I’ve had this website for nearly a year, and I’ve been posting on my blog since July. As I assess my hopes for this project, I have reconsidered the text on my homepage, and specifically the discussion of the role of blindness in my work. On the one
How Can We Talk About Race? Thoughts Based on How We Talk About Disability
Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia is quoted in the December 10 edition of the New York Times as saying: “I don’t think it stands to reason that it’s a good thing for the University of Texas to admit as many blacks as possible.” He went on to say
Fab Vocab
After recently adding a “subscribe” feature to my website, I discovered that WordPress’s initial form reply to people who sign up begins, “Howdy.” I like people who say “Howdy,” especially friends from places like Texas and California. But it isn’t
Compliments
It can be hard to take a compliment gracefully. Sometimes we feel undeserving. Other times we wonder if we are being manipulated. There are times we feel a compliment is discordant with our actual achievement, such as when veterans of recent wars
The Samurai, ISIS and Glory
Reading Yukio Mishima’s novel, Runaway Horses, about failed Samurai rebellions in nineteenth and twentieth century Japan, has caused me to look at ISIS from a safe distance. In both cases, the ideology is violent and the premature deaths of its
An Oral History Experience
Last week I recorded a version of my life story for a New York Public Library oral history project, an experience that caused me to think about how we communicate who we are. (The recordings are being posted here, and I assume mine will be sometime