[nabs-l] WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THIS?

[Andi]

i   read this article, and was excited about this womans success but was 
angry about how the writer of the article portrayed her!  I have also been 
rongly portrayed in newspaper articals as I am sure many of you have.  I 
find news papers like to make a spectical of any one with a "disability" 
that does anything remotely normal and even more of a side show of someone 
who does something most "able bodied" people would have trouble doing.  This 
makes me angry because they take a positive advancement for the blind and 
turn it in to a condescension of the blind.  How do you all feel about this 
and other articals like it.  Do you have any sugjestions on how to redirect 
it back to a positive to the world?


Blind chef gains national acclaim
local/article_9884f76e-5023-11df-a9be-001cc4c03286 frame
local/article_9884f76e-5023-11df-a9be-001cc4c03286 frame end
the quad-city times

FORMER MOLINE RESIDENT COOKS AT GOURMET RESTAURANT IN CHICAGO

Blind chef gains national acclaim

Kay Luna | Posted: Sunday, April 25, 2010 2:15 am

Laura Martinez reaches out her hands, delicately running her fingers atop 
the kitchen counter and across several sharp knives and a vegetable grater.

She isn't afraid of getting cut.

She never does, Martinez says.

Picking up a very large knife, she feels the top of the blade.

"This one is for vegetables," the 25-year-old former resident of Moline 
softly says. "It has ridges."

The other knife is even longer and heavier. She picks it up, explaining that 
this one is called a chef's knife and she uses it to cut meat.

But right now, Martinez needs to dice some fresh parsley. So, she feels 
around on the counter again for the cutting board, using her sense of touch 
to make
sure the parsley is lined up just right.

Then, without an ounce of fear, she begins chopping up the parsley with the 
fast-moving technique employed by professional chefs - because she is one.

Martinez works as a chef in the kitchen of Charlie Trotter's, an exclusive 
gourmet restaurant in Chicago.

She also happens to be blind.

Fast learner gets inspiration

When Martinez was little, she did not realize she was different from anyone 
else. She thought everyone lived in darkness. She adapted to it.

She wanted to become a surgeon someday.

"I always liked knives," she said with a smile.

When she got older, she learned that she had been diagnosed with retinal 
blastoma, a type of cancer of the eyes, as a very young child. That is what 
caused
her blindness.

Doctors removed one eye. Then the chemotherapy and radiation used to treat 
the cancer ultimately ruined the vision in her other eye.

Martinez cannot see anything. She cannot even detect light.

In fact, she cannot remember ever seeing anything at all. She uses her 
active imagination instead.

She is also a fast learner, which came in handy after spending her early 
childhood in a Mexican town that did not have a school for the blind or 
special
education classes. The closest school she could have attended was a 
three-hour car ride away.

So, she stayed home and never learned to read or write in Spanish, English 
or Braille until the family moved to Moline. She began her formal education 
at the
age of 10.

Martinez caught up eventually, blossoming even more when she reached Moline 
High School and met her one-on-one education aide, Pam McDermott. The two 
spent
every school day together, starting when Martinez was 15, and they remain 
very close.

McDermott spent a lot of time talking to Martinez, describing situations and 
reading her books about the blind-and-deaf pioneer Helen Keller and other 
people
who overcame life's challenges.

Martinez's mother does not speak English. Neither did her late father.

McDermott found herself explaining so many unexpected things to the quiet, 
shy teenager - such as what flirting is and how some people have different 
skin
colors. She hated to be the one to tell her, but the subject came up at 
school.

Martinez began to dream about her future, but she faced people who told her, 
"You can't do that. You're blind. There's no way," she said.

"Kids would not come near me," Martinez said. "I was afraid to talk or do 
anything. But I don't give up."

McDermott's influence helped open a whole new world of possibilities for 
her, Martinez said.

She learned to play piano. She moved away to take life-skills classes for 
the blind. She took community college classes.

She dreamed about becoming a psychologist.

Eventually her interest turned to cooking. She figured it might be a little 
like surgery. Why not give it a try?

Martinez knew she would have to work harder than most to

convince people that she could work as a chef. And she was up to the 
challenge.

"I don't give up," she said.

Culinary school brings challenges

Martinez applied to the Le Cordon Bleu Culinary School in Chicago, an 
open-enrollment institution where most people are accepted as students but 
not everyone
graduates from the program, said Marshall Shafkowitz, the school's vice 
president of academic affairs and student services. The curriculum is tough.

So was Shafkowitz, who admits he was "the biggest skeptic" when it came to 
considering how a blind student could succeed at Le Cordon Bleu. The school 
had
never enrolled a visually impaired student before Martinez, he said.

Initially, he was concerned how her presence in the classroom might impact 
the other students' learning. Then he worried about how the teachers could 
present
the same curriculum, without lowering their standards, but do so in a way 
that would accommodate her.

He did not know whether she could handle the fast-paced environment of 
working in a commercial kitchen, which is so much different than cooking at 
home.

"It's a faster pace, with bigger knives and a lot more fire," he said.

After watching Martinez at school and witnessing her "drive and desire" to 
become a chef, Shafkowitz said he was amazed. He said her heightened focus 
via
the other senses, in the absence of sight, is her "superpower."

"Her sense of touch is amazing," he said. "The only way I can describe it is 
the touch that a surgeon has when they're working on your organs. She just
has that delicate way with a knife."

"She's not going to let anything hold her back," he added. "I think that's 
90 percent of who Laura is. Nobody's going to tell her no."

The school hired an aide to help her get around. She labeled things in 
Braille.

Mostly, though, she learned by using her hands to feel everything - 
especially the food she was preparing and cooking. She uses her sense of 
smell to figure
out which spices to use. She uses both senses to determine whether meat and 
other dishes are done.

Her favorite culinary class was the one in which she learned how to debone 
chicken and take the fat off beef before cutting it into chunks and feeding 
it
into a grinder. The teacher asked everyone to close their eyes and feel the 
joints and bones, the meat and the fat. That's how they learned where and 
what
to cut, Martinez said.

"Fat feels different. It feels slippery, kind of like Jell-O," she said. "I 
focus on the smell, sound and the feel."

An article about the school's first blind student was published in the 
Chicago Tribune during December, which inspired the "CBS Evening News" to 
feature
her on national television. During the filming of that segment, CBS brought 
along internationally famous chef Charlie Trotter.

They hoped he would observe Martinez in the kitchen and maybe give her some 
advice.

What he ended up giving her was a job offer: to work as a chef at his 
exclusive Charlie Trotter's restaurant in Chicago. No one expected that, 
least of
all Martinez.

"It's a big honor for me," she said. "It's very exclusive."

Rochelle Smith Trotter, a spokeswoman for the Charlie Trotter Corp., said 
Chef Trotter was very taken by Martinez's

passion for food and her strong determination - "two attributes which he 
utilizes to evaluate any potential team member," she said.

Martinez graduated Feb. 11 from Le Cordon Bleu. A week later, she began 
working at Trotter's, where she is familiarizing herself with the kitchen 
and the
restaurant's French-contemporary gourmet cuisine.

"We use very expensive herbs from all over the world," she said, sniffing 
assorted spices in plastic containers at her childhood home in Moline.

She kept picking up the spices and putting them down, hunting for just the 
right one to season the sauce for her lasagna.

"Where's the salt?" she asked.

Still dreaming

Reaching her arms out in front of her, feeling for walls or other obstacles 
she might bump into, Martinez moves around the kitchen in Moline. She is 
lost
because her family recently remodeled.

"Where is the trash can?" she asks.

She feels around until she finds the sink to wash her hands, which she does 
repeatedly. She needs to stay cleaner than a sighted person, she says, for 
food
safety and sanitation reasons. That is because she touches the food that she 
cooks a lot.

Sometimes she browses cookbooks written in Braille or recorded on CD, but 
she likes to make up her own dishes or give her own special twist to an old 
favorite.
For example, she added grated jalapeno pepper to her lasagna, just to give 
it some kick, she said.

She imagines herself someday opening a restaurant in Miami, offering a mix 
of French, Italian, Mexican and Asian cuisines. She would call the place La 
Diosa,
which, she said, is Spanish for "The Goddess."

To those who might scoff at the idea, she says, "I'm not giving up."

 Skeptics don't discourage her. They just "give me the energy to fight," she 
added.

"I just say, 'I have to work harder to show you that I can.' "

--------------------------------------------------
From: "Jewel S." <herekittykat2 at gmail.com>
Sent: Monday, May 03, 2010 1:42 PM
To: "National Association of Blind Students mailing list" 
<nabs-l at nfbnet.org>
Subject: Re: [nabs-l] canes and increasing sensation of blindness

> Hi,
>
> I use my cane while holding someone's arm all the time. However, I do
> not consider it "sighted guide" so much as keeping with my friend who
> knows the way...especially since the person who usually does this with
> me is my legally blind boyfriend. I hold his arm for balance
> primarily, and to keep track of where he is, as I have no peripheral
> vision. As we walk, he might point things out to me that I would miss
> with my cane no matter what (the mailboxes that stick out at
> head-height, the wet branches in front of my face, etcetra). I use my
> cane so he can concentrate on where we are going and things in front
> of us. I find the curbs and steps on my own, and sometimes if the
> light is too low, I find curbs and such for the both of us, as he is
> not as good with the cane (lack of practice!).
>
> I find that if I take someone's arm, I am far less likely to learn the
> route. I have done entire routes on someone's arm that, looking back,
> I couldn't tell you the first thing. This is partly because of my poor
> memory, but also because when I hold someone's arm, unless I'm in
> charge of navigation (which does occur sometimes), I let that work go,
> and concentrate more on balance, what my cane is finding, and sounds.
> I can enjoy myself a bit better this way.
>
> Personally, I think holding someone's arm and using a cane at the same
> time is perfectly fine. That's just my opinion, so feel free to shoot
> me down, but that won't stop me from doing it myself! I don't like to
> put all the responsibility on the other person, no matter how good a
> guide they are...though there is one exception. My O&M instructor
> would do sighted guide with me to get quickly to a location, and my
> cane just got in his way, and he was very good at guiding (he better
> be, since he teaches other people how to be sighted guides, too!), so
> I allow my cane to remain at my side, ready to pull out if I should
> need it, but I put my trust in him.
>
> ~Jewel
>
> On 5/3/10, clinton waterbury <clinton.waterbury at gmail.com> wrote:
>> As far as the cane issue goes, when I was about three years of age, I
>> started learning how to use the cane.
>>
>> The only problem was that I would flat out refuse to use it until the 
>> time I
>> was about five.
>>
>> The travel instructor finally said "Ok, you don't want to use it?  I'll 
>> take
>> it from you."
>>
>> At that point, I tried and faled miserably to walk around without it!
>>
>> At the day's end, I did get the cane back, and have been using it ever
>> since.
>> On May 2, 2010, at 4:49 PM, Gerardo Corripio wrote:
>>
>>> Hi guys: I'm curious as to is it fine to use a cane while going sighted
>>> guide with someone? for instance suppose the person whom I'm going with
>>> has
>>> never done sighted guide with a blind person, thus doesn't know to alert
>>> us
>>> of steps and the like. So I was thinking that if this technique is fine 
>>> to
>>>
>>> use it can serve two purposes:
>>> 1.-Be able to go along sighted guide but at the same time being able to
>>> oneself find and sort obstacles the sighted person might not have the 
>>> mind
>>>
>>> to let us know.
>>> 2.-Be able to start mapping in our minds the route following, thus make 
>>> it
>>>
>>> easier to get to know the route by ourselves.
>>> Also I've got another subject on my mind, thus sending in the same 
>>> email:
>>> Is
>>> it normal that when using a cane I have conflict in using it? though I
>>> know
>>> the cane is how we get around by ourselves thanks to a bad experience
>>> while
>>> studying for a diploma in Humanistic Therapy some years ago in that when 
>>> I
>>>
>>> wanted to use the cane again after some years of having it dusting, I 
>>> held
>>>
>>> it in my hand but wasn't able to use it at ease because memories of the
>>> experience came flooding back. fortunately I've been able to work them 
>>> out
>>>
>>> but am curious as to know if this has happened to you guys? It's a
>>> conflict
>>> because for one I'm aware that the cane makes us unique as blind people
>>> and
>>> lets us move around by ourselves but also because here in Mexico the 
>>> blind
>>>
>>> aren't viewed as equals in some respects, thus when using the cane gives
>>> me
>>> the feeling that lets blindness show even more, making the sighted 
>>> people
>>> feel ill at ease; speaking from experience in another country when I 
>>> know
>>> in
>>> the US you guys don't have to cope with these things because of how
>>> advanced
>>> you guys are in the work you've done all these years. some day I hope to
>>> be
>>> able to be like you guys and really live by your standards, thus hoping
>>> these questions bring on a good discussion from which more than one 
>>> might
>>> learn something new and enrich the topic of appreciating our roots 
>>> brought
>>>
>>> on recently.
>>> Gerardo
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
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>>
>>
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>>
>
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