[Ct-nfb] This letter was in the New York Times

[Gary Allen]

This  letter  was  in  the New York Times on Sunday. Several people
responded  to this article  including  Mark Riccobono.

Feeling My Way Into Blindness


Blindness is enveloping. It’s beyond belief to step outside and see so
little, just a milky haze. Indoors, a smothering dark. It means that you
can’t shed a mood of loneliness with a brisk walk down the street because
you might trip, fall and break something. Nor will you see a passing
friend, the sight of whom could be as cheery as an actual conversation.
Sights, like sounds, randomly evoke a surge of memories ordinarily
inaccessible that lighten and brighten the day. “Who are you?” I may
already have asked 10 people who have spoken to me. Their body language as
well as their smiles are lost to me. Human nature is striped with
ambiguities, and you need to see them, but like a prisoner, I am hooded.

I lost my sight once before, to cataracts, a quarter-century ago, but it
was restored miraculously by surgery. It then went seriously bad again,
until, reaching 80, I needed a cane. Tap, tap. Ambulatory vision is the
technical term.

Everything becomes impromptu, hour by hour improvised. Pouring coffee so it
doesn’t spill, feeling for the john so you won’t pee on the floor, calling
information for a phone number because you can’t read the computer, or the
book. Eating takes considerable time since you can’t see your food. Feeling
for the scrambled eggs with your fingers, you fret about whether you appear
disgusting. Shopping for necessities requires help. So does traveling on a
bus.

The kindness of strangers is proverbial — a woman leads me through the
bustle of an airport toward the taxi stand, a waitress hands me back a $50
bill I mistook for a 20. Blindness is factually a handicap, yet an
empathetic one, because other people can so easily imagine themselves
suffering from it, sometimes even experiencing a rehearsal for it when
stumbling through a darkened house at night. I remember how in school we
teased students with Coke-bottle glasses, but didn’t laugh at blind folk
whose black glasses signified that they couldn’t see at all.

I know about handicaps harder to cotton to, having stuttered terribly for
decades, my face like a gargoyle’s, my mouth flabbering uncontrollably.
Blindness is old hat. In Africa you still see sightless souls led about by
children gripping the other end of a stick. Blindness in its helplessness
reassures the rest of us that that oddball is not an eyesore or a loose
cannon. Being blind is omission, not commission; and you’d better learn how
to fall. Paratrooper or tumbler training would be useful. A tumbler can tip
sideways as he lands so his hip and shoulder absorb the blow.





The ears need schooling as a locator. I search for the bathroom at night,
guided by a ticking clock whose location I recognize. As you go blind,
exasperating incongruities arise, but also the convenience of this new
excuse for shedding social obligations not desired. And you can give your
car away.

Hearing snatches of conversation from invisible voices, everything becomes
eavesdropping. Have I seen my last movie? Is the vision gone from
television? But I can still see daylight and bipedal forms, tree crowns and
running water, swirling, seething leaves against the sky-blue heavens,
which remind me of 80 years of previous gazing on several continents.
Eternal instants on Telegraph Hill, Beacon Hill, or Venice and Kampala.

Splendiferous mountain vistas of greensward and cliffs scaffold my dreams,
drawn from memories of sheep pastures in Sicily and Greece, rich with
textured sedges or tinted canyons, then bombastic skyscrapers, or Matisse’s
Chapel. So it’s flabbergastingly impoverishing to wake up in the morning.
Faces are no longer seamed, nor are raindrops stippled on the windowpane,
cats high-tailed in a turf war, postage stamps vividly illustrative. I
forget my condition and grope for my glasses, wherever they are, as if they
could solve the emergency. Blindness is an emergency; the window shades are
drawn, and one deals with it in myriad ways.



To the Editor:

Re “Feeling My Way Into Blindness” (Disability series, Sunday Review, Nov.
20):

My heart went out to Edward Hoagland when I read his essay. I remember that
I once let blindness make me a passenger in my own life. That changed when
I encountered a vast network of other blind people who convinced me that
blindness did not define me, who taught me nonvisual ways to handle
everyday and not-so-everyday tasks, and encouraged me to expect more of
myself.

Without that experience, I might still live in fear of hurting myself or
breaking things when I walk down the sidewalk, and I might regularly
mismatch my shoes and socks.

I am now a successful blind man married to a blind woman, living a rich,
full life with her and our three children, and serving as president of the
National Federation of the Blind, a membership organization of tens of
thousands of blind people.

So my next correspondence will be to Mr. Hoagland, to offer him the love
and support from an extended blind family that changed my life and can
change his.

MARK RICCOBONO

Baltimore

To the Editor:

Edward Hoagland’s view of blindness is deeply upsetting. I am a blind
student double-majoring in English and political science at Amherst College.





He describes many things as requiring help. This could not be further from
the reality of my life and that of many of my friends. I travel
independently, use assistive technology to complete my work just as
efficiently as my peers, and excel academically and socially.

Mr. Hoagland’s article furthers stereotypes of the blind as helpless and
dependent. I fear greatly how my future employers and peers might view this
article. The problems I encounter almost never have to do with my
blindness; rather, they are a result of people’s attitudes.

The band teacher who didn’t want me in his class; the fellow student who
scoffed when I said I had an interview; the institutions that view
disability not as a part of human diversity, but as a pesky legal mandate:
These are the problems.

ANNIKA ARIEL

Amherst, Mass.

To the Editor:

As I know from personal experience, adapting to vision loss is a major
challenge, and Edward Hoagland’s description of his own sense of
frustration as well as deprivation during the process rings true. But I
would disagree about the enforced passivity to which he alludes.

Recent advances in technology have greatly enhanced ways in which people
who are blind can stay connected with the world at large. For example,
portable devices with optical-character recognition software would enable
him to read a dinner menu or a printed letter with a delay of only seconds;
screen-reading software on a computer would give him access to the internet
and to social media; and a vast number of books are available in digital
format.

For many people, the loss of vision is one of the most dreaded conditions
that they might experience during their lives, and it is certainly no
picnic to deal with it, but creativity, productivity and pleasure are not
extinguished by it.


Journalism that matters.
More essential than ever.
Subscribe to the Times
STANLEY F. WAINAPEL



Bronx

The writer is clinical director of physical medicine and rehabilitation at
Montefiore Medical Center.

To the Editor:

Edward Hoagland’s reaction to blindness shows the stereotypes to which he
has been exposed during decades of sight. It is what could be called the
“first-time syndrome”: what blindness is like on Day 1.

The transition to a world without sight is far from easy, but many of us
who are blind lead productive and meaningful lives. Blindness does not cut
me off from the world. I have rich relationships with my family, fellow
worshipers, some good friends and a wide variety of email correspondents. I
am obsessed with weather.





Those of us who have learned the skills of blindness avoid falls by
properly using our canes. We plan our trips. Newly invented travel devices
tell us exactly where we are and what is around us.

Because the media insists on portraying blindness as a medical condition at
best and a tragedy at worst, many people never learn about newspapers and
periodicals available to the blind in real time by telephone, video
descriptive services, and orientation and mobility training. Easy-to-master
techniques would enable Mr. Hoagland to eat his dinner without struggling.

I sympathize with him. Society, and particularly the media, have kept him
in the dark.

MICHAEL LEVY

Woodmere, N.Y.

The writer is president of Yad Hachazakah, the Jewish Disability
Empowerment Center.

To the Editor:

Edward Hoagland’s story powerfully puts a singular face on the daunting
challenge of vision loss and blindness. But he is not alone. More than 93
million adults over 40 experience vision problems, and about one in four
children have some form of vision challenge.

We know that prevention works. But the federal government, through the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, allocates only $3.8 million a
year toward prevention of vision problems. Vision preservation has many
components (awareness, education, advocacy, screening and research), but
the fundamental task is to connect those with high risk of vision loss to
professional eye care.

On behalf of all Americans, we urge the new Trump administration and
Congress to ensure that the necessary resources are in place to support
prevention initiatives that will turn back the tide of vision problems,
save money in the long run and help prevent future stories like Mr.
Hoagland’s from ever being told.

HUGH R. PARRY

President and Chief Executive

Prevent Blindness

Chicago






-- 
Gary Allen
President
National Federation of the Blind
Of Connectucut
(860) 589-2241
garyallenct at gmail.com
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