It has been over a week since I began using this blog to reflect on the letter that I have now sent to the two pastors of First Presbyterian Church of Savannah – Stephen Williams and Will Shelburne. I sent the letter today. It had a few modifications from the text in the last four postings. I ended up concentrating more on invisibility and less on being an enemy.
In one sense I feel directionless and in another I feel quite the opposite. It is clear that the next five or six months will be focused on Laser Eagles, the ROM art exhibit, shifting my staff team and my physical realities in order to accommodate the upcoming trip to Oregon, Arizona and the Conference for Global Transformation in San Francisco. The purpose of much of this trip is to nail down an opportunity to research the BMX Model and to demonstrate the inclusive video game at the conference.
So the direction is set in that sense. It is not set in a more personal and specific sense. Questions such as “Do I need a different kind of staff person so I can travel more easily?” or “How do I make sure that I’m making enough money that I can let go of ODSP if/when I need to?” – these questions remain vague and uncertain. Of course, their vagueness will disappear as necessity demands I take action. For example, I currently only have three weeks of staff time scheduled and my staff will soon be questioning me about what shifts they will have and how many hours and when am I going away and all that sort of thing. In other words, life will give me a direction if I haven’t already chosen one myself.
I am battling with myself. The question looks something like “I thought you were going to retire?” My circle is meeting on Sunday and I can already hear them protesting the intensity of life which faces me from end of April until end of August.
It is not hard to see how this all emerged. A few months ago I was lying on my back in my comfy bed recovering from near-terminal illness. Two forces conspired to shift all that. First, I was intrigued by the gigantic toys playing blocks outside my window at night only to discover that a prison is being assembled in my neighbourhood. Secondly, a colleague from the Book of Judith play went to a party because we couldn’t go to Edinburgh in November because I was sick. This set off a chain of events leading to my having an Inclusion art exhibit at the Royal Ontario Museum. Add to these main themes that I actually did recover and that Laser Eagles was revitalized this fall by the combined efforts of Kimberly Fu and the CAVE board, and rather suddenly I’m pushing to create THE art exhibit about the journey of Inclusion that will – one hopes – convict people with the desire to embrace diversity.
There are other factors such as Mike Skubic and the video game. It all runs together at this point. I am on the road again and compelled again.
I have a great sense of fatigue just thinking about it all. Of course, the thinking about it is way more tiring than the doing of it, but that’s where I’m at right now. I have been learning in many ways, and particularly through the course on achieving a lasting impact that a sense of fatigue and hopelessness is really no more than confronting the perception that “the tiger is not dead but asleep”. You can drag it out of the path but as soon as it wakes up it is going to walk right back to the road and lay back down on it again. Trying to bring about Inclusion has been like trying to drag this sleeping tiger out of the road.
The course has been very interesting and instructive. It has pulled up virtually every occasion where I have felt like I got close to making a powerful impact on building Inclusion only to be driven back into obscurity. Whether it was Al Etmanski firing me in 2000 or Tom Kohler crossing his arms and emphatically saying that people with disabilities are not invited to Citizen Advocate training or Jack Pearpoint or Marsha Forest not including me in Inclusion Press. No matter how great and inspiring my own journey has been or my ideas may be I am not seen as having the practicality that is required to put a real organizational strategy together and to bring it to fruition.
So now we (mainly Mike and I) envision a well resourced organization that will foster Inclusion. Now I am preparing to put my energy on the line to get the necessary steps in place. I cannot know of course if I am just dragging another sleeping tiger to the culvert from whence it will shortly return, wet and hungry.
Showing posts with label Citizen Advocacy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Citizen Advocacy. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
February 22, 2011
It would be easier, likely, to keep up these blog entries while in Savannah if Mike were more available to type for me. Mike has been working night and day except when Lara is on and is either talking with Kimberly, taking a well deserved break, painting or cooking and cleaning up when I get to the computer. On the other hand I am typically exhausted or thinking about my next presentation when I get here. Either way Farmville or Freecell usually wins out and takes up the last hour of my day.
Today, it’s earlier in the day, the two Citizen Advocacy presentations are done, Mike is painting and the constipation that plagued me since Sunday has given way. In other words I have enough energy to type this myself.
It became apparent, also on Sunday, (today is Tuesday), that the prison painting could not “get done” by Friday, or perhaps at all, in the style we were pursuing. In other words I got through about half of a highly detailed reproduction of the photograph “Dirty Window” and stopped. I have long doubted my own, and Mike’s capacity to make a close reproduction, and quietly wondered if a miracle would strike, or when and how I would choose, with Mike, to take a different approach. The moment came Sunday night, on going to bed, as I asked Mike what question he was going to bed with – to get answered by wake-up time in the morning. I told him that my question was something like: “What sort of painting could get done by Friday evening – the time I make my presentation at the Bean – that would also authentically represent my experience of discovering the construction of a prison in clear view of my bedroom window.”
Sunday evening I explained that I had hit a six month time period in 2005 when I stopped painting. This occurred when I got frustrated when I wanted to paint detail and could neither conceptualize it for myself nor convey the picture in my mind well enough to my tracker to get her to put on the canvas what I was (vaguely) imagining. Eventually I realized that this was NOT a disability issue, but a common phenomenon among artists. The art itself has a way of partly determining what it will be like when it’s done, and to keep on going, the artist must surrender to the art piece, and let it become what it will.
Laser Eagle artists also must surrender to the will and capacity of the tracker. This apparently extra dimension is merely part of the dynamic dance. By dancing the art becomes and in the end it is what it is. Such is life fully lived.
In the midst of this conversation Mike told me that he is a finisher – someone who takes what a graphic artist has pencilled and fills in the lines and colour. This is something I did not know. So now we have begun again.
I will now have five or six pieces for Friday’s presentation – and later the ROM exhibit. I will have an unfinished, detailed piece and three or four side pieces (pieces we made after long detailed efforts on “Dirty Window”, made with left over paint and less constraint). I will also have a more cartoon like piece – unfinished or finished. Together they represent a more complete picture of my journey to respond authentically to the prision outside my window.
I realize now fully why I had to – was compelled to – come to Savannah. The pelicans have little to do with it – they were the dream image calling to me. I saw some last week and have not wanted to see them again.
I came to express my gratitude.
I have been shown a door to expressing the beauty and possibility of inclusion, of citizenship and community, of faith, of diversity, of life itself. For many years Savannah has been a mirror for me, showing me aspects of exclusion, of elegance, of perseverance, of courage, of creativity. I have been able to see myself and to hear my own voice in ways I can and could not experience elsewhere.
Marsha and Jack brought me to Savannah the first time, but this place and the things I have done in it, like Citizen Advocacy work with Tom Kohler and peace work with Gabor, have been expressions of my own dream. Awkwardly I have discovered Judith and her song over thirty years, and the trips to Savannah have been choruses in my melodic creation.
Friday I will “sing” what there is at that point, and I will tell all of Savannah that comes to hear how this beautiful, terrible town, built on the bruised backs of slaves, has opened my door to freedom.
Today, it’s earlier in the day, the two Citizen Advocacy presentations are done, Mike is painting and the constipation that plagued me since Sunday has given way. In other words I have enough energy to type this myself.
It became apparent, also on Sunday, (today is Tuesday), that the prison painting could not “get done” by Friday, or perhaps at all, in the style we were pursuing. In other words I got through about half of a highly detailed reproduction of the photograph “Dirty Window” and stopped. I have long doubted my own, and Mike’s capacity to make a close reproduction, and quietly wondered if a miracle would strike, or when and how I would choose, with Mike, to take a different approach. The moment came Sunday night, on going to bed, as I asked Mike what question he was going to bed with – to get answered by wake-up time in the morning. I told him that my question was something like: “What sort of painting could get done by Friday evening – the time I make my presentation at the Bean – that would also authentically represent my experience of discovering the construction of a prison in clear view of my bedroom window.”
Sunday evening I explained that I had hit a six month time period in 2005 when I stopped painting. This occurred when I got frustrated when I wanted to paint detail and could neither conceptualize it for myself nor convey the picture in my mind well enough to my tracker to get her to put on the canvas what I was (vaguely) imagining. Eventually I realized that this was NOT a disability issue, but a common phenomenon among artists. The art itself has a way of partly determining what it will be like when it’s done, and to keep on going, the artist must surrender to the art piece, and let it become what it will.
Laser Eagle artists also must surrender to the will and capacity of the tracker. This apparently extra dimension is merely part of the dynamic dance. By dancing the art becomes and in the end it is what it is. Such is life fully lived.
In the midst of this conversation Mike told me that he is a finisher – someone who takes what a graphic artist has pencilled and fills in the lines and colour. This is something I did not know. So now we have begun again.
I will now have five or six pieces for Friday’s presentation – and later the ROM exhibit. I will have an unfinished, detailed piece and three or four side pieces (pieces we made after long detailed efforts on “Dirty Window”, made with left over paint and less constraint). I will also have a more cartoon like piece – unfinished or finished. Together they represent a more complete picture of my journey to respond authentically to the prision outside my window.
I realize now fully why I had to – was compelled to – come to Savannah. The pelicans have little to do with it – they were the dream image calling to me. I saw some last week and have not wanted to see them again.
I came to express my gratitude.
I have been shown a door to expressing the beauty and possibility of inclusion, of citizenship and community, of faith, of diversity, of life itself. For many years Savannah has been a mirror for me, showing me aspects of exclusion, of elegance, of perseverance, of courage, of creativity. I have been able to see myself and to hear my own voice in ways I can and could not experience elsewhere.
Marsha and Jack brought me to Savannah the first time, but this place and the things I have done in it, like Citizen Advocacy work with Tom Kohler and peace work with Gabor, have been expressions of my own dream. Awkwardly I have discovered Judith and her song over thirty years, and the trips to Savannah have been choruses in my melodic creation.
Friday I will “sing” what there is at that point, and I will tell all of Savannah that comes to hear how this beautiful, terrible town, built on the bruised backs of slaves, has opened my door to freedom.
Saturday, February 19, 2011
February 19, 2011
It is Saturday. I had a late lunch at “the Bean” after resting for the morning and spending a few hours on Tybee Island. No pelicans today, except for four I saw from the causeway, driving into the island from Thunderbolt. They were flying in formation much as fighter plane pilots do at air shows. This is how I knew they were pelicans and not sea gulls.
It has been an exceptionally warm day. Mike and I both wore shorts. Tybee was packed with beach folks. This likely is the reason for no pelicans. I walked around most of the southern end of the island but did not feel much like staying. I just don’t like people in crowds that much.
We – Lara, Mike and I – finally met up with Tom Kohler at the Bean. At first Tom was a little cool – arms crossed and that sort of thing. As the conversation unfolded it seems that he is defensive/worried that I will confront him about the Citizen Advocacy approach to imaging the “protégé” – the official term used in CA to denote the person who has been labelled disabled, and with whom CA programs “match” a typical citizen. Tom and I have disagreed in the past about the importance of providing “trainings” to both the citizen advocate and his/her protégé, and not just the advocate alone, as tomorrow and Tuesday are arranged. It wasn’t on my mind to confront him this time with that, but clearly he was getting up for an argument.
For me the biggest thing to sort out was what I am going to talk about tomorrow and on Tuesday. Tom wants something about presence and possibility. With Mike there we ended up talking a lot about the inclusive video game. In the end Tom said he wants me to talk about Marsha and me, then about how Mike and I met and got into the several projects we share – along the theme of listen, imagine, network.
I will sleep on this, and I am sure will catch the flavour, but as a different theme has been becoming more important to me, this doesn’t seem too natural.
It has been fabulous working with Lara. But as any given day progresses, without good structures for me to participate, and to eat and sleep without Lara’s or Mike’s full time presence, all of us get tired, defocused and edgy.
In particular I feel the need to create some distance between Mike and I and we made some progress with that today. Even though Mike is not working as a personal assistant today he has hung around me except when he slept in and when he lay on the beach for awhile. I believe that Tom caught the wave because he took Mike for a beer without me, and he also entered into a brainstorm about where, when and with whom Mike can go for a meal – again without me.
I am alone now and it is good. I was not prepared for how dirty Imlay House is. I was going to get Lara to wash the kitchen floor which is so filthy that my chair leaves track marks in the dirt. There is no mop. Lara offered to wash it with rags, but she is getting tired, the edginess has started, and it isn’t worth the time/cost to exhaust her that much. So we will continue to live with the grime.
My own edginess is abating as I get Mike’s alignment with how much money we have to spend on food, as well as getting the painting well underway. I think we are about 30% done. We will also need to set up some slides for Friday. I think it is going to get easier as we get the strangeness and the vacation –ness out of the way, hopefully pretty soon now. Then both of us will get more comfortable just getting the work done. There is a lot of work.
It has been an exceptionally warm day. Mike and I both wore shorts. Tybee was packed with beach folks. This likely is the reason for no pelicans. I walked around most of the southern end of the island but did not feel much like staying. I just don’t like people in crowds that much.
We – Lara, Mike and I – finally met up with Tom Kohler at the Bean. At first Tom was a little cool – arms crossed and that sort of thing. As the conversation unfolded it seems that he is defensive/worried that I will confront him about the Citizen Advocacy approach to imaging the “protégé” – the official term used in CA to denote the person who has been labelled disabled, and with whom CA programs “match” a typical citizen. Tom and I have disagreed in the past about the importance of providing “trainings” to both the citizen advocate and his/her protégé, and not just the advocate alone, as tomorrow and Tuesday are arranged. It wasn’t on my mind to confront him this time with that, but clearly he was getting up for an argument.
For me the biggest thing to sort out was what I am going to talk about tomorrow and on Tuesday. Tom wants something about presence and possibility. With Mike there we ended up talking a lot about the inclusive video game. In the end Tom said he wants me to talk about Marsha and me, then about how Mike and I met and got into the several projects we share – along the theme of listen, imagine, network.
I will sleep on this, and I am sure will catch the flavour, but as a different theme has been becoming more important to me, this doesn’t seem too natural.
It has been fabulous working with Lara. But as any given day progresses, without good structures for me to participate, and to eat and sleep without Lara’s or Mike’s full time presence, all of us get tired, defocused and edgy.
In particular I feel the need to create some distance between Mike and I and we made some progress with that today. Even though Mike is not working as a personal assistant today he has hung around me except when he slept in and when he lay on the beach for awhile. I believe that Tom caught the wave because he took Mike for a beer without me, and he also entered into a brainstorm about where, when and with whom Mike can go for a meal – again without me.
I am alone now and it is good. I was not prepared for how dirty Imlay House is. I was going to get Lara to wash the kitchen floor which is so filthy that my chair leaves track marks in the dirt. There is no mop. Lara offered to wash it with rags, but she is getting tired, the edginess has started, and it isn’t worth the time/cost to exhaust her that much. So we will continue to live with the grime.
My own edginess is abating as I get Mike’s alignment with how much money we have to spend on food, as well as getting the painting well underway. I think we are about 30% done. We will also need to set up some slides for Friday. I think it is going to get easier as we get the strangeness and the vacation –ness out of the way, hopefully pretty soon now. Then both of us will get more comfortable just getting the work done. There is a lot of work.
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