[blparent] NFB and Cane Length (was Introduction and aQuestion from the origenater)

[Judy Jones]

You are so right about the cane.  I, too, use the telescopic cane and love 
it, but at the agency where I work, they sell a cane tip that is meant for 
the folding canes, it is a roller ball tip.  The tip is a true ball shape. 
I got one to try out in the countryside and love it!.  The ball is hooked to 
a metal socket, which allows the ball to roll as you move the cane back and 
forth.  No matter the topography, it almost never sticks, and is ideal for 
hiking and dirt roads or in the woods.

For sentimental reasons, I also have my first indestructible fiberglass long 
cane.  It is really showing its age, since I used to take it backpacking 
while in college years ago.

I have an old high school friend who dropped his fiberglass cane down an 
underpass.  He states several cars ran over it - he could hear the 
clickclick, clickclick, - before he got someone to stop and hand it up to 
him.  He reports it was none the worse for wear.

Judy

-----Original Message----- 
From: Robert Shelton via BlParent
Sent: Sunday, February 21, 2016 12:50 PM
To: 'Blind Parents Mailing List'
Cc: Robert Shelton
Subject: Re: [blparent] NFB and Cane Length (was Introduction and aQuestion 
from the origenater)

I'm a life long cane traveler, and I remember making my own back in the 
1960's. It was called, believe it or not, a "long cane," and it was sort of 
long, considering it was made of aluminum tubing, but laughable by today's 
standards. With such materials, a reasonable length would have been too 
heavy to be very useful.

I never was that conscious about canes until I spent a summer hanging out 
with MFBers at the National Center where I got my first telescoping model. 
It was still short by today's standards, but the combination of light weight 
and metal tip made it a far better navigation instrument than anything I'd 
used before. The secret is to have a tip which extracts the maximum 
information from whatever it touches like textures, differences in 
materials, for example the difference between a glass door and the glass 
side panels, and a shaft that transmits those signals as faithfully as 
possible. I keep two in normal use. One is carbon fiber telescopic --  
feather touch and the best navigator, but it's delecate. The other is the 
NFB freeby which I've had for years -- I just bought a big bag of new tips 
for it. It's almost as good as the CF job, and it's essentially 
indestructible.

The deal with length is that it buys you reaction time. The penalty is 
weight and loss of sensitivity. I discount the issues navigating in a crowd 
because you can always shorten by using the "pencil grip," at least if you 
have a nice light cane.

I realize that people have many individual prefferences, but the greater the 
bandwidth of information we can extract from the environment, the better we 
do, at least as a general rule. Yes, loss of vision puts a big hole in our 
sensory environment, but ears, hands, feet and skin can make up most of what 
the LDP's get from vision, and used the right way, can bring in information 
that is missed by almost all LDP's.

-----Original Message-----
From: Jo Elizabeth Pinto [mailto:jopinto at msn.com]
Sent: Saturday, February 20, 2016 12:53 PM
To: Blind Parents Mailing List
Subject: Re: [blparent] NFB and Cane Length (was Introduction and a Question 
from the origenater)

To be perfectly honest, the reason I have not joined the NFB is because many 
members put forth a very rude face to the public when it comes to demanding 
equal treatment.  Believe me, I understand where the anger and bitterness 
come from.  I've been in the real world as long as anybody else.  We need to 
be firm and resolute when dealing with discrimination as it arises in the 
media, the courts, etc.  But meeting injustice with anger on the streets 
from day to day only leads to public confusion when often, the people who 
receive the anger are only trying to be helpful.

For example, my boyfriend offered assistance to a blind man not long ago who 
was literally about to step out into the street in front of an oncoming city 
bus.  The man snapped at him, saying it was wrong to assume that he needed 
help just because he was blind and that he knew exactly where he was going 
and how to get there.

My boyfriend--okay, diplomacy isn't his best trait--backed off and told him 
that if he was on a career path to becoming a hood ornament, he was headed 
in exactly the right direction, good luck.  I don't know for sure that the 
blind man was affiliated with the NFB, but he had the typical "I don't need 
sighted help" attitude and the super long cane.  He could have been.

As far as the super long canes go, they don't work for me.  I've been given 
a lot of crap for that by blind people I know.  I'm a slower traveler since 
I lost the last of my light perception and developed fibromyalgia and other 
health problems, which I've also been hassled for, but it is what it is.
Frankly, I don't understand those long canes as a symbol of blind strength 
or anything else.  I've been told they can make a person travel faster.  If 
that works for some people, more power to them, but why does that make the 
long canes a symbol of anything?  When I went to a State of Colorado NFB 
convention, the only thing the long canes seemed to be a symbol of was the 
license to ram other people in the ankles and crowd them out of the way in 
the food line.  It would seem to me that a telescoping cane would work 
better in most situations because it could be folded up and put out of the 
way.  I really am open to an explanation.

Jo Elizabeth

"The Bright Side of Darkness"
is my newly published novel,
available in Kindle, audio, and paperback formats at Amazon.com.
-----Original Message-----
From: Kane Brolin via BlParent
Sent: Saturday, February 20, 2016 8:40 AM
To: Blind Parents Mailing List
Cc: Kane Brolin
Subject: Re: [blparent] Introduction and a Question from the origenater

On 2/19/16, Elizabeth Bowden via BlParent <blparent at nfbnet.org> wrote:
> I'd like to let everyone know that I am also blind, and wanted the
> informN as much as > the mother does.  Also, she is having a problem
> with her email, so I offered to join the > list first so she could see
> what an email discussion list is like.
> Just my 2 cents worth.

Thank you, Elizabeth.  I have seen you on some other lists before, though I 
generally lurk on lists more than I participate.

I have come to love the Federation and its subsidiary groups, and I even am 
a leader on a small scale.  But I have to say that for me this has been an 
acquired taste, because some Federationists overreach and cut off our nose 
to spite our face.

One time in the early '90s, I came to visit a chapter meeting in the heart 
of Chicago, carrying a telescoping cane that I had purchased through what is 
now the Independence Market.  Without even knowing me, a veteran member of 
that chapter accused me of "folding up your blindness" because I was not 
carrying the full-length, long cane (which in my case stands about 70 inches 
high).  I knew I would be riding back and forth on trains, sitting at a 
crowded outdoor café, etc.  So I just decided to bring the telescoping cane 
with me--as much for convenience as for anything else.  But somehow this man 
thought that I probably was trying to hide my blindness from the world or 
de-emphasize it by choosing a cane whose length I could collapse.
Utterly ridiculous, as I've dealt with blindness my entire life--some times 
more effectively than others--but I've never had an issue with owning up to 
this characteristic or with sharing my coping techniques (or other 
resources) with those who are curious.  And, being total, it's not as though 
I've ever been able to hide it.  What's more,  the style of telescoping cane 
I purchased, had been recommended to me by none other than Dr. Jernigan 
himself, whom I'd met face to face the prior year. Experiences like this one 
were one factor in my not joining up with the Federation actively for more 
than 20 years of my adult life.

I don't believe in watering down our principles.  But I think it's best to 
practice the Stephen Covey maxim of "Seek first to understand before being 
understood."

I will say nothing further in or about this thread.  Thank you for your 
indulgence.

-Kane

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