[Brl-monitor] The Braille Monitor, January 2016
Brian Buhrow
buhrow at lothlorien.nfbcal.org
Thu Dec 31 14:42:57 PST 2015
BRAILLE MONITOR
Vol. 59, No. 1 January 2016
Gary Wunder, Editor
Distributed by email, in inkprint, in Braille, and on USB flash drive
(see reverse side) by the
NATIONAL FEDERATION OF THE BLIND
Mark Riccobono, President
telephone: (410) 659-9314
email address: nfb at nfb.org
website address: http://www.nfb.org
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Monitor subscriptions cost the Federation about forty dollars per year.
Members are invited, and nonmembers are requested, to cover the
subscription cost. Donations should be made payable to National Federation
of the Blind and sent to:
National Federation of the Blind
200 East Wells Street at Jernigan Place
Baltimore, Maryland 21230-4998
THE NATIONAL FEDERATION OF THE BLIND KNOWS THAT BLINDNESS IS NOT THE
CHARACTERISTIC THAT DEFINES YOU OR YOUR FUTURE. EVERY DAY WE RAISE THE
EXPECTATIONS OF BLIND PEOPLE, BECAUSE LOW EXPECTATIONS CREATE OBSTACLES
BETWEEN BLIND PEOPLE AND OUR DREAMS. YOU CAN LIVE THE LIFE YOU WANT;
BLINDNESS IS NOT WHAT HOLDS YOU BACK. THE NATIONAL FEDERATION OF THE BLIND
IS NOT AN ORGANIZATION SPEAKING FOR THE BLIND-IT IS THE BLIND SPEAKING FOR
OURSELVES.
ISSN 0006-8829
© 2016 by the National Federation of the Blind
Each issue is recorded on a thumb drive (also called a memory stick
or USB flash drive). You can read this audio edition using a computer or a
National Library Service digital player. The NLS machine has two slots-the
familiar book-cartridge slot just above the retractable carrying handle and
a second slot located on the right side near the headphone jack. This
smaller slot is used to play thumb drives. Remove the protective rubber pad
covering this slot and insert the thumb drive. It will insert only in one
position. If you encounter resistance, flip the drive over and try again.
(Note: If the cartridge slot is not empty when you insert the thumb drive,
the digital player will ignore the thumb drive.) Once the thumb drive is
inserted, the player buttons will function as usual for reading digital
materials. If you remove the thumb drive to use the player for cartridges,
when you insert it again, reading should resume at the point you stopped.
You can transfer the recording of each issue from the thumb drive to
your computer or preserve it on the thumb drive. However, because thumb
drives can be used hundreds of times, we would appreciate their return in
order to stretch our funding. Please use the return envelope enclosed with
the drive when you return the device.
[PHOTO CAPTION: Palm-lined drive leading to front entrance to Rosen Shingle
Creek Resort]
Orlando Site of 2016 NFB Convention
The 2016 convention of the National Federation of the Blind will take
place in Orlando, Florida, June 30 to July 5, at the Rosen Shingle Creek
Resort, 9939 Universal Boulevard, Orlando, Florida 32819-9357. Make your
room reservation as soon as possible with the Shingle Creek staff only.
Call (866) 996-6338.
The 2016 room rates are singles and doubles, $83; and for triples and
quads $89. In addition to the room rates there will be a tax, which at
present is 13.5 percent. No charge will be made for children under
seventeen in the room with parents as long as no extra bed is requested.
The hotel is accepting reservations now. A $95-per-room deposit is required
to make a reservation. Fifty percent of the deposit will be refunded if
notice is given to the hotel of a reservation cancellation before May 27,
2016. The other 50 percent is not refundable.
Rooms will be available on a first-come, first-served basis.
Reservations may be made before May 27, 2016, assuming that rooms are still
available. After that time the hotel will not hold our room block for the
convention. In other words, you should get your reservation in soon.
All Rosen Shingle Creek guestrooms feature amenities that include
plush Creek Sleeper beds, 40" flat screen TVs, complimentary high-speed
internet capabilities, in-room safes, coffee makers, mini-fridges, and hair
dryers. Guests can also enjoy a swimming pool, fitness center, and on-site
spa. The Rosen Shingle Creek Resort has a number of dining options,
including two award-winning restaurants, and twenty-four-hour-a-day room
service.
The schedule for the 2016 convention is:
Thursday, June 30 Seminar Day
Friday, July 1 Registration Day
Saturday, July 2 Board Meeting and Division Day
Sunday, July 3 Opening Session
Monday, July 4 Business Session
Tuesday, July 5 Banquet Day and Adjournment
Vol. 59, No. 1 January
2016
Contents
Illustration: The NFB of Pennsylvania Convention Then and Now
Statewide Blind Group Meets at Birthplace
by Eric Mark
When History Repeats Itself, Why Must Blind People Be the Victims?
by Steve Jacobson
Keeping Some of the Good Oranges
by Justin Salisbury
Low-Tech Solutions for Employment for the Blind
by Jan Bailey
People, Power, and Pelf
by Ed Vaughan
A Matter of Dignity: How Minnesota is Failing the Disabled
by Chris Serres and Glenn Howatt
In Their Own Words: The Historical and Rhetorical Significance of the
Annual Banquet Address at the National Federation of the Blind Convention
by J.W. Smith
Senior Citizens Take on Senior Challenges
by Ken Cary
The Secret to Winning a National Federation of the Blind
Scholarship.................................
by Patti S. Gregory-Chang
Class Action Lawsuit Against Redbox Has Proposed Settlement
Recipes
Monitor Miniatures
[PHOTO CAPTION: Plaque at the Genetti hotel commemorating the founding of
the National Federation of the Blind.]
[PHOTO CAPTION: Mark Riccobono shakes hands with Dutch tenBroek in front of
plaque.]
The NFB of Pennsylvania Convention Then and Now
In mid-November of 1940 the Pennsylvania Federation of the Blind held
its fifth annual convention in Wilkes-Barre. Gale Burlingame, president of
the organization, invited representatives of other organizations of the
blind to attend that meeting, which was to be held at the Reddington Hotel.
We all know that in the late afternoon of Saturday, November 16, the
National Federation of the Blind came into being with Jacobus tenBroek as
its first president. Gus Genetti, son of the original owner, explained that
the room where that historic meeting took place at the Reddington Hotel was
damaged by fire, but the Genetti Hotel, which was expanded and occupies the
same property, has continued to serve the community.
It was at the Genetti that the NFB of Pennsylvania conducted its 2015
convention November 13 to 15. NFB President Mark Riccobono was the national
representative, and a number of other state presidents were also present:
Pam Allen of Louisiana, Carl Jacobsen of New York, Eric Duffy of Ohio, and
Jennifer Dunnam of Minnesota. Other notables included Marion Gwizdala,
president of NAGDU; Barbara Pierce, longtime president in Ohio and former
editor of the Braille Monitor; and Julie Deden, director of the Colorado
Center for the Blind. Dutch tenBroek, the tenBroeks' eldest son, and his
wife Kathy were also in attendance throughout the weekend.
Friday was filled with parent and legislative seminars and an exhibit
room. The students met that evening. One of the highlights of the day was a
fundraiser for the Keystone Chapter, a game of Jeopardy featuring NFB
trivia questions with Carl Jacobsen, Julie Deden, and Barbara Pierce as the
contestants. Carl wiped up the floor with the two women. An auction that
evening raised a good deal of money for the affiliate.
Many of the presentations during the convention session contrasted
life and prospects today with life as it was lived in 1940. After lunch on
Saturday participants congregated outside the hotel to take pictures before
a bronze plaque at the entrance of the hotel. This plaque displays the NFB
logo and the words "Birthplace of the National Federation of the Blind
November 1940" both in raised letters and in Braille.
This was a truly memorable convention. Dutch tenBroek's recollections
of his family and especially his father were unforgettable. A champagne
toast was offered by President Riccobono at the banquet using commemorative
wine glasses for each attendee. No one who was present will ever forget the
convention.
----------
Statewide Blind Group Meets at Birthplace
by Eric Mark
From the Editor: This article comes from The Citizen's Voice and its
web version citizensvoice.com, originally published November 15, 2015. It
is reprinted with the kind permission of the publisher and shows what
citizens of Wilkes-Barre heard about the organization that was born in
their community:
The Pennsylvania chapter of the National Federation of the Blind held
its annual convention this weekend at the spot where the organization was
born in 1940: Best Western Genetti Hotel & Conference Center.
In November 1940, a group of sixteen advocates for the blind from
seven states gathered in Wilkes-Barre at the hotel that is now Genetti's.
They formed a constitution that created the National Federation of the
Blind, or NFB, which grew to be the largest organization led by blind
people in the nation. To mark the seventy-fifth anniversary of the
Federation's founding, the Pennsylvania chapter chose Wilkes-Barre as the
site for this year's state convention, said Lynn Heitz, the chapter's first
vice president. "The national organization was founded right here," she
said Saturday afternoon, outside a spacious meeting room where most of the
120 people who attended the convention gathered for lectures and seminars
on a wide range of topics that affect the visually impaired.
Blind and low-vision people of all ages walked confidently into and
out of the room with the help of long white canes. One of the seminar
topics was "Technology for the blind and how it has changed." Mark
Riccobono, the national president of NFB, had some thoughts on that, as he
stepped out of the meeting room to speak with a reporter. He called
technological advances "double-edged" for the visually impaired community.
On the upside, there are useful technologies such as voice-activated
personal assistants available on computers and smart phones. Riccobono
demonstrated an app he recently installed on his iPhone, called KNFB
Reader, that can take a picture of printed text and read it aloud to a
visually impaired person. He pointed his phone toward the program for the
convention, clicked a button, and a mechanical voice started to recite the
convention schedule listed in the program.
On the other hand, the push for technological solutions to replace
Braille, a writing system for the blind that uses raised letters and
characters, has left some blind people struggling, especially younger ones
in school and college, Riccobono said. "A lot of technology is not built
with accessibility in mind," he said. He cited his own experience growing
up as a legally blind student in Wisconsin, where his teachers, in line
with the educational philosophy of the time, tried to get him to read and
study as much as possible the conventional way and use Braille only as a
last resort. "I faked it all the time," he said. "I had to memorize
things."
There were lots of positive stories at the convention, which draws a
dedicated core group and some newcomers each year, according to Heitz, who
described the gathering as "a family." Liliya Asadullina, twenty-two, said
being blind has not stopped her from a rewarding and enjoyable college
career at Metropolitan State University of Denver. "They have a really good
public transportation system," she said, adding that she has no qualms
about taking a bus or train on her own. She credited the local chapter of
the NFB near Philadelphia, where she grew up, with helping her to develop
that confidence. "They showed me you have to be independent," she said.
The NFB has led the push for civil rights for the blind, which has
helped raise awareness for all special needs groups, Riccobono said. As
traffic drove by on East Market Street outside the hotel, he gave an
example. In 1940 when the Federation was founded, if a car jumped a curb
and struck a blind person on a sidewalk, the blind pedestrian was
considered partly culpable, according to Riccobono. Blind people and others
with challenges or special needs were expected to basically stay out of
sight and mind in those days, he said. Today, through educational efforts
and legislation such as "white cane laws" that require motorists to stop
and allow blind pedestrians to cross the street, things are different,
Riccobono said. "Blind people have the right to be in the world," he said.
----------
[PHOTO CAPTION: Steve Jacobson]
When History Repeats Itself, Why Must Blind People Be the Victims?
by Steve Jacobson
From the Editor: In the December 2015 issue of the Braille Monitor,
we talked about the rollout of Unified English Braille and the decision
made by the Braille Authority of North America, the National Federation of
the Blind, and the American Council of the Blind to continue using Nemeth
Code for mathematics in the same way that we continue to use music Braille
for that very specific notation. Every organization that debated this issue
was reluctant to change Braille, but all of them decided that, in the
interest of allowing it to represent print symbols that are more commonly
used in our more technical society, in an effort to produce better
materials which are translated from print to Braille and from Braille to
print, and in an effort to create a code which could more easily be
expanded as changes in notation would require, we would make the difficult
transition to Unified English Braille for the literary code. However,
because of many concerns raised about the use of Unified English Braille
for mathematics, a decision was made that we would continue to use the
Nemeth Code for mathematics.
In this article Steve Jacobson discusses policy positions taken by
the Braille Authority of North America and examines the implications of
letting the choice of Braille instruction be individualized. I observe that
the word "individualized," like the word "choice," seems to be the buzzword
of the day. The question we must ask ourselves is whether words in common
usage represent the goal being sought when they were adopted or whether
their invocation too often represents just the opposite. Because
individualized education is a part of the law, some claim there can be no
requirement that blind children be given Braille instruction, that no test
can be used to determine a child's optimal reading method, and that, in
essence, individualized means that what a child gets or does not get is
dependent on his or her individualized education team, a team all too often
composed of people who lack a strong understanding of (or often even basic
exposure to) the efficient use of blindness techniques. Since so many in
the field proclaim that we are interested in seeing more blind people enter
the fields of science, technology, engineering, and math, isn't it
reasonable that we point out that the argument is rarely if ever advanced
that the answer to a scientific problem or a mathematical answer is
individualized or a matter of choice? Arguing for a teaching style that
embraces many different learners is commendable, and offering informed
choice to the person who is most affected by decisions is unquestionably
worthy, but I believe these words have been taken far beyond their intended
meaning and have been used by those who want to avoid facing the making of
sound, scientific decisions that lead to quality education and employment.
Here is what Steve has to say about the recent debate over using the Nemeth
Code:
During the past year, and particularly after BANA's fall meeting,
some confusion has arisen regarding exactly where we are with respect to
how to Braille math and scientific materials. As a result, there are
several new issues we need to resolve with associated questions that must
be asked.
As a starting point, let's take a look at the entire series of BANA
(Braille Authority of North America) press releases to understand where we
are now. We will start with the press release issued in 2012:
"... The most prevalently-used of these, the Nemeth Code, a
Braille code for mathematics and science notation, has been widely
recognized as a powerful and efficient system for representing these
subject areas in Braille. Therefore, it is moved that the Braille
Authority of North America (BANA) adopts Unified English Braille to
replace the current English Braille American Edition in the United
States while maintaining the Nemeth Code for Mathematics and Science
Notation, 1972 Revision; the Music Braille Code 1997; and the IPA
Braille Code, 2008. The official Braille codes for the United States
will be Unified English Braille, Nemeth Code for Mathematics and
Science Notation, 1972 Revision and published updates; Music Braille
Code, 1997; and The IPA Braille Code, 2008; . . . "
This press release continues with references to formats and tactile
graphics guidelines, but we have not included that here:
In 2013 BANA issued a press release after their November meeting,
setting the implementation date for UEB, and once again they referred to
the motion passed in 2012.
In 2014, a statement approved at the BANA board meeting in November
says: "As of the implementation date in 2016, UEB, Nemeth, Music, and the
International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) will be the official codes for use in
the United States. BANA is providing guidance on how to incorporate the
Nemeth Code into UEB context with the intent that the Nemeth Code will
continue to be integral to Braille in the United States."
Now we come to November 2015 and the following statement:
"The Braille Authority of North America (BANA) recognizes and
appreciates the genuine concerns from the Braille community regarding
the transition to Unified English Braille (UEB). BANA stands by our
original motion to adopt UEB as a complete code as well as the
implementation statement issued in 2014 in which we expressed that the
Nemeth Code remains integral to Braille in the United States. The
Board of BANA could not reach consensus regarding the establishment of
a single standard code for technical materials for Braille in the
United States. The decision to use UEB or the Nemeth Code within UEB
context for technical materials should be made based on Braille
readers' individual needs."
Although those of us who believe for a number of reasons that
adopting UEB while maintaining Nemeth Code for math and science have reason
to be disappointed in this statement, it also provides us with an
opportunity to try to understand some of the various views on this subject.
It also demonstrates the need to establish exactly how we approach changes
to Braille in the future.
First, note that the word "standard" was not used in any of the press
releases except for the most recent one. The word to describe the various
codes was "official." Given that past statements continue to be supported,
Nemeth Code is still considered an official math code by BANA. This is
further supported by the fact that BANA has implemented changes to the
Nemeth Code during the past year. Some argue that by virtue of UEB being an
official code, since UEB includes mathematics, it should have the same
status with respect to math in the United States as does the Nemeth Code.
Certainly many mathematical symbols will be used in materials that are not
considered mathematical or technical.
Without repeating the consequential arguments already put forth by the
National Federation of the Blind on this matter (see Resolutions 2012-13
and 2015-29), there are a number of questions that follow from the November
2015 statement that must be explored. What makes a student better suited to
one code or the other? Are the two choices equal choices when viewed in a
historical context? What do decisions today say about future decisions
about Braille codes?
During the long debate regarding this issue, it has been difficult to
document which approach, Nemeth Code or UEB, is clearly superior for the
representation of mathematics and technical materials in Braille. Arguments
show that there are strengths and weaknesses of each approach. Given that
the decision as to which code to teach a student is in reality made by a
teacher and not by a student, there is legitimate concern that what we are
facing is the expression of a preference by an educator for a particular
code rather than the application of an objective process to determine which
code should be used by a student. Many educators have long expressed the
opinion that Nemeth Code is difficult to learn and use. There is even a
mistaken notion held by some that, since mathematics is already part of
UEB, mathematical symbols (and thus mathematics itself) will be easier to
learn if only UEB is used and not the Nemeth Code. In reality either code
requires a good deal of effort to learn if one sets out to learn the entire
code all at once as is the case for transcribers or even teachers. A
student will generally not learn the entire code, whether Nemeth or not,
all at once. Rather, a student will learn the elements that are required at
a particular time. The challenges of learning a mathematical code will be
different depending upon which code is learned, but it is difficult to see
a clear advantage of either code in this regard.
In other aspects of education, there are usually characteristics of a
student that can be used to make decisions about his or her education.
Which characteristics would be used to determine which code to teach? How
will the benefit of choosing UEB instead of Nemeth Code for math for some
students be measured to insure there is a significant advantage when
weighed against the fragmentation of resources and the other disadvantages
of supporting two approaches?
Another concern raised regarding UEB/Nemeth is the fact that some UEB
math symbols will be present in general non-technical material. This raises
the question of whether learning two separate sets of symbols is a reason
to avoid teaching Nemeth Code. It needs to be understood that what we used
to think of as higher or more advanced mathematics is becoming more and
more common at lower grades. The use of equations in math and science
occurs earlier than ever before. Delaying the teaching of Nemeth Code will
increase substantially the number of symbols that have both Nemeth and UEB
representations that will need to be learned all at once, creating
confusion rather than avoiding it. There is, of course, a downside to being
required to learn separate representations of the same symbol, but there
has been a very strong belief in the United States that moving away from
the established Nemeth Code simply does not offer the same advantages as
does moving to UEB for literary Braille. To a large degree, we have been
learning multiple representations of the same symbol already, so this isn't
really new.
So have the waters just been muddied by the above? Is the choice of a
math code strictly an "A" or "B" choice between equal alternatives? As has
been written elsewhere, we have an infrastructure and experience in the
United States with the Nemeth Code that we simply do not have with math and
science using UEB. This includes trained transcribers, a certification
process, and the refinements and supports that come from the decades of
experience of Braille readers doing math. In addition, the retention and
integration of Nemeth Code has been an essential part of gaining support
for the adoption of UEB by consumer organizations and others. To use Nemeth
Code allows us to continue down the path that BANA defined in 2012 and
mostly still supports today. Not to use Nemeth code for mathematics
undermines this position, fragments our ability to produce timely Braille,
and requires that we develop a second set of transcribers and a new
certification process. We have not been shown with clear evidence that
there is truly an overall advantage in changing our approach to Braille
math in the United States.
Finally, are we entering a new era that requires 100 percent
agreement before we regard any choice of a standard code to be the
preferred choice? Are we turning the clock back one hundred years to a time
when the Braille code is defined in part by geographic boundaries within
the United States or the school attended, just when mathematics and science
are gaining an increasing importance in education? To move in this
direction requires that there be a real advantage clearly demonstrated, and
that simply has not been done. Until it has, and until the voices of
consumers come to echo this, Nemeth should continue to be the code use for
mathematics.
----------
[PHOTO CAPTION: Justin Salisbury]
Keeping Some of the Good Oranges
by Justin Salisbury
From the Editor: Justin Salisbury is a second-year graduate student
in the Professional Development and Research Institute on Blindness at
Louisiana Tech University. He was working on his dissertation in
agricultural and applied economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison
when he changed directions and decided to pursue a career as a teacher of
the blind.
In this article he discusses a long-running debate about blind people
pursuing careers working with the blind and exposes interesting
contradictions in what we say and feel about the value of the field and the
motivations of those who work in it. Is educating and rehabilitating the
blind important enough that this is where we should direct some of our most
capable people, or do we reflect the widely held view in America that
"Those who can, do; those who can't, teach." In addition, we are similarly
divided when it comes to when people should enter the field. One line of
thought has been that blind people should first work in a field that has
little or nothing to do with blindness, show that they can be successful,
and then come to work with the blind. In this way they can speak with
authority to say that blind people can compete in the private and public
sectors. The argument on the other side is that teaching is a learned skill
and that one can't just transition into the blindness field without
specialized training, the kind that is usually gotten by young people who
select the field when deciding a college major. Here is Justin's
perspective on this issue:
Many of us may think that, if we want good oranges and can go
anywhere to buy them, the place to go is Florida. However, in agricultural
economics the "oranges principle" teaches us that high-quality products are
disproportionately shipped out of the regions where they are produced. The
price of shipping a high-quality orange is the same as the price of
shipping a low-quality orange. The price to the consumer has to absorb the
cost of the shipping; if people have to pay more for any orange because of
shipping costs, they might as well buy high-quality oranges. In the
namesake example we learn that the high-quality oranges, relative to the
low-quality oranges, are disproportionately shipped out of Florida.
Today, young people in the organized blind movement have a culture
discouraging the most competent among us from entering careers in the
blindness field. I knew this to be the case long before I chose to enter
the field, and I must admit that I was a part of perpetuating that culture
at one time. My fellow Federationists were consistently thrilled to learn
that I was studying in the science, technology, engineering, and
mathematics (STEM) area and were always willing to support me. I had become
socially conditioned so that, when I met young blind people interested in
working in the blindness field, I quickly asked if they had considered any
other opportunities outside it. In mainstream society, if we meet someone
who plans to get a job at McDonald's, we do the same thing: we ask if they
have any bigger plans. If we meet someone in medical school, we don't ask.
We are not nearly as compelled to push that person to fulfill a greater
potential. This demonstrates some widely held value judgments about working
at McDonald's and working as a medical doctor. It was not so long ago that
I was telling other blind students that they could do better than becoming
a Braille teacher.
I knew that this cultural phenomenon existed, but I had to face it
myself when I transitioned into the blindness field. This prompted my
investigation into the causes of that culture, and I have written this
article to outline the results of my investigation. I must thank Dick Davis
and the Employment Committee of the National Federation of the Blind, a
committee on which I am proud to serve, for acting as a solid sounding
board and providing me with some of the concepts I describe today.
We have gone through several historical phases in employment for the
blind. At first we had blind people living in blind guilds, doing all we
could to survive together, maybe caning chairs or singing to make a little
money. The concept of blind people holding competitive, integrated jobs was
nowhere on the horizon. Then we went into the sheltered workshop era, where
blind people were often employed in facilities with other disabled people,
frequently making subminimum wages and being supervised by the sighted.
Opportunities for advancement were almost zero, and the thought that this
should be otherwise was ridiculed as fanciful if not downright foolish. As
bad as it was, blind people at least had jobs.
Then we started seeing blind people working as the greeters at the
state agencies serving the blind. Blindness did not need to be hidden
anymore, and people entering the agency buildings could feel good to see a
blind person doing something. Soon enough blind people began holding jobs
as assistants to blindness professionals and then as low-level human
service professionals. Here we were able to say that we were working in the
blindness field, though we were not the highly skilled blindness
professionals that the National Blindness Professional Certification Board
certifies today.
After this phase we began seeing an increase in the employment of the
blind in many fields, though technical ones like engineering and medicine
still saw smaller gains than fields such as social work or education.
We now live in a time in which a blind person can realistically
pursue a career doing just about anything. There are challenges to get the
education, secure a job, and deal with the inaccessible technology that so
often comes with it, but blind people have more opportunity now than we
have ever had before. No longer should we feel forced into work in the
blindness field, but neither should we be so focused on running away from
the past that we fail to consider careers on an old but still-to-be-
conquered frontier.
When considering careers with the most occupational prestige, many
require rigorous training beyond the skill sets that people already have
prior to beginning training for them. For example, medical school and law
school are rigorous preparation programs, giving aspiring lawyers and
doctors the skills that they did not have prior to attending those
programs. It is generally assumed that people know how to ask, "Paper or
plastic?" prior to becoming employed to bag groceries. Similarly, a
properly trained blind person can read Braille and walk with a cane, as
well as function with a strong sense of self-efficacy; these are
fundamentals of daily life. Those who do not fully understand the duties of
a good teacher of the blind mistakenly believe that possessing those basic
fundamentals is all a person needs in order to teach blindness skills to
others. But that assumption overlooks how much work a teacher of the blind
may have to do to give a student self-confidence, self-worth, and a healthy
attitude toward living with blindness. In this devaluing of teaching and
the art of motivating people to become all they can, we diminish the
respectability of the blindness field and categorize some of our more
energetic members in the movement as poor performers or those who just
couldn't compete.
In our society we assign value to opportunities based in part on how
exclusive those opportunities are. Part of how we assess the prestige of a
university is based upon how hard it is for someone to gain admission to it
or how selective or exclusive it is. If an opportunity appears to be off-
limits and restrictive to many members of our community, we assess that
opportunity to be more valuable than those opportunities which are more
widely available. Scarcity drives up the assessed value. Becoming a teacher
of the blind is not off-limits to most blind people who wish to become one.
What we do may be a lot of work, but it is not rocket science, and the
discrimination that blind people face in the job market is lessening with
each new CBP (certified blindness professional) entering the field. Though
the shortage is immense and the need is great, the ability to access the
opportunity somehow makes that opportunity less appealing.
Our goal is to help every blind person become well rehabilitated, but
often this term is defined more by contrasting him with others who lack the
skills or confidence we want every blind person to have. Many of us have
encountered a teacher of the blind who was dependent enough that she or he
did not serve as the kind of role models we wanted them to be. Maybe it was
the Braille teacher who was led everywhere by a sighted assistant. Maybe it
was the blind rehabilitation counselor who would talk to himself during
important meetings. Since many supervisors and decision-makers in the
blindness field have low expectations of blind people, they may fall victim
to accepting a lower standard of performance from these employees. If we
know that blind people can occasionally keep jobs in the blindness field
without performing competitively, we are tempted to associate that career
field with blind people who have not yet acquired good training. Would we
make the same generalization when encountering an ineffective lawyer, a
doctor lacking bedside skills, or a teacher who didn't relate to her
students? If we generalized this freely, soon we would come to feel that
all fields were safe havens for incompetents, and indeed some who are less
than competent are found in every field.
The flipside of the argument that people who work in the blindness
field are incompetent or have to meet a lesser standard is also in
evidence. The blind people who work outside blindness in the more
prestigious career fields are most often thought to be independent and well
rehabilitated. We therefore strive to work in these fields, not just
because they might interest us, but as a way of affirming our own
independence. We seem to believe that, as with oranges, the good ones get
shipped out. The assumption is that those without the best training and
attitudinal adjustment are less able to compete in the cutting-edge
frontier job fields, which leads to their disproportionately staying in the
blindness field. The same logic holds that well-rehabilitated blind people
are disproportionately entering frontier job fields. I doubt that
statistics exist to show that these assumptions are true, but perhaps this
is research I will one day do.
The idea that becoming a teacher of the blind is a less valuable
career rests upon the assumption that blind people are not important.
Ultimately, we prioritize what we identify as most important. When we tell
a young person that he or she can do better than a certain career, we are
saying that the career itself is not important. When we devote our career
to helping a certain group of people, assessing the importance of the
career inherently requires a value judgment on the importance of the
population being served and of the service being provided to them. As a
parallel, we too often tell a woman that she should not become a stay-at-
home mother because she can do better for herself and for the broader
population of women by pursuing a financially-compensated career. As stay-
at-home fathers become more common, the same message will likely emerge for
men. This bias and consequent push inherently carries with it the message
that children are not important and that caring for their health and safety
and fostering their intellectual and personal development is not important.
If by the will of God I become a parent one day, I do not plan to
undervalue the importance of caretaking, and I am grateful for the benefits
I experienced because my mother kept herself available to her children most
of the time.
When a person encourages blind students to consider other options
over teaching the blind or talks about the career as if it is a less-
appealing option, that person is telegraphing the message that this career
is less important and not quite worthy of a truly capable and competent
blind professional. Maybe the person persuading blind people to go in a
different direction does not understand the life-changing effect that a
good teacher of the blind can have on a blind student. Maybe that person
has been affected by the low expectations in society and considers blind
people to be less important than sighted people. Maybe the person who
believes these things has never taken the time to consider the
contradiction in saying how important it is to get quality training and
opportunity and at the same time devaluing those who provide just that. We
can all fall victim to these messages, and the National Federation of the
Blind is what inoculates us against them. Part of the emotional adjustment
which occurs at our training centers is learning to believe at the deepest
levels that blind people are equal in value to our sighted counterparts.
After all, we are.
We need good blind role models working in the blindness field. It is
only because of the good blind role models in my life, whom I found through
the National Federation of the Blind, that I am on the path to self-
actualization and living the life I want. Good sense ought to lead us to
ensure that good blind role models are working in the blindness field.
Every blind person deserves an instructor who can put on a pair of
sleepshades and do exactly what he or she is telling the blind student to
do. As President Riccobono reminded us in his first national convention
banquet address, diamonds must be cut by other diamonds. The lesson is
clear: we must not ship out all of the good oranges.
----------
[PHOTO CAPTION: Jan Bailey]
Low-Tech Solutions for Employment of the Blind
by Jan Bailey
From the Editor: This article is gratefully reprinted from the fall
2015 issue of the NFB of Minnesota's quarterly publication, the Minnesota
Bulletin. Here is how Editor Tom Scanlan introduced the article: Editor's
Note: Jan is a retired counselor for State Services for the Blind. She
serves as our Rochester Chapter president and a member of the NFB of
Minnesota board of directors.
There is a plethora of technology in our world today, and it is
certainly important in helping blind people to become employed, but often
the simple low-tech solutions are never thought of.
When I got my first job, I was a college student, and the job was
splicing movie film in the darkroom. I was one of the first people hired,
so we started out working on fake film to practice, but when the real film
came in we had to prioritize the processing of the film, first doing the
one-day film, ending with the film that would go back to a small town
drugstore where they promised the customer to have their film back to them
in a week.
These films were labeled on a card on the inside of the box of film,
and my boss soon called me in. He said they liked me, told me I did a good
job, but said they would have to let me go. When I asked him why, he
explained that they couldn't ask another employee to get my film for me,
and that the A film had to be done first, then the B film, and then the C
film. Since I couldn't read the cards, I had to go.
On my own I had begun to realize this was going to come up, so I
started thinking about a solution in advance. I explained to my boss that
the system he had in place was time-consuming and ineffectual, but I told
him that in a nice way. I explained that, since we were in the darkroom, a
blindness technique would work much better. I told him people were wasting
a lot of time taking film off the conveyer belt, going to the front of the
room, removing the card, picking up the flashlight, moving away from the
film, turning on the flashlight to read the card, and then, if the film
wasn't an A film, they would have to turn off the flashlight, put the card
back into the box of film, put down the flashlight, pick up the box of
film, and try to remember where they got it off the conveyor belt. I told
him it would be much easier if he would buy three one-hole paper punches
for the people out front who prepared the trays of film for us. They could
write on the card for the people out in the light, but for us they could
punch holes in the card: one for A, two for B, and three for C. I suggested
they make a space between the punches so that people who weren't used to
doing things tactually could easily feel these holes. He loved it, adopted
my technique, and I kept my job. My technique was faster too, because we
could just go up and down the conveyor belt, feeling the cards without
removing the trays of film. It was a major time saver, and everyone
continued to use it long after I left.
The next job I had was as a social worker in a nursing home. One of
my jobs was to make quarterly case notes on all the residents in the
nursing home. At that time I used a typewriter since this was in the late
seventies and before the advent of the personalized computer or word
processor. I knew I could type the notes, but I had to figure out a way I
could recognize my own sheet in the chart and how I would know where I had
left off in my typing. I did a search and found some paper that was
perforated in four places. I simply put this paper into the typewriter,
typed the first quarter's notes, and put it in the chart. When it was time
to do the next quarter's notes, I put the same piece of paper back into the
typewriter and went down to the next perforation. The charts were in
numerical order at the nurse's station, so I never had a problem finding
the correct chart. Since this paper was perforated, I was able to find my
sheet very easily, because I could easily feel the perforations.
My next job was as a rehabilitation counselor at State Services for
the Blind, where I worked for thirty-one years. I had a client who wanted
to be a dishwasher, but after his work evaluation his job coach told me
that he couldn't be competitive as a dishwasher because he wouldn't be able
to walk across the room carrying a stack of clean dishes to put them away.
I suggested that he place all the dishes on the cart (probably more than
the average person could carry) and then pull the cart behind him as he
walked across the room using his cane. He was successfully employed as a
dishwasher at a large hotel.
I had another client who was going to work as a station aide in a
nursing home, and he too was working with a job coach. He filled water
pitchers, made up and delivered bedding packets, and took the residents
down to their meals. They were going to let him go because they wanted him
to signify that each resident had eaten their meal by marking their names
off a printed list they gave him. He couldn't read this list, and no one
could figure out a solution. We met, and I asked him how many tables were
in the room. He said there were fifteen tables. Four people sat at each
table. I asked him if he knew who sat at each table and where they sat,
that is, what side of the table they sat on. He said he did. He could read
very large print and could read Braille, but not fast enough. I asked him
if he could read very large numbers. He said he could. So I suggested his
wife could make up fifteen cards on 5-by-8 cards. She would number these
cards one through fifteen, then draw four circles in magic marker on the
card, and then fill in the names of the residents. She would put these
fifteen cards in order on a large ring. Then, since he knew where each
person sat, he would simply make an X on each of the four circles and hand
them in. After three days of this they said he didn't have to keep doing
that, but it saved his job.
Too often I see people deciding that a blind person can't do a job
because of one small thing, when just a little ingenuity could save the
job. In the lingo of the day they call this thinking out of the box, but in
my day we called it using your brain and being flexible enough to come up
with alternative techniques.
----------
[PHOTO CAPTION: Ed Vaughan]
People, Power, and Pelf
by Ed Vaughan
From the Editor: Ed Vaughan is professor emeritus in sociology at the
University of Missouri Columbia. He has been a Federationist for more than
thirty years and has written extensively about blindness in academic
publications and in books he has authored and co-authored. He is also a
frequent contributor to the Braille Monitor, and here is his most recent
offering:
Throughout my academic career and personal life, I have been
concerned when individuals are exploited. Concerning blindness, I was
always angered when I encountered educators and rehab workers with low
expectations for blind people. This becomes worse when low expectations are
embodied in the culture of agencies and organizations. Pelf is the Middle
English word for wealth ill begotten. Does this idea apply to people who
make their money and careers while diminishing the life prospects of the
people they are supposed to be serving?
In the January 1985 Braille Monitor in the article "Bringing Conflict
into Focus" I described some of the sources of conflict between consumers
and the providers of rehabilitation services. I observe that there is no
necessary unity of interest between consumers and providers. Many of the
sources of conflict are rooted in the organizational work settings of rehab
and education professionals.
From the organization's point of view, regulations, budget matters,
and procedures are both necessary and important. Throughout the resulting
procedures, the blind person is a case to be processed by the various
workers involved. The client may spend many hours doing nothing while
awaiting events scheduled for the convenience of the organization. The
person seeking rehabilitation may be anxious, uncertain as to how he or she
is being perceived, and aware that the process is the "only game in town."
Quite normal and ordinary procedures from the point of view of the
organization may appear to the client as himself or herself continually
being considered as a category of a problem rather than as a whole person.
The notion of "red tape" is used universally to describe the frustrations
ordinary citizens feel in dealing with bureaucratic requirements, and there
is a full measure of it here.
Over the past thirty years some conditions are definitely improving.
However, a great many blind people still experience unnecessary frustration
and difficulty in using rehabilitation and educational services. The
persistence of needless barriers to progress is rooted in the
organizational and bureaucratic inertia of many government and private
agencies.
Since the Middle Ages the most common form of large scale social
organizations is rational bureaucracies. More than any other social
scientist, Max Weber described their characteristics. Such organizations
concentrate power and economic resources to achieve goals. Power is from
the top down-everyone has a boss. People are employed for their specialized
competence-you only do your carefully defined job. Typically employment
leads to careers, and loyalty to the organization is presumed. Information
comes from the top down, and you are extremely disloyal if you are a
whistleblower.
Organizational goals are important but not crucial. For example, when
the March of Dimes helped defeat polio, it dramatically reached its goal.
However, the organization continues adopting more general goals such as
fighting birth defects. If you have an effective fundraising organization
with good salaries, who wants to quit?
Such organizations are thought to be more efficient, thus linking the
most effective means to reach goals. These organizations are the most
dominant forms of employment in modern societies. However, they are value
neutral-they can be efficient in organizing mass murder or raising money
for the Red Cross.
Blind people of necessity interact with large organizations when they
seek education or rehabilitation services. This circumstance is more
complicated than simply dealing with a bureaucracy. We must deal with
workers who claim to be professionals. What does it mean to be a
professional? These are workers who claim specialized knowledge to deal
with specific problems. In terms of our concerns the first professions
dealing with blindness were medical. Early in the twentieth century
physicians got legal control of the medicine/drug prescription process, and
they also became gatekeepers for determining blindness. If you claimed
blindness or visual impairment, you had to have a physician document your
condition. Subsequent medical groups evolved under this medical umbrella,
including nursing, physical therapy, occupational therapy, social work, and
several want-to-be professions relating to blindness. Each profession
claims specialized knowledge about a problem they have defined. They
control entry and claim legitimacy by being licensed by the government or
seeking certification from standards created by their own organization. No
longer are professionals solo practitioners. Overwhelmingly they work
within rational bureaucracies such as state governments, hospitals, and
Lighthouses. They are now legitimated by socially powerful organizations,
and they work within bureaucracies with all the characteristics mentioned
above.
When we encounter a problem with education or rehabilitation
services, we are not merely dealing with a specialized geek in a
bureaucracy; we are dealing with workers who think they possess
scientifically-based knowledge on any problem we present. They know what is
wrong with us and what we need. Many of them insulate themselves from
consumers. Professionals working in the field of blindness frequently give
as reasons for not participating that they must keep a professional
orientation, that they cannot be advocates for groups, that conflict
situations are harmful to agencies.
Why are these professional groups and their organizations so
resistant to consumer input? Why are some sheltered workshops so resistant
to paying the minimum wage when it is almost certainly not an economic
issue? Why did professional organizations so long resist the idea of blind
mobility teachers? Why in the 1930s and 40s did the developing profession
of workers for the blind eliminate itinerant blind teachers?
All of us continue to be concerned about the needless dependency
creating aspects of many rehabilitation programs. Increasingly the NFB has
confronted the inertia of private and state agencies as well as
corporations whose products are not accessible to blind people. Why the
inertia and resistance to change? Administrators obtain social prestige,
economic power, good salaries, and long-term career security. The field of
work for the blind is not a large profession, and these professionals often
have limited mobility opportunities. In many cases these administrators and
professionals have no interest in seeing their boat rocked.
"There is a crack in everything-that's how the light gets in."
Leonard Cohen frequently discusses freedom and social change in his music.
Max Weber was also concerned about freedom and individual responsibility.
In the modern world these are experienced in social organizations. As Weber
observed, charismatic leaders emerge as they challenge present
arrangements, and their followers sometimes become involved in social
movements. This is how we got the National Federation of the Blind-
charismatic leaders and a strong social movement.
However, the NFB is also a rational bureaucracy. How has it avoided
bureaucratic inertia and stagnation? First, it has kept a constant and
clear focus on the organization's goals. Through this focus it has avoided
being co-opted by other social movements. Second, through its constitution
it is a tightly knit organization from the top down. This permits prompt
correction when things go awry at local and affiliate levels. Third, there
is circulation within the elites. Individuals with talent can move up
through the organization, becoming board members, national staff leaders,
and holding leadership positions in the numerous special interest groups.
Fourth, four decades ago when I first encountered this social movement, I
was impressed by the ethnic and gender diversity. This again brings new
leadership, talent, and energy. Finally, through careful selection there
has been remarkable continuity at the presidential position, providing
organizational stability and continuity.
As an example, I was at first skeptical when the NFB created three
residential agencies in Minneapolis, Denver, and Ruston, Louisiana. Did
this social movement need three agencies that might become similar to the
numerous existing centers? After twenty years these centers have continued
to embody the values that characterize their founding. They continue to
change attitudes and lives by expanding opportunities and horizons. There
are no low expectations here.
Why the title-"People, Power, and Pelf"? Pelf is ill-begotten money
or wealth. What kind of people would be characterized as earning ill-
begotten gains? If a rehab organization is not rehabilitating, is this not
pelf? If organizations are not changing with new human developments-not
providing more options for clients-is this not pelf? If an organization
does not welcome consumers as partners, is this not pelf? Such
organizations should not be controlling, but liberating. "Oppression,
however well intended, is evil."
Through its continual development of national leaders the NFB has
liberated or at least greatly improved many state and private agencies. In
the many decades ahead we can hope that pelf will be largely eliminated in
agencies and institutions that provide rehabilitation services.
----------
A Matter of Dignity: How Minnesota is Failing the Disabled
by Chris Serres and Glenn Howatt
From the Editor: The National Federation of the Blind's fight to do
away with subminimum wage payments in America is well known and long-
standing. The following article describes the plight of people who work in
subminimum wage environments and their desire to be paid a living wage. We
thank the authors for writing this, and their newspaper for allowing us
permission to reprint it. (Copyright 2015, Star Tribune, republished with
permission.)
In a field on the outskirts of town, a man with Down syndrome is
spending another day picking up garbage. He wears faded pants, heavy
gloves, a bright yellow vest, and a name tag that says "Scott Rhude." His
job is futile. Prairie winds blow debris from a landfill nearby faster than
he and his coworkers can collect it. In the gray sky overhead, a turkey
vulture circles in wide loops.
Rhude, thirty-three, earns $2 an hour. He longs for more rewarding
work-maybe at Best Buy, he says, or a library. But that would require
personalized training, a job counselor, and other services that aren't
available.
"He is stuck, stuck, stuck," said his mother, Mary Rhude. "Every day
that he works at the landfill is a day that he goes backward."
Rhude is one of thousands of Minnesotans with disabilities who are
employed by facilities known as sheltered workshops. They stuff envelopes,
package candy, or scrub toilets for just scraps of pay, with little hope of
building better, more dignified lives. Many states, inspired by a new civil
rights movement to integrate the disabled into mainstream life, are
shuttering places like this. Not Minnesota. It still subsidizes nearly 300
sheltered workshops and is now among the most segregated states in the
nation for working people with intellectual disabilities.
The workshops are part of a larger patchwork of state policies that
are stranding legions of disabled Minnesotans on grim margins of society.
More than a decade after the US Supreme Court ruled that Americans with
disabilities have a right to live in the mainstream, many disabled
Minnesotans and their families say they still feel forsaken-mired in
profoundly isolating and sometimes dangerous environments they didn't
choose and can't escape.
Records examined by the Star Tribune bear them out. Minnesota pours
$220 million annually into the sheltered workshop industry, consigning more
than 12,000 adults to isolating and often mind-numbing work. It also relies
more than any other state on group homes to house the disabled-often in
remote locations where residents are far from their loved ones and
vulnerable to abuse and neglect. And when Minnesotans with disabilities
seek state assistance to lead more independent lives, many languish for
months-even years-on a waiting list that is now one of the longest in the
nation.
"We have entire communities of people with disabilities in this state
who have zero choice," said Derek Nord, a University of Minnesota scholar
who specializes in disability policy. "They live in closed systems with no
obvious way out."
State officials defend Minnesota's record, saying it led the nation
in closing large institutions for people with mental impairments and that
it ranks high in the generosity of its disability benefits. But in
interviews with the Star Tribune, they acknowledged that people with
disabilities deserve more control over their lives and said they are taking
significant new steps to give them more choice in work and housing.
"Today, too many families believe their child or their loved one only
has one option-a sheltered workshop," said Jennifer DeCubellis, assistant
commissioner at the Department of Human Services. "So we have to undo that,
and make sure they understand there are other options. We have not done
such a good job connecting people to those options."
Other states are far ahead of Minnesota. Vermont has abolished
sheltered workshops and moved most of their employees into other jobs.
States across New England place nearly three times as many disabled adults
in integrated jobs as Minnesota. Washington offers disabled workers nine
months of vocational training and career counselors.
"Nationally, the big river of change is flowing ... toward increased
integration," said Pamela Hoopes, legal director of the Minnesota
Disability Law Center. "Sometimes it appears that we [in Minnesota] are
meandering along the bank and getting hung up on the weeds."
Safe or Trapped
The segregation starts early. As a boy in special education classes,
Scott Rhude showed talent with computers and photography. But once he
graduated from high school, his mother says, he bounced from one segregated
workplace to another, never quite escaping a system that has sometimes
amounted to little more than what she calls "babysitting."
Away from his job, Rhude has built an independent life. He pays his
own rent and shares a house with three friends in Willmar, a town of 19,600
west of the Twin Cities. He sings karaoke, goes on double dates, and
started his own book club. His bedroom is packed with trophies from Special
Olympics events. "I'm not afraid of anything," he joked recently, flexing
his biceps under a poster of a professional wrestler in his bedroom.
But Rhude's pursuit of independence ends each morning when the city
bus drops him off at West Central Industries, a sheltered workshop on the
edge of town. From here, a van takes him to the Kandiyohi County landfill,
where he spends the next five hours collecting trash on a hillside as big
as two football fields.
Mary Rhude says she and her son hoped the roving work detail would
broaden Scott Rhude's skills and give him exposure to other employers in
Willmar. Instead, she says, it has become a "suffocating" experience that
keeps her son isolated from the community.
Kristine Yost, a job placement specialist for people with disabilities,
calls this system "the conveyor belt."
"It's heartbreaking," she said, "but time and again, young people get
pigeonholed as destined for a sheltered workshop, and then they can't get
out."
Civil Rights Revolution
In 1999, the US Supreme Court issued a landmark ruling, known as
Olmstead, that prohibits states from unnecessarily confining people with
disabilities in special homes or workplaces. In a broad reading of the
Americans with Disabilities Act, the court said that fairness demands not
just access to buses and buildings, but to a life of dignity and respect.
People with a wide range of disabilities-including Down syndrome, cerebral
palsy, and autism-call it their "Brown vs. Board of Education."
In the ruling's aftermath, many governors closed state institutions
for the disabled and the US Justice Department sued Oregon and Rhode Island
to close sheltered workshops. But, sixteen years later, the movement has
yet to take hold in Minnesota.
Under sustained pressure from a federal judge, Minnesota this fall
became one of the last states in the country to adopt a blueprint-known as
an Olmstead plan-to expand housing and work options for people with
disabilities. County officials and social workers have begun consulting
disabled clients about their goals and interests. By 2019 the state expects
counties to complete detailed, individualized plans spelling out work and
housing options for thousands of disabled adults.
Yet even if it is executed successfully, the state's plan calls for
only modest increases in the number of disabled adults living and working
in the community. It makes no mention of phasing out segregated workshops
and group homes. Its employment targets, Hoopes said, are "woefully
inadequate" and a "lost opportunity."
Some families defend sheltered workshops, saying they provide a safe
place and a sense of accomplishment for young adults who cannot hold
competitive jobs. Minnesota has a high overall employment rate for adults
with disabilities, in part because of its sheltered workshops. Others say
the state is clinging to an obsolete and paternalistic practice.
"We have this mindset in [Minnesota] that says protection trumps
everything else, and we have to keep people in these isolated bubbles to
keep them safe," said Mary Fenske, a disability rights advocate from Maple
Grove who advises employees of sheltered workshops.
Sheltered Workshops Multiply
Sheltered workshops were designed after World War II to prepare
people with disabilities for traditional employment. They caught on in
Minnesota, and between 1970 and 1984 the sheltered workforce increased from
700 to 6,000 workers, including thousands of people who needed daily
activities after the closing of state mental hospitals. Today, state policy
perpetuates the segregation.
Each year, Minnesota pays more than $220 million in state and federal
Medicaid funds to scores of sheltered workshops and training programs,
which have become a large and self-sustaining industry. They operate fleets
of vans, partner with local group homes, and use a federal loophole that
exempts them from minimum-wage law. Most of Minnesota's sheltered workshops
are nonprofits, but many hold business contracts with companies such as 3M
to assemble or package products, while others provide janitorial services
to local businesses. Even though they pay, on average, just $4.05 an hour,
most could not survive without state subsidies to cover the cost of
supervision and other services.
"If not for the government money, a lot of these [sheltered workshops]
would be starved out of existence," said Jim Clapper, board chairman of
Midwest Special Services, Inc., a sheltered workshop and day training
provider in St. Paul. Clapper's son works at a sheltered workshop.
From a taxpayer's perspective, the workshop model is highly
inefficient. It costs roughly $52,000 to create a sheltered workshop job
that pays at least minimum wage, state records show. That's nearly ten
times the $5,300 it costs to help a disabled worker get a job in the
community, according to a 2010 survey by the Department of Human Services.
"This all comes down to funding," said John Butterworth, director of the
Institute for Community Inclusion, a research and training center at the
University of Massachusetts. "If Minnesota spent this money on competitive
employment, you would see more people working in typical workplaces earning
typical wages."
If sheltered workshops prepared their clients for better jobs, they
might justify the huge investment. But academic research and state reviews
suggest they do not. When Minnesota's legislative auditor studied the
industry in the 1980s, he found that only eighty-three of three thousand
sheltered workers graduated to competitive jobs. Today, research places the
share at about 5 percent.
In fact, sheltered workshops can actually impede clients' progress by
training them to be compliant and settle for mundane tasks, said Bryan
Dague, a University of Vermont researcher who advises states on disability
employment. "All too often, a job in a sheltered workshop is a dead end,"
Dague said.
Factory Work
Early one morning last spring, at a warehouse set amid cornfields
near Fairmont, Minnesota, more than thirty workers with varying
disabilities stood quietly in line, clutching their white time cards. A few
checked their watches nervously. At 8:15, a clipboard-wielding supervisor
shouted, "It's time to get rollin'! Time to get rollin'!"
With its clockwork precision, this workshop operated by MRCI Inc. of
Mankato shows how the industry has developed a keenly efficient model-but
also why many of its employees find it suffocating. Over the next eight
hours, employees filled 3,600 plastic tubes with patriotic red, white, and
blue gumballs for Memorial Day sales at big-box retailers. They also
arranged more than 50,000 cans of chicken into tidy piles as they tumbled
down a fast-moving conveyor belt known as the "T-Rex."
Apart from managers occasionally yelling orders, the sprawling room
was quiet but for the steady rat-a-tat of gumballs pouring into twelve-inch
tubes and the hum of a machine wrapping plastic around cans of chicken.
"Our workers are very well-behaved and task-focused," said Ramona
Harper, the workshop's manager, as she walked the plant floor. "This is the
best-kept secret in Martin County."
Next to many workers were small white sheets to track their
productivity. Every so often, a manager stopped by and jotted down how many
tubes each employee had filled with gumballs. Pay is calculated using the
prevailing wage for similar work: A disabled worker who pours gumballs half
as fast as a non-disabled person makes half the prevailing wage for light
manufacturing, or about $5 an hour.
At noon, workers rushed into the cafeteria for plastic-wrapped
sandwiches waiting under a heat lamp. On this day, the room buzzed with
talk of two colleagues who "made it to the outside." One landed a job at
Walmart, and the other was bagging groceries at a local supermarket for $9
per hour.
"It's the success stories that give us hope that someday we can make
it out of here," said Dustin Leibfried, 42. "Because there are some days
when you feel like you're just racing, racing to catch up. Most of us want
out."
A Closed System
John Wayne Barker was working his way through the brightly lit
lunchroom of Merrick Inc., where he has been executive director for the
past seventeen years. Every few steps, a worker stopped him for a high five
or a hug. Barker is a vocal defender of sheltered workshops, and his
expansive facility is considered a model for the industry. It operates an
assembly line where about one hundred workers perform tasks like inserting
greeting cards into envelopes for sale at grocery stores. But it also
offers an array of "life enrichment" services, from music and pet therapy
to yoga and gardening, for people who may be unable to work.
If the workshop closed, many of its employees would be "at home,
staring at the wall," deprived of their sole source of wages and social
interaction, Barker said. "Without our program, virtually nine out of ten
people we're serving would have no consistent daytime activity," he said.
"Nobody [here] is trapped or unhappy."
Some parents agree. Ivan Levy said his twenty-six-year-old son,
Jason, who has autism and a developmental disability, has improved his
social skills and self-confidence since coming to work at Merrick five
years ago. After years of job coaching, he earns minimum wage in Merrick's
recycling center. "If you closed the workshop, Jason would go from being in
an environment with a lot of support and a lot of interaction to one with
zero support and zero interaction," said Levy, an attorney in St. Paul.
"He'd be sitting at home, watching television or playing video games all
day."
But for a large share of Minnesota's disabled workers, that's simply
not true. At sheltered workshops subsidized by Minnesota's state workforce
agency, as many as 45 percent of employees simultaneously hold other jobs
in the community for at least minimum wage, according to an internal
analysis. When Vermont closed its last sheltered workshop in 2002, social
workers found jobs for 80 percent of the workers.
"The numbers show that a lot of people [in workshops] can do real
work for real wages if given the opportunity," said Jon Alexander, a
supported employment provider in Little Canada. That includes people like
Larry Lubbers, 61, who made $15 an hour moving shopping carts at a Rainbow
Foods until he suffered a back injury. Unable to find other work, Lubbers,
who has an intellectual disability, said he didn't object when the county
suggested a sheltered workshop.
Yet Lubbers says he remains shocked by his low pay. He now makes less
than $30 a week doing menial tasks such as inserting straws into plastic
bags. "It's out of sight, out of mind," Lubbers said one day as he waited
for a van to work from his home in Inver Grove Heights. "Once you walk into
a sheltered workshop, you become invisible."
Breaking out of the system can be extremely difficult. Because their
wages are so low, many sheltered workshop employees can't afford their own
apartments or transportation. A 2010 state survey found that nearly 80
percent rely on their employer as their primary source of transit. In fact,
a half-dozen sheltered workshops also run their own group homes; at least
one, Functional Industries in Buffalo, Minn., shuttles people to its
sheltered workshops from its group homes in its own vans.
"It's a closed system," said Mary Kay Kennedy, executive director of
Advocating Change Together, a disability rights group in St. Paul. "It's so
safe and predictable that a lot of people never get to explore other
options and realize their true potential."
Handing Out Résumés
Kenisha Conditt, twenty-seven, who has a developmental disability,
went straight to work at Midwest Special Services in St. Paul after
graduating from youth vocational training. For the past five years, she has
been assigned to a cleaning crew that collects trash, mops floors, and
cleans toilets at area businesses.
On a recent morning, Conditt's team marched in a line through the
parking lot of an industrial park in Minneapolis, carrying large plastic
jugs in one hand and long-handled pincers in the other. With a supervisor
watching, they plucked plastic bags, cigarette butts, and shattered glass
from the blacktop.
"You missed one, Kenisha!" the supervisor called, pointing to a rusty
nail.
After dumping her last bucket of trash and mopping the entryway of a
bus terminal, Conditt returned to Midwest's gated campus in St. Paul, where
she spent the next several hours killing time before a Metro Mobility bus
arrived to take her home. Sitting with a group of coworkers on a row of
plastic chairs, she stared ahead stoically as a woman with an accordion
played "Goodnight Irene" and then the workshop's special song, "Midwest
Special Services is where I like to be ... "
When the song ended, Conditt and the others filed quietly back to a
row of desks full of puzzles and games. "Five years of this, and I'm ready
to move on," she said. "I don't want to spend the rest of my life cleaning
toilets."
A few days later, Conditt seemed transformed. On Sundays she helps
teach children at Christ Temple Apostolic Church in Roseville. She laughed,
sang, and read children's books as toddlers crawled over her lap and
shoulders.
"Kenisha has gifts that people at the workshop never see," said her
mother, Antoinette Conditt. On the drive home from church, they spotted an
Old Country Buffet with a "Help Wanted" sign in the window. Her mother
pulled over. Conditt darted across the parking lot.
Stepping into the restaurant's lobby, she smoothed her blue skirt,
smiled broadly, and asked if she could speak with the manager. In one of
her hands Conditt held tightly to a folder filled with copies of her
résumé. She takes them everywhere she goes.
----------
[PHOTO CAPTION: J. W. Smith]
In Their Own Words: The Historical and Rhetorical Significance of the
Annual Banquet Address at the National Federation of the Blind Convention
by J. W. Smith
From the Editor: Dr. J. W. Smith is an associate professor teaching
communications studies, focusing on rhetoric and public address and
political and cultural contexts. He teaches at Ohio State University in
Athens, Ohio. He is the Immediate Past President of the National Federation
of the Blind of Ohio, a gospel singer who had a CD or two to his name, a
family man, and a Federationist who loves good speeches.
JW joined the NFB almost a quarter of a century ago and has long been
moved and fascinated by the annual banquet speech highlighting our national
conventions. This article represents interviews that he did nearly twenty
years ago, so the reader will observe that Dr. Maurer is referred to as
president, and Dr. Jernigan is sometimes referred to as the past president.
Here is what he has to say after talking with two dynamic speakers
and one very observant, reflective, and articulate member:
I joined the National Federation of the Blind in 1990 when I was a
young professor of communication studies at Indiana University, South Bend.
As it happens I was invited to a chapter meeting as a result of someone
seeing a story that had been done on me by the South Bend Tribune. As you
might expect, my life was never the same after that first meeting. I
remember listening to Dr. Jernigan and President Maurer on the Presidential
Release and, as a professor of what was called speech communication at that
time, I was mesmerized by their rhetorical style and delivery.
I was fortunate to attend my first national convention in 1992 in
Charlotte, North Carolina. It was an overwhelming and exhilarating
experience overall, but the power of the banquet speech was unlike anything
I had ever experienced before. Since that speech I have not missed a
convention to date or a banquet address. When I attended the 1993
convention in Dallas, Texas, and after leaving the banquet that year, I
made up my mind that I would write a critique of the historical/rhetorical
significance of the banquet address itself. I decided that it would be
helpful to interview Dr. Jernigan, President Maurer, and perhaps several
other Federationists who had been longtime members of the movement to
ascertain just what this event and that speech meant to them.
I had just missed the 1990 banquet address delivered by Dr. Jernigan,
which had commemorated the fiftieth anniversary of the NFB. Although I was
not in attendance at that convention or banquet address, it was a desire of
mine to do a rhetorical analysis of that speech. In a paper entitled "In
Honor of Kenneth Jernigan: Argumentative Functions of History in the 1990
Banquet Address to the National Federation of the Blind" presented at the
Central States National Communication Association Meeting in April 2012, my
colleague Dr. Jerry Miller and I sought to analyze that speech from a
particular communication perspective. In part we wrote:
"Routinely honored and recognized for his achievements and dedication
throughout his tenure as the leader of the NFB, Jernigan accepted an
invitation to deliver the 1990 banquet address. In reality no other member
of the NFB had the knowledge and respect comparable to that of Kenneth
Jernigan. Jernigan's address serves as a defining event for the NFB, as it
simultaneously chronicles the historic journey of the blind movement,
challenges the audience to accept his historical account of the NFB, and
motivates the association and its members to take responsibility in
securing their rights. Jernigan's address permitted his listeners to become
part of one-man's lived experience and perceptions of truth that, in turn,
serve as argumentative proof for his audience, particularly members of the
NFB. Jernigan's efforts motivate his audience to take action and embrace
their identities.
As Kenneth Jernigan delivers the address, he establishes the
importance of such a speech and outlines what is needed in a successful
address. He accomplishes this lesson by quoting an excerpt from a letter
shared with him by his mentor, Dr. Jacobus tenBroek. In this letter Dr.
tenBroek is inviting Professor Kingsley Price to deliver the 1949 banquet
address:
"The banquet address is a kind of focal point in which the problems of
the blind, their peculiar needs with respect to public assistance,
employment, and equal opportunity are formulated and presented both
with an eye to rededicating and stimulating the blind persons present
and an eye to enlightening and possibly converting the many sighted
persons who have been invited to attend. For me, this has always been
a job of rehashing and repeating certain central ideas. My imagination
and new methods of statement have long since petered out. The next
alternative is to get a new 'stater.' This is what I would like you to
be."
Jernigan reflects on a passage from another of tenBroek's letters in
which he admonishes Professor Price for declining the invitation to deliver
the banquet address. "We are desperately in need of new voices and a new
brain to do this job, and a man from New York has geographical advantages
as well." This strategic use of direct quotations and "report speech" by
Kenneth Jernigan accomplished the task of calling the membership to action.
Although Jernigan provides his own set of guidelines for a successful
banquet address earlier in the speech, it is his reflection on the words of
his mentor that allows him to call others to action, while admonishing
those who fail to step forward when called. As the longest serving leader
of the NFB and one responsible for much of its organizing, Jernigan argues
that it is fundamentally important to become familiar with their history.
As he writes, "In considering our past I am mindful of the fact that except
for inspiration, perspective, and prediction, there is no purpose to the
study of history." Jernigan's ironic phrase draws humorous attention to the
importance of history and the instruction such information provides."
I have listened to that speech many times, and it never fails to
encourage, inspire, and motivate me as a member of this movement.
The purpose of this article is to bring to light interviews that I
conducted over twenty years ago from those most responsible for the
creation of this phenomenon known as the annual banquet address. I was
privileged to speak with Dr. Jernigan, President Maurer, and the longtime
editor of the Braille Monitor, Barbara Pierce. I want you to hear in their
own words their thoughts about creating such addresses and their rhetorical
and historical significance for both members of the movement and the
general public.
[PHOTO CAPTION: Dr. Jernigan speaking at 1994 convention]
Interview with Dr. Jernigan
I approached Dr. Jernigan in the fall of 1994 and requested a phone
interview. As you might expect, he graciously agreed, and on a cold October
night I called him, and even though he was tired after a long day, he took
time to answer my questions and to provide me an extraordinary experience.
I recorded this interview on a small tape recorder, and I maintained that
small cassette for approximately twenty years before getting the interview
itself transferred to a CD version. There were times during those years
when I feared I had lost the cassette or that it had worn out, and I would
never be able to get the valuable information from it for this purpose. You
can only imagine how elated I was when I was able to get it done, and, in
fact, the quality of the interview is still amazing even to this day. Here
is what Dr. Kenneth Jernigan had to say on that late October night in 1994:
JW: This will be in essence a historical/rhetorical analysis of the NFB
banquet address over the first forty-four years of our movement.
KJ: All right.
JW: And I have a rare chance to talk with a person who has-let me see, how
many of them have you heard?
KJ: I've heard all of them since 1952, so I've heard forty-three.
JW: That's right, and do you know how many you've actually done yourself?
KJ: Well, I could count them. I did the 1963 banquet speech, and I did the
68, 9, 70, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 80, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 90.
JW: And 90
KJ: So I've done twenty-one of them, I guess.
JW: Wow. All right, talk to me then a little bit about the banquet address
and its present-day impact on the blind of this country.
KJ: The banquet address is meant to be a statement of principles and also a
philosophical guidepost for our future. It is meant to be a summing up
of where we've been and where we're going. It is now regarded by
everybody as the high point of the convention. I would say the banquet
speech constitutes a psychological-it certainly is the key statement
of philosophy during the convention or is meant to be.
JW: Tell me about your best and worst memories of the banquet addresses
you've heard and you've done. It sounds like a strange question, but
what is your best, and what was your worst experience with it?
KJ: Let me say that my banquet addresses have been meant to address given
things. One time we dealt with the history of blindness, one time with
what blindness was like in literature, and another with what kind of
relations we have with the public. One time I gave a banquet address
called "Blindness: The Patterns of Freedom," which talked about what
the principal elements are that go to make up the pattern that you
have to have coming from second-class to first-class status. I would
think that my best banquet speeches have been, at least from my point
of view, the 1973 speech, which is "Blindness: is History Against Us;"
'75, "Blindness: is the Public Against Us;" '76, which would be
"Blindness: of Visions and Vultures;" and '85, which is "Blindness:
The Pattern of Freedom;" and the 1990 one, which is the fiftieth
anniversary speech. I regard those as the five best banquet speeches
I've made.
As to my most difficult experiences with the banquet speeches, they
had to do with one of those very five. In 1985, in Louisville, when we
were just starting, we were a minute or two in and apparently some
wires got hot, and the people got all panicky-the hotel people-and
jerked all of the video wires and lights. So everything, the sound
system and everything, went down, and we had to start the banquet
speech over.
JW: Oh my goodness-[laugh], I didn't know that. Moving on, how in the world
does one prepare for such a speech? Talk to me about that-how do you
put it together?
KJ: I think that what you have to do in preparing a banquet speech is quite
different than what you do in preparing a letter or even an article.
In the first place let me say to you that when I have written banquet
speeches, I've put in an average of eighty working hours on the
banquet speech. Now that is so because every sentence, every comma and
period, every word gets careful examination and scrutiny. The banquet
speech essentially-it seems to me that the ones that I've given-the
pattern I've developed for a banquet speech is you pose a problem or
you state a proposition, and then it seems to me you talk some about
the historical roots of it all, and then you give illustrations and
examples, and ultimately you come to the place where you're going in
the future with it and you say some concluding propositions. That's
about what a banquet speech is, the patterns that I would use for a
banquet speech.
JW: I have read the entire book Walking Alone and Marching Together in
Braille. I have a Braille copy. I am now going through the taped
version of it, and I must say that I am not finished. I'm at the point
where you did your 1986 speech, the last one as president. In my
observation you sounded-I don't know what the word is-you sounded very
introspective. What were you feeling during that speech?
KJ: Well, of course that speech represented what I viewed to be a major
milestone in my life because, although I had stepped aside from the
presidency in 1977 for a year, I did not know whether I would come
back as president. I suspected I might if things so indicated-if my
health improved, and it did. But in 1986 I knew that, barring a
tremendously unforeseen circumstance such as the death of the person
coming in as president or some other fantastically unlikely situation,
that I was not going to be president of this organization anymore, and
therefore I of course reviewed in my own mind my time in the
federation as well as many other things in my life.
JW: It came through [laugh]; it really did. I don't have the chance to talk
with Dr. tenBroek, but you were one of his principal lieutenants in
those early years. Did you have much discussion with him about the
banquet address? How did he feel about it? Do you have any memories
about his involvement in it?
KJ: Yep. I think that his own banquet addresses, as I've read them,
underwent a change also. He was from first to last quite a scholar, a
legal scholar, but he was interested in-after studying the
philosophical tone of the movement in several of his earlier speeches-
he was interested in making a more-I don't know how to put it,
speeches that were immediate-issue-oriented. The earlier ones were
also issue oriented, but they were more heavily philosophical--
rallying cries as opposed to the heavily issue oriented ones of the
latter stage.
JW: What would you say was his best in your mind of the ones that you
heard?
KJ: I believe "The Cross of Blindness" was the best that he gave from my
point of view.
JW: What year was that? Do you remember the year?
KJ: 1956.
JW: Six, okay.
KJ: No, 1957, take it back. '56 was "Within the Grace..."
JW: "Within the Grace of God," yes.
KJ: Now I regard some of his earlier speeches as perhaps better to read and
study than some, and "The Cross of Blindness" was a prime example of
one that was better to listen to.
JW: Well, my final question for you, and then I'd like for you to have the
opportunity to say anything else you'd like to say about this whole
issue. My final question goes something like this: I heard you say at
this year's meetings that if things work out and you attend your-I
believe it's your fiftieth convention-or is it 2000 that you and
President Maurer said that you would do the banquet address is that...
KJ: 2001.
JW: Uh huh
KJ: It will be my fiftieth banquet in a row.
JW: I'm asking you to take out your crystal ball now. What do you see as
possible primary concerns for that banquet address? Where do you see
the blindness movement, and what do you think you might say?
KJ: Well, of course it is natural to look back over a century or a half a
century and to look ahead. We'll be halfway toward our century mark,
so you're really talking about what will be more than fifty for me.
This will be the sixty-first convention-or the sixty-second-I guess
sixty-first for the NFB. We'll be into our second half-century; we'll
be into a new century, and this country is bound to have undergone
considerable change by then. The first Clinton administration will
have come and gone, and there'll either be a second or a Republican
administration, and then we'll be into still yet another
administration down the line. There are tremendous changes now coming
in the social fabric of this country, and so the blind naturally look
to accommodate to those changes and to try to make those changes
accommodate to them. All of that will need to be considered.
JW: Yes. Any final comments you could tell me about the banquet address-
something that has not been addressed in my questions-observations
that come to mind? I mean, I think I've captured the essence of a once-
in-a-lifetime experience here.
KJ: I think that the banquet address does many things. For the brand-new
Federationist, the banquet address is an experience that brings that
convention together. It cements Federationism into the whole of the
individual, almost. It is, for the person who has been there five,
ten, fifteen years who is in mid-stride in the Federation-I think the
banquet address renews; I think it encourages; it gives a shot of
energy for the coming year. I think for the person who is a longtime
veteran in the ranks that the banquet address has nostalgic overtones
to it. I think it also makes one think of generations to come. It
tends to expand the sweep of one's thinking forward and backward. It,
I think, impresses and invigorates all of us, but it does different
things for people, depending on how long they've been coming to
conventions.
JW: Yes, as I said, this is the third one that I've actually heard, and, uh
boy, I remember that first one in '92, and it did all those things
that you say.
That was the interview, and even as I write and listen to this
recording now, I am struck by its power, focus, and sincerity. Dr.
Jernigan's graciousness and love for this movement was as genuine as it
could be, and as a young member then, I could not believe that he was
allowing me this amazing opportunity.
[PHOTO CAPTION: Marc Maurer speaking at podium in 1995]
The Interview with President Maurer
In the winter of 1995 it was quite obvious that I should interview
President Maurer, and once again I was afforded extraordinary access and
genuine graciousness. I conducted this interview by phone as well, and I am
indebted to Sarah Parsloe, a graduate student at Ohio University, for her
willingness to transcribe these recordings. She captured the essence of the
interviews, allowing me the editing license necessary for these finished
products.
In the Maurer interview I was struck by the candor and conversational
quality of the interviewee. This was 1995, and by that time President
Maurer and Dr. Jernigan were functioning as a well-oiled team. In fact,
their tag-team approach to everything really did seem to give us double for
our admission at the conventions. I think you can also read and hear the
genuine love and respect that President Maurer has for his mentor and
friend, Dr. Jernigan. For me to be able to interview both of them on this
topic provided some profound insights and revelations that I think worthy
of future research and study. Here is the Maurer interview:
JW: Marc, could you first talk with me about the historical significance as
well as the contemporary significance of the banquet address.
MM: Well, the banquet address is a document which intends to put, at the
time that we are having the convention, into perspective where the
blind of the United States and-for that matter, in a sense, the blind
of the world-are. In fact I think the blind of the United States, at
least at the moment, are ahead of the blind of the world and
developing the opportunities for independence, and I think that's the
objective involved-for blind people to exercise their talents to the
extent that we who are blind have them, and therefore that tries to
put into perspective at the time it is delivered where we are. Now, it
also intends to have a sweep which is broad enough to show that what
we are doing and what we are trying to achieve as a movement is a part
of the broader perspective of history so that the banquet speech is
timely when delivered, but is also in a sense timeless because it will
show, in one facet or another, one element or another of the greater
society, why this particular movement matters, and what difference it
is making to the broader arena or the broader community in which blind
people live.
JW: I talked to Dr. Jernigan about this, but I really want your input on
this: How do you prepare for such a speech? Walk me through that.
MM: Well, I look for speech ideas all the time. I know that speeches will
have to be written. I look for ideas, and I try not to use up ideas
when they are of special significance. There is one speech that I have
written and delivered which might have been a national convention
banquet speech, but was not. Well, no, there are two. One of them
became a Monitor article, and it might have had enough importance to
be a banquet speech. I know it wasn't developed enough to be a banquet
speech, but a Monitor article. It's a good Monitor article, and it has
an important nugget of an idea and reality about it which might have
been significant enough to be a banquet speech. See, the sun will rise
in the east-that is true, and it is important. It is very important
because if the mangy thing does not rise, you'll freeze to death after
a while, and a while won't be long, and so will the rest of the world,
and so it's important. But, since you can't do a thing about it, it
wouldn't make a good banquet speech. The speech has to be something
that you can do something about. It has to be a message showing that
the individual action of the human being will matter and can make a
change, which is important both for the blind person and to the world
at large. So, with that in mind, I look for ideas that can be made
into banquet speeches, and I look for them all the time. An idea-it
has to be important, and it also has to be one which not everybody in
the world already knows so it has some freshness about it, and it has
to be an idea which has an element in it which means that a person can
do something to make some change which will make a difference to bring
greater cohesion, conformity, and a brighter and better world. So
that's the idea I'm looking for. I never know what it is before I see
it, and sometimes even then I'm not sure it's good enough.
JW: I see.
MM: So I'm looking for that. Then, once you have that idea, it has to be
presented in a package which is understandable. Two or three years ago-
I forget which one it was now-there was an idea, the mysterious 10
percent. It said that education happens-that you have to know 90
percent of what you are presented, and the new stuff can be about 10
percent, and that 10 percent is all important. Well, I think this has
an element of truth about it, but you have to present this idea in a
way which is understandable. It can't be so different and so new that
nobody gets it, so it has to be presented in a way that people will
understand.
This means that the banquet speech can't be written all at once-100
percent, you write those words, and they take a long time. And then
you go over them, and that takes a long time. My experience is that I
write the introduction to the banquet speech and then throw it away
and start over. And then, after I've written it the second time,
usually I like it well enough to keep it, except that it gets massaged-
probably anywhere from a dozen to twenty times before it's finished.
JW: By you?
MM: By me.
JW: Do you have other official or unofficial editors, people you've trusted
over the years look at it?
MM: I went to Dr. Jernigan on them.
JW: Ok.
MM: But I don't show it to anybody else.
JW: I see. Let me ask you: I have read the Braille issue of Walking Alone
and Marching Together. I am now listening to the tape issue. I am now
at 1987.
MM: You have the one with the voices?
JW: That's right. I'm in 1987 now. I'm about to listen to your first
banquet address. Talk to me about what it was like getting ready for
that and how you felt delivering that if you can remember.
MM: Well, there was only one real question. Everybody has a speech in them-
one. Your own story is a speech if you know how to write it.
JW: Yes.
MM: So everyone has one speech, and the question was could I deliver it.
JW: Uh huh.
MM: There are two speeches that the president gives as a matter of
tradition although it hasn't always been that way, and I don't
guarantee that it always will be. Dr. Jernigan and I have agreed for
example that in the year 2000, he's going to give the banquet speech-
which is a nice thought-I won't have to write it if I'm around.
JW: [Laugh]
MM: There are two speeches: one is the presidential report, and one is the
banquet speech. I had delivered the presidential report by the time we
got to the banquet in 1987, and the presidential report went all
right. You could offer criticisms of its delivery, but it went all
right-people liked it, at least. When Dr. Jernigan ceased to be
president, as you will remember from this year's banquet, there were
many people that weren't sure if that was a good thing to have done. I
believe Dr. Jernigan wasn't sure, although he never said so. I wasn't
entirely sure myself. He asked me once upon a time if I wanted to be
president of the organization, and I told him I did. He said "That's
just as well, because you can't be president if you don't want to be."
So we talked about it, and I became president. Whether it was a good
thing to have done, a lot of us were wondering about. I was wondering,
he was wondering, although he didn't say so. The question was whether
or not I could carry what the organization had already done. Dr.
Jernigan makes great speeches, so the organization cannot have
somebody who can't make pretty good speeches as its leader because it
will look like second-rate and second best. Say what you will about
the organized blind-we're not prepared to have second rate by and
large. On occasion we might take second best for some specific
purpose, but it will have to be to achieve a different end. We're not
prepared to have it overall, and I'm one of the ones that isn't. So,
with that in mind, the question was whether or not the speech could
swing at all, and it went all right.
JW: Ok
MM: And it's hard-with that kind of understanding behind you, it makes a
person moderately uneasy.
JW: Yeah [laugh]. Let me ask you about the audiences you have to address.
I've sat through three banquet addresses now live and in person, and
probably just about all of them or most of them on tape. Talk to me
about-as you prepare that speech and as you deliver it, what are the
audiences you are addressing, and what-you know-how do you get at
meeting their needs?
MM: The Federation is a good audience, a very good audience. When the then
president comes to the microphone to speak to the Federation, the
president knows that the Federation is friendly to begin with. It is
longing for whatever is being done at the podium to be successful and
is willing to empathize with the person making the address. All of
that is good. But the Federation is a very knowledgeable audience. It
knows what good speeches are like. It recognizes a flimflam, and it's
not willing to tolerate one. Consequently, you have to give it to the
audience straight, and it has to be of good quality. The audience
knows when it's not going to have good quality. It's willing to
tolerate people who aren't top quality, but it's been through enough
of the good quality stuff that it's perfectly well aware of when it's
not getting the best. So with that in mind you've got to prepare for
the people who are out there. Now, who have you got: you've got the
guy who is on the line in the factory; you've got the unemployed
person who didn't get much education; you've got the fellow from the
hills who didn't get much chance; you've got the college professor and
you've got the lawyer and the engineer; you've got people who didn't
find a way to go and be a part of the broader society too much, so
they've spent a lot of time listening to the talk shows, they are
aware of what's happening on the talk show circuit. You've got all
those people. And you've got all of the ethnic backgrounds, and you've
got all of the religious backgrounds. There are some people in the
audience who will be-probably there aren't many who are anti-religious-
but there are many who don't have religion as a high priority, but
there are some who wouldn't miss a Sunday at church. And you've got to
know that.
JW: Yes
MM: It's a very broad range of individuals.
JW: If you had to highlight two or three key things or issues that you try
to bring out within this address, what would they be?
MM: Well, individual responsibility and individual power. If you don't have
individual responsibility, individual power doesn't make any sense. If
you don't have individual power, neither does individual
responsibility. The fact that anyone can, with the right motivation,
the right persistence, the right understanding make a significant
difference sufficient that it will change the fabric of society at
least in the area where that individual is-that is part of every
single banquet speech.
JW: Okay, well this is fascinating, you know. I'm going to write an article
about the banquet address. I've spoken with Dr. Jernigan, but you had
a chance to work closely with Dr. Jernigan, and you had a chance to
hear a number of his banquet addresses. Tell me how you felt as an
audience member listening to his banquet addresses.
MM: Oh, my. I don't know whether your experience was the same as mine, but
the first banquet address I heard was the 1969 banquet. I was in the
audience, and Dr. Jernigan got up there and began to talk, and in a
minute I knew he was talking to me. I think that most of the people in
the audience felt the same way: he was speaking to me individually. He
was saying these things that would make a difference to me in my own
life, and it was positively magic.
JW: Oh yeah, yeah. My first one was yours in Charlotte, and I'll never
forget it. I was hooked from then on. Let me ask you also, then, what
do you think was the best Jernigan speech you've heard? I've already
asked him what he thought was his best. What would you say was his
best?
MM: I don't know.
JW: So you haven't singled out one in particular?
MM: Well, I could tell you some I liked. I could tell you some I liked for
different reasons.
JW: Yes
MM: Banquet speeches are supposed to be timeless, and mostly they are. But
some, it seems to me, came at a particularly good time. I think that
the 1990 speech was one like that. The 1976 banquet speech had a
magnificent power, too. But then maybe the 1985 banquet speech does.
Anyway, I don't know which one I liked better.
JW: Yes, yes. Well, how about you personally? You've done seven of them.
Which one would you say has been your best or worst, and why do you
think so?
MM: Well, I think that I'm not in a good position to answer that question.
I think that one of the more interesting banquet speeches was the
first, and yet I don't think it was as well delivered as I would have
hoped. The 1994 banquet speech may have been delivered better than any
of the others. It had an interesting idea in it, but it's not the idea
that I would regard as the most interesting of any of my banquet
speeches. Last year's banquet speech I found interesting. I don't know
whether other people did or not, but I did.
JW: Well, my final question to you, President Maurer, is very simple, and
it is related to the banquet address. What is the future of the
banquet address, and what are some of those future themes. Let's say
it's ten or perhaps fifteen years from now-look into your crystal
ball, and tell me what that banquet speaker is talking about.
MM: Well, the Federation has changed over the years. The position that we
now have is different from the position that we had twenty-five years
ago. The National Federation of the Blind is more powerful. It has a
larger membership; it has many successes to its credit. It seems to me
that one banquet speech will need to focus on something which Dr.
Jernigan talked about a little bit two years ago. There will be two
things that I think will occur that will have to be addressed in
banquet speeches, and one is that we have to find a way to know how to
manage the power that we possess with understanding and restraint.
Most countries that have gained independence have fought hard to gain
it, have had a period of time that was relatively peaceful, and then
have gone into civil war and civil strife either for longer or a
shorter time because they didn't know how to govern internally. The
failure to know how to manage the power that they had attained caused
conflict, disturbance, and destruction. We must prevent that. We have
to be able to use the power that we gathered together to make the
society better. We have to find a way to become truly integrated, and
that means to interact with other outfits around the world or at least
around this country. That has to be done without strife.
The second thing that is important, it seems to me, is that as
you gain a measure of success and as people grow up not facing the
stark reality of nonparticipation, then they begin to believe that
there isn't anything important for the organization to do, and they
may not join it. Especially is this so if they think they've made it
on their own, so why bother. We have to address that. That is
occurring right now, in fact.
JW: Yes
MM: I think that the number of people who have that feeling may increase. A
sense of history must be a part of what we are, and a sense of history
must give us a sense of community, so we have to address that in times
to come. If we don't address it now, I think it will be a greater
phenomenon in the future.
Just imagine having had the opportunity to speak with the two men who
had delivered the banquet addresses from 1968 to 1995. It seemed to me what
was left for me to do was to find a unique audience perspective-and did I
ever with Barbara Pierce.
[PHOTO CAPTION: Barbara Pierce at 1997 national convention]
Interview with Barbara Pierce
My original plan was to interview several longtime Federationists and
then take themes from their responses in reference to their recollections
of the banquet addresses. After thinking about it, I thought that
interviewing the then-editor of the Braille Monitor would be sufficient and
provide a sort of insider/outsider perspective on the topic. Unlike the two
previous interviews, this one was conducted in my hotel room at the 1997
convention in New Orleans. Of course, Barbara Pierce was my affiliate
president at the time, and she was her usual professional and confident
self during the interview. Her unique take on the topic is timeless and
instructive even today.
JW: Ok, I have Barbara Pierce here and Barbara, first of all, two-part
question: how long have you been with the NFB, and what is your role
in the organization?
BP: I joined the Federation in January of 1974 and have been active in the
organization ever since. I have organized a chapter and become that
chapter's president (that was back in the 70s). I've been a state
board member and a state officer. Since 1984 I have been president of
the NFB of Ohio. I have been the director of public education for the
national organization since about 1980, or maybe '78, to the present,
and since 1988 I have been first associate editor and now editor of
the Braille Monitor magazine, the house organ of the Federation.
JW: As you know, this interview is about the banquet address. Now I say
that to you as someone who knows what that means, but what does that
mean to you?
BP: I have been present at twenty-three consecutive banquets of the
National Federation of the Blind. The banquet address, as an element
in the organization-it's certainly the high point of the convention,
and the convention is the high point of the Federation's year. For me
the banquet address is the focal point of the magnifying glass; all of
the rays come together and focus on one point. It is an articulation
of the philosophy as it is manifest in the lives of blind people. It
is a way of saying to ourselves over and over again, "Here's who we
are; here's what we struggle against; here is the victory we define
for ourselves."
JW: Now that's a twenty-three-year-old answer, and that's good. I want to
ask you something else: can you remember your first banquet address,
and can you take yourself back to how you felt, talk to me about the
atmosphere; put me back there.
BP: Okay, now first of all, my first banquet was 1975, and as it happens
that was the third in a series of three banquet addresses: "Is History
Against Us," "Is Literature Against Us," "Is the Public Against Us."
So in fact, I had heard recordings of the first two elements before I
went to the 1975 address, but there was something electric in the air
about being present for that address. Dr. Jernigan is a powerfully
eloquent speaker, and his delivery is nearly flawless. I could hear
that on the recordings before then, but there is something about being
in the room and sharing the experience with over 1,500 other people.
Somehow sharing such an experience with 1,500 people has in itself a
powerful effect, and I can remember sort of reaching and pinching
myself. Am I really here? Having heard the speeches, suddenly to be
present and to have this speech laid out before us, which was, "Here
are all the ways in which in a sense it feels as though public
attitudes are so piled up against us, and yet the public isn't really
against us. We must see that people understand and come to the
realization of blindness that we have," and it was like being hurled
out into the world on a catapult. I think nothing will ever be as
exciting to me again. I have heard better banquet speeches since, but
the impact will never be the same because nothing like that will ever
be like the first.
JW: I know, it's kind of like your first love, your first whatever.
BP: First baby, yeah, [laugh], that's right.
JW: Of the twenty-three you've heard, what was your favorite and why?
BP: Hmmm, well, 1976 "Of Visions and Vultures" has a special place in my
heart, partly because I was sitting there in all innocence, and
suddenly a letter that I wrote got read in the banquet address. That
was a pretty astonishing experience suddenly to make it into the
banquet address-it sort of felt like I had achieved a little piece of
immortality, but that banquet address is certainly the articulation of
a lot of our perceptions of what it is like to live out the
Federation's philosophy. We must keep our eye on what it is that we're
doing; we must not be distracted; we must move forward in absolute
focus and attention. It was laid out in intimate detail, anecdote by
anecdote, letter by letter, personal crisis by personal crisis, so
that one was a very powerful one.
I really like-and I'm going to have a hard time getting it
right-I think it's 1985, it's Dr. Jernigan's "The Patterns of
Freedom." I personally find that a very powerful one because it goes
to the heart of what constitutes freedom, and it seems to me this is
absolutely essential for blind people to understand. No one can give
us what it is we must have. We must take it; we must deserve it; we
must maintain it, and I think that is such a fundamental truth, and he
managed to find ways of saying it. There are so many wonderful quotes
through the ages that he pulls together and puts into a blindness
context; I love that speech.
JW: You know that Dr. tenBroek, Dr. Jernigan, and President Maurer have
done the majority of the speeches since the founding of this
organization. You've had the privilege of sitting through that
transitional phase of Dr. Jernigan to President Maurer. Talk to me
about that.
BP: Of course, in the structure and evolution of the organization that was
a very important speech because the question in everyone's minds had
to be, can President Maurer deliver a speech of the force and caliber
that we have been used to hearing. If this is the single experience
that is going to galvanize an entire organization for a year, it is
fraught with a great deal of importance, so everyone, myself included,
came into the banquet that night with a profound question on our
hearts: Can he do it?
JW: No, no pressure on him!
BP: No, none whatsoever-I mean, you know that was just astonishing,
astonishing how he did it, and I suspect he will never work on a
banquet speech as hard or as long as he must have worked on that one.
I don't know that for a fact, but I believe that is in fact the case.
"Back to Notre Dame" was the name of the speech, and it was his
thinking about his own evolution and how far we have to come by
looking at his experience as a student at Notre Dame, and it worked.
So there was this great euphoria for that that all of us were caught
up in because the magic was there. You know, we're looking at a young
man just beginning, taking over for a man seasoned and experienced,
who had an impeccable ear for the language, and so it's not the same.
It's a different voice. The great sophistication and sensitivity to
nuance of the language that Dr. Jernigan has, Mr. Maurer didn't have
in 1986. But, but, it was clear that it was going to be all right and
that the nurturing, the feeding, the food, and the energy were all
there. We were still capable of sending people out into the world,
marching together, and we were capable of going out to walk alone, and
that is so essential for us in this organization. So much of the time
each of us labors in a little part of the vineyard where we're the
only person.
JW: Do you have a favorite part, a favorite segment?
BP: Of the address?
JW: Of the address itself, of the oration?
BP: I have never really looked at it in that way before.
JW: See, I like introductions. I like the introductions of those
presentations.
BP: When introductions are done well, I agree with you. I think that the
introduction is probably the hardest thing to do well, and I think
that as we plow this particular field it gets harder to find a way
into the material. Certainly, historically, the most fun part of the
banquet address is the middle part where all of the examples such as
the putting sponges on blind people's heads and twenty-seven steps and
teaching a blind person to clap and all of the nonsense, the nonsense
that so much of our lives leads to such painful frustration, and
suddenly, for one glorious moment together, we laugh, and that is so
healthy for us to be able to laugh about it together. I think that is
such a creative, energizing, and frustration-letting portion for the
group to experience together that that I find that great fun. So, in
sum, in many ways I think that's my favorite part.
JW: And your laughter-it does stand out, as does your clap. I have a couple
more questions, and I have one specifically for you now as an editor-
you know as an editor of this journal/magazine. Do you listen
differently to these addresses-as both a Federationist and as an
editor-does the job ever enter in?
BP: The job enters in as I note how things will go, because, of course, in
our journal we have both a print and a Braille version, and that's
just text. That's set because the speech has been typeset, and he's
reading a copy of it. That's it, you know: that's cast in stone.
But the recorded version-we will tape, but we roll cleaned up tape.
There was the year that the fire department came rushing in, and we
had a ten-minute hiatus in the middle of the banquet address because
they pulled the plug on the microphone. Of course we clean up little
things that go on, so I'm always listening to see how much of that
kind of thing has to be done and to note the places where I want to
make sure that the technician has, in fact, done it correctly. My goal
is to see that the person in Dubuque who didn't get to the convention
has the sense of magic that we had in being there, that he is swept
along, at least to the degree that we can get it onto the tape. At the
same time I want to work to see that the person is not distracted by
the little things in the banquet room that didn't matter with all the
emotion and everything there working together, but which, if you just
listened to the tape recorder at home, would get in the way. So it's
more of the technical things that I pay attention to as I'm listening
and to see where I'm going to have to polish the mirror to make sure
that the reflection comes up accurately.
JW: I see. What advice would you give to potential banquet speakers for
this occasion in terms of preparation?
BP: Of course I do banquet speeches because I go around the country and do
state banquets. So the banquet address as an art form is something I
agonize over quite a lot. I am deeply grateful that I will never have
to give a banquet address of the significance and with carrying the
freight that this one has, because it is an awesome responsibility to
have. Anyone who is giving a banquet address to an organization doing
the kind of work that is done in our Federation has to take it
seriously. You need to give more than just a delightful, lively,
interesting after-dinner speech that will keep the folks awake. You
have to think hard about your message and how you will deliver it when
you really want the banquet address to work and when the work that has
to be done is serious work because it has to kindle people and unite
them and send them out reenergized to lift their weight in wildcats.
I think that you cannot just stand up-or it takes many years
before you can stand up and do that kind of speech off-the-cuff and
have it work right. So you have to decide what mechanism you're going
to use to try to accomplish what needs to be done. Are you going to
try humor? Are you going to try to do it with tight logic? Are you
going to try to do it with just inspirational words? Or, if not just
one but several, what is the mix you're going to try to use? How much
are you going to try to make this a personal expression, and how much
are you going to try to take material that you come across and shape
that into to a fully developed argument of the kind that you want to
make? Different people in this organization have different styles.
Some of them are very personal and idiosyncratic, some of them depend
absolutely on ideas that they play with and develop, and some of them
roam around and pick up a lot of anecdotes and pieces of literature
and leave their speeches at that. You've got to decide what your way
is to do that.
It seems to me the other thing that one has to decide is
whether you are going to do a speech that you're going to read and
deliver sentence by sentence, carefully crafted as Dr. Jernigan's and
Mr. Maurer's speeches are always done. They are reading a speech that
takes about eighty hours to put together, and they read the speech
almost exactly as written. In many ways I think that is extremely hard
for most people to pull off because it is so hard to project one's
personality into that kind of crafted prose and not have it sound as
though you're just reading the text. You have to project so that you
are speaking to them and ensure that you really are bringing your
audience along.
I've tried delivering speeches in which I've read the whole
text, but I have settled more or less on extensive notes so that I've
got my focus very carefully honed. I've plotted my path, my map is
very clearly defined of where I'm going and how I'm unfolding it, but
I depend on the energy and the hormones at the moment to give me the
actual sentences and the words to convey the ideas. But it seems to me
that you have to find your own personal style, whatever it is that is
most successful for you, the most successful mechanism for you to use
in conveying your ideas. Then be comfortable with that choice, and
don't eat your heart out because you can't do it some other way. The
important thing is to develop your own style, and then go on about
your business.
Conclusion
So there you have it-the words of three giants in our movement, and
my extraordinary interaction with each of them. I don't know why it took me
twenty years to do this article, but in some ways it seems timely and
appropriate for the 75th year of our movement. Little did any of us know
that Dr. Jernigan would deliver his last banquet address in 1997 and pass
away in 1998. Hearing his voice in this recording continues to inspire and
encourage me, and I hope it does the same for you. I could feel the
emotions of President Maurer as he prepared to bring the gavel down on the
convention with President Riccobono at the banquet last year. Thus, hearing
his voice from 1995 and watching his efforts to build the Jernigan
Institute and lead this movement into the twenty-first century, has been
quite amazing as well. And I never would have thought that when I conducted
that interview with Barbara Pierce in 1997 that I would follow her as the
President of the NFB of Ohio.
Perhaps twenty-five years from now someone will write a similar piece
albeit probably much better than this one, and it will be fascinating to
see what the story of our movement is then. I am confident that the banquet
address will continue its historical and rhetorical significance for us,
and although the audiences will change, the message will only get more
clear, necessary, and focused.
----------
[PHOTO CAPTION: Ken Cary and Jane Lansaw]
Senior Citizens Take on Senior Challenges
by Ken Cary
From the Editor: This article is special to me because it comes from
an unexpected source and offers thanks to someone who is a longtime
personal friend of mine, a friend I once doubted when she said she was
going to become a mobility instructor. I have several times apologized for
doubting and do so yet again.
Turning to the author, it is fascinating to observe how people age
and how they view new life opportunities. Many say they are too old to
learn and shutdown when people talk with them about mobility, technology,
learning once again to read, and engaging in new adventures. Ken Cary has
been blind just over ten years, and at seventy-five he should give all of
us pause who say "I can't," or "I am too old."
Ken wrote this story for the Braille Monitor both to motivate other
blind people and to thank someone who has played a very special role in his
life-both very laudable reasons to embrace the task of writing, even when
it is not one's normal activity. Here is what he says:
My name is Ken Cary, I'm seventy-five years old, and I'm deaf and
blind. I have neuropathy in my hands and feet, and I suffer 25 percent
memory loss because of a stroke in 2003.
In 2007 I went to Criss Cole Rehabilitation Center (CCRC) in Austin,
Texas. There they taught me the computer. They taught me daily living. I
couldn't do Braille because of the neuropathy. They taught me industrial
arts, and what I think is the most important thing they taught me is
mobility.
About six months ago I went to Leader Dog in Rochester, Michigan, to
be trained to receive a dog. I had just undergone five weeks of radiation,
coupled with a sinus condition that torments me 24/7. They weren't aware of
these things when I arrived, which affected my performance. They had a
video of me which was taken at home before my illness, and they said that a
different person came down to the school. They had already trained a dog
for me. I told them that earlier I had walked fast. But in the condition I
was in when I arrived for guide dog training, I couldn't keep up with the
dog that they trained. After three days they decided the best thing was to
just send me home and have me come back later when I was in better shape.
Before I left they got a lady from DARS to come over and check my
mobility skills. The people with leader dog weren't with her. She did this
independently. She took me through alleys and pastures, down highways, and
on streets where I did curb travel and shoreline. She took me to places
where there were trees I had to navigate around. When she got through, she
said, "Mr. Cary, I want to know who taught you how to do this because you
have excellent mobility skills, and I think you could go all over the
United States and the world, as far as that goes, and you could do it by
yourself. My opinion is that you don't need a dog. Who was your
instructor?"
Now we're getting closer to the lady I want to talk about. At Criss
Cole my first mobility instructor was Marion Small. She was an excellent
instructor, but she taught me the basic things, and I wasn't with her but
for about three months. She was a character; I called her Showbiz Small
because she liked to dance with you out there and get you mixed up to see
if you could cross the road and line up to the street. She was real
outgoing, altruistic, and had a positive mental attitude.
Then I was moved to another team and got Jane Lansaw as an
instructor. Jane was the total opposite of Marion. At first I didn't like
her. She was all business, and her goal was to teach me everything about
mobility. She told me to carry a bag and always have a raincoat in it
because we didn't come in for rain, snow, or windstorm. Our sessions were
for two hours. There would have to be severe lightning for us to come in
before the two hours were up.
Not many deaf-blind people go to Criss Cole. There are only legally
blind and totally blind people who are there. Consequently a lot of
instructors there didn't have an opportunity or didn't know how to train
mobility trainers for the deaf-blind. Jane really got interested in this.
To help me and others, she had to come up with some new techniques she
didn't use with her regular students. She made signs for me that I could
use when I would go on a travel lesson using the bus. I would hold up a
sign saying "Bus 5," and then another one that said "Bus 38," which I used
a lot. She got hooked up with our deaf-blind specialist, Kathy Young, and
she had a bunch of knowledge that Jane didn't have. Jane also got a lot of
stuff from Helen Keller [the Helen Keller National Center for Deaf-Blind
Youth and Adults] with techniques that Ann Sullivan used, and these she
used to train me. She also made a sign that said "taxi" that I would hold
up when trying to get a cab. Another sign that I carried said, "I am deaf
and blind, and I have trouble crossing busy, high-traffic streets. Would
you help me cross the street by touching my left shoulder?" I carried these
signs wherever I went, and I had some cards made up that I gave the bus
drivers that said the same thing. They also told the drivers I was hard of
hearing and instructed them to talk really loud to me when I needed to get
off the bus.
I spent hours with Jane Lansaw in training. I didn't know it, but she
was sharing techniques with interns from out of town so they could learn by
seeing how I was performing. Often I would get mixed up, disoriented, and
she would let me mess up, even if it took hours. She would stay with me
until I figured out where I was supposed to be going. It was unbelievable
the patience that she had.
One time I was having trouble finding the warehouse, the place at the
center where we would sometimes meet and where we could buy supplies. It
was simple for everyone else, but I was having a terrible time finding it,
so I had a digital recorder, and she dictated the instructions on it. I was
following those instructions the best I could, but I still crossed the road
where I wasn't supposed to and rewound the recorder to read the
instructions again. I realized I made a mistake and corrected it. I would
go forward several blocks and would then decide that I needed to go back. I
was going back and forth, constantly going back to my recorder, and I
finally got to the warehouse. Of course, Jane had enough confidence in me
that she remained at Criss Cole, believing I could and should go by myself.
When I got to the warehouse, I made them sign a letter saying that I
made it there, because I didn't think she would believe that I did it. When
I finally got back, she could see me coming, and, when she saw that letter
from the warehouse, we both started jumping up and down, and she was
hugging me, and we were acting like two crazy people out there, because
this was a major accomplishment for me.
She liked to make me go to the University of Texas and walk the main
drag. There are thousands of students there, and Jane would give me
addresses of businesses that I had to find. It was either north or south of
where I was. I found out that, when I went inside a business, most of the
employees didn't even know their street address, which really complicated
it.
One time she and one of her interns were in a business that I was
supposed to find. I walked by it three times and thought about stopping,
but I said to myself that "No one would stop at this place." So I just went
about my business and went back the other way. I went into a building, and
for some reason my arm started to bleed really badly. I take Plavix and
aspirin, and if I hit something, I really bleed. The manager said, "You are
losing blood," and gave me a paper towel and said, "You need to leave our
business and go clean yourself up somewhere." So I knew I had to go back
home because I was going to have sunstroke I was so hot. There was no way I
could get in touch with Jane, so I went back to the center, and after about
an hour and a half she called in and said, "Has Ken Cary checked in?"
"Yes he has. He checked in, and he checked out again, and he's going
to the warehouse by himself."
She said, "Well you tell him I'm going to wring his neck when I get
in." When she came back and got all the information, she knew I had made
the right decision.
In my team at Criss Cole they were always inviting people they
thought were the best mobility people to walk to the Capital, which was
four miles, and they had to wear a blindfold. They never thought I was good
enough to do that, so one Saturday I did it on my own. I recorded every
step on my Milestone digital recorder. After about two hours I got to the
Capital, and a guy had been watching me. He said, "You finally made it to
the Capital." I guess he was surprised. I went over and had a lady that
worked there stamp a piece of paper saying that I had been to the Capital.
After I had gone there, I had a friend that took the information off the
recorder and put it on a disk. I waited for about a week and gave it to
Jane. She couldn't believe it and mentioned it in the auditorium at the
center. I got the Traveler of the Week award.
On bad weather days Jane would take me in a room and explain how
Austin was laid out. She explained that there is a river that runs through
Austin so you kind of keep up with Austin by how many roads are north or
south of the river. What she explained seemed to me to be kind of a
complicated process, but after you studied it, it would help you find
addresses better. She would send me out on drop-offs, sometimes out in the
middle of Austin, and say, "Get home." Supposedly they would go back to the
center, but I think they were watching me from far away with binoculars to
see if I was heading the right way to get back. When on these trips, you
could ask people, "Where is the closest bus station," and if they wanted to
help you, you could let them help you get there. We did these drop-offs
several times, and one time I lucked out and just got on the right bus and
beat them home. I was sitting, waiting on them, and they couldn't believe
that I got there first.
Jane Lansaw loves to work with deaf and blind people. When new deaf
and blind people come into Criss Cole, she gets them, and she tells them
about me. It encourages them because Jane knows that, since I left Criss
Cole, I have been to Detroit, Michigan, by myself. I've been to Disney
World in Florida four or five times by myself. I have been to the Chicago
Airport, Denver Airport, Atlanta Airport-you name it, I've done it by
myself. To accomplish this I have had to ask a lot of questions.
I live in a small town, and I go to the post office by myself about
once a week. I have to travel by the schoolhouse to get there. It's about
four blocks down to Highway 69, and there are 150,000 cars that pass by
there every day both ways. It is a very dangerous road. When you are deaf-
blind your primary travel problem is not jumping out in front of traffic;
it is the turning lanes that you can't hear as well, and you've got to be
sure that you don't jump out in front of a car in a turning lane. If I'm
not sure, I will use my sign for asking someone to help me. I am not going
to do something stupid.
Once I cross the street heading to the post office, I go through
parking lots; I pass a couple of small, narrow alleys that could be roads;
I walk through grass and finally find the post office. Of course I have to
come back home after I go to the post office. This requires a lot of
mobility skills that I learned from Jane Lansaw. I just want to say thank
you, Jane. You gave me my life back, so I don't have to sit down and watch
TV all day and be afraid to go anywhere.
Since working with Jane, I have gone to skydive in San Marcos, and I
jumped out nine times to beat former President George H. Bush's tandem jump
record. I took jumps eight and nine the same day to accomplish that.
Fortunately, President Bush has quit jumping. During the process, every
time I thought I had him beat, he would go jump out again, and I had it in
my head I was going to break his record. I started jumping at age sixty-
seven, did my most recent jump at seventy-four, am now seventy-five, and I
will not quit jumping. When I die, I want it to be when I'm swinging a cane
while jumping out of an airplane. Thanks, Jane.
----------
Seize the Future
The National Federation of the Blind has special giving opportunities
that will benefit the giver as well as the NFB. Of course the largest
benefit to the donor is the satisfaction of knowing that the gift is
leaving a legacy of opportunity. However, gifts may be structured to
provide more:
. Helping the NFB fulfill its mission
. Realizing income tax savings through a charitable deduction
. Making capital gain tax savings on contributions of appreciated assets
. Eliminating or lowering the federal estate tax in certain situations
. Reducing estate settlement costs
NFB programs are dynamic:
. Making the study of science and math a real possibility for blind
children
. Providing hope and training for seniors losing vision
. Promoting state and local programs to help blind people become first-
class citizens
. Educating the public about blind people's true potential
. Advancing technology helpful to the blind
. Creating a state-of-the-art library on blindness
. Training and inspiring professionals working with the blind
. Providing critical information to parents of blind children
. Mentoring blind job seekers
Your gift makes you a partner in the NFB dream. For further
information or assistance, contact the NFB.
----------
The Secret to Winning a National Federation of the Blind Scholarship
by Patti S. Gregory-Chang
From the Editor: Patti Chang is the chairman of one of the most
important committees of the National Federation of the Blind. She and her
committee are charged with advertising our scholarship program and choosing
thirty students who evidence academic success, leadership, and a
demonstrated commitment to helping others. Here is Patti's announcement
about the 2016 scholarship program:
Each July at our national convention the National Federation of the
Blind gives a broad array of scholarships to recognize achievement by blind
scholars. We offer thirty scholarships, and all are substantial and
prestigious enough to warrant any student's time to complete and compete.
Our $12,000 Kenneth Jernigan Scholarship is the largest. The NFB
Scholarship Program is our investment in the future of blind people who
demonstrate scholastic aptitude, leadership, and service. I encourage every
blind college student to apply.
I am sometimes asked what the secret is to winning an NFB
scholarship. I am going to tell you the secret. First of all, applicants
must meet the eligibility requirements to receive a scholarship. All
applicants for these scholarships must be legally blind; must reside in one
of our fifty states, the District of Columbia, or Puerto Rico; must be
pursuing or planning to pursue a full-time postsecondary course of study in
a degree program at an accredited United States institution in the fall
academic year; and, if chosen as a finalist, must participate in the entire
NFB national convention and in all scheduled scholarship activities.
Many think the key to becoming a winner is a high grade point
average. Others believe it is based on participation in extracurricular
activities. Still others think it is one's level of commitment to the NFB.
While grade point average is important because it demonstrates the ability
to learn and be successful academically, it is not the only attribute that
influences the scholarship committee. Participation in extracurricular
activities is important in portraying oneself as a well-rounded person; it
is not sufficient in itself to justify a scholarship award. Committed
members of the organization recognize the attributes that are important to
committee members when determining who wins a scholarship.
The scholarship program is a tremendous tool for us to develop future
leaders of the National Federation of the Blind, but scholarship awards are
not restricted to members of the organization. The National Federation of
the Blind is an organization dedicated to creating opportunity for all
blind people. Recipients of NFB scholarships need not be members of the
National Federation of the Blind. Many of our past winners were not even
aware of the NFB before they applied for our scholarships. When you check
the lists of past winners, you will see that students of all ages and in
widely differing fields have won over the years. The class of 2015 included
students entering their freshman year, as well as older students who were
nearly ready to write their PhD dissertations. Past winners are working
toward credentials for employment in diverse fields.
There is truly only one way to win an NFB scholarship: that is to
apply. Each November the new, updated scholarship application forms are
posted on the Web at <www.nfb.org/scholarships>, along with important
information about the contest, links to information on past winners, and a
page of frequently asked questions. The application form for 2016 is
already online. It will remain up until March 31. The process can be
initiated with an online application, which we prefer, or students can ask
for a print application by contacting our scholarship office at
<scholarships at nfb.org> or by calling (410) 659-9314, ext. 2415.
A complete application consists of the official application form and
a student essay, plus these supporting documents: student transcripts, two
letters of recommendation, and proof of legal blindness. The student must
also complete an interview with the president of the applicant's state of
residence or the state where he or she will be attending school. High
school seniors must also include a copy of the results of their ACT, SAT,
or other college entrance exams.
Unfortunately, some applications are incomplete, so the committee is
unable to consider them fairly. Applicants must ensure that all of the
required information and supporting documentation have been received by our
scholarship office either online by midnight EST, March 31, or by mail
postmarked by March 31. Students should carefully consider who can do the
best job of writing their letters of reference. Letters should support the
application by being full of facts and observations that will help the
members of the committee see the applicant as a smart, active student and
citizen. Students can write their essays using word-processing software.
They should remember to use the spell checker (or a human proofreader)
before uploading, printing, or copying and pasting it into the online
application form.
In an effective essay the applicant will talk about his or her life
in a way that gives the committee insight into him or her. The essay should
cover the ways in which one lives successfully as a blind person and
describe one's personal goals for the future. Information about positions
of leadership is especially helpful. Committee members give the essay a
great deal of attention.
The NFB scholarship committee is comprised of dedicated, successful
blind people, who will review all applications and select the top thirty
applicants for the scholarship class of 2016. Note that students submit
just one application to the program; the scholarship committee will choose
the thirty finalists from all applications received. These thirty
scholarship finalists will be notified of their selection by telephone no
later than June 1.
Finally, during the annual convention held June 30 through July 5,
2016, in Orlando, Florida, the scholarship committee will decide which
award will be presented to each winner. Attending and participating in the
entire NFB national convention is one of the requirements to become an NFB
scholarship winner. Of course attending the convention is also a
significant part of the prize.
The National Federation of the Blind's national convention is the
largest gathering of blind people to occur anywhere in the world each year,
with 2,500 or more people registered. Those chosen as scholarship finalists
will have the opportunity to network with other blind students, to exchange
information and ideas, and to meet and talk with hundreds of blind people
who are successfully functioning in many occupations and professions. Our
past winners often comment that the money was quickly spent, but the
contacts they made and the information they gathered at convention have
continued to make their lives richer than they had ever imagined.
Often students apply more than one year before winning a scholarship,
so applicants are encouraged to reapply. The NFB may award three or more
scholarships to men and women who have already received one Federation
scholarship in the past if their scholarship and leadership merit another
award. Individuals receiving a second NFB national scholarship are
recognized as tenBroek Fellows. The secret, if there is one, to winning an
NFB scholarship is to read carefully the application on our website, and
then provide all of the required information and supporting documentation
before the deadline of March 31. However, I actually maintain that there is
no secret. The only way to win an NFB scholarship is to apply.
----------
Class Action Lawsuit Against Redbox Has Proposed Settlement
From the Editor: As a service to our readers, the Braille Monitor
from time to time publishes class action settlements so that those who wish
to object to them or those who may benefit are made aware of them. Below is
a summary notice of the proposed settlement of the class action lawsuit
against Redbox, the popular video and video game rental kiosk company.
Included is contact information for the law firm handling it and a link to
the full notice describing the settlement. We have not done the editing
that the Braille Monitor normally does to ensure compliance with the NFB
Style Guide and the Chicago Manual of Style.
SUMMARY NOTICE OF PROPOSED SETTLEMENT OF CLASS ACTION LAWSUIT
Jahoda, et al. v. Redbox Automated Retail, LLC,
No. 2:14-cv-01278-LPL (W.D. Pa.)
____________________________________________________________________________
_
ATTENTION: ALL LEGALLY BLIND INDIVIDUALS WHO HAVE
ATTEMPTED, WILL ATTEMPT, OR HAVE BEEN DETERRED FROM ATTEMPTING TO ACCESS
RENTAL SERVICES AVAILABLE AT REDBOX
KIOSKS IN all 50 states and the District of
Columbia except California
YOU HAVE A RIGHT TO OBJECT TO THE SETTLEMENT DESCRIBED BELOW
READ THIS NOTICE AND INSTRUCTIONS CAREFULLY
This notice is to inform you about the proposed settlement that would
resolve the class action lawsuit Jahoda, et al. v. Redbox Automated Retail,
LLC, Case No. 2:14-cv-01278-LPL (W.D. Pa.). The lawsuit asserts that Redbox
violated the Americans with Disabilities Act, 42 U.S.C. § 12101 et seq., by
offering video and video game rental services at self-service, touchscreen
Kiosks that are not fully accessible to, and usable by, blind individuals.
Redbox believes that the Kiosks are compliant with the ADA and denies all
liability. The settlement, which must be approved by the Court, would
resolve the lawsuit.
CLASS: Solely for purposes of effectuating this settlement, the Court
has certified a settlement class of all legally blind individuals who have
attempted, will attempt, or have been deterred from attempting to use
Redbox Kiosks in all 50 states and the District of Columbia except
California (because of a separate settlement in California) (the "Class").
PROPOSED SETTLEMENT: The settlement requires Redbox to modify at least
one of its Kiosks at each retail location where kiosks are located in all
50 states except California so that they are fully accessible to, and
usable by, blind individuals. The modifications will include the addition
of a standard headphone jack which will provide access to audio
instructions regarding how to call a specially-trained Redbox customer
service representative who will remotely assist the consumer. The
settlement imposes certain other requirements, which are set forth in
detail in the Settlement Agreement. All Class members will be bound by the
terms of the settlement relating to the accessibility of Redbox Kiosks in
all 50 states and the District of Columbia except California if the
settlement is approved by the Court.
The District Court has appointed Carlson Lynch Sweet & Kilpela, LLP,
as class counsel to represent the named plaintiffs and the interests of the
absent class members. Class Representatives will receive the following
single Plaintiff incentive payment: $2,500 to Robert Jahoda and $2,500 to
April Nguyen. Class Counsel will be paid $397,000 for all attorneys' fees
and litigation costs and expenses.
OBJECTIONS: Class members can object to the proposed settlement by
filing a written objection by March 15, 2016 either in person or by first-
class mail to:
Clerk of the Court, U.S. District Court
700 Grant Street
Pittsburgh, PA 15219
All written objections must include: (i) the name of this litigation;
(ii) Class member's full name, address, and telephone number; and (iii)
specific reasons for objecting and evidence or legal authority in support
thereof.
FAIRNESS HEARING: The Court will hold a hearing in this case on April
27, 2016 at 10 A.M. in Courtroom 7B to consider whether to approve the
Settlement. Class members may appear at the Fairness Hearing by filing a
Notice of Intention to Appear with the Court, postmarked no later than
March 15, 2016.
FURTHER INFORMATION: This is only a summary of the litigation, claims
asserted, Settlement and related matters. A Full Notice describing the
Settlement is available online at <www.redboxadasettlement.com>.
IF YOU HAVE ANY QUESTIONS OR CONCERNS, ADDRESS ALL INQUIRIES TO CLASS
COUNSEL: Benjamin J. Sweet, Esquire, bsweet at carlsonlynch.com, Carlson Lynch
Sweet & Kilpela, LLP, 1133 Penn Avenue, 5th Floor, Pittsburgh, PA 15222,
www.carlsonlynch.com, or at 1-800-467-5241.
PLEASE DO NOT CONTACT THE COURT OR REDBOX'S COUNSEL.
----------
Recipes
This month's recipes come from the members of the NFB of Wisconsin.
Dump Cake
by Chad Nelson
Ingredients:
1 box yellow or white cake mix
1 stick butter, melted
1 can pie filling, (apple, cherry, or blueberry works best).
Method: Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In medium mixing bowl mix
together melted butter and box of cake mix, making sure cake mix is well
blended with the butter. Grease bottom and sides of a 9-by-13-inch pan
thoroughly. Firmly pat cake mixture into bottom of pan. Pour pie filling
evenly over top of crust, bake at 350 for approximately twenty-five to
thirty minutes.
----------
Crock Pot Beer Brats
by Chad Nelson
Ingredients:
1 24-ounce can of beer
1 package brats
Sauerkraut (if desired).
Method: Pour beer into crock pot, place brats into beer, and cook on
high for six hours or medium for eight hours. Add sauerkraut one hour
before serving, or if desired heat separate on stovetop. Serve with raw
onion and potato salad.
----------
Best Baked Beans Ever!
by Chad Nelson
Ingredients:
2 28-ounce cans of beans
1 cup brown sugar
1 tsp mustard
3/4 cup ketchup
4-5 sliced natural casing hot dogs
Method: Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Mix together ketchup, mustard,
beans, hot dogs, and brown sugar in medium casserole dish. Bake one and a
half to two hours. Serve with potato salad and beer brats.
----------
Chorizo [pork sausage] Vegetable Soup
by Ericka Short
Ingredients:
1 box of chicken broth
1 pound of chorizo-best if it is what your butcher makes at your grocery
store
1 to 2 cups of cooked rice
1 can of diced tomatoes with chilies-do not drain
1 large or 2 smaller green peppers chopped
1 onion either sliced or diced, whichever you prefer. Pick your favorite
variety.
1 can of whole kernel corn drained, or 1 bag of frozen corn, thawed
1 can sliced black olives
Dash of following spices: nutmeg, paprika, cinnamon, and cilantro, or
preferred herbs
Note: You definitely can experiment with things like mushrooms, carrots,
and other vegetables if you like. This is a basic recipe. Before you do so,
try the original.
Method: In a large soup kettle, break up your chorizo and brown.
Sometimes it is easier to roll the chorizo into little balls than to have
it look like hamburger bites. This ensures things are cooked evenly. Do not
drain grease. While chorizo browns, chop vegetables. When your meat has
browned completely, pour broth in with meat. Turn heat to high, bring to
boil. Let boil for two minutes and stir. Make sure the seasonings from the
meat are mixed with the chicken broth. Add vegetables. Turn down heat to
medium high. Pour in diced tomatoes with chilies. Stir. In about five
minutes add spices, then turn down to medium or medium low and let simmer.
You can also add cooked rice if it is not fully cooked like wild or brown
rice. Let sit and simmer for half an hour to forty-five minutes, stirring
occasionally. Add rice in last ten minutes if you didn't add it earlier.
There is no real timing to this, and as with most soups it tastes
better the longer it sits. I suggest you make it the night before. This is
a nice alternative to chili when the weather turns colder. Makes at least
eight servings.
----------
[PHOTO CAPTION: Bill Meeker and Cheryl Orgas]
Autumn Cranberry Pie
by Bill Meeker and Cheryl Orgas
Ingredients:
1 cup all-purpose flour
3/4 cup melted butter
1 1/2 cups sugar, separated
2 eggs, beaten
1 teaspoon almond extract
2 cups fresh, whole cranberries
1/2 cup chopped walnuts
Method: Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Combine flour, butter, one cup
sugar, eggs, and almond extract in a bowl. Mix well. Spoon into a greased
ten-inch pie plate. Combine cranberries, walnuts and 1/2 cup sugar in a
bowl; mix well. Spoon into pie plate on top of crust mix. Bake for thirty-
five minutes. Do not overbake, crust should be like a moist cookie.
----------
Berry Crumble
by Bill Meeker and Cheryl Orgas
Ingredients:
2 cups blueberries
2 cups raspberries
3/4 cup flour
2/3 cup light brown sugar
1 stick butter
Method: Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Put berries in a medium bowl. In
another medium bowl combine flour and sugar. Remove three tablespoons of
flour mixture and gently toss with berries. Place berries in an 8-inch
square pan. To make topping, add melted butter to remaining flour mixture,
combine well. Crumble little bits of topping over berries. Bake until
berries just start to bubble, about 35 to 40 minutes.
----------
Chicken Enchilada Soup
by Bill Meeker and Cheryl Orgas
Ingredients:
1 pound cooked chicken breast, shredded
1 10-ounce package frozen corn
1 14-ounce can whole tomatoes, smashed
1 4-ounce can green chilies
1 10-ounce can enchilada sauce
1 14-ounce can chicken broth
2 cups water
1 bay leaf
1 medium onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 tablespoons cilantro
1 teaspoon cumin
1 teaspoon chili powder
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
Salt to taste
Garnish:
2 tablespoons olive oil
7 corn tortillas
Mexican blend shredded cheese
sour cream
lime juice (optional)
Method: Place your chicken in the bottom of your slow cooker, then
put in all other ingredients. My slow cooker is a three-quart, and the soup
fills it to the rim. Cover and cook on low for 6-8 hours.
Garnish: Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Brush tortillas with olive oil
and place on a cookie sheet. Bake ten to fifteen minutes. Take them out of
the oven; when cool enough to handle, crumble them over your soup. Or if
you're like me and want to save time, Tostitos tortilla chips work just as
well. Garnish with cheese, sour cream, and lime juice.
----------
Monitor Miniatures
News from the Federation Family
Amazon Smile:
Help increase donations to the National Federation of the Blind by
signing up on Smile.Amazon.com and identifying the National Federation of
the Blind as the charity you would like to receive the donation. We will
receive 5 percent of every purchase made at Smile.Amazon.com. More
information can be found at
<http://smile.amazon.com/gp/chpf/about/ref=smi_aas_redirect?ie=UTF8&qid=1449
498066&ref=spkl_3_0_2279808162>.
For an Amazon customer to identify a charity: go to Smile.Amazon.com,
type in "National Federation of the Blind, Inc.," find your charity's name
in the list and click select button.
The National Federation of the Blind, Inc. is the first charity
listed when searching using this name; if you search using National
Federation of the Blind, we are the forth charity in the list since many of
the state affiliates have registered and are in the list under National
Federation of the Blind.
In order for us to get a percentage, you need to be logged into and
shop at <Smile.Amazon.com>. If you shop at Amazon.com (instead of
Smile.Amazon.com), no donation is made. Products, reviews, and prices are
the same between Amazon.com and Smile.Amazon.com for those products sold
through both sites; sometimes Smile.Amazon.com will not have a product that
can be found on Amazon.com.
At-Large Chapter Gives Another Reason to be Thankful:
What's cooking in Oregon? Well, Thanksgiving dinner for an individual
who may not have had anything to cook. However, the National Federation of
the Blind of Oregon At-Large Chapter is not only thankful this year, but
giving as well. They sponsored a family by providing $100 toward their
Thanksgiving dinner.
The individual we helped is blind and currently unemployed. She lives
with her daughter and two granddaughters. She was a former vendor in the
Business Enterprise Program and moved to Tennessee to care for her father.
After his passing she moved back to Oregon, only to find out her husband
was ill. She cared for him for two years before his passing. She then
decided to take some college courses to brush up on her skills. She said,
"I could never stop thinking about the Business Enterprise Program and how
happy it made me." She loves cooking, being creative, and customer service.
She trained for the last nine months to get her license renewed in the
Oregon BEP and is now awaiting an opening.
NFBO At-Large Chapter members are thankful that their fundraisers
were successful this year and allowed them to sponsor a family for
Thanksgiving. They plan on sponsoring a family next year for Thanksgiving
and Christmas. 'Tis the season to give back, after all.
New Functions in the KNFB Reader:
The KNFB Reader app for the Android platform is now available. In
addition, both versions (Android and iOS) are now integrated with the
popular file storage, sharing, and collaboration platform, Dropbox. When
users scan a document with the KNFB Reader, it can be instantly saved in a
Dropbox folder tied to the user's account. Users can even retrieve
documents from Dropbox after they are deleted from their smart phone or
other device. For more information go to <www.knfbreader.com>.
Chapter Expands Membership and Gets Creative in its Assignments:
The week after hosting the NFB Indiana State Convention in South
Bend, the NFB Michiana Chapter added seven new official members, expanding
our membership roll from eight to fifteen. We also added two new members to
the board-and instead of making these at-large positions, we are grooming
these two new ladies to play specific roles on our board that previously
were not defined.
The other three board positions remain in the hands of those who held
them prior to November 2015, but all positions will be up for election this
coming August. The NFB Michiana board consists of: president, Matthew
Yeater; vice president and acting treasurer, Kane Brolin; secretary,
Jeanette Shown; marketing coordinator-in-training/new board member, Edie
Leemreis; digital information outreach coordinator-in-training/new board
member, Daphne Tinder-O'Brien.
Elected:
At the 2015 convention of the National Federation of the Blind of
Pennsylvania the following officers and board members were elected:
president, James Antonacci; first vice president, Lynn Heitz; second vice
president, Connie Schwarzfeld; secretary, Harriet Go; treasurer, Antoinette
Whaley; and board members Emily Angelcyk, Liliya Asadullina, and Denice
Brown.
Pen Pal Wanted:
Kathy Alverson would like Braille or cassette pen pals. Her interests
include TV, bowling, swimming, going for walks, and meeting new people. You
may write to her at 545 Public Ave., Apt. 425, Beloit, WI 53511.
In Brief
Notices and information in this section may be of interest to Monitor
readers. We are not responsible for the accuracy of the information; we
have edited only for space and clarity.
2015 Advent Booklet Now Available:
Message of Hope is a Unity outreach program. Funded solely by
donations, Message of Hope shares the assurance of God's love and grace by
providing free spiritual materials to those in need. Unity extends support
to individuals in various care settings and to those experiencing hardship.
Message of Hope also serves persons with blindness or visual impairments,
offering free spiritual resources in Braille, on CD, in digital format, and
an online Braille library.
The 2015 Unity Advent booklet is now available online. Visit
<http://www.unity.org/braille/> to download your copy.
Computers for the Blind:
Computers for the Blind (CFTB) is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization
located in Richardson, Texas. We receive donations of no-longer-needed
computers from businesses and individuals. Our volunteers wipe the hard
drives clean, refurbish the computers, and install the assistive technology
that make them accessible to persons who are blind or have low vision.
We ship these computers throughout the United States to persons who
cannot afford a new computer and the expensive assistive technology.
Depending on donations, we ship Pentium 4 or Dual-Core two GHz computers.
The minimum configuration that is shipped is:
. 2 GB of RAM, 160 GB hard drive
. sound card, speakers, broadband network card
. keyboard and mouse
. For those with low vision: seventeen- to twenty-one inch LCD monitor
. For people who are blind: fifteen- to twenty-three inch LCD monitor
Software:
. NVDA Screen Reader, <www.nvda-project.org/>
. JAWS for Windows demo version screen reader
. Licensed version of MAGic without speech (screen magnification)
<http://www.freedomscientific.com/>
. Talking Typing Teacher demo version, MarvelSoft
. Windows 7 Professional operating system, Microsoft Security
Essentials, Internet Explorer, Windows Live Mail 2012
. Just Write Checks <http://www.apipos.com/jwcdown.htm>
. Firefox <http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/>
. Chrome Internet browser <http://www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/browser>
. Open Office Spreadsheet and PowerPoint
. 388 Electronic Books <http://www.gutenberg.org>
. Jarte word processor
. Various help files: PC setup instructions, tutorials, and FAQ articles
Consumer Fees:
. Desktop computer with monitor -$110
. Laptop computer-$160
Optional add-ons available through the manufacturer
. MAGic with Speech, MAGic keyboard, two software upgrades $199, Freedom
Scientific
. JAWS screen reader $716, Freedom Scientific
. Talking Typing Teacher for Windows (TTT) $50, MarvelSoft
Descriptive movies are available on loan in VHS and DVD formats for a
$25 lifetime membership. Titles can be found at
<https://www.computersfortheblind.net/movie-list.html>
To order a computer or movie, contact us by phone at (214) 340-6328,
by email at <info at computersfortheblind.net>, or visit our website at
<www.computersfortheblind.net>
Prescription Labeling Expanded:
ScripTalk audible prescription labels are now available nationwide at
all local Rite Aid and Walmart pharmacies, as well as at several national
mail-order pharmacies. Rite Aid and certain mail-order pharmacies also
offer large print and Braille prescription labels. Be aware that you may
have to educate your local Rite Aid or Walmart pharmacist that their
employer is actually offering accessible prescription labels. These
companies are very large, and it can take time for local pharmacists to
become aware of new company initiatives.
If you are a Walmart customer and your local pharmacist is not yet
familiar with the availability of accessible prescription labels, just tell
the pharmacist to "Search for ScripTalk on The WIRE." The pharmacist will
know to search Walmart's internal communication system to find instructions
on how to get ScripTalk implemented locally.
If you are a Rite Aid customer and your local pharmacist is not yet
familiar with accessible labels, ask the pharmacist to call their corporate
support number for more information, or you can also call EnVision America
for assistance at (800) 890-1180.
Accessible prescription labels are also available through mail order
from the following national mail-order pharmacies:
1. CVS.com Home Delivery supplies audible prescription labels.
2. CVS/Caremark PBM Mail Order supplies audible, large print, and
Braille prescription labels.
3. Humana Mail Order supplies audible and Braille prescription
labels.
4. Rite Aid Mail Order supplies audible, large print, and Braille
prescription labels.
5. United Healthcare/OptumRx Mail Order supplies audible prescription
labels.
6. Walmart Mail Order supplies audible prescription labels.
Camp Siloam 2016:
The Gospel Association for the Blind is pleased to announce our
fourteenth Bible Camping session. Camp will take place from Saturday, May
21 through Saturday, May 28, 2016, at the Golden Cross Ranch in New Caney,
Texas.
The morning Bible teacher for the week is Brother Bruce Coonce. The
evening services will be conducted by Brother George Gray as well as a
guest preacher. The theme for the week of camp is "For Such a Time as
This."
Some of the activities planned for the week are a shopping trip; two
Christian films (to be announced); swimming throughout the week; a special
meeting for camp ladies; a trip to a local carnival; horseback riding; and
riding the zipline, to name just a few. We also look forward to two talent
nights, two hayrides, and a closing campfire. We hope you will come and
enjoy the tremendous food, terrific fellowship, and a top-notch fun-packed
week!
A $25 deposit is required for ALL campers; however, if you are a
first-time camper, your remaining cost for the week of camp and
transportation will be covered by the Gospel Association for the Blind.
Send check or money order to: The G A B, PO Box 1162, Bunnell, FL 32110.
You will then receive a camp application, which you need to complete, as
well as a medical form for your doctor. These forms are to be returned to
the GAB by Friday, April 8, 2016.
For further information you may call the GAB at (386) 586-5885 or
email Camp Director George Gray at <geogray at sbcglobal.net>. We encourage
you to visit our website <www.circleministries.com> for photos and more
info on past camping sessions, as well as a host of other information on
blind programs, etc. We look forward to having you with us for an exciting,
fun-packed week of camp!
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NFB Pledge
I pledge to participate actively in the efforts of the National
Federation of the Blind to achieve equality, opportunity, and security for
the blind; to support the policies and programs of the Federation; and to
abide by its constitution.
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