[nfbwatlk] FW: [Wcb-l] mark in the news, lol.

Thu Aug 13 15:36:38 UTC 2009

Reminds me of all those canes lost down elevator shafts at conventions. 
Mike

-----Original Message-----
From: nfbwatlk-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:nfbwatlk-bounces at nfbnet.org] On
Behalf Of Frye, Dan
Sent: Thursday, August 13, 2009 8:18 AM
To: NFB of Washington Talk Mailing List
Subject: [nfbwatlk] FW: [Wcb-l] mark in the news, lol.

This, in the forwarded message below, is the most ridiculous use of city
time and effort that I've ever heard of in a long while. I'm glad things
worked out for Mark, of course, but in an age where we're dealing with
all kinds of social and economic issues, what is the government doing
retrieving lost items (the product of an incidental accident that could
have happened to anyone) and why is the press covering this nonsense?
And while I am fairly attached to my cane, I hardly think of it as being
such a custom fit that its loss would be consequential. To Mark's
credit, he wasn't expecting that the cane would be recovered or that
this would attract conventional press attention, but our friend
certainly does manage to get covered in the press for the most amazing
reasons.

Exasperated,

***********************
Daniel B. Frye, J.D.
Associate Editor
The Braille Monitor
National Federation of the Blind
Office of the President
1800 Johnson Street
Baltimore, Maryland 21230
Telephone: (410) 659-9314 Ext. 2208
Mobile: (410) 241-7006
Fax: (410) 685-5653
Email: DFrye at nfb.org
Web Address: www.nfb.org
"Voice of the Nation's Blind"
The Braille literacy crisis in America jeopardizes opportunities for
blind people throughout the country.
You can be part of the solution. 

-----Original Message-----
From: wcb-l-bounces at wcbinfo.org [mailto:wcb-l-bounces at wcbinfo.org] On
Behalf Of Becky Frankeberger
Sent: Thursday, August 13, 2009 10:47 AM
To: Wcb-l at wcbinfo.org
Subject: [Wcb-l] mark in the news, lol.

Hey Mark, to help you feel better I tapped apparently hard a fire
hydrant coming out of class at the University of Pittsburgh.  My friend
was driving me home, anyway. This was my only cane. Glue did not help
keep the tip on.
So I was stuck for a couple of weeks as I was a new cane user and had no
idea where to get a new one.  Being a teen I was too embarrassed to ask
my VR counselor.

Becky and my joy wheels

Blind man gets cane back after it slipped down drain A blind man who
lost his cane down a storm-sewer drain last month in West Seattle got it
back this week, with help from a watchful friend and Seattle Public
Utilities.
By
Susan Gilmore
Seattle Times staff reporter
Mark Adreon, who is blind, stands next to the West Seattle drain where
his white cane got caught and fell in.
Enlarge this photo
GREG GILBERT / THE SEATTLE TIMES
Mark Adreon, who is blind, stands next to the West Seattle drain where
his white cane got caught and fell in.
One minute Mark Adreon, who has depended on his cane to get around since
he went blind 16 years ago, was walking along an unfamiliar West Seattle
street and, in a split second, his cane was gone.
It was sucked into a storm-sewer drain, and, Adreon figured, was lost
forever.
Adreon was walking with a friend to a festival in West Seattle last
month "when my cane hit something and I started tapping and it just
dropped down the drain."
He figured it had dropped 25 feet into a sewer catch basin.
Believing the cane was gone and sad that he'd lost the one that worked
so well for him, he had to order a new one.
Enter David Gould.
Gould, who lives in the same condo building as Adreon and is a friend,
said he was sitting at his computer above the street and saw Adreon's
cane drop into the catch basin below the grate.
Like Adreon, Gould thought the cane was lost. But on Tuesday, when Gould
passed the storm sewer and looked through the grate, the cane was still
visible.
Maybe, he thought, Seattle Public Utilities could help.
Within hours, Adreon had his cane back, retrieved and cleaned by two
city workers.
"I was surprised and grateful. I certainly didn't expect it," said
Adreon, 50, who works for a state agency for the blind. "What happened
yesterday was so serendipitous.
I'm blind and you get used to a certain piece of equipment. I never
imagined [the city] would take the time or energy to rescue a cane."
Using a computer that can locate any sewer grate in the city, city
workers found the one that had swallowed the cane and sent a crew of two
to fetch it.
advertising
Click here to find out more!
\
Andy Ryan, spokesman for Seattle Public Utilities, said calls for items
lost down sewer drains are rare, only two or three each month, but this
is the first time he's heard of a cane disappearing down a sewer.
Other items that have been lost: cellphones, tools, eyeglasses, money
and jewelry.
If the city has the crew available, it will try to retrieve the items.
Crews have rescued kittens and ducklings from drains, he said, and once
there was a call to help a penguin from Woodland Park Zoo that had
fallen into a drain. It didn't survive.
Another time, a utility worker found an entire bag of groceries in a
storm drain, including hot dogs and a whole chicken.
"We do it routinely," Ryan said of retrieving lost items in drains.
"It's one of the things the crews do. If we're able to help the
customer, we will."
Ryan said the catch basins below the drains are cleaned each year, so
the cane eventually would have been pulled from the drain, but the city
would have had no idea who it belonged to if Gould had not made his
call.
"We were all pleased the city jumped on it so fast," Gould said. "The
cane is like the extra finger on a hand."
Ironically, Adreon was walking near the grate at the same time the city
workers pulled out his cane and reunited him with it.
As for Adreon, he now has a spare should a sewer grate swallow his cane
again.
Susan Gilmore:                20...        or
sgilmore at seattletimes.com
Copyright C The Seattle Times Company

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