Collected Item: “Harriotte Cook-Hurie-Ranvig Oral History, 2021/11/28”
Title
Interview with Harriotte Cook-Hurie-Ranvig
Who conducted the interview? List all names, separated by comma.
Kit Heintzman
Who was interviewed? List all names, separated by commas.
Harriotte Cook-Hurie-Ranvig
Email Address(es) for all interviewers. Separated by comma.
kheintzman@gmail.com
Use one-word hashtags (separated by commas) to describe your oral history. For example: Where did it originate? How does this object make you feel? How does this object relate to the pandemic?
#6Jan2021, #ableism, #abortion, #activism, #activist, #afib, #anthropologist, #blind, #Boston, #Canada, #cancer, #church, #cooperativeliving, #Deaf, #Delta, #democracy, #diabled, #disability, #domesticviolence, #fascism, #fear, #forprofithealthcare, #GeorgeFloyd, #Georgia, #Hungary, #Ivermectin, #Massachuesettes, #medicalracism, #meditation, #mother, #music, #musician, #narcolepsy, #NovaScotia, #partnership, #podcast, #publictransit, #queer, #racism, #reading, #Quaker, #sexualassault, #singing, #Somerville, #TedTalks, #Thanksgiving, #touch, #trauma, #Trump, #Tuskegee, #vaccine, #variants, #virology
What is the format of your recording?
Video
In what ZIP code is the primary residence of the interviewee? (enter 5-digit ZIP code; for example, 00544 or 94305)? In what city/town/village does the interviewee live? In what country does the interviewee live? All comma-separated.
Somerville, MA, USA
What is the gender of the interviewee? Be sure to allow interviewees to self-identify their gender in the pre-interview or interview. *Do not assign a gender identity to interviewees.*
she/her/hers
What is the age of the interviewee?
75 or older
How does the interviewee describe their race or ethnicity? Be sure to allow interviewees to self-identify their race/ethnicity in the pre-interview or interview. *Do not assign a racial or ethnic identity to interviewees.*
Duke's mixture: Dutch, French, English, Scottish
Describe the oral history.
FLAGGING FOR CURATOR ATTENTION: 2h 07m (video available in Heintzman's google drive): discussion of daughter’s molestation, daughter's name is not mentioned in the sentence, but is mentioned elsewhere in the interview; abuser not named, but could possibly be discerned from context.
Self-Description:
“I am 75 years-old and very comfortable with my age and my body. Not that the body is perfect, but I’m comfortable with it. I started losing my sight when I was 6 years old in the spring of my first grade year, in public school in Valdosta, Georgia. It was from a fall where I bumped the back of my head. I was already wearing glasses for being near-sighted, and the peculiar thing was I had a terrible headache and they checked me for concussion. But, as it turns out I had a full detachment from the right eye, which I as a child was not particularly aware of therefore it went untreated for quite some weeks. I lost the sight fully then with the right eye. Managed pretty well the left eye, except I had some cataracts and apparently a gradually detaching retina as well. I guess I saw colors and shapes until I was 11 or maybe 12. Difficult to remember, but I treasured light perception. And locating myself by paying attention to where windows were in any new space I was in. Apparently I could see enough to navigate a school 700 kids when I first went to Atlanta for 1 or 2 years to learn braille at what was then called the beginnings of mainstreaming… learning some skills for being blind, which at that time, I didn’t identify with at all. I laughingly say, “I was hard-of-seeing”. Mostly I didn’t get isolated except for some playground activities like softball, but on the other hand we also had ethnic dancing. And of course I sang at every opportunity. I also had private piano lessons, but had a horrible teacher, so that went by the way until high school. I tried to learn guitar, but my little fingers hurt too much. So, ostensibly I was homeschooled for five years as the youngest of the [four] children [in my family].
“I was homeschooled by my mother, in a sense by my father who read to me quite advanced things, like Dickens. And I also learned to touch type thanks to my mother’s color coded poster that I could manage to learn the home keys, probably the most major skill I got in my childhood. Let’s just say by the age of even 11 or 12 I’m sure I was more than legally blind, and I would consider myself blind by age 14 or 15, and I had light perception until I was 40. I didn’t actually perceive myself as “disabled” even as a blind person, because I thought being disabled meant –as a blind person–everything was all dark. And as I’ve already related, things were not all dark for me. So I never assumed, and this is certainly because I’m white and I grew up, my father was from poverty. My mother was from some inherited wealth, not really, very poor as a child. [from age 8 to 14 years old she lived in boarding houses with her mom who seem to become more and more delusional over time until her mom was committed to a state mental institution.]
“[Mom’s great aunts became her guardians.] when she started high school. [Thanks to her great aunts,] she had sufficient money to go to college. I was so lucky that my father was very successful, and one of his key goals was that his children, he could pay for excellent education, [for private high schools], at least through their Bachelors degree. And, that in itself in the 1950s and 1960s is pretty astounding. So after these two years I went off to a tiny boarding school where I was the first, maybe the only, blind student, and I think what strengthened me to be in the world as a person who was blind “disabled” was a certain confidence and joy that my mother certainly imbued in me, my father too to a degree, but my mother primarily. It was just second nature to me to teach my teachers and fellow students how to walk with me, how to work out assignments with me, etc. etc., because even though I learned braille, you couldn’t get any current literature that you just wanted to read in braille…. I was the first blind student in over 110 years when I went to Antioch College, and I went there because they promised a year in Europe and work experience in co-op jobs. And even though I got into Radcliffe, I turned them down like a 17-year-old naive girl might just do. I really never thought there was anything I could not do, and mama just had a belief that if you worked hard enough at a dream somehow you might be able to realize it. I was a folky too, I played guitar…
“I feel as though I’ve had 7 lifetimes in a lifetime. I’ve been married and divorced three times. Two of those times very amicably, and I’m close friends with both (of them. [My third husband was a dear friend young Indian who as a friend and lover of my husband who struggled deeply with depression. With out this friend, I have grave doubts we could have completed the 18 month legal and actual journey in India.] My first husband [introduced me to classical Hindustani music in north India, which made it possible for me to become a performer and teacher; the love of it has nourished me to the completion of my dissertation in 2009 and beyond] has been an important feature of my life, certainly up to the completion of my dissertation in ethnomusicology in 2009. I had two children with my second husband. The first was our biological son in ’85, and then we wanted a second child. But when he was an infant I had a herniated lumbar disk, and was kind of put out of work and everything else for four months. I decided I really wanted to save my body’s energy and adopt an Indian daughter. We managed to do that. We went back To India on my senior music research in (1989-91). I should say one last bit about that [earlier part of my life; just prior to the senior research grant period, I worked for five years] at the Massachusetts Office on Disability, then so ridiculously named the State Office of Handicapped Affairs. I mention that here because in the last 8 years I’ve returned to disability advocacy, I’ve taken it on as a real personal and volunteer activity, in a strong cross-disability fashion. So for example National ADAPT and Massachusetts ADAPT, especially National, was very much focused on individuals who were and are wheelchair users and often in need of certain amounts, or many hours, of personal care attendants [as well as affordable and accessible housing.] I think I might be one of two blind people in a national organization that I’m aware of. I’ve taken on civil rights non-violent actions [recently in the effort to keep the affordable care Act,] until the pandemic. [I enjoy playing traditional tunes on the recorder.] That’s how I met my true love Frank 18 years ago. He himself is 29-years my junior, but somehow age hasn’t gotten in our way. Leading a course in the prisons until the pandemic for three years on leadership and transformational thinking. It’s music at home. Enjoyment of cooking and in the kitchen. And yogurt and sourdough bread. I have had a [part time secretary] consistently since 1979, although during the pandemic I lost one for the whole year. Now I have a great one. Oh and I have been a volunteer doula [for friends, 15 times from 1989-2006].”
NB: Square brackets indicate Harriotte’s additions, some of which are not present in the interview but are a part of her story
Some of the things we talked about included:
Childhood experiences of public health, hygiene, during polio
[forty years of Cooperative living before and during the pandemic; roommates moving out during a pandemic; respect and safety in cohabitation]
Comparisons between COVID in the USA, Canada, Hungary, and India
Comparisons between health care expenses in the USA, Germany, and India
Having vaccine hesitant people in social circle and family; the harms of labels; the impact of lived experience and trust in the medical system
Outdoor socializing; boundaries with unvaccinated friends
Vaccination and the social good
Personal experiences with medical/dental procedures; security in medical insurance; Medicare, Medicaid and MassHealth; for profit healthcare forcing grave inequity
Personal experiences with social vulnerability, isolation, and independence
Being blind and friendships with sighted people; disability allyship; voicing needs [for accommodation and accommodations continuously]
Going into clinics/hospitals for medical procedures during the pandemic; Zoom medical appointments
Slow progression of loss of sight starting in childhood, coming out as disabled, cane use
Medical and scientific knowledge and empowerment COVID-19; deciding to get vaccinated; podcasts
Comparatively fast access to vaccination to others
Easier access to church services and meetings after they went online
Writing a memoir about adopting daughter
Anti-racist workshops, the murder of George Floyd, segregation, overt and coverts
Partnership during the pandemic: books: “Begin again: James Baldwin’s America, by Eddy Glaude, “Beloved, by Tony Morison, Podcasts: “1619” Podcast: Scene on Radio: 14 part series, “Seeing White” “just mercy, true Mercy” film and book by Brian Stevenson etc
Fear and loneliness in the pandemic; fear of political conservatism
Playing music, meditating, poetry, going for walks
Using a BiPAP and massaging joints with arnica oil
Post-medical-procedure masking discomfort
Public transit usage, accessible transit, getting around while blind
Emotional impact of vaccination
Son traveling back to the USA, [to support his Dad to empty destroyed objects from Dad’s home so that Dad could welcome his friends, family, and tenants … Partner and I insuring immediate first Moderna after two Sputnik vaccine injections in Hungry.]
to get vaccinated due to inequitable global distribution
Fear of confrontation and freeze responses
Working in prison activism and with ADAPT
Infection with COVID as an inevitability
Sexual violence
Large pre-pandemic Thanksgiving dinners compared with to a small Thanksgiving gathering in 2021
Sensory experiences of the pandemic: connecting to people by sounds and touch
Negative cultural associations with masks: hiding one’s face for breaking and entry
Health apps
Delta and the emergence of another variant
Women in science
Remembering this moment as one where people came to support each other in ways they never would have imagined
Dedication to living
Reflecting on what one loves and cherishes
Cultural references: Alexander (Technique (lessons, *the joy of learning poised relaxed movement in my body* , Amy Coney, Barrett, Arlington Street Church (Boston) , MA, USA), Eddie Glaude, Gone with the Wind, Edith Hamilton’s Book of Mythology, Gabor Maté’s The Wisdom of Trauma, Henrietta Lacks, Institute for Survival and Beyond, James Baldwin, Joanna Macey’s book “World as Lover” (1991), Katelin Kariko, Maya Angelou, NPR, Paul Farmer, Rachel Cargle’s Do The Work Course 30-Day Challenge, RadioLab, Robert Mcfarland’s The Old Ways (2012), Section8, This Week in Virology, YouTube, Young Adult Novels, Zoom
See also:
https://www.wgbh.org/news/post/masshealth-leaves-many-adults-without-dental-care
https://truthout.org/articles/disability-activists-crash-congress-to-stop-a-bill-that-would-undermine-their-civil-rights/
https://www.buzzsprout.com/606004/9349649-22-disability-rights-we-need-more-funding-for-independent-living-esp-under-covid
https://soundcloud.com/kit-heintzman/soundscape-with-harriet-hurie-ranvig
Self-Description:
“I am 75 years-old and very comfortable with my age and my body. Not that the body is perfect, but I’m comfortable with it. I started losing my sight when I was 6 years old in the spring of my first grade year, in public school in Valdosta, Georgia. It was from a fall where I bumped the back of my head. I was already wearing glasses for being near-sighted, and the peculiar thing was I had a terrible headache and they checked me for concussion. But, as it turns out I had a full detachment from the right eye, which I as a child was not particularly aware of therefore it went untreated for quite some weeks. I lost the sight fully then with the right eye. Managed pretty well the left eye, except I had some cataracts and apparently a gradually detaching retina as well. I guess I saw colors and shapes until I was 11 or maybe 12. Difficult to remember, but I treasured light perception. And locating myself by paying attention to where windows were in any new space I was in. Apparently I could see enough to navigate a school 700 kids when I first went to Atlanta for 1 or 2 years to learn braille at what was then called the beginnings of mainstreaming… learning some skills for being blind, which at that time, I didn’t identify with at all. I laughingly say, “I was hard-of-seeing”. Mostly I didn’t get isolated except for some playground activities like softball, but on the other hand we also had ethnic dancing. And of course I sang at every opportunity. I also had private piano lessons, but had a horrible teacher, so that went by the way until high school. I tried to learn guitar, but my little fingers hurt too much. So, ostensibly I was homeschooled for five years as the youngest of the [four] children [in my family].
“I was homeschooled by my mother, in a sense by my father who read to me quite advanced things, like Dickens. And I also learned to touch type thanks to my mother’s color coded poster that I could manage to learn the home keys, probably the most major skill I got in my childhood. Let’s just say by the age of even 11 or 12 I’m sure I was more than legally blind, and I would consider myself blind by age 14 or 15, and I had light perception until I was 40. I didn’t actually perceive myself as “disabled” even as a blind person, because I thought being disabled meant –as a blind person–everything was all dark. And as I’ve already related, things were not all dark for me. So I never assumed, and this is certainly because I’m white and I grew up, my father was from poverty. My mother was from some inherited wealth, not really, very poor as a child. [from age 8 to 14 years old she lived in boarding houses with her mom who seem to become more and more delusional over time until her mom was committed to a state mental institution.]
“[Mom’s great aunts became her guardians.] when she started high school. [Thanks to her great aunts,] she had sufficient money to go to college. I was so lucky that my father was very successful, and one of his key goals was that his children, he could pay for excellent education, [for private high schools], at least through their Bachelors degree. And, that in itself in the 1950s and 1960s is pretty astounding. So after these two years I went off to a tiny boarding school where I was the first, maybe the only, blind student, and I think what strengthened me to be in the world as a person who was blind “disabled” was a certain confidence and joy that my mother certainly imbued in me, my father too to a degree, but my mother primarily. It was just second nature to me to teach my teachers and fellow students how to walk with me, how to work out assignments with me, etc. etc., because even though I learned braille, you couldn’t get any current literature that you just wanted to read in braille…. I was the first blind student in over 110 years when I went to Antioch College, and I went there because they promised a year in Europe and work experience in co-op jobs. And even though I got into Radcliffe, I turned them down like a 17-year-old naive girl might just do. I really never thought there was anything I could not do, and mama just had a belief that if you worked hard enough at a dream somehow you might be able to realize it. I was a folky too, I played guitar…
“I feel as though I’ve had 7 lifetimes in a lifetime. I’ve been married and divorced three times. Two of those times very amicably, and I’m close friends with both (of them. [My third husband was a dear friend young Indian who as a friend and lover of my husband who struggled deeply with depression. With out this friend, I have grave doubts we could have completed the 18 month legal and actual journey in India.] My first husband [introduced me to classical Hindustani music in north India, which made it possible for me to become a performer and teacher; the love of it has nourished me to the completion of my dissertation in 2009 and beyond] has been an important feature of my life, certainly up to the completion of my dissertation in ethnomusicology in 2009. I had two children with my second husband. The first was our biological son in ’85, and then we wanted a second child. But when he was an infant I had a herniated lumbar disk, and was kind of put out of work and everything else for four months. I decided I really wanted to save my body’s energy and adopt an Indian daughter. We managed to do that. We went back To India on my senior music research in (1989-91). I should say one last bit about that [earlier part of my life; just prior to the senior research grant period, I worked for five years] at the Massachusetts Office on Disability, then so ridiculously named the State Office of Handicapped Affairs. I mention that here because in the last 8 years I’ve returned to disability advocacy, I’ve taken it on as a real personal and volunteer activity, in a strong cross-disability fashion. So for example National ADAPT and Massachusetts ADAPT, especially National, was very much focused on individuals who were and are wheelchair users and often in need of certain amounts, or many hours, of personal care attendants [as well as affordable and accessible housing.] I think I might be one of two blind people in a national organization that I’m aware of. I’ve taken on civil rights non-violent actions [recently in the effort to keep the affordable care Act,] until the pandemic. [I enjoy playing traditional tunes on the recorder.] That’s how I met my true love Frank 18 years ago. He himself is 29-years my junior, but somehow age hasn’t gotten in our way. Leading a course in the prisons until the pandemic for three years on leadership and transformational thinking. It’s music at home. Enjoyment of cooking and in the kitchen. And yogurt and sourdough bread. I have had a [part time secretary] consistently since 1979, although during the pandemic I lost one for the whole year. Now I have a great one. Oh and I have been a volunteer doula [for friends, 15 times from 1989-2006].”
NB: Square brackets indicate Harriotte’s additions, some of which are not present in the interview but are a part of her story
Some of the things we talked about included:
Childhood experiences of public health, hygiene, during polio
[forty years of Cooperative living before and during the pandemic; roommates moving out during a pandemic; respect and safety in cohabitation]
Comparisons between COVID in the USA, Canada, Hungary, and India
Comparisons between health care expenses in the USA, Germany, and India
Having vaccine hesitant people in social circle and family; the harms of labels; the impact of lived experience and trust in the medical system
Outdoor socializing; boundaries with unvaccinated friends
Vaccination and the social good
Personal experiences with medical/dental procedures; security in medical insurance; Medicare, Medicaid and MassHealth; for profit healthcare forcing grave inequity
Personal experiences with social vulnerability, isolation, and independence
Being blind and friendships with sighted people; disability allyship; voicing needs [for accommodation and accommodations continuously]
Going into clinics/hospitals for medical procedures during the pandemic; Zoom medical appointments
Slow progression of loss of sight starting in childhood, coming out as disabled, cane use
Medical and scientific knowledge and empowerment COVID-19; deciding to get vaccinated; podcasts
Comparatively fast access to vaccination to others
Easier access to church services and meetings after they went online
Writing a memoir about adopting daughter
Anti-racist workshops, the murder of George Floyd, segregation, overt and coverts
Partnership during the pandemic: books: “Begin again: James Baldwin’s America, by Eddy Glaude, “Beloved, by Tony Morison, Podcasts: “1619” Podcast: Scene on Radio: 14 part series, “Seeing White” “just mercy, true Mercy” film and book by Brian Stevenson etc
Fear and loneliness in the pandemic; fear of political conservatism
Playing music, meditating, poetry, going for walks
Using a BiPAP and massaging joints with arnica oil
Post-medical-procedure masking discomfort
Public transit usage, accessible transit, getting around while blind
Emotional impact of vaccination
Son traveling back to the USA, [to support his Dad to empty destroyed objects from Dad’s home so that Dad could welcome his friends, family, and tenants … Partner and I insuring immediate first Moderna after two Sputnik vaccine injections in Hungry.]
to get vaccinated due to inequitable global distribution
Fear of confrontation and freeze responses
Working in prison activism and with ADAPT
Infection with COVID as an inevitability
Sexual violence
Large pre-pandemic Thanksgiving dinners compared with to a small Thanksgiving gathering in 2021
Sensory experiences of the pandemic: connecting to people by sounds and touch
Negative cultural associations with masks: hiding one’s face for breaking and entry
Health apps
Delta and the emergence of another variant
Women in science
Remembering this moment as one where people came to support each other in ways they never would have imagined
Dedication to living
Reflecting on what one loves and cherishes
Cultural references: Alexander (Technique (lessons, *the joy of learning poised relaxed movement in my body* , Amy Coney, Barrett, Arlington Street Church (Boston) , MA, USA), Eddie Glaude, Gone with the Wind, Edith Hamilton’s Book of Mythology, Gabor Maté’s The Wisdom of Trauma, Henrietta Lacks, Institute for Survival and Beyond, James Baldwin, Joanna Macey’s book “World as Lover” (1991), Katelin Kariko, Maya Angelou, NPR, Paul Farmer, Rachel Cargle’s Do The Work Course 30-Day Challenge, RadioLab, Robert Mcfarland’s The Old Ways (2012), Section8, This Week in Virology, YouTube, Young Adult Novels, Zoom
See also:
https://www.wgbh.org/news/post/masshealth-leaves-many-adults-without-dental-care
https://truthout.org/articles/disability-activists-crash-congress-to-stop-a-bill-that-would-undermine-their-civil-rights/
https://www.buzzsprout.com/606004/9349649-22-disability-rights-we-need-more-funding-for-independent-living-esp-under-covid
https://soundcloud.com/kit-heintzman/soundscape-with-harriet-hurie-ranvig
On what date did you record this oral history?
2021-11-28T15