[Nfbmo] Fw: [Chapter-presidents] Letter to the Editor Concerning "Dining

DanFlasar at aol.com DanFlasar at aol.com
Fri Mar 12 18:33:50 UTC 2010


I agree completely with the stance  taken in the letter written in response 
to a report on a fund-raiser
for a group fighting blindness that featured a blindfolded dinner for  
attendees.  I however, think that the letter
partially missed the point of the exercise.  Of course blindfolding  
someone for an hour - or even all day - 
doesn't give anyone a real sense of what permanent blindness is like - but  
it can do a really good job des-
cribing the fear a person feels when they experience - for the first  time 
- loss of vision, and that was
the real point of the exercise - to induce in potential donors the feeling  
of impending global loss that can arise
from the prospect of loss of some vital function.  I think anyone here  
would feel the same fear in learning
that they will soon be deaf, or that they will lose a limb.  
     Of course we can learn to cope later, but a group  dedicated to 
*fighting* blindness does not address how
to manage, despite medical efforts, life after blindness.    That's the job 
of the NFB, among other groups and
agencies.   It would not make sense to not try to take  better care of your 
diabetes to keep from losing your
vision because blindness can be very successfully minimized  afterwards.  I 
think the exercise is perfectly
valid for the purposes of increasing donations to the group seeking a cure  
for RP.  
      I'll never forget the absolute terror I felt  when, in preparation 
for an ERG, I was placed, blindfolded, in
a chair in a busy hospital corridor at Massachusetts Eye and Ear  Hospital. 
  Being completely sightless 
for the first time, alone, with the world going by normally, I was within  
seconds of completely panic when
a person next to me noticed my anxiety and brought the nurse who took me  
into a quiet room to regroup.
     And I'll never forget the hope, courage and relief  I experienced when 
I found, a few months later, an
article by Kenneth Jernigan called "A Philosophy of Blindness".    His 
clear and consistent explanation of
life without sight made me realize that, as with so many things, deciding  
our life is ruined by something is
pretty much always premature.   That article led me to the  NFB.
      Yes, we can get along fine without sight,  but that doesn't mean that 
we mustn't try to prevent sight loss
by addressing its preventable causes.
     
 
 
In a message dated 3/12/2010 11:37:24 A.M. Central Standard Time,  
msievert at sbcglobal.net writes:

I agree,  simply blind-folding people will give them a "sense" of 
blindness, but not the  "learned skills".

Sort of like trying to have a sighted person explain  to us what it is like 
to see with two eyes and good vision. We can try to  perceive a world with 
good vision, but we can never completely  understand.

As I get older i realize how limited my sight is, and how  much I rely upon 
the skills I have learned over the years.

Being  visually impaired is an interesting experience. You learn a lot of 
neat  things. 

I am glad events such as the one below exist and raises a good  amount of 
funds.

Matt




On Mar 12, 2010, at 11:12 AM,  "fred olver" <goodfolks at charter.net> wrote:


----- Original  Message ----- From: "fred olver" <goodfolks at charter.net>
To: "NFB  Chapter Presidents discussion list"  
<chapter-presidents at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Friday, March 12, 2010 10:11  AM
Subject: Re: [Chapter-presidents] Letter to the Editor Concerning  "Dining 
in theDark"


I have read with great interest the article and  your letter which you sent 
to the newspaper, however I would take issue with  your statement "I am 
writing to comment on the article "Awareness Was the Main  Course" by Laura 
Reiley that appeared in the March 10 Metro section of the  St.
Petersburg times. As a blind person, I often meet people who are amazed  by 
the fact that I can perform even the simplest of tasks. Generally this  
attitude
is based on their own experience attempting to perform the same  task 
without eyesight and failing at it miserably. ." I would contend that as  stated 
in my book "dealing With Vision Loss," published 2007 through  Author-House 
and also available from  my website  http://www.dealingwithvisionloss.com 
that the problem is that most seeing  folks when confronted with either a 
blind-fold experience or with dealing with  with a person who is blind can for 
the most part, only think of how it would  be for them or how they would 
react if they lost their vision or a large  portion of it. The problem is not 
blindness, but their perception of it, from  their perspective. Sure, it is 
easy or easier for most of us to say that  blindness is insignificant, but 
look at what we know, the education we have  received, the training, the 
adaptive aids we have learned to use.

Fred  Olver
----- Original Message -----  From: Marion Gwizdala
To: NFB  Chapter presidents
Sent: Friday, March 12, 2010 7:55 AM
Subject:  [Chapter-presidents] Letter to the Editor Concerning "Dining in  
theDark"


Dear All,
Pasted below is an article that  appeared in the March 10 issue of the St. 
Petersburg (Florida) Times  concerning a fund raising event for the 
Foundation Fighting Blindness and the  Letter to the Editor I wrote.

fraternally yours,
Marion Gwizdala,  President
National Association of Guide Dog Users
National Federation of  the  Blind
813-598-7161
President at NFB-NAGDU.ORG
HTTP://NFB-NAGDU.ORG



Awareness  Was the Main Course
by Laura Reiley
Published in the St. Petersburg  Times
March 10, 2010

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.
Mary Lou  Johnson Evans was there for a similar reason. Her 14-year-old son,
Josh,  suffers from the same disease.
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.
Laura Reiley can be  reached at
lreiley at sptimes.com
or (727) 892-2293.
March 11,  2010
Dear Editor,

I am  writing to comment on the article "Awareness Was the Main Course" by 
Laura  Reiley that appeared in the March 10 Metro section of the St.
Petersburg  times. As a blind person, I often meet people who are amazed by 
the fact that  I can perform even the simplest of tasks. Generally this 
attitude
is based  on their own experience attempting to perform the same task 
without eyesight  and failing at it miserably. It is for this reason that most 
blind
people  are opposed to using the type of simulation exercises featured in 
this  article. Blindfolding a sighted person and asking them to perform even  
a
simple task does not, as the article purports, give a person any  awareness 
of what the life of a blind person is like. In fact, such exercises  only 
serve
to reinforce the misconceptions and promulgate the myths about  blindness 
that create the social, legal, and economic barriers that prevent us  from 
achieving
true equality with our sighted peers. Those of us who are  blind have 
developed an array of non-visual techniques to perform activities  of daily 
living,
such as eating, just as effectively as sighted people do  using eyesight. 
Blindfolding a sighted person and asking them to perform a  task is like 
putting
someone in the cockpit of a jetliner and telling them  to fly! Lacking the 
proper skills, the results of both would be  disastrous!

The real problem  of blindness is not the lack of eyesight; rather it is 
the manner in which we  are treated as the result of the misconceptions
people have about  blindness. If one really wants to find out what life is 
like for a blind  person, there is no need to don a blindfold! All one needs 
to
do is carry a  white cane, the international symbol of blindness,  and go 
about their  everyday life. Then they would feel the crushing insults  of  
public
misperception that blind people, except for those few who are  believed to 
be amazing and extraordinary, are innately ignorant and helpless.  They would
experience the waitress who asks a five year old what the blind  adult 
wants to drink. They would encounter the librarian who admonishes them  for going
out alone, thus exposing them to the hazards of opening a door.  They would 
be confronted by the Employer who inquires about who will bring  them to 
work.
They would learn that even well educated doctors are so  ignorant as to ask 
them who bathes them! Though you might want to minimize  these incidents 
away,
they are examples of the type of ignorance I - and  other blind people - 
encounter on a regular, almost daily,  basis!

I am not asserting  that eyesight is not beneficial nor that the work of 
the Foundation Fighting  Blindness is not valuable. What concerns me
is that organizations that  assert they want to "serve the blind" do us 
such a disservice by reinforcing  the public misconceptions and fears that 
create
the problems we face. I am  all for raising money to cure retinal 
degenerative diseases, especially since  the condition that has caused my blindness, 
that
of my 14-year-old nephew ,  and several other members of my family is 
retinitis Pigmentosa. I am, however,  opposed to creating the type of fear and 
pity
that results from  blindfolding people for the purpose of raising money! 
Such a practice is as  offensive to me as a black-faced minstrel would be to an
African American!  These misconceptions are the reason fewer than 10% of 
blind children are  learning to read and write Braille, producing functionally 
illiterate
blind  adults. These fears and misconceptions are the reason that the 
unemployment  rate among the blind is more than 70%!

The veracity of my concerns are supported by the numerous  inaccurate 
statements made by the author who has bought into the false  perceptions
of the blind. Does she really believe that "other senses are  heightened" 
by taking away one's sight or "; texture became paramount" as the  result of 
simulated
blindness? Does she really believe that blindfolding  participants "gave 
all assembled a greater window into the world of the  sightless"? Does she 
really
believe that blind people go through life  "bumbling" their ways around or 
did she just irresponsibly promulgate the  pitiful stereotype in an effort to
sell your newspapers like the Foundation  Fighting Blindness did to sell 
themselves and selfishly generate  revenue  with no concern about the social 
consequences
of their  actions?

The belief that  blind people are endowed with heightened senses and 
special powers is a myth.  Blind people simply learn to use their other senses
and alternative  techniques to perform the tasks sighted people do with 
eyesight. Like any  skill, these techniques are generally not acquired in a 
half-hour
nor  mysteriously and supernaturally endowed. However, these skills enable 
blind  people to function independently, efficiently, and effectively. In  
fact,
the average blind person can perform the same tasks as their sighted  peers 
as well, if not better, by employing these alternative techniques. Our  
blindness
is not the problem. The real problem of blindness is the  misunderstanding 
and lack of information that exists. If a blind person is  given proper 
training
and opportunity, blindness is only a physical  nuisance.

In the future, when  your paper is doing a story about blindness, it would 
be helpful to get  accurate information and the perspective of a blind
person who is qualified  to speak to these issues by being chosen by the 
blind to speak on their  behalf. The National Federation of the Blind is the 
oldest
and largest  organization of the blind in the United States. We are not an 
organization  that speaks on behalf of the blind; we are the blind speaking  
for
ourselves. For accurate information about blindness or the blind,  please 
feel free to get in touch with me or visit one of our websites  at

HTTP://WWW.NFB.ORG

Or

HTTP://WWW.NFB-NAGDU.ORG

Respectfully  yours,

Marion Gwizdala, President

National Association of Guide  Dog Users

National Federation of the  Blind

813-598-7161

President at NFB-NAGDU.ORG




----------------------------------------------------------------------------
--


_______________________________________________
Chapter-presidents  mailing  list
Chapter-presidents at nfbnet.org
http://www.nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/chapter-presidents_nfbnet.org
To  unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for  
Chapter-presidents:
http://www.nfbnet.org/mailman/options/chapter-presidents_nfbnet.org/goodfolk
s%40charter.net


----------------------------------------------------------------------------
--



No  virus found in this incoming message.
Checked by AVG -  www.avg.com
Version: 9.0.733 / Virus Database: 271.1.1/2741 - Release Date:  03/12/10  
03:42:00


_______________________________________________
Nfbmo  mailing  list
Nfbmo at nfbnet.org
http://www.nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/nfbmo_nfbnet.org
To  unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for  
Nfbmo:
http://www.nfbnet.org/mailman/options/nfbmo_nfbnet.org/msievert%40sbcglobal.
net


_______________________________________________
Nfbmo  mailing  list
Nfbmo at nfbnet.org
http://www.nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/nfbmo_nfbnet.org
To  unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for  
Nfbmo:
http://www.nfbnet.org/mailman/options/nfbmo_nfbnet.org/danflasar%40aol.com




More information about the NFBMO mailing list