[stylist] Congrads, Jim

[Donna Hill]

Great article, Jim! This is just what we need to educate the public! 
Thanks, Robert, for posting it here. I knew it was in the latest 
Monitor, but haven't gotten to it yet.
Donna Hill

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Robert Leslie Newman wrote:
> Yes, Jim! I just went on to the NFB-org site and found the December BM and
> there was your  article! In fact, I pasted it in below-
>
> Braille Monitor                                                    December
> 2009
> (back) (contents) (next) 
>
> A Meet the Blind Month Coup for the NFB of Kansas
>
> >From the Editor: The following profile of Jim and Lynda Canaday appeared in
> Lawrence, Kansas, Journal World and News on Monday, October 12, 2009. The
> reporter communicated exactly the message we hope to spread during this
> month-long effort to educate the public about their blind neighbors. We
> reprint it here with permission:
>
> Keenly Attuned Blind Couple Have Different Way of Looking at Things
>
> by Kevin Anderson 
>
>
> Jim and Lynda Canaday live with their dog Darby in North Lawrence. The
> couple need little assistance in living independently and are active members
> of the community. Jim has been blind since age thirteen, and Linda has been
> blind since shortly after birth. 
>
> {Sidebar} Meet the blind
> October is Meet the Blind Month. The local chapter of the National
> Federation of the Blind will host a White Cane Safety Walk at noon Saturday
> at 11th and Massachusetts streets in Lawrence.
>
> The walk will involve blind people gathering near South Park and then
> walking through downtown to raise awareness of the importance of white canes
> and guide dogs. {End Sidebar}
>
>
> In addition to using a timer, Jim Canaday sniffs steaming bratwursts to help
> determine whether they are done. He prefers to grill his brats, but rainy
> weather prevented outdoor cooking this day. It's boiled bratwursts for lunch
> today. No, that's not the best way to cook them. Jim Canaday knows this.
> Grilling them outside is far preferable. But what are you gonna do? It's
> raining in North Lawrence. So Canaday-in his kitchen that is crowded by pans
> of resting bagel dough-sets a pot to boil. He comes back to check it. He
> lightly touches the plastic handle of the pot and feels the vibration of
> bubbling water. Now it is ready.
>
> But still he's talking about what was not meant to be. The high flames of a
> grill. The heat of ash-covered charcoal. "Oh, you use charcoal?" his visitor
> asks with surprise. 
>
> Canaday smiles a bit like a true barbecuer would. "Oh yeah, you get much
> better flavor," Canaday says with a bit of inflection in his own voice,
> surprised that the questioner didn't know that.
>            
>
> Who would have thought that expressing surprise that a blind guy uses a
> charcoal grill was silly? Come to find out, it was. "People overestimate how
> much trouble blindness really is," Canaday says.When Jim and his wife Lynda
> leave their North Lawrence home for a walk-he walks at least fourteen blocks
> every day-they notice which way the wind is blowing. 
>
> They notice the sound of the grain elevator, which is different from the
> sound of the chemical plant; the rushing water over the dam; the whistles of
> the trains; a spot where the pavement has a rough edge to it that marks the
> end of the bridge.
>
> Jim has been blind since he was thirteen. Prior to that he had limited
> sight, but an infection took that from him in a week's time. Lynda has been
> blind since she was born prematurely and placed in an incubator with too
> bright a light.
>
> The North Lawrence details are more than just scenery to Jim and Lynda.
> Every little sound or feel helps guide them home each day. "It is all about
> getting good at mental mapping," Jim said. "Sighted people take things for
> granted because you can just look at a map." But it is about more than just
> having a good memory. Jim credits his father-who died when Jim was
> sixteen-for showing him the world. "He insisted I get out and go," Jim said.
> "We built our own house, and he had me climbing on the roof and doing all
> sorts of things."
>
> And Jim insists that, if he hadn't gone blind, he never would have attended
> college. Before he went blind in the eighth grade, he never learned Braille.
> Reading was extremely difficult. After he learned Braille, he became a
> voracious reader and learner. He has a master's in clinical psychology from
> Kansas University.
>
> Growing up in Southern California, Lynda was the only blind person on the
> campus of Hollywood High. But she already had learned much about the world
> by standing in her mother's kitchen as a young girl. "I would watch her
> cook," Lynda said. "I would listen to her, and then I would take my play
> dishes and make the same noises she would make. I would always ask her,
> 'What are you doing, what are you doing? Can I do it, can I do it?'"
>
> Evidently she could. She cooked her family's Thanksgiving dinner at the age
> of 7. Lynda ended up spending a good part of her adult life as a
> professional voice coach and singer, performing at Los Angeles night clubs
> six nights per week. A medical condition unrelated to her blindness
> ultimately caused her to give up her career, although she does work as a
> part-time voice instructor.
>
> A serious heart problem has caused Jim to largely remain unemployed for the
> last several years, though he serves as an officer for the local chapter of
> the National Federation of the Blind and is a member of the city's Public
> Transit Advisory Committee. "Coping with blindness doesn't mean that we're
> unusual or gifted or particularly intelligent," Jim said. "It means that we
> had good training, and we did the get-up-and-go thing." Jim is washing a
> load of clothes. He's doing it carefully. Not because he's blind. Because
> he's a husband. "I have to make sure I don't get anything of Lynda's in
> here," Jim says. A previous mishap has made that clear. "I used to let him
> do it, but I ended up with a lot of clothes that weren't the color I thought
> they were," Lynda says.
>
> So Jim sorts carefully, feeling fabric to determine whether it is a towel or
> one of his wife's blouses. Then he touches the large washer knob that has
> about a dozen different settings. He remembers where the various settings
> are around the dial, and he lightly runs his index finger around its edge.
> His finger stops above the blue indicator line. It is just a thin coat of
> blue paint on the dial-the same as on any normal washing machine. But Jim's
> finger feels the slight variation in texture on the dial, and with that he
> can set the washer on the right setting. Well maybe Lynda wouldn't go that
> far.
>
> He fills the detergent cup to the right level by sticking his finger in the
> cup and pouring until the liquid reaches his knuckle. It is just one of many
> tricks of the trade. He grabs one bottle of Dr Pepper and a same-sized
> bottle of Diet Coke. He shows how the ridges along the side of the cap of
> the Dr Pepper bottle are closer together than those on the Diet Coke bottle.
> Lynda salts her tomato by taking off the lid of the shaker and grabbing a
> pinch or two with her fingers.
>
> Jim grabs items off the shelf with confidence because he knows where each
> item is supposed to be. That's not Lynda's favorite practice. It can get
> risky, and she's implemented a system for putting Braille labels on most of
> the kitchen's cans. (Groceries are delivered by Checkers grocery store each
> week.) It is worth the hour it takes with the couple's Braille machine,
> which looks a bit like a typewriter.
>
> "I once knew a guy who didn't [label], and he called each dinner, `dinner
> roulette,'" Lynda said. "It was like 'oh, what's this? String beans. What's
> this? Applesauce.' I told myself I was never going to do that."
>
> There's a bit of Braille elsewhere. A small brass plaque that hangs from the
> wall and asks God to bless this home is a noticeable piece of Braille. The
> other photos and wall hangings, however, have no Braille elements. Yes,
> their walls are heavily decorated: photos of family members, artwork made by
> an aunt or an uncle, sentimental pieces that adorn many walls in many other
> homes.
>
> The couple's conversation is peppered with phrases that may surprise. They
> often talk about not being able to see something. Jim described his previous
> white cane as being so dingy that it "looked like" it had been through a
> nuclear blast.
>
> Sometimes, a person can almost forget. Like when Lynda was talking about how
> Jim previously did not use Braille tags to identify the color of his clothes
> in his closet. So he didn't use to be such a good dresser? Lynda laughs. "I
> don't know," she says. "I couldn't see him."
>
> In reality there's much the sighted can't see about the blind. When people
> who are blind close their eyes, do they dream in pictures? Can any words
> ever describe the color red? Does curiosity ever become too heavy a burden?
> "I used to think more about what things looked like than I do now," Lynda
> said.
>
> But she believes she has a good idea of the outside world. Growing up at
> camps for the blind, there was a heavy emphasis on touching their
> surroundings. Trees, leaves, even a garter snake one summer. And yes, she
> dreams. She dreams in colors although she doesn't know if her blue is the
> rest of the world's blue. But her dreams are detailed. She knows an apple is
> one color of red and cinnamon is another.
>
> For Jim it is different. "I remember colors, but to be perfectly honest, it
> has been thirty-seven years now," said Jim, who is fifty. "I have to really
> work to remember colors." But as the colors of a sunset fade away from
> memory, Jim insists that it does not create a sinking feeling. His life is
> not one filled with frustration. "Everybody faces a certain amount of
> frustration in their lives," Jim said. "We happen to be made so we don't
> see. That means we have certain issues. "But to me blindness is a
> characteristic, much like height, skin color, and hair color. If you are
> five-foot-six and you really want to be the starting forward on your
> basketball team, you probably are going to have some frustration. You can
> either fret about that or move on and invent a vaccine or something."
>
> In the North Lawrence home that he's never seen, there is much about life
> that is too good to fret over. As his visitor gets ready to leave, the topic
> of the grill comes back up. He missed that today. The temperature-according
> to his computer that has a speaker and an electronic voice that communicates
> what's on the screen-was forty-nine degrees outside. But in reality it is
> more than just the weather that keeps him away from the grill. Since he's
> moved to North Lawrence, it has become difficult to grill because of all the
> noise--the trains and everything else. The only safe way for Jim to grill is
> with his ears. But it's also the enjoyable way.
>
> "If you have charcoal, lump them all together and light them. Give them
> eight to ten minutes to settle down, and then close your eyes and tip your
> ear to them," he says to his visitor. "You'll hear crackle and pop, but you
> won't hear a hiss. Come back when your total time is fifteen, twenty
> minutes, twenty-two tops, and you're going to hear a little hiss. That's
> going to tell you, 'Oh, I can take a stick and separate the charcoals
> because it is all caught now.' Yeah." Oh, how much you miss by being able to
> see.
>
>
> (back) (contents) (next) 
>
>
> Robert Leslie Newman 
> Email- newmanrl at cox.net
> THOUGHT PROVOKER Website- 
> Http://www.thoughtprovoker.info
>
>
>
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