United States with the benefit of medical insurance. Honestly, it seems... distorted, bloated and not at all based in the reality faced by most people in the world. I simply would not have survived as long as I have if I had been born in a third world country, or in this country without health insurance. I, like you, am literally measured by the amount I can pay for the care I receive.

I am left, finally, to ask: why do I deserve to live when others do not?

It must truly be admitted that if we do not see our actions as purposeful and meaningful to others as much as they are to ourselves, we lose all perspective and all consciousness in the idea of otherness and individuality. If we do not acknowledge our place in the system of poverty, hatred, and a valueless driven life, we do not acknowledge our place on the earth. It isn't enough for us to shake our heads in disgust at what others do to cause suffering; how can it be? Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law. Yes! Act only in a way that you consciously choose to make true and real. Act only in a way that does not allow for slavery in your name or in the name of your lower price, your freer choice. It must be so. That is the only way to be worthy of the lives we are privileged to lead. You choose! You decide! You act in a way that is conscious of others!

Now ask yourself: Do you deserve your life? Does your life, in all of its daily functions, its lesser and its greater moments, cause or alleviate suffering? It is not enough to allow others to do the work for us; to acknowledge that the organizations who fight these things exist and are therefore acting in our stead. It cannot be enough when the problem exists at all. It's easy enough to understand that if we support companies who employ slave labor then we support slavery. When we grab a Hershey's bar at the convenience store or a Reese's peanut butter cup out of the vending machine, we are eating off of the backs of slaves. We endorse the idea that cheap chocolate is a better outcome for all of us than paying more for chocolate, or anything else. We decide that our palates, our taste buds, are more important than the suffering of others. How can this be? How have we gotten here so willfully and yet so ignorantly?

Priorities.

We'd rather have 500 channels of satellite TV than use that money to fight rampant slavery. We'd rather have 30 pairs of shoes than spend that money to build wells for people who get their water from a swamp. We'd rather have a perfectly manicured lawn than spend that money on education, in our own damn country! We'd rather shop at Walmart than spend more to shop at Costco, where employees are treated like human beings worthy of respect and the bottom line is, amazingly, secondary to the health of the company and employees themselves. We'd rather we didn't have to think about how the cocoa for our cheap chocolate bar was obtained. We'd rather unthinkingly go through life allowing others to do the moral heavy lifting for us.

We don't want to bother. And the sad part is: we don't have to be bothered. We can continue to go about our lives as if nothing we do truly matters to anyone but us and ours. That absence of conflict in our lives has been brought to us by the people who do stand up and fight for the rights of others. Those people are the ones who have given you the choice to be oblivious, the choice to be selfish. Do you deserve it? No. There is no such thing as a deserving selfish act because there is no such thing as an act that exists on its own. Whether you choose to use more water to keep your non-native grass alive than a person in Africa uses all year, or whether you choose to live as well as you can but only insofar as it doesn't inconvenience you, you are choosing to act in a way that has consequences to others. All others. The only truly selfish act you are allowed is the act of existence; everything else is a gift. Be sentimental: treasure it.

For, we are the makers of ripples.

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Evil dick? yup

2008-08-02T02:20:00Z

I just tried scribefire after having so many problems with blogger. I wrote an entire post which then magically erased itself. Have I mentioned how much I despise blogging software? If I write a post in Word, the spacings get all screwy. Yet, I am sure to lose at least part of each post I write when I write it on blogger. Yes, I am whining. I'm sick, I'm allowed to whine.

Did you hear about Dick Cheney and the suggestion that Navy Seals be used as bait to give us an excuse to invade Iran? I can't imagine how betrayed the soldiers and soldiers' families who voted for these "people" must have felt when they heard this story. It takes a special brand of evil to consider using soldiers as bait just so that we can get what we want, not because it will do some good. This is the sort of thing that gives the 9/11 conspiracy nuts more fodder and the sort of thing that makes us all that much more distrustful of our country. The fact that this kind of evil is allowed to prosper, is allowed to make decisions for us is abominable. This is the kind of evil that doesn't masquerade behind a benign countenance; it is the kind of evil that lays it bare and then laughs at anyone who objects. It is this totalitarian thinking, this idea that we can do whatever we wish simply because no one will be there to stop us that has caused such a serious rift between reality and politics in this country. Who is watching the watchmen?

And yet, what has the highest ranking democrat done about any of it? Nothing. First, Nancy Pelosi states that impeachment is "off the table" for Bush. Then she says she's willing to entertain it, but doggone it! there just isn't time before he leaves office. Now she has stated through a spokesperson that she will not decide on the contempt citation for Karl Rove until September. What in the name of all things good and true is she waiting for? If I were a conspiracy nut I might be inclined to believe that Pelosi is a highly successful republican plant. I am left to wonder if she is nothing more than a power player who, like Dick Cheney, cares for nothing other than her own power and her own gratuitous fortune. One thing I do know for sure: she has misled people when she claimed to be a democrat.

What do politicians think will happen if we continue on this road to extreme gaps in earning? Do they really think the people will not rise up and revolt against their lack of opportunity? Do they really not know that the soaring crime rates are exactly that? I don't get it, I really don't. How can so many people be so divorced from reality and so cut off from the common person that they think people will quietly starve to death, or die of kidney failure on the street, or die in a random shooting? Did you know that if you're homeless and you're in renal failure, if it takes you more than a few days to die they kick you out of the charity hospital? You only get so long for your final death throes before you are either kicked back to the street or put in a medicare nursing home. And spare me the, oh, but they chose to be homeless! rhetoric. No one chooses to be homeless. When you were a kid did you think, I want to grow up to be a homeless crack addict! Of course not. No matter the road that brought you to homelessness, being homeless or begging on the street is not a happy place to be.

Yet, we do nothing. We sit back in our comfortable homes, paying $350 a month for air conditioning and $200 a month to water our pristine lawns full of non-native flowers and we shake our heads at the evil of it all while sipping our iced tea. If you don't think you have as much responsibility in this whole ridiculous situation we're in, think again. You, me, everyone in this country who is capable of speaking out has the duty to stop this shit. Now. Stop the reign of terror brought about by the Bush administration. Bring back checks and balances to government. Stop the devaluation of life as a basic necessity, not a luxury! You realize that, don't you? Life is now a luxury. Can't afford to feed/house/care for yourself? Sucks to be you. Dick Cheney, Nancy Pelosi, George Bush, even you Barack Obama, you can all do those things. What about us?

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Spandau Sounds*

2008-07-26T03:53:00Z

I had a funny experience yesterday afternoon: I was driving to the pharmacy in an enormous SUV (rental) when a man in a Jeep darted in front of me and almost caused an accident. I instinctively honked at him, which he apparently didn't like. He sort of swerved a little bit toward me as I passed him, then got into the turn lane behind me and turned into the pharmacy parking lot. As I pulled into the handicapped spot at the front of the store, he pulled into a spot down the row. My usual exit the car routine goes something like this: 1. Take off seatbelt, 2. Put purse over head and arm (cross ways over chest), 3. put my arm through my crutch and grip the handle, 4. open the door and either swing my legs out or step out, one leg at a time (depending on strength that day), 5. pull crutch through the car after me. Imagine my doing all of this while being blocked from view by a large car door; you wouldn't see the crutch at all. So, as I was getting out of the car I saw the man from the Jeep walking purposely toward me, with a nasty look on his face. On his way toward me he had to navigate a column that necessitated some deviation from a straight path. If the man went in front of the column, he was coming toward me; if he went behind, he was going toward the store. Just as he was going in front of the column toward me I shut the door of the car and he clearly saw the crutch. He literally did a circle around the column and kept walking, acting as if he had never intended to come near me! It was freaking hilarious. I almost wish he had started yelling at me before I shut the door just so I could have seen his reaction when confronted with the gimp aid. That would have been priceless!

I've noticed this sort of attitude before; this attitude of gentleness toward people who are clearly disabled. What's odd is that I tend to see either that or the exact opposite. It's as if we inspire such strong emotions in people that they are incapable of reacting to us in a moderate way. While I was in the bathroom at Red Lobster the other day two women came in; one went into a stall and the other stood by the sink. They were talking up a storm about their different aches, pains and ailments, complaining away their time in the potty. As I exited the stall the woman by the sink literally stopped talking mid sentence and looked at me like she wanted to hit me. It was such an odd reaction and one I don't understand, still. Was it my age? Was it the crutch? Did she have instant guilt for complaining about minor aches and pains when a young woman with a crutch (i.e. a more unfortunate person) was listening? It's hard to say. I have an Obama sticker on my crutch but her angle in reference to the sticker made it impossible for her to see. It was just so odd.

It's natural for many of us to want to be sweeter to people whom we view as less fortunate than ourselves, just as it is natural for others to want to be mean to people they view as inferior to them. We know that, it isn't particularly revelatory. I simply find it odd that there tend to be only two categories that necessitate action toward people with disabilities: unfortunate or inferior. It's very similar to the kind of thinking that leads to or is engendered by extreme racism. I am not saying that is what is happening with these people; I am saying that the instantaneous nature of the emotion is one that has to come from long and fiercely held generalizations. Where do those generalizations come from?

Philosophy has many subcategories that people tend to specialize in and focus on in their studies and writing. Ethics is one of those categories, as is epistemology. Epistemology is, generally speaking, the search for the meaning of truth, or how we Know. There are several different theories for how truth is established and how we Know, of course; philosophers must always disagree or think up new ways to torture students. Some think truth cannot be established, others think it is established through the necessity of it, while others think it is established through coherence. While I tend to agree with a mishmash of theories (the McQuillan theory of Pragmacorrespondence?), William James's theory of truth is one I think serves us well when discussing the reasons for the broad generalizations people make whenever they are confronted with something new. James's theory is that there is no such thing as absolute, static truth; truth is simply what is true in pragmatic terms at the moment of its use. In other words, truth exists to apply itself to the general, not as a macro idea or fact that applies always, regardless of the particular.

I think James hit on something quite interesting with this idea of pragmatism being the true (!) focus of knowledge. Think of it this way: if we were constantly forced to reevaluate every new thing we see, hear, taste, touch, smell or do we'd never progress beyond a baby's ability to process life. If we had to do that much work constantly, we would never get anything related to the utility of life accomplished! For example: when you go to a party where you don't know anyone, it requires far more work than if you were at a party where you do know everyone. You've already assigned belief and meaning and truth to the people you know and you only need to change those things when something new about that person is established. But when you are in a new situation with new things you are forced to find belief, meaning and truth for each thing. That's a hard process! Luckily, we've already established some larger generalizations that can be applied in general terms to the new things we're experiencing. If you see a person reading a book in the corner at the party and you know that everyone you've ever met who is that bookish is also quite shy, you make the unconscious generalization that the bookish person in the corner is shy. If you're wrong, it's an easy fix and it's something you are not required to discover on your own. People will act as they act, regardless of what we think; it is up to them to show us who they are and up to us to change our generalizations on the fly.

This theory and practice does get a little tricky when we add in things like hate, anger and closed mindedness. If you were raised to believe that all Asians will cheat you when dealing with them financially, you will make the assumption that the Asian man at the pharmacy is taking something from you that he has no right to take. You assumed something from a generalization you believe is based on truth. But that is not a generalization that works. Even if you had experienced an Asian person cheating you, the cheating had nothing to do with the man's race and everything to do with his character. We might say that a person who belongs to the North American Cheater's Club would be someone who will cheat us because they have demonstrated a willingness to do that by their behavior. Behavior is the key in these things; people may look like they behave (clothes, makeup, hygiene), but those things necessitate behavior. When we generalize correctly, we make assumptions about people based on what we know about others like them. What do we know about the Asian cheater? We know that he is a man, he is Asian, and he cheated. The cheater’s gender and race have nothing to do with the act of cheating; the cheating is what we have to understand the person. In other words, do you know more about a person by looking at them or by seeing them act? Clearly, actions are the only indications of a person’s character and the only way we can know who they are.** Accordingly, if your only experience with people in wheelchairs has been that they are cranky and have huge chips on their shoulders, you will generalize that behavior for all wheelers because it is backed up by the assumption that people in chairs might have a harder life than people who are able to ambulate without assistance. There are good reasons behind these generalizations and these particular assumptions translate to all the knowledge you require until you have a new experience with a wheeler that changes your necessary knowledge. That is the nature of this fluid idea of truth; we change our understanding and beliefs when it is pragmatically necessary.***

This is all very idealistic, but it does work well for us in practical terms. The challenge will always be, though, how to know when a change in generalization is necessary and which generalizations are nothing more than prejudices. You will hear people say things like, "I Jewed them down to a lower price," about bargaining for a better deal. That is the phrasing for an improper generalization. While there may be some Jews who are parsimonious, ascribing that characteristic to such a large group of people is not something that will ever work on pragmatic grounds. If you make that large of a generalization you are bound to be in a constant state of confusion or anxiety because you are constantly having to either refuse to acknowledge that your idea is wrong (which requires more work than accepting that your idea is faulty and moving on) or you will have to constantly be reevaluating the idea.**** If the constant reevaluation is happening, you've missed the pragmatic utility of generalizations entirely! While it seems like the Jewish generalization and the disability generalization are the same, they are quite different. The cranky behavior of the wheeler has two things backing up the generalization: the experience you've had with a cranky wheeler and the knowledge you have that ambulation usually makes life easier. The Jewish assumption has only one thing behind it and that is your experience with one person without any kind of reason behind the experience itself. While the wheeler may not be cranky because he or she is in a chair (and really, being in a chair can be a good thing, too), the generalization does have some soundness to it in relation to how we understand the nature of our existence. What is there about the Jewish person and parsimony that makes sense? Is there any utility in the action itself? No, of course not. There isn't a practical reason for the assumption that all Jews are parsimonious, though there might be more of a practical reason behind the assumption that all wheelers are cranky. The more practical nature of the wheeler assumption does not, however, absolve us of guilt if we keep the generalization once we know it is not valid. That is why prejudice, or a belief we want to be true no matter if it is true or not, are so detrimental to our epistemological understanding. With every generalization comes the necessity of the acknowledgment of our fallibility as humans. Quite simply, we can always be wrong in everything we think we know.

Let me give you one more example: If you live in the United States and you drive a car, and you live in a state that allows people to pump their own gas, chances are good that you've pumped gas into a car on more than one occasion. If you're driving around in an unfamiliar area of town and you notice you need gas, the process for getting the gas will be known to you already and would not necessitate new knowledge on your part. Even if you find that the gas station you chose has a slightly different process for getting gas, your generalizations about pumping gas are ultimately still true; you've simply added a new element to what you already understood. If, however, we change the way we fuel our cars you will have to learn a new way of doing it and the old generalizations must be discarded; they will no longer be pragmatically true.

What does this wordy discussion of truth have to do with the reactions people have to the disabled? Simple! People react the way they do because the experiences they've had and the truth of those particulars fuel their generalizations about the disabled. It's harder to attach blame when that is the case because we're not talking about something like race or even culture; we're talking about a very specific way of life that is particularly different for every disabled person, but generally the same for every all disabled people. The generality is the limitation we have that able bodied people do not. Yet, everyone has limitations; that is the thing, the knowledge of limitations, that allows for the somewhat appropriate generalization about people who are more limited than you. If I were to think about it (not that I do that sort of thing) I would probably find that I have made some assumptions about what it is like to live life in a wheelchair and about the people who do that. My generalizations might be closer to particular truth than an able bodied person's generalizations, but they are no less fluid. The amount of change needed does not alter the necessity of the fluidity of the generalization or the generalization itself; all it does is give me a head start on truth.

Another reason able bodied people react to us in strong ways much of the time is partially due to the fact that we are a minority of people whose differences are imposed on others. Five able bodied people standing in a group discussing dogs are just standing there discussing dogs. If there is one black person in the group the situation does not change; the race of of the participants is irrelevant to the negotiation of the conversation. If, on the other hand, one of those people is disabled the negotiation does change. If they are deaf, for example, they either need to face the person speaking to read their lips, or someone needs to translate with ASL, or the person speaking must use both ASL and spoken language. The difference doesn't make the disabled person inferior to the others, nor does it make the situation harder or less valuable. The difference is only the imposed limits on others in the situation, not just the person with the disability. Again, that isn't a bad thing, it's just a necessity. Unfortunately, some able bodied people do attach value to these things and assume that a person who can't do the things they do in the same way is lacking in something. That is not an appropriate generalization because it forces the particular to be general. While the deaf person in the dog discussion can't hear as everyone else can, they can still have as much participation in the discussion as everyone else; it is simply a difference in the way it is communicated. It is the same with walking versus wheeling; the movement necessary to get to a different spot is accomplished in different ways but it is accomplished. Any generalization of lesser value is one that has nothing to do with the actuality and everything to do with a forced version of reality. It simply does not correspond to truth.

We need to be thoughtful and aware of our generalizations for them to work for us instead of against us; I do realize this is easier said than done. Generalizations can turn into steadfast beliefs if we are lazy or if we think we benefit from a truth that is not supported by correspondence. When you allow for belief to correspond to truth, it must actually correspond to truth; if we allow for such a thing, we also must acknowledge that the truth we think we know is still understood in human (fallible) terms. Even if you think you Know, doubt will always creep in. We are, after all, human. Generally speaking.

*I admit, sometimes the obscurity of the titles I choose cracks my ass up!

**Appearances are relevant to generalizations only when they involve action.

***Please do not think that this theory legitimizes every generalization. There must be practical necessity involved and it must be based on actuality. If someone is rude to you and you assume it's because they have a little green alien residing in their bottom, you are making an assumption that is utterly divorced from necessity or actuality. If you were to then make the generalization that all rude people have little green aliens in their bottoms you are basing the generalization on something that cannot be true. Generalizations must be knowledge and reality based to constitute truth.

****I recently read Schindler's List, by Thomas Keneally. I can't remember who it was that said it, but one of the high Nazi party members (Goering, maybe?) made a speech in which he admitted that "Aryans" probably knew one Jew who was a "good" Jew. He went on to tell them that they must make no exceptions and be merciless with all Jews because they were all the same at bottom. I would imagine the willingness to admit that there might be some goodness in this thing you have decided is all bad would make your steadfast bias painful. The futility of a generalization that admits flaws is the thing that ultimately dooms tyranny.

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I'm angrier than I can say

2008-07-22T20:19:00Z

Before I begin let me state unequivocally: I do not in any way support terrorism in any form. I am a huge fan of order in society and in giving up some liberty for the insurance of greater freedoms. But I am also a huge fan of biological equality and for being responsible for what we do alone. Our justifications for our deeds can never, never be based on what someone else has done; that is a coward’s gambit. I am also a big believer in enforcing an idea, not just stating it as fact. (edit) OK mom, I'll take out the naughty language.

Whenever I am in the car I listen to NPR. I listen to it every morning on the way to work and every afternoon on the way home. It has been informative and interesting all these years and I usually come away from the brief NPR sessions with more than I had before I listened to it. This morning was no different but the thing I came away with was outrage. And the thing I can’t believe is that I wasn’t outraged before and there are few people who are outraged still.

We live in a country that no longer holds itself accountable to the Geneva Conventions. I never thought I would write or say or think such a thing, but the truth is inescapable. For those of you who are not familiar with the Geneva Conventions, they are a set of treaties written and ratified on how enemy captives are to be treated by their capturers, among other things. In other words, the Geneva Conventions are there to insure that anyone captured by an enemy in the time of war is entitled to a basic standard of treatment that prohibits things like torture and abuse. The Bush administration is trying to claim that the detainees at Guantanamo are “unlawful enemy combatants” but that notion has been soundly put to rest by the International Court: "There is no intermediate status; nobody in enemy hands can be outside the law." This is in addition to the 4^th Geneva Convention which deals with civilians.

Here we are, in the 21^st century, and we’re torturing people we have captured and are holding them without due process of law. I can get around the habeas corpus objection if they are prisoners of war, but we cannot get beyond basic standards of care. When we allow, endorse and practice torture on people who are in our care, no matter who they are, we are endorsing the very idea that those things are acceptable for everyone. We don’t have the luxury of saying, do as I say, not as I do as a country. We are the country we choose to be and if we choose to ignore that most basic standard of right conduct, we have chosen tyranny. How did this happen?

I’ll tell you how it happened: We are so busy being angry about men sleeping with men and women sleeping with women that we have forgotten that there are some basic issues we have yet to resolve, some basic tenets of the principle of harm that are being violated every minute of every day. We have chosen to care about how people have sex rather than the way we treat other people, as if we can be responsible for the way other people live and not responsible for our own endorsements and lives. If you support the torture of prisoners through your lack of outrage over the fact of its existence and yet you are outraged over people having sex… honestly, I don’t even know what to say to that. What is wrong with you? How do you lay your head on your downy pillow at night knowing that there are people being tortured in your name? Do you honestly care more about other peoples’ sex lives? Where is your sense of perspective?

While you are happily debating whether or not people have the right to love whomever they wish, the world has gone to hell. Have you noticed that the Taliban are making a strong showing in Afghanistan? Did you notice the dire figures being released by a vast majority of scientists that show a crisis in environmental issues? How about the fact that our prisons are overflowing but our education system is underfunded by hundreds of percentage points? Any of those things bother you? Maybe just a teensy bit? Or is it really all about penises and vaginas for you?

Gay men and women marrying and having sex has nothing to do with me and will never affect me. Torture? That affects me as long as I am a citizen of this country. As a citizen, I am subject to the laws of the land as much as anyone else, and if the law states that it is ok to torture people, I could be that person one day. Gay? Nope, not going to happen in this lifetime. Tortured? Could happen tomorrow. Yes, that goes for you, too. Comfy, now?

Even if you believe that every person being held at Guantanamo is guilty, is rightly there, you still have the obligation of outrage on behalf of the ideal your country is supposed to uphold. You still are responsible for the idea that our country is allowed to torture human beings in the name of the citizens of this country. You get to own that. You. Those of you who rail against the terrible things the terrorists have done to their own captives as an excuse to torture them don’t get to have all of that moral indignation. Sorry! You lost that right when you said it was ok for us to do it, but not them. You lost that right when you decided that people who are like you are better and deserve better treatment than people who are like them. We’re not talking about people who have demonstrably harmed people in every instance, here; there are people being held who have done nothing. Yet, that makes little difference when we are trying to find moral justification for our own acts. We are not responsible for what they did; we are only responsible for what we do. That is the fundamental reason we should be taking to the streets and protesting the idea that torturing people under our guard is both vile and utterly anathema to everything we profess to believe in this country. Remember this? “We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.” Where in that brief quote does it say, but only the Americans? Where does it say, but only the ones who think like us?

I am sick to outrage of the idea that people think they believe in equality when all they do shows that belief is unthinkingly empty. We are not asked to coddle murderers or dictators or terrorists; we are asked to treat them as if they are human as they have not themselves done. How can you condemn a person for doing something you are doing to them? Do you not see the problem inherent in that action? As vile as they are and as horrific as their crimes remain, we did not do those things. The proper response to vile acts is not the endorsement of those acts by doing them ourselves!

I received an email today entitled, “The Axis of Idiots.” I won’t go into much detail because I don’t want to make you all sick, but the email states that Edward Kennedy was wrong for showing the pictures of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal and asking for an end to that kind of treatment. Who thinks that way? What kind of a person thinks we should measure our actions on the actions of terrorists? Make no mistake, when you justify the continued abuse of prisoners of war based on the principle that what they are doing is worse, or they started it, you are stating that you think the idea of torture and annihilation are super keen, okey dokey for everyone. If you state that they are doing it so you can too, you are saying that what they are doing is right! How is that not evident? How? Can you imagine the outrage in our country if the Abu Ghraib actions had happened to one of our own? Let me guess: it would be ok as long as the person being tortured had already done very bad things; things like torturing another human being. Oh, wait…

You and I and everyone else who lives in this country have a responsibility to make sure our interests as citizens are protected. If you think torturing human beings protects your interests, then I suggest a quick move to Sudan; they are all about one side being right and the other side being disposable. Have a blast. I choose to live in a country that stands for equality, no matter who you are; a country where, no matter how vile your actions, you are still entitled to fundamental rights because the rest of us carry the moral majority for your sorry ass. I choose to live in a country where torture is condemned because it is wrong, not because we didn’t think of it first.

I don’t want to live in a country whose citizens think as the Nazis thought. I don’t want to live in a country whose citizens think as the terrorists think. I don’t want to live among people who believe their biological and ideological rights are more important than those of others. Anyone who would endorse that view is low, vile and acting in a way that endorses tyranny and injustice. Stop it. Stop it now. Stand up for the idea of equality in all things, not just in the easy ones. Stand up for the idea that people, no matter who they are or what they’ve done, are still people. Stand up for the idea that in matching a person’s crime with an equal or worse crime you are endorsing the very idea of the rightness of the crime itself. Stand up, now, before the person being tortured is you and your only redress to law is the empty promise of a once great nation. Stand up before we lose the soul of our most treasured, fundamental belief: equality, responsibility, and the condemnation of any act that infringes upon those ideals. Stand up against the tyranny inherent in terrorist thinking and torture. You never know when the tide will turn from tyranny over them to tyranny over you.

"You've gotta say, "I'm a human being, goddammit! My life has value!"

So, I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window, open it, and stick your head out and yell,

"I'm as mad as hell,

and I'm not going to take this anymore!"

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Oh, by the way, the soldier in that picture recently overdosed. The consequences of tyranny reach into the depths of our despair.

Blah blah

2008-07-21T20:37:00Z

Miscellaneous blah blah today.

Sometimes I wonder how it is possible people can think others are ridiculously stupid. Does anyone really believe that these people are who they say they are? Come on... where did they go to promote their agenda? Fox News. It's so obvious they are people who, for whatever reason, are attempting to make Democrats generally and Obama specifically look bad. A group that claims: "This website was founded in the desire to reveal the corruption, misconceptions and distortions of the liberal and biased media who have prohibited the free flow of ideas and truth," has no true interest in the middle ground they claim to occupy. The liberal bias? Who is it that owns the largest chunk of the media on the planet? Here's a hint: it's not Oprah Winfrey. Regardless of their clear agenda, I hope they fall into the dustbin of history sooner rather than later; we don't need more pandering to those who lack the ability to think critically or who think it's funny to cause demonstrable harm to the cause of democracy.

Simon's Cat has a new video and it is the best one, yet! Well, it's the best one until the next one:

I spent a lovely morning trying to get myself to class. These are the times when being ill sucks more than it is irrelevant. I'm clearly sick with something (pneumonia? probably) that is causing all kinds of pleasant effects. When I get sick my body does two things: it fights anticoagulation and the deficits I already possess make themselves really, really known.

Weakness? Oh, I must have forgotten to condition my hair because this brush just won't go through it.
Anxiety? Excuse me while I shake here in the corner.
Dizziness? Wheeeeeeeee! the merry-go-round goes faster! faster!
Fatigue? The sun hitting the horizon means it is time for sleep, right?
Words? What? No, you said what. What? I don't know. Wait, what?

Did you hear about Michael Savage? Disabled Politico blogged about this several days ago and I've been wanting to mention it, but the whole sick issue has been getting in the way. Michael Savage, a man with a PhD, mind you, thinks that autism is a fraud. All those kids need is a strong male hand to tell them to stop being babies and stop acting like idiots. I know I don't need to say much about this as it speaks for itself, but it does make me wonder if Savage has suffered some brain trauma. He's bound to know that no matter what he thinks about autism, this kind of thing is not going to make him any friends and is likely to lose him his job. Whether you agree or not, calling people who are considered disabled (a whole 'nother debate there) frauds is not going to go over so well. There will be people who will say that the world has become too P.C., but that misses the point; the point is that when a thing is medically documented it is not something anyone else gets to pass judgment upon as being "fake." Even if you think people use it as an excuse for bad behavior, you still don't have the right to discredit the entirety of the thing. It's as if people think that the exception proves the problem, when the reality will always be that the reason we even know about the exception is because it is remarkable among sameness. We hear about the abuse far more than we hear about the need because the need exists in a bland, realistic way. The abuse is something that exists in a sensational, look at me! way.

What I am trying to say, rather weakly today, is that I am tired of the abuse of a thing, the exception of a thing being the definition of a thing. We saw this with "welfare mamas" during the first Bush (Sr.) campaign and we see it over and over with everything else. If a cop rapes a man with a broom handle, it suddenly is indicative of all cops. This is seen even more so when we're talking about things like disability or behavior. When someone brags about getting disability for something they don't need, that becomes indicative of people who receive disability. Yet, how many people know that disability payments are extremely hard to get and do not cover basic living expenses? The exception never, never proves the rule.

I've gone off on a bit of a tangent, I know. Autism is not something that is lacking in clear diagnostic guidelines. Autism is not something you can just snap out of with a good smack on the butt every day. Yet again, we have this asshole with a microphone who thinks it is easy because he has never had to deal with it, he's never been intimately acquainted with the thing itself. We all do this, of course. Most of us, however, have the sense to realize that just because our experience is different doesn't mean our experience is right or universal. Hell, I got a whole new understanding of the crushing despair associated with depression when I had that horrible reaction to Trileptal. I'm sick of the conceit so many people have that because they have experienced things differently they know better than others what the truth of the matter, any matter is. The reliance on blind anecdote, or anecdote without examination, is ruining us as a society and it must change.

Michael Savage is hardly worth mentioning because he is so obviously an asshole and an idiot. The same is true for the organization I linked first in this post. These people will always be marginal in society because they do not have the best interest of society at heart. But that doesn't mean we can just roll our eyes and walk on past when we see their ridiculous antics. The necessity to stand up and say "no" to them is never going to go away. In a quick search for the reaction to Savage I saw that the autism guide on About hoped that people would not respond to Savage. I had to shake my head at the lack of care that attitude indicates and wonder how on earth someone who professes to have an interest in autism in particular could be so blindly blase. It is in how we deal with the marginalized lunacy that we learn that it is lunacy in the first place. Look at what has happened with the antivaccination canard: too few people spoke up and now it has unleashed an epidemic, and not an internet epidemic, a real epidemic.

Ya know, I am simply lacking the strength to write any more. One final note: Matt Scott didn't win the Espy and that makes me sad. But he did have a great time and he has an incredible attitude about it. We should all endeavor to be more like him.

I'm going to watch The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, now. I watched Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism the night before. Meh, nothing we didn't already know. The funny thing about that documentary was that I was only half way paying attention until I realized that the disguised voice of one of the anonymous interviewees was Keithy. I'd recognize his modulation anywhere. God, I love netflix. Oh, Jon and I tried to see the new Batman movie in the middle of the day on Saturday. Yeah, no. It was sold out for the entire day by 2:00. Has anyone seen it, yet? I'm curious. Wow, for someone who lacked the strength to write anything more, I've sure written more than I wanted to. Wait, what?

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Dear Senator Obama

2008-07-16T04:51:00Z

Survey says!

2008-07-15T03:52:00Z

Disaboom recently commissioned a survey of able bodied people to get their ideas on what life would be like if they were to suddenly become disabled. The results of the poll were very hurtful and disheartening when I first read them, but the more I've thought about it, the more I think they are as they should be. 52% of able bodied people polled responded that they would rather die than live with a disability. I get that.

Getting that might not have been the reaction you would expect from a disabled woman who leads a rich, rewarding life with a disability. I get that, too. I've stated many times since I got sick that I would not want to live in a locked in state, nor would I want to live if my brain registered as dead. But the truth is, I don't know what I would want in that situation. I can't possibly judge such a thing because I lack the understanding of what that thing means. As another member put it, I lack the imagination to project my self into that situation because it doesn't hold any commonality with who I am today. I am what I consider to be whole. Yet, I know that there are other people who see me as less than because of the crutch. I don't really blame them because they, too, lack the imagination to see themselves as a person with a crutch. I think I would rather die than live uneducated and poor, but how would I know I was living a life I didn't like? Clearly, I wouldn't know it.

I think we possess the ability to make moral judgments on actions we have not experienced because all of those judgments stem from the principle of harm: if you violate someone else's liberty then you are violating their basic right to a lack of harm. But there is nothing moral about wanting to live as a person with a disability or not to live that way; it is simply something we do. Chances are good most people would change their minds and find heretofore unknown strength to cope with a new way of life. That's why we say that nobody is really against the disabled. The morality of the issue only comes into the argument when we seek to harm someone else, to take away their liberty. No one is attempting that when they say they'd rather die than be one of us, though.

Understandably, many people with disabilities took this news of the 52% pretty hard. Many took it personally and some took it as a rallying call against able bodied people. I've seen a fair bit of that sort of thing in the disability community, an us versus them attitude, and I think it does us more harm than it does them. We are the ones called upon to force the issue of acceptance, not the people who can't even imagine what our lives are and how we live them. It is our responsibility as people with disabilities to make other people aware of the challenges we face, the limitations they unwittingly put on us. Would you know to help someone if they never made it known themselves? Of course not. That is canoe we're paddling and the one we continually have to attempt to point in the same direction.

It's not that we need able bodied people to understand us intimately. What we need is for people to understand that we know only what we know and to make a judgment based on what someone else knows is beyond our powers of imagination. We've all been hurt, so we know that hurting someone else is not right or good. I don't have to be raped to know that it would hurt like hell and would cause all kinds of anguish, just as someone who is able bodied doesn't need to know that it is wrong to dump someone out of their wheelchair. There is a basic principle of harm in those two actions that we can all understand. What we need to let people slide on is this idea that they have to understand the basic facts of our existence and our limitations without having anything in their own lives to understand them with; they lack the necessary tools of experience. It is for that reason that I think the moral indignation against able bodied people is misplaced. It is unfair to ask people to put themselves in our shoes, wheels or prosthetics and to instantly understand what life is like as a person with a disability.

It's interesting to note that people who have lived with disability their entire lives tend to have a slightly different take on these things than those of us who became disabled later. I think the life long disability might make you more tolerant of the other side because they have no idea what it is like not to be able bodied, just as you have no idea what it's like to be able bodied. It's those of us who came by our disabilities later in life that tend to have a harder time with the attitudes we think we see in the able bodied community. Really, it shouldn't be that way; I remember the fact that disability was simply not present in my life and therefore lacked meaning to me. That doesn't mean I would park in the handicapped spots or act in ways that were harmful to people with disabilities, but I know that imagining my life now would have been impossible. Actually, if you could go back and tell that version of me running up that mountain in Los Angeles that in a few short years I'd be walking with a crutch and parking in the handicapped spot I probably would have been immeasurably depressed. I would have lacked the process necessary to grieve the loss of my current idea of normalcy. And there is nothing wrong with that, just as there is nothing wrong with thinking you'd rather die than live with disability.

I know I am not heroic in any way, just as everyone else who is disabled is not heroic due solely to their disability. I might be heroic in the influence I have over my students and the good I do, but the disability is only that basic existence that lacks moral value. That's it, isn't it? There is nothing morally valuable about being disabled or able bodied, it simply is our existence. When we start to put value on either one of those things, we lose our ability to accept life as it is and we begin to think that our existence is contingent upon our ability to walk or wash ourselves. Those things are the same for all people; we simply must do what we must do and any heroism we find in our lives must surpass those must dos. As I stated in an earlier post, heroism is the bounding beyond normal. Imagination and heroism are fine things, but they are always based on our own reality. And you know what? There's nothing wrong with that.

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So funny I forgot to puke

2008-07-13T04:56:00Z

Have you heard this one? Barack Obama dies and makes his way to heaven. When he reaches the pearly gates, he has this conversation with God:

God: Who are you?
Obama: I'm Barack Obama. I was the first black president of the United States.
God: You were?! I didn't know that had occurred! When was that?
Obama: Ten minutes ago.

I was stunned speechless when I heard this “joke.” There are many ways to characterize this snippet as offensive, and none to characterize it as funny. Joking about the assassination of a president is simply not something we do. Yet, people do it openly when the man who could be president is black. It’s almost as if people think they have permission based on the color of a person’s skin to act in ways they would find abhorrent if confronted with in their own lives.

I was reminded of this fact last week when Dallas was, yet again, embarrassed by John Wiley Price. The thing is, Price has been an embarrassment for Dallas for a long time. When I lived here before moving across the country he was posturing and making an ass out of himself then; he has never stopped and he continues to show a side of the south that is hateful and clownish. He is no less racist than any white supremacist and he is no less lacking in education and reason. Of course, this incident wouldn’t have passed without the racists from the other side of the fence jumping into the fray and dicto simpliciting this thing into a problem of an entire race, not just one bigoted fool. The comments on the stories posted online ran the familiar gamut of, “black people use any opportunity to make it about race,” to “these people are all this stupid.” It reminds us all that racism uglies up the place, no matter where it is smeared.

I’ve been thinking about race in the presidential campaign a fair bit lately. I’ve noticed that Obama leaves the ideology of race behind when answering questions or giving speeches. He gave one brilliant speech about race (that I know of) but he has left race out of it since then. Some people think this is a mistake. Some people think we should acknowledge and deal with the race issue because it is an issue we all still face. It is an issue that is an issue, in other words. I think they’re wrong.

Race is still an issue, of course. There isn’t a person on this earth who has not had racism directed at them, even in small ways. We must still fight the fight of tolerance and biological equality, but we must never forget that the fight itself is not the end result. We must never forget that the fight to end racism means race ceases to be an issue. The only way to make race a simple fact of existence and not a thing that categorizes value is to stop allowing the racists to bring it up in the first place. Those people do not inform my life, nor should they inform public debate or policy.

There is no way to properly express the horror and pain that flashed through me when I heard the Obama “joke;” I don’t associate with people who think that way, so the sudden assault of it was disproportionately jarring. But the appropriate response to such a thing would not be to joke about assassinating or harming president Bush. People who think that harming someone is the thing you do when that person is different have crossed the line of reason into a world where people are nothing more than the things that serve you, the things that only matter because of you. This isn’t new thinking, nor is it profound; I could smarmily bring up Godwin’s Law and refrain from the obvious, but sometimes the obvious is necessary. The times when people have taken the ideology of that “joke” and acted upon it millions of people have died in the name of someone else’s “better” value. People die in that way due to that thinking because people no longer have value beyond the slavish drive of principle; people simply frame themselves on the label that attaches itself to them and in the opposition that label holds against us. We are no longer the person who has a family, is a lawyer, is running for president; we become someone based on the color of our skin that is divorced entirely from the ideas, dreams and feelings of the thing itself. We become that other thing because that is the value of the label; or, that is the lack of value in the label. Is there anything of the father to the daughters in the above “joke?” No. Is there anything of the value attached to basic biological humanness in the “joke?” No.

As humans we are fundamentally present and monochromatic. We are unable to be anything other than human, which means we are unable to be anything other than the group of humans together. Our individuality ceases to be such a big deal when we know that we are the same as everyone else in our limitations; there is, simply, no difference between you, me, Barack Obama, and George Bush. We may believe different things and we may act in different ways, but none of that has anything to do with the fundamental biology and sameness that is a human being. So, focusing on race in any way allows for a false value to be placed on something that has only one value. In that way, race only becomes an issue when racists make it one. If you do not care about a person’s race, why would you even think of it? Why would it matter? But if you think it is an issue worth talking about in specific relation to a person then you are forcing race into the debate where it does not belong. Race doesn’t pay the bills, doesn’t fight the fight, doesn’t hold up the flag. People do those things.

Race is not the point. People are the point.

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When in doubt, just ask me

2008-07-08T00:46:00Z

I've been RIGHT ALL ALONG! Shopping at Walmart is bad for you and everyone else. And it's not just because of their predatory business practices or the pitiful amount they pay their employees or the global environmental impact they continue to have or the support of sweat shops or even the recent attempt to take away a disability settlement one of their employees won FROM SOMEONE ELSE while working at Walmart (you can't make this shit up!). No, the reason it is bad for all of us to shop at Walmart is because you might be bitten by a rattlesnake!
Jesus, Mary and Joseph!

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Thank you

2008-07-06T05:05:00Z

My summer I class ended Thursday. On the last day of class when we are supposed to be having a final exam (I assign papers, not tests) we have a discussion about some of the extra credit questions. The extra credit questions are social issues, like smoking in public or stem cell research or access for people with disabilities that they write an opinion on, just a page. I knew they were restless Thursday so I didn't keep them very long, but it is always hard for me to say goodbye to a class. I so want to keep them for myself.

My students are the children I will never have. I don't put a huge burden on them by that, but they have come to mean more to me than anything else in my life. It helps that I seem to have the best students in the world every semester, but that has everything to do with them and nothing to do with me. This semester was no exception and I was fortunate to have learned a great deal from this group. I will miss them.

As one student was leaving he very shyly came up to me and handed me a book. It was a book I knew about, everyone does, but one I had not read. It came out when I was still working in the film business, still cynical enough to dismiss that type of book as hokey and clearly not for a driven workaholic like me. They made a movie of the week of it, but I didn't see it. I don't watch MOVs as a rule. It starred one of my favorite actors, Jack Lemmon, and would turn out to be his last credited role. The book, by the way, is Tuesdays With Morrie, by Mitch Albom.

I thanked my student, hugged him, and swallowed my tears so that I could go on with the goodbyes and the meeting I had planned with another student after class. After that meeting, where I told a beautiful, intelligent, engaging and deserving student that she is beautiful, intelligent, engaging and deserving of the best life has to offer, I came home and watched a netflix movie. I puttered about, read the last "quizzes" I had given the students in which I had asked them not to sign their names but to tell me what they thought of the class. I really wanted some objective thoughts, but I should have known better. It's human nature to tell people who have power over us what we think they want to hear, so I got a lot of positive comments. Not that they don't mean those comments, but I know there are ways I could improve my classes and my teaching. After finishing the class reviews, I picked up the book.

On the inside cover he had written, "Thank you for making me question myself," and signed his name. He has a great name that I loved to say in class, drawing the syllables of the great name out. I probably embarrassed him as much as I embarrassed a student last spring whose first name was St. John. It isn't surprising that a woman named Liesl in the United States like names. Sitting in the armchair in the living room I started reading, not realizing that the book was about a professor and a former student. I eventually migrated to bed, reading as I always do, before falling asleep. As tired as I was, I just couldn't stop reading. I read 140 pages that night and finished it the next morning. The book concerns what the author called the last class between a dying professor and a former student who had not seen his favorite prof in 16 years. I saw it more as a last confirmation of the relationship the two shared, however distant their time together had been. The words of wisdom were not anything out of the ordinary or particularly profound, but the wisdom the professor imparted was not the thing I responded to in the end. I found myself responding to the relationship the two people shared more than the nature of their discussions. The student was loved and he loved in return.

There is a joy that is hard to explain when you are able to reach students on a personal level. It's the joy of knowing that your words have meaning to the people they should and that you're connecting with the people who matter the most. I realize that not all professors feel this way about their students, but they should. Actually, anyone who teaches should feel this way. We are too often caught in the easy melancholy of a difficult and financially puny job to notice that we have such sweetness, such richness, such pure delight sitting in our classes every day. We forget that the filling of brains with knowledge and the connection we make to our students are the things of dreams. We forget that the relationships we foster are the relationships students will often base their lives upon. We forget that the knowledge we give them and the advice they take away are often the things they use to find themselves and their purpose. We forget that the street to this relationship can never, ever be one way. Simply, we often forget why we are there and the reward it will inevitably bring because we forget to take the time to connect to our students. You know I'm right; how many truly wonderful teachers have you had? How many of your college professors knew your name?

I am completely humbled and awed by my students every semester. It will always be my duty to be humbled and awed by them because they will never stop being extraordinary. We create the world when we teach, yet we often forget that and we often forget that our responsibility to everyone else is greater than someone who does not have the burden of imparting knowledge and connectedness to impressionable minds. It is for that reason that I am always stunned to hear some of the stories my students tell about other teachers or professors who have not treated them well. I look at them and wonder how someone could be unkind to the promise staring at me at that moment. How could someone look at them and do the one thing they have the power to do that will create sadness and pain in the world? I will never understand those teachers and I will always tell my students how wrong anyone is who tells them they are not valuable, intelligent and wonderful.

The professor in Tuesdays With Morrie, Morrie Schwartz, was clearly the kind of professor who made a profound impact on the lives of many of his students. I hope to be that kind of professor; receiving the book that details such a relationship is a good indication that I am that sort of professor. It is my duty to try to be that, to endeavor to teach the entire person, not just the part of the student that is learning philosophy. We are all trying to learn and trying to find the best way to live our lives. Being the person who helps others do that is akin to the makers of movements, the movers of society. We grant the future our time and our hard won knowledge because we know that the things we give are given back in so many ways. It isn't just the immediate sense of the personal triumph and relationship of the professor and student; it is in the making of the person and the wish for more than what is now that we see the true responsibility we serve as teachers and it is in this personal relationship between teacher and student that the true sweetness lies. When you know that a student has taken away something from your class that will serve them their entire lives you know you've created a better future. When you know that your existence is important to someone else, you know that the meaning in your life has been met. That is the stuff of joy.

There is one more thing about the gift: as I was reading it I noticed little pencil marks, so I flipped to the front. It definitely didn't look new. It could have been bought at a used bookstore, but I prefer to think that he gave me his own copy. It meant so much to me to receive the book alone, but to receive his copy is profoundly inspiring and humbling. At the end of the semester I have started to give my students individualized cards to thank them and to tell them how much promise they have; in those cards I tell every one of them that they will remain a piece of the best part of me. I carry the pieces of them with me wherever I go and I experience daily, hourly elation with the sublime company I keep of them. Now I have something physical with this book to tangibly remind me of their promise, engagement and wonder. It makes me so happy.

I'll leave you with one final note: There's no way to know how often we touch the lives of our students, but when you do get a glimpse of it, the feeling of joy is overpowering. That small glimpse may be small because anything more would be too much for us. But it isn't the size or the quantity of these experiences that matter; what matters is that they happen at all.

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