by Penny Reeder
Since the events of September 11, much has happened, in the world and in our little ACB microcosm of America: There was a board meeting in Albuquerque, various state affiliates held conventions, where some elected new officers, resolutions were debated and adopted, new friendships were forged, old friends were remembered, and many renewed their commitments to making the world a better place for everyone, blind and sighted alike. The ACB Task Force on Voting began compiling and drafting a Voting Access Handbook which is expected to take up its position next to its sister guidebook for advocates, the Pedestrian Safety Handbook, at ACB.org. A pretty cool computer traveled from its factory of origin to Kansas where Matt Campbell installed the operating system which allowed it to become our web server, and from there to a California server farm, where Earlene Hughes, Jonathan Mosen, Chris Gray, Matt and others loaded files and installed programs to convert it into a “new and improved” ACB.org, and our presence on the web once again became a reliable and reassuring “fact of life.”
Mike Duke and Jay Doudna spent all their “free” weekend and evening minutes preparing the convention tapes, and Sharon and I began figuring out when we will squeeze the associated tasks of summarizing the tapes and compiling the photographs to create a convention issue of “The Braille Forum” into our regular schedules, and we went in and had a talk with the tape duplicator that lives in our work room, and encouraged it to stay in good repair for that important annual job of duplicating all those sets of convention tapes.
Meanwhile, many from ACB have stood in long lines waiting to give blood or made monetary donations to the Red Cross. All of us have lighted candles, some of us have attended church services for the first time in a while, or resurrected our Fourth of July flags to fly proudly on porches, from balconies, on dog-guide harnesses, or from the tops of backpacks. I gave to DC firefighters collecting money at my Metro stop for their fallen New York comrades every morning for a week; in Arkansas, they held bake sales and sent the money they raised to the New York State WTC Relief Fund. Imogene Johnson from Little Rock told me, “Last year when we had some trouble down here in Arkansas, electricians from New York City came down to help us get our electricity back after the storms had knocked down all our power lines. And we just felt we needed to do something to help them in their time of trouble, to repay them in some small way for their kindness to us.”
Other affiliates from New York to South Carolina, Maryland to California, have done the same. In California, CCB has directed donations toward agencies who can help WTC survivors whose injuries will leave them visually impaired.
The death and destruction at the World Trade Center, in the skies over Pennsylvania, and at the Pentagon dominated all our e-mails for many days. A parody of How the Grinch Stole Christmas featuring an evil “Binch” made all the e-mail list rounds, with some complimenting the anonymous author’s creativity and others wondering about the usefulness of allowing all our anger and sadness to reside in a racial epithet. List members of the Muslim faith told their colleagues about a tradition anchored in a belief that God encircles the whole universe with love. Some wondered exactly how many books the NLS has recorded about Islam, and others shared Internet resources with those who wanted to learn more about what Muslims believe.
There was a brief discussion about the appropriateness of using a medium like the ACB listserv to discuss topics which were not really related to blindness or the organization, but the discussion seemed to evaporate because we all needed to share with one another. Many newspaper articles and editorials found their way to our lists. Every day we wondered why, how, who; every night we watched the evening news and shed tears of sadness and frustration. The e-mailing lists of the ACB family allowed us to do what any family does best — to offer support during times of sadness and provide a forum for sharing information, hosting discussions, allowing debate, and helping each member to find solace in the comfort offered by others.
Gradually, as hours turned to days, and then weeks, we learned to tear ourselves away from our TVs and radios and, as our president and others urged, get back to work, school, normal. The lists went back to topics like scripts for JAWS, upgrades of Window-Eyes, the costs of technology and ways to afford it, speeches by blindness leaders, accessible pedestrian signals in West Virginia, the discipline amendments that could deny special ed students appropriate educational services, where and when to hold the annual ACB legislative seminar: the typical topics of conversation for people who are blind.
On October 7, I returned from the Maryland state convention, where new officers had been chosen and among other things, we had voted to send money to assist the relief efforts of the American Red Cross. Expecting to relax with a rerun of “A Prairie Home Companion,” I turned on the radio and learned that at that very moment, U.S. bombs were falling on Afghanistan. There were somber briefings from the Pentagon, from the President, from Tony Blair in London, and a menacing videotaped diatribe by Osama Bin Laden beamed across the world’s news wires and television screens by the Middle Eastern satellite news channel Al-Jazeera, in which he celebrated Americans’ sorrow and fear and promised more of the same.
Is this solemn tone destined to be the subtext of the rest of our lives? What can I say in a Thanksgiving message to help myself and my readers gain a thankful perspective as fall turns to winter and we gather with comfort foods filling tables and sideboards to break bread together with family and friends? With so much sadness and anxiety at the back of our minds, coloring our thoughts, our plans, our conversations, will a “normal” season of Thanksgiving be forever out of our reach?
I can remember the Thanksgiving after John Kennedy’s assassination and death. I can still hear the sad way Lyndon Johnson sounded on that Thanksgiving day as he addressed Americans, although I no longer remember the words he spoke. I was in high school then. I wondered if we would ever recover as a nation, and I remember thinking that the Thanksgiving meal seemed entirely inappropriate. This year, with thousands dead, my own teenagers may feel our Thanksgiving preparations are inappropriate. Yet, as I gather supplies, and look up the old familiar recipes for Mama Stamberg’s cranberry sauce, cornbread and sausage dressing, and pumpkin pie, I am comforted and thankful: for family and friends to share the meal and the day with; for work that allows me to do things I think are important, for all the men and women I’ve met who work tirelessly to bring opportunities to people who are blind while not allowing blindness to interfere with their own involvement in family and community life or their citizenship in the USA or the world.
Nearly 40 years after we mourned the death of a popular and youthful president at another Thanksgiving table, I can begin to understand why my family bought the turkey, set the table, made two kinds of dressings and went through the rituals of a harvest festival. That was a year when we were frightened and sad, but we all went through the motions of Thanksgiving, because, after all, we still had all the folks gathered around the groaning table to be thankful for and to count upon, and if we hadn’t celebrated the holiday in 1963, then the Thanksgiving of 1964, and the years after that, would have been even sadder.
Who knows what terrors will have come to America or the world between today when I write this message and the day you retrieve your November “Braille Forum” from your mailboxes? No matter what happens, this is a year when we will all feel far removed from the “normal” of last year’s Thanksgiving feast. But I urge you to make your holiday preparations, to order the turkey or make plans to fill a seat at the table of a friend or family member. Let us hold hands and thank God for being together, and for living in a country where we think it’s important to come together every November to give thanks, to share and create memories, and to draw strength from one another.
Even if we feel like we’re just going through the motions and the day, the dinner, the relatives and the endless loads of dishes seem more surreal than real, it’s worth it to go through those motions, because counting blessings, asking for divine guidance, and saying the familiar words will help us to feel grounded, to know who we are, and to find the wisdom and the strength that will allow us to be, once again, truly thankful.