It’s the day before I leave for Savannah, with Mike Skubic and Christopher Lee. Things are a bit chaotic around here!
Once again I missed blogging yesterday. I was at the “Work of Hearts” Gala, a fundraiser for Laser Eagles. I think for now it is just better to say that I will blog every four days at least, or twice a week. Until I get my road life back under my belt I don’t want to give the impression that I’m simply choosing not to blog. Rather I am re-establishing the “rhythm” that gets it all done. – (preferably making it all look easy at the same time!)
The Gala was fabulous and a real testament both to what people can accomplish even when they don’t necessarily see “eye-to-eye”, and to Kimberly Fu’s capacity as an event organizer. It was elegance at its best and done on shoe string. Regardless of how much money was made (I have no idea!) the essential value of Laser Eagles was communicated far and wide.
I had a real sense of people working together, as well. Mike Skubic and Helen Tweddle jumped in – with my Dad’s car – to make Greg’s transportation work out. Other tasks were getting handled with little fanfare. It made community seem real.
For me this was all on top of a week of last minute rushes, dramas, inadequate schedulings and opportunities – lost and found. It seemed that I still had only two double bookings to resolve, and they both worked out rather miraculously.
A sense of a fundamental shift is there. The new ODSP caseworker called me to get help in working out my complex financial situation with the clear intention of making it work for me. Olivia passed MY proposal around to all members of the Inclusion Circle. The media CAME to the Laser Eagles event. It feels like I’m actually being taken seriously!
I have wanted to and thought about blogging all the way through, but not had the energy and focus when the time came. I really SHOULD get one of those voice recorders that can be downloaded and converted to a text file.
Anyway the adventure has truly begun. The car is washed, gassed and loaded. Nearly everything is done, except the sleep.
Soon I will be painting, and revealing – mostly to myself – what message the rising Mimico Correctional Centre is trying to evoke.
I guess what really shifted is that I am willing, or nearly so, to be a leader with a distinct point of view, a defined vision of what the next world needs to be like, the beginnings of a strategy, and the willingness to have others improve it.
It is late and my eyes are drooping, my legs aching and my head fuzzy. Let the adventure begin.
Showing posts with label dream. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dream. Show all posts
Saturday, February 12, 2011
Saturday, January 29, 2011
January 29, 2011
Gloria had a fabulous idea today. She suggests that I take all the entries I have made about the cranes, cubes and the prison which is rising before me and make them into one article and publish it – somewhere like The Globe and Mail.
I will do this, but not tonight.
The doing of this is related in a number of ways. First on my mind is to develop the capacity to be calm, courageous and to celebrate life in the midst of all that is life destroying, horrible and disgusting. My automatic response is to ignore or run away. Truly I want to do neither. I want to be able to continue to look out my window, to be a watcher as my Mother was, and to celebrate the fabulous variety of insignificant events that continue to emerge moment by moment just outside my bedroom window. I want to continue to love living in this odd neighbourhood, so close to the lake, so “underdeveloped”, so human. I want to paint the emergence of life around me. I do not want to stop seeing and I do not want to have to go away. These are ways of the past that I have been able to rise above. This is my personal legacy – to be able to be where I am and be who I am whether or not I am afraid.
From another perspective it is too simplistic and fundamentally not true to say that this prison building is wrong. It is very much not what I would choose, but this is not the same thing as being wrong. There are many dynamics that bring about the global economy that result in Texan prisoners building cubes for Ontario prisoners to assemble and live in. I would prefer that people make different choices, and organize themselves differently in the awesome, largely unconscious, effort to work together around the planet. Just the same, although the results of this effort seem so contrary to life and its affirmation, still it is life and living people that are bringing it about. I do not understand and perhaps understanding is not an adequate response or approach. However, in my not understanding I can still appreciate the awesomeness of what is beyond me and my capacity to understand.
I have spent most of my life in a conscious choice to make a difference that I call Inclusion. I feel that this choice, this calling, is in some kind of coordination with the eternal impulse that brings life to the world – often called God. The rising presence of a massive prison in my backyard – rising night by night as I sleep or don’t sleep in my bed – can it be accidental? And even if it is accidental is it not something to which I can respond? What is before me at this time is to discover the response that I can make that forwards the conversation called Inclusion because that is who I am.
If I write my life with a large brush then it seems that Camphill fell through and my finances fell apart so that I might end up in this bedroom looking out this window at the very time when this prison is being assembled. Of course, I could say the same thing about other elements of my life – for example, that Gabor turned against me so that Mike would come to fill the empty position, or that I would have to turn to ODSP so that I would be in a clear position to choose powerfully how I accept or do not accept the next plan from ACF, or that I would contract a life threatening infection and have five doctors deal with it ineffectively so that I might end up lying and looking out this window for nine weeks. I am sure that many would say that I am far too full of myself to write such a major role into my life script.
On another topic, tomorrow is the day that I set to choose if I am leaving for Savannah, or not, on February 12. It seems that we are about $4000 short of what it would take to pay Mike and another assistant separately from the CILT based fund for my personal assistance. The value of doing it this way, besides keeping the peace among myself, CILT and the Ministry of Health, is that I would recoup a large part of the overspending of this account that has happened in the last seven months.
Unfortunately, no such amount of money is forthcoming for all the usual reasons. It is certainly not for lack of looking for it, although I’m sure there are sources that I have not discovered or touched. For the last six weeks I have kept a chart with happy faces and stars to reinforce my efforts to find money. The chart has helped. I am now more than likely going to earn enough money each month this year to be able to pay back some of the ongoing debt I am in, and to travel to some important engagements like the Conference for Global Transformation in May. Just the same, the money for Savannah is not there today. Of course, it may show up tomorrow. It would be awesome!
What would I do in Savannah? Paint “Dirty Window” and have it ready for the ROM exhibit. (This is the painting of the rising prison.) Catch up on what’s been happening with people who are struggling to be economically included in the most racist place I have ever been. Re-immerse myself in an explicitly Christian environment that somehow moves me deeply. Hang out with pelicans during the month before all the tourists invade. Speak to people about what I have learned and questioned in the two years since I last spent time with them. Enjoy the car ride down and back – a time that always allows me to pull my thoughts together. Eat fabulous southern grits and BBQ and other foods rarely encountered in the cooler north. There is so much more that I can hardly imagine that three or even five weeks wouldn’t pass by in a flash.
But it seems, at least tonight, that I am not meant to go. Seemings can be wrong. I sure hope this one is!
I will do this, but not tonight.
The doing of this is related in a number of ways. First on my mind is to develop the capacity to be calm, courageous and to celebrate life in the midst of all that is life destroying, horrible and disgusting. My automatic response is to ignore or run away. Truly I want to do neither. I want to be able to continue to look out my window, to be a watcher as my Mother was, and to celebrate the fabulous variety of insignificant events that continue to emerge moment by moment just outside my bedroom window. I want to continue to love living in this odd neighbourhood, so close to the lake, so “underdeveloped”, so human. I want to paint the emergence of life around me. I do not want to stop seeing and I do not want to have to go away. These are ways of the past that I have been able to rise above. This is my personal legacy – to be able to be where I am and be who I am whether or not I am afraid.
From another perspective it is too simplistic and fundamentally not true to say that this prison building is wrong. It is very much not what I would choose, but this is not the same thing as being wrong. There are many dynamics that bring about the global economy that result in Texan prisoners building cubes for Ontario prisoners to assemble and live in. I would prefer that people make different choices, and organize themselves differently in the awesome, largely unconscious, effort to work together around the planet. Just the same, although the results of this effort seem so contrary to life and its affirmation, still it is life and living people that are bringing it about. I do not understand and perhaps understanding is not an adequate response or approach. However, in my not understanding I can still appreciate the awesomeness of what is beyond me and my capacity to understand.
I have spent most of my life in a conscious choice to make a difference that I call Inclusion. I feel that this choice, this calling, is in some kind of coordination with the eternal impulse that brings life to the world – often called God. The rising presence of a massive prison in my backyard – rising night by night as I sleep or don’t sleep in my bed – can it be accidental? And even if it is accidental is it not something to which I can respond? What is before me at this time is to discover the response that I can make that forwards the conversation called Inclusion because that is who I am.
If I write my life with a large brush then it seems that Camphill fell through and my finances fell apart so that I might end up in this bedroom looking out this window at the very time when this prison is being assembled. Of course, I could say the same thing about other elements of my life – for example, that Gabor turned against me so that Mike would come to fill the empty position, or that I would have to turn to ODSP so that I would be in a clear position to choose powerfully how I accept or do not accept the next plan from ACF, or that I would contract a life threatening infection and have five doctors deal with it ineffectively so that I might end up lying and looking out this window for nine weeks. I am sure that many would say that I am far too full of myself to write such a major role into my life script.
On another topic, tomorrow is the day that I set to choose if I am leaving for Savannah, or not, on February 12. It seems that we are about $4000 short of what it would take to pay Mike and another assistant separately from the CILT based fund for my personal assistance. The value of doing it this way, besides keeping the peace among myself, CILT and the Ministry of Health, is that I would recoup a large part of the overspending of this account that has happened in the last seven months.
Unfortunately, no such amount of money is forthcoming for all the usual reasons. It is certainly not for lack of looking for it, although I’m sure there are sources that I have not discovered or touched. For the last six weeks I have kept a chart with happy faces and stars to reinforce my efforts to find money. The chart has helped. I am now more than likely going to earn enough money each month this year to be able to pay back some of the ongoing debt I am in, and to travel to some important engagements like the Conference for Global Transformation in May. Just the same, the money for Savannah is not there today. Of course, it may show up tomorrow. It would be awesome!
What would I do in Savannah? Paint “Dirty Window” and have it ready for the ROM exhibit. (This is the painting of the rising prison.) Catch up on what’s been happening with people who are struggling to be economically included in the most racist place I have ever been. Re-immerse myself in an explicitly Christian environment that somehow moves me deeply. Hang out with pelicans during the month before all the tourists invade. Speak to people about what I have learned and questioned in the two years since I last spent time with them. Enjoy the car ride down and back – a time that always allows me to pull my thoughts together. Eat fabulous southern grits and BBQ and other foods rarely encountered in the cooler north. There is so much more that I can hardly imagine that three or even five weeks wouldn’t pass by in a flash.
But it seems, at least tonight, that I am not meant to go. Seemings can be wrong. I sure hope this one is!
Monday, January 17, 2011
January 17, 2011
At about 4:50pm EST I was sitting with Helen and Dad in a branch of the TD bank watching the black computer screen of the burly, sometimes surly, financial officer as she set up a joint line of credit on the GIC that Dad has willed to me on his passing. The intention was to pay off the loan on the trailer that Gabor, Jason and I lived in on the WPI Tour up until Sept. 22, 2009.
Suddenly a clear white sentence appeared in bold letters near the bottom of her screen. TRANSFER APPROVED LOAN PAID OFF.
I nearly cried, fainted and stopped breathing for two seconds. The enormous unshiftable burden – the physical sign of my failure to manage my life during those seven months, the unending anxiety of a responsibility I can’t meet yet must meet every month – in a split second dispassionately disappeared.
I had no idea of the extent of the weight on my spirit until it was gone. And when it was gone, it was just gone. A pile of papers to sign, two managers to say “Yes”, an electronic ritual to complete precisely – and the white letters simply appeared at the bottom of the computer screen.
Forgiveness has been dispensed.
This does not mean I have no financial concerns. It means I have a path to getting from “red” to “black” to being once again free to powerfully impact my and other’s circumstances with my own money, not just other’s on my behalf.
I owe so much to my parents I cannot fathom the depth. My Mother’s relentless saving reaches from beyond her grave through my Father through his love of me and of manipulating his GIC’s to release me from the shackles and the shame I incurred for throwing my hat over the wall in 2008. I am blessed.
My sense of mission is once again reinforced. Why am I so blessed, so lucky if not for being yet again showered with opportunities to keep on bringing Inclusion. Forward – go forward!
Today I met a young research student, and in a nutshell, a feasible research project is emerging around measuring the impact of the WPIT inclusive video games on the peacefulness of the children and youth who play it. A new “Yes”, a different “Yes”, a powerful “Yes”! Forward – go forward!
Jen was here this morning. Together we explored the nature of standing. For me it was more like having a conversation with my body about the experience of standing – the being of upstanding – of leadership and courage. I am stretching and parts of my body are turning and curving differently. The body of Judith is discovering how to support her stand.
I, Judith, am leading the world, through a planet wide team of young people, into an international culture of abundance, inclusion and peace. It is my destiny and I choose to fulfill this dream.
Suddenly a clear white sentence appeared in bold letters near the bottom of her screen. TRANSFER APPROVED LOAN PAID OFF.
I nearly cried, fainted and stopped breathing for two seconds. The enormous unshiftable burden – the physical sign of my failure to manage my life during those seven months, the unending anxiety of a responsibility I can’t meet yet must meet every month – in a split second dispassionately disappeared.
I had no idea of the extent of the weight on my spirit until it was gone. And when it was gone, it was just gone. A pile of papers to sign, two managers to say “Yes”, an electronic ritual to complete precisely – and the white letters simply appeared at the bottom of the computer screen.
Forgiveness has been dispensed.
This does not mean I have no financial concerns. It means I have a path to getting from “red” to “black” to being once again free to powerfully impact my and other’s circumstances with my own money, not just other’s on my behalf.
I owe so much to my parents I cannot fathom the depth. My Mother’s relentless saving reaches from beyond her grave through my Father through his love of me and of manipulating his GIC’s to release me from the shackles and the shame I incurred for throwing my hat over the wall in 2008. I am blessed.
My sense of mission is once again reinforced. Why am I so blessed, so lucky if not for being yet again showered with opportunities to keep on bringing Inclusion. Forward – go forward!
Today I met a young research student, and in a nutshell, a feasible research project is emerging around measuring the impact of the WPIT inclusive video games on the peacefulness of the children and youth who play it. A new “Yes”, a different “Yes”, a powerful “Yes”! Forward – go forward!
Jen was here this morning. Together we explored the nature of standing. For me it was more like having a conversation with my body about the experience of standing – the being of upstanding – of leadership and courage. I am stretching and parts of my body are turning and curving differently. The body of Judith is discovering how to support her stand.
I, Judith, am leading the world, through a planet wide team of young people, into an international culture of abundance, inclusion and peace. It is my destiny and I choose to fulfill this dream.
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
January 4, 2011
It was a double whammy sort of day. The back/leg pain is strong, then my chair broke down. Now I am lying in bed, and so is Mike, who also has felt crappy (and crabby) all day.
What is authentic expression right now? Whining, bitching, sleeping?
What is keeping my word right now? Blogging, figuring out how to get to the Atkinson meeting anyway, stating openly what isn’t going to get done?
It’s not going to be a two pager right now. The body/mind is too tired.
I can imagine a support circle that honoured my vision and my perspective, that fully got why I can’t stay home and play safe, AND worked with others who say they can imagine me reaching the world through video conference to make this years’ old dream come true. Then I wouldn’t have to be figuring out how I can be travelling ten weeks of this spring coming. Where are these pushy people who will make it happen?
I think, at the root of it, I haven’t stood enough for myself. Now I will. It is urgent!
What is authentic expression right now? Whining, bitching, sleeping?
What is keeping my word right now? Blogging, figuring out how to get to the Atkinson meeting anyway, stating openly what isn’t going to get done?
It’s not going to be a two pager right now. The body/mind is too tired.
I can imagine a support circle that honoured my vision and my perspective, that fully got why I can’t stay home and play safe, AND worked with others who say they can imagine me reaching the world through video conference to make this years’ old dream come true. Then I wouldn’t have to be figuring out how I can be travelling ten weeks of this spring coming. Where are these pushy people who will make it happen?
I think, at the root of it, I haven’t stood enough for myself. Now I will. It is urgent!
Monday, January 3, 2011
January 3, 2011
There is a little tug-o’-war going on in me these days. The “I don’t wanna’s” are pretty strong – I don’t wanna:
- fundraise
- have a support circle
- cut down on gluten and drink more fluids – not caffeinated ones at that
- invite people to the Completion Evening of Wisdom
- catch up on e-mail
- set up paying gigs for February and March
- get my eyes checked
- etc.
I DO wanna too, and generally I am doing a little better than 50% which is the level I was at for years.
Why the ambivalence? Well, besides not wanting to “stick out” I realized as I was waking up this morning that I have been reluctant to be honest and open about my life-long sense, strong and clear since I was twelve, that I have a personal relationship with God and that God has given me a mission – to create Inclusion, especially so that people who don’t speak can be seen and supported as contributors to society.
But this is a fact for me – one that has shaped all my life. Still I cannot imagine saying in public, or in front of my circle, certainly not frequently and bravely: “Got wants this and I want to do it!”
This reluctance to sound like a religious weirdo constantly gives strength to the “I don’t wanna’s”. It’s better to not stick out, but rather to look like I’m motivated by good thinking and research, to seem like I just want the same things as most people.
But probably I am not fooling anybody anyway. Clearly I DON’T want the same things as most people!
Being at the Terracotta Warriors exhibit last Friday reinforced deeply for me the realization that most people do not know that there is an alternative path to peace besides war. The visible evidence was impactful - that fighting for a stable society and community with abundance and opportunity for all is a way of every culture that goes back multiple millennia. It was also powerfully clear that this way is wasteful, bloody and ineffective.
The other clear message was that history takes no account of the needs, desires or contributions of ordinary people. They live and die hearing that their sole contribution to peace on earth is to support war, up to losing the lives of loved ones and themselves.
I have another way. It takes many ordinary people to build and sustain Inclusion. The good news is that when they do so they also build abundant economy and community, and eliminate the fear and inadequacy that lead to war.
Can I gather enough courage, faith, people and resources to get the message across so that all ordinary people know they have a choice and they know how to implement that choice?
- fundraise
- have a support circle
- cut down on gluten and drink more fluids – not caffeinated ones at that
- invite people to the Completion Evening of Wisdom
- catch up on e-mail
- set up paying gigs for February and March
- get my eyes checked
- etc.
I DO wanna too, and generally I am doing a little better than 50% which is the level I was at for years.
Why the ambivalence? Well, besides not wanting to “stick out” I realized as I was waking up this morning that I have been reluctant to be honest and open about my life-long sense, strong and clear since I was twelve, that I have a personal relationship with God and that God has given me a mission – to create Inclusion, especially so that people who don’t speak can be seen and supported as contributors to society.
But this is a fact for me – one that has shaped all my life. Still I cannot imagine saying in public, or in front of my circle, certainly not frequently and bravely: “Got wants this and I want to do it!”
This reluctance to sound like a religious weirdo constantly gives strength to the “I don’t wanna’s”. It’s better to not stick out, but rather to look like I’m motivated by good thinking and research, to seem like I just want the same things as most people.
But probably I am not fooling anybody anyway. Clearly I DON’T want the same things as most people!
Being at the Terracotta Warriors exhibit last Friday reinforced deeply for me the realization that most people do not know that there is an alternative path to peace besides war. The visible evidence was impactful - that fighting for a stable society and community with abundance and opportunity for all is a way of every culture that goes back multiple millennia. It was also powerfully clear that this way is wasteful, bloody and ineffective.
The other clear message was that history takes no account of the needs, desires or contributions of ordinary people. They live and die hearing that their sole contribution to peace on earth is to support war, up to losing the lives of loved ones and themselves.
I have another way. It takes many ordinary people to build and sustain Inclusion. The good news is that when they do so they also build abundant economy and community, and eliminate the fear and inadequacy that lead to war.
Can I gather enough courage, faith, people and resources to get the message across so that all ordinary people know they have a choice and they know how to implement that choice?
Saturday, January 1, 2011
January 1, 2011
It has been a day of rest, play and building tools of accomplishment for 2011.
The rest is needed. I have had wheezing and an odd swelling in my left arm and hand. Considering how many people have been down with the flu recently, and how big the conversation has been lately about my death, it seemed important to consciously do stuff to tell myself that I am taking good and successful care of myself. So I have been in bed all day, peeing whenever I had the slightest inkling. The wheezing is gone and the swelling down.
The play consists of three Farmville harvests and all that entails, about five games of electronic Price is Right with Kevin my 11 year old neighbour, teasing Mike (not too much – he’s really tired from last night), some FreeCell and contemplation of greater sexual expression!
Building tools is a large piece that won’t be done all in one day. It involves opening 2011 folders, setting up a year-long calendar with everything in it – in five colours! – that I already know I am committed to and organizing my promises and related resources. I set up two tables – one for this week and one for next.
Yesterday I completed the year with the typical review of what I intend my year to look like. This work, of course, is required to be able to set up the tools. For all that 2010 was a year of dramatic events, little has changed in how I intend to live my life. This is my “To Do” banner: "I am the possibility of interesting. I am committed to World Peace through Inclusion. My word creates the world my community lives. I create with beauty, truth and goodness."
These words are essentially the same as those for 2010. I am certainly committed to World Peace through Inclusion, to my coop, my personal stability and to having a superlative staff of personal assistants. These are as clear, or even more clear than ever.
What is new is my commitment to my own expression. Hence this blog and a nearly completed first draft of my autobiography. It is also in focus that WPIT needs a real organization – I am willing to believe that the concept that peace is available through Inclusion will not disappear entirely as I let go of the reins.
And so, as I wrote two days ago, now is the time to push for money. So many of the 2011 tools now in use or in creation are intended to keep me asking for financial resources – for WPIT and for my personal assistants.
My financial coach had me realize that I did not fully realize the cost to me and to the world that I don’t have the $6 million to stabilize WPIT. I am used to imagining and working toward finding enough money month by month to keep my home, health, car and staff. My immediate work is to get crystal clear on the earth changing difference that world peace would make and how uniquely available that peace is through Inclusion.
The more clear that state is the more powerful I will be at finding the people and resources that WPIT needs.
Happy New Year!
The rest is needed. I have had wheezing and an odd swelling in my left arm and hand. Considering how many people have been down with the flu recently, and how big the conversation has been lately about my death, it seemed important to consciously do stuff to tell myself that I am taking good and successful care of myself. So I have been in bed all day, peeing whenever I had the slightest inkling. The wheezing is gone and the swelling down.
The play consists of three Farmville harvests and all that entails, about five games of electronic Price is Right with Kevin my 11 year old neighbour, teasing Mike (not too much – he’s really tired from last night), some FreeCell and contemplation of greater sexual expression!
Building tools is a large piece that won’t be done all in one day. It involves opening 2011 folders, setting up a year-long calendar with everything in it – in five colours! – that I already know I am committed to and organizing my promises and related resources. I set up two tables – one for this week and one for next.
Yesterday I completed the year with the typical review of what I intend my year to look like. This work, of course, is required to be able to set up the tools. For all that 2010 was a year of dramatic events, little has changed in how I intend to live my life. This is my “To Do” banner: "I am the possibility of interesting. I am committed to World Peace through Inclusion. My word creates the world my community lives. I create with beauty, truth and goodness."
These words are essentially the same as those for 2010. I am certainly committed to World Peace through Inclusion, to my coop, my personal stability and to having a superlative staff of personal assistants. These are as clear, or even more clear than ever.
What is new is my commitment to my own expression. Hence this blog and a nearly completed first draft of my autobiography. It is also in focus that WPIT needs a real organization – I am willing to believe that the concept that peace is available through Inclusion will not disappear entirely as I let go of the reins.
And so, as I wrote two days ago, now is the time to push for money. So many of the 2011 tools now in use or in creation are intended to keep me asking for financial resources – for WPIT and for my personal assistants.
My financial coach had me realize that I did not fully realize the cost to me and to the world that I don’t have the $6 million to stabilize WPIT. I am used to imagining and working toward finding enough money month by month to keep my home, health, car and staff. My immediate work is to get crystal clear on the earth changing difference that world peace would make and how uniquely available that peace is through Inclusion.
The more clear that state is the more powerful I will be at finding the people and resources that WPIT needs.
Happy New Year!
Thursday, December 30, 2010
December 30, 2010
Yesterday I wrote for the book and you will, of course, get to read that within the next few months – by May is our intention.
For the last week I have been fundraising with determination. WPIT provides me with lots of opportunities and lots of reasons to get more people involved and find lots of dollars. Right now it’s my most grounded way out of personal poverty.
So tonight I will just share my notes I use in constructing fundraising e-mails. The document they refer to is posted on www.peaceforinclusion.blogspot.com.
To a Canadian potential donor:
We spoke on the phone this morning. You said you would see if some of your friends (10?) would let me contact them about donating to World Peace through Inclusive Transformation.
I believe in and am giving my life to World Peace through Inclusive Transformation - WPIT, www.judithsnow.org. I noticed in 2006 that people become more peaceful when they take the journey to include diversity in their everyday lives. I have attached a document with lots of information, including our latest projects.
The most exciting project is that we are coding a 3-game series of video games where players do better in the game when they include diversity in the group of people who are playing AND reward diversity in the Zombie characters.
The money we raise is used for project development. the coding costs $80,000, and video development costs $7,000.
Money also goes to cover thousands of dollars each year of wages for my personal assistants – money that the government does not cover. This year I must raise $14,000 for this necessary expense alone.
One possible way to donate is to send a cheque to the Family Life Foundation. WPIT gets 85% of your money and you get a charitable receipt. Send the cheque to:
Family Life Foundation
c/o Lindsay King, Director
6 Kings Inn Trail
Thornhill, ON, L3T 1T7
Include in the memo: World Peace through Inclusive Transformation
The other way is to go to www.ppsn.on.ca and click on "Donate". Follow the prompts I get 50% of your donation and YOU get 75% of your donation back as a tax credit when you file your income tax. More information is on their website.
Thank you for your consideration and generousity.
Warmly; Judith
To a potential US donor:
It is awkward to ask for donations, but I believe in and am giving my life to World Peace through Inclusive Transformation - WPIT, www.judithsnow.org. I noticed in 2006 that people become more peaceful when they take the journey to include diversity in their everyday lives. I have attached a document with lots of information, including our latest projects. The most exciting project is that we are coding a 3-game series of video games where players do better in the game by including something that is different about the characters and about other players.
The money we raise is used for project development. It also goes to cover thousands of dollars each year of wages for my personal assistants – money that the government does not cover. This year I must raise $14,000 for this necessary expense alone.
There are two things you can do to make a difference with WPIT, and my ongoing underfunding with my personal assistance.
First, make a list of people you think would be open to listening to a request for money to support my ongoing participation, and ask them if I can contact them. If they say "Yes", give me their contact information. I am attaching a brief about WPIT and its projects.
Secondly, send a check directed to the World Peace through Inclusion Tour to:
First Presbyterian Church of Savannah
c/o Barbara Bishop
520 Washington Avenue
Savannah, GA 31405-2323
Thank you!
(Let me know how much so I can budget, please.)
Warmly and Season’s Greetings; Judith
For the last week I have been fundraising with determination. WPIT provides me with lots of opportunities and lots of reasons to get more people involved and find lots of dollars. Right now it’s my most grounded way out of personal poverty.
So tonight I will just share my notes I use in constructing fundraising e-mails. The document they refer to is posted on www.peaceforinclusion.blogspot.com.
To a Canadian potential donor:
We spoke on the phone this morning. You said you would see if some of your friends (10?) would let me contact them about donating to World Peace through Inclusive Transformation.
I believe in and am giving my life to World Peace through Inclusive Transformation - WPIT, www.judithsnow.org. I noticed in 2006 that people become more peaceful when they take the journey to include diversity in their everyday lives. I have attached a document with lots of information, including our latest projects.
The most exciting project is that we are coding a 3-game series of video games where players do better in the game when they include diversity in the group of people who are playing AND reward diversity in the Zombie characters.
The money we raise is used for project development. the coding costs $80,000, and video development costs $7,000.
Money also goes to cover thousands of dollars each year of wages for my personal assistants – money that the government does not cover. This year I must raise $14,000 for this necessary expense alone.
One possible way to donate is to send a cheque to the Family Life Foundation. WPIT gets 85% of your money and you get a charitable receipt. Send the cheque to:
Family Life Foundation
c/o Lindsay King, Director
6 Kings Inn Trail
Thornhill, ON, L3T 1T7
Include in the memo: World Peace through Inclusive Transformation
The other way is to go to www.ppsn.on.ca and click on "Donate". Follow the prompts I get 50% of your donation and YOU get 75% of your donation back as a tax credit when you file your income tax. More information is on their website.
Thank you for your consideration and generousity.
Warmly; Judith
To a potential US donor:
It is awkward to ask for donations, but I believe in and am giving my life to World Peace through Inclusive Transformation - WPIT, www.judithsnow.org. I noticed in 2006 that people become more peaceful when they take the journey to include diversity in their everyday lives. I have attached a document with lots of information, including our latest projects. The most exciting project is that we are coding a 3-game series of video games where players do better in the game by including something that is different about the characters and about other players.
The money we raise is used for project development. It also goes to cover thousands of dollars each year of wages for my personal assistants – money that the government does not cover. This year I must raise $14,000 for this necessary expense alone.
There are two things you can do to make a difference with WPIT, and my ongoing underfunding with my personal assistance.
First, make a list of people you think would be open to listening to a request for money to support my ongoing participation, and ask them if I can contact them. If they say "Yes", give me their contact information. I am attaching a brief about WPIT and its projects.
Secondly, send a check directed to the World Peace through Inclusion Tour to:
First Presbyterian Church of Savannah
c/o Barbara Bishop
520 Washington Avenue
Savannah, GA 31405-2323
Thank you!
(Let me know how much so I can budget, please.)
Warmly and Season’s Greetings; Judith
Sunday, December 19, 2010
December 19, 2010
I wrote my second draft for the ROM tonight. I now feel free to share the first one. We are pushed back to mid-June or early July, for very good reasons. More soon!
Exhibit Overview – the Legacy of Judith
Preliminary Thoughts
This - Draft 1 - is written by Judith Snow. It is clear to me at this moment that I cannot fairly represent The Book of Judith since Michael Rubenfeld, Sarah Garton Stanley and I have not worked together since the ROM hosted the preliminary meeting on Nov. 29.
I have only a superficial understanding of the needs, structures and processes of the ROM. As such I anticipate that this – the first kick at the can – is off base and I am requesting lots of constructive feedback and an opportunity to meet key players in the near future.
I have spoken at length with nine individuals who come from a variety of communities in my life, such as a Vice President of Spinmaster, which is a toy company, who advised me about interactive toys.
Dreams, Hopes, Must Haves
I am starting at my dream because dreaming is always a powerful place to start!
I want the people who design, build, tour and enjoy this exhibit to be exposed to and potentially fall in love with the understanding that Inclusion is a multi-dimensional approach to building a vibrant society where social and economic benefits accrue from garnering the gifts of diversity.
My art, and the play The Book of Judith, are aspects of my legacy of building Inclusion internationally. This is what the ROM knows about me so this is what we talked about on Nov. 29. However, my paintings and the play are not a complete representation of what it means to be Judith Snow. Therefore I have been imagining an interactive exhibit that says more than these can say in themselves.
I have many long term partners and relationships with whom I want to share this voice. The ROM is primary because they own and have opened the opportunity, and because there is a longer term potential through the Programming functions at ROM to continue to foster understanding and practise of Inclusion. Secondly, the Book of Judith and I are essentially one in this, though it remains to be created how the tour of the play intersects with the tour of the exhibit.
Laser Eagles Art Guild, the Marsha Forest Centre, the Atkinson Charitable Foundation, World Peace through Inclusive Transformation and the City Team of the Toronto Wisdom Unlimited program are all integrated in my journey toward “being” Inclusion. This exhibit is my chance to shine AND to celebrate my community, relationships, collaboration and partnerships. To me they are central to my life and legacy.
While this work can’t be only about ME and my art, at the same time the design of the exhibit can and must integrate these relationships without confusion of the message, distraction from the art and the play, or encumbrances that would make the exhibit unworkable as a touring or stationary unit.
My “must haves” are:
It will be joyful and uplifting to do this - for me and others;
I am partnered with and taught what I need to know to fully participate;
The stationary and touring products represent Inclusion as I understand it;
The exhibit has an interactive component, and the exhibitors work with me to ensure that this aspect is sustained when I am not present to do so; and,
Costs are covered and there is sufficient recompense as to not make my participation a financial burden to me.
The “would love it if” aspects are:
I would like a book to get written, published, to sell well and to launch my ideas through related videos and other media.
I would like to get a teaching venue out of this where I have real control over the teacher, student, content dynamic.
I don’t expect the ROM to promise these, but the exposure and “the resume” are priceless to me! I am asking only that people are aware that these are important to me and to steer in directions that make these results likely.
Limitations, Barriers and Challenges
Inclusion necessarily is a challenge to the status quo in some way. This means there will always be “issues” when we are beginning the effort to be inclusive. I began my thinking about the exhibit itself by “noticing” what came up for me as issues.
The exhibit room is roughly 20 feet by 24 with three doorways and one “lopped off” corner giving effectively 7 discreet display areas of varying size. In addition there is a display panel in the middle of the room that runs on a diagonal and is approximately 9 by 2 by 7 feet high, and from which can be hung paintings, posters, video screens and similar objects. The walls are white, smooth and likely painted. The ceiling is perhaps 20 feet high or more and both inaccessible and not uniform in construction. The floor is smooth and not carpeted. There is no seating of any kind. There is abundant track lighting aimed at the walls and central display panel, making the room bright and very suitable as an art gallery.
The room is essentially a thoroughfare for visitors and staff moving from the Rotunda core or the elevators to the dinosaur exhibit and service areas. When we were being shown the room I observed a continuous low flow of traffic – everything from guests to garbage disposal units moved on through! The challenge is to entice visitors to step out of the flow and spend some time – maybe time that they had allocated for other exhibits – dipping into and dallying with Inclusion.
Other limitations – not necessarily BARRIERS – are that:
Floor space to move around in, after the “stuff” is placed, is not ample;
People who do not easily stand for more than a few minutes have no place to rest;
There is no apparent expectation that the exhibit will cater to children, those who lie down or those with unusual sensitivities or interests in light or sound; and,
Sharing the experience of play or interaction in general is NOT encouraged as there is an ongoing need to prevent vandalism in this and other exhibits.
Concepts for the Exhibit
The room lends itself neatly to the paradigm of structuring inclusive support that I used to call “Harmonizing the Four Things Worth Doing” – the paradigm that formed much of the basis of the 1991 book: “What’s Really Worth Doing and How to Do It”, still available through Inclusion Press.
In my current conceptualization the regular path that visitors who are merely going through the room with no intention of staying will be clearly marked as “The Normal Path – Do Not Stop or Look Around”. All along it there will also be enticements to step aside and stay awhile, learn something and enjoy the experience.
In addition, the room will be conceptually divided into three layers. The middle layer will be for language based communications, including talking videos, text and more realistic paintings. The floor to about 3 ½ feet up will be for playful, interactive and colourful objects and paintings. Six feet up will be for projections, both colourful and those statements and photographs captured and recorded by visitors.
The groupings of videos, pictures and photographs on the central panel will focus on dreaming. The rest of the display space will focus on place, people and resources, indicating how different communities in my life have shaped my expressions of Inclusion. Finally the “dead” space between the “Normal Road” and the South Wall, really 3 short walls connected like a bay window between the main entrance and exit, will be reserved for statements about barriers. For example I will hang my first framed painting, “Vulnerability”, where my tracker was an art therapist who claimed that my work wasn’t art.
I will find ways to include other artists such as Felicia Galati and Irena Kagansky. The intention is to show, first, that I am not unique among artists as a person who does not sit easily with being labelled disabled, and secondly, that I have influenced such artists.
Floor to 3 1/2 feet
The concept is to appeal to children and others who are unlikely to be interested in language driven information. Spinmaster will donate four Aquadoodles. These devices allow drawing, finger and hand prints, and written messages. The message slowly disappears in a few minutes. We can arrange a camera that takes a picture of the design/message, to preserve it and project the growing collection of messages in a slowly moving pattern on the walls and perhaps on hung-from-ceiling panels.
Colourful, abstract paintings will also be hung in this area, perhaps six of mine and another six from Laser Eagle artists, featuring Felicia Galati. They will be unframed canvas boards, solidly attached to the wall and covered with a material like Plexiglas that can be easily cleaned off.
Six feet up…
The Marsha Forest Centre will collaborate to refurbish and/or redesign some of my PATH’s and other graphically designed depictions on newsprint, typically banners that are 8 by 3 ½ feet. The themes will indicate movement from early to later understandings of Inclusion. The newsprint will be “fixed” and can be mounted so as to be moved for the tour.
These will intermingle with the preserved drawings and messages from the Aquadoodles.
3 ½ feet to six
(Please note: exact dimensions of paintings will follow as soon as the basic design is agreed on.)
“Dead Space” of the South Wall:
“My Community” – acrylic on canvas, not framed, approx. 4 by 2 1/2 by 2 inches, accompanied by text about my being ejected from the organization that I started to flow individualized funding to coop members who need personal assistance;
photos of Irene Kagansky in the Book of Judith choir, text from my blog entry about her, and a display of one of her poems;
“Vulnerability” – acrylic on newsprint, framed and glazed, 29 in by 23 in by 1 in, on the South/West wall adjacent to exit, with text about being told I’m not an artist.
East Wall
This area will be used for an extensive exploration of the Laser Eagles Art Guild, including:
video on tracking and tracker training
about 4 framed paintings (dimensions to follow shortly)
photographs of artists at work
statements from the Etobicoke Art Gallery where our work has been displayed an exhibition of Felicia Galati’s work, pictures of her painting and an article that I wrote for the Centennial Flame project acknowledging her gifts (English, French, Text & Audio)
an area for me or other Laser Eagle artists to demonstrate how we paint. This area will not be continuously be used of course and so at other times paintings on easels can be left on display and cordoned off for security purposes.
North Wall – larger area
This will be the People area. It will be organized in sections relative to the important communities of my life.
The area for the Wisdom City Team will include a painting called “Boats”, which is acrylic on canvas, and needs to be framed. It will also include a video slide presentation of people assisting me to climb a rock wall on a cruise ship. The short article that I wrote about this called “Shoes” will be displayed in such a way that it can be read or listened to. Likely other artifacts, collages and text relative to participation will be displayed, (I’m making it up here guys!)
Similar displays will be created with a painting, text and video for other communities as mentioned in the beginning of this document.
In addition to being organized by communities, we will use a “path” that is painted on the wall to demonstrate how my art has progressed from 1984 to now. I will use 4 or 5 unframed paintings, (these may be framed by the ROM if this is their preference). I will also use quotes and text to demonstrate shifts in my thinking about Inclusion.
Following a progression, everything about the Book of Judith play will be around the doorway which is in the west side of the North Wall.
North Wall – smaller area, and West Wall
This area will be used to demonstrate Resources. I will work with Motion Specialties to have a puff and sip, and a touch plate system available for show, and video demonstrating how people drive their wheelchairs and type on computers with these systems. We will also provide video of artists painting using the lasers, and when a Laser Eagle artist is present we will provide lasers for people to attempt tracking themselves.
Central Display Panel
This will be used on both sides for video, text and perhaps 4 paintings (framed) to demonstrate the importance of dreaming.
I have a large 10” diameter Dreamcatcher made by a young aboriginal man with autism. I will display pictures of him creating the Dreamcatcher. This artefact needs to be repaired and cleaned, and hung high enough to not be vulnerable to passersby.
Questions…
Insurable value??? How does that get calculated?
How to represent “Place”??
I’m sure there are many others!
Conclusion
Once again, thank you for this opportunity and please provide extensive feedback so that I may quickly get to work on creating and finding the resources and artefacts that will make this exhibit extraordinary.
Exhibit Overview – the Legacy of Judith
Preliminary Thoughts
This - Draft 1 - is written by Judith Snow. It is clear to me at this moment that I cannot fairly represent The Book of Judith since Michael Rubenfeld, Sarah Garton Stanley and I have not worked together since the ROM hosted the preliminary meeting on Nov. 29.
I have only a superficial understanding of the needs, structures and processes of the ROM. As such I anticipate that this – the first kick at the can – is off base and I am requesting lots of constructive feedback and an opportunity to meet key players in the near future.
I have spoken at length with nine individuals who come from a variety of communities in my life, such as a Vice President of Spinmaster, which is a toy company, who advised me about interactive toys.
Dreams, Hopes, Must Haves
I am starting at my dream because dreaming is always a powerful place to start!
I want the people who design, build, tour and enjoy this exhibit to be exposed to and potentially fall in love with the understanding that Inclusion is a multi-dimensional approach to building a vibrant society where social and economic benefits accrue from garnering the gifts of diversity.
My art, and the play The Book of Judith, are aspects of my legacy of building Inclusion internationally. This is what the ROM knows about me so this is what we talked about on Nov. 29. However, my paintings and the play are not a complete representation of what it means to be Judith Snow. Therefore I have been imagining an interactive exhibit that says more than these can say in themselves.
I have many long term partners and relationships with whom I want to share this voice. The ROM is primary because they own and have opened the opportunity, and because there is a longer term potential through the Programming functions at ROM to continue to foster understanding and practise of Inclusion. Secondly, the Book of Judith and I are essentially one in this, though it remains to be created how the tour of the play intersects with the tour of the exhibit.
Laser Eagles Art Guild, the Marsha Forest Centre, the Atkinson Charitable Foundation, World Peace through Inclusive Transformation and the City Team of the Toronto Wisdom Unlimited program are all integrated in my journey toward “being” Inclusion. This exhibit is my chance to shine AND to celebrate my community, relationships, collaboration and partnerships. To me they are central to my life and legacy.
While this work can’t be only about ME and my art, at the same time the design of the exhibit can and must integrate these relationships without confusion of the message, distraction from the art and the play, or encumbrances that would make the exhibit unworkable as a touring or stationary unit.
My “must haves” are:
It will be joyful and uplifting to do this - for me and others;
I am partnered with and taught what I need to know to fully participate;
The stationary and touring products represent Inclusion as I understand it;
The exhibit has an interactive component, and the exhibitors work with me to ensure that this aspect is sustained when I am not present to do so; and,
Costs are covered and there is sufficient recompense as to not make my participation a financial burden to me.
The “would love it if” aspects are:
I would like a book to get written, published, to sell well and to launch my ideas through related videos and other media.
I would like to get a teaching venue out of this where I have real control over the teacher, student, content dynamic.
I don’t expect the ROM to promise these, but the exposure and “the resume” are priceless to me! I am asking only that people are aware that these are important to me and to steer in directions that make these results likely.
Limitations, Barriers and Challenges
Inclusion necessarily is a challenge to the status quo in some way. This means there will always be “issues” when we are beginning the effort to be inclusive. I began my thinking about the exhibit itself by “noticing” what came up for me as issues.
The exhibit room is roughly 20 feet by 24 with three doorways and one “lopped off” corner giving effectively 7 discreet display areas of varying size. In addition there is a display panel in the middle of the room that runs on a diagonal and is approximately 9 by 2 by 7 feet high, and from which can be hung paintings, posters, video screens and similar objects. The walls are white, smooth and likely painted. The ceiling is perhaps 20 feet high or more and both inaccessible and not uniform in construction. The floor is smooth and not carpeted. There is no seating of any kind. There is abundant track lighting aimed at the walls and central display panel, making the room bright and very suitable as an art gallery.
The room is essentially a thoroughfare for visitors and staff moving from the Rotunda core or the elevators to the dinosaur exhibit and service areas. When we were being shown the room I observed a continuous low flow of traffic – everything from guests to garbage disposal units moved on through! The challenge is to entice visitors to step out of the flow and spend some time – maybe time that they had allocated for other exhibits – dipping into and dallying with Inclusion.
Other limitations – not necessarily BARRIERS – are that:
Floor space to move around in, after the “stuff” is placed, is not ample;
People who do not easily stand for more than a few minutes have no place to rest;
There is no apparent expectation that the exhibit will cater to children, those who lie down or those with unusual sensitivities or interests in light or sound; and,
Sharing the experience of play or interaction in general is NOT encouraged as there is an ongoing need to prevent vandalism in this and other exhibits.
Concepts for the Exhibit
The room lends itself neatly to the paradigm of structuring inclusive support that I used to call “Harmonizing the Four Things Worth Doing” – the paradigm that formed much of the basis of the 1991 book: “What’s Really Worth Doing and How to Do It”, still available through Inclusion Press.
In my current conceptualization the regular path that visitors who are merely going through the room with no intention of staying will be clearly marked as “The Normal Path – Do Not Stop or Look Around”. All along it there will also be enticements to step aside and stay awhile, learn something and enjoy the experience.
In addition, the room will be conceptually divided into three layers. The middle layer will be for language based communications, including talking videos, text and more realistic paintings. The floor to about 3 ½ feet up will be for playful, interactive and colourful objects and paintings. Six feet up will be for projections, both colourful and those statements and photographs captured and recorded by visitors.
The groupings of videos, pictures and photographs on the central panel will focus on dreaming. The rest of the display space will focus on place, people and resources, indicating how different communities in my life have shaped my expressions of Inclusion. Finally the “dead” space between the “Normal Road” and the South Wall, really 3 short walls connected like a bay window between the main entrance and exit, will be reserved for statements about barriers. For example I will hang my first framed painting, “Vulnerability”, where my tracker was an art therapist who claimed that my work wasn’t art.
I will find ways to include other artists such as Felicia Galati and Irena Kagansky. The intention is to show, first, that I am not unique among artists as a person who does not sit easily with being labelled disabled, and secondly, that I have influenced such artists.
Floor to 3 1/2 feet
The concept is to appeal to children and others who are unlikely to be interested in language driven information. Spinmaster will donate four Aquadoodles. These devices allow drawing, finger and hand prints, and written messages. The message slowly disappears in a few minutes. We can arrange a camera that takes a picture of the design/message, to preserve it and project the growing collection of messages in a slowly moving pattern on the walls and perhaps on hung-from-ceiling panels.
Colourful, abstract paintings will also be hung in this area, perhaps six of mine and another six from Laser Eagle artists, featuring Felicia Galati. They will be unframed canvas boards, solidly attached to the wall and covered with a material like Plexiglas that can be easily cleaned off.
Six feet up…
The Marsha Forest Centre will collaborate to refurbish and/or redesign some of my PATH’s and other graphically designed depictions on newsprint, typically banners that are 8 by 3 ½ feet. The themes will indicate movement from early to later understandings of Inclusion. The newsprint will be “fixed” and can be mounted so as to be moved for the tour.
These will intermingle with the preserved drawings and messages from the Aquadoodles.
3 ½ feet to six
(Please note: exact dimensions of paintings will follow as soon as the basic design is agreed on.)
“Dead Space” of the South Wall:
“My Community” – acrylic on canvas, not framed, approx. 4 by 2 1/2 by 2 inches, accompanied by text about my being ejected from the organization that I started to flow individualized funding to coop members who need personal assistance;
photos of Irene Kagansky in the Book of Judith choir, text from my blog entry about her, and a display of one of her poems;
“Vulnerability” – acrylic on newsprint, framed and glazed, 29 in by 23 in by 1 in, on the South/West wall adjacent to exit, with text about being told I’m not an artist.
East Wall
This area will be used for an extensive exploration of the Laser Eagles Art Guild, including:
video on tracking and tracker training
about 4 framed paintings (dimensions to follow shortly)
photographs of artists at work
statements from the Etobicoke Art Gallery where our work has been displayed an exhibition of Felicia Galati’s work, pictures of her painting and an article that I wrote for the Centennial Flame project acknowledging her gifts (English, French, Text & Audio)
an area for me or other Laser Eagle artists to demonstrate how we paint. This area will not be continuously be used of course and so at other times paintings on easels can be left on display and cordoned off for security purposes.
North Wall – larger area
This will be the People area. It will be organized in sections relative to the important communities of my life.
The area for the Wisdom City Team will include a painting called “Boats”, which is acrylic on canvas, and needs to be framed. It will also include a video slide presentation of people assisting me to climb a rock wall on a cruise ship. The short article that I wrote about this called “Shoes” will be displayed in such a way that it can be read or listened to. Likely other artifacts, collages and text relative to participation will be displayed, (I’m making it up here guys!)
Similar displays will be created with a painting, text and video for other communities as mentioned in the beginning of this document.
In addition to being organized by communities, we will use a “path” that is painted on the wall to demonstrate how my art has progressed from 1984 to now. I will use 4 or 5 unframed paintings, (these may be framed by the ROM if this is their preference). I will also use quotes and text to demonstrate shifts in my thinking about Inclusion.
Following a progression, everything about the Book of Judith play will be around the doorway which is in the west side of the North Wall.
North Wall – smaller area, and West Wall
This area will be used to demonstrate Resources. I will work with Motion Specialties to have a puff and sip, and a touch plate system available for show, and video demonstrating how people drive their wheelchairs and type on computers with these systems. We will also provide video of artists painting using the lasers, and when a Laser Eagle artist is present we will provide lasers for people to attempt tracking themselves.
Central Display Panel
This will be used on both sides for video, text and perhaps 4 paintings (framed) to demonstrate the importance of dreaming.
I have a large 10” diameter Dreamcatcher made by a young aboriginal man with autism. I will display pictures of him creating the Dreamcatcher. This artefact needs to be repaired and cleaned, and hung high enough to not be vulnerable to passersby.
Questions…
Insurable value??? How does that get calculated?
How to represent “Place”??
I’m sure there are many others!
Conclusion
Once again, thank you for this opportunity and please provide extensive feedback so that I may quickly get to work on creating and finding the resources and artefacts that will make this exhibit extraordinary.
Saturday, December 18, 2010
December 18, 2010
I made $0 today. Dad paid the $26 to fix the tire. Tomorrow I will make nothing and on Monday I will make $500.
I rested today, levelled up twice in Farmville, did some Wisdom preparation for our course completion night, some ROM related stuff, and visited with Steve for a couple of hours. Then I went Christmas shopping with my hyper eleven year old friend, Kevin, from down the hall. His mother, Sherry, practically worshipped me when I picked him up. I can only imagine that he is a handful – the kind of child that REALLY needs a whole village to raise him.
Yet having him around as he has been for the last eight days feels good mostly. Boundaries are needed – yes. I amused and shocked myself when I first saw that he had taken a half a pie out of its box and put it on his personal plate! There was no measured thought in my parent-like response to that one! But both the wanting to and being able to effectively intervene were right there, and it felt good! Yes, he can be safe with me.
Otherwise we rode in the car, shopped at a used everything store for Christmas stuff and ate together. I learned that the current word for “very good” is “Bam”. It feels good to know that too.
I realize that I present questions, suggestions, alternatives and explanations to Kevin that often make no sense to him or of no interest. Tonight I decided that this is not a problem. I recalled how Dad talked endlessly at a level usually just out of reach, and continuously presented reading material and other information that had nothing to do with my reality. But he kept in touch somehow with my world as I think I am with Kevin’s. I think this because Kevin keeps on coming back for more.
When I was ready and willing to be available I had Dad’s world already with me. So I felt OK today with explaining to a fidgety eleven year old how one gets a driver’s license while he wasn’t listening or comprehending much, yet was also hanging in for the whole experience.
A poor kid with labels based on his perception differences with a great Mom in a bunch of fractured relationships – half a hallway away. It has taken fifteen months and two parties to find them, or rather, for them to be willing to come close. I held those parties with Peter’s assistance because of genuinely believing in WPIT, Giftedness and John McKnight style community development.
I feel like I am on a number of thresholds and that something is breaking my way. Can it be that once again the universe is willing for me to have my dreams come true? Actually I imagine that the Universe has always been willing. It’s just that it is never just about me and so whole worlds must shift for things to line up. They are shifting.
Perhaps the Universe is with me as my Dad was with me when I was ten, or as I am with Kevin now. It is presenting me with the dream, the world and the pathways. However I can only dimly catch the drift right now. Just the same I am getting that there is a drift to catch and I am willing. Is it possible that I am now also close to being able?
I rested today, levelled up twice in Farmville, did some Wisdom preparation for our course completion night, some ROM related stuff, and visited with Steve for a couple of hours. Then I went Christmas shopping with my hyper eleven year old friend, Kevin, from down the hall. His mother, Sherry, practically worshipped me when I picked him up. I can only imagine that he is a handful – the kind of child that REALLY needs a whole village to raise him.
Yet having him around as he has been for the last eight days feels good mostly. Boundaries are needed – yes. I amused and shocked myself when I first saw that he had taken a half a pie out of its box and put it on his personal plate! There was no measured thought in my parent-like response to that one! But both the wanting to and being able to effectively intervene were right there, and it felt good! Yes, he can be safe with me.
Otherwise we rode in the car, shopped at a used everything store for Christmas stuff and ate together. I learned that the current word for “very good” is “Bam”. It feels good to know that too.
I realize that I present questions, suggestions, alternatives and explanations to Kevin that often make no sense to him or of no interest. Tonight I decided that this is not a problem. I recalled how Dad talked endlessly at a level usually just out of reach, and continuously presented reading material and other information that had nothing to do with my reality. But he kept in touch somehow with my world as I think I am with Kevin’s. I think this because Kevin keeps on coming back for more.
When I was ready and willing to be available I had Dad’s world already with me. So I felt OK today with explaining to a fidgety eleven year old how one gets a driver’s license while he wasn’t listening or comprehending much, yet was also hanging in for the whole experience.
A poor kid with labels based on his perception differences with a great Mom in a bunch of fractured relationships – half a hallway away. It has taken fifteen months and two parties to find them, or rather, for them to be willing to come close. I held those parties with Peter’s assistance because of genuinely believing in WPIT, Giftedness and John McKnight style community development.
I feel like I am on a number of thresholds and that something is breaking my way. Can it be that once again the universe is willing for me to have my dreams come true? Actually I imagine that the Universe has always been willing. It’s just that it is never just about me and so whole worlds must shift for things to line up. They are shifting.
Perhaps the Universe is with me as my Dad was with me when I was ten, or as I am with Kevin now. It is presenting me with the dream, the world and the pathways. However I can only dimly catch the drift right now. Just the same I am getting that there is a drift to catch and I am willing. Is it possible that I am now also close to being able?
Thursday, December 16, 2010
December 16, 2010
Sunday, Wednesday and tonight I spent considerable time with a child. It makes me appreciate SO much that I don’t have one.
He likes me, though, and I like him. Regardless I’m not set up for it in my living space or psychologically. It gives me new understanding why other people who use personal assistance have worked hard to create a particular type of support to help them raise children. Without that it’s a real challenge to get the kid to keep his sticky fingers off the keyboard while his incompatible “educational” game is threatening to melt down my operating system.
It seems like I have spent a lot of time and energy lately trying to reassert control – “my boundaries” as they say now. I noticed recently that I have greatly increased my patrolling – frequent trips through the apartment to ensure that things have been put away where they belong, room has been left on the floor to permit free passage of my wheelchair, Peter’s stuff is in Peter’s spaces, table tops are cleared of things whose purpose is incompatible with the function of the table – even regularly counting what’s left of the eggs, toilet paper rolls, tissue boxes, etc. In such ways I have become my Mother.
Part of this is because with Peter here, four other personal assistants coming weekly, a great deal of WPIT and Laser Eagles planning going on in the space and now intentionally offering hospitality to neighbours – including an eleven year old boy – everyone’s needs for safety, storage, secure work space, etc. must be met. Those needs may exist for an hour or for months. Once again, I have gotten fairly good at understanding and accommodating the requirements of my assistants. Adding a housemate and a half-a-dozen neighbours created a different dynamic that invites stress and chaos.
Another factor behind my increased control freakiness belongs squarely to the “Third Cycle”. Since it’s clear that I will live and I have a passion to get back in the game of inclusion, I must vastly increase my resources. I have about a $15,000/year shortfall in paying my personal assistants. I have large living costs. Lots of things cost double because of been accompanied – bus fare, meals, hotel rooms, rent. Most importantly the research and project development needs for WPIT will be/are significant.
I used to be very good at making money, especially when Marsha was around to remind me to keep at it and to promote me. Then I got slack. As the end of Cycle 2 crept up on me I grew content to live the life of a very poor person,
But Cycle 3 is now very much underway and I must leave the ODSP world soon – perhaps February. My intentions are set on a functioning Judith Snow/World Peace through Inclusion Foundation with assets not less than $6 million by the end of 2011!
I am learning again how to make money. I am getting coaching. I am seeing how I got stuck in lots of side tracks, from not wanting to lose my connection with vulnerable people to enjoying hanging out with the stories of how hard it is and in enjoying too much the dreaming of what we could do next.
What works is to take the action that reliably brings in the money. I set a goal of making $500 a day, five days a week. Yesterday I made $550. Today I made $100. Tomorrow I will make $500.
He likes me, though, and I like him. Regardless I’m not set up for it in my living space or psychologically. It gives me new understanding why other people who use personal assistance have worked hard to create a particular type of support to help them raise children. Without that it’s a real challenge to get the kid to keep his sticky fingers off the keyboard while his incompatible “educational” game is threatening to melt down my operating system.
It seems like I have spent a lot of time and energy lately trying to reassert control – “my boundaries” as they say now. I noticed recently that I have greatly increased my patrolling – frequent trips through the apartment to ensure that things have been put away where they belong, room has been left on the floor to permit free passage of my wheelchair, Peter’s stuff is in Peter’s spaces, table tops are cleared of things whose purpose is incompatible with the function of the table – even regularly counting what’s left of the eggs, toilet paper rolls, tissue boxes, etc. In such ways I have become my Mother.
Part of this is because with Peter here, four other personal assistants coming weekly, a great deal of WPIT and Laser Eagles planning going on in the space and now intentionally offering hospitality to neighbours – including an eleven year old boy – everyone’s needs for safety, storage, secure work space, etc. must be met. Those needs may exist for an hour or for months. Once again, I have gotten fairly good at understanding and accommodating the requirements of my assistants. Adding a housemate and a half-a-dozen neighbours created a different dynamic that invites stress and chaos.
Another factor behind my increased control freakiness belongs squarely to the “Third Cycle”. Since it’s clear that I will live and I have a passion to get back in the game of inclusion, I must vastly increase my resources. I have about a $15,000/year shortfall in paying my personal assistants. I have large living costs. Lots of things cost double because of been accompanied – bus fare, meals, hotel rooms, rent. Most importantly the research and project development needs for WPIT will be/are significant.
I used to be very good at making money, especially when Marsha was around to remind me to keep at it and to promote me. Then I got slack. As the end of Cycle 2 crept up on me I grew content to live the life of a very poor person,
But Cycle 3 is now very much underway and I must leave the ODSP world soon – perhaps February. My intentions are set on a functioning Judith Snow/World Peace through Inclusion Foundation with assets not less than $6 million by the end of 2011!
I am learning again how to make money. I am getting coaching. I am seeing how I got stuck in lots of side tracks, from not wanting to lose my connection with vulnerable people to enjoying hanging out with the stories of how hard it is and in enjoying too much the dreaming of what we could do next.
What works is to take the action that reliably brings in the money. I set a goal of making $500 a day, five days a week. Yesterday I made $550. Today I made $100. Tomorrow I will make $500.
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
December 14, 2010
I don’t feel much like writing. It’s been a busy day – a Laser Eagles fund raising planning meeting, Laser Eagles itself where I painted five small pieces, a little shopping and finally a Book of Judith debrief. Interspersed were the usual things that add up to hours and hours of time allocated – getting up, bedpan trips, getting to, in, out and away from the car (especially in winter where cleaning the wheelchair wheels becomes part of the process), e-mail, (Farmville!), eating and preparing for the next – meal, day, meeting, project, assistant, etc. There are days and parts of days where one more interruption, thought, task, whatever seems much, much too much. Today has been like that!
On top of this is the nagging question in my head – “Am I actually doing anything?” Someone today asked me, “What’s new?”, and I had no answer except, “The ROM”, which she already knew about. Why is it that so much energy and activity is expended on so little? Even more, what compels me either to be always “doing” or asking “Why”.
Anyway it seems like a chore to write tonight, yet important to keep on going. It’s a commitment now, and keeping it helps me continue to have faith in myself.
Part of it is to keep on capturing the edges of this fabulous moment in my life when inclusion is emerging at an entirely new level. Here are recent examples:
- real progress with letting go and having something that I created and care about be picked up and nurtured by others – Kimberley with Laser Eagles, Mike with WPIT
- inching patiently through the structures and processes of the ROM so that they may genuinely be partners in creating something inclusive
- living in my home and neighbourhood like I actually want to and do belong here
- sneaking up on writing another book
- designing with colleagues a touring version of the Book of Judith that is authentically vulnerable and will draw host communities into the inclusive experience
- staying in a role on the Toronto Wisdom City Team for more than a few months, confronting what hasn’t worked and taking on reaching new successes.
Now a real question is, “Can I make all of this packaged in the sort of profile that I will get paid enough money so that my living AND enhanced participation costs are paid, and my personal assistants’ wages are covered ongoingly - deep into the future?”
Can my art and my writing make money?
Can my ideas, dreams and experience make money?
Why not? Somehow it seems more likely that they can and always could except where I have been putting unnecessary barriers in the way.
I have a friend whose advice I am seeking regularly about money who says it is simply a matter of saying what I am going to do to make money, then doing it. No more hype, getting ready, anxiety, whatever – just choose to do something, then do it!
I have had considerable practice with just that and creating these daily writings.
Now I will copy the pattern over to making money!
On top of this is the nagging question in my head – “Am I actually doing anything?” Someone today asked me, “What’s new?”, and I had no answer except, “The ROM”, which she already knew about. Why is it that so much energy and activity is expended on so little? Even more, what compels me either to be always “doing” or asking “Why”.
Anyway it seems like a chore to write tonight, yet important to keep on going. It’s a commitment now, and keeping it helps me continue to have faith in myself.
Part of it is to keep on capturing the edges of this fabulous moment in my life when inclusion is emerging at an entirely new level. Here are recent examples:
- real progress with letting go and having something that I created and care about be picked up and nurtured by others – Kimberley with Laser Eagles, Mike with WPIT
- inching patiently through the structures and processes of the ROM so that they may genuinely be partners in creating something inclusive
- living in my home and neighbourhood like I actually want to and do belong here
- sneaking up on writing another book
- designing with colleagues a touring version of the Book of Judith that is authentically vulnerable and will draw host communities into the inclusive experience
- staying in a role on the Toronto Wisdom City Team for more than a few months, confronting what hasn’t worked and taking on reaching new successes.
Now a real question is, “Can I make all of this packaged in the sort of profile that I will get paid enough money so that my living AND enhanced participation costs are paid, and my personal assistants’ wages are covered ongoingly - deep into the future?”
Can my art and my writing make money?
Can my ideas, dreams and experience make money?
Why not? Somehow it seems more likely that they can and always could except where I have been putting unnecessary barriers in the way.
I have a friend whose advice I am seeking regularly about money who says it is simply a matter of saying what I am going to do to make money, then doing it. No more hype, getting ready, anxiety, whatever – just choose to do something, then do it!
I have had considerable practice with just that and creating these daily writings.
Now I will copy the pattern over to making money!
Friday, December 10, 2010
December 10, 2010
It’s very late and I am just getting down to the writing. It’s so tempting to simply dig up another old article. If I can’t find one I can feel good about, then there are so many old e-mails. It would take much more digging and editing to reuse them. I have promised myself for years that “someday” I will do just that – dig and edit – pan for gold?!?
But I don’t want to lose the discipline of writing to bring forth expression over communication. Reusing what I have done before is not the same as newly writing. I am not saying I was “bad” to post articles for three nights. It was a sort of expression for sure – an expression of me accommodating to a “waiting” time within myself. But posting old articles is not the process that encourages me to dig in and reach for as yet uncreated words that are true for me right now.
It is a new discipline for me to not be trying to prove something to someone. When I have written before this blog I was either trying to find my own voice within a space where many other voices were tempting me or insisting that I say something else, or I was trying to push back another – usually hegemonic – voice, or I was trying to explain something. It is not that those impulses are not present now – they are! Rather this writing is intended to be more like painting. It is more about seeing differently who I am for no other reason than seeing it.
It is not a pure motivation. It is all jumbled together. I do, however, get real, seemingly accidental, glimpses of created point of view – me simply perceiving.
It’s worth writing at 11:30pm to get those glimpses and I don’t want to get too lazy to keep the space within which they occur.
Jen, the masseuse, was here today. She has begun to focus some of her time on my head – cranial-sacral work. Working near my eyes brought a new vision. I saw two divergent rows of crystal butterflies, still and hard, translucent and shining, and yet vibrantly alive.
I believe that I have great capacity for creativity and for dreaming. In this vision I had the impression that I have much greater capacity for creativity and for dreaming than I have been aware of – in the sense that I did not realize that such a capacity was available to a human being – not just not available before to me.
I had (have?) a deeper sense of the value of dreaming. I dream powerfully. In this world the time given to dream is greatly truncated. In this vision I felt grateful and centred in acknowledging my role and gift as a dreamer. I could clearly see that, although dreaming isn’t all there is to creating reality, it IS fundamental, and not just at the beginning of things, but all the way through.
My odd body includes a vast projection room where dreaming goes on continuously. My oversized head includes a brain within which unlimited “holographic” designs of potential futures are easily constructed and shifted. Apparently my capacity is exceptional and even largely untapped by ME.
When Sarah, Michael and I were talking to ROM people today I was very strengthened by my awareness that I can continuously dream in spaces where people are saying “No” to parts of the picture. It simply requires a shift, not an end. By the end of our hour together, there was a clear sense that everyone was in “Yes” space!
But I don’t want to lose the discipline of writing to bring forth expression over communication. Reusing what I have done before is not the same as newly writing. I am not saying I was “bad” to post articles for three nights. It was a sort of expression for sure – an expression of me accommodating to a “waiting” time within myself. But posting old articles is not the process that encourages me to dig in and reach for as yet uncreated words that are true for me right now.
It is a new discipline for me to not be trying to prove something to someone. When I have written before this blog I was either trying to find my own voice within a space where many other voices were tempting me or insisting that I say something else, or I was trying to push back another – usually hegemonic – voice, or I was trying to explain something. It is not that those impulses are not present now – they are! Rather this writing is intended to be more like painting. It is more about seeing differently who I am for no other reason than seeing it.
It is not a pure motivation. It is all jumbled together. I do, however, get real, seemingly accidental, glimpses of created point of view – me simply perceiving.
It’s worth writing at 11:30pm to get those glimpses and I don’t want to get too lazy to keep the space within which they occur.
Jen, the masseuse, was here today. She has begun to focus some of her time on my head – cranial-sacral work. Working near my eyes brought a new vision. I saw two divergent rows of crystal butterflies, still and hard, translucent and shining, and yet vibrantly alive.
I believe that I have great capacity for creativity and for dreaming. In this vision I had the impression that I have much greater capacity for creativity and for dreaming than I have been aware of – in the sense that I did not realize that such a capacity was available to a human being – not just not available before to me.
I had (have?) a deeper sense of the value of dreaming. I dream powerfully. In this world the time given to dream is greatly truncated. In this vision I felt grateful and centred in acknowledging my role and gift as a dreamer. I could clearly see that, although dreaming isn’t all there is to creating reality, it IS fundamental, and not just at the beginning of things, but all the way through.
My odd body includes a vast projection room where dreaming goes on continuously. My oversized head includes a brain within which unlimited “holographic” designs of potential futures are easily constructed and shifted. Apparently my capacity is exceptional and even largely untapped by ME.
When Sarah, Michael and I were talking to ROM people today I was very strengthened by my awareness that I can continuously dream in spaces where people are saying “No” to parts of the picture. It simply requires a shift, not an end. By the end of our hour together, there was a clear sense that everyone was in “Yes” space!
Thursday, December 9, 2010
December 9, 2010
One more article! (I promise I will write anew tomorrow.)
The Story
by Judith A. Snow, MA
Prologue
Many groups of people who are marginalized today have a history of their people that gives an explanation of present day reality. For example, African-Americans
and African-Canadians have stories that tell how their ancestors were enslaved and brought to North America. Stories tell how some were guided by maps encoded into songs as they traveled the "underground railroad" and escaped to freedom.
These traditional stories give current members of the group, especially the children, an explanation for the poverty, discrimination, exploitation and hostility
they experience in the present. As the child grows, she or he may reject these interpretations and adopt or invent others. Even so, the stories have served a purpose. The stories give members of the group a way to defend themselves against the negative stereotypes that are attributed to them by others who have the power to discriminate and exploit.
Even while the material effects of marginalization are being experienced, the child has an inner anchor to sustain a positive identity for herself or himself. It
can be remembered that it is not her or his inevitable fate to be so abused. The opportunity remains to find a way to work for greater freedom and respect.
Children labeled with disability come to this world as members of every cultural group that occupies this world. Almost always they are born to parents who are
not themselves viewed as disabled. Those who surround them are almost always unfamiliar with the fact that handicappist stereotyping disguises and renders invisible the person's actual abilities and contributions. Their parents have no story to counter the negative beliefs about bodies and minds that function in unusual ways. In fact, their parents may very likely be champions of these stereotypes.
In such situations children have no way of knowing that there are other ways of knowing themselves. They cannot know how to resist adopting these beliefs about themselves. In other words, a labeled child has no choice but to understand themselves as broken, as being a "mistake" or a "defect", as being fundamentally incapable and irresponsible, as being a helpless misfit who is less than able.
For better or worse, human beings are easily molded by and adapt to the symbolic realities that we proclaim to each other. If I say the little white pill will take the pain away, sugar becomes a powerful analgesic. If enough of us believe you are dying, you are very likely to die. Consequently, the child who is labeled as "disabled" inevitably becomes a disabled child - broken, helpless and unable.
When I was seven months of age I was diagnosed as having Spinal Muscular Atrophy, a form of Muscular Dystrophy. I was labeled "severely physically disabled". When I was six years old I remember my father telling me that some U.S. doctors were putting children labeled "mentally retarded" to death, saying
that society should not have to bear the burden of caring for these children. Dad, who grew up in rural England, explained that in his youth children with "mental retardation" were able to grow potatoes along with everyone else. They were a regular, accepted part of his community. But children like me were killed. People felt they did not have enough resources to support someone who would likely not be able to grow food.
My father's story was harsh. But that is not what I heard when I was six. I heard that I had enemies and that I had better pay attention. I heard that he and Mom were going against the mainstream and that meant they loved me and that we were all vulnerable. I heard that the way to gain acceptance among strangers was to contribute to the well-being of the community.
Outside of this one occasion I was raised without an orientation to the prejudice daily inculcated into my being. I was in my thirties before it really began to occur to me that I was my own worst enemy. I had adopted all the ableist stereotypes as being realities of my true self. Consequently I cooperated while others,
wittingly or not, hurt my body, deflected my mind, impoverished my circumstances, and diminished my abilities and contributions.
I have long thought that living as a labeled person requires the skills to live as an alien in a misunderstanding, often hostile, foreign territory. It would be helpful to have an orientation to the ways of the foreign inhabitants. I often have wished to have a reorienting story, such as might have been told to me as I sat in my mother's lap, still a babe, if my mother had known I needed such a story. I invented such a story.
The Story
by Judith A. Snow, MA
You are not from here. You are more like the people who are from here than they can imagine. But they find it difficult to see you for who you are or to like you.
You have chosen to live your life among these people. This is a dangerous choice. You made this choice because you love these people. They need you.
You must remember that it takes a long time for most of these people to see that you are alive, and that you have a heart, and that you are trying to give something to them.
Some of them will never see you as anything more than a puppet at best. You must find people who will see that you are alive. You must help them over and over again to keep on seeing that you are alive. If you do not help people to see that you are alive, you will fall asleep. The only life you will have is the life of a
puppet filled with other people's stories. They may grow tired of playing with you; they may break you; they may throw you away; they may destroy you.
When you find people who can see you, you must learn to live among them. You must learn to believe most of what they believe, and to act in most of the same ways as they act. People who can see you will tell you how to do this. You must listen closely and watch carefully even when it is tiresome. If you do not strive to become like them, the others who cannot see you will drive you away. Even those who can see you will not be able to hold on to you.
However, you must not strive to be completely like these people or you will break yourself.
While you are among these people you must constantly search for ways to hang on to your true self and your true way of being even while you are acting like others as much as possible. As some of these people get to know you better and better they can help you find your true self and your own way of being.
Be courageous in asking these people to help you be your true self. Be courageous in doing this even when it hurts you and when it hurts them. It is your way to love these people. It is your way to heal them. It is your way to help them renew themselves. It is why you are choosing to live among them.
The Story
by Judith A. Snow, MA
Prologue
Many groups of people who are marginalized today have a history of their people that gives an explanation of present day reality. For example, African-Americans
and African-Canadians have stories that tell how their ancestors were enslaved and brought to North America. Stories tell how some were guided by maps encoded into songs as they traveled the "underground railroad" and escaped to freedom.
These traditional stories give current members of the group, especially the children, an explanation for the poverty, discrimination, exploitation and hostility
they experience in the present. As the child grows, she or he may reject these interpretations and adopt or invent others. Even so, the stories have served a purpose. The stories give members of the group a way to defend themselves against the negative stereotypes that are attributed to them by others who have the power to discriminate and exploit.
Even while the material effects of marginalization are being experienced, the child has an inner anchor to sustain a positive identity for herself or himself. It
can be remembered that it is not her or his inevitable fate to be so abused. The opportunity remains to find a way to work for greater freedom and respect.
Children labeled with disability come to this world as members of every cultural group that occupies this world. Almost always they are born to parents who are
not themselves viewed as disabled. Those who surround them are almost always unfamiliar with the fact that handicappist stereotyping disguises and renders invisible the person's actual abilities and contributions. Their parents have no story to counter the negative beliefs about bodies and minds that function in unusual ways. In fact, their parents may very likely be champions of these stereotypes.
In such situations children have no way of knowing that there are other ways of knowing themselves. They cannot know how to resist adopting these beliefs about themselves. In other words, a labeled child has no choice but to understand themselves as broken, as being a "mistake" or a "defect", as being fundamentally incapable and irresponsible, as being a helpless misfit who is less than able.
For better or worse, human beings are easily molded by and adapt to the symbolic realities that we proclaim to each other. If I say the little white pill will take the pain away, sugar becomes a powerful analgesic. If enough of us believe you are dying, you are very likely to die. Consequently, the child who is labeled as "disabled" inevitably becomes a disabled child - broken, helpless and unable.
When I was seven months of age I was diagnosed as having Spinal Muscular Atrophy, a form of Muscular Dystrophy. I was labeled "severely physically disabled". When I was six years old I remember my father telling me that some U.S. doctors were putting children labeled "mentally retarded" to death, saying
that society should not have to bear the burden of caring for these children. Dad, who grew up in rural England, explained that in his youth children with "mental retardation" were able to grow potatoes along with everyone else. They were a regular, accepted part of his community. But children like me were killed. People felt they did not have enough resources to support someone who would likely not be able to grow food.
My father's story was harsh. But that is not what I heard when I was six. I heard that I had enemies and that I had better pay attention. I heard that he and Mom were going against the mainstream and that meant they loved me and that we were all vulnerable. I heard that the way to gain acceptance among strangers was to contribute to the well-being of the community.
Outside of this one occasion I was raised without an orientation to the prejudice daily inculcated into my being. I was in my thirties before it really began to occur to me that I was my own worst enemy. I had adopted all the ableist stereotypes as being realities of my true self. Consequently I cooperated while others,
wittingly or not, hurt my body, deflected my mind, impoverished my circumstances, and diminished my abilities and contributions.
I have long thought that living as a labeled person requires the skills to live as an alien in a misunderstanding, often hostile, foreign territory. It would be helpful to have an orientation to the ways of the foreign inhabitants. I often have wished to have a reorienting story, such as might have been told to me as I sat in my mother's lap, still a babe, if my mother had known I needed such a story. I invented such a story.
The Story
by Judith A. Snow, MA
You are not from here. You are more like the people who are from here than they can imagine. But they find it difficult to see you for who you are or to like you.
You have chosen to live your life among these people. This is a dangerous choice. You made this choice because you love these people. They need you.
You must remember that it takes a long time for most of these people to see that you are alive, and that you have a heart, and that you are trying to give something to them.
Some of them will never see you as anything more than a puppet at best. You must find people who will see that you are alive. You must help them over and over again to keep on seeing that you are alive. If you do not help people to see that you are alive, you will fall asleep. The only life you will have is the life of a
puppet filled with other people's stories. They may grow tired of playing with you; they may break you; they may throw you away; they may destroy you.
When you find people who can see you, you must learn to live among them. You must learn to believe most of what they believe, and to act in most of the same ways as they act. People who can see you will tell you how to do this. You must listen closely and watch carefully even when it is tiresome. If you do not strive to become like them, the others who cannot see you will drive you away. Even those who can see you will not be able to hold on to you.
However, you must not strive to be completely like these people or you will break yourself.
While you are among these people you must constantly search for ways to hang on to your true self and your true way of being even while you are acting like others as much as possible. As some of these people get to know you better and better they can help you find your true self and your own way of being.
Be courageous in asking these people to help you be your true self. Be courageous in doing this even when it hurts you and when it hurts them. It is your way to love these people. It is your way to heal them. It is your way to help them renew themselves. It is why you are choosing to live among them.
Monday, December 6, 2010
December 6, 2010
I have been actively writing a brief for the ROM so tonight I will share something I wrote on April 15, 2009.
Struggling Out of the Disability Box
Recently I viewed the documentary “Shameless” which is a celebration of Bonnie Sherr Klein’s return to filmmaking after being rendered unable to pursue her career for many years by two strokes. The video is shot in company with four others who are similarly accomplished artists who self identify as disabled. The following is the text of my comments to Catherine Frazee who is featured in the documentary and who is a professor at Ryerson University’s School of Disability Studies. I am hopeful that she will post a reply.
“I feel estranged from the growing crowd of advocates with disability who are actively giving definition to the disability culture. I watched the video with longing and sadness, of course recognizing myself sitting behind you in the scene where you spoke at the Latimer vigil that cold February morning. I was not chosen to be a part of creating Shameless. If I had been asked I likely would have said “No”. I am not part of the Ryerson gang. Though I am an artist, and paint regularly along side of others who are considered to be disabled, likely I will rarely choose or be asked to participate in disability arts events. I’m not complaining – I exclude myself.
The watershed is simply that I continue to believe in and to explore the possibility that I am not disabled, and that no one else is either. This mission of mine drives a wedge between me and my colleagues, such as yourself who is avidly creating disability pride and disability culture.
Last night and today some thoughts gelled, so I write to clarify and share them, and hopefully elicit a response.
In Shameless Bonnie Sherr said something like: “Once I was a person who made documentaries. Then I was a person with disabilities. Now I am a filmmaker with disabilities.”
What struck me is how in this statement “disability” is pretty much equivalent to “making documentaries”, in the sense of being a vocation or mission. It’s as if Bonnie is saying: “My first and chosen mission in life was to make documentaries, my second, forced/surprise mission was to be disabled, and now I can have both vocations.”
This is interesting to me because I am currently struggling to get myself out of what I see as a career box. Before I became involved in disability rights and inclusion I was training to be a psychological counselor and also interested in Mathematics. The sort of life choices that you are very familiar with presented themselves, and from 1976 until now every career choice has been related to disability. Not to go into details, I am now strongly suspecting that I was recently refused a job due to discrimination based on….. It’s subtle. Certainly the discrimination, if that is what it was, is not a blatant refusal to recognize my abilities. However, my career history cannot document the explicit credentials. Of course it can’t – getting the credentials was never open to me. I have equivalent experience, but it doesn’t look typical. But there in lies the discrimination. Why does it have to look typical?
So disability can indeed be a career. But it is not my ability and function, or absent ability or function, that is the basis of disability as a career. Nor is it Bonnie’s alteration in ability and function. Bonnie is a top notch creator of documentaries, before and since her brain injury, as well as a superlative wife and mother. These are her careers. What makes “disability” a career is our society’s insistence that this is who we are – disabled!
When I examine the word and the concept I see three things.
1) Disability as loss of function – the injured baseball player is placed on the disabled list. Such a person is expected to recover the same functions. When a person such as Bonnie recovers to different functions, or Catherine and Judith build a life without every having certain functions, are we thinking about and experiencing the same phenomenon. I don’t think so.
2) Disability as career. (see above)
3) Disability as opposite or counter to ability. Is a Black person a non-White? Is a woman a non-male? Is a lesbian not a woman? Of course these ideas have existed. Mostly they have been put in history’s waste basket. Why do we choose to explain ourselves in these terms as if ability were a linear phenomenon and our job is to keep on explaining that we didn’t really get the raw end of the stick?
I am struggling in three ways. First I am struggling to know who I am – myself. To the extent that I can own but not be driven by the above named misperceptions, to fight but not be defined by the constant erosion of the supports I use to participate in life, plus not be dominated by the spectre of poverty always lurking and all the other life degrading cultural phenomenon we all face, I am in constant search to know myself as real.
Secondly, I am struggling to make personal assistance visible. I was struck by the absence of personal assistants in Shameless, though this is not meant as a criticism since the presentation was complete in itself. However, neither Pat nor Michael is a typical partner, and there are others besides Pat in your own life who assist you in your creation of your life. I believe that for others to realize that we are not bad copies of the people we should have been, the contributions that we make to those who assist, and they to us, must be made visible and celebrated in the world. This work is also part of ending the hegemony of individualism.
Lastly, I struggle with the invisibility in the disability pride world of those who don’t speak and who are usually labeled as “profoundly developmentally delayed”. Since the early ‘80’s I have intentionally sought to know and understand the experiences and contributions of quiet people - people who live nearly exclusively through the bodies and voices of others. Their presence and contributions are evident, but generally ignored, misrepresented and discouraged. From the “independent living” movement until now not many have been willing to acknowledge that “they are us” too.
I deeply wish that we had another set of words and phrases to express the infinitely rich sphere of ways that human bodies show up on this planet, and the wonderfully rich, uncountable contributions this makes possible. Such words would make visible that human ability and the careers we pursue are related, but not the same, phenomenon. Such language would give us a strong foundation for not just accepting and tolerating, but fully celebrating, diversity. Such conversational capacity would put you and me on the same side of this fundamental liberation movement.
But for now I am simply stuck with saying and writing that I am not and never have been disabled.”
Struggling Out of the Disability Box
Recently I viewed the documentary “Shameless” which is a celebration of Bonnie Sherr Klein’s return to filmmaking after being rendered unable to pursue her career for many years by two strokes. The video is shot in company with four others who are similarly accomplished artists who self identify as disabled. The following is the text of my comments to Catherine Frazee who is featured in the documentary and who is a professor at Ryerson University’s School of Disability Studies. I am hopeful that she will post a reply.
“I feel estranged from the growing crowd of advocates with disability who are actively giving definition to the disability culture. I watched the video with longing and sadness, of course recognizing myself sitting behind you in the scene where you spoke at the Latimer vigil that cold February morning. I was not chosen to be a part of creating Shameless. If I had been asked I likely would have said “No”. I am not part of the Ryerson gang. Though I am an artist, and paint regularly along side of others who are considered to be disabled, likely I will rarely choose or be asked to participate in disability arts events. I’m not complaining – I exclude myself.
The watershed is simply that I continue to believe in and to explore the possibility that I am not disabled, and that no one else is either. This mission of mine drives a wedge between me and my colleagues, such as yourself who is avidly creating disability pride and disability culture.
Last night and today some thoughts gelled, so I write to clarify and share them, and hopefully elicit a response.
In Shameless Bonnie Sherr said something like: “Once I was a person who made documentaries. Then I was a person with disabilities. Now I am a filmmaker with disabilities.”
What struck me is how in this statement “disability” is pretty much equivalent to “making documentaries”, in the sense of being a vocation or mission. It’s as if Bonnie is saying: “My first and chosen mission in life was to make documentaries, my second, forced/surprise mission was to be disabled, and now I can have both vocations.”
This is interesting to me because I am currently struggling to get myself out of what I see as a career box. Before I became involved in disability rights and inclusion I was training to be a psychological counselor and also interested in Mathematics. The sort of life choices that you are very familiar with presented themselves, and from 1976 until now every career choice has been related to disability. Not to go into details, I am now strongly suspecting that I was recently refused a job due to discrimination based on….. It’s subtle. Certainly the discrimination, if that is what it was, is not a blatant refusal to recognize my abilities. However, my career history cannot document the explicit credentials. Of course it can’t – getting the credentials was never open to me. I have equivalent experience, but it doesn’t look typical. But there in lies the discrimination. Why does it have to look typical?
So disability can indeed be a career. But it is not my ability and function, or absent ability or function, that is the basis of disability as a career. Nor is it Bonnie’s alteration in ability and function. Bonnie is a top notch creator of documentaries, before and since her brain injury, as well as a superlative wife and mother. These are her careers. What makes “disability” a career is our society’s insistence that this is who we are – disabled!
When I examine the word and the concept I see three things.
1) Disability as loss of function – the injured baseball player is placed on the disabled list. Such a person is expected to recover the same functions. When a person such as Bonnie recovers to different functions, or Catherine and Judith build a life without every having certain functions, are we thinking about and experiencing the same phenomenon. I don’t think so.
2) Disability as career. (see above)
3) Disability as opposite or counter to ability. Is a Black person a non-White? Is a woman a non-male? Is a lesbian not a woman? Of course these ideas have existed. Mostly they have been put in history’s waste basket. Why do we choose to explain ourselves in these terms as if ability were a linear phenomenon and our job is to keep on explaining that we didn’t really get the raw end of the stick?
I am struggling in three ways. First I am struggling to know who I am – myself. To the extent that I can own but not be driven by the above named misperceptions, to fight but not be defined by the constant erosion of the supports I use to participate in life, plus not be dominated by the spectre of poverty always lurking and all the other life degrading cultural phenomenon we all face, I am in constant search to know myself as real.
Secondly, I am struggling to make personal assistance visible. I was struck by the absence of personal assistants in Shameless, though this is not meant as a criticism since the presentation was complete in itself. However, neither Pat nor Michael is a typical partner, and there are others besides Pat in your own life who assist you in your creation of your life. I believe that for others to realize that we are not bad copies of the people we should have been, the contributions that we make to those who assist, and they to us, must be made visible and celebrated in the world. This work is also part of ending the hegemony of individualism.
Lastly, I struggle with the invisibility in the disability pride world of those who don’t speak and who are usually labeled as “profoundly developmentally delayed”. Since the early ‘80’s I have intentionally sought to know and understand the experiences and contributions of quiet people - people who live nearly exclusively through the bodies and voices of others. Their presence and contributions are evident, but generally ignored, misrepresented and discouraged. From the “independent living” movement until now not many have been willing to acknowledge that “they are us” too.
I deeply wish that we had another set of words and phrases to express the infinitely rich sphere of ways that human bodies show up on this planet, and the wonderfully rich, uncountable contributions this makes possible. Such words would make visible that human ability and the careers we pursue are related, but not the same, phenomenon. Such language would give us a strong foundation for not just accepting and tolerating, but fully celebrating, diversity. Such conversational capacity would put you and me on the same side of this fundamental liberation movement.
But for now I am simply stuck with saying and writing that I am not and never have been disabled.”
Sunday, December 5, 2010
December 5, 2010
Tonight I will write some about how I am designing the exhibit - in my head.
To reiterate, I want people to be exposed to and potentially fall in love with the understanding that Inclusion is a multi-dimensional approach to building a vibrant society where social and economic benefits accrue from garnering the gifts of diversity.
The room lends itself neatly to the paradigm of structuring inclusive support that I used to call Harmonizing the Four Things Worth Doing – the paradigm that formed much of the basis of the 1991 book: “What’s Really Worth Doing and How to Do It”, still available through Inclusion Press. It looks like this:
Harmonizing the Four Things Worth Doing
The regular path that visitors who are merely going through the room with no intention of staying will be clearly marked as “The Normal Path – Do Not Stop or Look Around”. All along it will be enticements to step aside and stay awhile, learn something and stay awhile.
In addition, the room will be conceptually divided into three layers. The middle layer will be for language, including talking videos, text and more realistic paintings. The floor to about 3 ½ feet up will be for playful, interactive and colourful objects and paintings. Six feet up will be for projections, both colourful and those statements and photographs captured and recorded by visitors.
The groupings of videos, pictures and photographs on the central panel will focus on dreaming. The rest of the display space will focus on place, people and resources, indicating how different communities in my life have shaped my expressions of inclusion. Finally the “dead” space between the “Normal Road” and the fourth wall will be reserved for statements about barriers, such as hanging my first framed painting where my tracker was an art therapist who claimed that my work wasn’t art.
I will find ways to include other artists such as Felicia G. and Irena K. The intention is to show, first, that I am not unique among artists as a person who does not sit easily with being labelled disabled, and secondly, that I have influenced such artists.
Preliminary thoughts! More soon!
To reiterate, I want people to be exposed to and potentially fall in love with the understanding that Inclusion is a multi-dimensional approach to building a vibrant society where social and economic benefits accrue from garnering the gifts of diversity.
The room lends itself neatly to the paradigm of structuring inclusive support that I used to call Harmonizing the Four Things Worth Doing – the paradigm that formed much of the basis of the 1991 book: “What’s Really Worth Doing and How to Do It”, still available through Inclusion Press. It looks like this:
Harmonizing the Four Things Worth Doing
The regular path that visitors who are merely going through the room with no intention of staying will be clearly marked as “The Normal Path – Do Not Stop or Look Around”. All along it will be enticements to step aside and stay awhile, learn something and stay awhile.
In addition, the room will be conceptually divided into three layers. The middle layer will be for language, including talking videos, text and more realistic paintings. The floor to about 3 ½ feet up will be for playful, interactive and colourful objects and paintings. Six feet up will be for projections, both colourful and those statements and photographs captured and recorded by visitors.
The groupings of videos, pictures and photographs on the central panel will focus on dreaming. The rest of the display space will focus on place, people and resources, indicating how different communities in my life have shaped my expressions of inclusion. Finally the “dead” space between the “Normal Road” and the fourth wall will be reserved for statements about barriers, such as hanging my first framed painting where my tracker was an art therapist who claimed that my work wasn’t art.
I will find ways to include other artists such as Felicia G. and Irena K. The intention is to show, first, that I am not unique among artists as a person who does not sit easily with being labelled disabled, and secondly, that I have influenced such artists.
Preliminary thoughts! More soon!
Thursday, December 2, 2010
December 2, 2010
Gloria and I went to see Wasteland, (Wasteland.com), at the TIFF Bell Lightbox on King Street. There is SO much going on there that Gloria and I are considering getting memberships so to be able to see movies and exhibits for less. It would be a way to reinforce my taking off a day a week to sustain my own wellbeing – and a step up from Farmville!
The movie follows a Brazilian artist who transforms people’s lives as together they turn garbage into art that represents their lives, capacities and dreams.
Afterward, in the exceptionally well designed café that serves the Lightbox, Gloria recorded my words:
“What struck me was that after all the years, as the camera man said, the people who were the garbage pickers were able to lift themselves out from where they were when they saw themselves as artists.
When I became an artist it was that – it didn’t happen all at once, but it happened like that. The process of realizing ever so slowly that I am an artist has given me a place to be, to look at all the other stuff – I’m not trapped being an advocate, fighting to be an advocate. Do you remember how angry and frustrated I got saying over and over again that there is no disability? Saying I am not disabled over and over again created the being of disabled. You can’t ever get out of it.
What if God created art so we can have a place to be so that we can get out of our traps?
When I’m at Laser Eagles and see how the other artists improve in their lives – I realize it’s a wonderful moment when you discover you’re an artist.”
There is a powerful moment when one of the pickers teaches the significance of each moment, each bit of garbage, each person. He is teaching that it is important to recycle not just most cans but ALL cans. He says: “99 is not 100.”
I saw myself in the pickers. I saw the pride, the integrity and the trap. Even to this day I live in a world that sees different capacity as “trash”. I saw that art provided them with a different place to stand and a different perspective wherein they could exercise their natural power.
Can my exhibit provide such a transcendent place?
I am struggling within myself to find images and themes that will open such a powerful space that real life will be present and the rigid hierarchical structure of the ROM will not be able obliterate it. How can such a static, ephemeral moment as walking through an exhibition of my art on the way to the dinosaurs cause a transformative encounter with Inclusion?
There were other pleasures in the experience today. Most of the Lightbox spaces, and also the café within it, are simple and welcoming and also use light and sound to create intimate, comfortable and welcoming ambiance. At the end of the movie I was dancing – for the second time this week!
On another note I added Advil back into my pain management mix today and I have sat up for ten hours! I am hopeful that I have found another clue.
The movie follows a Brazilian artist who transforms people’s lives as together they turn garbage into art that represents their lives, capacities and dreams.
Afterward, in the exceptionally well designed café that serves the Lightbox, Gloria recorded my words:
“What struck me was that after all the years, as the camera man said, the people who were the garbage pickers were able to lift themselves out from where they were when they saw themselves as artists.
When I became an artist it was that – it didn’t happen all at once, but it happened like that. The process of realizing ever so slowly that I am an artist has given me a place to be, to look at all the other stuff – I’m not trapped being an advocate, fighting to be an advocate. Do you remember how angry and frustrated I got saying over and over again that there is no disability? Saying I am not disabled over and over again created the being of disabled. You can’t ever get out of it.
What if God created art so we can have a place to be so that we can get out of our traps?
When I’m at Laser Eagles and see how the other artists improve in their lives – I realize it’s a wonderful moment when you discover you’re an artist.”
There is a powerful moment when one of the pickers teaches the significance of each moment, each bit of garbage, each person. He is teaching that it is important to recycle not just most cans but ALL cans. He says: “99 is not 100.”
I saw myself in the pickers. I saw the pride, the integrity and the trap. Even to this day I live in a world that sees different capacity as “trash”. I saw that art provided them with a different place to stand and a different perspective wherein they could exercise their natural power.
Can my exhibit provide such a transcendent place?
I am struggling within myself to find images and themes that will open such a powerful space that real life will be present and the rigid hierarchical structure of the ROM will not be able obliterate it. How can such a static, ephemeral moment as walking through an exhibition of my art on the way to the dinosaurs cause a transformative encounter with Inclusion?
There were other pleasures in the experience today. Most of the Lightbox spaces, and also the café within it, are simple and welcoming and also use light and sound to create intimate, comfortable and welcoming ambiance. At the end of the movie I was dancing – for the second time this week!
On another note I added Advil back into my pain management mix today and I have sat up for ten hours! I am hopeful that I have found another clue.
Friday, November 26, 2010
November 26, 2010
Moods can be annoying!
Of course with yesterday’s great news there are complications. What will this do to my ODSP income, if anything? How does this affect the people who are expecting me to be more available to WPIT? Already I have had an offer to purchase four paintings from a speculator. Another person wanted me to share the news NOW with a group I haven’t gotten to yet.
None of this changes anything substantial. It just leaves that mood – that unwelcome sense of a “bad moon rising” – that sense of distraction that comes with having multiple agendas to untangle. What of all this is me – my expression?
Perhaps that is the point anyway. What is my expression in the face of being recognized? It’s one thing to be “out” trying to get “in”. It’s quite another, I suppose, to have come home to find that home is no more interested in Inclusion than anywhere else was.
Not that I thought it was – I just got disoriented for a moment! Whoops - sorry.
Inclusion hasn’t happened in the world yet, except for those momentary, seductive occasions that give one both a sense of what’s possible and the necessity to not hope unrealistically. There is still much work to do. The question is what is the good work to do now?
I love the heady beginnings of fun things. The video game project, the ROM. I’m not so fond of the negotiation part – sorting out mine and other’s agendas, often in a competitive stance.
There is nothing wrong with either the competition nor the fact that I don’t like it. In fact this is precisely where I get to show that Inclusion can actually happen. If we/I can come to grips with all the needs and diversities and have it work out with no one left out then the world really will have something to pay attention to!
So can I like it, or at least cease to resist it? Can I be the perfect matador and simply not be there for the moment the bull passes through the cape?
It’s not a challenge I had anticipated but neither is one I am unfamiliar with. This is just taking a Rubik’s cube life to another level.
I wonder when and what I will paint next. My familiar tracker quit this week, and although Mike is a good tracker, if he tracks for me on the days he works as a personal assistant it limits his break time. It seems ironic indeed that at the moment when the world will want to see me paint, I am almost as unprepared to do so as in the beginning in 2004.
So perhaps the genuine question for me to address now, in the few months before the exhibit happens, is who will paint with me in this upcoming year of public scrutiny?
Of course with yesterday’s great news there are complications. What will this do to my ODSP income, if anything? How does this affect the people who are expecting me to be more available to WPIT? Already I have had an offer to purchase four paintings from a speculator. Another person wanted me to share the news NOW with a group I haven’t gotten to yet.
None of this changes anything substantial. It just leaves that mood – that unwelcome sense of a “bad moon rising” – that sense of distraction that comes with having multiple agendas to untangle. What of all this is me – my expression?
Perhaps that is the point anyway. What is my expression in the face of being recognized? It’s one thing to be “out” trying to get “in”. It’s quite another, I suppose, to have come home to find that home is no more interested in Inclusion than anywhere else was.
Not that I thought it was – I just got disoriented for a moment! Whoops - sorry.
Inclusion hasn’t happened in the world yet, except for those momentary, seductive occasions that give one both a sense of what’s possible and the necessity to not hope unrealistically. There is still much work to do. The question is what is the good work to do now?
I love the heady beginnings of fun things. The video game project, the ROM. I’m not so fond of the negotiation part – sorting out mine and other’s agendas, often in a competitive stance.
There is nothing wrong with either the competition nor the fact that I don’t like it. In fact this is precisely where I get to show that Inclusion can actually happen. If we/I can come to grips with all the needs and diversities and have it work out with no one left out then the world really will have something to pay attention to!
So can I like it, or at least cease to resist it? Can I be the perfect matador and simply not be there for the moment the bull passes through the cape?
It’s not a challenge I had anticipated but neither is one I am unfamiliar with. This is just taking a Rubik’s cube life to another level.
I wonder when and what I will paint next. My familiar tracker quit this week, and although Mike is a good tracker, if he tracks for me on the days he works as a personal assistant it limits his break time. It seems ironic indeed that at the moment when the world will want to see me paint, I am almost as unprepared to do so as in the beginning in 2004.
So perhaps the genuine question for me to address now, in the few months before the exhibit happens, is who will paint with me in this upcoming year of public scrutiny?
Thursday, November 25, 2010
November 25, 2010
It’s relatively early in the day. I usually write these near 11:30pm and it’s just past 11:30am. I have just heard momentous news, and I am going to be writing e-mails to friends and colleagues everywhere. I figure I may as well do it this way, and take parts of this and turn it into the e-mails later. It might save some Morse Code puffing!
I have just heard that my paintings and the play – The Book of Judith (http://bookofjudithplay.blogspot.com/) – are going to be exhibited at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM). I am to be a guest curator. The theme will be my legacy of Inclusion and my growing understanding and message portrayed as art, video and other interactive elements. After a stationary instalment in the museum itself, we will tour both the play and art. This will be in partnership with the Trillium Foundation who are already backing a spring and fall tour of The Book of Judith.
In all it’s a year’s commitment to celebrating Inclusion and diversity.
Michael Rubenfeld and Sarah Garton Stanley are integral to the creation, development, production and presentation of the play. We will be in close collaboration for all of it!
Even the World Peace through Inclusive Transformation will get a leg up as this theme and initiative are very much part of my legacy. Will I finally be able to get research backing for the BMX Model of Inclusion?
Recognition and the opening of doors come in quiet and unassuming ways. Yesterday included a last minute rearrangement of my schedule so I could participate in a teleconference with the ROM. It was no big deal – I am always rearranging my schedule last minute. Staff needed on the spot support to put a last minute proposal in front of the museum’s exhibit selection committee. Today I was in bed, getting ready to get up so the technician could fix the electronics of my bed. The call came and my future shifted.
It’s such an ordinary moment that my emotions haven’t caught up. I get what Mike was saying about meeting with the video game producers on Monday. It’s such an ordinary day, unlike a special day that one has been preparing for - a wedding or graduation - that the obvious next step is to go have lunch. The overall mood is so ordinary, so: “Well, of course – what else would we do except say yes.” In the absence of a big high it nearly feels like a low.
Yet I have been preparing for this day in one way or another since I was four – 57 years. I am coming home to a rightful place in the world. I don’t need a big high right now. I need to place myself firmly in the passion for Inclusion that has carried me through these 57 years. I need to fully feel and express my gratitude for the opening, for the many hands – seen and unseen – that have carried me to this day, and for the vision, energy and courage I have been given to keep on working the path when there was no sign that this future was realizable. Hallelujah!
Michael and I will be at the ROM on Monday for the first production meeting, to find out really what we need to do to set up the contracts, partnerships, etc. Then we will go have a beer. By then I think I will be ready to celebrate!
I have just heard that my paintings and the play – The Book of Judith (http://bookofjudithplay.blogspot.com/) – are going to be exhibited at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM). I am to be a guest curator. The theme will be my legacy of Inclusion and my growing understanding and message portrayed as art, video and other interactive elements. After a stationary instalment in the museum itself, we will tour both the play and art. This will be in partnership with the Trillium Foundation who are already backing a spring and fall tour of The Book of Judith.
In all it’s a year’s commitment to celebrating Inclusion and diversity.
Michael Rubenfeld and Sarah Garton Stanley are integral to the creation, development, production and presentation of the play. We will be in close collaboration for all of it!
Even the World Peace through Inclusive Transformation will get a leg up as this theme and initiative are very much part of my legacy. Will I finally be able to get research backing for the BMX Model of Inclusion?
Recognition and the opening of doors come in quiet and unassuming ways. Yesterday included a last minute rearrangement of my schedule so I could participate in a teleconference with the ROM. It was no big deal – I am always rearranging my schedule last minute. Staff needed on the spot support to put a last minute proposal in front of the museum’s exhibit selection committee. Today I was in bed, getting ready to get up so the technician could fix the electronics of my bed. The call came and my future shifted.
It’s such an ordinary moment that my emotions haven’t caught up. I get what Mike was saying about meeting with the video game producers on Monday. It’s such an ordinary day, unlike a special day that one has been preparing for - a wedding or graduation - that the obvious next step is to go have lunch. The overall mood is so ordinary, so: “Well, of course – what else would we do except say yes.” In the absence of a big high it nearly feels like a low.
Yet I have been preparing for this day in one way or another since I was four – 57 years. I am coming home to a rightful place in the world. I don’t need a big high right now. I need to place myself firmly in the passion for Inclusion that has carried me through these 57 years. I need to fully feel and express my gratitude for the opening, for the many hands – seen and unseen – that have carried me to this day, and for the vision, energy and courage I have been given to keep on working the path when there was no sign that this future was realizable. Hallelujah!
Michael and I will be at the ROM on Monday for the first production meeting, to find out really what we need to do to set up the contracts, partnerships, etc. Then we will go have a beer. By then I think I will be ready to celebrate!
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
November 23, 2010
I am almost too tired to do this, although it has been a momentous day, more than worth writing about. My mind has dissipated to the level of playing Freecell for an hour, knowing I want to write and that have lots to do and respond to. I am just tired – in a very satisfied and somewhat overwhelmed way.
Sometimes – tonight – I imagine myself when I was 30 or 45 years younger and try to figure out if I could have ever predicted my life as it is now from the perspective of those days. I was with Mike at supper. He is 36 years younger than I am (as I often remind him!) and I was losing myself in a reverie about IF I could have believed then that today COULD even happen.
Some things are clearly enough in a line to have been comprehensible. Four walls, table cloths, stuff like that. But much beyond this mind numbing simplicity and clearly my life has leapt into so many dimensions that the child and young adult Judith had no imagination of. A simple example – I have many ceramics – very beautiful pieces – given to me by the artists who made them, and more than one each! I could not have permitted myself at 25 to imagine that I would have such friends. That I myself would be an artist was certainly not in my purview.
Tonight Mike, his friend Kevin and I presented a potential WPIT project to a class of young students who are learning to design and develop video games. The idea is to create a series of video games that require the players to build inclusive solutions to the games’ problems. Without getting into details (perhaps in the near future!) we were met with focussed interest and enthusiasm. Some twenty students and the teacher signed up to find out more and to start designing and writing the required code.
When I was twenty-five I had spent a summer coding data onto charts printed on legal sized paper so key punch typists could create the cards that fed an apartment-sized computer.
Three professors had at that same time showed off to me their personal computers and proudly demonstrated how to play Pac Man.
I understood Inclusion to mean that I should be fighting for the right to share an apartment with someone who had quadriplegia and with whom I had no particular relationship. In this apartment and ONLY in this apartment I would be able to get six hours a day of personal assistance given to me by someone I did not hire who was trained by someone else to “take care” of me. It was the best I could hope for at 25.
I understood that I was lucky to hope that someday I would be employed by some corporation to do something like HR work. I had been told by knowledgeable professionals that I would not live past thirty and that I would have few if any friends.
Tonight Mike and I were talking about a certain quiet feeling, almost like a let down, that one can have after a very successful event. In this case we are having the kind of experience that hard work, good luck and a really good idea are coming together. In one sense it should be perfectly obvious that such a thing as Inclusive video games can be created. On the other hand I think we both know that this evening and this project could easily go the other way.
I said to Mike that I recognize that quiet feeling as being different from enthusiasm. For me, it is about passion and gratitude. Enthusiasm is a cheap high that easily dissipates when circumstances change or even when it’s just the next morning. Passion is a long term energy and one is very fortunate indeed to be able to live inside the space of one’s own passion.
And this is where gratitude comes in, at least for me. I am deeply moved that my life has been given so many opportunities to extend beyond anything I could or still can imagine. Not only am I someone who gets to do what I love to do; I am also someone who is blessed with unique surprises that take me well beyond the kind of life I would have created for myself if it were all left up to me.
Call it God or call it whatever makes sense to you. My life is clearly in the hands of a power greater than myself and in my opinion that is a very good thing!
Sometimes – tonight – I imagine myself when I was 30 or 45 years younger and try to figure out if I could have ever predicted my life as it is now from the perspective of those days. I was with Mike at supper. He is 36 years younger than I am (as I often remind him!) and I was losing myself in a reverie about IF I could have believed then that today COULD even happen.
Some things are clearly enough in a line to have been comprehensible. Four walls, table cloths, stuff like that. But much beyond this mind numbing simplicity and clearly my life has leapt into so many dimensions that the child and young adult Judith had no imagination of. A simple example – I have many ceramics – very beautiful pieces – given to me by the artists who made them, and more than one each! I could not have permitted myself at 25 to imagine that I would have such friends. That I myself would be an artist was certainly not in my purview.
Tonight Mike, his friend Kevin and I presented a potential WPIT project to a class of young students who are learning to design and develop video games. The idea is to create a series of video games that require the players to build inclusive solutions to the games’ problems. Without getting into details (perhaps in the near future!) we were met with focussed interest and enthusiasm. Some twenty students and the teacher signed up to find out more and to start designing and writing the required code.
When I was twenty-five I had spent a summer coding data onto charts printed on legal sized paper so key punch typists could create the cards that fed an apartment-sized computer.
Three professors had at that same time showed off to me their personal computers and proudly demonstrated how to play Pac Man.
I understood Inclusion to mean that I should be fighting for the right to share an apartment with someone who had quadriplegia and with whom I had no particular relationship. In this apartment and ONLY in this apartment I would be able to get six hours a day of personal assistance given to me by someone I did not hire who was trained by someone else to “take care” of me. It was the best I could hope for at 25.
I understood that I was lucky to hope that someday I would be employed by some corporation to do something like HR work. I had been told by knowledgeable professionals that I would not live past thirty and that I would have few if any friends.
Tonight Mike and I were talking about a certain quiet feeling, almost like a let down, that one can have after a very successful event. In this case we are having the kind of experience that hard work, good luck and a really good idea are coming together. In one sense it should be perfectly obvious that such a thing as Inclusive video games can be created. On the other hand I think we both know that this evening and this project could easily go the other way.
I said to Mike that I recognize that quiet feeling as being different from enthusiasm. For me, it is about passion and gratitude. Enthusiasm is a cheap high that easily dissipates when circumstances change or even when it’s just the next morning. Passion is a long term energy and one is very fortunate indeed to be able to live inside the space of one’s own passion.
And this is where gratitude comes in, at least for me. I am deeply moved that my life has been given so many opportunities to extend beyond anything I could or still can imagine. Not only am I someone who gets to do what I love to do; I am also someone who is blessed with unique surprises that take me well beyond the kind of life I would have created for myself if it were all left up to me.
Call it God or call it whatever makes sense to you. My life is clearly in the hands of a power greater than myself and in my opinion that is a very good thing!
Friday, November 19, 2010
November 19, 2010
As I was checking dates today I realized that I have been writing for more than a continuous month. This will be the 34th posting in this blog. I am “chuffed” as I somewhat expected that I would have missed a day by now, or written less than 2 pages or given it up all together. So far so good for me. I’ve never run out of gas either since owning my first car in 1980 (a yellow Fiat), except for the time that a block of ice severed the fuel line and the gas all ran out in ten minutes –I don’t count that one!
A funny thing happened today… Sometimes the Morphine hits me more than others, especially the evening dose. Tonight I was listening to some Moody Blues in my I-Tunes on my laptop. When Jay was here from Phoenix during our birthdays he left about 22 days worth of music in my folder. I’m not a big listener to music anymore and Jay likes a lot of stuff I don’t it seems, but at supper in bed tonight I found this familiar album from the late ‘60’s.
I realized that the last time I listened to this particular album I was likely stoned too – much more stoned than I am tonight and on a very different, non-prescription drug – but still in a recognizably similar state. Ah, it takes me back!
It felt humourous and good - a recognition and a bridge to a very different yet familiar version of myself. In many ways I am happier now than then, and I NEVER could have imagined today from the perspective of that day. The similarities are there, though. I am still idealistic, searching, self-centred and committed to making a real difference.
My circle meeting was intense last night, leaving Mike and Kimberly put off to some extent. Thank God Gloria was here today. She got sick last night and missed the circle meeting but came today to collage and lunch with me. She has a great connection with Mike and I expect a growing one with Kimberly. We talked together and told many stories about Scott and his supporters, trials and joys of previous trips to Georgia, and of the kind of clashes people have when they care, when they are confronted and when finally they are honest with each other.
Of course both Mike and Kimberly are 25 years old. I am frequently and stereotypically confronted with the depth of their passion, energy, creativity and intelligence and how differently they look upon or simply are unaware of how I, and now my circle, see risks, fatigue, areas that need more careful attention or even some potential directions to take. To me my age shows up most around them. I both want to and don’t want to think and be like them. It seems both wonderful and exhausting.
I guess that it is a blessing that I am not young and they are not old. So far we have been able to work out an amazing variety of ideas and issues. I will do my best to keep it clean and good, not because of either them or me, but because the possibility of World Peace through Inclusion will do so well in their hands.
I am writing this while I am still in bed. Nick and I finally rigged up my laptop and Morse Code so I can use my interface while I am semi lying down. All the pieces that are necessary were in my bedroom. I just didn’t see the last essential part until this afternoon. How often we can’t see what we are looking at!
The collage I did today is about me being reluctant to stick out. Of course I love to have everyone’s attention too. But there is a fear that shows up when I get close to noticing I’m a leader.
After I finished the collage I saw that it has many eyes and points of light in it. It’s hanging over the foot of my bed. I hope I dream about it tonight.
A funny thing happened today… Sometimes the Morphine hits me more than others, especially the evening dose. Tonight I was listening to some Moody Blues in my I-Tunes on my laptop. When Jay was here from Phoenix during our birthdays he left about 22 days worth of music in my folder. I’m not a big listener to music anymore and Jay likes a lot of stuff I don’t it seems, but at supper in bed tonight I found this familiar album from the late ‘60’s.
I realized that the last time I listened to this particular album I was likely stoned too – much more stoned than I am tonight and on a very different, non-prescription drug – but still in a recognizably similar state. Ah, it takes me back!
It felt humourous and good - a recognition and a bridge to a very different yet familiar version of myself. In many ways I am happier now than then, and I NEVER could have imagined today from the perspective of that day. The similarities are there, though. I am still idealistic, searching, self-centred and committed to making a real difference.
My circle meeting was intense last night, leaving Mike and Kimberly put off to some extent. Thank God Gloria was here today. She got sick last night and missed the circle meeting but came today to collage and lunch with me. She has a great connection with Mike and I expect a growing one with Kimberly. We talked together and told many stories about Scott and his supporters, trials and joys of previous trips to Georgia, and of the kind of clashes people have when they care, when they are confronted and when finally they are honest with each other.
Of course both Mike and Kimberly are 25 years old. I am frequently and stereotypically confronted with the depth of their passion, energy, creativity and intelligence and how differently they look upon or simply are unaware of how I, and now my circle, see risks, fatigue, areas that need more careful attention or even some potential directions to take. To me my age shows up most around them. I both want to and don’t want to think and be like them. It seems both wonderful and exhausting.
I guess that it is a blessing that I am not young and they are not old. So far we have been able to work out an amazing variety of ideas and issues. I will do my best to keep it clean and good, not because of either them or me, but because the possibility of World Peace through Inclusion will do so well in their hands.
I am writing this while I am still in bed. Nick and I finally rigged up my laptop and Morse Code so I can use my interface while I am semi lying down. All the pieces that are necessary were in my bedroom. I just didn’t see the last essential part until this afternoon. How often we can’t see what we are looking at!
The collage I did today is about me being reluctant to stick out. Of course I love to have everyone’s attention too. But there is a fear that shows up when I get close to noticing I’m a leader.
After I finished the collage I saw that it has many eyes and points of light in it. It’s hanging over the foot of my bed. I hope I dream about it tonight.
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