[Blindtlk] FW: Awareness was the Main Course

[Jewel S.]

Here is the original St. Petersburg article. I think the Letter to the
Editor was a bit harsh, but does hit on some very good points,
including the fact that Foundation Fighting Blindness uses blind
people to create pity from sighted people to raise funds. It's a sad
state when a blind person has to talk about how depressed and angry at
the world they were when they went blind to raise funds. Of course,
they don't -have- to, as NFB chapters all over the nation raise funds
by showing people what we -can- do. Our local chapter is doing a
Pancake Breakfast with Applebee's, and I am going to suggest that we
not be so wary about being the servers...take the plunge and serve the
breakfast. We -can- do it, and the sighted people who attend will be
impressed and pity us, but maybe it'll teach them that we can do
anything a sighted person can do, sometimes even better, because we
use more than one sense to do the task.

Without further ado, the original article:

Awareness was the main course.
By LAURA Reiley Times Staff Writer ST. PETERSBURG  You knew your plate
had been set before you only by sense of smell. It smelled like beef,
something braised and hearty. On your right a voice asked what you do
for a living. You turned and lobbed an answer in that direction.
Tuesday night was the Foundation Fighting Blindness's first Tampa Bay
Dining in the Dark event at the Renaissance Vinoy Resort & Golf
Club. More than 200 people, dressed fancy and sipping cocktails, took
seats in the main ballroom and eventually donned something called a
Mindfold face mask, impervious to light and lined with foam. The
lights dimmed and as emcee Dick Crippen of the Tampa Bay Rays goaded
the crowd, the group endeavored to enjoy "the first meal you will
never see. Other senses were heightened, texture became paramount. But
more important, it gave all of the assembled a greater window into the
world of the sightless. Many had come because their lives had already
been touched by degenerative retinal diseases. Briana Pompilus , 24,
was there as a volunteer with her mother Veronica Floyd, 44, who was
diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa  at age 22. Still driving now,
eventually her vision will close up as if looking through two drinking
straws. One of the evening's speakers, April Lufriu, a former Mrs.
Florida America pageant winner and president of the Tampa Bay area
chapter of the foundation, spoke of her sister's retinal disease and,
more haltingly, about her two children's recent diagnosis.
Degenerative retinal diseases affect more than 10 million Americans.
As keynote speaker James Minow described it, the foundation's aim is
to put an end to retinal disease by replacing defective cells in the
retina, replacing defective genes and by developing new treatments to
protect degenerating retinas. The obstacle? As is so often the case,
it's money. According to Kim Marlow, regional director of development
for the foundation, the evening in St. Petersburg will raise $100,000
for the cause. The most successful Dining in the Dark event to date,
in New York, raised $500,000 in a single evening. The evening's
honorees, doctors James Gill and Stephen Klasko, were feverishly
optimistic about conceivable cures for blindness. For those assembled,
a half hour in the dark was a humbling, and bumbling, reminder of the
magnitude of the gift of sight..