July 18: Hermann of Reichenau (1013-1054)

[Image description: A painting showing a brown robbed monk, Hermann, holding a crutch in one hand and a book in the other, with a harp nearby, and the words "Salve Regina," the name of his best known composition; found here]

Maybe some of the fine medievalists blogging about disability history can help with this one: I saw reference to Hermann von Reichenau's birthday today (the Catholic Encyclopedia gives the date as 18 February instead; still, five years till his 1000th!). The son of a nobleman, he didn't walk, and was hard to understand when he spoke, so the assumption is usually that he had CP or something similar. He was called "Hermann der Lahme," or "Hermannus Contractus" or Hermann the Lame, Hermann the Twisted. At age 7 Hermann entered the monastery at Reichenau. There, he became an expert on Arabic mathematics and astronomy, composed hymns and poetry, and wrote historical chronicles and treatises on music theory and math games. He seems to have introduced the astrolabe to central Europe, among his other accomplishments.

The relics on display here seem to include part of Hermann's skull? Am I seeing that right?

While I'm on the subject of cloisters, I recently read Mark Salzman's Lying Awake (Vintage 2001), a short novel about a cloistered nun in 1990s California who's diagnosed with temporal lobe epilepsy. But Sister John, a published poet, experiences her seizures as ecstatic spiritual revelations, and isn't sure she wants to lose that by having the recommended neurosurgery. The story follows her decision-making, the conversations she has with doctors and priests and her sisters in the community. It's thought-provoking, because the life of a woman religious involves vows and habits of selflessness that affect her criteria for deciding about medical treatment. (If the author's name rings a bell, Mark Salzman is married to filmmaker Jessica Yu, who won the Academy Award for her 1996 short-subject documentary Breathing Lessons--about Berkeley poet Mark O'Brien, who used an iron lung.)

Fun with Sitemeter

If you're the person who arrived at DS,TU today by googling "how to play level 23 crip rader"--apologies, and good luck. We have absolutely no game tips for you. But if anyone ever develops a game named Crip Rader, we'd maybe be interested in having a look.

Anatomy of a search-string mishap: Crip, level, and play aren't uncommon words on our blog; rader pick up a reference to Laura Rader, a book illustrator, in this February 2007 post about author Jane Yolen. Hmm!

The Politics of Dance

In growing up, when I would attend weddings or celebrations, my relatives would well-meaningly say "come on Carol, let's dance" and they would swoop me up in their arms and dance with me. Even as a child, I was very uncomfortable with this form of dance. Not so much by the gesture but more about my immobility, being inserted into the arena of movement ... of dance.

I was so glad that I grew up in an era where going to the dance didn't mean dancing at all. The really cool kids would just stand, or in my case sit, along the wall and be cool... ya know, just be all knowing and too cool to dance. This generational tradition was my saving grace. My disability blended in perfectly. I could just gossip, throw around some profound wisdom that I had no clue what I was talking about and just be cool with the rest of the on-lookers of those who really thought that dance was for dancing.

It wasn't until many years later that the dreadful dance was once again in my social domain. I attended my first Society for Disability Studies conference. I heard so much buzz about this event called The Dance but I figured it was just a social culmination of the conference, probably an event for schmoozing, hooking up and impressing fellow academians, dropping the title of your latest article or book that was about to go to press.

Much to my horror and downright fear, the dance was actually a dance. People jirated in all forms and styles with whatever part of their body that they could move and they chose to move. I remember very carefully selecting a table back by the wall and making sure that I had a tall glass of of beer with a straw that I could drink independently from. This was my fortress. I could just look and appreciate the chutzpah of my dancing peers or my peers that had a lot more fluidity than I but my destiny was not to escape. A friend of mine who I admire immensely spotted me trying very hard to look nonchalant and engrossed in doing nothing. I knew when she swung her chair in my direction that there wasn't any way out. I either had to show my political disability arrogance by dancing or be found out as a hypocrite. I was right, Simi Linton gave me what I fondly refer to as "The Linton Test." So, after all these years, there I was on the dance floor shaking my head, letting my arms flail and acquiring the skill of the tounge dance.

I survived the dance and to be honest I still can't say that I'm a convert. Everytime I attend the SDS dance, I have feelings of ambivalence but since I always have to make sense of everything, I think the dance whether one is enthralled by it or more lukewarm is a political statement that represents evolution of an oppressed people. The dance is a montage of anger, joy and liberation I know those of you reading this blog are probably saying "Carol, why don't you just shut up and dance."

July 14: Woody Guthrie (1912-1967)

[Image description: Woody Guthrie, guitar in hands; guitar displays a sign that reads "This Machine Kills Fascists"]

"The note of hope is the only note that can help us or save us from falling to the bottom of the heap of evolution, because, largely, about all a human being is, anyway, is just a hoping machine." --Woody Guthrie

Legendary American folk singer and songwriter Woody Guthrie was born on this date 96 years ago, in Okemah, Oklahoma. At age 52, he was picked up for vagrancy in New Jersey, and alcoholism or schizophrenia were suspected as underlying causes of his increasing erratic behavior and health changes. But at the Greystone Psychiatric Hospital he was instead diagnosed with Huntington's Chorea (now known as Huntington's Disease)--an incurable degenerative neurological condition. He died thirteen years later, at a state hospital in Queens, NY. Guthrie's ex-wife went on to work with other affected families on securing funding for research into HD.

This birthday gives me an opportunity to mention Alice Wexler's new book: The Woman Who Walked into the Sea: Huntington's and the Making of a Genetic Disease (Yale University Press, available September 2008) takes the story of Huntington's in America back long before Woody Guthrie, to the early 19th century, to the communities on Long Island where HD was a familiar reality in many leading local families. She follows the story of the disease through generations, through the eugenics era (where HD's strong genetic pattern made it an obvious subject of study), and into the present of genetic technology.

Disability Blog Carnival #41 is up now!

[Image description: Disability Blog Carnival logo, featuring a patent drawing of a torso bracing device, with the words "the Disability Blog Carnival: A Bracing Event" superimposed in blue]

Retired Waif has posted the 41st edition of the Disability Blog Carnival, with the title "Death Becomes Her." Longtime Carnival readers may remember that the last time Retired Waif hosted an edition, she was nearly in labor (literally, reporting possible contractions in the course of the post itself!). This year, the theme is end-of-life issues: "It isn't nice and sweet, this carnival," she explains in the introduction. Indeed--but it is full of links to thoughtful, ambivalent, resolute, defiant, questioning, and wise posts, so settle in and have a read.

Next edition is scheduled to be hosted by Greg at Pitt Rehab on July 24, and he's requesting your stories about "a memorable summer vacation/adventure/ordeal." Hm, I foresee a whole new definition of "summer break," and a swarm of jellyfish stings, airport mishaps, and sunscreen disasters. But then, I'm starting to look forward to September already.... Submit via any of the usual channels--the blogcarnival.com form (but beware the Captcha--still not accessible, grrrr), in comments here or at Greg's blog, or just put the phrase "disability blog carnival" in your post, and we'll probably find you somehow.

July 13: John Clare (1793-1864)

[Image description: Engraved portrait of the poet John Clare, shown with tousled hair, wearing a suit with a heavy coat, vest, and a shirt loosely tied up with a print kerchief]

English poet John Clare was born on this date in 1793, in Helpston, near Peterborough. He was the son of a laborer, and himself a laborer, a gardener, who wrote poetry when he could, to be published by an acquaintance. His earnings were never enough to adequately support his wife and seven children (and his alcohol consumption); he experienced depression and later erratic behavior. In 1837 he was placed in a private asylum. After four years, he tried to live at home again, but his wife soon committed him again, this time to the Northampton General Lunatic Asylum, where he eventually died in 1864. It was at Northampton that he wrote his best known poem, "I Am," reflecting his sense of being abandoned by friends and loved ones, his vivid torments, and his longing for rest, "untroubling and untroubled."

I AM
John Clare

I am; yet what I am none cares or knows,
My friends forsake me like a memory lost;
I am the self-consumer of my woes,
They rise and vanish in oblivious host,
Like shades in love and death's oblivion lost;
And yet I am! and live with shadows tost

Into nothingness of scorn and noise,
Into the living sea of waking dreams,
Where there is neither sense of life nor joys,
But the vast shipwreck of my life's esteems;
And e'en the dearest--that I loved the best--
Are strange--nay, rather stranger than the rest.

I long for scenes where man has never trod;
A place where woman never smil'd or wept;
There to abide with my creator, God,
And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept:
Untroubling and untroubled where I lie;
The grass below--above the vaulted sky.

July 4: Christine Lavant (1915-1973)

[Image: Black-and-white photo of a woman, Christine Lavant, wearing a headscarf, gazing at an empty glass of tea on the table she's seated behind]

"Illusions, to be sure, are safe, are precious, but the truth is
usually more important."

--Christine Lavant

Austrian poet Christine Lavant was born on this date, the youngest in a big family based in a Carinthian village. Her father was a miner, her mother a seamstress. Christine was sick a lot as a kid--one infection damaged her vision when she was an infant, another made her deaf in one ear as a teenager; her face and neck bore the scars of experimental x-ray treatments; tuberculosis and depression were also in the mix. At 20, she was hospitalized for six weeks after a suicide attempt; in 1946 she recorded the experience in "Memoirs from a Madhouse," but wouldn't allow its publication until decades after her death. It's now available in an English translation (Ariadne Press 2004).

Lavant became a highly respected poet in Austria, and won the Grand State Prize for Literature in 1970. One of her short stories, "Das Kind" (1948) is about a hospitalized child, bandaged, confused, lonely, dreaming of her family. Her 1956 volume of poems, Der Bettlerschale (The Begging Bowl) reflects her themes of need, abandonment, alienation, and melacholy. A 1978 collection of her poetry appears under the title Art Like Mine Is Only Crippled Life (from a quote by Lavant). There are English translations of a few Lavant poems here and here.