[stylist] DBG (chapter 4)

[LoriStay at aol.com]

Hmm.   Eight years later?   That's stretching it a bit.   How old is the 
child we're reading about in the second chapter?   Six or seven?   Eight years 
later she would be fourteen or fifteen, and I can't see her mother forcing 
her to try to fly (or float) because she would then be adult in size.   A 
lot of child abuse stops when a person reaches the teen years because all it 
takes is one slug in the gut from the kid to the parent to stop the bullying. 
  Bullies are usually cowards.
So since it can't be the same child, who are we reading about?   Sorry if 
I'm confused!

I first realized that low vision people might use braille and canes in 
1981, when I attended a seminar at the NFB in Baltimore.   It was an eye opener 
in more ways than one.   On one side of me sat Joane Fernandez (later Joanne 
Wilson) who wore glasses, but still wrote her checks using a guide and 
Braille, and on the other sat Ramona Walhoff, knitting or crocheting something 
during the seminar.   I think Ramona has no vision at all.   Joanne also used 
a cane.   Some years later, she became the director of the Louisiana Center 
for the Blind and after that she was head of Rehabilitation Services in 
Washington.   She took herself quite far using the skills of blindness.   It's 
not something one forgets.

On the other hand, I have a friend who is partly deaf and partly blind who 
refuses to learn Braille or sign.   Communication with her was extremely 
difficult.   I had to email her, and have her expand the message to better than 
18 point on her screen.   We encouraged her to get cochlear implants, which 
have helped somewhat, as she now augments her enlarged screen with a screen 
reader.   Cochlear implants are not perfect, however.    Aside from the 
difficulty she had getting them installed (the first one had her on the 
operating table all day, and failed to actually install it!), if several people are 
talking at once, say in a party, they are useless.   I sometimes have 
similar problems!   I taught a class a couple of years, and finally had to tell 
the people (all adults) that "If more than one person talks at a time, I 
can't hear either of them."   I still tell this to a group I lead.   They think 
I'm kidding.   And I'm classified as fully able to hear.   I'm not so sure.

Anyway, could you clear up my confusion about the main character?   What's 
her name?   Do you have an outline of her life to date (not too detailed)?   
Or are we talking about two girls, both daughters of the mother who tries 
to kill her?
Lori

In a message dated 9/7/09 5:07:49 PM, dreamavdb at googlemail.com writes:


> Hi Laura,
> yes Fiona (the 3ft 7 lady) does make an apearance but you have to wait
> several chapters before she comes into it again, since the first
> chapter happened 8 years after the second one, so that time has to
> elapse before we get to meet Fiona again.
> 
> Your spot on about oralism. I feel my education has suffered due to
> the lack of more visual clues but since I was just HOH nobody
> considered signing as neccessary. It's the same when blind kids have
> some useful sight. Braille goes out of the window and they are
> expected to use large print and not encouraged to use a cane.
> I used a cane when I still had low vision and found it very useful.
> Another strange thing is that while low vision people are discouraged
> from using canes, people seem ok about them using a guide dog. I never
> quite understood that.
> If you need a guide dog your vision is automatically bad enough to use a 
> cane.
> 
> Helene
> 
>