By Edwin Cooney
Dated July 20th, 2007
I don’t know about you, but I’ll guess: this Iraqi war makes you just as tired as
it does me. Even more, this war seems to have brought out the worst in all of
us -- supporters and opponents, Congress, the media, and the Bush administration.
We who oppose the war want to judge the outcome of the “surge” before General David Petraeus does. To us, a surge is only an escalation in a hopeless struggle.
Supporters of the administration and its Iraqi policy look to any improvement on the proverbial battlefield for encouraging results. They try to ignore what the government is not doing and what the various dissident groups are doing to one another.
In Congress, House Democrats appear to be deliberately out of touch with much of their liberal constituency which very much wants both President George W. Bush and Vice President Richard B. Cheney impeached. As for their Senate colleagues, there seems to be a pre-occupation with a proposed timetable for withdrawal from Iraq which a combination of minority Republicans and conservative Democrats have the votes to prevent.
President Bush continues to stay the coarse — of course. While waiting for a glowing report from General Petraeus on the success of the recent surge, the President, speaking as usual before a handpicked audience, informed us that he was sending Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to the Middle East for the purpose of opening up talks which will lead to a two state solution to the Israeli Palestinian conflict. Real success in this area, the President knows, would be a great achievement for his administration. Even better, it would silence a lot of smug, self-righteous, noisy people.
Meanwhile, on the campaign trail, all of the Democratic Presidential candidates and Libertarian GOP candidate Ron Paul of Texas oppose the Bush administration’s Iraqi policy. Most of their efforts are designed to demonstrate to the public how they — individually as President -- would be more effective than their opponents in bringing about an advantageous result out of the seemingly endless and hopeless Iraqi conflict.
As for GOP candidates, most of them, while generally supportive of the President, want us to understand (without directly saying so of course) that they individually could fight the war on terror, which they see as the legitimate reason for our being in Iraq, better than President George Bush has.
So the question is: where does this leave you and me — that is — “we the people of the United States” to whom all of our leaders and potential leaders say they look to for their wisdom?
Speaking for myself, drawing--as I do--a distinction between our struggle with Radical Islam and the evil Saddam Hussein, I opposed President Bush’s decision to invade Iraq in 2003. I also draw a distinction between our legitimate concerns as to the ambitions of Radical Islam and their strategy of “terrorism.” Terrorism is after all a strategic tactic as was poison gas in World War I and our use of the atomic bomb to end World War II. As I’ve stated before, the British demonstrated that Irish terrorists could be negotiated with when Sinn Féin settled in 1998 following twenty-nine years of domestic terror in England which snuffed out the lives of “commoners,” members of Parliament, and even Royalty in the person of Lord Mountbatten.
Thus, I’ll go on record asserting that, while there is a violent conflict with Radical Islam, there is no such thing as a War on Terror. Terror is a tactic. In every conflict, one side seeks to have an advantage over the other which is designed to demoralize the enemy. I also insist that our invasion of Iraq was actually a step backward. Before March 19th, 2003, there was in Iraq a cruel but effective deterrent to Al-Qaida as well as to Iranian expansion. His name was Saddam Hussein. Throughout the 1980s, our President (I believe his name was Ronald Wilson Reagan) treated Saddam Hussein if not like an ally than certainly like a most useful and valued helpmate despite Hussein’s treatment of his people. Nor was President Reagan the first to misjudge a foreign leader. The practice of such misjudgments goes back to FDR who believed he could manipulate “Uncle Joe Stalin” with his charm. Even further back, Woodrow Wilson treated his European colleagues during the 1919 World War I Peace conference with detached contempt.
It seems to me, therefore, that the solution to the Iraqi conflict is one for a concerted worldwide effort with Americans playing a supporting rather than a lead role. There is merit to President Bush’s decision to pursue a two state solution to the political Gordian knot in the Middle East. There is also merit in the policy of forcefully responding to the violence of militant Islam.
As for you and me, our job is to take it all in. Watch and listen to the political pundits whether they come from Fox News or CNN. We must endure it when Homeland Security Chief Michael Chertoff predicts a possible terrorist attack on us sometime this summer. At the same time we, the American people whose wisdom is so relied on by the President and Vice President, must listen as Mr. Cheney insists that Al-Qaida is on the run. Never mind if one or all are seriously confused. For the next eighteen months, these men have responsibility for our safety.
.
As for impeachment, skip it. Vermont Senator Bernard Sanders, an independent liberal who votes with the Democrats in the Senate, made the observation that if we can’t get 60 votes in the Senate to establish a timetable for withdrawing our troops from Iraq, how can we expect to get sixty-seven votes to convict President Bush were he impeached by the House?
Hence the liberals will continue to fill the airwaves and cyberspace with complaints that the Democrats have broken faith with the worthy voters of the Fall of 2006 and threaten to permanently abandon the world’s oldest political party forever. Republicans will continue to justify the Iraqi conflict as a necessary evil while asserting that Democrats have always been for appeasement—even though conservative-oriented folks cheered the loudest when Neville Chamberlain made his bargain with Adolf Hitler at Munich in 1938. (Back in the thirties, conservatives called themselves “Isolationists”!)
Many years ago, comedian Jim Gordon, who played the character Fiber McGee on radio, used to say of his antagonist Dr. Gamble: “He makes me tired.”
As I said at the outset, this war makes me tired, but its outcome is so important, I really and truly do not dare to yawn.
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
Sunday, July 22, 2007
Friday, July 13, 2007
FROM OUT OF THE BLUE -- A Much Needed Reminder
BY EDWIN COONEY
It was on the afternoon of Monday, June 18th, 2007 that I arrived at the Amtrak train station in Washington D.C. aboard Train #125 out of Penn Station in Newark, New Jersey.
I was on my way home to Alameda, California after a full three weeks of happy reunions with old friends and first time meetings with new ones. I felt content for the most part. I was even reasonably satisfied with my own behavior in the way I’d handled one or two touchy situations that are a part of daily relationships and circumstances.
My train was only about 30 minutes or so late, but that was all to the good. It meant that I would only have to wait 20 or 25 minutes for Amtrak Train #29 scheduled out of the station at 4:05 p.m. It would be especially pleasant if Train #29 was nicely air conditioned against the 85 to 90 degree east coast heat and 85 plus percent humidity, but that matter would take care of itself.
Then came the word that Train #29 to Chicago, due to an equipment failure, would not be able to meet its 4:05 p.m. departure schedule and that there was no estimated time when it would depart. A trainload of Amtrak passengers waited patiently in the station hoping that the mechanics would be able to remedy Train #29’s ills quickly enough for all to be on their way in time to make all necessary connections.
As I waited, I found myself seated between two gentlemen. One, from Chicago, told me that he spends a lot of his time on board his houseboat. The other, Archie from Rhode Island, said he also likes to travel but prefers solid terra firma. At one point in our conversation, Archie, in his delightful New England accent, informed me that a blind man without hands was seated a short distance away and was “fumbling” with his suitcase and obviously could use help. Archie was gone for only a very short time before he returned to report that the “blind man without hands” was all right and needed no help.
“Where is he going?” I asked, wondering if he’d be on Train #29 once it got rolling.
“I don’t know,” replied Archie, “but he’s here with the rest of us.
“Wow,” I thought to myself. “Here we are in Washington D.C. and not too far from me is a blind man without hands. It’s got to be Iraq,” I told myself.
Then I began to create a whole set of assumptions about this man’s background:
He has to be a veteran; He’s in Washington for treatment and rehabilitation at Walter Reed hospital; He’s an Iraq War veteran; His injury is recent.
Next came my assumptions regarding his state of mind:
He’s gotta be angry and bitter about his recent war injury; He’s gotta be apprehensive and even frightened as he struggles to adjust to his deficiencies; He’ll be lost or easily disoriented; He’ll need lots of help; He’ll be sad and perhaps even clingy.
Next, I went to the root of my assumptions -- my own fears, needs, comforts and ideas of convenience:
What would I do without hands? I’d be totally lost without a sense of touch. How could I function as I do today using a cane? What’ll I do if he’s in my car? I’ll have to help him, because, after all, he’s one of “us”.
Then came my final hope:
“Maybe he’ll be in another car if not on another train.”
Alas, such was -- most fortunately -- not to be.
Shortly after six-thirty p.m., I was assisted onto Train #29 and into the lower portion of a car which is where passengers who are senior and/or with disabilities may ride.
The car was reasonably cool and my seat was next to an electrical outlet so that I could conveniently listen to taped books and recharge my cell phone. The train had started to move, but the conductor hadn’t come to collect our tickets. I mumbled to myself out loud wondering whether the act of eating my lunch would automatically bring the conductor around to take my ticket.
Suddenly, from one seat behind me and across the aisle to my left, I heard the chime of a talking watch. Then a very cheery voice said:
“Who’s this blind guy who talks to himself?”
Next came introductions. His name was Dan and I, of course, introduced myself as Ed. My introduction to him confirmed his assumption as to who I was, thus I didn’t have to say anything to him about my disability. What’s strange is that although he rather quickly explained his condition to me, I don’t recall precisely how he confirmed to me that he was “the blind man without hands”.
Almost instantly, even before Dan told me much about himself, my fear-laden presumptions and perceptions melted away. Dan, after all, was Dan. Dan was not a set of my presumptive fears.
Within minutes of the outset of our conversation, the conductor had come around taking tickets and Dan was making plans to go to the dining car for supper. Since I’d had my lunch, I didn’t need the dining car. I’d join him in the lounge car for Happy Hour. Thus it was clear that Dan got around as well as I did.
During Happy Hour, Dan and I easily conversed on a number of topics. He was easy-going, he flirted with the ladies much more easily and with seemingly much greater confidence and resourcefulness than I. Even more, Dan was funny.
Once we were back in our car, Dan told me that at the age of 15, which was back in 1955, he’d injured himself while constructing a hand grenade. He went on to explain that as a youngster he’d learned to make such incendiaries in order to protect himself from possible harassment or harm from Chicago’s youth gangs. One day, he explained, he’d accidentally installed the wrong type of trigger on his latest grenade and his life had been changed forever.
He went on to talk of his daughters, one of whom served in the Balkan conflict in the late 1990s. He spoke of his life’s work as a rehabilitation counselor for the Department of Mental Health in Decatur, Illinois.
Dan is now retired and doesn’t have to work for monetary reasons. He just likes to keep busy. The reason he was on the train was because he was returning home from a job interview in Alexandria, Virginia.
The only assistance I provided him was to let him use my cell phone to call his daughter who was meeting him in Chicago, so that he could let her know that the train was running late.
When Dan and I parted in Chicago, I knew that I’d met a very extraordinary person. Certainly, my vacation—and, if I allow it, perhaps my life -- had been enriched by that man named Dan. However, I was also aware that I’d been guilty of one of humankind’s most subtle but devastating injustices.
I was guilty of the act of “preconceived negative personal perception”. What is even more incredible to me is that I am acutely sensitive to the fact that I am a lifelong victim of such preconceived negative personal perceptions.
How many times have I been denied opportunities for work, friendship, even love because of a person’s negative perceptions and ultimate inability to imagine interacting comfortably with me in a working or loving relationship? How many times have I answered the inquiry people often make as to what is hardest about living with disability by saying, with some intensity, that the most difficult aspect of living with disability (which in my case is total blindness) is dealing with the public’s perception of it.
The answer to both the above questions is — too many times.
Preconceived negative personal perception often is devastating to persons who live with disability. Unfortunately, its practice -- which I’ll define here as preconceived negative conclusions about others based on poor knowledge of the conditions under which another person lives -- is widely practiced and affects far more than the disabled.
Thus, persons with disabilities, persons of different races, of different religions, of different classes and economic stature are all too often ready-made victims of our preconceived ideas as to how they live, what they believe, what they can do and what they will be like. What is more, one shouldn’t assume that the poor and disadvantaged are the sole victims of negative personal perception. The rich and powerful can also be victimized – and often are. Their ability to more easily protect themselves from negative personal perception doesn’t in the least justify the practice.
Hence, the victim of racism can also be a racist, the offended can indeed offend, the sinned against can -- and do -- sin…as I learned once again on Monday, June 18th, 2007:
Just because I’m aware of others’ capacity for preconceived negative personal perception does not immunize me from practicing it myself.
Furthermore, negative personal perception may not be the only path to our individual and societal failings, but it’s surely one of the most well-taken paths. Next to the path of least resistance, the path of negative personal perception is the easiest to take…and it’s taken too often by far too many -- including this observer.
Thanks, Dan. Because you’re you, I couldn’t get away with it -- this time anyway!
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
It was on the afternoon of Monday, June 18th, 2007 that I arrived at the Amtrak train station in Washington D.C. aboard Train #125 out of Penn Station in Newark, New Jersey.
I was on my way home to Alameda, California after a full three weeks of happy reunions with old friends and first time meetings with new ones. I felt content for the most part. I was even reasonably satisfied with my own behavior in the way I’d handled one or two touchy situations that are a part of daily relationships and circumstances.
My train was only about 30 minutes or so late, but that was all to the good. It meant that I would only have to wait 20 or 25 minutes for Amtrak Train #29 scheduled out of the station at 4:05 p.m. It would be especially pleasant if Train #29 was nicely air conditioned against the 85 to 90 degree east coast heat and 85 plus percent humidity, but that matter would take care of itself.
Then came the word that Train #29 to Chicago, due to an equipment failure, would not be able to meet its 4:05 p.m. departure schedule and that there was no estimated time when it would depart. A trainload of Amtrak passengers waited patiently in the station hoping that the mechanics would be able to remedy Train #29’s ills quickly enough for all to be on their way in time to make all necessary connections.
As I waited, I found myself seated between two gentlemen. One, from Chicago, told me that he spends a lot of his time on board his houseboat. The other, Archie from Rhode Island, said he also likes to travel but prefers solid terra firma. At one point in our conversation, Archie, in his delightful New England accent, informed me that a blind man without hands was seated a short distance away and was “fumbling” with his suitcase and obviously could use help. Archie was gone for only a very short time before he returned to report that the “blind man without hands” was all right and needed no help.
“Where is he going?” I asked, wondering if he’d be on Train #29 once it got rolling.
“I don’t know,” replied Archie, “but he’s here with the rest of us.
“Wow,” I thought to myself. “Here we are in Washington D.C. and not too far from me is a blind man without hands. It’s got to be Iraq,” I told myself.
Then I began to create a whole set of assumptions about this man’s background:
He has to be a veteran; He’s in Washington for treatment and rehabilitation at Walter Reed hospital; He’s an Iraq War veteran; His injury is recent.
Next came my assumptions regarding his state of mind:
He’s gotta be angry and bitter about his recent war injury; He’s gotta be apprehensive and even frightened as he struggles to adjust to his deficiencies; He’ll be lost or easily disoriented; He’ll need lots of help; He’ll be sad and perhaps even clingy.
Next, I went to the root of my assumptions -- my own fears, needs, comforts and ideas of convenience:
What would I do without hands? I’d be totally lost without a sense of touch. How could I function as I do today using a cane? What’ll I do if he’s in my car? I’ll have to help him, because, after all, he’s one of “us”.
Then came my final hope:
“Maybe he’ll be in another car if not on another train.”
Alas, such was -- most fortunately -- not to be.
Shortly after six-thirty p.m., I was assisted onto Train #29 and into the lower portion of a car which is where passengers who are senior and/or with disabilities may ride.
The car was reasonably cool and my seat was next to an electrical outlet so that I could conveniently listen to taped books and recharge my cell phone. The train had started to move, but the conductor hadn’t come to collect our tickets. I mumbled to myself out loud wondering whether the act of eating my lunch would automatically bring the conductor around to take my ticket.
Suddenly, from one seat behind me and across the aisle to my left, I heard the chime of a talking watch. Then a very cheery voice said:
“Who’s this blind guy who talks to himself?”
Next came introductions. His name was Dan and I, of course, introduced myself as Ed. My introduction to him confirmed his assumption as to who I was, thus I didn’t have to say anything to him about my disability. What’s strange is that although he rather quickly explained his condition to me, I don’t recall precisely how he confirmed to me that he was “the blind man without hands”.
Almost instantly, even before Dan told me much about himself, my fear-laden presumptions and perceptions melted away. Dan, after all, was Dan. Dan was not a set of my presumptive fears.
Within minutes of the outset of our conversation, the conductor had come around taking tickets and Dan was making plans to go to the dining car for supper. Since I’d had my lunch, I didn’t need the dining car. I’d join him in the lounge car for Happy Hour. Thus it was clear that Dan got around as well as I did.
During Happy Hour, Dan and I easily conversed on a number of topics. He was easy-going, he flirted with the ladies much more easily and with seemingly much greater confidence and resourcefulness than I. Even more, Dan was funny.
Once we were back in our car, Dan told me that at the age of 15, which was back in 1955, he’d injured himself while constructing a hand grenade. He went on to explain that as a youngster he’d learned to make such incendiaries in order to protect himself from possible harassment or harm from Chicago’s youth gangs. One day, he explained, he’d accidentally installed the wrong type of trigger on his latest grenade and his life had been changed forever.
He went on to talk of his daughters, one of whom served in the Balkan conflict in the late 1990s. He spoke of his life’s work as a rehabilitation counselor for the Department of Mental Health in Decatur, Illinois.
Dan is now retired and doesn’t have to work for monetary reasons. He just likes to keep busy. The reason he was on the train was because he was returning home from a job interview in Alexandria, Virginia.
The only assistance I provided him was to let him use my cell phone to call his daughter who was meeting him in Chicago, so that he could let her know that the train was running late.
When Dan and I parted in Chicago, I knew that I’d met a very extraordinary person. Certainly, my vacation—and, if I allow it, perhaps my life -- had been enriched by that man named Dan. However, I was also aware that I’d been guilty of one of humankind’s most subtle but devastating injustices.
I was guilty of the act of “preconceived negative personal perception”. What is even more incredible to me is that I am acutely sensitive to the fact that I am a lifelong victim of such preconceived negative personal perceptions.
How many times have I been denied opportunities for work, friendship, even love because of a person’s negative perceptions and ultimate inability to imagine interacting comfortably with me in a working or loving relationship? How many times have I answered the inquiry people often make as to what is hardest about living with disability by saying, with some intensity, that the most difficult aspect of living with disability (which in my case is total blindness) is dealing with the public’s perception of it.
The answer to both the above questions is — too many times.
Preconceived negative personal perception often is devastating to persons who live with disability. Unfortunately, its practice -- which I’ll define here as preconceived negative conclusions about others based on poor knowledge of the conditions under which another person lives -- is widely practiced and affects far more than the disabled.
Thus, persons with disabilities, persons of different races, of different religions, of different classes and economic stature are all too often ready-made victims of our preconceived ideas as to how they live, what they believe, what they can do and what they will be like. What is more, one shouldn’t assume that the poor and disadvantaged are the sole victims of negative personal perception. The rich and powerful can also be victimized – and often are. Their ability to more easily protect themselves from negative personal perception doesn’t in the least justify the practice.
Hence, the victim of racism can also be a racist, the offended can indeed offend, the sinned against can -- and do -- sin…as I learned once again on Monday, June 18th, 2007:
Just because I’m aware of others’ capacity for preconceived negative personal perception does not immunize me from practicing it myself.
Furthermore, negative personal perception may not be the only path to our individual and societal failings, but it’s surely one of the most well-taken paths. Next to the path of least resistance, the path of negative personal perception is the easiest to take…and it’s taken too often by far too many -- including this observer.
Thanks, Dan. Because you’re you, I couldn’t get away with it -- this time anyway!
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
Friday, July 6, 2007
VACATION—AS MUCH A REMINDER AS A REST
BY EDWIN COONEY
My recent vacation began smoothly and pleasantly on the morning of Monday, May 28th largely due to the considerate and most helpful efforts of four men named Chris, Don, Peter and Dennis.
Wearing new clothes, carrying a new cane, toting a new cell phone along with a full suitcase, I arrived shortly after eight thirty a.m. at the Emeryville, California train station on Monday, May 28th to begin a three-and-a-half day venture across America. The following Thursday, the Lakeshore Limited out of Chicago would deposit me in Depew, New York, a suburb of Buffalo.
Between Sacramento, California and Denver, Colorado, I had the pleasant company of a lady named Nancy. Nancy has a son living in Seattle, Washington, a daughter and
granddaughter living north of Denver, Colorado and family residing all over the West. Her experience riding the roads and rails is extensive and her adventures are varied in the moods their memories invoke. Thus, as train Number Six, the California Zephyr, worked its way - ponderously at times - across the western mountains, deserts and the great salt flats, Nancy shared some of her stories with me.
She told of the time recently when a passenger aboard the Greyhound bus she was riding reported to the driver that another passenger was carrying a gun. The bus was held up for two hours while authorities thoroughly searched the bus. She shivered in the cold and waited with her fellow travelers only to discover that the gun was merely a beebe gun intended as no threat to anyone. Yes, indeed, travel does have its travails--especially on Amtrak.
While waiting in Chicago for the Lakeshore Limited to Buffalo, I encountered one of the most resourceful and purposeful ladies I’ve met in some time. Her name is Charlene and she and her daughter Eva were traveling back to their home near New York from a family reunion in Minnesota. The Amtrak station in Chicago is underground and thus makes it hard for passengers waiting between trains to use radios to listen to local baseball games or other broadcasts. Even worse, the television in the station wasn’t showing the Cubs game then in progress. Charlene, a lady possessed of both charm and persistence, sought assistance from the technical staff and made the request to let us hear the Cubs rather than the boring movie being broadcast. Although we didn’t get to hear the Cubs, I like to think that the reason for that was simply because we ran out of time between trains. The daughter of a Canadian father and an Icelandic mother, Charlene was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, and has traveled widely. For many years, Charlene has been involved in caring for and supporting people with disabilities as well as people who suffer from the depravities of a low income existence. Charlene and her remarkable daughter Eva, who has sufficiently mastered disability to become the Program Director at the Westchester, New York Independent Living Center, were the kind of traveling companions who made me want to know them even when I wasn’t traveling.
Then, too, there was Jerry, a Learning Consultant at the Center for Advanced Learning in Concord, Ohio. Jerry is the kind of person who makes his companion feel like he or she is the center of his attention — even in the most crowded room.
The train was a mere twenty-five minutes late getting into Buffalo and I was met there by my friend Bob. For the last thirty-two years, Bob has been most considerate and kind to me as both a friend and even a landlord. Bob, who constantly reminds me that he “tumbled out of the hills of Pennsylvania,” and therefore is “just a country boy,” insists on being not only helpful, but even generous. He makes it easy for me to minimize our political differences.
Attica, New York has been known to the world primarily as a prison town since the Attica Prison Riot in September 1971. Tiny in size, its other-worldliness is emphasized for me by three distinct sounds. The first sounds are the hymns which are heard throughout the village twice daily -- at noon and at 6 p.m. -- from the chimes of St. Vincent’s Roman Catholic Church. The second is the sound of the crunch of automobile tires on a gravel driveway instead of the usual concrete driveway found in most other places. That sound takes me back as far as I can remember. The third sound is more subtle but ultimately more significant: in the village of Attica, the sound of traffic is present, but it doesn’t dominate one’s senses. The most constant sound in Attica is that of barking dogs, the chirping of birds, and the wind in the trees. That sound, powerful and even primitive, leaves one with the impression that Attica could very easily be swallowed up by Mother Nature—-prison and all.
Attica always will mean the most to me as the home of a woman who has nurtured me since she was a “house mother” and I was a student at the New York State School for the Blind in nearby Batavia, New York. Edith has meant more to my values (spiritual and otherwise) than any other single person. She was born in Buffalo back in 1910 when children were mostly born at home and were expected to be “seen and not heard”. Now, at age ninety-seven, Edith, with considerable dignity, lives in a very different world from the one into which she was born. She doesn’t quarrel with today’s world, different as it is from the world she once knew, for she has always championed young people. Now she spends her time in her home from which she offers love and gentle wisdom in support of those she cherishes—including this observer.
Her daughter Sharon, who came to Attica from her Watertown home approximately 150 miles to the northeast of Attica to be with us, although somewhat different from Edith in style and manner, nevertheless possesses a sweet and generous nature. Marvelously feminine, Sharon’s personality is such that sunny laughter inevitably bubbles just below the surface of her daily existence and thus seems to fuel her ongoing thoughtfulness of other people.
While staying in Attica, I had lunch at the Attica Hotel with Dr. Wayne Mahood, a retired professor but still an actively prolific author of history texts. Between 1969 and 1994, Wayne was an instructor of education at the State University College at Geneseo. A professor and friend of mine since 1971, Wayne has grown gracefully senior encouraging and advising me as well as far more successful students. My shortcomings in these pages are not of his doing: Wayne really does encourage me to do better.
Batavia, which sits well established atop the flatland of Western New York, thirty-five miles northeast of Buffalo and thirty miles almost due west of Rochester, is a pretty thriving place for such a small city of approximately 18,000 citizens. It is the home of the New York State School for the Blind which opened in 1868 and which I attended from the fall of 1950 until June of 1966. These days the school serves a different and more severely disabled group of those who live with blindness. Its future as an institution is uncertain, but its past was celebrated by its Alumni Association early in June at its annual alumni reunion which was held at the Batavia Holiday Inn.
For nearly three days, I shared a cascade of school memories with approximately fifty others ranging in age from their early forties to the upper eighties. Many at the reunion attended that little school as early as 1924 and as recently as the late 1970s. Their common bond is their love for the school. Their common discomfort is coping with what their alma mater has become. I knew most of those who attended the reunion although I was not really a contemporary of many of them.
For hours and hours we exchanged stories. One man named Michael remembered my having protected him from a dog when he was about ten years old. To him I still am a hero although he realizes that all the dog was doing was barking, but he was deathly afraid of dogs. Then there is Nick who still blames me for an accident he had once while we were both in the school infirmary. “It wasn’t my fault,” Nick insists, “you had me laughing so hard that I couldn’t help it.” I thought the nurse understood the situation pretty well, but Nick isn’t so sure she did.
Between Sunday, June 10th and Friday, June 15th, I went home. I was born in Binghamton, New York and lived in what they still call “The Triple Cities” -- Binghamton, Johnson City and Endicott -- during school vacations throughout most of my childhood. My friends Barb and Dick were not only wonderfully generous and kind to me this year, but have been so since I was a teenager. They have lived in the same house since 1961 and are the proud parents of two children and two grandchildren. Steve is a new and somewhat struggling businessman who lives by his principles no matter how difficult for him they may be. He believes in hard work and conscientious behavior. His sister Kathy works contentedly as a secretary and computer whiz and raises their granddaughter Jenny. Sweet and petite, Barbara is intensely passionate about people and the principles that matter to her. Dick is quiet and easy-going but very passionate about Bobbie—as he usually refers to his wife. Their grandson Nick, Steve’s son, is very precious to them.
Barb and her sister Joanie treated me to a night of baseball at Nyseg Stadium where the Binghamton B-Mets lost to the Redding Phillies 7 to 1. When I was growing up, the team was called the Binghamton Triplets and they were a Yankee farm team. Yes, Binghamton really does possess a most glorious past.
Okay, it’s true. I won’t deny it. My best friend is a woman. Her name is Rhoda but I always call her Roe. We were in graduate school together and have been friends ever since. While I was majoring in history, Roe was a Library Science major. Second only to Edith, Roe has watched over me since August 29th, 1973 when we first talked at SUNY Geneseo.
Small, round-faced, and curly-haired, Roe believes in living by rules and standards, but she has a considerable amount of understanding and respect for the “underdog”. Intensely proud of her Jewish heritage, she is also intensely interested in helping other people learn about their own heritage. Her strongest characteristics are loyalty and thoughtfulness especially for those she cares about most, which of course include her husband and two daughters.
Mark, her husband of twenty-five years, is an imposing looking but very generous man. Primarily because he has a strong sense of his own worth, Mark extends himself to be kind and helpful to others. I was permitted to share his Father’s Day weekend. How much more generous than that can one possibly be?
Yes, this vacation was indeed a reminder of the past and the present, the happy, the sad and the uncertain. It was a reminder of the vastness of America, of the variety of its people’s experiences and perceptions. Even more, near its close, I got a reminder I didn’t realize I needed. I’ll share it with you next week.
Meanwhile, please accept this as…
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
My recent vacation began smoothly and pleasantly on the morning of Monday, May 28th largely due to the considerate and most helpful efforts of four men named Chris, Don, Peter and Dennis.
Wearing new clothes, carrying a new cane, toting a new cell phone along with a full suitcase, I arrived shortly after eight thirty a.m. at the Emeryville, California train station on Monday, May 28th to begin a three-and-a-half day venture across America. The following Thursday, the Lakeshore Limited out of Chicago would deposit me in Depew, New York, a suburb of Buffalo.
Between Sacramento, California and Denver, Colorado, I had the pleasant company of a lady named Nancy. Nancy has a son living in Seattle, Washington, a daughter and
granddaughter living north of Denver, Colorado and family residing all over the West. Her experience riding the roads and rails is extensive and her adventures are varied in the moods their memories invoke. Thus, as train Number Six, the California Zephyr, worked its way - ponderously at times - across the western mountains, deserts and the great salt flats, Nancy shared some of her stories with me.
She told of the time recently when a passenger aboard the Greyhound bus she was riding reported to the driver that another passenger was carrying a gun. The bus was held up for two hours while authorities thoroughly searched the bus. She shivered in the cold and waited with her fellow travelers only to discover that the gun was merely a beebe gun intended as no threat to anyone. Yes, indeed, travel does have its travails--especially on Amtrak.
While waiting in Chicago for the Lakeshore Limited to Buffalo, I encountered one of the most resourceful and purposeful ladies I’ve met in some time. Her name is Charlene and she and her daughter Eva were traveling back to their home near New York from a family reunion in Minnesota. The Amtrak station in Chicago is underground and thus makes it hard for passengers waiting between trains to use radios to listen to local baseball games or other broadcasts. Even worse, the television in the station wasn’t showing the Cubs game then in progress. Charlene, a lady possessed of both charm and persistence, sought assistance from the technical staff and made the request to let us hear the Cubs rather than the boring movie being broadcast. Although we didn’t get to hear the Cubs, I like to think that the reason for that was simply because we ran out of time between trains. The daughter of a Canadian father and an Icelandic mother, Charlene was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, and has traveled widely. For many years, Charlene has been involved in caring for and supporting people with disabilities as well as people who suffer from the depravities of a low income existence. Charlene and her remarkable daughter Eva, who has sufficiently mastered disability to become the Program Director at the Westchester, New York Independent Living Center, were the kind of traveling companions who made me want to know them even when I wasn’t traveling.
Then, too, there was Jerry, a Learning Consultant at the Center for Advanced Learning in Concord, Ohio. Jerry is the kind of person who makes his companion feel like he or she is the center of his attention — even in the most crowded room.
The train was a mere twenty-five minutes late getting into Buffalo and I was met there by my friend Bob. For the last thirty-two years, Bob has been most considerate and kind to me as both a friend and even a landlord. Bob, who constantly reminds me that he “tumbled out of the hills of Pennsylvania,” and therefore is “just a country boy,” insists on being not only helpful, but even generous. He makes it easy for me to minimize our political differences.
Attica, New York has been known to the world primarily as a prison town since the Attica Prison Riot in September 1971. Tiny in size, its other-worldliness is emphasized for me by three distinct sounds. The first sounds are the hymns which are heard throughout the village twice daily -- at noon and at 6 p.m. -- from the chimes of St. Vincent’s Roman Catholic Church. The second is the sound of the crunch of automobile tires on a gravel driveway instead of the usual concrete driveway found in most other places. That sound takes me back as far as I can remember. The third sound is more subtle but ultimately more significant: in the village of Attica, the sound of traffic is present, but it doesn’t dominate one’s senses. The most constant sound in Attica is that of barking dogs, the chirping of birds, and the wind in the trees. That sound, powerful and even primitive, leaves one with the impression that Attica could very easily be swallowed up by Mother Nature—-prison and all.
Attica always will mean the most to me as the home of a woman who has nurtured me since she was a “house mother” and I was a student at the New York State School for the Blind in nearby Batavia, New York. Edith has meant more to my values (spiritual and otherwise) than any other single person. She was born in Buffalo back in 1910 when children were mostly born at home and were expected to be “seen and not heard”. Now, at age ninety-seven, Edith, with considerable dignity, lives in a very different world from the one into which she was born. She doesn’t quarrel with today’s world, different as it is from the world she once knew, for she has always championed young people. Now she spends her time in her home from which she offers love and gentle wisdom in support of those she cherishes—including this observer.
Her daughter Sharon, who came to Attica from her Watertown home approximately 150 miles to the northeast of Attica to be with us, although somewhat different from Edith in style and manner, nevertheless possesses a sweet and generous nature. Marvelously feminine, Sharon’s personality is such that sunny laughter inevitably bubbles just below the surface of her daily existence and thus seems to fuel her ongoing thoughtfulness of other people.
While staying in Attica, I had lunch at the Attica Hotel with Dr. Wayne Mahood, a retired professor but still an actively prolific author of history texts. Between 1969 and 1994, Wayne was an instructor of education at the State University College at Geneseo. A professor and friend of mine since 1971, Wayne has grown gracefully senior encouraging and advising me as well as far more successful students. My shortcomings in these pages are not of his doing: Wayne really does encourage me to do better.
Batavia, which sits well established atop the flatland of Western New York, thirty-five miles northeast of Buffalo and thirty miles almost due west of Rochester, is a pretty thriving place for such a small city of approximately 18,000 citizens. It is the home of the New York State School for the Blind which opened in 1868 and which I attended from the fall of 1950 until June of 1966. These days the school serves a different and more severely disabled group of those who live with blindness. Its future as an institution is uncertain, but its past was celebrated by its Alumni Association early in June at its annual alumni reunion which was held at the Batavia Holiday Inn.
For nearly three days, I shared a cascade of school memories with approximately fifty others ranging in age from their early forties to the upper eighties. Many at the reunion attended that little school as early as 1924 and as recently as the late 1970s. Their common bond is their love for the school. Their common discomfort is coping with what their alma mater has become. I knew most of those who attended the reunion although I was not really a contemporary of many of them.
For hours and hours we exchanged stories. One man named Michael remembered my having protected him from a dog when he was about ten years old. To him I still am a hero although he realizes that all the dog was doing was barking, but he was deathly afraid of dogs. Then there is Nick who still blames me for an accident he had once while we were both in the school infirmary. “It wasn’t my fault,” Nick insists, “you had me laughing so hard that I couldn’t help it.” I thought the nurse understood the situation pretty well, but Nick isn’t so sure she did.
Between Sunday, June 10th and Friday, June 15th, I went home. I was born in Binghamton, New York and lived in what they still call “The Triple Cities” -- Binghamton, Johnson City and Endicott -- during school vacations throughout most of my childhood. My friends Barb and Dick were not only wonderfully generous and kind to me this year, but have been so since I was a teenager. They have lived in the same house since 1961 and are the proud parents of two children and two grandchildren. Steve is a new and somewhat struggling businessman who lives by his principles no matter how difficult for him they may be. He believes in hard work and conscientious behavior. His sister Kathy works contentedly as a secretary and computer whiz and raises their granddaughter Jenny. Sweet and petite, Barbara is intensely passionate about people and the principles that matter to her. Dick is quiet and easy-going but very passionate about Bobbie—as he usually refers to his wife. Their grandson Nick, Steve’s son, is very precious to them.
Barb and her sister Joanie treated me to a night of baseball at Nyseg Stadium where the Binghamton B-Mets lost to the Redding Phillies 7 to 1. When I was growing up, the team was called the Binghamton Triplets and they were a Yankee farm team. Yes, Binghamton really does possess a most glorious past.
Okay, it’s true. I won’t deny it. My best friend is a woman. Her name is Rhoda but I always call her Roe. We were in graduate school together and have been friends ever since. While I was majoring in history, Roe was a Library Science major. Second only to Edith, Roe has watched over me since August 29th, 1973 when we first talked at SUNY Geneseo.
Small, round-faced, and curly-haired, Roe believes in living by rules and standards, but she has a considerable amount of understanding and respect for the “underdog”. Intensely proud of her Jewish heritage, she is also intensely interested in helping other people learn about their own heritage. Her strongest characteristics are loyalty and thoughtfulness especially for those she cares about most, which of course include her husband and two daughters.
Mark, her husband of twenty-five years, is an imposing looking but very generous man. Primarily because he has a strong sense of his own worth, Mark extends himself to be kind and helpful to others. I was permitted to share his Father’s Day weekend. How much more generous than that can one possibly be?
Yes, this vacation was indeed a reminder of the past and the present, the happy, the sad and the uncertain. It was a reminder of the vastness of America, of the variety of its people’s experiences and perceptions. Even more, near its close, I got a reminder I didn’t realize I needed. I’ll share it with you next week.
Meanwhile, please accept this as…
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
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