TABLE OF CONTENTS

Editor's Line

From The President by Kathey Wheeler

MCB Office News by Bev Armstrong

Help Needed In Finding Past MCB Award

Recipients by Bev Armstrong

Do You Need A Scholarship?

Public Relations Report

Blind Task Force Report by Patty Schonlau

Flash Technology: The Perfect Fit For NLS

What's In A Word?

Connecting The Dots

The Art Of Seeing Without Sight

Affiliate Affairs

From The Lower Left-Hand Drawer

Tips On Hiring Drivers

Back to the Chronicle Archives

Editor's Line

I thought I would call your attention to a couple of articles in this issue that I think you will find interesting.

One is an article about the National Braille Press, who produce the Braille edition of the Chronicle. It describes in detail how NBP produces Braille books and contains some very good quotes affirming that Braille is just as important today as it always has been.

There is also an article about a man from Turkey who is able to paint pictures, even though he has been blind from birth. Researchers in Boston are scanning his brain to find out exactly what is going on when he does it.

Also in this issue: a list of previous MCB award winners, tips for hiring drivers, what the new digital talking books from NLS will look like, and a report on some of the issues involving education of blind children in Missouri. Enjoy.

Hello again, MCB members and friends. As most of you already know, Beverly Armstrong is working in the office. Her title, which is rather more like a job description than a title, is Temporary, Interim, Office Supervisor.

Beverly will be organizing the office work schedule, supervising the secretary and any other clerical assistants we may have, and will be performing other duties which may arise from time to time.

She will be working up to twenty hours a week until twenty working days after an Executive Director begins work.

I am sure that all of you will welcome Bev and will appreciate the needed help and knowledge she brings to MCB.

Bev serves MCB as First Vice President and as the contact person working diligently with our attorneys to resolve our problems with the management of the blind pension fund.

She will continue in these positions. I have checked the Internal Revenue web site and have found that in our situation, as a not-for-profit corporation, there is no conflict of interest involved with our employment of Bev in the office while she serves as a member of the Board. At Board meetings, she will not vote on any matter pertaining to the office.

As you know, the MCB President visits each affiliate once each term to personally acquaint as many members as possible with the progress of our projects and programs. Often, these visits are scheduled around social occasions. Such was the case when I joined the UWB for their Christmas party at Pietro's restaurant, on December the eighteenth. The UWB is the first affiliate I have had the pleasure to visit.

The summit meeting including MCB, NFB, and Rsb will be held in Jefferson City, on Saturday, February 26, 2005.

Representing MCB will be Kathey Wheeler, Bev Armstrong, Phyllis Lovett, and Chip Hailey.

The spring Board meeting date is Saturday, April 23rd at the Clarion Hotel, in Kansas City. On Friday evening there will be a hospitality room available to us.

All are welcome to the Board meeting and also to the hospitality room. In the hospitality room, often, many topics are discussed which come up on the floor during the Board meeting. All who want to attend are welcome.

At the April Board meeting I shall be asking approval from the Board for the appointment of Phyllis Lovett as the Resource and Development Chair. She is experienced in the field of fund raising and the writing of grant proposals. If you have ideas for fund raisers, be encouraged to contact Phyllis.

Remember to submit nominations for the Nathaniel Johnson, Ellis M. Forshee, Darrell Lauer, and Outstanding Leadership awards to the office before the April Board meeting.

I attended the ACB midyear Board meeting in Las Vegas. There is an ACB Board member who lives in Missouri and I had hoped to have a full report on the Board meeting for this issue of the Chronicle.

However, none was received. Since I attended all of the sessions open to the public, I am able to mention a few high points which were presented and some actions taken. I do encourage you to read the official report in the forum.

A major reason I chose to attend this ACB Board meeting was to ensure that MCB'S position with reference to the suit against the state was fairly represented should the issue be raised before the Board. As it happened, the suit was mentioned in private conversation and not before the Board. We were congratulated in our effort and wished well in our endeavor. The Board adopted a budget for the coming year which will balance without dipping into reserves.

ACB will work toward getting "point of sale" machines accessible to the blind and will ask NFB for financial assistance in this project. "Point of sale" machines are machines in stores that customers use to check themselves out.

ACB has chartered a new special interest affiliate for diabetics. Interested parties should contact the ACB office. ACB has been given the use of a week of a time share each year for twenty-five years if ACB pays the maintenance fee. The time share week will be used as a fund raising vehicle. Check the forum for details.

ACBES is considering, in addition to its customary sale of pre-owned merchandise, becoming both a wholesale outlet for other thrift stores and a consignment outlet.

June 15th is the cut off date for the $77 room rate at the ACB convention. Easter is coming soon, and I wish all of you a joyous celebration.

First, let me say thank you to all of you for being so pleasant and cooperative when you have called into the office. It has been fun getting to know more of you.

Since my beginning work in the MCB office on November 22, we have kept busy. We were in the throes of sending out the large print calendars to those calling in to request them. They are a very popular item.

As of this writing, we have depleted our supply. Hopefully, most people needing them were able to get one. We have sent out about 400 of them. The calendars are rolled and placed in long, round mailing tubes and then they must be taken to the post office.

They, along with some other items, are mailed as free reading matter. The post office tells us that something mailed free reading matter can take anywhere from seven to ten days to reach its destination. It is handled as Fourth Class mail.

Speaking of sending free reading matter, it is probably not a good idea to mail something of importance as free reading matter. The post office tells us that they only guarantee delivery of Express mail.

There are always Health Benefit packets, Special Services packets and Adaptive Technology Grant packets to send out as these are ongoing programs.

As there have been two Board meetings (one held in Sedalia on November 20 and the other a teleconference Board meeting on January 11, there were minutes to print and distribute to each officer and Board rep. This distribution is done in the individual's preferred reading format which can be Braille, large print or e-mail.

Unfortunately, I had the responsibility of terminating Edna Crawford, our office secretary, because of frequent absenteeism. Our office, having only two employees, (and at that time just one) we had to have someone we could depend on in the office.

Since Edna was terminated on December 17, Tom and Sharon have again been helping out. Checks still had to be written, calendars mailed, mail read, etc. Once again I began the interviewing process.

I went back to some of the applicants from which Edna was chosen. One of those applicants was interviewed; however, I just didn't feel she was the person for the job. I then interviewed two others, one of whom I have employed.

She is Mary Walter, who comes to us from Mind's Eye Information Service. She came highly recommended by John Weidlich. As of this writing, she has been on the job just two days but is learning very quickly. She is a joy to have with us, and I hope you will have the opportunity to talk with her and become acquainted. I believe she will serve MCB very well. If you talk with her, you might want to ask her where that ugly floral arrangement came from that greeted her her first morning at work.

The Scholarship program mailing was sent out on January 7. This was a 549-piece mailing which had three enclosures. Near the end of January I received the information for the Summer Camp mailing. That mailing has been completed now for about a week, due to the hard work of Sharon, who did the copying, collating, folding, stuffing and placing the labels on the envelopes. She really enjoyed this task.

Since all of our affiliates and special interest groups have cooperated and sent in their updated membership list, Tom and Mary are now working on updating our files and must then update Missouri's entire membership list for ACB.

This is necessary in order for people who want to go to the ACB convention to have their names shown on our membership list. This is time-consuming and a big job; the job will be done by the March 15 deadline.

We will have Legislative Days on March 1-2 in Jefferson City. There has been a mailing letting our affiliates know of the schedule and asking for their hotel reservations by Feb. 15.

There has been no more important time this year than for us to be talking with our Representatives and Senators about our concerns. Legislation has been introduced that could certainly adversely affect people with disabilities. We need to talk to the people who make the policies and laws.

There will be packets to prepare for both the elected officials and our affiliate representatives. I do not yet know just what bills Bessie Reece is planning to have us work on. You will recall I have been saying how important it would be to get that membership lists in so that your affiliate would receive their affiliate grant for 2005.

Well, the checks for those grants were mailed to our treasurer, William Hawkins, on February 2 for signing and mailing to the affiliates. Can I say that seriously "the check is in the mail"?

When time permits, Tom has been sorting papers and filing where needed or else discarding them. Should you take a look at the store room, he is also tidying up that room. It has long been in need of some attention, even if it is a store room. I am told the office looks very nice.

Answering the many, many phone calls we receive requires a significant amount of time. Many callers are looking for visual aids for an elderly parent or friend who now has Macular Degeneration. Of course, this is just one such type of call. We have social workers calling who work in agencies that have visually impaired consumers, and they are looking for some help for them.

We will soon be preparing for our spring Board meeting which will be held at the Clarion Complex (formerly known as the Adams Mark) in Independence, Mo. That is where our state convention was held in 2003, and that is where our convention will be held this year. The date of the spring Board meeting will be Saturday, April 23.

By the time you read this, we should have an ADT Security System installed in our office. This has been discussed for a couple of years now, and the Board decided action needed to be taken. Let me say here that to my knowledge there have been no attempts to break into the building, but the Building Committee and Board have felt it is a good precautionary measure. Our building is being used by various groups. The Harmony Lions sponsor bingos there periodically.

The MSB Boosters host fundraisers occasionally. Mind's Eye uses our large meeting room for various types of meetings. RITE holds their monthly meetings at the building on the first Friday night of each month. Our building is certainly being used both for business and fun. If the office staff can be of help to you personally or to your affiliate, please give us a call. We do enjoy the work. Bev Armstrong

Dear Readers: The following are lists of MCB Award recipients which I have compiled. I have done this with the use of "The First Twenty-Five Years", looking in back issues of the "Chronicle" and talking with different ones who might have this particular knowledge.

First, let me say "thank you" to all of you who helped in any way. It did take some time but it was fun. You will note that there are some years where there is no name listed in that year or for that particular award. I understand that early on the Ellis M. Forshee Award was not given every year as well as the Federationist of the Year Award.

I am asking for your help. If any of our readers know of someone who received one of these awards and the year, but who is not included in this list, please contact me. I would like to have as complete a list as possible. Neither do I want to leave someone out who did receive one of these awards.

You may e-mail me at home: b_armstrong2@sbcglobal.net.
My home phone number is:
314-781-1866.
You may also call me at the MCB office by calling:
800-342-5632 or 314-832-7172
You may also e-mail me at the office:
moblind@mindspring.com


I will certainly appreciate your help. I also hope you enjoy reading the names of these recipients.
Bev Armstrong

(Compiled November 2004)
Ellis M. Forshee Award Recipients
1958: Congressman Tom Curtis
1959: 1960: Congressman Frank Karsten
1961: Proctor Carter
1962: 1963: 1964: 1965: 1966: Rep. Charlie Bauer
1967: Arthur and Vivian Stewart
1968: Adeline Ruenzi
1969: McDonnell-Douglas Corporation
1970: Rep. James Conway
1971: Victor and Xena Johnson
1972: 1973: Gerber Wrought Iron Works
1974: Jack and Alma Murphy
1975: Joseph Stokes
1976: 1977: Robert Leighninger
1978: Assunta and Fred Lilley
1979: George Lantz
1980: R. D. "Pete" Rogers
1981: James Habel
1982: Roy and Shirley Specht
1983: Bill Benson
1984: Ed and Louise Rieman
1985: 1986: Caroline Manakea
1987: Carl Mack
1988: 1989: John Evans
1990: Laura and Aubrey Welle
1991: Lucille Fierce
1992: Tom Culliton
1993: Georgetta Patterson
1994: Father Boni Wittenbrink
1995: Marie Kelley
1996: Zada Albee
1997: Ida Scotti
1998: Senator Harold Caskey and Rep. Bill Boucher
1999: Ken and Teddi Emmons
2000: Diane Golden
2001: Jim Tusher
2002: Dennis Miller
2003: Bill Hagood
2004: Bev Armstrong
FEDERATIONIST OF The YEAR (from 1971-1984)
1971: Majella Rigdon and Eleanor Shain
1972: 1973: Laura Welle
1974: Robert Leighninger
1975: 1976: 1977: Don and Betty Clarkson
1978: Wenona Sucher
1979: Ed and Louise Rieman
1980: 1981: 1982: Fred and Assunta Lilley
1983: Beverly Haase
1984: Nathaniel Johnson
(The Federationist of the Year Award was changed to the Nathaniel Johnson Award beginning in 1985.)
1985: Glen Carmack
1986: Francis and Dorothy Moranville
1987: Edward Lanser
1988: Eugene Edwards
1989: Bill Longinotti
1990: Liesa Wasson
1991: Shirley Brokaw
1992: Eujean Dody
1993: Bev and Don Shockley
1994: Carolyn Anderson
1995: Roy and Edna Freeman
1996: Jenny Eachus
1997: Harvey House
1998: Gene Weathers
1999: Mike Keller
2000:John Weidlich
2001: Leroy Welch
2002: Marie Thompson
2003: Letha Dangerfield
2004: Maryan Harrison President's Outstanding Service Award
(Begun in 1997)
1997: Charles Smith
1998: Paul Matthews
1999: Linda Burris
2000: Donna Giger
2001: Celita White
2002: Nancy Hodson
2003: Brandi Emmons
2004: Tom and Sharon Armstrong ACB Lifetime Membership Award
(ACB began this program in 1985. MCB gave no lifetime memberships until 1994.)
1994: Darrell Lauer
1995: Edna Freeman
1996: Shirley Brokaw
1997: Carl Mack
1998: Beryl Masters
1999: Ken Emmons
2000:
Lucille Fierce
2001: 2002: Chip Hailey
2003: Bessie Reece
2004: Jerry Annunzio

Our M.C.B. scholarship applications have been sent out to colleges and universities throughout Missouri. I encourage you to apply if you are in college or planning to attend next fall. Some of the requirements are that you be a full time student, legally blind and maintain a 2.0 grade average. The necessary documentation is listed in the scholarship guidelines. If you need an application, please call the M.C.B. office at 1 800 342-5632.

Due to my fault, John didn't receive my report for the last Chronicle. When you read this, the calendar order will already be placed. Legislative days will be past, and we trust you sent a representative to the Legislative days.
We hope to have other hand-out things by the April Board meeting. See you all at the April Board meeting.
Leroy Welch PR Chairman

At our Convention last year, we heard about the +401 Task Force, a committee working to improve the quality of education for blind and visually impaired students in Missouri.
Here is a report from Patty Schonlau MCB'S representative on that task force.

Patty teaches Braille at the Missouri School for the Blind. On December 8, 2004, a BTF meeting was conducted in Columbia, Mo. There were two main issues the BTF focused upon: The MAP, Missouri Assessment Plan, and transition.

Before providing any additional information, I wish to state the purpose of the BTF. The purpose of the Blind Task Force is to develop goals and objectives to guide the improvement of special education, related services, vocational training, transition from school to work, rehabilitation services, independent living and employment outcomes for eligible students.

There was an in-depth report submitted by a subcommittee of BTF focusing on transition. Transition is an important component of the day-to-day coping process.

Five major transition points in the educational career of blind and visually impaired students were identified.
1. First Steps to Early Childhood: (Pre Kindergarten)
2. Early Childhood to Kindergarten (part B)
3. Elementary to Middle Junior High
4. Middle Junior High to High School
5. High school to College or Work (post graduation)

There are others, some are not so well defined. Stage OneTransition from First Steps to the Early Childhood: Special Education programs are taken seriously by First Steps and ECSE personnel and usually managed well. The issue that should be noted for First Steps services for vision needs is that in much of the rural parts of the state there is typically no service available to families.
In the past, MOSPIN has provided some parent training services to families of birth to 3 year olds; however with the reorganization of the First Steps services, these are no longer available to a large number of infants, toddlers and their families in the more rural parts of Missouri.
Many families must drive to the metropolitan areas to access these services at centers such as Delta Gamma in St. Louis and CCVI in Kansas City. This is an issue that may require additional information and may also need to be addressed through DESE and the SICC.

Stage Two ECSE to Kindergarten (Part B services):
This is basically a transition to regular school. It means a transition to an increasing academic program and gradually away from a developmental model.
This raises many issues regarding continued therapies and new needs. This transition is most often not well designed, thereby leaving the student at a disadvantage for learning vital skills for continued progress.
This transition stage should be designated to teaching continued basic reading (Braille and/or books on tape training) and reading comprehension, travel, computer, learning comprehension, advocacy and listening skills, which are often overlooked until problems are noticed and a student is already beginning to fall behind.

Stage Three Elementary to Middle School Junior High:
At this level academics are the basis for services. The more demanding schedule along with the increased changes in teachers, environment and needs begin to take a toll on the ill prepared student. Implementations of accommodations, modifications, and support services, which can appear to be working well in the elementary grades, begin to fall apart.
This transition is difficult enough for students without the added difficulty of multiple implementers. In addition, increasing demands of regular education programs present additional barriers to those students who have not been properly prepared for the demands Middle School places on them.
It is vital, at this stage, that students be aware of their own needs, be able to begin to advocate for themselves, and have good reading, comprehension and travel skills. In addition, this transition stage is vital to their future life goals. In that light, this stage should be handled with all parties understanding the importance of the goals.
This transition stage should include life skills, travel skills (beyond the school setting), more intense computer training, continued reading, comprehension, listening skills training along with the addition of college search and an eye on future goals.

Stage Four High School:
This transition is by-and-large the most acknowledged by the schools and by IDEA. It is the most emphasized transition point of all the transitions. By the time a student is in High school, if stages have been left out, many VI students find themselves in a most difficult position, if, they have not received additional help.
High School is the culmination of all the other stages in their school career. Through both Junior and Senior High, teams need to consider post graduation goals and needs.
Although both the FEDS and DESE have emphasized this transition point, it still remains a problem due to misunderstandings, miscommunication, lack of coordination and thorough consideration.
A failure to consider, plan for, and meet the early educational needs of the VI student, which also include the continued in-service training of those who work directly with the students, is key.
This transition stage should be dedicated to looking towards college or work after high school. At this stage the student should be self guided, for the most part, with little assistance for the daily tasks of school.
This course will prepare each student for the challenging and exciting future they face ahead. This should be the goal of all who work with the students.

Stage Five Post Graduation:
Lastly, this stage should be mostly self-guided with students advocating as adults for what they need.
This is the time that all education and training should come together to help them move into the adult world without fear of what's ahead and confident that they are well prepared for the demanding future they face.
RSB maintains a Children's Service component which is dedicated to addressing the first four major transition points and is charged with the responsibility of involvement in the last.
Even so, much needs to be done within RSB as well as the public education system to coordinate, improve reporting and address all the transition needs of Missouri's VI students.
Transition is one of the most critical components of the blind and visually impaired student's educational careers. Although it is key, it is often glossed over, overlooked or left out of the IEP process completely.
The next scheduled BTF meeting is to be conducted on February 8, 2005.

I took this article from the latest issue of Talking Book Topics so you may have already read it, but I thought you would find it interesting if you haven't seen it. It gives more information about the new format for talking books that we will likely be using in a few years.

What has been dipped in cola, put through a washing machine, dunked in coffee, trampled by a skateboard, run over by a child's toy car and given to a six-year-old boy to destroy? Answer: a flash cartridge--an extremely durable device.

Five cartridges were tested. Five survived. For this reason, among others, NLS settled on flash memory as the new distribution technology for its digital talking books (DTB).

Flash memory--a term coined for the system's ability to rewrite content "in a flash"-is the industry standard for handheld devices such as cell phones, digital cameras and palmtop computers. It combines rewritability and portability with ease of operation and decreasing costs--all features that make it attractive to both the users of DTB'S and librarians.

In addition, the flash cartridges will be about the size of a credit card, or approximately 2 by 3-1/2 inches. This will permit NLS to label book titles in braille as well as large print.

"Flash technology will provide readers with a DTB that is easy to use, portable, and virtually indestructible with the high-quality sound one expects from a digital product. It will allow users the reading experience of their choice," says Frank Kurt Cylke, the director of NLS. Flash was not a rash decision. NLS examined the range of other memory storage devices, such as the CD-ROM and magnetic drives.

Until recently, flash memory was priced too high. But now costs are reasonable. "NLS has been tracking this technology for a number of years. Now it is clear from the continued drop in prices and from projections by industry analysts that it will be feasible by 2008," says Michael Moodie, deputy director of NLS. Consider the alternatives.

Why flash cartridges instead of the more familiar Cd-rom? Cd's are low-cost and can store a book; however, they are difficult to handle especially for people with limited dexterity. The discs are easily damaged and must be inspected each time they are sent out, or a new copy produced for each circulation. In addition, CD players are fragile and repairs are expensive.

A magnetic hard drive system was also considered. This medium could store as many as 300 book titles on a single machine. However, the drives have sensitive electromechanical parts that damage easily and are expensive to repair. Based on careful evaluation of all available options, a flash-memory-based system was adopted for implementation in 2008.

Technology for tomorrow. It was necessary for NLS to update the current system. "The current analog cassette system is based on a technology that is disappearing. In the future, parts for players will be difficult or impossible to obtain, and the cost of cassette tape is likely to increase significantly. In addition, digital technology offers many features that will benefit talking-book users," says Jean M. Moss, NLS digital projects coordinator. "Flash memory is more durable, easier to handle, and simpler to use than other digital media. It will also mean more reliable players because no moving parts are required," says Moss.

Flash technology will most appeal to patrons because of its ease of use. "Patrons will like the fact that the great majority of books will each be on a single flash cartridge, so there will be fewer objects to keep track of," says Moodie. "An entire cartridge can be played from beginning to end without having to change any switches or turn the cartridge over. And the player will always keep track of where the reader left off." "Because flash memory cartridges can have new books quickly copied onto them and can be reused thousands of times, new distribution models are possible.

For example, some books do not circulate very often but are still important to have in the program. Rather than having such books taking up shelf space in libraries across the country, copies can be quickly made when needed," says Moodie. "Flash was chosen because it fits so well with our many requirements for a talking book medium," says Moodie.
My Kawarthaddcom, Canada Wednesday, December 29, 2004

Editor's Comment: This article, written by a Canadian disability advocate, addresses an issue that seems to be a big concern for a lot of people, especially, I suspect the--shall we say-non-disabled: which word is better, "handicapped" or "disabled".

I wonder if you have thoughts on this. Is one word better than another, or is the whole question largely irrelevant to you? And what about this whole issue of saying "a person who is blind" instead of saying "a blind person?" I have some thoughts on this, but I think I'll save them for later. In the meantime, read this piece and, if you feel strongly on this, tell me and your fellow Chronicle readers what you think. It might make an interesting article for the next issue.

The hotel registration clerk gave the man in a wheelchair his room key and said, "You are in a handicapped room--Number 415." The man wheeled away from the counter and thought to himself, "Hmmm, a handicapped room. I wonder what's wrong with it?"

Today we have handicapped hotel rooms, handicapped parking spots, handicapped washrooms and a myriad of other items which are supposedly handicapped. We all know what message is trying to be conveyed but the message is wrong. Obviously these items are not handicapped but are items that can be used by persons with disabilities to avoid being handicapped in any particular situation.

From "handicapped" we get cutesy words like "handi-capable," a rather condescending phrase to praise someone with a disability, and "handi-capitalism" to describe the growing market of products for people to overcome the "handicaps" society thrusts upon them.

A person who requires the use of a wheelchair, or a person who is blind, or a person who is hard of hearing, is only handicapped if the environment he or she is in doesn't allow him or her to do what he or she wants to do. If a person who is blind wants to cross the street, he/she is not handicapped if there are audible traffic signals. The environment creates the handicap, not the individual with the disability.

Although "handicapped" is widely used in both law and everyday speech to refer to people having physical or mental disabilities, those described by the word tend to prefer the expression "people with disabilities."

"Handicapped," a seemingly inoffensive term, may imply a helplessness that is not suggested by the more forthright disabled.

It's also felt that some stigma may attach to the word "handicapped" because of its origin in the phrase "hand in cap" (actually derived from a game of chance) which is sometimes mistakenly believed to involve the image of a beggar.

The word "handicapped" is best reserved to describe a disabled person who is unable to function because of something in their environment. Thus a person with a physical disability requiring a wheelchair may or may not be handicapped depending on whether wheelchair ramps are made available.

Then there is always the question of how to describe persons with disabilities. Lists upon lists have been created to help sort out the problem but they all have a central theme.

Generally, if you are describing a group of people, avoid phrases that start with "the"--the disabled, the handicapped, the crippled, the deaf, the blind. You can't go too far wrong if you start the description with the word "person" or "persons"--a person with a mobility problem, a person with a hearing problem, a person with a vision problem. A person is a person first. The problem is secondary.

Words and phrases are important to properly describe a person's situation without offending them. It's also important for everyone, whether or not they have a disability, not to get hung up on the subject. I fully agree with the individual who said, "You can call me anything you want, just don't call me late for dinner."

John MacDonald is a member of the Council for Persons with Disabilities. The Boston Phoenix, MA Wednesday, February 02, 2005

This is an excellent article about the National Braille Press, which also powerfully addresses the question of why Braille is still important today, despite all the advances in technology. I hope you will find it as interesting as I did. With communication technologies exploding exponentially, can Braille--invented in 1829 and largely unchanged since--still be relevant?

In 1960, William Raeder was a young geologist, not long out of Boston University. One day, he and his colleagues were floating in frigid waters above the Arctic Ocean floor, using explosives to set off small earthquakes for underwater seismic-refraction studies. A stick of TONIGHTT detonated prematurely in his grasp, and everything went black.

Raeder's right hand was obliterated. On his left, only the pinky and ring fingers remained. His hearing was severely damaged. And, after seven weeks of surgeries that only barely saved his life, he was told "to start thinking that I was going to spend the rest of my life as a blind person."

Forty-five years later, in his Spartan corner office at the National Braille Press, in the Fenway, Raeder sits behind a desk that holds just a few dictaphones, a handful of microcassettes, and an outdated speaker-equipped computer, and folds his arms across his chest. His right eye concealed behind a large black patch, his gaze points past me, as if conjuring memories from some distant spot on the horizon.

Almost sheepishly, he recounts his immediate reaction to those paralyzing words. "Tears started rolling down my face. And I will have to confess that the first vision that came to my mind was sitting on the sidewalk in front of Filene's, on Washington Street, with a tin cup, begging." But, he says, "no sooner had that vision come into my mind than I thought, Oh, that's ridiculous." Within 20 minutes of the diagnosis, Raeder had resolved to live a full and normal life. (His first thought, he says, was that he was going to be senator from Alaska.) So he checked into the Catholic Guild for the Blind--now known as the Carroll Center for the Blind--in Newton.

Over the next 16 weeks, he learned how to navigate with a cane. How to sweep a floor. How to make himself a sandwich. And he started to learn Braille. But, after three arduous attempts over the ensuing years, Raeder realized he'd reached an impasse. He just couldn't discern those tiny dots. "I only have a little finger and a ring finger on my non-dominant hand, and it turns out that those two fingers are the least sensitive," he explains.

"So, my ironic situation is that, although I am the president of the National Braille Press, and I am totally blind, I cannot read Braille." That hasn't stopped Raeder from helping build NBP--WHICH was founded in 1927 as a Braille newspaper--into one of the foremost Braille publishing houses in the country. In this refurbished piano factory, about 50 employees--roughly a third of whom are blind or otherwise disabled--churn out a staggering 15 million pages of Braille each year.

It's all done using just a small stable of antediluvian machines, sturdy and simple; a striking amount of the work is still done by hand. Impressive, too, is the sheer range of material NBP puts out: toddler-friendly titles like Goodnight Moon and books older kids can dig; music books and cookbooks; guides to everything from puberty to menopause to Windows XP; The 9-11 Commission Report, footnotes and all; Dr. Atkins' New Carbohydrate Gram Counter; high-school algebra and biology textbooks; volumes of poetry; a weekly roundup of syndicated columnists like George Will and Paul Krugman; microwave-oven manuals; restaurant menus; airline safety instructions.

But in the 21st century, with communication technologies exploding exponentially, can this uncomplicated system of raised paper dots--invented way back in 1829 and largely unchanged since--really still be relevant? We live in an age when computers can speak and listen. When long hours of audio can be stored on chip the size of a thumbnail. Who needs to read with their fingers? Here's a better question: who wants to go through life not knowing how to read?

IF YOU'RE LIKE most sighted people, you have cursory knowledge of what Braille is. You're dimly aware that it's a tactile technique for reading, writing, and printing that was invented almost two centuries ago by Louis Braille, a Frenchman who was blinded in a childhood accident. You might know that it's a binary system, where the presence or absence of a bump on a grid of six raised dots determines letters, numbers, and punctuation. You may not know that Braille can relate to any language, even ones with pictographic alphabets like Chinese, and that there are separate Braille systems for presenting mathematics, shorthand, and musical notation. Some Braille books--a child's picture book, a computer manual--also use tactile diagrams to represent images, albeit crudely.

What might surprise you most is that many people who should know these things don't. There are more than 56,000 legally blind school-aged children in the United States. Only 10 percent of them use Braille as their primary source of reading. Granted, perhaps 40 percent of that 56,000 have other disabilities that leave them cognitively unable to read. But it's the contention of National Braille Press that children who rely on readers or listening devices or magnifying glasses are being done a grave disservice.

Tanya Holton, NBP'S vice-president of development, puts it plainly. "Braille is the only way for blind people to be literate." Unfortunately, says Holton, there's been a "significant decline in Braille literacy. It's primarily due to the mainstreaming of blind children into public schools. Mainstreaming is a great educational concept, and it's fabulous for a lot of reasons. It's important for kids to be together with other kids, for social reasons, to learn from the kids around them. But, from the point of view of strict literacy, it was a bad thing.

The school administrators didn't necessarily see the value of Braille. Well, a blind kid can have a book on tape! Isn't that easier, in fact? Teaching Braille was considered to be expensive, and not always embraced as financially feasible. Let's say you have one kid in a school district, and it's going to cost you $30,000 to have a Braille instructor specifically for that child. That's obviously something an administrator is going to work really hard not to have to do, unless they fully embrace how important Braille is."

In the 1980s there was a grassroots effort, spearheaded by blind adults and the parents of blind children, to counter a curricular trend they recognized was, in effect, condemning an entire generation of blind Americans to functional illiteracy. In roughly two-thirds of the 50 states, their efforts have since yielded bills that--while they obviously vary--essentially make Braille instruction compulsory, unless an educator proves that a blind child is cognitively unable to read. (Of course, this does mean that most blind children must depend on itinerant Braille instructors who sometimes travel up to 2000 miles a week to reach different school systems. And that, consequently, some kids receive only an hour or two of reading instruction per week. But that's better than nothing.)

So why is Braille important in this marvelous technological age? "Take out the word Braille, and put in the words reading and writing," says Bill Raeder. "We don't ask you how important the Roman alphabet is. How important is reading and writing? You've got reading and writing materials on the desk, right in front of you. And you do it all day, every day.

Braille is simply the alphabet for blind people. It represents the same words and the same letters. Why is reading and writing important? Same reason." Years ago, as his child was starting kindergarten, Raeder had an epiphany. "Suppose that this had happened: all these parents come in with their children, all excited for the first day of school, and the principal says, We've got an amazing new program this year! We've got tape recorders and talking computers, so guess what! We don't need to trouble your kids with the need to learn to read! How would those parents react?"

In recent decades, Braille has been resurgent--due in no small part to NBP'S efforts. "We're making great progress," says Raeder, who's been at NBP since 1976. "A dozen years or so ago, there was no presumption that blind children learning in public school knew how to read. Now, for the most part, there is. Not everywhere, but more so than a decade earlier." And, when it comes to the fiscal health of his nonprofit, Raeder says, "There's been a major shift in the last 15 years. We are a very small operation, but we have over 50 employees now. When I first came here, we were 12. Our budget, when I first came here, was $184,000. Now, it's $4 million." All that, even as NBP has sold close to 10,000 copies of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire--each for $70 less than what it cost to produce. "It's reverse lucrative!" Holton laughs. Even though Braille is incredibly expensive to produce, NBP is committed to keeping price points for its books comparable to what the printed versions sell for; it takes a loss on every title. (The nonprofit is funded through contract work and private and corporate donations.)

Still, it's all worthwhile, both for the benefits NBP provides for its readers and the self-sufficiency it offers its employees. More than 70 percent of working-age blind people in this country are jobless; Raeder says that "it's always been our policy to provide employment opportunities for blind people. And it's always been my experience, at least as long as I've been here, that it would be on a competitive basis with sighted people. It's not subsidized employment or anything like that. The blind person is expected to carry out the functions of a job, just as a sighted person would. Now, there are accommodations that are needed. Blind people often need accommodations. But so do sighted people. You need the light on! We certainly apply affirmative action here, and it's important to do that."

Back in high school, Melissa Hirshson, National Braille Press's transcription supervisor, was required to do community service during her senior year, and chose the Perkins School, in Watertown, for her assignment. "I worked with little kids, and I think about half of them at the time were cognitively able to read Braille," says Hirshson, who is sighted. "I just thought Braille was really interesting, that you write without having to see. So I just taught it to myself."

She's been at NBP for 13 years. Translating a written work into Braille begins with an electronic file, either sent directly to NBP or translated from the printed page using an electronic scanner. Demonstrating with a novel-in-verse called Shakespeare Bats Cleanup, Hirshson, using the locally developed Duxbury Braille Translator software, toggles between screens, and shows the transformation as a page of alphabetic text morphs into a white expanse marked by sparse regiments of small dots.

Once the translation is completed--it'll take Hirshson about two days to transcribe the book she's working on; a much longer text, like The 9-11 Commission Report, took about two weeks--the file is sent to an embosser who transfers those dots onto metal plates, imprints them on paper, and sends them on for proofreading. Hirshson then gets a stack of Braille pages back, along with a list of corrections, also written in Braille. (Like most sighted Braille readers, Hirshson reads the dots with her eyes, not her fingers.)

The proofreading is done in a dark and musty room that looks like an old-fashioned tradesman's workshop. Amid stacks of bound and unbound Braille--including a single dictionary that requires more than 70 volumes of heavyweight paper--four men sit hunched over desks, headphones on, fingers briskly scanning pages. "We usually do two readings on most jobs," says proofing supervisor Christopher Devin. "The first reading, we have people record the material on tape with all the punctuation, the spelling of unusual words and names, the paragraphing, and so forth. We listen to the tape, and we're reading along in Braille, and we're making sure not only that the Braille and the print are accurate copies of each other, but that the contractions are proper, the rules are followed, the Braille is set up properly on the page, and so forth."

Devin, who's been at NBP for nearly 30 years, has been blind since birth. While it's not a prerequisite for a proofreader to be a lifelong Braille reader, he says, "you have to be good. We all were born blind and learned it in school. If you happen to have lost your sight and learn Braille, you could do that. But that's tough. When you learn Braille, there's a whole sensitivity training for your fingers that gets your pathways built up so you'll really be able to see the Braille. The earlier you start using it, the better. Just like a language."

Bill Maling, who's been at NBP since 1980 and operates the plate-embossing device (PED), has some sight. He sometimes needs to tilt his head a little to read the information scrolling past on the monitors, and he wears thick-lensed glasses, through which he peers out from beneath a riot of long hair. He tells me there are only about 40 PED's in the whole country (they cost nearly $100,000 apiece). All day long, Maling feeds zinc plates, about the size of legal-size paper, into the PED's. As they roll through, they're imprinted with the same Braille patterns that were on Hirshson's computer screen. Feeding them through a second time imprints the other side, making the pages double-sided. A proof page of Braille is born when Maling simply runs the plate, along with a page of heavy-stock paper, through an old washing press. Each page takes about 30 seconds; doing proofs for a whole book might take a day or two.

When a book has been proofed and double-proofed, it's time to print it for real. In NBP's basement, pressman Gene O'Neill, who is sighted, oversees four presses that churn out about 2000 pages per hour. The mammoth machines were built back in the early '60s, but O'Neill says he's only had to make one service call. ("They're indestructible ''' the Mercedes of printing presses.") Most Braille is run off on 80-pound paper called end leaf--it has to be sturdy enough to hold Braille, but soft enough for fingers. It may sometimes be a bit boring to stack and sort pages all day long, but collator Elizabeth Bouvier doesn't show it.

Standing in the cavernous collating room, surrounded by stacks and stacks of off-white, heavy-stock Braille pages, she rhapsodizes about the variety in her job, the fact that she deals with different and interesting titles all the time. Near her is a pile of Braille menus bound for Friendly's, and several hundred copies of Our Special, NBP'S in-house magazine. But Bouvier is really looking forward to next week, when she'll be collating a book of recipes for drinks like daiquiris and mudslides. "The fun really flies when you're a drunk blind person with a blender," she says. "I walk better when I'm drunk. I walk straight!"

Bouvier has been at National Braille Press for more than a decade. She wasn't born blind; she started losing her sight at 22 and is gradually losing more and more. She says working at NBP made sense; besides the income it provides, it's offered her the opportunity to learn the skills for a life without sight. "I'm learning Braille now. It's been a struggle, but I wanted to label my CD'S." She hasn't quite gotten the hang of using her Brailler, and has mislabeled some titles in her library of show tunes. But, she laughs, "even Jello Dolly is better than nothing." SO, WHITHER BRAILLE? It ain't going nowhere.

Amy Ruell heads up the National Braille Press's ReadBooks! program--an effort to educate the parents of blind children about the importance of reading--and is especially tuned in to the latest technology. She remembers that "as a child, I did not have Braille books I could keep," and that the Braille books she used for school were "very bulky. I probably have back problems today in part because I had to carry so many books." Those days are over. Ruell says that, far from supplanting Braille, new technologies are complementing and enhancing it, making it more vital.

As an example, she cites her Braille note taker, a device about the size of a VHS cassette, onto which she can download as many as 2000 Braille books as electronic files; she then reads them via the machine's refreshable Braille display. "There's so much more available electronically now, with the advent of electronic books and computer files," she says. "This makes Braille all the more powerful. It's incredible, the breadth and quantity of material that's now available. It used to be that people were constrained by what was produced by the Library of Congress or what they could purchase. Now, because of these note takers and electronic files, we have more access to things we can physically read." "What it boils down to, in a basic way, is Braille being equivalent to print," says Tanya Holton. "Sighted people want access to as much information as they can, in as many media as they can, whether that be a book on tape when they're driving in the car, or a magazine at the beach, or a hardcover book when they're curled up at home, or the Internet on their laptop.

So there are lots of different ways a sighted person gets their information, and the same is true for a blind person. The difference is only that it's easier for a sighted person to get information than for a blind person to get access to information. "Blind people can get access to the hard news on the radio or TV. They can get access to all sorts of books on tape, or other media like downloadable books on the Internet. What we focus on is blind people who want to actively read rather than passively listen." "Braille will continue to be a modern and powerful tool," echoes Ruell, "if enough energy and resources are devoted to helping children and adults learn to use it."

Back to Index

I often like to include articles here that may be a bit off the beaten track. This is a very intriguing piece from a publication called The New Scientist about a totally blind man who paints pictures and about how we "see."

It is an odd sight. A middle-aged man, fully reclined, drawing pictures of hammers and mugs and animal figurines on a special clipboard, which is balanced precariously on a pillow atop his ample stomach. A half-dozen people buzz around him. One adjusts a towel under his neck to make him more comfortable, another wields a stopwatch and chants instructions to start doing this or stop doing that, and yet another translates everything into Turkish. A small group convenes in a corner to assess the proceedings.

A few of us just stand around watching, and trying not to get in the way. The elaborate ritual is a practice run for an upcoming brain scan and the researchers want to get everything just right. Meanwhile, the man at the centre of all this attention, a blind painter, cracks jokes that keep everyone tittering.

The painter is Esref Armagan. And he is here in Boston to see if a peek inside his brain can explain how a man who has never seen can paint pictures that the sighted easily recognise--and even admire. How does he do it?

Because if Armagan can represent images in the same way a sighted person can, it raises big questions not only about how our brains construct mental images, but also about the role those images play in seeing. Do we build up mental images using just our eyes or do other senses contribute too? How much can congenitally blind people really understand about space and the layout of objects within it? How much "seeing" does a blind person actually do?

Armagan was born 51 years ago in one of Istanbul's poorer neighbourhoods. One of his eyes failed to develop beyond a rudimentary bud, the other is stunted and scarred. It is impossible to know if he had some vision as an infant, but he certainly never saw normally and his brain detects no light now. Few of the children in his neighbourhood were formally educated, and like them, he spent his early years playing in the streets.

But Armagan's blindness isolated him, and to pass the time, he turned to drawing. At first he just scratched in the dirt. But by age 6 he was using pencil and paper. At 18 he started painting with his fingers, first on paper, then on canvas with oils. At age 42 he discovered fast-drying acrylics.

He paints houses and mountains and lakes and faces and butterflies, but he's never seen any of these things. He depicts colour, shadow and perspective, but it is not clear how he could have witnessed these things either. His paintings are disarmingly realistic. And his skills are formidable. "I have tested blind people for decades," says John Kennedy, a psychologist at the University of Toronto, "and I have never seen a performance like his."

Kennedy's first opportunity to meet and test Armagan in person was during a visit to New York last May, for a forum organised by a group called Art Education for the Blind. Armagan, who is something of a celebrity in Turkey, has become used to touring with his canvases to the Czech Republic, China, Italy and the Netherlands.

What made this visit different was the interest shown by scientists--both Kennedy and a team from Boston. Kennedy put Armagan through a battery of tests. For instance, he presented him with solid objects that he could feel--a cube, a cone and a ball all in a row--and asked him to draw them. He then asked him to draw them as though he was perched elsewhere at the table, across from himself, then to his right and left and hovering overhead. Kennedy asked him to draw two rows of glasses, stretching off into the distance.

Representing this kind of perspective is tough even for a sighted person. And when he asked him to draw a cube, and then to rotate it to the left, and then further to the left, Armagan drew a scene with all three cubes. Astonishingly, he drew it in three-point perspective--showing a perfect grasp of how horizontal and vertical lines converge at imaginary points in the distance. "My breath was taken away," Kennedy says.

Kennedy has spent much of his career exploring art from the perspective of blind people. He has shown that people who are congenitally blind understand outline drawings when they feel them just as seeing people do. They understand and can draw in three dimensions. In fact, blind children develop the ability to draw, he has found, much as sighted children do--but all too few blind children ever get the opportunity to explore this ability.

Even knowledge about perspective, he has come to believe, is acquired in similar ways for both. "Where a sighted person looks out, a blind person reaches out, and they will discover the same things," says Kennedy. "The geometry of direction is common to vision and touch." Lines and one-liners It is the night before the Boston team's first brain scan. Armagan is sitting at a long table at an inn, entertaining everyone with one-liners, trying to explain how he does his artwork.

Alvaro Pascual-Leone, the Harvard neurologist who invited him here, and Amir Amedi, his colleague, are challenging him with more and more complex tasks. Draw a road leading away, says Pascual-Leone, with poles on either side and with a source of light underneath. Armagan smiles confidently. He uses a special rubberised tablet, called a "Sewell raised line drawing kit". This device allows him to draw lines that rise off his paper as tiny puckers, so that he can detect them with his fingertips. And so he draws the road and the poles: one hand holding the pencil, the other tracing along behind, like surrogate eyes, "observing" the image as it is being laid down. A minute or so later, the picture is done.

Pascual-Leone and Amedi shake their heads in wonder. So, we ask, how do you know how long these poles should be as they recede? I was taught, he says. Not by any formal teacher, but by casual comments by friends and acquaintances. How do you know about shadows? He learned that too. He confides that for a long time he figured that if an object was red, its shadow would be red too. "But I was told it wasn't," he says. But how do you know about red? He knows that there's an important visual quality to seen objects called "colour" and that it varies from object to object. He's memorised what has what colour and even which ones clash. Scanning the mind's eye Next day, and the time has come for Armagan to get into the scanner.

The Harvard scientists are collaborating with scanning experts at Boston University. In addition to taking a structural snapshot of Armagan's brain and establishing if it can perceive any light (they confirmed it cannot), this morning's experiment will have him doing some odd sequences of tasks. He'll have a set number of seconds to feel an object, imagine it and draw it. But he has also been asked to scribble, pretend to feel an object and recall a list of objects that he learned days earlier.

Pascual-Leone and Amedi want to see what Armagan's brain can tell them about neural plasticity. Both scientists have evidence that in the absence of vision, the "visual" cortex--the part of the brain that makes sense of the information coming from our eyes--does not lie idle. Pascual-Leone has found that proficient Braille readers recruit this area for touch. Amedi, along with Ehud Zohary at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, found that the area is also activated in verbal memory tasks. When Amedi analysed the results, however, he found that Armagan's visual cortex lit up during the drawing task, but hardly at all for the verbal recall.

Amedi was startled by this. "To get such extraordinary plasticity for drawing and zero for verbal memory and language--it was such a strong result," he says. He suspects that, to a certain extent, how the unused visual areas are deployed depends on who you are and what you need from your brain.

Even more intriguing was the way in which drawing activated Armagan's visual cortex. It is now well established that when sighted people try to imagine things--faces, scenes, colours, items they've just looked at--they engage the same parts of their visual cortex that they use to see, only to a much lesser degree.

Creating these mental images is a lot like seeing, only less powerful. When Armagan imagined items he had touched, parts of his visual cortex, too, were mildly activated. But when he drew, his visual cortex lit up as though he was seeing. In fact, says Pascual-Leone, a naive viewer of his scan might assume Armagan really could see.

That result cracks open another big nut: what is "seeing" exactly? Even without the ability to detect light, Armagan is coming incredibly close to it, admits Pascual-Leone.

We can't know what is actually being generated in his brain. "But whatever that thing in his mind is, he is able to transfer it to paper so that I unequivocally know it's the same object he just felt," says Pascual-Leone.

We normally think of seeing as the taking in of objective reality through our eyes. But is it? How much of what we think of as seeing really comes from without, and how much from within?

The visual cortex may have a much more important role than we realise in creating expectations for what we are about to see, says Pascual-Leone. "Seeing is only possible when you know what you're going to see," he says. Perhaps in Armagan the expectation part is operational, but there is simply no data coming in visually.

Conventional wisdom suggests that a person can't have a "mind's eye" without ever having had vision. But Pascual-Leone thinks Armagan must have one. The researcher has long argued that you could arrive at the same mental picture via different senses.

In fact he thinks we all do this all the time, integrating all the sensations of an object into our mental picture of it. "When we see a cup," he says, "we're also feeling with our mind's hand. Seeing is as much touching as it is seeing." But because vision is so overwhelming, we are unaware of that, he says. But in Armagan, significantly, that is not the case.

I sit across from the source of all this mystery and I ask him about the birds he loves to paint. They are brightly coloured and exotic and I wonder aloud how he knows how to depict them. He tells me about how he used to own a parakeet shop. "They come to your hand," he says. "You can easily touch them." He pauses and smiles and says: "I love being surrounded by beauty."

Where we find out what's going on all over

Missouri Blind Of Central Mo
Hello to everyone from Sedalia, There isn't any more of 2004, We hope everyone survives in the year 2005.
One of our newer members, Rebecca Calvert, passed away on Sunday afternoon, December 5th at her home. Even though she was one of our newer members from Warqensburg, she will be missed. Prayers go out to her family and friends.

We had our Christmas party on Thursday, December 9. It was held at Liberty Cafe at 6:30 p.m. We had a total of 35 members and guests. Gerry asked that we have a moment of silence for Rebecca Calvert. Susan went around and collected donations for the mayor's Christmas tree fund. We collected $100.00 so our club will donate $100.00.
Tom Dinrah, one of our drivers, was presented with a Wal-mart gift card for $50.00.
Rusty Smith, who plays the organ, brought his keyboard and entertained us with some very good Christmas music. He was presented with a 100 year commemorative Christmas ornament.

Our Mcb state President Kathey Wheeler was invited but she had a commitment come up so she couldn't make it. The Blind of Central Mo would like to thank Kathey Wheeler for the beautiful card that she sent our affiliate.
We played a game with the gifts. The ones that brought gifts sat in a circle. When Rusty started playing the music, we would pass a gift to the right. When Rusty stopped the music, the person that ended up with the gift would leave the circle and the game would continue until everyone that brought a gift had a gift. Everyone that attended had a great time of good food, fun, and fellowship.
We have a new member in our club. Her name is Mabel Meier, and she is losing her sight. Congratulations Mabel, and welcome to our club. By the time you read this, spring should be here, That will bring everyone cheer. Until next time, keep your smile and a song in your heart. If you can't be good, be good at it.
Trudy Blood Blind of Central Mo Recording Secretary

Delta Area Blind
Hello again from the Delta Area of the blind and sighted.
No, we have not changed our name, I just like to recognize our sighted members, too. Some of us Delta Area blind and sighted members joined the River City Workers for the Blind in Cape Girardeau for their Thanksgiving dinner. It was also their 25th anniversary. They did a great job as usual. Everything was great and we all had a lot of fun and fellowship.

Then some of us went to Poplar Bluff for their Christmas party and again we enjoyed ourselves very much. They did a great job as always. Thanks to both affiliates for inviting the Delta Area Blind group. It sounds like the Delta Area blind and sighted members partied hardy during the Holidays. We had our Christmas party at Ryans in Sikeston. We also adopted a family for Christmas.

On a sad note, the Delta Area Blind and Sighted would like to express our sympathy to Andrew and Mickie Ormsby. Andrew lost his brother close to Christmas.
Marvin and Barbara Shelton lost their daughter suddenly in January. Our sympathy goes out to them also.

On a happier note, LaWanna Copeland and her friends have opened a restaurant in Mathews, Missouri, called the Harvest Restaurant. If you are driving down I-55, please stop in.
Happy New Year
Marie Thompson

The Joplin Service Club of the Blind
It is time to get the pen and paper out and get the article ready for the Chronicle.
First we hope everyone had a blessed and healthy holiday season. Our club had a busy and enjoyable time.

On December 4th, 19 from our group made the trip to Grove, OK to see the Kountry Kuzins Christmas show. December 5th, eight from our group attended the "Living Christmas Tree" program at the Ozark Christian College.

December 9th, 17 from our group attended the play at the Stained Glass Theater. Carolyn Fortson (wife of one of our volunteer drivers) had a very active part in the show and we all enjoyed the shows so much.

Again in December, instead of a gift exchange, we donated money and canned food to the Salvation Army. In November, the Telephone Pioneers were host to our fourth Thursday evening dinner.

In December, the St. Mary's Catholic church also fixed and served a wonderful meal. As I write, weather permitting, the Fisher Sunday School class will be fixing our January fourth Thursday evening dinner.

In December Virgil McCoy and other volunteers hosted a brunch at the blind center. Following that, a memorial, in memory of Letha Dangerfield was held by the members of the Ham radio operators, of which Letha was an active member for so many years.

At our November business meeting, an election was held for our MCB Board representative. Roger Casperson was elected, but due to being in the hospital was unable to make the trip to Sedalia, so Kathy Parmley (our president) attended and brought back a very good report.

Bill Eden and volunteers fixed us a delicious Christmas dinner. His granddaughter entertained us with several beautiful songs. Roger Casperson also sang a couple of songs.
Kathy Parmley had some special treats for everyone. She fixes something special for the people each holiday.
We also celebrated a very special birthday for Vivian Interval, who was 101 years old December 25th.

Several of our people have been ill. Helen Green had two stints put in and Mildred King is having several tests done. Several others have had flu type illness.

We have had a lot of rain and pretty cold weather, but we should not complain when we see and hear on the news the tragedies the people in so many places have suffered in loss of lives and property. We must remember them in our prayers.
Sincerely,
Valva York

Lake STOCKTON AREA COUNCIL OF The BLIND
Hello from Lake Stockton
The Dinner and Auction held last August gave us the opportunity to renew friendships and make new acquaintances with those that attended from area affiliates. We are already making plans for the 2005 Dinner and Auction on August 6 and look forward to seeing all our friends once again.

Over the past few months we welcomed four new members: Pauline Watkins, Michael Dawes, Everett Hopper, and Ellen Bell.
We were saddened by the loss of two dear friends and members. Everett Dody and Everett Williams went to be with their Lord and Savior on July 9 and August 24, respectively.

New officers were elected: President, Harry Hickman; Vice President, Susan Wickern; Secretary, Linda Dawes, and Treasurer, Dorothy Benes. An installation ceremony was held during our September meeting.
Seven members attended the state convention in October and, of course, they took a bunch of nuts with them. Thanks to all who supported our fundraiser by purchasing walnuts, pecans, cashews, etc.

Our affiliate was fortunate enough to receive second place for taking in new members. We were pleasantly surprised with a check for $250 from the Membership Committee. Thank you.

Several members dressed in Halloween costumes for our October meeting and some of those members received prizes from the judges.

On October 30 members and guests boarded a chartered bus for Branson. We ate dinner at the Baldknobbers Restaurant and then enjoyed the Baldknobbers show.

Forty-five people attended our Thanksgiving dinner and meeting in November and fifty-two people including Public Relations Chairman Leroy Welch and his wife, Loretta, attended our Christmas dinner and meeting in December.

The Fraternal Order of Eagles in El Dorado Springs provided turkeys for December door prizes. They hosted a Pig Roast and Cake Walk for us on December 18. We appreciate their continued support.

Our January meeting was canceled due to questionable weather. We look forward to our February potluck dinner and meeting followed by Bingo.
Robert and Teresa Evans do an excellent job arranging Bingo and prizes after almost every meeting.
Best Wishes to All Linda Dawes
Secretary


Progressive Council News
The Progressive Council has been very busy this past year and we are gearing up for plans, coordinated by our President Eldon Cox, for a great October state convention.

We had our Christmas party after our meeting in December. Don Wiggins brought in bar-B-Q with all the sides.

We had sold raffle tickets for the Honey Baked store and did our drawing at this time.

We sponsored a visually impaired child for Christmas and were able to get some nice gifts for the child.

The 2004 nut sale was very successful. In fact, we sold nuts in November at one of the local Wal-Mart stores.

We have added three new members: Terrie Arnold, Sondra Martinson, and Jean Rademacher. We will be having Sharon Bryant from the Kansas City Transportation Authority to speak at our February meeting.

As always, we have members who explore the latest in technology, health, education and welfare issues, then report the results to the group.

In February, Hank Pearce will be attending Legislative Days in Washington, D.C. Mary Pendleton and Hank will be representing our group at Legislative Days in Jefferson City in March. We look forward to seeing all of you at conventions and meetings in this New Year. "Spring brings fresh new life and ideas to facilitate progress for improvements."
Mary Lee Pendleton
Public Relations


THE RITE REPORT
What a beautiful day in February this was. This year is unusual, because one week it is in the 50s and 60s, and the next week is in the 20s. Oh, well, spring is just around the corner.

Our holiday season was filled with merriment and fun. Our bus trip to Sikeston was a happy time. We ate a good meal at Lambert's Restaurant and then had time to shop at the discount mall for about an hour. The bus was a regular chatter box with 41 passengers.

We adopted a student from the Missouri School for the Blind, not only for the holiday season but for the whole year. Rose, Janet and I attended the Christmas program and party at the school and met Angel. Yes, that's her name, and she is adorable. Our Christmas party was held at Pietro's. After dinner and the gift exchange, we were entertained by Steeve Schnelle. Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves.

We are happy to report that Angelo is doing well after his hip replacement surgery, so well that the doctor has already released him with no restrictions.

In November, while Ann Becker was receiving treatments for back problems as an out patient, she developed a case of shingles. She is doing much better now with both problems.

Larry Ledford is a Grandpa again. Little Aaron was born last September.

We are looking forward to this year because in October we will celebrate our 50th anniversary. We are planning a big party with all the trimmings. You will receive more information in the next two Chronicle reports. Of course, everyone will be welcome to attend.

And that about wraps it up for this time. We wish each and every one of you a happy and successful new year. Until we meet again in these pages, may God bless and keep you.
Warm Blessings
Bunny Mcginnis


River City Report
We welcome a new year here in the River City of Cape Girardeau and we are looking forward to a year filled with many activities.

The last part of 2004 kept us busy with our Thanksgiving dinner, which was held at a new location this year and all had a great time. We want to thank those from Sikeston, Poplar Bluff, and St. Louis who made the voyage to Cape to share in our Thanksgiving Celebration.

For Christmas we collected food and toys to take to local charities to be given out in the community, as well as purchased toys to be given to visually impaired children in the area covered by Darlene Staples-Felts with Rehabilitation Services for the Blind.

In February, we are planning to host a Valentine's Day party for the students of Parkview State School for the Severely Handicapped. They have several multi-handicapped students who are visually impaired and enjoy our company. We are also planning on having a small Valentine's party after our February meeting as well.

In the next few months we are planning quite a few little parties after our meetings to celebrate the various holidays. Our members really enjoy the opportunity to socialize after our regular business meetings. We are planning on having candy sales and yard sales in the spring or fall.

We are planning activities for White Cane Week in May, as well as getting ready for our picnic. This year the picnic will be June 18, 2005 at Cape County Park Shelter 21. We will begin gathering around 11:00.

We are all looking forward to our August meeting where we will be treated to a fish fry with fish caught by Bill Godwin and Clinton Shirrell, which last year was a hit despite the downpour that came that day.

We are happy to say we have a new member. She is Alyesia Smith from Cape Girardeau and we are very excited to welcome Alyesia to our affiliate.

We are also proud to announce the engagement of Brandi Emmons to Tom Jones of Independence. We wish them both the very best in their life together.

Well, until we see each other again, God Bless and we hope everyone has a great 2005. River City Workers of the Blind Communications Committee

Southwest Missouri Friendship Council I would like to wish all of the affiliates a happy new year. We had our election in October. Our President is Elaine Loyd, our vice president is Franklin Johnson, our second vice president is Max Richie, our Secretary is Harold Griffith, and our Treasurer is Cindy Duvall. Katheryn Deacon is Public Relations.

We had to elect another social director because Tom Smith resigned because his wife had to go on dialysis. So our new directors are Tom Duval and Helen Highley.

Cindy Smart was elected as our Resolutions person replacing Tom Duval. We talked about giving a donation to the American Legion. We also talked about donating to Toys for Tots. We had our social dinner at the American Legion. The President donated the turkey and the rest of us brought side dishes.

I brought my CCTV to show to members and we are trying to get a grant to purchase one. Our President handed out the calendars at the dinner. We had our Christmas dinner at Ryan's.

Happy birthday to Alice Poiry, Cindy Duval, Cindy Smart and Richard Thurbridge.

In December, we have three birthdays, Don Haase, Chip Hailey and Franklin Johnson. We heard a report about the MCB Board meeting.

We talked about buying a cane for Lisa Jackson because her dog recently died. I had a cane that I was not using which I gave to her.

We made plans for our Christmas party which had a gift exchange and other surprises. We also talked about Louis Braille week which was in January. We usually go to the mall and show people about Braille, but since the mall has new management, we could not go there this year, which was very disappointing.

We voted in three new members: Shirley Haas, Phyllis Neville, and David Schneider. David is sighted. He joined because his girl friend, Katheryn Deacon, is legally blind. Our President appointed a new Financial committee, consisting of Elaine Loyd, Cindy and Tom Duval, Jane Olsen and Linda Hailey.

Lisa Jackson will be going to get a new dog.

We are thinking about doing three different fund raisers in April, either a 50-50 drawing, a candy sale or an auction.

Recently, our former President, Ed Forcum had a heart attack. He is doing fine now.

Margaret Forcum had a slight heart attack and she is doing fine. We want to send our wishes to them.

Helen Highley wanted me to thank Jean Dody for the nice Christmas card she got.

I hope all the affiliates had a wonderful new year and that everyone is doing well.

The Springfield Scene by Phyllis Lovett
Thanksgiving Dinner: It was our pleasure to host the West Plains club for our annual exchange visit. We had our Thanksgiving dinner at the Cedars South. Of course, we had turkey and all of the trimmings. We always enjoy our exchange visits with the West Plains group. We all had a good time and ate too much.

Christmas Party: We held our annual Christmas party and gift exchange at our regular meeting place, Perkins restaurant. We had a good crowd and everyone enjoyed the gift exchange. We each bring a gift, not over $5.00. Women bring womens gifts and men bring men's gifts. This way the gifts are always appropriate.

Valentine visit: On February 14, we will take a vanload, thirteen of our members, to West Plains for our annual visit. We are looking forward to this as we always enjoy the fellowship and the food. Let's hope the weather cooperates.

Uwb Update Our report this time has a bit of an international flavor to it. One of our members, V. Balaji, was featured in an article in a magazine published in India, the country where he was born. Unfortunately, the article is too long to reprint here, but in it, Balaji tells his life story.

Balaji was born in 1943 in India. He lost sight in his right eye at age three due to an eye infection and then became totally blind around 1970. He attended school in India but he says "there was not much awareness about blindness at that time in the country. I did not get much help from the teachers. There were no concessions for me." He could not see the blackboard and could read print only for short periods of time.

He dropped out of college after a year and tried a few jobs without success. In 1973, he came to St. Louis, hoping to get treatment for his eye condition. He came here because one of his brothers worked at the Washington University Medical School. But the doctors here could do nothing to help him. Since there were few opportunities for him in India, he decided to stay here to learn Braille.

He then applied for a student visa so that he could attend Forrest Park Community College, where he studied food service. He entered the Business Enterprise PROGRAM and has worked at several facilities, including a very large cafeteria in St. Charles, where he arranged banquets for many occasions. He is currently the manager of the Zip Trip, a convenience store at the main Post office in Downtown St. Louis.

He became a US citizen in 1983. In 1980, he married a girl from India named Nalini and they have a son named Carthik. Balaji's message to other disabled people: "Don't lose confidence. Keep working. Do the best you can. You will succeed. There will be much to do in this world. If you go for it, you will get it. Nothing is impossible. If I can succeed in my life, so can you. It is absolutely important not to lose hope. Don't feel lonely." We are so happy to have Balaji in our organization. He is a hard worker and he's a very friendly guy with a great sense of humor.

Not much else to report this time, except that we have heard recently from some former members who have moved away from Missouri.

Howard and Janice Compton dropped by to see us while visiting relatives here over the Holidays. They are getting settled in Omaha but still hope to come back to St. Louis when Howard retires.

Mike Jolls, who is also in Omaha, wrote to say that he is doing well. We also got a call from Joan Myles, who is living in Salem, Oregon. She is doing great but still misses her friends and asked about a lot of people she knew when she lived here. It's really nice to hear from old friends.

That will do it for this time. We'll talk again in June. John Weidlich.

As I compose this column, I am doing what I usually do when I'm working on the Chronicle: listening to some quiet jazz on the radio. But I'm not listening to any of the local radio stations this time.

Thanks to a Christmas gift from Donna, I have joined the increasing number of people tuning into XM digital satelite radio. I was mildly interested in this when Bob Jaco and others told me about it, but I wasn't really sure whether I would like it. But I'm really glad Donna got it for me. XM has over 120 channels of music, talk and sports to choose from, many, but not all of the channels, commercial free.

You can find just about any type of music you want: seven channels playing different styles of country music, three jazz channels, three classical music channels, and several channels for soul music, Christian music, ethnic music, broadway show tunes, movie songs, love songs, rap, rock and music for kids.

There is also a separate channel featuring the music of each decade from the 40s through the 90s. There are several comedy channels, an old time radio channel and a channel that features modern radio drama and audio books. There are news channels, talk channels and sports stations. XM will also be broadcasting every baseball game played by every pro baseball team, beginning with spring training. I have my tuner hooked up to a Bose Radio and it sounds really good.

To get satelite radio, you purchase a tuner with an antenna and then pay a monthly subscription fee. I will be very interested to see how this new kind of radio broadcasting will affect commercial Am and Fm radio in the future. Now, I'll turn the music up just a bit and look inside the drawer and see what's here.

Let's start out with a couple of books. Acb member Larry Johnson has written a book about his travels called Mexico by Touch, True-Life Experiences of a Blind Deejay. It is available on five Cds for $25, plus $3 for shipping. Order from:
Larry Johnson
10863 Lake PATH Drive
San Antonio, Tx 78217

Some of you out there may know Janet Eckles. She and her family attended MCB'S summer camp several years ago. She has just published a book about her life called Trials of Today, Treasures for Tomorrow, Overcoming Adversities in Life. Janet was born in Bolivia and came to St. Louis with her parents as a child.

She was diagnosed with a vision problem when she was a teenager but was told that it would probably be many nears before she became blind, if it happened at all. However, she lost her sight completely at age 32, while raising three boys, ages four, six and eight. She went into a deep depression that nearly destroyed her marriage, but she slowly began to regain her independence and make a successful career as a Spanish interpreter. A deeply religious person, she credits her turnaround to her faith in God.

A few years ago, her family relocated to Florida and in her book, she describes adjusting to the move. She also deals candidly with a recent tragedy in her life, the murder of one of her sons during a robbery. In addition to her story, she also shares many of her spiritual insights in the hope that they will help others dealing with adversity.

The book is available in print from major bookstores and will also be available in Braille and on tape. You can also order it by going to her web site: www.janeckles.com. Janet has also written an article for the Chronicle which I hope to be able to include in a future issue.

Next, we'll look at some new video magnifiers, those things we used to call Cctvs. The MonoMouse is a new magnifier from Bierley Associates. The MonoMouse, manufactured in China and now being sold in this country, is shaped like a computer mouse and is plugged into a standard television. It magnifies text up to 15 times on a 14-inch screen and up to 22 times on a 20-inch tv. The price is only $185, which is by far the lowest price I have ever heard of for this kind of device. If you want to know more about it, contact Jay Jinon at Bierley Associates, (408) 224-8188, Extension 106, or visit www.bierley.com. The company is apparently based in China, with its US distributor located in San Jose, California.

Max is a new hand-held video magnifier from Enhanced vision. Also the size of a computer mouse, it, too, can be connected to any standard Tv or monitor. It magnifies up to 28 times. It can also be worn on a pair of glasses or attached to a portable screen. Prices start at $349. Contact Enhanced Vision at (800) 440-9476. Telesensory is offering online demonstrations of its Aladdin product line of magnifiers. The web site is www.telesensory.com. My Reader is a new electronic reader from Pulse Data that allows a user to scroll text and control the way it is displayed on the screen. A page of writing can be displayed by paragraph, by line or a word at a time. My Reader costs $4,995 and is available from the Human Ware Group, (800) 722-3393.

Another merger: Pulse Data International, a New Zealand-based company, and Visuaide, a Canadian company, have merged to create a new company to be called the HumanWare Group. HumanWare was the name used by Pulse Data's North American subsidiary. Pulse Data's product line includes the SmartView video magnifiers, and the Braille Note line of notetakers. Visuaide is known best for the Victor digital Talking book players and the Trekker Gps system.

The President of the new company will be Dr. Russel Smith, the Ceo of Pulse Data. Pulse Data and Visuaide were both formed in 1989.

Correction: The correct phone number for Premiere Assistive Technology, mentioned in the December column, is (517) 688-8188. thanks to Mark Perr for calling that to my attention.

By the time you read this, Abc will have premiered a new Tv show featuring a blind character. It is called Blind Justice, starring Ron Eldard as Jim Dunbar, an NYPD detective blinded in a shooting, who returns to the force as a gun-carrying detective, using his other senses to solve crimes. The advance ad copy for the show says that Blind Justice will deal with issues faced by "handicapped employees."

Apparently, one of the plot complications is that he has a female partner who apparently doesn't want to work with a blind guy. I guess she doesn't think he can protect her if bullets start flying. But I bet they fall in love before the season ends.

It is produced by Steven Bochko, who has done some pretty good cop shows during his career, along with a few monumental flops. I have to admit I'm more than a little bit skeptical about this one, but we'll just have to see how it turns out. It airs on Tuesday evenings on Abc.

Mcb News: Beverly Kaskadden says the St. Charles County Council affiliate has a new web site, designed by John Herzberg. It is www.scccb.org. Bev says check it out. So I did and I found it to be very informative with lots of useful information about the affiliate and about MCB. This could be a good project for other affiliates.

Kurzweil Educational Systems has released Version 9.0 of its Kurzweil 1000 optical character recognition software, which includes an online encyclopedia and a business calculator. It costs $995. Contact the company at (800) 894-5374 or visit www.kurzweiledu.com. The DocuEdge is new scanning software from the Assistive Technology Center. The DocuPen scanner can hold up to one hundred pages in its memory for transfer to a computer. The computer files can then be turned into text for reading or printing. The introductory price for this new device is $229. For information, call (916) 956-2054 or visit this web site: www.assistivetechcenter.com.

Now some items for the cooks: Cooking in the Dark has issued a recipe collection of favorite recipes from members of the Cooking in the Dark and Blind Cooks e-mail lists. It comes in four Braille volumes. Volume I contains entrees and soups; Volume Ii has vegetables, side dishes, salads and deserts; Volume Iii has recipes for cakes and pies; Volume Iv contains snacks and cookies. The whole set costs $56.50 but individual volumes can be purchased separately. It is also available on tape for $20 or on disk for $25. Order from Dale Campbell, 16810 Pinemoor Way, Houston, Tx 77058, Phone: (281) 456-1840. The web site is www.blindmicemart.com.

Cooking Down Home is an e-mail list for exchanging recipes, crafts, tips, clean jokes and riddles, birthday greetings and friendly chatter. To join, send an e-mail to cookingdownhome-subscribe@yahoogroups.com.

New from National Braille Press: George Foreman's Indoor Grilling Made Easy: More Than 100 Simple, Healthy Ways to feed Family and Friends by George Foreman and Katheryn Kellinger, in two Braille volumes for $19.95. The book contains breakfast foods, entrees, side dishes, desserts and snacks all made on the grill. The book also contains flavor-enhancing ideas and instructions for using the George Foreman grill. Order from National Braille Press, 88 St. Stephen Street, Boston, Ma 02115, (800) 548-7323, e-mail orders@nbp.org.

Maureen Pranghoffer offers to locate recipes and provide them to people in Braille, on tape, computer disk or by e-mail. Her address is 4910 Dawnview Terrace, Golden Valley, Mn 55422, Phone: (763) 522-2501, e-mail: maureensmusic@comcast.net.

The Service Club for the Blind, located in St. Louis, now offers their merchandise and price list in Braille as well as large print. The Service Club sells Braille paper, slates and styluses, low vision items, talking clocks and watches, folding canes, Braille and low vision games, brooms and mops and gifts for all occasions, including some very delicious home made cookies. The address for the Service Club is 3719 Watson Road, St. Louis, Mo 63109 and the phone number is (314) 647-3306.

Love Is Blind is a new magazine for blind singles being published by Easttex Access. To subscribe, call (877) 222-0679 or send e-mail to loveisblind@blindlikeme.com and type love is blind in the subject line.

Macular Degeneration Support sells the following three videos: The Task of Living with Central Vision Loss, $30; Macular Degeneration, The Inside Story, $35; and Learning To live with Low Vision: a Journey Through Rehabilitation, $25. Unfortunately, I don't have a mailing address or phone number, except that the company is located in Grandview, Missouri. The web site is www.mdsupport.org.

Living With Low Vision: a Resource Guide for People with Sight Loss: 7th Edition, contains information on self-help groups, high tech equipment, independent living, travel, recreation and laws. It is available in 18-point type for $48.95 from Resources for Rehabilitation, 22 Bonad Road, Winchester, Ma 01894. Phone: (781) 368-9094. The web site is www.rfr.org. The Vip is a digital talking thermostat that speaks the indoor temperature and time of day as well as program settings. Prices start at $149.50. To order, call (800) 838-8860 or visit www.talkingthermostat.com.

Bibles for the Blind provides free bibles in Braille and on tape, King James Version. You can also get a free book of daily devotions. The address is 3288 East Rosehill Avenue, Terre Haute, In 47805-1287, Phone: (812) 466-4889.

Firefighters for Christ offers free Christian teaching tapes and three versions of the Bible on MP-3 format: the King James Version, the New King James Version and the dramatized Living Bible. Address: 4 Santa Maria, Foothills Branch, Ca 92610, Phone: (949) 470-9883. Their web site is www.firefighters.org.

Finally, The First Steps for the Blind support center in Kansas City is planning a unique event as part of its barbecue on June 18th. It will be a guide dog competition. Dogs will compete in three categories: best dressed, best of breed and the best tail ager. Prizes will be awarded in each category and the overall winner will receive a gift card from a pet supply store. For more information or to get an enrollment form, call Cathy Pyper at First Steps for the Blind, (816) 455-5219 or e-mail her at cpyper@kc.rr.com.

Speaking of dogs, what do you think is the most popular breed of dog in America? Well, according to the American Kennel Club registrations for all recognized breeds, it is by far the Labrador retriever, with 146,692 registrations in 2004, accounting for about fifteen per cent of the nearly one million dog registrations recorded last year. Coming in second, the Golden Retriever, with 52,550. This isn't the first time. Labs have in fact been the most popular breed every year since 1990. Labs originated in Newfoundland in the 16th century and were brought to America in the 19th century, where they became popular for their hunting ability. That's it for this time. See you in June.