• “Singing Over the Bones”: The Miracle of Art and Intention

    If a friendship starts with a conversation about books, the two friends are hardly surprised when literature itself becomes a third, equal presence in the relationship. This is how things began for Katie and me. Katie became my first “college friend” when an orientation team leader asked her to look after me. Both Katie and I considered this an awkward arrangement; I felt like her baggage, and Katie felt like my babysitter. Without openly acknowledging the awkwardness, I took her elbow, and we tried to make small talk. In minutes, the all-important question arose: Do you like to read?

    I cannot now recall which of us asked this question, but it sparked an enthusiastic discussion. After only a few sentences, we were excitedly trading literary recommendations, kindled by the realization of our mutual love of Jane Austen. Over the next seven years of our friendship, we’ve since encouraged each other to read hundreds of texts—from classical Chinese philosophy to modern poetry. We’ve reveled in wide-ranging discoveries—the letters of Vita Sackville-West and Virginia Woolf, the poetry of Seamus Heaney, the folktales of medieval Iceland, and the latest books that blend neuroscience and the philosophies of yoga. When Katie gives me a book, I know it will challenge my mind and speak to my soul.

    For my most recent birthday, she presented me with a copy of Clarissa Pinkola Estés’s 1975 work, Women Who Run with the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype. It’s a thick volume – over 500 pages – that offers anthropological, psychological, and spiritual commentary on the female psyche and the power of storytelling. In its first pages, Estés introduces the story of La Loba, the Wolf Woman, a mysterious crone who wanders the world and collects the bones of dead creatures, especially wolves. When she has assembled an entire skeleton, La Loba begins to “sing over the bones,” and her singing transforms the skeleton into a living creature. With each line of melody, the Wolf Woman imbues the dead bones with life, adding blood, muscles, skin, and fur, until the creature begins to breathe and move. With purposeful singing, La Loba can resurrect any creature from this throwaway material “in danger of being lost to the world” – its bones (23).

    It is the connection between singing, life, and intention that draws me to read on. After presenting the story of La Loba, Estés insists that we must all look for our own “bones,” the integral structures of our spirituality, the framework of our souls. She writes, “[The story] promises that, if we will sing the song, we can call up the psychic remains of the wild soul and sing her into a vital shape again” (24). For Estés, and for those who respect the story of La Loba, our life’s work is to uncover and nurture our deepest selves. We must find the bones and sing over them, crooning them to life.

    I find this tribal story compelling because it reiterates, or perhaps predates, what I have learned through my experiences: singing changes the world of the singer. The cultures who believe in some version of La Loba are not the only ones to acknowledge the power of singing. Throughout my Catholic upbringing, the adults around me encouraged my love for singing, citing the mantra, “Singing is praying twice.” Whenever I performed sacred music – or choral music in general – my experiences confirmed the truth of this adage. I felt, as I have said in previous blogs, incredibly connected with my fellow singers and with the divine.

    I remember when I first heard someone talk about the connection between art and life in specific terms. My tenth grade world history teacher showed slides of tribal artifacts from Africa and said, “These people didn’t believe in ‘life for art.’ They believed in ‘art for life.’” She meant that every tool for daily living, every piece of practical houseware, was covered with art: vivid colors, carvings, runes. The members of this tribe used art to infuse everyday life with meaning and beauty. No article went without embellishment.

    Believing in “art for life” gives each person infinite possibilities for enriching their everyday experiences. In his Letters to a Young Poet, the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke conveys his enthusiasm for this ideal; he argues that if you can’t find artistic inspiration, you’re not looking hard enough. Rilke teaches that the real artist can draw inspiration from the most ordinary experiences. The dedicated artist uses art to transform the ordinary into the extraordinary in the service of life—to make our existence more sincere, more real. To help us understand the unbearable and celebrate the miraculous.

    But art is not always a miracle cure. In her exploration of animal and human emotions, behavioral analyst Patricia McDonald relates a story about Ella Fitzgerald, in which Ella’s singing brought to life some unexpected emotions. Apparently, after spending a year singing the lyric, “I’m so tired,” Ella began to experience chronic fatigue, but she didn’t unearth the connection between lyric and feeling until she discussed the situation with her doctor. Her repeated lyrics became a kind of incantation—though I’m sure her physician didn’t use that word—telling her how to live.

    Lyrics contain a transformative power. Often at the end of rehearsal, my chorus members heed the call to “Circle up!” We join hands, making a human chain, and sing one of our many Sweet Adeline classics. To prepare for international competition in Hawaii, we currently favor “Aloha ‘Oe,” a beautiful Hawaiian parting song. But when I hear about Ella’s “I’m so tired,” I can’t help but think of one of our other favorites, “Harmonize the World.”

    The skeptic in me wants to interrogate this song: Does it really work? Can lyrics really harmonize the world? But I silence the skeptic by remembering my bones. Singing is praying twice, and words have power. Then I feel that I am really doing something by singing over the bones of harmony, calling up from the dust of old chords a vision of a peaceful, civil world—a world of constant, contagious music.

    Each time I prepare to sing, I ask myself a series of questions. What will I make with my music? What bones have I collected? What will I sing to life? I marvel at the miracles wrought by art and intention—the incredible changes in mood and circumstance that singing can achieve. I find power not only in the words I sing but also in the action of singing, in the sensation of being surrounded by kindred spirits, in the sheer, primal resonance of many voices making harmony. Even the mechanisms of singing are miraculous for me. I am delighted and absorbed in this spiritual task of finding my bones and my voice—of experiencing what I can build with my voice and my beliefs.

  • The Pen and the Playground

    My favorite teaching duty is course design. Though I hardly control every aspect of the courses I teach – the text choice, the policies, the measurable learning outcomes – I can arrange the order of readings and daily activities. I particularly enjoy asking my students to draw connections between seemingly unrelated texts. I’ll take a 2008 TED Talk and a political essay from 1849 and ask my pupils, “What can a student gain from studying these texts in tandem?” I urge them to synthesize something new by closely examining each text’s objectives.

    For today’s class, they read Northrop Frye’s “The Vocation of Eloquence,” the final chapter of his book, The Educated Imagination. In this essay, Frye insists that the study of literature nourishes the imagination, and the imagination helps us adapt and survive – transforming the world we experience into the world we desire. Imagination, says Frye, lets us test-drive our futures; if we want to be doctors, we must be able to imagine ourselves as doctors. Thus, literature – playful, expressive, and versatile – allows us to train our creative minds.

    During class, my students viewed Dr. Stuart Brown’s TED Talk, “Play Is More Than Fun.” With the help of countless adorable animal pictures, Brown argues for the importance of play. Debunking the idea that play only serves as a rehearsal for adult life, Brown suggests that play promotes adaptability, learning, and trustworthiness. He urges his audience to contemplate their own “play histories,” thinking back to their happiest, most playful memories in order to connect with their real passions.

    So here is my play history – or a brief excerpt from it. I know my current passions: poetry and music. But I want to see what a playful exploration of my past delights will uncover.

    Inside my childhood bedroom, there is a mirrored closet with glass shelves. For several years, the shelves hosted a sprawling miniature village. Houses constructed from popsicle sticks sheltered action figures of miscellaneous origin, each villager no more than a few inches tall. Star Wars characters resided alongside Disney princesses in perfect harmony, their world accessorized with everything from tiny teapots and potted plants to a music box shaped like an upright piano. One lucky family even owned a petite bookshelf, stocked with colorful and anonymous volumes.

    My friend Caitlyn and I spent hundreds of hours, kneeling or sitting in delighted absorption before this layered village, moving its people in and out of elaborate plots. We created character voices and dialogues – conflicts, love stories, comedies, and seemingly incongruous tragedies – sacrificing previous plot lines for the whimsy of the moment. Caitlyn’s bedroom contained an analogous structure – the same playground with different architecture. She was particularly proud of a complex popsicle-stick bridge that joined the two halves of her city, and a glittering waterfall she skillfully constructed from layers of aluminum foil and blue plastic wrap.

    The chief companion of my elementary school years, Caitlyn joined me in a thousand variations on imaginative play. We spun scenarios from the extraordinary material in books and the ordinary stuff of classrooms. A lesson on Jupiter’s volcanic moons transformed us into intergalactic lunar mountain climbers. A chapter from an American Girl book hurled us back in time; we became sister settlers on the prairie, or a merchant’s daughter and her governess in colonial Williamsburg. One particularly demanding English teacher swapped the traditional book reports with a radio play option, daring our creativity to new extremes. With a keyboard and unsophisticated tape recorder, we documented fictional talk shows and radio plays — long after we completed the initial school project.

    Though we grew older, we refused to surrender our love of make-believe. As our schedules filled with homework and after-school club meetings, we took our play onto paper. No longer able to spend hours crouched before our miniature villages or dressed in costumes of our own creation, we traded the physically active play of our childhood for its mental representation. Caitlyn picked up a drawing pencil, I selected a ballpoint pen, and we filled notebooks with cartoons and stories. Like the improvisational radio dramas of our middle school years, this play began to keep its own record.

    Our playground moved onto paper, its character uncompromised. Between classes, we exchanged a decorated spiral notebook, leaving each other notes. This play honed the art of stealth: while we scribbled the latest installment in a parody or comic strip, we appeared to be taking diligent notes in class.

    As a self-proclaimed nerd and enthusiastic student, I am almost ashamed to admit that I took this deceptive “note-taking” beyond the notebook Caitlyn and I shared. I often traveled with two non-academic notebooks in my backpack – the one I exchanged with Caitlyn, and another in which I began a trilogy of fantasy novels. I carried the habit beyond high school into my undergraduate and graduate classes. My low vision always helps me in this private wordplay; I bend so low over my writing in any situation that people can’t tell whether I’m creating poetry or prose.

    I look to Northrop Frye and Stuart Brown to justify this play on paper. Frye asks us to engage with the imagination – does he really want me to ignore the wisps of inspiration that always seem to arrive during faculty meetings or uninteresting speeches? Brown says that play will keep me young and help me learn – wouldn’t he encourage me to keep a notebook, a private playground, with me always?

    That’s the way I choose to join Frye and Brown’s texts. But, like a good teacher, I’ll leave you to make your own connections.

  • Contemplating the Heavens

    In fourth grade, I encountered a piece of assistive technology that looked like it belonged in a sci-fi movie. The LVES (Low Vision Enhancement System, pronounced “Elvis”) was a weighty headset that obscured the upper half of my face, resting against my nose with sweat-inducing foam pads. A battery pack of several pounds accompanied the bulky headset and contained all the controls for flying the device. I relied on the LVES for distance vision; it enabled me to finally read what was written on the blackboards of my elementary school years. Though it had a mounted camera that could be angled for close-up tasks, I mainly used the LVES to follow board-work during math classes. It also featured a neat cable that could hook up to a TV, allowing what appeared on the screen to appear on the two square-shaped viewing panels inside the headset. This feature was useful when my teachers showed films in class.

    A state-of-the-art contraption in 1997, the LVES contained all the staples of many assistive devices today: inverted or adjusted color modes, adjustable contrast and brightness, several levels of magnification, and auto-focusing cameras. The LVES was on the inconvenient side of portable. Packaged in a thick black carrying case, it equaled the weight of an extra backpack. So it traveled with me to school and back home again; I rarely took it to social functions. I was used to living without accurate distance vision; I only acknowledged a need for far-seeing eyes in the schoolroom.

    Later incarnations of the same technology were renamed and resized. By the year 2000, I was sporting a device called a Jordy (yes, it was named after the Star Trek character), which was about a third of the size and weight of the LVES, with improved magnification, contrast, and picture clarity. In 2002, the Jordy 2 was released—and the headset finally lost its hot, uncomfortable spongy padding because it was no longer needed. The Jordy 2 was compact, petite, and effective, and these new advantages won it a spot in my social pursuits as well as my academic ones. When my chorus saw Beauty and the Beast on Broadway in 2004, the Jordy 2 allowed me to zoom in on characters from my seat in the third mezzanine. To my sighted companions—who never had to rely on such technology—I bragged, “I can see Belle’s shoes!” The Jordy 2 accompanied me to many more performances fitting inside a large camera case, its batteries weighing around 4 ounces.

    But the LVES gave me something that its later, more convenient cousins never did. One clear night, I took the LVES outside to gaze at the full moon. I’ve always been able to see the moon quite well without glasses, even if I can’t distinguish its exact shape or phase. It’s a bright spot in a dark sky—nature in high contrast. I can sometimes pick out stars too, if they’re bright enough. The night sky’s effortless inverted colors—pale splotches on a dark background—have always fascinated me.

    So I stood in the backyard, wearing the LVES, and tilted my face to the sky. The brightness of the moon filled the square viewers inside the headset, and I turned the large clicking knob to increase the magnification. As the LVES took me closer, I began to see cracks and fissures across the moon’s pale surface. I went as close as the magnification would let me, and then I realized—with the slow dawning clarity of low vision—that I was looking at lunar craters.

    I’ve never forgotten that fascination, that intense visual intimacy with space. I’ve never forgotten feeling transfixed by that moment, standing in the cool quiet of the backyard, looking at a moon so big and bright. The LVES made the moon defy depth and distance or me, and I was convinced that I could reach out and touch the cracks and craters, feel the smooth bright surface.

    Since then, my experience of the sky and its colors has been varied and incredibly narrative. During all stages of the day, I often ask others to describe the sky to me. Unable to spontaneously identify sky and cloud colors for myself, I want to understand what makes sunrises, sunsets, and storms so remarkable. I want to understand the value of a clear blue sky, a cold gray day, or a crisp and bright winter sun.

    Friends have told me that the morning is made of pinks and yellows, the evening made of reds and purples. On the morning rides to school, Dad explains how low-hanging clouds change the sky and how the sky predicts the weather. We swap adages about when a sailor should take warning and predict where and when the reliable summer rains will fall. In the evenings, Mom pulls me outside to see the harvest moons and supermoons that hover above our chimney, describing their shapes and colors.

    I can make the best use of my vision at dawn and dusk, when the world is covered in a hazy half-light. My vision fails me in sunny circumstances—at the beach, on a bright day, at midmorning or mid-afternoon when the sun is waking up the world with merciless rays. Autumn and winter sunshine treats me better than the summer sun coveted by tourists, but I’m the most happy under the soft gloom of a gray day.

    All my life I’ve heard of the beauty of sunsets, something that is invariably lamented when people speak of vision loss. Though I’ve watched the sun set a few times, I haven’t been able to appreciate the beauty of it—I couldn’t distinguish the bands of melting color and I couldn’t stare at the sky long because of the sun’s brightness. Recently, however, I’ve experienced two sunsets in very distinct ways.

    When I graduated with my Master’s in 2012, Suzanne, a family friend and honorary aunt, presented me with an 11 x 14 canvas depicting a beachside sunset over the water. Knowing that I’d never be able to freeze a sunset long enough to see it—and that I couldn’t bring a sunset “up close”—Suzanne took a photo of a beautiful Fernandina sunset and had it transferred onto the canvas.

    Now, on my wall, the picture radiates its warm dusky colors. The sun is a bright white and yellow ball in the upper right, its perfect circle smeared by passing clouds. The sky around the sun fades from yellow-orange to dark orange, then to gray-purple. The sun is reflected in the water below, rippling down the side of the page in bright flame. A dolphin and two boats inhabit the water, while blurred dark plants claim the foreground. Knowing that I wanted to write this blog, I asked Katie to describe the picture to me. She repeated the colors of the sky, being meticulous in her word choice, as I took rapid, confusing notes. Later, I reviewed my notes and gazed at the picture, trying to marry the verbal description with the visual reality. Though I can’t dissect the colors of the sky, I’m still amazed by the incredible life of the burning sun and the shining water.

    The second sunset came to me purely through words. A week ago, Stephen and I were having dinner when he glanced outside and remarked on the sky. “It’s a perfect sunset,” he said with appreciation. “Can you see sunsets?” I explained that I could see them but that I didn’t really know how to appreciate them (mostly for the reasons I listed above). I asked him to describe this one to me.

    He told me that the sun was bright, just getting ready to set, and surrounded by a patch of perfect blue sky. Bands of reddish-orange and purple tinged the edge of the sky—but the remarkable thing, as he said, was the sky blue around the sun. The strong contrast between the vibrant delicate blue and the intense, saturated reds and oranges of the sky’s edges—that’s what made the sunset so gorgeous.

    I continue to be fascinated by the sky, though I prefer to gaze at the evening or night sky and avoid the glare of midmorning and afternoon. One day, I hope to go stargazing somewhere without the light pollution of a large city. I can’t wait to see what I could really discern in a dark night sky. For now, I’m content to look at the moon whenever she appears. I enjoy her in all stages, but something about the full moon is incredible to me. Perhaps it’s because she’s so bright and intense against the sky—I can see her so well. I never tire of looking at her.

  • Why Identify?

    When I introduce or identify myself as a disabled woman, I often encounter surprised reactions. People frankly reply, “I don’t think of you as disable”—and why would they? For most nondisabled people (that’s “able-bodied” people in outdated lingo), the word “disability” summons a troupe of negative conditions. Suffering, impairments, trips to the doctor, the inability to hold a traditional nine-to-five job, designated parking spaces (that may or may not be the best ones on the lot), and inspirational Lifetime movies—these are the average pieces of the disability  word cloud. For those whose lives are untouched by disability, there is little incentive to see disability and its bearers in a different light.

    However, once you “cross over” and become a member of that often-pitied, frequently misrepresented group called “the disabled,” your perspective on disability might change. Depending on how disability affects your life, you may start to rethink the language that you use—and critique the language others use to describe you. Perhaps you’ve lately acquired an impairment or condition that allows you to come among our ranks. Or maybe you’ve been disabled for years, but you’ve been hiding out with the “normies” (another term for the nondisabled). Attempting to conceal a disability and appear nondisabled is called “passing.” Successfully passing as nondisabled can be more feasible or totally impossible. Since I am a blind woman who employs a cane and dark glasses to safely navigate my environment, passing is not a practical option for me.

    So, if taking shelter under the colorful umbrella of “disability” only broadcasts a swirling mass of negativity, why would anyone choose to identify as disabled? Wouldn’t disabled people prefer some euphemism, like “differently abled” or “physically challenged”? Why choose a term that only makes nondisabled people uncomfortable?

    Under the umbrella, I understand the entire disability word cloud.

    For disabled people, “disability” does not connote only suffering, loss, envy, and despair. Disabled people do not spend all their waking hours gazing longingly at the nondisabled counterparts who can perform the tasks that disability has complicated. Our lives are not Lifetime movies.

    This is not to say that we don’t have our moments of intense suffering, pain, and frustration. I experienced my most recent feeling of “sight envy” at my sister’s wedding. Everyone present was torn between two incredible visions: my sister coming down the aisle, beautiful and smiling with a huge bouquet of yellow tulips—and her new husband, elated as he watched her approach. In such an intense moment, my low vision excluded me on two levels; I couldn’t see the joy that the bride and groom independently carried, and I couldn’t witness that joy multiply itself when they saw each other. It was a visual exchange that I knew I’d never share—the “first look” that characterizes the wedding experience. I felt deeply separated from the delighted onlookers in this scenario. I’ve since thought of ways to adapt this experience to suit my own abilities, but these adaptations don’t countermand the pain of that moment.

    Despite the poignancy of such an experience, I would not describe my life as a constant refrain of sight envy. I have my routine frustrations—I can’t drive (yet), I can’t pluck my own eyebrows, I can’t readily identify colors—but I don’t focus on these things. Similarly, I don’t elevate my disabled experience as some delayed-release enlightenment. My disability doesn’t make me a saint or superstar. If I inspire others, let it be because I am myself, not because I am disabled.

    My relationship to disability is symbiotic: disability is part of my word cloud, and I am part of its word cloud. It affects my perceptions, decisions, behaviors, and attitudes, and I contribute to its characterization.

    People identify as “disabled” to emphasize a shared experience. This is not to say that every blind person lives the same life, with identical frustrations, joys, and fears. Some blind people program computers, climb mountains, enjoy talking watches, and refuse to use braille—all unappealing activities for me.

    Ministries, education courses, and service organizations often insist that disabled people come together to bolster each other through the negative experience of disability, and the “support” groups that are fostered in these places respond to this negative bias.  I’ve been to support groups for blind people where, by way of introduction, people list their condition after their name: “Hi, I’m Joe, and I have RP” or “Hello, I’m Janet, and I have macular degeneration.” Groups that encourage this kind of introduction also encourage a “medicalized” focus: “We are who we are by virtue of our diagnoses. And we’re only here because our doctors thought it was a good idea.” This support emphasizes the “loss” in vision loss and encourages moments of sight envy.

    Meaningful support encourages the sharing of all experiences, both positive and negative, significant and mundane. Effective “disability groups” offer a chance for their members to talk about all areas of their lives, because disability affects all areas of a person’s life.

    By identifying as disabled, I can participate in the dialogue among disabled and nondisabled people. I can engage with the experiences of suffering, pain, and exclusion, but I can also enjoy the discussions of humor, surprise, and delight. Most disabled people can relate to the awkward approaches of curious strangers, but many can also relate to the new friendships born of a person’s curiosity—or the unexpected delight from an episode of graceful, unsolicited assistance. I will not go so far as to say that disability is a “blessing in disguise,” because many disabled people must still fight for their rights to education, accommodation, and—in some cases—life. However, to understand “disability” as a tag for explicit inferiority of mind, body, or experience is a serious and limiting decision.

    For most of us, disability is not a choice, but the label is. We choose to identify, because we choose to share, to fight, to rejoice—to experience our humanity together.

     

    * For a complex discussion of the vocabulary of disability, see “Reassigning Meaning” from Simi Linton’s Claiming Disability: Knowledge and Identity (1998).

     

     

  • The Sensuous Semicolon—and Other Romantic Punctuation

    If you are asked to dredge up the principles of grammar you learned in middle school, you might give voice to the following claims:

    • An independent clause can stand alone
    • A dependent clause can’t stand alone.
    • A sentence fragment is an incomplete thought.

    When I hear these claims from grammar unenthusiasts, I notice two things. Firstly, these facts are easy to memorize but hard to apply. They don’t provide enough practical information to help the diffident writer navigate the churning whirlpools of grammatical variation. For example, an independent clause should be defined as “a clause that can stand alone because it contains a subject and verb and expresses a complete action.” But this definition is unwieldy—arming the reader or writer with a cumbersome and tedious checklist for examining prospective clauses. Any time the reader meets a new clause, she has to conduct the following tedious interview: “OK…do you have a subject? Where is it? And do you have a verb? Where is it? Oh, and do you express a complete thought?” Like most grammatical concepts learned by rote, this definition isn’t user-friendly, so users keep only what seems to be the essential idea—an independent clause can’t stand alone.

    Secondly, these claims emphasize the inherently social nature of sentences. Certain sentence parts can’t stand alone—they need friends, cohorts, stronger companions to help them feel complete. Sentences just want to get together. That’s what writing is all about.

    English teachers never want to talk about the secret romances of good writing, the elicit affairs of comma splices, the close-knit relationships enabled by semicolons. They want to discuss “subjects” and “main verbs”; they would rather pontificate on the principles of coordination and subordination. But the reality is that these terms are all part of a secret code, and every English teacher has sworn this oath: “I shall never reveal to my students the intimate social underpinnings of the words they use!” With true Victorian sensibility, they cover the sensuous material of language with elaborate and evasive terminology—grammatical jargon that effectively douses the expressive desires of most writers.

    Well, I’ve decided to violate the oath and bring you the secret to syntactic harmony. All the time you’ve been reading and writing, you have probably noticed a certain chemistry among sentences—an inner music, a palpable cohesion. This is the sign of healthy grammatical relationships. So how do writers keep the romance alive?

    The secret to syntactical bliss lies in punctuation. But first, let’s examine the power of independence.

    We call a clause independent when it has a subject and verb that create a complete story. The story will be small, but the sentence makes sense on its own. If you run into a room and declare, “Albert went to the store,” your listeners will feel a degree of satisfaction. Curious bystanders may ask, “Which store?” or “What did he get?” or even “Who is Albert again?” but you have no obligation to answer these questions. You’ve given the necessary information. Someone did something. X accomplished Y. The story, however boring, is complete. We call this sentence a simple sentence—but we can also call it a sexy single. She’s a sentence who’s got it all. She can walk down the page, unhampered by awkward modifiers and unashamed to be solitary.

    And sexy singles like to hook up with other sexy singles. So if our first gal, “Albert went to the store,” meets a kindred spirit, “Betty went to the park,” they can go on several kinds of dates. If they are just getting to know each other, they will go on the grammatical first date—using a comma and a conjunction. A snapshot of their date looks like this:

    Albert went to the store, and Betty went to the park.

    This first date is also called a compound sentence.

    As they get closer, their dates will look a little different. How are they relating to each other? If they’re clicking on several levels, they may keep that “and.” If they’re feeling contrary, they’ll trade it for a “but.” If they’re agreeing to disagree, they might use a “so.” And when things really start to heat up, they’ll invest in a really romantic piece of punctuation…the semicolon.

    Albert went to the store; Betty went to the park.

    Look how close and cozy they are! That semicolon allows them to settle down together on a comfortable sofa in front of a dying fire with mugs of hot cocoa. That semicolon means that she’s wearing a soft floral perfume and he’s been working out. They’re staring into each other’s eyes and talking about their childhoods. They’re leaning over a book of poetry, and one arm slips around another’s shoulders. They’re dancing cheek-to-cheek.

    But the variety of their dates is infinite. They can also go out for a nice em-dash, a long hyphen that changes the mood of the situation.

    Albert went to the store—Betty went to the park.

    This isn’t as cozy as the semicolon, but it’s a fun time. Perhaps they’re going bowling with friends—its a date for these two, but the friends are there too. Maybe they’re at an amusement park, holding hands on the Ferris wheel. They’re at the movies, and it was her turn to pick. They’re eating Fondue, and it’s not his favorite—but he’s still having fun because they’re together.

    These are all scenarios where the date is going well, but what if the date goes wrong? What if he’s on his phone the whole time or she’s talking about her previous relationships? What if the restaurant is shabby and ill-lit with dirty plates? What if, at the last second, she refuses to pay for him or he for her? What if it’s their 5-year anniversary and he takes her out for fast food? How would that look?

    Albert went to the store, Betty went to the park.

    We call this cheap date, this uncomfortable situation, a comma splice. Neither sentence has invested enough to make the experience pleasant. This isn’t an unexpected victory over adverse circumstances. This is a lowest-common-denominator event. This is grammatical settling, and neither sentence will be happy about it.

    And what about when partners become indifferent? We call that a run-on sentence, and it looks like this:

    Albert went to the store Betty went to the park.

    They’re too blasé to buy any punctuation for each other. And you can forget about conjunctions; they’re just waiting for the relationship to fizzle out. Semicolons, colons, commas, conjunctions—these love-tokens strengthen relationships. But in the run-on or fused sentence, nothing holds our two singles together. They’re not moving toward each other; they’re just existing in the same space.

    And what about clingy partners? Well, we call them dependent clauses because they’ve got a subject and verb but they can’t stand alone. They don’t want to be alone. They’re looking for a curvy, strong, confident clause to curl up with. Here’s our lonely single: “While I was at work.” Read it aloud and you can hear the desire for social inclusion; this clause wants to be part of something bigger. If she gets a date with one of our sexy singles (whose previous relationship dissolved because of too many run-ons), it will look like this:

    While I was at work, Betty went to the park.

    She’s leading our independent clause across the page, but what if the sexy single wants to lead her new, dependent partner? Their interaction will look like this:

    Betty went to the park while I was at work.

    When the independent clause leads the way, the sentence doesn’t need to buy a comma. The independent clause effectively clears a path for the dependent one.

    It’s important to notice that these dates look different from our compound sentence dates. In these scenarios, called complex sentences, one clause gets most of the attention while the other becomes subordinate, less important. But since sentence parts love to be together, the subordinate clause doesn’t mind. Life is all about give-and-take, right? Sometimes we get to be the main clause; sometimes we have to be the subordinate clause. Sometimes we’re in the first paragraph, and other times, we’re in the footnotes.

    I can’t end my description of cohesion, or sentence romance, without tipping my hat to that grammatical maverick, the sentence fragment. Edgy, unconventional, and occasionally irritating, this rule-breaker doesn’t worry about labels, dates, or promises. Fragments are just there—sitting in the corner in a beret, smoking a foreign cigarette, and reciting obscure poetry. Sometimes they breeze across your page, leaving you with only a faint hint of their exotic cologne. Sometimes you hear their husky inflections from around a corner—but you round that corner and they’re gone. They’re unpredictable. They won’t be pinned down. And most rule-following English teachers won’t even allow them in the classroom.

    We call them “incomplete sentences,” because they may lack a subject or a verb. But they’re only “incomplete” if we elevate those self-reliant, intoxicating independent clauses as the gold standard for sentences, the complete package. Fragments have their place. Even if we can’t always say what that place is.

    Overall, these numerous and varied sentence dates—these instances of cohesion—create a more stable relationship among all sentences. We call that larger harmony “coherence.” Coherence is when everyone is getting along, when each sentence is feeling connected and supported on all sides. Coherence is what we call the best grammar party you’ve ever been to, where the food is perfect, the music is not too loud, and the conversations are so riveting that, before you know it, you’ve spent seven straight hours talking to the same people.

  • I Only Have Eyes for…Grammar: Creating a Multi-Sensory Method for Teaching Writing

    As a writing instructor with low vision, I spend my life trading between a large white stick and a small white stick. The large one, of course, is the cane that helps me navigate my work environment. I open my classroom door, cane in hand, and proceed to my desk. At the desk, I fold the cane and it disappears – a quick sleight of hand for the students present. Students who enter the room after me and leave before me will not know I use it. I trade the cane for a small white stick with a black cap, the dry-erase marker that enables me to convey my thoughts in visual language on the large whiteboard behind my desk.

    Despite my blindness, vision occupies the central role in my classroom. In each class session, I trade one tool of vision for another—oscillating between the cane that compensates for my low vision and the marker that relies on the sight of my students. Even when I am not using my small white stick, my students complete primarily visual tasks.

    In my first class, I guide the students through an exercise called Flash Peer Editing (FPE). FPE is something I created on the way to class, but I’m sure that the idea isn’t really mine. When you study, teach, and tutor writing, you forget who invented which pedagogy. However, I try to put my own spin on this exercise by incorporating aural and visual processes.

    Flash Peer Editing works like this. Students bring two copies of their paper to class, keeping one in front of them and passing the other copy to their right. At this point, I use my little white stick to write a series of “rules” on the board, each brief rule corresponding to a round of rapid editing. At the end of each round, students pass the papers to their right. In Round 1, students should mark 3 things that are well executed in the paper, such as graceful sentences, apt word choice, or logical arguments. In Round 2, students should mark 3 sections for improvement—like awkward phrases, misspelled words, ill-defined concepts. They do not have to correct the problem—they just have to draw attention to it.

    Round 3, another visual exercise, offers students the chance to search the paper for words from my Banned Words and Phrases list. The list contains 40+ words and phrases that tend to weaken student writing—phrases such as “The writer does a good job of X” or “The writer is just trying to Y.” Words like “very,” “utilize,” “totally,” and “huge”—and phrasal verbs like “talk about,” “back up,” “point out” and “go on to say”—are also on the list. My goal here is not to make students afraid or ashamed of using these words. Rather, I hope to show them that there are more descriptive words out there (and “out there” is also on the list). In Round 3, students readers circle any banned words that catch their eye as they read. They do not have to complete a meticulous search for every banned word in the paper.

    Finally, in round 4, students experience their paper in a chiefly aural way. Students pass their papers to the left until each has his or her own work again. Then, they keep the marked copy of their short paper and hand the clean copy to a partner. Turning over the marked copy so that they won’t be tempted to look at the text, they listen to their partners read their work aloud. As the partner reads, students note any observations  they have about the sound of their work. They repeat this process twice, so both partners can hear their work aloud.

    This round is undoubtedly my favorite because my classroom suddenly fills with the sound of self-conscious students reading aloud. Sometimes they adopt funny accents or pretentious voices to cover their unwillingness to read another’s work; other times, they read the writing faithfully and seriously, without attempting to alter pronunciation or inflections for comic relief. Invariably, the students listening to their own work begin to giggle and squirm. They seem to say, “Did I really write that?” Occasionally, the listeners express delight and surprise at the sound of their well-constructed sentences.

    While this version of peer editing does incorporate aural and tactile elements—students hear their work aloud and mark another’s work—I am disappointed by its primarily visual nature. I want students to understand the importance of hearing their work aloud. Often, we edit as we read visually—our brain runs a sophisticated “autocorrect,” transforming hastily mistyped words until they resemble what we intended to type. Reading aloud thwarts this process, especially if you choose an unsympathetic reader who will stumble and stutter over your awkwardly worded phrases. Even if your reader can guess at your meaning, this guesswork takes some time; it will not occur within the first read-aloud.

    I am spoiled by the text-to-speech software on my computer. During all the stages of my writing process, Alex, the obliging voice on the Mac OS, reads my work aloud—and, though he is remarkably expressive, he is also unsympathetic. He stumbles over my misspellings and convoluted sentences just as any human reader would.

    In my second class, I again pick up the dry-erase marker to begin a highly visual explanation of sentence parts. I scrawl three sentences on the board:

    1. Today I got an umbrella.
    2. Sandra was driving to the store.
    3. Ms. Michael loves pumpkin spice lattes.

    My students are having trouble with be-pattern sentences: sentences that use forms of to be as the main verb. These sentences look like this: Jane is sad, Andrew is in the car, Cecilia was angry, Marvin was the winner. Often, my students confuse these types of sentences with sentences like #2, “Sandra was driving to the store,” calling “driving to the store” an adverbial, a phrase that describes the verb was. I explain the difference in words, gesturing with my hands, but I am met by complete silence or the sound of a student tossing a pen aside in frustration. So I must illustrate the difference visually

    I turn back to the board, searching for where I wrote my sentences. It is not always easy to find my own writing on the huge white surface. I ask students for the main verb in the sentence, and some courageous voice says, “Driving!” I draw a squiggly line underneath it. Then I point to “was” and ask, “So what do we call this?” Another brave participant says, “A linking verb!” and a student who has done her reading says calmly, “An auxiliary.”

    I illustrate the incorrect labeling of sentence parts by drawing brackets around the sentences. I draw huge swooping arrows to convey which parts modify, or describe, nouns, verbs, or phrases. I draw boxes around subjects and squishy brackets around direct objects. I break up the sentences and write them in passive voice, drawing arrows to show how the subject is no longer doing the action.

    As I scribble my version of grammatical geometry, I literally face the highly visual nature of my own grammar knowledge and instruction. I understand grammar in a visual way. Like many of my peers, I was forced through countless hours of diagramming sentences—plotting sentences on long horizontal lines and relegating modifiers and less important phrases to the space beneath the lines.

    As I teach these lessons, I cannot help but think, What if I had a totally blind student? What would I do? How can I translate my visual understanding of grammar and my sight-based editing techniques to a nonvisual thinker? I harbor secret dreams of taking a braille essay and cutting out every individual word, so that the words could be plotted and rearranged on a large surface. Perhaps I could teach diagramming sentences in the way that I was taught the basic templates for street crossings. A mobility instructor arranged bright yellow strips of velcro on a large black felt board, making T and plus-shaped intersections and asking me to navigate the “route” with a finger. I felt like I was in kindergarten again, but I enjoyed this tactile approach.

    Though my current methods are proving effective, I continue to strive for a multi-sensory approach. I cannot love the sound of poetry and feel of editing without wanting students to experience these sensations for themselves. When I draw complex diagrams on the board, I am visually representing what I believe to be the anatomical structure of living language—a structure that could easily become three-dimensional with the right tools. My task now is to find these tools and implement them. I want to make students take writing into their own hands, to feel their words in their fingers and break and remake sentences at their natural junctures.

  • Memorial for Seamus Heaney

    On Friday I received the sad news that Seamus Heaney, one of my favorite poets, had recently died.

    I first encountered Heaney’s work eight years ago in an AP Literature class. Over two semesters, our teacher—a vivacious, knowledgeable man who always fought for the best parts in our class readings of Shakespeare—steeped us in poetry. Insisting that “poetry isn’t always pretty,” he began our first lesson with Wilfred Owen’s “Dulce Et Decorum Est,” a graphic account of the poet’s experience as a soldier in World War I. We moved through John Donne, the Romantic poets, Archibald MacLeish, Robert Frost, Emily Dickinson, and countless others – our glimpses of each poet ranging from single poems to groups of six or seven. When we arrived at Seamus Heaney, our teacher selected “Digging” and “The Forge.” He read them aloud in his sonorous way, with his natural proclivity for the native Irish inflections of the poet.

    I liked Heaney’s unassuming, earthy style, and I liked his rhythms. I liked how, at the end of “Digging,”* Heaney chose the pen because he didn’t believe he could hold the shovel. Thinking of myself as a writer of only novels and dreaming of being a poet, I considered poetry a holy, untouchable craft. (I still consider poetry sacred, but now I choose to reach for it, rather than assume its touch will burn me.)

    After this brief foray into Heaney’s work, I completed a ritual for the poets I enjoyed from AP Lit: I searched for Heaney online and read his poems “Blackberry-Picking” and “Song.” I loved what I found, but I didn’t think to purchase a book of his work. I considered my exposure to Heaney incidental; I didn’t think I needed to pursue his poetry beyond the rare moments when it chanced across my life.

    The next time I saw Heaney’s name, I was picking up my books for a Periods of Early British Literature class in autumn, 2007. I was a sophomore with a vague idea of the booklist, and, rather than defaulting to the college bookstore, I found myself standing before Barnes & Noble’s shamefully small poetry section, trying to remember which copy of Beowulf I needed. My choices were limited to the stale and formulaic Barnes & Noble Classics edition (with its unromantic cover, thin pages, and spidery, faded font) or a flashy, stylish edition with a striking, high-contrast cover design. The soldier’s helmet emblazoned on the dark cover was textured; I could feel the “metal” links beneath my fingers. The book was sturdy, almost square-shaped, with the Old English verses on the left and the Modern English translation on the right. The translator of course was Heaney. I recognized his name, but I didn’t realize the significance of his work. When I studied Old English three years later, I developed a profound appreciation for Heaney’s translation—I recognized the level of linguistic knowledge and marveled at the intense poetic labor needed for this task.

    My English teachers continued to shape my interactions with Heaney’s work. What began in AP Lit intensified throughout three courses taught by Dr. Rae: Early British Literature, Linguistics, and Poetry & Poetics. Katie and I took these courses, and together we fell in love with Heaney’s poetry. Sitting side-by-side in cramped desks, we poured over his poems—inebriated with delight and desperate to show Dr. Rae that we could interpret Heaney as brilliantly as she did.

    However, our professor’s most significant gift came outside the classroom, on an enjoyable but poignant evening. Before she transferred to another university, she wanted to have dinner with us. We sat down to Thai food and ginger-pear martinis in an elegant, dim restaurant, and Dr. Rae handed each of us two identical books: a copy of a journal in which one of her poems was published and a copy of Seamus Heaney’s 1995 Nobel Prize Lecture, “Crediting Poetry.”

    My edition of “Crediting Poetry” was small and square, a hardcover with dust jacket and thick pages. In the lecture, Heaney articulated his history with poetry—how poetry expresses all human conditions and validates our vulnerabilities. He wrote, “I credit poetry, in other words, both for being itself and for being a help, for making possible a fluid and restorative relationship between the mind’s centre and its circumference.” For Heaney, poetry is a way of keeping your humanity in a turbulent world, for processing and understanding your experiences, for anchoring yourself and your values.

    Dr. Rae’s gift has become a treasured possession, one that I share with students as often as I can. Heaney’s lecture overflows with poetic images and manipulations of time and space, blurring the line between poetry and prose. Its form alone earns it a place on my course syllabus. And if students grasp even a vague impression of its message, I know I’ve done them a service.

    I started to purchase Heaney’s work on my own, and I continued to receive Heaney’s poetry as gifts from Katie. Each gift commemorates our shared enthusiasm for the poet and our history with his work – a history that resonates with all our classroom epiphanies. During my last and most difficult semester of grad school, Katie presented me with a box of anti-stress goodies, and Heaney’s 2011 collection, Human Chain. When we heard about his death, we read Human Chain aloud together.

    Heaney’s “Sunlight” was the first poem I ever read in braille. I’ve written extensively on  my very brief experience of braille poetry—on the struggles and joys of deciphering a single word and realizing its poetic significance, on the ability to finally read poetry outside, on being able to spend so much time laboring over Heaney’s words. I still keep my braille copy of Heaney’s North on a shelf in my office, waiting for the perfect combination of sunshine, autumn breezes, and free time.

    The remarkable thing about writing is that it softens the blow of hardship and separation. Poetry has often helped me through extreme difficulties—the death of a friend who was more like a sister, the distance of a thousand miles between my beloved friend and myself, the terrifying waves of doubt that come when any chapter of my life closes and the pages of a new one start to turn. Perhaps this is why I don’t feel desolate about Seamus Heaney’s passing. I must relinquish the far-fetched dream that I’ll meet him in some exclusive yet earthy poetry workshop—the fantasy that he’d shake my hand and say something brief and beautiful about my work. I have to let go of the sorrow that rises each time I think, “He’ll never release another collection.” Katie and I won’t be rushing to the bookstore in search of his latest volume of lectures or poems. He won’t win any more prizes or deliver any more lectures. But he has left us—left me—with so much to explore. Several volumes of his poetry and prose sit on my shelves, in braille and in print, and I have read only a fraction of them. Even his recent book of collected poems doesn’t contain all his work.

    Seamus Heaney’s is not an easy loss to bear, but I believe that his poetry will do what poetry always does. It will, as Heaney wrote, be “itself and…a help.” I am thankful that he trusted so much to poetry and left us so many poems in which to trust.

    * I recommend that you listen to Heaney read “Digging” aloud. The link is just above the text of the poem.

  • Delectable Chemistry

    In life, in love, and especially in the kitchen, a handful of qualities or ingredients will collaborate to produce something incredible. While each ingredient lends its particular property, some strange magic occurs during the process of combination. Something tweaks the assembly of these few items and creates an extraordinary whole. Today I experience this magic as baking.

    With my collection of tiny extract bottles and spice canisters, I feel like a medieval apothecary. I arrange my ingredients on the kitchen counter and place the large bright mixing bowl atop a wooden cutting board. A devil’s food cake mix, 2 eggs, a stick of butter, vanilla extract, hazelnut extract, instant coffee, cinnamon, white and semi-sweet chocolate chips—this array promises a delectable future.

    After preheating the oven to 375, I open the devil’s food cake mix. The rich smell of cocoa rushes out of the opened pouch as I tip the light brown powder into the bowl. It falls quietly into the bowl, and I understand that the powder has a loosely packed, fluffy texture. I measure cinnamon into my palm—about a quarter of a palmful—and add it to the cake mix.

    Next comes the instant coffee, in its fat glass jar. I enjoy the smell of the instant coffee, though I never prepare it as a drink. The granules smell earthy, woody, and slightly bitter—the smell is deep and dark. Since this is the only ingredient I’m measuring with a utensil, I don’t bother to use my measuring spoons. I retrieve a regular spoon from the silverware drawer and add a spoonful of instant coffee to the other dry ingredients.

    I whisk together the dry ingredients, watching the dark streaks of coffee fade into the softer brown of the cake mix. I pour in a handful of semi-sweet chocolate chips and two handfuls of white chocolate chips. I apply the whisk again, ensuring that all the chips are thoroughly coated by the cake mix.

    I unwrap the butter and place it in a sturdy coffee mug with a handle. I pop it in the microwave to soften for 45 seconds. While the microwave drones and the kitchen fills with the smell of melting butter, I add a splash of hazelnut extract and two splashes of vanilla to the batter. When the microwave beeps in completion, I retrieve the butter. I add this to the mix as well.

    Now comes a tiresome baking task: cracking eggs. Currently my favorite method involves lightly tapping the egg on the counter and cracking it over a separate bowl. I crack my two eggs in the large mug, vacated by the softened butter. I save the eggshells for use in our garden.

    The melted butter, extracts, and eggs transform my fluffy dry mixture into a sloppy mess. I use the whisk to incorporate the new ingredients; I watch my batter take on streaks of dark brown. Setting the whisk aside, I prepare to tackle the batter by hand. My left hand rests on one corner of the square bowl while my right hand massages the mixture within. I rotate the bowl with my left hand and mix its contents with my right. The well-mixed batter feels thick and slippery—a textural contrast to the few clumps of dry powder that need to be incorporated. As I mix, I can feel the small chocolate chips, carried along in the current of batter. Since they were well-coated with the dry mix, they do not fall out of this happy stream.

    When the batter is thoroughly mixed, I begin preparing my baking surface. I line a cookie sheet with shiny foil and apply cooking spray. Because I can’t see whether I’ve given the sheet an even coat, I slide a paper towel over the foil. Now I can see that my foil’s shine has become slightly foggy.

    Using a small, spring-loaded scoop, I create balls of dough. I can fit twelve balls on the cookie sheet, spacing them at least an inch apart. The scoop ensures that the cookies will be about the same size. As with mixing the batter, I can keep one hand clean. My clean right hand holds the scoop while I shear off extra dough with my left.

    I place the cookie sheet, with its small chocolate burdens, on the lower oven rack and turn on the oven light for extra visibility. I set the timer for 11 minutes and put the cinnamon, instant coffee, hazelnut, and vanilla back on my shelf, in their proper places. I wait.

    Soon the smell of transformation wafts from the kitchen, and the oven chimes its solicitous one-minute warning. I return to the kitchen and take up my purple oven mitts. Large and long, these mitten-shaped protectors have heavily textured silicon outside and soft fabric inside.

    The oven display flashes as the last minute elapses, and then the timer begins its persistent beep. I lower the oven door, catching a glimpse of my cookies. Illuminated by the oven light, they are easy to spot—puffy dark circles on a bright stage. I bring out the pan and balance it on the stovetop. I close the oven and remove the mitt from my left hand. With my right, I hold the cookie sheet steady; with my left, I gingerly press the center of several cookies on the tray.

    To tell if the cookies are done, I must pay attention to their surface texture and smell. Their color has changed, become darker and less glossy. The smell has changed too—all traces of the batter’s raw, wet aroma are gone. When I press each with a finger, the cookie feels firm but not rock-solid. One minute more and these will turn to disks of concrete. Each cookie has some give. All the cookies display a few fault lines—cracks and crinkles that tell me that they are done. Here and there, white chocolate chips twinkle invitingly against their dark chocolate surroundings.

    From experience I know that I can’t take the cookies off the sheet right away. Because these are made from a cake mix, they are not crunchy or sturdy like other cookies. They are fluffy and light, similar to madeleines. Removing them before they’ve had time to cool will mean lots of breakage. Though broken cookies taste just as good, they don’t look as appealing, and they leave the cookie sheet a mess. So I wait.

    Five minutes pass, and I decide that the cookies are cool enough. I gently rotate each cookie, freeing it from the foil. I stack the cookies on a plate. I arrange them asymmetrically.

    One cookie doesn’t make it to the plate. It is warm and soft, its chocolate flavor rich and complex. The cinnamon and coffee heighten the overall flavor in perfect subtlety, never coming out into the open. The chocolate chips make tiny creamy pockets in the soft, fluffy texture. Short-lived and long-savored, the cookie is a small gift of magic and science.

    Image

    Chocolate cookies

  • The Character of Sound

    In his book Touching the Rock: An Experience of Blindness, John Hull calls himself a “whole body seer,” one who lives in a world seamlessly comprised of four senses. Like many blind people, Hull can detect seemingly visual features of his world through senses other than vision. He can understand where and how the rain falls by ear. Undoubtedly, he can tell whether he walks into an empty room or a room filled with furniture – just by how the air in the room feels as he moves. Describing how the brain of the blind person processes voices, he writes, “For the blind, people are not there unless they speak…When you are blind, a hand suddenly grabs you. A voice suddenly addresses you. There is no anticipation or preparation…people are in motion, they are temporal, they come and they go.”

    I frequently experience Hull’s brand of vocal navigation. I am aware of an approaching person only by his or her audible personality. I must weave a narrative from the sounds around me. I will present two vignettes.

    The first vignette places me in an environment where noises abound. Katie and I have plans to meet for coffee, and I arrive early. I sit down at a small, round table and pile my bags on the tabletop. I wait for the familiar jingling of keys that indicates Katie’s approach. As I wait, a person approaches me–through sound. A voice happens upon my ears. “Hilary? Is your name Hilary?”

    I look up and search for the speaker. This is a complex spatial calculation; my mind places the woman in front of me, diagonally to my right—at two o’clock. I ask if she is speaking to me.

    “Yes,” she says. “There’s a drink up for Hilary, so I wanted to see if it was yours.”

    I explain that I am not Hilary, and I assume she walks away. She grows silent, so she ceases to hold my attention.

    Moments later, a second voice emerges on my left—another woman, another courtesy. “Emily, I want to let you know I’ve just mopped this area. So be careful.”

    I thank the unseen employee, whose voice is vaguely familiar. Unable to read her name tag, I don’t know who she is. I only know I’ve made small talk with her while she took my order and prepared my countless soy chai lattes.

    Soon the jingling of keys – I think they’re keys, they sound like keys  – alerts me to Katie’s approach. Without fail, I can calculate about 3 seconds between the musical sound and Katie’s equally musical, “Hey Em!”

    The second vignette finds me in a calmer, quieter place: the classroom. Here, I learn the location of students by the unzipping of bags, the shuffling of papers, the crunching of granola bars, and the beeping of cell phones. On final exam day, a new sound signals an approaching student—the chattering ice in a plastic Starbucks cup. I can construct a probable scenario from this ice, rattling as the student walks past. The noisy beverage tells me two things: the student was up late last night and the weather is hot today.

    For the curious, I’ll add this: you can tell what kind of cup the student is carrying by listening to the ice. The ice in a plastic cup rattles more noisily than the ice in a styrofoam cup. You can also guess the quality and amount of liquid in the cup, depending on the speed and attitude of the rattling ice. I know from the sloshy rattling that my students are drinking iced coffees, iced lattes, or iced green teas. Frappuccinos, because of their smooth, blended texture, do not make a lot of noise until you get to the last few, desperate sips.

    As students approach my desk to drop off their exam papers, I marvel at how many carry iced coffee drinks. To me, these students present identical audible profiles; each drink rattles in much the same way. When a student chooses to give a parting word, I can distinguish him or her from the crowd of iced coffee drinkers. I wonder if they realize their own anonymity in this case.

    John Hull’s description of hearing voices makes the blind person seem like a solitary figure, suspended in a passive sea of sound. Unable to control who and what comes near, this auditory observer must discern and build his world. And from this perspective, this world-building seems like a lonely, vulnerable task.

    However, building a world from sounds can create powerful realizations. Whenever I attend a concert, I intentionally sit far from the stage so that I won’t be distracted by scraps of visual perception. Sitting several rows back, I listen and find a place where the music itself rises upward—a unified fabric of sound, infused with human vitality. I often forget that the instruments, both human and man-made, are attached to human bodies. For me, the music becomes a seamless presence. Somehow the human endeavors are elevated, transformed. I forget about individuals holding bows, pressing keys, bringing the air that fuels the beautiful tones. I forget that the human voice resides in a human body. I can’t hear the boundaries of the human body, so the sound has no boundaries.

    Beginning as perception, the boundlessness of music becomes poetry for me; it becomes the cornerstone of my musical philosophy. I immerse myself in the collaboration, only to be carried upward beyond my own body. In the audience, I forget that musicians are tied to the earth; as a performer, I nourish my sound on this perception.

    My auditory world-building exceeds the task of telling me who is near and what they’re doing. It creates or conveys the personalities of others and shapes the deeper core of my understanding.

  • Blind Magician

    In J. R. R. Tolkien’s extensive epic, The Lord of the Rings, much attention is given to the One Ring, a powerful weapon that changes the hearts and minds of men, dwarves, elves, and wizards. After encountering the Ring of Power, many characters discover a hunger for ability, a yearning to wear and wield this small gold weapon that can reshape the world. Though the Ring claims the spotlight throughout the three books, other magical implements exist – working for good and evil within the story. My favorite of these is a staff belonging to Gandalf, the tale’s wise and cantankerous wizard. The staff sometimes appears as a humble walking stick. At other times, it is the light in dark places. Gandalf rarely appears without the staff in hand – it banishes demons, conjures fireworks, and harnesses his magical abilities.

    As an admirer of Tolkien’s work and a blind woman, I feel affinity for this magical accessory. My desire to visit Tolkien’s Middle-earth compels me to parallel the White Wizard’s weapon with my own commonplace talisman – a slender, foldable creation, wrapped in white reflective tape. For me, the white cane is a wizard’s staff in humble costume. It transports me to unforeseen environments, grants me helpful attentions from others, and allows me to change my world by presenting an active, capable picture of blindness.

    In each tale of magic and self-discovery, a moment of epiphany and acceptance opens the world of an ordinary person to fantastical possibilities. Arthur sees and retrieves a sword from a stone; Frodo steps forward and offers to destroy the One Ring; Harry Potter opens the impressive letter from Hogwarts. In an ordinary world, a protagonist must decide to accept the magical token – a cloak of invisibility, a victorious sword, a lucky feather – before his or her life can become extraordinary.

    As the heroines and heroes of fantasy accept wise council and magical heirlooms, the ordinary blind person accepts the cane. This acceptance is far from easy. When I was ten, I started training with the cane, but I was reluctant to use it in all environments. Afraid that the cane would set me apart, I convinced myself I could travel without it. I did not fully accept its power until I was fifteen. Confronted by necessity, I pulled the sword from the stone, put on the cloak, tucked the lucky feather in my pocket. I decided to embrace the magic that had been waiting for me for five years.

    Like a mystic word that opens locked doors or answers riddles in invisible ink, the cane carries me to unknown realms. With a cane in hand, I feel confident enough to travel independently. The cane is a far-seeing crystal that extends my knowledge of the world – if only by 48 inches. It sweeps the ground before me, describing changes in my environment – steps, curbs, piles of leaves, signs, golf carts, boxes, and people whose existence I cannot visually detect. With cane in hand, I wield a prophetic power that prepares me for safe travel.

    While some magical tools gain prestige by rendering their user invisible, the presence of the cane makes me more visible. The cane marks me out as an exception to the rule. In most groups, I alone sweep the white staff as I walk. This rare, bright implement of independence catches the eyes of passersby and works spontaneous miracles. Doors swing open, people step out of my way, friendly greetings fall on my ears.

    A powerful symbol, the cane signifies many kinds of existence. Some see it as a crutch, a sign that indicates my weakness and vulnerability. To them, the cane is not a single staff but a heavy cross. I wield it like a biological scarlet letter – a signal of my deplorable and inferior life. Surely I, with this heavy cross in hand, cannot enjoy the pleasures that the observers enjoy.

    For others, the cane is more than a powerful symbol: it is a symbol of power. They see the cane as a mark of my fierce drive to be independent, present, and successful; they recognize the work that prepared me for its use. They understand the hours of toil that fit a person for carrying a magical device. Perhaps they too have trained with their own symbols of power; they know the cost, the upkeep, the discipline needed to use such a staff as mine.

    A third group of observers sees the cane as a sign of mystery. Unsure of its powers or uses, the courageous approach with questions. The cowardly stand aloof and gossip, their voices louder than they realize. With these people, the cane’s protective powers are amplified – it grants me a quick method for determining a person’s character. Even when the questions or comments are clumsy, those who bring them have a ready stock of goodwill for me. Those who would rather speculate from afar will not prove themselves worthy friends.

    Gandalf’s staff marks him as a wizard, and my cane marks me as a blind woman. This mark allows me to carry the idea of blindness into new and exciting realms. Often, I must create the place for my talisman, because it is the first to appear in these frontiers. Onstage with my chorus, my magic staff changes shape, becoming slimmer and more compact. A long, slender pocket on the side of my chorus costume – the creation of our chorus seamstress – accommodates the compact ID cane I use during performances. The seamstress’s masterful addition keeps the cane from rolling around underneath the risers or getting misplaced backstage. This measure ensures that I won’t be parted from my talisman.

    If a cane user cannot realize the power residing in the slender dimensions of a white cane, I recommend a healthy dose of whimsy and an understanding of metaphor. The everyday magic of canes is impossible to ignore. I first accepted the cane for its superficial powers, its compensations for my low vision, but, like the Ring that creates the Fellowship or the external magic that reveals internal strength, the cane continues to unfold new powers. To accept the cane, I had to accept myself. To embrace its power, I had to decide who I wanted to be. Now, my cane is a portable charm against diffidence and fear. I carry courage in its 48 inches.

    My daily existence rarely offers me the experience of traveling with another cane user. I treasure the handful of times I’ve spent strolling beside someone whose familiar tapping and sweeping echoes or prefigures my own. Like a secret handshake or code word, the sound of another cane in use grants me a sense of kinship, a spiritual resonance. I rejoice that another carries the quiet power in the white staff, and I hope he or she uses it with care.

  • Everyday Activism: What We Do with Disability

    For the past year, our department has included an essay from Temple Grandin’s The Way I See It: A Personal Look at Autism and Asperger’s in the reader designed for entry-level composition courses. The excerpt is called “Teaching How to Generalize,” and I assign it for several reasons. For most students, this brief essay provides the first glimpse of Grandin’s writing and experience of autism. At the start of our discussion, the students who have encountered autism in some form usually say a version of the following comments:

    • “Well I knew an autistic kid in school but I don’t think he could have written this!”
    • “A girl at my high school had Asperger’s and was really socially awkward. Now I know why!”
    • “Is Temple autistic? Really?”
    • “I had no idea autistic people could communicate like this.”
    • “I feel so fortunate that I know how to put things in basic categories [a struggle Grandin articulates in the essay].”
    • “Life would be a lot harder if I was autistic.”

    I don’t nurse a dream of turning all my students into occupational therapists. I know better than to assume that the essay will mark a moment of life-changing epiphany. I don’t expect the ceiling to open at the skylight and fill my classroom with the golden light of empathy, compassion, and genuine respect for disabled people as people. But I do believe in the power of small changes.

    So I tell them to read “Teaching How to Generalize” and watch Grandin’s TED Talk, entitled, “The world needs all kinds of minds.” I use Grandin’s straightforward titles to explore certain rhetorical elements – purpose, context, audience. If she calls her talk, “The world needs all kinds of minds,” then we know she is arguing against the common belief that some minds are valueless. She speaks to the precise group who dismiss autistic thinking as a complete setback, something to be cured or eliminated. From her title alone, we can construct the system of rules that governs her composition – the forces she supports and the forces she opposes. We can build a context for Grandin’s work.

    We discuss how society places less value on the autistic children who aren’t little Grandins, the ones who struggle to tie their shoes and verbalize their thoughts. We talk about how using the word savant to represent a genius requires us to establish a lack of value for the non-savant.  Traditionally, to emphasize something means that something else must be de-emphasized. To treasure and laud savants means that we may discard or ignore non-savants.

    Aside from the content, Grandin’s essay is a paragon of concision and clarity. Each of her sentences pulls its own weight, and I challenge students to find the single word or phrase that could be omitted. They don’t usually find anything to strike out; Grandin has carefully constructed a literary machine. I encourage them to take her as a model when writing their own papers. I don’t insist that they all sound like Grandin, but I want them to begin casting off the habitual tendrils of “nothing words” that have crept into their writing. They’ve learned that long strands of saying nothing make their writing sound smarter, and I want them to reexamine this mythology.

    We place Grandin’s essay beside her TED Talk and discuss the costs and benefits of each medium. Students acknowledge that both essay and lecture will reach different audiences, use different rhetorical strategies. I silently rejoice that this intense dose of Grandin requires them to face a new story of autism in two different media. As students articulate the learning styles suited to text or video, I congratulate myself on presenting a three-dimensional figure of Temple Grandin – a figure that engages their eyes and ears. I hope it is a figure they can’t ignore easily.

    During a 2010 interview with Penn State, Grandin said that she devotes a third of her time to autism and the rest to her career. She recognizes that it’s important for her to continue her career in Animal Science, but she also wants to be a presence in the autistic community, giving talks, writing books, and stressing the importance of mentors, work experience, and early therapy. Her attitude suggests that her presence in everyday activities is an activism in itself.

    Purposeful integration into society will change people’s ideas more completely than any rally or lecture. By continuing to do her job, Grandin asserts her right to be there, to be visible and active in her professional community.

    From personal experience, I know that this kind of integration isn’t always pleasant. Often, it’s awkward, presenting a steep learning curve for the nondisabled person who has never experienced a blind woman and for me, the frontierswoman waving the “Welcome to Blindness” flag. I wave this flag every time I step up to a cashier, and she fumbles with my debit card or doesn’t look at me. Sometimes she broadcasts her diffidence by mumbling or trying to hurry me along. In this situation, it’s my duty to encourage her to interact with me. I keep my voice up, extend my hand, and ask her for the help I need.

    “If the amount is right, you can press the OK button,” she says routinely, not looking at me. (Yes, I can tell because her voice isn’t directed my way.)

    “Would you mind helping me? Is it this one?” I point with the electronic pen at a blue blob on the screen. “Every one of these machines is different.”

    “Oh, sure!” Her voice lifts as she reaches across the counter and directs my hand.

    Though this interaction achieves a pleasant result, its few agonizing moments are not pleasant. I am readily reminded of how some people do not really see me – they see a white cane and dark glasses, signs of unconquerable difference. Each time, I must change their minds, and it’s an exhausting labor.

    But I can’t imagine NOT doing this. I can’t imagine stalking away angry and upset, frustrated by the awkward treatment or refusing to explain my needs. If I can keep calm and breathe, if I can take the time to patiently describe my situation, most people will come around. Then whoever comes next, carrying the “Nice to meet you: I’m the 2nd blind person you’ve met” flag, will have an easier time.

    Perhaps this flag business is why I insist on teaching Temple Grandin. I don’t have to teach her; there are other readings in the book. But I want my students to treat the disabled people they encounter as people, as “second flag” bearers. If I can help them dispense with the awkwardness they think they need, then we can begin to dismantle the disabling attitudes surrounding physical and mental difference.

    This post was inspired by “Are You Coping?” a recent post on Blind Spot, a blog I recommend. 

  • A letter to Jane Eyre

    Dear Miss Eyre,

    I hope that the unfamiliarity of my name and address do not baffle you. The lack of a formal introduction and a long friendship shall not stop me from saying some things to you which I trust you will absorb with the spirit of Helen Burns — the spirit of self-improvement and beneficent attention.

    Today I write to offer my thoughts on certain aspects of your story, which I have just finished reading. Perhaps you are wondering why I call you by your maiden name. Miss Brontë’s wonderful publication tells me that you are lately married, but it is your unmarried self, at a fixed point in the narrative, for whom I fashion this letter.

    I know, Jane, that I have no right to pass judgment on the actions of your life. However, I find an inability to keep silent in one quarter – your initial treatment of Mr. Rochester in the last installment of your tale. Let me remind you of the scene.

    After your long departure, you have returned to Thornfield. You hear the tale of its recent devastation from a garrulous innkeeper, and, determined, you make your way to Mr. Rochester’s side. The innkeeper has described his new afflictions; your beloved is now blind in both eyes and missing his right hand. You can easily guess how these new losses have transformed his passionate spirit.

    You arrive at Mr. Rochester’s current residence, resolved to love him and live with him. Coming upon the house, you catch a glimpse of your beloved – dear Edward! – trying to take an evening walk about his premises. I say “trying” here because he walks with a mixture of reticence and resolution. Unaided, without a cane, he steps cautiously forward, his remaining hand extended before him. In a century, rehabilitation therapists will teach blind children to walk this way before they learn to use the white cane. When a blind child chances to totter forward without the proper precautions, its teacher will kindly admonish, “Put up your bumpers.”

    But dear Edward is no blind child under the supervision of a solicitous mobility instructor. He will not receive a slender white cane nor a course in street crossing. No wonder he hesitates, careful of each step, his outstretched hand seeking familiarities. For you and your readers alike, this is a sad spectacle.

    You relate the deepening pathos of the scene. Resigned, frustrated, and unwilling to accept another’s arm, dear Edward can only travel so far on his own. He must return to his house to sit in the dark, lonely parlor and dream of your coming.

    You know, at this point, that he hasn’t seen you – that it is impossible for him to discern your silent presence. In some minutes, you enter the house and present yourself to Mr. Rochester’s attendants, two old servants from Thornfield Hall. You insist that you, not Mary, will carry to dear Edward the glass of water and candles he has requested. So far, Jane, I object to none of these actions.

    Surely you remember the details of your long-awaited reunion with Mr. Rochester, but I will continue to summarize. You enter the room without speaking and try to discourage the friendly, audible welcome of your master’s dog. Dear Edward tells Mary to hand him the glass of water and you oblige. He senses something – your movements, the dog’s excitement, perhaps both – and asks you to confirm that you are Mary. You tell him she is in the kitchen. You offer him more water, and he asks you to speak, to reveal yourself.  You answer him, “Pilot [the dog] knows me, and John and Mary know I am here. I came only this evening.” Again, you withhold your name. He must speculate in discomfort; you keep him shrouded in uncertainty. After a few more lines of dialogue, you reveal yourself to be his “living darling,” his long sought and beloved Jane.

    I’m sure that this is a very touching memory for you, Ms. Eyre, but I must speak out at this juncture. No doubt, your story creates a dramatic, poignant, and brilliant entrance into Mr. Rochester’s dreary disabled existence. You withhold your identity and name from him just long enough – perhaps to draw him out or prepare him for the shock of your presence. But you must admit that this is bad form!

    You see, I am a blind woman who has blind friends, and I must protest your actions. To test your dear Edward in this way, to try his powers of perception even for a few moments, is cruel. We writers sacrifice much for a good story, but I believe that you overstep the bounds of compassion in this scene.

    You must acknowledge, Ms. Eyre, your position as teacher throughout this entire novel. Yes, you go on to treat dear Edward with kindness and respect – reading to him whenever he wishes, guiding him throughout countless nature walks, being his eyes in all cases – but this initial test, this power struggle in the first moments of your reunion, colors your whole relationship. I know that you and Edward have made a happy marriage together, but I cannot overlook this first breach of courtesy.

    I call you teacher, Ms. Eyre, because your readers learn from you. Truly they learn to be helpful and considerate to all, regardless of age or ability, but they also learn something of narrative cost. The narrative cost of your reunion with Edward is that he must give up his power to identify you. Are you unaware of the custom, Ms. Eyre, of identifying yourself to a blind person upon entering a room? Perhaps this custom did not exist when the scene occurred. It is possible, but I am unsure. None of your readers could doubt your deference, your knowledge of etiquette. I wonder then that you did not apply such deference in this case.

    I do not propose to rewrite your story. Now that you and Edward have developed such a comfortable routine, I am sure you always tell him when you enter a room. I am sure that you do not continue to observe him when he cannot observe you.

    I suppose then, Jane, that I am writing to warn you. There is a danger in the perceived power of the spectator – in the belief that one can always watch and never be watched, that such a watcher is therefore superior to those who cannot return the gaze. Not even for the sake of a good story should one exercise this power with impunity. Yes, a writer watches, a narrator observes, a speaker perceives – but all are accomplished because the environment allows it. Let us not write an environment which allows only some to exert a power of perception. Let us write of the times when Edward creates his own observations. He is not made to be watched only, to be digested in such a one-sided way.

    I hope you will accept and contemplate this frank composition. I place these thoughts before you because I know that a character as deep and strong as yours can change the nature of narrative. I urge you to build with me a society that treats vulnerability as an opportunity for characters to empower, rather than overpower, one another.

    Your sincere admirer and distant friend,
    Modwyn

  • Now I’m Hooked!

    When I discover a new passion, I remember how exciting life is. The tools of my latest discovery are simple ones: a thin, tapered metal hook and a thick skein of bright red yarn. Cool and smooth in my fingers, the hook contrasts against the yarn’s rough strands.

    Mom and I sit side-by-side on my bed, and I watch her hands arrange the hook and yarn. The red yarn is easy to see, but the magic of her small stitches is not. In teaching me to crochet, she must be creative. She describes the process of making a chain, conscious that my vision demands much from her words. Placing my hands over hers, I attempt to feel her loop the yarn around the hook. I try to understand how the yarn progresses around the hook and how the hook turns against the yarn to pull it through the loop—it’s a complicated tango of strands, and we need solid words to name each step.

    Finally, we find a method that works. Mom places the hook and yarn in my hands and orders me through the process. I make a loose slip knot, leaving a long “tail” at the end; I slide the loop onto the hook; I wrap the yarn “away” so that it curves around the hook from the right and pull the new loop through the earlier loop. I have a chain stitch.

    Only a few stitches into this frontier, I realize that crocheting is hard. Unable to negotiate the head of my hook properly through the loop, I must use fingernails to lift the loop over the hook. Mom says I must make a long chain of these stitches to begin my ambitious project: a scarf. Because I have not yet mastered the principle of “tension” – keeping the stitches loose but evenly spaced – I worry that the unevenness of the stitches will create an ugly scarf. My teacher easily settles my fears.

    “Don’t worry,” Mom says calmly. ‘If it looks terrible, I’ll make you rip it out.”

    Little do I know how often I will hear this refrain.

    After Mom inspects my work and declares that I have mastered the chain stitch, she takes me through the single crochet. At the end of the chain, I must again wrap the yarn around the needle, but this time, I am changing directions. I will go back along the chain, dipping into the loops I have already made. Crocheting back and forth along the chain will yield a scarf. After I have completed a few rows, Mom praises my progress.

    When I’ve completed 8 rows and the scarf is about as wide as my hand, a strange phenomenon occurs. A problem with my tension causes my scarf to curl in upon itself; it starts to look like a bisected telephone cord. Keeping her promise, Mom commands that I rip it out. As I pull out the stitches, the spiral effect dissipates, and I begin to rebuild the scarf.

    In a few weeks, I complete the scarf using the only stitch I know. I proudly show it to everyone—crocheting and non-crocheting folks alike. Katie, a devout and talented crocheter, describes my “mistakes”—missed stitches, ripples in the scarf, knots in the yarn—as artistic touches. She promises to teach me some new techniques.

    When our day arrives, Katie showers me with crocheting gifts. She gives me a skein of dark blue yarn; its strands are fat and soft. To work with such a thick yarn, she presents me with a large crochet hook, about as thick as a pen. She also shows me an intriguing device, a small round medallion fitted with 4 angled grooves. If I slide a strand of yarn into the groove and turn the medallion, the tool will neatly cut the yarn.

    After I have shown Katie my favorite hook and the project I have just finished, she wants to see me in action. I use the large hook and the thick yarn she has provided, and she watches me make a short chain. The thick yarn is incredible! Its fat strands make stitches so large that I can actually see them! Satisfied with my progress, Katie has me do a few rows of single crochet—just to prove I can. Then she begins to teach me the double crochet.

    “Yarn over,” she commands. I look at her in silent confusion. “Wrap your yarn around the hook,” she explains. “That’s called ‘yarn over’ or YO in patterns.”

    As I obediently wrap my yarn around the hook, Katie explains the anatomy of my stitches. The chain has two sides. On one side of the chain, I will see a row of V’s that looks something like a braid; on the other, I will see a row of flat loops. She says that we want to work on the side that looks like a braid.

    Katie explains that my hook will dip through both sides of the V of each stitch, that double crochet is “tall” and builds upward. She instructs me to yarn over and slide the hook through the two sides of the V. When I am pulling the hook through the loops, the hook comes towards me. Katie is quick to correct this.

    “I’m going to change your whole process,” she declares gleefully. “Your hook is going to go out into the world, not toward you.”

    She instructs me to pull out my most recent effort, yarn over again, and take the hook through the loops of the V in the opposite direction. Instead of my hook coming to point at my own belly, it travels away from me, “out into the world” as she says. Then I yarn over again and pull the new loop back through the loops of the V. Now I have three loops on my hook, and I must yarn over again. She tells me to pull all but the last loop through the newly made one, so my hook will have two loops on it: the one I didn’t pull through and the new one, created by pulling the other two through my yarn over maneuver. Lastly, I yarn over again and pull the neglected loop through. After all this dizzy looping and pulling, I have finally accomplished a double crochet stitch.

    I suspect that Katie and Mom subscribe to the same teaching philosophies, because Katie instructs me to complete several rows of doubles. Like Mom, she promises to rip out stitches that do not meet with her approval. “I won’t let you form bad habits!” she intones. “Pull that one out.” Grumbling, I follow her orders and redo the offending stitches.

    As I progress along the short chain, I stop to feel and admire the double crochet. A “taller” stitch than the single, it makes a very pretty pattern. Because I am working with such thick yarn, I can easily feel and see the sampler I am creating. Katie tells me that this sampler is an important monument to my new skill. When I look at it, I will see where I began and how far I’ve come.

    When I feel comfortable with the stitch, Katie tells me to complete several rows. Sitting on the bed beside me, she works on her own project—glancing at me from time to time to check my progress. At one point, she insists, “I want to see you complete a double. Pull out what you just did.”

    Always the dutiful student, I cannot defy a good teacher. I pull out my most recent stitch and she leans over my shoulder to watch me remake it. Satisfied with my technique, she returns to her own work.

    In moments, my sampler is complete. I have a tidy dark blue square that showcases my crocheting skills thus far. I have alternated single and double crochet, doing two rows of each. I have trimmed the square in a border of singles. Katie shows me how to thread the tail, that loose end from my very first chain, into the square’s border so that it disappears. My square could be a small trivet or a large coaster, or it could serve no practical purpose.

    I examine my sampler, tracing each pattern with fingers and eyes, to understand its design. There is only one knot, the original slip knot that started the first chain. The rest of the work is nothing but loops. I cannot believe that I have created this thing.

    My teachers are pleased, and I’m hooked!

  • Blind Teacher II: The Saga Continues

    Just before lunchtime, I receive an urgent call. The colleague, whose class I’ll be taking over in two weeks, needs me to start tomorrow. Tomorrow!? I’d planned to go in and observe tomorrow; I’d given the assigned poems a cursory reading. I wanted to sit in the back and be unobtrusive. I must dispense with these half-plans and begin new ones.  Luckily, I know where the classroom is; another colleague helped me find it when we were activating our electronic keys.

    I begin the process of making the materials accessible. I send a series of emails to our department secretary, asking him to enlarge the poems for tomorrow’s class. In their current state, they’re dingy photocopies – not as grungy as some I’ve seen, but far too small to be legible. The photocopies were made in the usual manner of English professors: Open the thick book and mash it, pages down, onto the copier glass. The thicker the book, the more the professor resists copying each page to its own sheet of paper – so the text slips and curves into the graying vortex of the book’s spine and the edges of each page are muddy and dark.

    To make these texts accessible, someone – usually our meticulous secretary – will have to apply OCR (Optical Character Recognition) software to the existing PDFs. OCR will change the way that the computer interacts with the PDF. Instead of treating the PDF as a giant picture, OCR will allow the computer to recognize individual letters. Then using the text-to-speech function, my computer will read the texts aloud to me. This accounts for half of the ideal accessible text.

    The other half of accessibility is visual; I must be able to visually interact with texts. Here is where I usually clasp my hands and stare woefully at the ceiling – Why oh why did I choose a profession that demands such intense interaction with texts? – but it can’t be helped. I know that any career I choose will present its own challenges.

    Because I will thoroughly annotate each text and later read it silently or aloud under the variable lighting of a classroom, I require a larger font than I would use at home or in my office, beneath the cozy mood lighting I like best. This means that the dreadful 2-pages-per-sheet photocopies must be printed so that one book page covers one 8.5×11 sheet of paper. Occasionally people take it upon themselves to enforce “bigger is better,” enlarging my work to fit on 11×14 paper, but this measure begins a textual misadventure. Because my visual fields are limited, I work better with smaller areas, like the 13-inch screen on my laptop. To work with a larger screen up close, I would have to scan it more frequently. If I stand a few feet away, my central vision can accommodate larger areas.

    My use of text in class is intimate and specific. I need a clear font with serifs, like Times New Roman or Cambria, and I need the text printed on a manageable area – standard letter-size paper. For longer texts, I need clear (enlarged) page numbers and a solid system for organization, whether it’s staples, binders, or tabs. Fortunately, for this class, I am dealing with two short packets of poems – each packet is about 15 pages long.

    Because of the short notice, I worry that I will end up teaching without accessible copies of the poems. I am unfamiliar with the two poets, and I can only reason that I’ll ask students to read some of the text aloud. This will be my first time teaching these students, and I know the need to appear confident and capable.

    Just hours before my class begins, my colleague and I briefly discuss the poems. She describes major themes, and I suggest possible directions for the class. Our secretary manages to enlarge them in the nick of time, and I shove the two packets in my bag on my way to another meeting.

    All too soon, I stand before a low table at the front of my new classroom. Though I have folded my white cane, I have not removed my burgundy-framed sunglasses – the overhead lights are intense. My colleague introduces me briefly and asks the students to introduce themselves. My hands slide idly along the edge of the table. I feel my fingers start to tap the table, and I stop myself. I remember that, though I can only see parts of them – fuzzy heads, colorful blurs of clothing, dark lumps that must be schoolbags – they can all see me. I refuse to think about the loose bow on my shirt (is it straight?) or the shine that a warm classroom and two pairs of glasses add to my face. I smile, grateful that I remembered to apply lip balm.

    Even before I’ve given the blind professor spiel, introductions flow smoothly. All the students speak clearly, and most speak cheerfully, giving me their name, major, and an interesting fact about themselves. Once my colleague has fielded a handful of questions about past assignments, she leaves me alone with the new class. I take a breath and begin The Talk.

    I explain that I’ll be identifying them by their voices: “If I don’t hear you, you’re not here. So you’ll want to speak up often.” I say that I’ll be asking them whether the whiteboard is clean before I write on it. “It’s a pain to write over some previous math class,” I intone seriously. When I am greeted with silence, I grin, “That’s a joke. You can laugh.” They oblige – my first clue that they’ll be a fun and cooperative group. Lastly I ask, “Where’s the lightswitch in here?” A male student leaps to his feet, offering to turn off the lights for me, but I resist.  “No, I’ll do it – just direct me.” I explain that this is an informal test of their ability to communicate clearly and use direction-specific words. That gets a genuine laugh. Several voices chime in with succinct and accurate directions, and I flip off three of the four switches. Lastly, I add that they’ll need to submit their assignments in 18-point font. “And if your printer is running out of ink,” I pause dramatically. “Do us both a favor and print from the library. Faded ink is not fun to read.”

    The students receive this information stoically, though they chuckle in all the right places. There are no questions or complaints; they seem to digest what I’ve said without a problem. I can’t believe I’m at the end of my “this is how your professor is different” talk already. Don’t I have more to say? DId I forget anything?

    After my introduction, I lay out the plan for that day’s class – a length of 3.5 hours with three 10-minute breaks. As we move through collective and individual peer review, an informal lecture on poetics, and an interactive annotation exercise, we subtly amend the course plan. The students readily answer my questions about the course procedures and the day’s material. At one point, they can’t remember the criteria for individual peer review, so we invent a new procedure. During the final break, students chat about the feedback they’ve received. “We don’t get a lot,” they tell me. “We don’t get graded.”

    “Do you know why?” I ask, knowing full well that my colleague has explained her methodology to them. But because it’s so new and foreign, they don’t remember it.

    I offer them an explanation, and they indulge me, letting me pontificate for ten minutes on the value of the teacherless writing class. I scrawl Peter Elbow’s name on the board and explain, with more zeal than eloquence, the need to make writing a daily habit, the virtues of freewriting, and the growing confidence and command of words that accompanies such a pedagogy. I finish by saying that they’ll always read more willingly the material that interests them – but there is also value in learning to read texts that don’t interest them. Like the daily practice of musicians and athletes, writing takes rigor and commitment before you can expect to perform, to produce something of value.

    I doubt my speech pleases them, but I can sense that they are happier knowing what philosophies structure this course. I am excited to watch them grow as writers, curious how much they will choose to develop. And I feel I’ve accomplished something for myself. I expected the class to be chaotic: I imagined myself stumbling through unfamiliar poems, trying to articulate someone else’s theories, while students unaccustomed to the quirks of my instruction gave stilted responses or none at all. I feel an intense gratitude for the cooperation that brought us all success – a powerful appreciation for my colleague’s guidance, my secretary’s resourcefulness with the myriad and confusing features of Adobe Acrobat, and my students’ willingness to help me settle into the new rhythm of our course. Yet again, I find myself amazed at how quickly challenges disappear when people decide to work together.

  • Closet Case

    Tomorrow is a workday. Because I want an extra 15 minutes of sleep in the morning, I must select my professional attire tonight. I move to the closet and begin running my hand along the higher of the two clothing rods inside.

    My narrow closet is arranged in a very particular way. From left to right, clothes are sorted by category. Formal dresses are on the left, followed by semi-formal dresses, career dresses, and sundresses. Next come blouses; button-down collared shirts are first, arranged by sleeve length. To the right of the work shirts come cardigans, which are sorted by sleeve length and color family. The cardigans are followed by dressier blouses – paisley, silky, lacy, ruffly – which are also arranged by sleeve length, but these move from sleeveless to long-sleeved. Last on the upper rod are heavy winter coats. On the bottom rod, lower to the ground, hang my dress pants, blazers, skirts, and spare hangers. These categories are all sorted by color, with the darkest on the left and the lightest on the right.

    On the days when I teach, I gravitate toward the dress pants and button-down shirts. I am regularly mistaken for a student, so I strive for a certain formality in my teaching attire. I sweep my hair into a tight bun, choose blouses with stiff collars and cuffs, and try not to smile. However, I’m only tutoring tomorrow, so I can dress down a bit.

    I select a plain black dress with short sleeves. Because the front of the dress has a dramatic V neckline, I choose a red camisole to wear underneath. (Camis are kept in a separate drawer, also arranged by color.) I will choose shoes and jewelry in the morning. I have to leave some decisions to the fancy of the moment. Picking out accessories will be a breeze, though, because my shoes and jewelry – even the flowers for my hair – are sorted by color and style.

    I talk a lot about color, but I can’t actually identify it. I can distinguish many shades, so I’m sure I can see color. But I cannot spontaneously name it. If you hand me a red balloon, I will guess that it’s red – red has always been the easiest for me to see – but I don’t know for sure. Though I can’t identify colors by name, I continue to enjoy the same colors. I know I like reds, purples, and greens, and I especially like bold, bright colors. I detest pastels and what I call “sherbet colors” – those bright shades that emerge with summer fashions.

    When I go shopping, my companion will draw my attention to an article of clothing. “Look at this,” Mom or a friend will say. “Isn’t it pretty?” I will take a look, decide whether I like the item, and ask, “What color is it?” Most of the time, my friends and family can agree on the color name for a particular object. When they disagree, I find myself in a fashion pickle. From friends and experience, I’ve learned which colors “go” together, so, when my informants disagree on the name of a particular shade of pink, I will have a hard time planning an outfit around it.

    I’ve memorized the colors of most items in my closet. I know that the sleeveless silk blouse with the ruffles down the front is a pale yellow. I know that my favorite winter coat is deep purple. This memorization technique works especially well when I only have one of a particular item. When I have several shirts, dresses, or pants in the same style, remembering the color of each is challenging. It’s also challenging for me to remember the colors in multicolored items, which is why I tend to avoid multicolored jewelry. A few bright paisley blouses hang in my closet, so I learn whether these pair best with black or brown pants and wear silver jewelry with all of them.

    For me, the most daunting feature of fashion is not choosing the attire – it’s asserting my preference. Often, people assume that my limited vision eliminates my ability to prefer and the validity of such preferences. Therefore, I should be treated like a life-size Barbie and dressed in the clothing that the sighted folks around me like best. Here, I have to gently and not-so-gently remind others that I don’t resemble Barbie in any way. Unless Barbie develops a love of cupcakes, loses a few inches in height, and changes her hair color, we aren’t going to be twins.

    The fashion interference from others comes in the form of unsolicited advice and opinions. I’ll emerge, dressed and ready to go, and a friend or relative will say, “Hmm, I wouldn’t pair that cardigan with that skirt.” Strangers, and especially sales assistants, offer advice as well. On a summer’s day last year, I was trying on a new pair of boots – black leather boots with a 3-inch heel – and, as I walked around the small store to see how they fit, the saleswoman said, “They look great. But I wouldn’t pair them with that sundress.”

    “Who would?” I immediately thought, catching a glimpse of myself in the mirror. The dress was sleeveless, with three different shades of blue-green. To the woman, I said, “I wasn’t planning on it.” But of course, this didn’t sound like my insight. To her, I was simply parroting back the fashion wisdom she had chosen to impart.

    Other times, people express their surprise that I can dress myself. A fellow student once exclaimed, “You’re blind? You dress so well!” inserting a foot in her mouth with the ease of an Olympic gymnast. The assumption here is that my blindness prohibits me from doing essential things: choosing clothing suitable for the occasion and actually putting it on. Because of my vision, I should not, in theory, be able to select clothing that matches. Clearly, someone had to dress me.

    I make no false promises about my own abilities. I know that I cannot identify color and that stains are particularly hard for me to see. However, the line between the courteous assistance I need and the overbearing or patronizing advice I don’t need often blurs. People ignore this line when they start adjusting my crooked collar or brushing lint off my shirt without asking. Yes, it’s permissible for a mother to lick her finger and wipe something off your face, but it’s not acceptable for others to start adjusting me as though I’m a rumpled toddler ruining the holiday pictures.

    Because I don’t like to introduce pet peeves without offering pleasing alternatives, I will say that some people help me through my wardrobe malfunctions with aplomb. Someone who says, “Um, you’ve got something on your right shoulder,” and then directs me to the spot is definitely doing the right thing in my book. Also acceptable are those who say, “Hey, your collar is crooked. Would you mind if I fixed it?” In most cases, I will happily let people assist me because they asked first. I am not an adult in denial, shouting, “I CAN DO IT MYSELF!” I know when I need the assistance. Neither am I a child who cannot say what I like and what I need. A person who verbalizes a request or offer of help – who asks before doing – is someone worth having around.

    Simply put, I want credit for dressing myself. Perhaps it’s childish to demand this recognition, but, as I advance into my career, I want my competence to be acknowledged. I want others to know that I am well aware of the clothing, hairstyle, makeup, and accessories I wear. Yes, I do my own hair and makeup. No, I don’t have a lady’s maid to fasten all my hooks and buttons. My limited vision is not an open invitation for others to criticize my fashion sense.

    For those who don’t understand the irritation caused by unwanted and constant criticism, I will just have to find something of theirs to pick on.

Emily K. Michael

Emily K. Michael is a blind poet, musician, and writing instructor. She serves as the poetry editor for Wordgathering at Syracuse University. She is also a poetry mentor in AWP’s Writer to Writer program. Her work focuses on music, embodiment, teaching, and ecology. Emily is passionate about birds, medieval history, singing, and guide dogs.

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