Author Archives: Peter Sanford Kahrmann

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About Peter Sanford Kahrmann

Writer, disability rights advocate, civil rights advocate.

Thanking Eddie Izzard

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Those who know me know I am not about meeting famous people. I am about meeting and, if at all possible, thanking people who have made a difference in my life, and people I powerfully identify with, feel a kinship with. There are now three famous people who fall into that category: Bruce Springsteen, President Obama and now, comedian and actor Eddie Izzard, the latter being someone I’ve only recently learned about, thanks to Emily, a remarkable 24-year-old woman who is like a daughter to me.

Emily showed me a couple of clips of Eddie Izzard on YouTube and I was instantly smitten. Izzard is a remarkable comedian and, as he would say, a card carrying transvestite. Frankly, I don’t know how anyone can watch his performances, listen to his interviews, watch the documentary “Believe: The Eddie Izzard Story” and not love the man. Who he is is fully present. He has the courage to be who he is, and that, to me, is what it is about for each of us; giving ourselves permission to be who we are. Millions grow up being told, in one way or another, that there is something wrong with who they are and so they should be someone else. Bullshit. My friend Dave Listowski has the best retort for that: Be yourself, everyone else is already taken.

In his performances Izzard displays a remarkable ability to take the every day of things, peel back the layers, and show us more, or show us what we already know in a way that is, well, brand new. His bit on computers is funny as hell and then some.

 

In the documentary about his life you discover  that a truly loving heart beats within this man. There is a deep compassion for others as well as a remarkable level of self-awareness. It is not easy for most to be who they are openly and Izzard is a role model for anyone struggling with that challenge.

There is a deeply poignant moment in the movie where he talks about the death of his mother when he was five. Others have written about this moment, though I think sometimes they are so hell-bent on using tabloid phrasing they miss the breathtaking fearlessness of Izzard’s openness. He is talking about recently  reading a letter his mother, Dorothy,  wrote after she knew she was sick. In it she expressed her desire that Eddie and his brother and father be  settled in their new home, the boys in school. It is in this moment that tears slip from Izzard’s eyes. “I keep thinking that if I do all these things, and keep going and going, then… she’ll come back"  And now the tears are pouring from my eyes because I have for so long hoped (hoped!) that if I was just a good enough boy out here in the world my father, who died when I was 15, would come back and never had I heard someone voice the same thing, though I am sure many feel the same thing.

Now some in the tabloid species said he broke down, one said he burst into tears. Again, bullshit. He was fully present, fully in touch with his love for his mother along with the pulsing internal ache one feels when they are feeling the loss of a loved one.

As for his being a card carrying transvestite? Rock on, my brother. I hope some day we meet. If you want to see your mother, find a mirror, look closely, you will see the warmth of her heart looking right back at you.

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Where the Facts Lead

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Advocacy is not easy.

As a human rights advocate you see the ability of human beings to dehumanize other human beings, often for financial game and, almost as often, so those doing the dehumanizing can feel powerful, though it takes no power to dehumanize someone, just an ability to be heartless. You see lives lost, figuratively and literally.

I hold fast to something Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once said. “"The ultimate measure of a man  is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at a time of challenge and controversy. The true neighbor will risk his position and even his life for the welfare of others." Is is easy to hold fast in times of challenge and controversy?  No, of course not. It can be brutally hard, scary, painful, and, at times, deeply lonely. But I can live with all that. What I can’t live with, what is far more painful, is the task of staying silent when bigotry and discrimination is at work.

Perhaps one of the most grueling things for me is when I see other advocates set aside their advocacy when it is a friend or family member or business colleague or revenue source doing the dehumanizing. Staying silent, or turning a blind eye when people are being denied their rights, or are being misled, lied to, hurt, is not in my repertoire. In my more selfish moments, I wish it was, but it is not. It is painful when people you know stay silent when someone they happen to know is doing the dehumanizing, the discriminating. I’ve had some who I’ve admired and genuinely liked lash out at me when my advocacy efforts bump into members of their inner circle.

I can’t help where the facts lead.

Once, many years ago, I worked for a long-term healthcare facility in the Bronx. The company held a Christmas Party in a restaurant’s basement level banquet hall. To get to the hall you had to walk down a very long steep flight of stairs. There were no bathrooms on the same floor as the hall and, there was no elevator. This, of course, posed a problem for a good friend of mine who, like me, worked for this healthcare company and was a wheelchair user. Jim Cesario is about as dazzlingly good with a wheelchair as one can get, but still, rolling down a steep flight of stairs and then up again when you had to leave or, say, use the bathroom, would be rather difficult.

Anyway, once I’d learned of the set-up I announced I would not attend the party. Jim along with his wife and daughters were not going, for obvious reasons, and several staff members decided not to go in protest because of the sites inaccessibility. Marked as the ring leader, I was called into the administrator’s office where a few things were explained to me. Yes, they knew this was not fair to Mr. Cesario but after all he was the only wheelchair user on staff and they’d gotten a really good discount price for the hall. And secondly, didn’t I understand that my refusal to go was a blatant sign of disrespect for the company owner and the company as a whole? I said it didn’t make a difference if it was one wheelchair user or dozens, and as far as disrespecting the owner was concerned, perhaps the owner and all members of upper management ought to consider how they’d feel if they had to be carried up and down stairs – in front of their spouse, children and co-workers no less! – every time they needed to use the bathroom.

Needless to say, the party was held in the basement hall. I didn’t go. What’s worth noting is the party was thrown by a healthcare company that would tell the world it fully supported equal rights for wheelchair users, unless of course there was a discount to be had.

And then, in recent history, I uncover the fact that Tim Feeney was lying when he told – and continues to tell -  the world that he is Dr. Feeney or Tim Feeney PhD, when the only valid college degree he has is a bachelors. For fifteen years he was arguably the most powerful voice in the implementation of New York State’s Traumatic Brain Injury Waiver, a form of Medicaid reimbursement for survivors of brain injury living in the community. During that time Feeney would dictate policy and procedures to companies providing waiver services, inflict admission holds, direct that some survivors  be removed from the waiver or stop others from getting on the waiver.

Now you would think that when the truth was revealed, the advocacy community, not to mention the survivors, their families and providers would be glad. Most were. But some attacked me for bringing the truth into the light. Why? In some cases it was because Feeney was linked to people they liked and were friends with, namely former New York DOH employee Patricia Green Gumson and current DOH employee Bruce Rosen.  Both oversaw the waiver for many years and did many truly good things during that time. However, investigation of Feeney revealed there was ample reason to believe both both Gumson and Rosen knew about Feeney’s misrepresentation and covered for him.

I can’t help where the facts lead.

And now it again appears that Feeney may be given the same powerful position in the waiver even though the DOH and STIC (Southern Tier Independence Center) in Binghamton, the company likely to be awarded the contract with DOH that may lead to Feeney’s return, are fully aware of Feeney’s dishonesty. Needless to say I’ve already had people reach out to me telling me that STIC is a highly reputable center. They are right. It is. But even the best of us, myself included, make mistakes in judgment sometimes. Do we deserve to be villainized? No. Do we deserve to be held accountable? Yes.

Which is exactly what I am doing.

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In Fairness to STIC

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The Southern Tier Independence Center in Binghamton New York is in line to get the contract for the Neurobehavioral Project for the state’s Traumatic Brain Injury Waiver. If history has it’s way, they will give the work to Timothy J. Feeney and his staff. That would be a terrible mistake.

However, it is important that fairness is given to STIC and, by all accounts, its remarkable leader, Maria Dibble. One cannot assume (remember the Odd Couple joke) that Ms. Dibble and STIC have been made fully aware of all the untenable realities linked to Feeney.

But now STIC knows. This writer and others have provided Ms. Dibble and STIC with a plethora of documentation that reveals, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Mr. Feeney’s claims to have a PhD and a Masters degree are bogus. Both degrees, as the several thousand readers of this blog already know, were issued by Greenwich University, a now defunct diploma mill off the coast of Australia. In fact, one of the bogus degrees issued Mr. Feeney by Greenwich was issued before the diploma  mill before it moved from the American west coast to Norfolk Island off of Australia.

Now, STIC is aware.

STIC has also been made aware that Mr. Feeney has contracted with at least one public school district, the Fort Ann School District in Washington County, and is again presenting himself as Dr. Feeney or Timothy Feeney PhD. STIC has also been made aware that Feeney’s company’s voicemail already says they (not STIC) are under contract with the DOH as the Neurobehavioral Project when two things are true, the contract is not signed and were it signed, it would be with STIC, not Feeney’s company.

There’s more, and there’s more because all I hear of Maria Dibble and STIC is positive and she and they deserve all the facts. Some have already reached out to STIC about their concerns and STIC has been informed that some providers of services under the waiver will drop out if Feeney and his company are in any way involved.

For STIC, or anyone for that matter, to give the work to Feeney and his people now would be to somehow approve of the fact he misrepresents his credentials to families, consumers, providers and, in the case of the schools he is involved with, children. There have been complaints filed against him as a result of his actions at Fort Ann already.

Now STIC and Maria Dibble are aware of the facts, and they are honorable folks and I would like to think will do the honorable thing.

To give the work to Feeney, who is already misrepresenting himself even more on his new resume where claims, for example, that he is a “Registered psychologist (temporary)” in Victoria, Australia, resulted in this response from Linda Jen, the Senior Registration Officer for the Psychologists Registration Board of Victoria:  “Our records indicate that Timothy Feeney is not registered with the Psychologists Registration Board of Victoria. However, I am unsure what you mean by “temporary” registration?”

So again, it is another misrepresentation by Feeney. Now STIC and Maria Dibble do know the facts.  For them to work with Feeney now would mean that in some way STIC and Maria Dibble are comfortable working with someone who continues to misrepresent himself to consumers, children, professionals, and, perhaps in this case, the very agency that was going to give him work.

Were Feeney and his company given the work, then it would certainly appear to be a tail wagging the dog scenario, meaning Feeney, not STIC and Ms. Dibble, is calling the shots.

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Rand Paul: Part of Racism’s Last Gasp?

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I can’t count the number of times lately politicians remind me of the line made famous by Richard Pryor. Pryor’s wife catches him in bed with another woman and he says, “You gonna believe me or your lying eyes.”

Recently we had Connecticut Democrat Richard Blumenthal claiming his words were misplaced when he said, on more than one occasion mind you, that he served in Vietnam, when he never did serve in Vietnam. That’s called lying Richie B. Now we have Rand Paul who, like his father, has views on civil rights that would be well represented by a wardrobe heavy on the white sheets. His father, Ron Paul, was the only member of  congress – the only member of congress! – to vote against honoring the 1964 civil rights bill on its 40th anniversary.

Rand Paul spokesman Christopher Hightower wrote “Happy Nigger Day” on his MySpace page on Martin Luther King Day with a picture of an African American being lynched.  Paul has  spoken out against the Fair Housing Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act and he says private business should be allowed to discriminate because this is a free country.

It seems to me that there has been a spike in the expression of racist views since the election of President Obama, a president I believe will go down as one of my country’s greatest and, not incidentally,   and bravest. This, I suppose, was to be expected. What also ought to be expected is a surging response from the majority of Americans who believe in equality for all and who are very present in both of the major political parties. It would be unfair to define all Republicans by the actions of Rand Paul and it would be unfair to define all Democrats by the actions of Richard Blumenthal. What does need to happen, however, is the leadership of both parties needs to take their misguided members to task in voices the public can hear.

We can hope the spike is part of racisms last gasp.

As for the racists who think they can turn the tide of freedom, remember what the Japanese leader of the bombing of Pearl Harbor said of my country after the attack. "I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve."

True that.

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The Liars Among Us

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Are any of us this stupid? Sadly, I’m afraid so. What am I asking about? Are any of us stupid enough to actually believe Attorney General Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, a Democrat, when he refers to the several occasions when he said he served in Vietnam (see video below) when he didn’t as merely a few misplaced words on his part? If my Connecticut friends are dopey enough to elect him, and I don’t think they are, God help’m.

Perhaps what Richie B meant to say was, “I lied!” when suddenly, out of the blue, the slime-dripping God of lying took hold of his speech because the words he actually said were, “I will not allow anyone to take a few misplaced words and impugn my record of service to our country.” Hard to impugn something that barely exists if it exists at all.

But Richie B wasn’t the only one of late running around spewing garbage like a leaking sewage pipe. The Catholic Church with the what-me-cover-for-the-pedophiles? Pope is now running around arguing in court that Catholic Bishops are not employees of the church. Never mind that, as the Associated Press reports, “The pope appoints bishops, issues rules bishops are supposed to follow and accepts their resignations. Bishops take a vow of obedience to the pontiff and can’t switch jobs without his approval.”

And so the beat of lies goes on. Richie B claiming his words were misplaced and Popey claiming they don’t work for me.

And here’s the thing; both the blatant lies noted above drench disrespect on two groups of people who don’t deserve it. The men and women who served this country and, as the saying goes, gave all they had and in some cases gave their all, and the children. Anyone who would rather lie than take responsibility for disrespecting veterans and victimizing children doesn’t deserve public office to represent the people or the papacy to represent God. And that ain’t no lie.

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