Arika Okrent - In the Land of Invented Languages

And this changed their lives tremendously. On my Toronto trip, I asked another of Shirley’s former students how he used to communicate before he learned Blissymbolics. He typed out a one-word answer on his computer: “Kick.”

Though Blissymbols was a huge improvement over what was available to the children before, it was still not good enough. The children could communicate about almost anything with their teachers, parents, and others who were familiar with the special mechanics of negotiated agreement that Blissymbols required, but they couldn’t do this with just anyone. They had access to communication, but not full access. They had a very useful tool, but not a language.

So the OCCC staff modified and adapted Bliss’s system in order to make it serve as a bridge to English. They added the alphabet to the symbol boards, so the kids, before they had fully learned to spell, could constrain a symbol by pointing to the first letter of the word they intended. Teachers using the symbols in other countries made adjustments in accordance with the requirements of their spoken languages: In Hungary, they changed the order of the symbols to reflect Hungarian word order and added symbols for grammatical markers as needed. In Israel, they wrote the symbols from right to left. All of these adjustments infuriated Bliss, because he thought he had invented a universal language.

After the OCCC administration told Bliss he was not welcome anymore, his level of interference increased tenfold, and he started threatening lawsuits. Twice, legal agreements were reached where he granted the center rights to use his symbols (under the terms of one agreement, the center was required to mark all symbols in its publications that he had not personally approved with a ), but he always found an excuse to break the agreements and begin fresh attacks on its progress.

He sent an open letter to all institutions in Europe that worked with disabled children in order to “voice my flaming protest against the machinations and perversions of my work by an irresponsible and irrational woman, Mrs. Shirley McNaughton.” He wrote a pamphlet called “My Terror of Toronto” and sent it to the government, the press, and anyone else he thought would listen. McNaughton started getting random “who do you think you are?” letters from strangers. At the same time, Bliss wrote her letters telling her how much he loved her and hoped they could “go on to a greater glory together.” After he viewed the Mr. Symbol Man film, he sent her a telegram:

HAVE SEEN FILM EXTREME CLOSEUP OF YOU DEADLY TO HOLLYWOOD BEAUTIES BUT YOU CAME OUT MORE BEAUTIFUL THAN EVER HAVE FALLEN IN LOVE WHAT AGAIN YES AGAIN LOVE TO BOB KEVIN DAVID

Bliss was desperate for respect, but he was more desperate for love. He was genuinely shocked and hurt when people got angry at him, or cut him out of their lives, despite the fact that it was his own irrational behavior that drove them away. He saw himself as a charmer, an entertainer, a selfless lover of humanity. In his oftrepeated and unlikely account of his release from Buchenwald, he had melted the hearts of his Nazi prison guards with his mandolin playing. It was crucial to his view of himself that he believe in the magical power of his generous spirit.

So, often, when he sensed he had gone too far, he made an effort to win back love. But it never lasted very long. Sometimes the very next day after an apology, a flattery, a plea for pity and understanding, he would find himself fueled by a fresh wave of indignant anger, and the tirades would start up again. He couldn’t help himself.

This was his holiday greeting the next year:

A MERRY CHRISTMAS TO YOU, PEACE ON EARTH AND GOOD WILL TO ALL MEN. Yes, Good Will to all Men, but not to a woman, Mrs. McNaughton. She’s trying to kill me, make me drop dead so she can take over, but im not going to. Are you protecting your fair maiden, well she’s not fair. She has black hair and a black mind.

At one point, Shirley almost resigned, but found she couldn’t leave her students behind. Instead, she accepted dealing with Bliss as another part of her job. He still came back every spring, and she still greeted him warmly. Despite everything that had happened, she maintained respect and admiration for him, and really did want to please him. Her equanimity in the face of it all resulted in a workable but absurd situation, as captured in one of her letters to Bliss.

Dear Charles:

This is to acknowledge receipt of your July 19th letter, “Three Devastating Proofs That Shirley McNaughton Is Catastrophically Ignorant of My Logical Symbol System and the Catastrophic Results of Her Ignorance,” and your more recent letter of July 21st. Prior to your second letter I discussed with [the administration] your request for $5,000. Please direct all future correspondence relating to your expenses to them.

Thank you for your speedy response to our cable regarding the thickness of the pointer, and for your July 21st letter expressing your desire to work on symbols in September.

We look forward to your involvement in developing more symbols in the fall.

Sincerely,

Shirley

Eventually, the workable could no longer coexist with the absurd. Bliss brought the lawyers back, and the center, desperate to make him go away, settled with him. In 1982, the OCCC got an exclusive, noncancelable, and perpetual license to use Blissymbolics, and he got $160,000. Easter Seals, the charitable foundation under whose auspices the program was now working, paid the settlement.

That’s right. There’s no other way to put it: Bliss, self-proclaimed savior of humanity, stole $160,000 from crippled children.

I found out about the details of the settlement when I met with Shirley in the sleepy Ontario town of Guelph, where she lives with her husband in a tidy retirement village. There are Blissymbols throughout their town house, on a mirror over the piano, on needlepoint cushions in the guest room. The kitchen back-splash is formed by a chain of painted tiles that say, in Blissymbols, “People helping people helping people helping people.”

When she told me how much Bliss got in the settlement, I couldn’t contain myself. I told her how selfish, how blind, how crazy I thought he was. “Yes, it was difficult,” she said, “but it was all for the good of the kids who needed it in the end. Now I’m around the same age that he was when he first came to us, and I think I understand him better. I see that there’s not a lot of time left, and that has made me less tolerant of some things.”

Her biggest regret about Bliss’s behavior is that it hurt the reputation of their program. The Blissymbol method is used in scattered, individual schools in Canada, Sweden, and a few other countries, but it never gained traction in the United States, Britain, or any of the places that tend to determine the types of technologies and teaching materials that will be made widely available. Other symbol systems are used today, but they are more picture-like, less abstract, and less flexible than the Blissymbols. They serve for communication, but not as a bridge to full language—at least not for kids with the types of disabilities Shirley has worked with. She sees the predominance of these other symbol systems as “a reflection of how society treats disability—‘pictures are good enough.’ There’s no concern with enriching. They aren’t worried about the dignity of full language.”

On my last night in Toronto I had dinner with Paul Marshall—a former Bliss student of one of Shirley’s colleagues—who now works on projects for the Blissymbol program. His cerebral palsy is relatively mild—his motions are jerky and unbalanced, but he can walk, and he can point and type with one finger. However, he cannot use his voice. He came to the Blissymbol program when he was twelve, able to recognize some written words, but mostly dependent on his mother’s guessing. He was frustrated, angry, and depressed. By eighteen, he had made the transition to full English text. Today, he lives in his own apartment, about 120 miles north of Toronto, and works as a Webmaster. He told me, by spelling it out on a laminated alphabet grid, “Bliss is one of the greatest things ever to happen to me.” After dinner he went to catch a bus back home. Later that night, a major snowstorm hit, and the highway he was on was shut down for five hours. He was able to ask his fellow passengers to call his mother and tell her not to worry. He used his own words and spoke his own mind. No vague interpretation, no guessing. He was only as stuck and frustrated as the rest of the people on that bus.