[stylist] question

Thu Mar 26 18:50:23 UTC 2009

I would have to agree.  I find myself opening up more and being myself when 
with a group of blind folks.  With them I don't have to worry if I'm doing 
something or saying something that someone will misconstrue.
Maybe this is because on my shoulders I put the responsibility of making 
blind folks look normal.  You know, be a positive role model because if I'm 
a jerk, people will think all blind people are jerks.  I had a few 
experiences with such people in college.
When I am with blind people I feel more like we're just a group of people. 
I can put away my amazing woman cape for a while and just be me.
Barbara

If wisdom's ways you wisely seek, five things observe with care:  of whom 
you speak, to whom you speak, and how and when and where.

--------------------------------------------------
From: "John Lee Clark" <johnlee at clarktouch.com>
Sent: Thursday, March 26, 2009 1:40 PM
To: "'NFBnet Writer's Division Mailing List'" <stylist at nfbnet.org>
Subject: Re: [stylist] question

> Barbara:
>
> There were two interesting studies that may answer your question.
>
> One study was about the amount of contact people had with each other.  The
> writers came up with a nickname for a big psychological term, I forget the
> academic term, but the nickname for it was Vitmain T, T short for Tribe.
> The less contact you have--the less time, the fewer interactions, 
> etc.--the
> less vitamin T you have and it has a negative impact on your well-being.
> But the more vitamin T, the healthier your life is.  Family is important,
> but also friends, community stuff like churches or clubs, and so on.
>
> Well, the researchers found that many people were in serious decline in 
> this
> department.  Working all day in their tiny cubiles.  Family is smaller, if
> you even have one.  Not much else, certainly not on a daily or even weekly
> basis.
>
> The other article was about minorities and how people cope with
> relationships and major events.  Its basic thesis was that those in
> close-knit minority communities tended to have healthier relationships and
> tended to cope with events better, like death in the family.  Less likely 
> to
> divorce, lower rates of suicide, etc.
>
> Neither mentioned the Deaf community, but I would thinki that both apply
> very well.  I'll admit that I don't know hearing and sighted people well,
> what they're really like in mainstream life, and so I can't justly 
> compare.
> But if what I glean from memoirs, novels, and the movies I saw from when I
> could still watch movies, if hearing and sighted people are anything like
> that, then I'll take banding together.
>
> I remember a panel of grown hearing children of Deaf parents.  They said
> that though they entered into mainstream society, they always found
> themselves coming back to the Deaf community.  They said it wasn't just
> because Deaf culture is their native culture before they learned to be 
> like
> hearing people, but it also had to do with very basic things that their
> hearing families, spouses,s friends just could not provide.  For example,
> one woman's husband's mother died, and since she was close to her, she was
> just as grieved, but nobody would talk about it, everyone was so buttoned 
> up
> and keeping stuff inside.  She was bothered by this and finally could not
> stand it any longer and got in her car and drove for two days to her Deaf
> parents.  Her old Deaf friends came over there, and it was only then she
> could talk about her grief and start with the process.
>
> Maybe it was just that she didn't know how to grieve with the hearing side
> of her family and they did have a perfectly good and healthy way to do it
> and it was just that she didn't know what it was.  I dunno.  But there 
> were
> many other stories from that interesting panel that leads me to suspect 
> that
> life in mainstream society is NOT all that great and maybe is even very,
> very sick.
>
> Again, I don't know both sides firsthand.  I only know the signing 
> community
> intimately.  All of my hearing and sighted friends are signers, people who
> have adopted the signing community as their own, so they're not really 
> like
> most hearing and sighted people.  Many of them say they find our community
> to be fulfilling in ways that mainstream culture could not.  They feel 
> more
> alive, more fully human among us.
>
> Maybe you have some experience of some minority communities.  What do you
> think?
>
> John
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org] On
> Behalf Of Barbara Hammel
> Sent: Wednesday, March 25, 2009 9:01 PM
> To: NFBnet Writer's Division Mailing List
> Subject: Re: [stylist] question
>
> As much as she may be disliked, Helen Keller did say once that to be blind
> was to be cut off from things but to be deaf was to be cut off from 
> people.
> As  blind folks, we are only cut off from the things that the sighted 
> world
> find exceedingly important.  As a deaf person, one is in the world alone
> unless he wants to read lips or communicate via written word.  The deaf
> really have no choice but to band together.  Who else can speak their
> "language"?  I wish everyone were required to at least learn to finger 
> spell
>
> in school.  There is no reason why, in the advanced culture that we live,
> that deaf folks should have to feel the need to band together.
> Barbara
>
> If wisdom's ways you wisely seek, five things observe with care:  of whom
> you speak, to whom you speak, and how and when and where.
>
> --------------------------------------------------
> From: "John Lee Clark" <johnlee at clarktouch.com>
> Sent: Wednesday, March 25, 2009 12:18 AM
> To: "'NFBnet Writer's Division Mailing List'" <stylist at nfbnet.org>
> Subject: Re: [stylist] question
>
>> Jim:
>>
>> What you wrote made me wonder about something.  In academic circles, for
>> rehab of the blind, education of the blind, blind studies, and so on, are
>> there many blind researchers and professors?
>>
>> I am very fearful that the answer may be no.
>>
>> The only thing I know is that I was truly shocked to learn that the
>> Minnesota school for the blind has only one fully blind teacher.  One!
>> Compare this to the school for the deaf, where eighty percent of the 
>> staff
>> is deaf, all the way from administration down to houseparents.
>>
>> The academic journals on deafness, ASL, Deaf education, and so on, all 
>> are
>> edited by Deaf scholars and the great majority of contributors, the
>> professors and such, are Deaf.
>>
>> True, mainstreaming is prevalent, but this is most often a problem with
>> school districts wanting to keep Deaf students because they're cash cows.
>> They promise they'll provide all the resources blah blah.  But it's crap.
>>
>> Still, Deaf schools are going strong and there are many large Deaf
>> programs
>> within public schools, so there's a good social critical mass and also
>> Deaf
>> teachers there.  All the accredition programs, the teacher training
>> programs
>> for Deaf education, etc. all are run by Deaf people.
>>
>> I hope that blind people run everything, too.  If that's not the case,
>> that
>> needs to change--or am I wrong to think that would be a good thing?
>>
>> John
>>
>> No virus found in this outgoing message.
>> Checked by AVG.
>> Version: 7.5.557 / Virus Database: 270.11.26/2020 - Release Date:
>> 3/24/2009
>> 9:19 AM
>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Writers Division web site:
>> http://www.nfb-writers-division.org 
>> <http://www.nfb-writers-division.org/>
>>
>> stylist mailing list
>> stylist at nfbnet.org
>> http://www.nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/stylist_nfbnet.org
>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
>> stylist:
>>
> http://www.nfbnet.org/mailman/options/stylist_nfbnet.org/poetlori8%40msn.com
>>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Writers Division web site:
> http://www.nfb-writers-division.org <http://www.nfb-writers-division.org/>
>
> stylist mailing list
> stylist at nfbnet.org
> http://www.nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/stylist_nfbnet.org
> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
> stylist:
> http://www.nfbnet.org/mailman/options/stylist_nfbnet.org/johnlee%40clarktouc
> h.com
>
> No virus found in this incoming message.
> Checked by AVG.
> Version: 7.5.557 / Virus Database: 270.11.29/2023 - Release Date: 
> 3/25/2009
> 6:54 PM
>
>
> No virus found in this outgoing message.
> Checked by AVG.
> Version: 7.5.557 / Virus Database: 270.11.29/2023 - Release Date: 
> 3/25/2009
> 6:54 PM
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Writers Division web site:
> http://www.nfb-writers-division.org <http://www.nfb-writers-division.org/>
>
> stylist mailing list
> stylist at nfbnet.org
> http://www.nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/stylist_nfbnet.org
> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for 
> stylist:
> http://www.nfbnet.org/mailman/options/stylist_nfbnet.org/poetlori8%40msn.com
> 