Poetry and essays about disability with Jim Ferris, Andrew Palasciano, Christine Kalafus and Ginger Carlson!
Transcript: Jim Ferris:
Talking with the President of the United States
this must have been a dream
but it feels like a memory
because when you meet the President
of the United States you would remember it,
at least a guy like me would, or should,
unless he has dementia or something,
but the President, he’s looking at
my shoes, I mean everybody looks
at my left shoe because it’s so
built up and everything, but
the President of the United States
wants to talk about my shoes,
and I know I should feel
embarrassed or something because
my shoes don’t even come close
to matching, when a kid on the street
says How come your shoes don’t match
I tell ‘em Because my feet don’t match,
no wonder they didn’t want me
in the army, but all the Commander
in Chief wants to talk about is my shoes,
he even notices my right shoe,
that’s probably why he’s President,
now I have to look at his shoes too,
and soon enough one of his
Very Important Handlers
shoos him off to somebody
more consequential, but I met
the President of the United States
and we talked, for a moment,
but probably it was a dream,
maybe for both of us
Poetry and essays about disability with Jim Ferris, Andrew Palasciano, Christine Kalafus and Ginger Carlson!
Transcript: Jim Ferris:
Talking with the President of the United States
this must have been a dream
but it feels like a memory
because when you meet the President
of the United States you would remember it,
at least a guy like me would, or should,
unless he has dementia or something,
but the President, he’s looking at
my shoes, I mean everybody looks
at my left shoe because it’s so
built up and everything, but
the President of the United States
wants to talk about my shoes,
and I know I should feel
embarrassed or something because
my shoes don’t even come close
to matching, when a kid on the street
says How come your shoes don’t match
I tell ‘em Because my feet don’t match,
no wonder they didn’t want me
in the army, but all the Commander
in Chief wants to talk about is my shoes,
he even notices my right shoe,
that’s probably why he’s President,
now I have to look at his shoes too,
and soon enough one of his
Very Important Handlers
shoos him off to somebody
more consequential, but I met
the President of the United States
and we talked, for a moment,
but probably it was a dream,
maybe for both of us
Poetry and essays about disability with Jim Ferris, Andrew Palasciano, Christine Kalafus and Ginger Carlson!
Transcript: Jim Ferris:
Talking with the President of the United States
this must have been a dream
but it feels like a memory
because when you meet the President
of the United States you would remember it,
at least a guy like me would, or should,
unless he has dementia or something,
but the President, he’s looking at
my shoes, I mean everybody looks
at my left shoe because it’s so
built up and everything, but
the President of the United States
wants to talk about my shoes,
and I know I should feel
embarrassed or something because
my shoes don’t even come close
to matching, when a kid on the street
says How come your shoes don’t match
I tell ‘em Because my feet don’t match,
no wonder they didn’t want me
in the army, but all the Commander
in Chief wants to talk about is my shoes,
he even notices my right shoe,
that’s probably why he’s President,
now I have to look at his shoes too,
and soon enough one of his
Very Important Handlers
shoos him off to somebody
more consequential, but I met
the President of the United States
and we talked, for a moment,
but probably it was a dream,
maybe for both of us
Self-Portrait #10 with Black Riviera
gray stubble this morning, which always
reminds me of the World War Two vets
who lived upstairs from Len’s Tap – the bums
we called them. Maybe they were heroes.
I should shave. When I read the title
“The Black Riviera” I felt some
excitement, a Riviera for
the rest of us, not just for the chosen
few, I didn’t think of a place for
disabled people—nondisabled
people wouldn’t mind sending us all
away, send me to the Black
Riviera, in the poem it’s
a drug dealer’s car but in my pea
brain it’s a beach where the sand won’t
get in your gears, where the mountains don’t
fight the sea, you don’t have to worry
about gray stubble, paper bag tests
and pale grammar, being too much yet
still never enough, where there is room,
somehow, for people like you and me.
Andy Palasciano:
My name is Andy Palasciano I am a graduate from San Diego State in English Literature. I work as a Job Coach with disabled adults where I go to their places of employment and help them succeed at their job. I also take Zyprexa so I have a heart for their plight for sure my book “The Warrior :The Tales of a Substitute Teacher and Job Coach” tells about, not just surviving as a Substitute, but also my career as a job coach working with those who taught me to love and be lovable. My latest book “Revolutions: Night and Day,” (Lymer and Hart) which is a collection of night and day poems that mirrors the rotation of the Earth deals with the triumph over these issues and many others. Both books are available on Amazon and have been a blessing to me and I feel they will bless others.
The Spiritual Master
If you keep me alive in this world, I will keep you alive in the other
Keen senses forge for sufficient ken in the efferlove
No one had ever seen the master. He lived in a room behind these signs.
Yet his name is famous throughout the land. He is considered by many to be the
greatest master in the world. You can see flags flying and people jumping in
parade celebrating his name and the wonders he has shown them. Only his top
associates are admitted into the room. I can imagine white columns and floors of
Persian rugs where the master kneels and genuflects, a white beard in three
braids with a balding head carrying flax of white hair down his back. But the
master has never been seen, only by his close associates. And the people long to
give him form. But maybe that’s the point. Perhaps the master does not want to
be defined by a mask and become a dangerous idol, a porcelain doll to be deified.
As it is now, the master can fit into the tiniest vile and stretch beyond the
netherdome in star cluster light years from now. Why would he want to trade
that in to become a plastic Buddha doll?
I have obsessed over one day seeing the master for years. I, like many boys in
my village, dreamed of one day being like the master in my childhood. China is a
land with great wells of dreams. The master’s associates would deliver messages
and interpretations from the master to our village square and we would vooshie
and wonder. Sufficient Ken Page 1
Every year our village would hold art contests to see who’s painting or
sculpture captured the master’s essence in a human face and body. My master
usually looked white-haired and balding. But sometimes my master was young
with blond ponytail-playing the flute in the forest. I could see a stream misting
through black birches at a standstill, and the green field rolling above it to meet
the muddy slope. And the master would slope slide from above out of light down
the muddy slope and into the stream, bathing in daylight, sky fawning.
One day one of the associates of the master saw me painting for this contest
and said, “No No No, The Master is more like a little baby, strong as a tree trunk
and soft and lucid as water.”
This really confused me since I knew the master must have been a certain age
by now, well older than I as a child.
Perhaps the Associates only wanted to confuse us to make the game more fun.
Perhaps they enjoyed it as much as we. Or perhaps the wanted to break us of
defining the master with form.
Today, while working my job as bus boy at Foo Ling’s restaurant, I slammed
down my plates and decided. Today I am older. I am old enough to do something
about it. I simply had to see the master. I crept up the outer white poles of the
master’s building and across. As I crept I wondered why no one had ever broken
the sacred code which sanctified the master’s privacy. Surely this was more of
the associate’s playfulness.
Sufficient Ken Page 2
I snuck up to the second story window and looked down. I saw beneath the
white pillared room, the associates walking busily around. And in the kitchen was
an autistic man. He was busily eating cookies and smashing his head with his
lunch tray. “Protect the master’s head!” the associates said as they ran to this
man’s aid. “Tell him to stop!” one of the associates said. “You tell him, you know
the master is non-verbal and doesn’t understand what language is!”. “Now turn
on the master’s cartoons and get his pillow for the couch.”
I watched in disbelief as I saw one of the associates writing “interpretations” of
the master’s movements.
As I watched the master watching television I knew he had never meditated for
a moment in his life. Sitting on the couch he had one hand cupped over his left
eye and one hand cupped over his right ear as he rocked back and forth. Looking
down I began to cry in admiration. He had no long white beard or no blond
ponytail and probably couldn’t play the flute, but truly, this was the master.
Christine Kalafus:
I am Christine Kalafus, a writer in development, and survivor of cancer and of twins who had colic. I’ve had two experiences with depression. The first was when I was going through chemotherapy and the second was when I closed my sewing business. Both were terrifying, but they were circumstantial — they ended within months.
For my sister, depression is chronic.
Now, writing about someone else’s mental illness, and sharing it, especially that of a family member is precarious. No one truly understands someone else’s experience; we can only understand our own. My flash nonfiction piece Dear Feather is not about my relationship with my sister’s depression, but about my relationship with my sister and my desire to end her suffering.
Now, my sister and I do not have the same last name, but even so, some details have been changed to protect her privacy. Feather was her childhood nickname.
D E A R F E A T H E R
I know you’ll never read this. It’s hard and you like soft.
But it’s Christmas — your birthday.
Remember, in Mom’s Pontiac, Dad taking control of the radio? Barry Gibb was out, and Juice Newton was in. This afternoon, just before leaving their house for my own, Mom went into the bathroom, and I ran back into the spare room. In the closet, there’s a pile of music they don’t listen to anymore. And there she was, Juice, on the pinnacle, judging from a director’s chair on the cover of her eponymous cassette as I removed the top off a box of photos.
I plopped the box on the open sofa bed — you know how impossible it is to fold up — the way Mom loads it with egg crate foam, the fifty-pound featherbed, two blankets, that weird velour one and the wool one, and mattress pad. Our mother would forget a mattress pad like forgetting talcum powder under her armpits.
In the bathroom, Mom flushed the toilet, but the faucet didn’t come on as usual as if she were listening to me do what she’d accurately accused me of in the past — swiping photos of my childhood and stowing them away in my luggage.
But I didn’t find the photo of me on my first bicycle with its chopper-like handlebars and the basket tied to the front with a naked Sweet Sixteen Barbie inside. Instead, I found you.
The you before you stopped answering your phone.
It was your first day home. When I asked Mom what she brought me from the hospital she said a sister. And I said anything else? I am four and you are surprisingly hard to hold even though you’re asleep. You’re all in white and wrapped in a white blanket. I’m looking down on you with a big smile.
But it’s at least two years before I can show you ice cream, or how to blow out all your breath without stopping on dandelion fluff or how to execute a perfect somersault. It’s another year after that before you hide your vegetables under the refrigerator when Dad leaves the table and Mom scoots out of the room to throw his work clothes into the wash. Sayōnara green beans. Peas. Broccoli.
Corn cobs were challenging. I once saw you contemplate an open window.
It was before you made Grandma Rose choke on Christmas Eve dinner when you said What if I don’t want to share my presents with Jesus?
It was before you took the cover off Grandma Eva’s lipstick and inserted the tip into each circle of her rotary phone. Before you pinched the optometrist’s ass at your eye appointment, and I, sitting properly, waiting my turn, dropped my eight-year-old jaw at your nerve.
I’ve never had nerve like that.
When I was sixteen and you were twelve, I imagined your life. I saw you in a giant van, covered in painted flowers, the inside loaded with children. You were gorgeous. Long, wavy chestnut hair like Mom’s, no makeup necessary, and taller than me. With better boobs. A waist from fairy tales.
I thought you’d go everywhere.
The other day, waiting at the dentist, I read an article that the symptoms of depression can mimic Lyme Disease. I fantasize that I take you to the doctor, they give you antibiotics and you’re cured. You’re even kind to Republicans.
You cannot remember plopping into my lap when I sat in front of the TV, watching Wonder Woman, how I’d wrap a finger around your curls like I was making a promise.
Back to the photo. I’m holding you. You have no worries — no fears. Everything is possible. It’s your birthday, after all.
You’re born again.
Ginger Carlson:
Dr. Ginger Carlson is a thought leader, author, and speaker. She hosts the podcast Get Thirsty and teaches individuals, teams, and organizations to create the conditions for achieving a state of flow, so they can amplify decisiveness, engagement, productivity, and happiness. Dr. Carlson transforms challenges into possibilities, division into bridges, and tragedy into triumph. Her motto: Bliss is a Verb! Dr. Carlson can be contacted through her website https://www.gingercarlson.com/
I am Dr. Ginger Carlson. born and raised here, I’m a product of Douglas County Schools. I’ve spent the last 30 years giving my life to education, districts across the US, &American and embassy schools. I’ve accredited schools in 20 countries on 5 continents. I specialize in education systems, professional development, assessment, and curriculum. I’ve worked around the world, but my roots are here. When I decided to return to Nevada, I made sure to buy a home in Douglas. My youngest child now attends Douglas County schools.
While I’ve served on and worked with education boards for decades, It’s been 36 years since I’ve been to a DCSD board meeting in person. I’ve been following you online.
Last I attended a board meeting here was in 1987, when I stood in front of the board as a female athlete who was denied the right to play soccer at Douglas because there was not yet a girls team, & The coach at the time, said he “was not going to coach a girl.”
We have evolved in regards to discrimination, that is certain. There is still a lot of work to do.
I do wish to applaud the most recent attempt at assuring non-discrimination through the Resolution affirming your commitment to equity. It does feel a little like a Trojan horse in veiled ways —- i urge you to refine it.
Regarding point 20. materials-
Of course, we know, Discrimination is illegal. I ask that there is careful oversight of materials selection or any impending curation.
Denying materials that reflect any of our students, is (as defined in item 19) is discriminatory. As a PUBLIC school district, not private, it must provide what the resolution states “equitable educational opportunities for ALL students.” ALL students family’s values, belief systems, and family structures, should be reflected in the materials our children can learn from. It never means those materials are forced on anyone, but rather made available.
Because Every student matters. Every moment counts, right?
Across the district, we see the words EMPOWER INSPIRE PREPARE and CONNECT.
If we are to EMPOWER— then our children will see themselves in the materials they learn from, and will have choice in how they represent their knowledge.
If we are to INSPIRE - then they’ll have models for learning and ideas that stretch their thinking
If we are to PREPARE - then our children practice the skills of engaging in an evolving world, and learn to articulate their own beliefs well.
If we are to CONNECT - we take the time and energy to bring together ideas and bridge divisions, not stay divided.
I so appreciate the work of boards. The word TRUSTEE literally means to hold in TRUST. Meaning that the responsibility of the TRUSTEES is to assure that ALL students are held in trust. I trust you will do that.
Thank you.
Soul has an appreciation of human limitations
The no makes the way for the yes
Hello. I am Ginger Carlson. And it is such an honor to be here. I’m going to be reading 7 original poems. If I am meeting you for the first time, I am what I call a Life Alchemist, some who embraces challenge and transforms it into new realities. I am also a course and experience creator, and the host of the podcast Get Thirsty, where I deliberately use poetry as “white space” I see this medium for crafting and combining language in unique ways - poetry- as our treasured breath that we get to take in and release in each moment. Among a variety of challenges I have experienced in my life, for years, I suffered with chronic pulmonary issues, and if you know anyone who uses breathing machines, or has copd, or asthma you might know how the absence of breath can be such a scary thing. And so for years, I got stuck in this place with my health where I was simply trying to always gasp for more air. And I was completely missing the point that I could only take more air in when I had space in my lungs to do that. It was when I fell in love with my exhale, and the release of air too, not just the intake of air, that I was able to make some progress. And that is poetry to me. A cherished full breath, that we get to both take in and release with each new thought.
So I hope you enjoy these few of my cherished full breaths:
It doesn’t matter if you don’t know
What it means right now.
We are in the desert of forgetting, caught up in the dream of matter.
And that is just one sacred location on the journey.
The eyes that know will sing
The memory
And blast comatoseness
Into new nectar
Not your handwork to control.
The art of allowing
Is achingly simple
Open your palms to the heavens
Dear one
just. let. Go.
Oh the joy of being human
Where the mythic mingles with
Street life
And there is a
Graceful balance of dream visions and discovered treasures of the past in the ruins we get to come back together to explore
Wouldn't it be nice
If we could embrace
Our imperfections of flesh
residing here in
A knowing that
Freshly embroidered arteries
Give way to playful minds and endless new opportunities
The ground is generous here
From blocks and tears
Come the sweet blossoms
That grow into the fruits we get to squeeze into
The luscious juice of our well-lived togetherlives
There is a sweet inclusiveness in knowing that
the little things are what matter
Edges are meant to be edgy
And to wish is to allow mercy to enter
This is the transparent sky
When seemingly unkind things come from wise people
Maybe they are the truths we should listen to
This is the miracle of bitter fruit
No human will be untouched by this planet’s puberty
Chaos and change walk palm in palm.
Genesis may be thousands of years past, but
The world is still in creation mode
Reframing is what is requested of us now
and ultimately required
Because Everyday we are becoming new humans
Through Personal apocalipsis
What deep inquiry needs to happen
To alter realities
Our birthright is to walk through it awake
Lick our wounds
Learn our lessons
Heal slowly
Love massively
These are the Solutions for a thriving future
Here, a divine appointment, an audience we must show up for
One of our deepest pains is when our souls feel fractured from the life we are living
In realigning with ourselves, we engage the process of becoming alive
What energy!
What are you carrying that is asking to be set down?
colliding grief and exhaltation, mine and yours… click your rubyheels together girl… there’s no such thing as a more worthwhile use of this. precious. Time.
And an added 6th poem, the poem that is the namesake for my podcast.
Get thirsty
For the things above your head
A small sip of surrender
Is worth saying yes to
Please reach out and let me know if there is anything here that touches you. I can be found at my website gingercarlson.com And it would be a delight to hear from you.
Rae Rose:
The Kardashians Help The Mentally Ill
When I was in high school my friend Lucy got her graded paper back and exclaimed, exactly like this, “What do I have to do to get an A or B in this class? Go to the ends of the earth and back?”
That’s what I say — and how I say it — when people talk smack on the Kardashians. While defending Kim Kardashian I might say: “She’s earning her law degree what does she have to do to for you to support her? Or you to just shut up for 5 minutes?”
This rage comes naturally as The Kardashian’s and I are entirely entwined.
I come to their defense — Klohe is a goddess. Scott’s FAMILY, and he’s come so far. Come at me.
Of course, in turn, and this should be obvious — the Kardashians defend me against hallucinations.
I think it’s because I watched them, for the first time, after my brain emergency surgery on my midbrain. They were the only show that didn’t confuse me. Every other show made me cry because I just couldn’t follow it, but they were a family. A loving family. It wasn’t complicated. The word “Family” seem to hang in a lovely pink neon light whenever I would watch their show. I could barely swallow, couldn’t walk, my head freaking hurt, I was missing a lot of hair and wore an eyepatch — but I had those sisters.
If I see a hallucination from my bipolar disorder, which happens frequently, I watch The Kardashians and it calms me down. For some reason their organized kitchens help the most.
The other day in the living room I found my two daughters saying “beaucoup beaucoup beaucoup la frites.” They were talking to each other in French. They barely speak English. This had to be an auditory hallucination. I sat in the other room, watched an old episode where Kendall told her parents she wanted to be a model for the first time — oh Kendall, oh Kylie, you were babies! — and when I was done, my kids weren’t speaking in French.
A week ago I saw him, a little person — and I’m not trying to make trouble he was actually a little person, my hallucinations are quite diverse. So, a little person was walking down my hallway, he turned, looked at the bathroom door he — he went through the freaking closed door. It was disturbing. Thankfully Khloe dressed up like Kris for a bunch of tiny pranks that had me very entertained.
Look I know he was a little person and not a child because I can tell the difference between little people and children just at a glance plus he was wearing two kinds of corduroy. Weird. That’s not a mistake parents make.
The other day my family went to buy a used car we can can barely afford and I was sitting behind the wheel of this parked jeep and I said, “Okay, I know I’m always seeing something, but this is for real.”
I pointed ahead and said, “Monkeys! It must be some sort of habitat!”
“In a parking lot?” My husband asked.
”Oh come on you see them — right?” I looked at everyone: “RIGHT?”
They were black and white, gripping things, hanging, eating. It was so real to me. The car salesmen said “Um, maybe it was a cat? Should you exit the driver’s seat?”
So, and it feels like I will be asked to do this the rest of my life, I exited the driver’s seat. I sat in back and watched, on the long way home, one of my favorite episodes. Kourtney and Kim are in a fight. A big one. But then, Kim tells her something no one was expecting: Kim is pregnant! Kourtney realizes she has to support Kim. Like any sister would. And they looked like actual monkeys, okay?
I feel like my hallucinations are getting to be more elaborate, more Kardashian like, to distract me from the actual Kardashians.
Two nights ago I heard my dog whimpering at the door, wanting to be let out. When I opened the door, he wasn’t there, so I figured he was by the door he wanted to be let out of. But then, the deeper I walked into the livingroom — in some creepy Beetlejuice carnival, I saw it. Dozens of strings of fairy lights hung from the ceiling, the rocking chairs moved back and forth on their own. The furniture was somehow growling. Tiny animals we definitely do not own and that could never be identified by anyone jumped up and down to the music. I turned around and walked to my room — where a guy, flailing his arms, was waiting for me. I turned on one of the newer Kardashians that I had been watching earlier — a very Skims heavy episode but I love to see Kim succeed. I shone my cell light at the flailing man, who instantly turned to black-blue smoke. Skims saves the day again.
Then I got in bed, and watched Kim take care of her mom after a surgery while my body calmed down from whatever had just happened. I thought, What are these hallucinations after? What is creating them? Will I always have them? Is the only cure The Kardashians?
And for now it’s okay because, as everyone on earth knows quite well, as they have proven again and again with their brands and children and successes — The Kardashians work.
And they work for my mental illness.
Thank you, Kardashians. You are truly loved. By me.
Merci.
Thank you so much for listening and thank you for my contributors, Jim Ferris, Andrew Palasciano, Christine Kalafus and Ginger Carlson! Thanks again!