TED on Tuesday: Deep Sea Diving…in a Wheelchair

Image courtesy Sue Austin website...

Multimedia, performance and installation artist Sue Austin challenges our notions of what disability is. Sue is the founder and artistic director of Freewheeling, an initiative aiming to further the genre of Disability Arts.

Sue states: "My studio practice has, for sometime, centred around finding ways to understand and represent my embodied experience as a wheelchair user, opening up profound issues about methods of self-representation and the power of self-narration in challenging the nexus of power and control that created the ‘disabled’ as other."

When Sue got a powered wheelchair more than sixteen years ago, she felt a tremendous sense of freedom. However, others looked at her as though she had lost something precious―her ability to walk and move about freely. On the other hand, for Sue Austin, the power chair gave her precisely that ability. By adding modifications and additions to her chair, Sue is able to create art, and just as importantly, travel and explore the world in ways that almost defy the imagination.

This talk, filmed at TEDxWomen 2012 includes stunning footage of Sue as she dons an oxygen tank and breathing apparatus, and turns her powered wheelchair into an underwater vessel that propels her across vast ocean floors, and amongst schools of multi-coloured fish. In doing so, Sue Austin reshapes how we think about disability, and proves once again, that where there is a will, there is always a way.

More Information

TED Online…

Sue Austin’s website...

Sue Austin on Twitter...

Freewheeling...

In Review: Gone To New York

~ I have only read one other book by Ian Frazier, and that was his paean to the American prairies called Great Plains - a book I thoroughly enjoyed and reviewed here…

When I saw a copy of his 2005 collection of essays about New York City, Gone to New York: Adventures in the City making the decision to buy it was easy.

Gone to New York collects together twenty-two essays that examine aspects of life in New York City that are by turns, poignant, funny, serious, and insightful. The essays come from a variety of magazine sources, including the Atlantic, and The New Yorker, for which Ian Frazier continues to write as he has since 1973. Each story in the book contains a year of publication, and these range from Antipodes (1975), to the 2005 essay, Out of Ohio.

Along the way we meet a succession of New Yorkers, each of which is unique in their own way. There’s George Willig, the man who scaled the World Trade Center in 1977 using handmade clamping devices; we learn about Clifford Holland, that man for whom the Holland Tunnel is named;  we meet Martin Tytell, who at 83 years of age in 1997 (when the essay Typewriter Man was written), may have been the last manual typewriter repair man in New York City. We visit crime scenes, take bus rides, walk Canal Street, and stop to remove plastic bags from trees.

Two of the most touching stories are To Mr. Winslow (1993), and Street Scene (1995). In the first essay, Frazier writes about Allyn Winslow, a forty-two-year-old drama teacher who was shot and killed one June morning, after refusing to hand his new bicycle over to four teenagers. In three brief pages, Frazier documents the creation of a memorial to Mr. Winslow, that appears over several days on the exact spot at which he died. He records items as they are added to the memorial by locals, who in most cases didn’t know Allyn Winslow personally, but who were still moved to remember his passing.

Then, over a period of five months, Frazier traces the gradual breakdown of the memorial as summer rains, vandalism, ongoing park maintenance, and winter storms slowly eliminate signs of the original location, so that eventually all trace of it disappears. And thus, with its final disappearance, one is left to wonder if anyone―apart from the writer―still remembers Mr Winslow.

Image courtesy of Bag Snaggers...

[Image Right: The actress and singer, Bette Midler using a Bag Snagger to remove plastic from a New York City tree. Background to this photo is recounted in the essay, Bags in Trees: A Retrospective.]

In Street Scene, Frazier watches as a woman administers mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to an elderly woman who lies on a Brooklyn sidewalk. Assisting her is a young male who counts off “One, two, three, four, five,” as he in turn administers chest compressions in an attempt to keep the elderly lady alive. Eventually, an Emergency Medical Service truck arrives and the paramedics take over the life-saving work of the volunteer rescuers. Ian Frazier watches as the male and female part without a word, and go their separate ways. At least Frazier has enough presence of mind to approach the man to thank him for what he had done.

He then runs after the woman, who was by now well down the block: I tapped her shoulder and she turned and I said thank you. Her eyes were full of what had just happened. There were tears on her upper cheeks. She said something like, “Oh, of course, don’t mention it.” She was … an ordinary-looking person, but glowing beautifully.

Earlier this month in my piece Reflections From The Window Seat, I asked the question, “…when you travel, where do you prefer to sit: window, aisle or middle seat?.” I added that I am definitely a window seat traveller, and went on to elaborate further about why. In Frazier’s essay, Route 3, I was delighted to read this: I usually travel to and from the city by bus. Most bus commuters sensibly occupy themselves with newspapers, laptops, CD players, and so on. I always try to get a window seat and then look at the scenery. If this were a ride at an amusement park, I would pay to go on it.

Frazier then goes on to describe in detail the bus journey along Route 3 between his home and the city, and I got a lot of satisfaction knowing that I had found a kindred spirit when it came to the joys of window seat travel. Even if the journey was only between workplace and home.

It probably isn’t necessary to be a New Yorker, or to have visited the city, to get the most out of the twenty-two essays in Gone To New York, but it helps. Having said that, most people reading this have been to New York City, if only through the medium of Hollywood movies and countless television shows. It should not be too hard to imagine yourself walking along Canal Street with Ian Frazier, as he points out some of the streets quirkier characters, and grumbles about the plastic bag tangled in the branches of the tree you are passing under. Speaking of which, here is an American television news item which includes Ian Frazier and his friend Bill McClelland using a Bag Snagger to remove plastic from trees.

Gone to New York: Adventures in the City is a delightful read, and is well worth seeking out either online, or through your local bookstore.

More Information

Ian Frazier at Wikipedia…

At The New Yorker…

At The Atlantic…

Ian Frazier on Facebook…

Bag Snaggers.Com…

New York City, Six Months After Sandy

Image courtesy Wikipedia. Author: Hybirdd

~ The modern, relentless 24 hour news cycle, has a voracious appetite. Most news stories, unless on the scale of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in New York City, and Washington, DC, quickly disappear from the front pages of newspapers or as the lead story of nightly news bulletins.

At least 285 people were killed along the path of the storm in seven countries. In the United States, where media organizations and some U.S. government agencies nicknamed the hurricane "Superstorm Sandy," the storm affected 24 states, including the entire eastern seaboard. The most severe damage occurred in New Jersey and New York, when the storm surge hit New York City on October 29, flooding streets, tunnels and subway lines, and cutting power in and around the city. Damage in the US was estimated at over US$71 billion.

Six months after Hurricane Sandy made landfall in Cuba, and worked its way up the east coast of the United States to New York City and beyond, devastating coastal communities in its path, little if anything is heard about the ongoing recovery efforts still underway in these coastal communities. In New York City for example, vast stretches of beach front along the Atlantic reaches of Staten Island and Coney Island in particular still look much like they did soon after the storm struck.

Clipping from amNY...

While I don’t have a complete list of locations and infrastructure that are still closed or under repair, six months after Sandy, the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island Immigration Museum remain off the tourist circuit. The Statue of Liberty is due to open by July 4, but no date has been set for the reopening of Ellis Island.

Of the numerous subway stations and tunnels that were flooded by the almost 14 foot storm surge, the new South Ferry station seems to have suffered the most, when 15 million gallons of salt water poured into it, causing around US$600 million in damage. In response, the old 108-year-old South Ferry station has been reopened while the new station is repaired―a process that may take as long as two or three years!

To my knowledge, the one remaining subway line to be affected by Hurricane Sandy is the A-train. This currently runs as far as the Howard Beach station, with free shuttle buses operating non-stop between this station, and Far Rockaway-Mott Avenue. I assume, rail service is also affected at the other end of the Rockaways, at Rockaway Park Beach. More information about this service can be found at the MTA.INFO site…

Elsewhere along the coast, work is continuing apace to get New York’s beaches ready for the 2013 summer season. Despite being one of the worst affected areas, Coney Island is already open for business―or most of it anyway. The main outlet for Nathan’s Famous, a Coney Island business famous for its hotdogs, and for the annual hotdog eating contest they run remains closed, although its other branch location on Boardwalk West is open. 

Photo: M.T.A. / Patrick Cashin / via Wikipedia

The nearby New York Aquarium at Coney Island was flooded, and will have a limited opening this spring, but there is no timetable for the re-opening of Nathan’s. Meanwhile, Rockaway beach and Jacob Riis Park should be open by May 25 (Memorial Weekend), but it looks like Fort Tilden will be closed for the summer.

And then there is one of my favourite New York City locations―the South Street Seaport area around Pier 17. After a long day walking the streets of lower Manhattan, I have spent many a warm summer evening relaxing and taking in the sights and sounds around the South Street Seaport.

The viewing ‘decks’ of the shopping mall on Pier 17 provide some of the nicest views of the Brooklyn Bridge―especially if you time your visit to coincide with the magic hour or two around sunset. Then the view and the wonderful photographic opportunities are unbeatable. Sadly, though, not only did the South Street Seaport Museum suffer extensive damage, but the Pier 17 area itself was badly affected by the storm.

Negotiations are currently underway with the Howard Hughes Corporation (which owns the Pier 17 area), to build a modern shopping mall, incorporating a rooftop garden and concert area, and other facilities. I can’t say I am excited by the new design for the building which features copious amounts of glass, and seems out of place at a ‘seaport’ location, but maintaining the seaport there is better than having yet another skyscraper dominating the skyline at the foot of Manhattan.

In the meantime, I understand the current shopping facilities at Pier 17 will continue to operate as best they can through summer 2013, until construction of the new building commences later this year. 

I am sure the above is just a small part of what remains to be done to repair and replace damage caused by Hurricane Sandy in the New York City area. But I hope it serves as a reminder that although the news cycle has moved on, thousands of people along the whole length of Sandy’s path are still dealing with the aftermath  of the storm every day, and will continue to do so for many years.