[stylist] stylist Digest, Vol 118, Issue 25

[Renee Pavlus]

I am on your list-serve, but haven't opened up all the emails, sent to
me. My field is in the clinical areas, and must say that literature
and what it brings forth, in the past has damned the blind in so many
ways. I wrote a thesis years ago while in graduate school, in the
1990s and spoke about images of the blind in the media and literature,
and the psychological ramifications. We are making strides, but these
confusing and inaccurate images in literature and on the screen still
make our jobs, as clinicians, difficult. I am presently completing a
second Masters Degree, and plan to license as a CMHC working with the
disabled community as a therapist. It troubles me, that, no matter how
hard we work for equality and fairness there is often a cloud of
misunderstanding or ignorance over our heads. So to conclude, I can
see the damage which is still pilfered through the words of
individuals who neither understand or some times do not want to open
their minds. I am speaking about professionals who are very educated
and knowledgable of so much, but are so stupid when it comes to
broadening their minds and hearts...
Please excuse the spelling. I am one of those persons who struggle
with spelling, and it often makes writing emails difficult. Any one
know about a braille speller, and where I can obtain one to use when
writing emails and documents which can't be spell checked. Even spell
checking can't repair all of the mistakes, especially when it comes to
like-minded words which spell differently depending upon the useage.
It is a curse, indeed, and makes me look so illiterate. It isn't
blindness, it comes down to memory, and a cognitive kind of thing.
which I struggle with. .
I have thought of getting a program like Dragon, but I hear that it
interferes with the JAWS voice program. Any suggestions?
Thanks
Renee Pavlus

On 2/18/14, stylist-request at nfbnet.org <stylist-request at nfbnet.org> wrote:
> Send stylist mailing list submissions to
> 	stylist at nfbnet.org
>
> To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit
> 	http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/stylist_nfbnet.org
> or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to
> 	stylist-request at nfbnet.org
>
> You can reach the person managing the list at
> 	stylist-owner at nfbnet.org
>
> When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific
> than "Re: Contents of stylist digest..."
>
>
> Today's Topics:
>
>    1. Re: Blind or Visually Impaired Authors, new books and more &:
>       Is Literature Against us? NFB Speech (Jacobson, Shawn D)
>    2. Re: Low expectations of the blind; RE:  New Book, blindness
>       on TV (Jacobson, Shawn D)
>    3. Re: Blind or Visually Impaired Authors,	new books and more &:
>       Is Literature Against us? NFB Speech (Lynda Lambert)
>    4. Re: New Book, blindness on TV (Lynda Lambert)
>    5. FW:  Blind or Visually Impaired Authors
>       (Cheryl Orgas & William Meeker)
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Tue, 18 Feb 2014 08:20:13 -0500
> From: "Jacobson, Shawn D" <Shawn.D.Jacobson at hud.gov>
> To: "'newmanrl at cox.net'" <newmanrl at cox.net>, 'Writer's Division
> 	Mailing List'	<stylist at nfbnet.org>
> Subject: Re: [stylist] Blind or Visually Impaired Authors, new books
> 	and more &:  Is Literature Against us? NFB Speech
> Message-ID:
> 	<8838F3FB8A7BB044AA6DE247E617C6F20101DAA1D2 at ELANNEPV117.exh.prod.hud.gov>
> 	
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>
> This brings back memories.  I remember reading "Blindness is Literature
> Against us" in braille at the Iowa Braille School.  This was back in the
> early '70's when being a Federationist could get you in trouble, so you had
> to hide Federation literature under the bed.
>
> Anyway, thanks for reminding us.
>
> Shawn
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: stylist [mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Robert Leslie
> Newman
> Sent: Monday, February 17, 2014 10:07 AM
> To: 'Writer's Division Mailing List'
> Subject: Re: [stylist] Blind or Visually Impaired Authors, new books and
> more &: Is Literature Against us? NFB Speech
>
> Hey you all, here is more on the topic of blind authors, the blind as
> portrayed on TV, in books, etc. This is a Kenneth Jernigan banquet speech
> and it hits at more of this present theme of ours:
> Blindness: Is Literature Against Us?
> An Address Delivered by Kenneth Jernigan
> President, National Federation of the Blind
> At the Banquet of the Annual Convention
> Chicago, July 3, 1974
> History, we are told, is the record of what human beings have done;
> literature, the record of what they have thought. Last year I examined with
> you the place of the blind in history-not just what we have done but what
> the historians have remembered and said we have done. The two, as we found,
> are vastly different.
> This year I would like to talk with you about the place of the blind in
> literature. How have we been perceived? What has been our role? How have
> the
> poets and novelists, the essayists and dramatists seen us? Have they "told
> it like it is," or merely liked it as they've told it?
> With history there is at least a supposed foundation of fact. Whatever the
> twisting or omission or misinterpretation or downright falsehood, that
> foundation presumably remains-a tether and a touchstone, always subject to
> reexamination and new proof. Not so with literature. The author is free to
> cut through facts to the essence, to dream and soar and surmise. Going
> deeper than history, the myths and feelings of a people are enshrined in
> its
> literature. Literary culture in all its forms constitutes possibly the main
> transmission belt of our society's beliefs and values-more important even
> than the schools, the churches, the news media, or the family. How, then,
> have we fared in literature?
> The literary record reveals no single theme or unitary view of the life of
> the blind. Instead, it displays a bewildering variety of images-often
> conflicting and contradictory, not only as between different ages or
> cultures, or among the works of various writers, but even within the pages
> of a single book.
> Yet, upon closer examination the principal themes and motifs of literature
> and popular culture are nine in number and may be summarized as follows:
> blindness as compensatory or miraculous power, blindness as total tragedy;
> blindness as foolishness and helplessness; blindness as unrelieved
> wickedness and evil; blindness as perfect virtue; blindness as punishment
> for sin; blindness as abnormality or dehumanization; blindness as
> purification; and blindness as symbol or parable.
> Let us begin with blindness and compensatory powers. Suppose one of you
> should ask me whether I think there is any advantage in being blind; and
> suppose I should answer like this: "Not an advantage perhaps: still it has
> compensations that one might not think of. A new world to explore, new
> experiences, new powers awakening; strange new perceptions; life in the
> fourth dimension." How would you react to that? You would, I suspect, laugh
> me out of the room. I doubt that a single person here would buy such
> stereotyped stupidity. You and I know from firsthand experience that there
> is no "fourth dimension" to blindness-no miraculous new powers awakening,
> no
> strange new perceptions, no brave new worlds to explore. Yet, the words I
> have quoted are those of a blind character in a popular novel of some time
> back. (I don't know whether the term has significance, but a blind "private
> eye," no less.)
> The association of blindness with compensatory powers, illustrated by the
> blind detective I have just mentioned, represents a venerable tradition,
> reaching back to classical mythology. A favorite method of punishment among
> the gods of ancient Greece was blinding-regarded apparently as a fate worse
> than death-following which, more often than not, the gods so pitied the
> blinded victim that they relented and conferred upon him extraordinary
> gifts, usually the power of prophecy or some other exceptional skill. Thus,
> Homer was widely regarded as having been compensated by the gift of poetry.
> In the same way Tiresias, who wandered through the plays of Sophocles,
> received for his blindness the gift of prophecy.
> The theme of divine compensation following divine retribution survived the
> passage of the ages and the decline of the pagan religions. Sir Arthur
> Conan
> Doyle (one of the most eminent novelists of the last century, and the
> creator of Sherlock Holmes) conjured up a blind character with something of
> Holmes's sleuthing talents, in a book entitled Sir Nigel. This figure is
> introduced as one who has the mysterious ability to detect by hearing a
> hidden tunnel, which runs beneath the besieged castle. His compensatory
> powers are described in a conversation between two other people in the
> novel:
> "This man was once rich and of good repute [says one], but he was beggared
> by this robber lord who afterwards put out his eyes, so that he has lived
> for many years in darkness at the charity of others."
> "How can he help in our enterprise if he be indeed blind?" [asks his
> companion.]
> "It is for that very reason, fair Lord, that he can be of greater service
> than any other man. For it often happens that when a man has lost a sense,
> the good God will strengthen those that remain. Hence it is that Andreas
> has
> such ears that he can hear the sap in the trees or the cheep of the mouse
> in
> its burrow . . ."2
> The great nineteenth-century novelist Victor Hugo, in The Man Who Laughs,
> reflected the view of a host of modern writers that blindness carries with
> it a certain purity and ecstasy, which somehow makes up for the loss of
> sight. His blind heroine, Dea, is portrayed as "absorbed by that kind of
> ecstasy peculiar to the blind, which seems at times to give them a song to
> listen to in their souls and to make up to them for the light which they
> lack by some strain of ideal music. Blindness," says Hugo, "is a cavern to
> which reaches the deep harmony of the Eternal."3
> Probably it is this mystical notion of a "sixth sense" accompanying
> blindness that accounts for the rash of blind detectives and investigators
> in popular fiction. Max Carrados, the man who talked of living in the
> "fourth dimension," first appeared in 1914 and went on to survive a number
> of superhuman escapades through the nineteen twenties. In 1915 came another
> sightless sleuth-the remarkable Damon Gaunt, who "never lost a case."4 So
> it
> is with "Thornley Colton, Blind Detective," the brainchild of Clinton H.
> Stagg; and so it is with the most illustrious of all the private eyes
> without eyes, Captain Duncan Maclain, whose special qualities are set forth
> in the deathless prose of a dust jacket:
> "Shooting to kill by sound, playing chess with fantastic precision, and, of
> course, quickening the hearts of the opposite sex, Captain Maclain has won
> the unreserved admiration of reviewers."5
> Even the author is carried away with the genius of his hero: "There were
> moments," he writes, "when powers slightly greater than those possessed by
> ordinary mortals seemed bestowed on Duncan Maclain. Such moments worried
> him."6
> They might worry us, as well; for all of this mumbo jumbo about abnormal or
> supernatural powers doesn't lessen the stereotype of the blind person as
> alien and different, unnatural and peculiar. It makes it worse.
> Not only is it untrue, but it is also a profound disservice to the blind;
> for it suggests that whatever a blind person may accomplish is not due to
> his own ability but to some magic inherent in blindness itself. This
> assumption of compensatory powers removes the blind person at a stroke of
> the pen from the realm of the normal-the ordinary, everyday world of plain
> people-and places him in a limbo of abnormality. Whether supernormal or
> subnormal does not matter-he is without responsibility, without rights, and
> without society. We have been conned into this view of second-class status
> long enough. The play is over. We want no more of magic powers and
> compensations. We want our rights as citizens and human beings-and we
> intend
> to have them!
> It is significant that, for all his supposed charm and talent, Maclain
> never
> gets the girl-or any girl. The author plainly regards him as ineligible for
> such normal human relationships as love, sex, and marriage. Max Carrados
> put
> it this way in replying to an acquaintance who expressed great comfort in
> his presence: "Blindness invites confidence," he says. "We are out of the
> running-for us human rivalry ceases to exist."7
> This notion of compensatory powers-the doctrine that blindness is its own
> reward-is no compliment but an insult. It robs us of all credit for our
> achievements and all responsibility for our failings. It neatly relieves
> society of any obligation to equalize conditions or provide opportunities
> or
> help us help ourselves. It leaves us in the end without the capacity to
> lead
> a regular, competitive, and participating life in the community around us.
> The blind, in short, may (according to this view) be extraordinary, but we
> can never be ordinary. Don't you believe it! We are normal people-neither
> especially blessed nor especially cursed-and the fiction to the contrary
> must come to an end! It is not mumbo jumbo we want, or magical powers-but
> our rights as free people, our responsibilities as citizens, and our
> dignity
> as human beings.
> Negative as it is, this image of compensatory powers is less vicious and
> destructive than some others which run through the literature of fiction
> and
> fantasy. The most damaging of all is also the oldest and most persistent:
> namely, the theme of blindness as total tragedy, the image summed up in the
> ancient Hebrew saying, "The blind man is as one dead." The Oedipus cycle of
> Greek tragic plays pressed the death-in-life stereotype to its farthest
> extreme. Thus, in "Oedipus Rex", in which the king puts out his own eyes,
> the statement occurs: "Thou art better off dead than living blind." It
> remained, however, for an Englishman, blind himself, to write the last word
> (what today would be called "the bottom line") on blindness as total
> disaster. John Milton says in Samson Agonistes:
> Blind among enemies, worse than chains, Dungeon, or beggary, or decrepit
> age!... Inferior to the vilest now become of man or worm; the vilest here
> excel me, They creep, yet see; I, dark in light, exposed To daily fraud,
> contempt, abuse, and wrong, Within doors, or without, still as a fool, In
> power of others, never in my own; Scarce half I seem to live, Dead more
> than
> half.... a moving grave.8
> What is most striking about this epic poem is not the presence of the
> disaster concept (that might have been expected) but the fact that Milton
> of
> all people was the author. His greatest writing (including "Paradise Lost")
> was done after his blindness. Then why did he do it? The answer is simple:
> We the blind tend to see ourselves as others see us. Even when we know to
> the contrary, we tend to accept the public view of our limitations. Thus,
> we
> help make those limitations a reality. Betrayed by the forces of literature
> and tradition, Milton (in his turn) betrayed himself and all others who are
> blind. In fact, he actually strengthened and reinforced the stereotype-and
> he did it in spite of his own personal experience to the contrary. The
> force
> of literature is strong, indeed!
> The disaster concept of blindness did not stop with Milton. "William Tell",
> the eighteenth-century play by Schiller, shows us an old man, blinded and
> forced to become a beggar. His son says:
> Oh, the eye's light, of all the gifts of Heaven the dearest, best! ... And
> he must drag on through all his days in endless darkness! . . To die is
> nothing. But to have life, and not have sight-Oh, that is misery indeed!9
> A century later the disaster concept was as popular as ever. In Kipling's
> book, The Light That Failed, no opportunity is lost to tell us that
> blindness is worse than death. The hero, Dick Heldar, upon learning that he
> is to become blind, remarks: "It's the living death .... We're to be shut
> up
> in the dark ... and we shan't see anybody, and we shall never have anything
> we want, not though we live to be a hundred." 10 Later in the book, he
> rages
> against the whole world "because it was alive and could see, while he,
> Dick,
> was dead in the death of the blind, who, at the best, are only burdens upon
> their associates." 11 And when this self-pitying character finally manages
> to get himself killed (to the relief of all concerned), the best Kipling
> can
> say of him is that "his luck had held till the last, even to the crowning
> mercy of a kindly bullet through his head." 12
> Joseph Conrad, in "The End of the Tether", kills off Captain Whalley by
> drowning, as a fate much preferable to remaining alive without sight. In
> D.H. Lawrence's "The Blind Man", there is a war-blinded casualty named
> Maurice, whose total despair and misery are unrelieved by any hint of
> future
> hope; and Rosamond Lehmann, in her novel "Invitation to the Waltz", goes
> Lawrence one better- or, rather, one worse. Her war-blinded hero, although
> he appears to be living a respectable life, is portrayed as if for all
> practical purposes he were a walking corpse. He leads, we are told, "a
> counterfeit of life bred from his murdered youth." And when he brings
> himself somehow to dance with a former sweetheart, it is a sorry spectacle:
> "She danced with him," says the author, "in love and sorrow. He held her
> close to him, and he was far away from her, far from the music, buried and
> indifferent. She danced with his youth and his death." 13
> For writers such as these, the supposed tragedy of blindness is so
> unbearable that only two solutions can be imagined: either the victim must
> be cured or he must be killed. A typical illustration is Susan Glaspell's
> "The Glory of the Conquered", of which an unkind critic has written: "It is
> a rather easy solution of the problem to make her hero die at the end of
> the
> book, but probably the author did not know what else to do with him." 14
> Let us now leave tragedy and move to foolishness and helplessness. The
> blind
> man as a figure of fun and the butt of ridicule is no doubt as old as farce
> and slapstick. In the Middle Ages the role was regularly acted out on
> festive holidays when blind beggars were rounded up and outfitted in
> donkey's ears, than made to gibber and gesticulate to the delight of
> country
> bumpkins. Reflecting this general hilarity, Chaucer (in "The Merchant's
> Tale") presents a young wife, married to an old blind man, who deceives him
> by meeting her lover in a tree while taking the husband for a walk. The
> Chaucerian twist is that the old man suddenly regains his sight as the
> couple are making love in the branches-whereupon the quick-witted girl
> explains that her amorous behavior was solely for the purpose of restoring
> his sight. Shakespeare is just as bad. He makes the blinded Gloucester in
> "King Lear" so thoroughly confused and helpless that he can be persuaded of
> anything and deceived by any trick. Isaac, in the Old Testament, is duped
> by
> his son Jacob, who masquerades as Esau, disguising himself in goatskins,
> and
> substituting kid meat for the venison his father craves-all without a
> glimmer of recognition on the part of the old man, who must have taken
> leave
> of the rest of his senses as well as his sense of sight.
> An unusually harsh example of the duping of blind people is found in the
> sixteenth-century play "Der Euienspiegel mit den Blinden". The hero meets
> three blind beggars and promises them a valuable coin to pay for their food
> and lodging at a nearby inn; but when they all reach out for the money, he
> gives it to none of them, and each supposes that the others have received
> it. You can imagine the so-called "funny ending." After they go to the inn
> and dine lavishly, the innkeeper demands his payment; and each of the blind
> beggars thereupon accuses the others of lying, thievery, and assorted
> crimes. The innkeeper-shouting "You people defraud everyone!"--drives the
> three into his pigsty and locks the gate, lamenting to his wife: "What
> shall
> we do with them, let them go without punishment after they have eaten and
> drunk so much, for nothing? But if we keep them, they will spread lice and
> fleas and we will have to feed them. I wish they were on the gallows." 15
> The play has a "happy ending," but what an image persists of the character
> of those who are blind: criminal and corrupt, contagious and contaminated,
> confounded and confused, wandering homeless and helpless in an alien
> landscape. Their book of life might well be called "Gullible's Travels."
> The helpless blind man is a universal stereotype. In Maeterlinck's play,
> "The Blind", all of the characters are portrayed as sightless in order to
> make a philosophical point; but what emerges on the stage is a ridiculous
> tableau of groping, groaning, and grasping at the air.
> One of the very worst offenders against the truth about blindness is the
> eminent French author of our own day, Andre Gide, in "La Symphonie
> Pastorale". A blind reviewer of the novel has described it well: "The girl
> Gertrude at fifteen, before the pastor begins to educate her, has all the
> signs of an outright idiot. This is explained simply as the result of her
> blindness .... [Gide] asserts that without physical sight one cannot really
> know the truth. Gertrude lives happily in the good, pure world the pastor
> creates for her .... Gertrude knows next to nothing about the evil and pain
> in the actual world. As a sightless person she cannot consciously know sin,
> is blissfully ignorant, like Adam and Eve before eating of the forbidden
> fruit. Only when her sight is restored does she really know evil for what
> it
> is and recognize sin. Then, on account of the sinning she has done with the
> pastor without knowing it was sinning, she is miserable and commits
> suicide."16
> In literature not only is blindness depicted as stupidity but also as
> wickedness, the very incarnation of pure evil. The best-known model is the
> old pirate "Blind Pew," in Stevenson's "Treasure Island". When the young
> hero, Jim Hawkins, first encounters Pew, he feels that he "never saw a more
> dreadful figure" than this "horrible, soft-spoken, eyeless creature"; and
> when Pew gets the boy in his clutches, Jim observes that he "never heard a
> voice so cruel, and cold, and ugly as that blind man's." 17
> A much earlier version of the wicked blind man theme is seen in the
> picaresque romance of the sixteenth century, "Lazatillo de Tormes".
> Lazarillo is apprenticed as a guide to an old blind man, who is the very
> personification of evil.
> "When the blind man told the boy to put his ear to a statue and listen for
> a
> peculiar noise, Lazarillo obeyed. Then the old man knocked the boy's head
> sharply against the stone, so his ears rang for three days......"18
> Throughout the ages the connection between blindness and meanness has been
> very nearly irresistible to authors, and it has struck a responsive note
> with audiences--audiences already conditioned through folklore and fable to
> believe that blindness brings out the worst in people. Given the casual
> cruelty with which the blind have generally been treated, such villainous
> caricatures have also provided a convenient excuse and justification. After
> all, if the blind are rascals and rapscallions, they should be handled
> accordingly- and no pity wasted.
> Alternating with the theme of blindness as perfect evil is its exact
> reverse: the theme of blindness as perfect virtue. On the surface these two
> popular stereotypes appear to be contradictory; but it takes no great
> psychological insight to recognize them as opposite sides of the same
> counterfeit coin. What they have in common is the notion that blindness is
> a
> transforming event, entirely removing the victim front the ordinary
> dimensions of life and humanity.
> Blindness must either be the product of sin and the devil or of angels and
> halos. Of the latter type is Melody, in Laura Richards' novel of the same
> name: "The blind child," we are told, "touched life with her hand, and knew
> it. She knew every tree of the forest by its bark; knew when it blossomed,
> and how .... Not a cat or dog in the village but would leave his own master
> or mistress at a single call from Melody." 19 She is not merely virtuous;
> she is magical. She rescues a baby from a burning building, cures the sick
> by her singing, and redeems alcoholics from the curse of drink.
> It is passing strange, and what is strangest of all is that this absurd
> creature is the invention of Laura Richards, the daughter of Samuel Gridley
> Howe, a pioneer educator of the blind. Like Milton, Mrs. Richards knew
> better. She was betrayed by the forces of tradition and custom, of folklore
> and literature. In turn she betrayed herself and the blind, and gave
> reinforcement to the stereotype. Worst of all, she doubtless never knew
> what
> she had done, and thought of herself as a benefactor of the blind and a
> champion of their cause. Ignorance is truly the greatest of all tragedies.
> The sickest of all the romantic illusions is the pious opinion that
> blindness is only a blessing in disguise. In "The Blind Girl of
> Wittenberg",
> by John G. Morris, a young man says to the heroine: "God has deprived you
> of
> sight but only that your heart might be illuminated with more brilliant
> light." Every blind girl I know would have slapped his face for such
> insulting drivel; but the reply of this fictional female is worse than the
> original remark: "Do you not think, sir," she says, "that we blind people
> have a world within us which is perhaps more beautiful than yours, and that
> we have a light within us which shines more brilliantly than your sun?" 20
> So it goes with the saccharine sweet that has robbed us of humanity and
> made
> the legend and hurt our cause. There is Caleb, the "little blind seer" of
> James Ludlow's awful novel, "Deborah". There is Bertha, Dickens' ineffably
> sweet and noble blind heroine of "The Cricket on the Hearth", who comes off
> almost as an imbecile. There is the self-sacrificing Nydia, in "The Last
> Days of Pompeii"; and there is Naomi, in Hall Caine's novel, "Scapegoat".
> But enough! It is sweetness without light, and literature without
> enlightment.
> One of the oldest and cruelest themes in the archives of fiction is the
> notion of blindness as a punishment for sin. Thus, Oedipus was blinded as a
> punishment for incest, and Shakespeare's Gloucester for adultery. The theme
> often goes hand in hand with the stereotype of blindness as a kind of
> purification rite--an act which wipes the slate clean and transforms human
> character into purity and goodness. So Amyas Leigh, in Kingsley's "Westward
> Ho", having been blinded by a stroke of lightning, is instantly converted
> from a crook to a saint.
> Running like an ugly stain through many of these master plots- and,
> perhaps,
> in a subtle way underlying all of them-is the image of blindness as
> dehumanization, a kind of banishment from the world of normal life and
> relationships. Neither Dickens' blind Bertha, nor Bulwer-Lytton's Nydia,
> when they find themselves in love, have the slightest idea that anybody
> could ever love them back- nor does the reader; nor, for that matter, do
> the
> other characters in the novels. Kipling, in a story entitled "They," tells
> of a charming and apparently competent blind woman, Miss Florence, who
> loves
> children but "of course" cannot have any of her own. Kipling doesn't say
> why
> she can't, but it's plain that she is unable to imagine a blind person
> either married or raising children. Miss Florence, however, is magically
> compensated. She is surrounded on her estate by the ghosts of little
> children who have died in the neighborhood and have thereupon rushed to her
> in spirit. We are not meant to infer that she is as crazy as a hoot
> owl--only that she is blind, and therefore entitled to her spooky
> fantasies.
> The last of the popular literary themes is that which deals with blindness
> not literally but symbolically, for purposes of satire or parable. From
> folklore to film the image recurs of blindness as a form of death or
> damnation, or as a symbol of other kinds of unseeing (as in the maxim,
> "where there is no vision, the people perish)." In this category would come
> H.G. Well's classic "The Country of the Blind"; also, "The Planet of the
> Blind", by Paul Corey; and Maeterlinck's "The Blind". In the short story by
> Conrad Aiken, "Silent Snow, Secret Snow," blindness becomes a metaphor for
> schizophrenia.
> In virtually all of these symbolic treatments, there is an implied
> acceptance of blindness as a state of ignorance and confusion, of the
> inversion of normal perceptions and values, and of a condition equal to if
> not worse than death. The havoc wrought upon the lives of blind people in
> ages past by these literary traditions is done, and it cannot be undone;
> but
> the future is yet to be determined. And that future, shaped by the
> instrument of truth, will be determined by us. Self-aware and
> self-reliant-neither unreasonably belligerent nor unduly self-effacing-we
> must, in a matter-of-fact way, take up the challenge of determining our own
> destiny. We know who we are; we know what we can do; and we know how to act
> in concert.
> And what can we learn from this study of literature? What does it all mean?
> For one thing, it places in totally new perspective the pronouncements and
> writings of many of the so-called "experts" who today hold forth in the
> field of work with the blind. They tell us (these would-be "professionals,"
> these hirelings of the American Foundation for the Blind and HEW, these
> pseudoscientists with their government grants and lofty titles and
> impressive papers) that blindness is not just the loss of sight, but a
> total
> transformation of the person.
> They tell us that blindness is not merely a loss to the eyes, but to the
> personality as well-that it is a "death," a blow to the very being of the
> individual. They tell us that the eye is a sex symbol, and that the blind
> person cannot be a "whole man"-or, for that matter, presumably a whole
> woman
> either. They tell us that we have multiple "lacks and losses." 21
> The American Foundation for the Blind devises a 239 page guidebook22 for
> our
> personal management," with sixteen steps to help us take a bath, and
> specific techniques for clapping our hands and shaking our heads. We are
> given detailed instructions for buttering our bread, tying our shoes, and
> even understanding the meaning of the words "up" and "down." And all of
> this
> is done with federal grants, and much insistence that it is new discovery
> and modern thought.
> But our study of literature gives it the lie. These are not new concepts.
> They are as unenlightened as the Middle Ages. They are as old as Oedipus
> Rex. As for science, they have about as much of it as man's ancient fear of
> the dark. They are not fact, but fiction; not new truths, but medieval
> witchcraft, decked out in modern garb-computerized mythology. What we have
> bought with our federal tax dollars and our technology and our numerous
> government grants is only a restatement of the tired old fables of
> primitive
> astrology and dread of the night.
> And let us not forget NAC (The National Accreditation Council for Agencies
> Serving the Blind and Visually Handicapped). When the members of NAC and
> its
> accredited minions try to act as our custodians and wardens, they are only
> behaving in the time honored way of the Elizabethan "keepers of the poor."
> When they seek to deck us out in donkey's ears and try to make us gibber
> and
> gesticulate, they are only attempting what the country bumpkins of 600
> years
> ago did with better grace and more efficiency.
> We have repudiated these false myths of our inferiority and helplessness.
> We
> have rejected the notion of magical powers and special innocence and
> naivete. Those who would try to compel us to live in the past would do well
> to look to their going. Once people have tasted freedom, they cannot go
> back. We will never again return to the ward status and second-class
> citizenship of the old custodialism. There are many of us (sighted and
> blind
> alike) who will take to the streets and fight with our bare hands if we
> must
> before we will let it happen.
> And we must never forget the power of literature. Revolutions do not begin
> in the streets, but in the libraries and the classrooms. It has been so
> throughout history. In the terrible battles of the American Civil War, for
> example, the writers and poets fought, too. When the Southern armies came
> to
> Bull Run, they brought with them Sir Walter Scott and the image of life he
> had taught them to believe. Ivanhoe and brave King Richard stood in the
> lines with Stonewall Jackson to hurl the Yankees back. The War would have
> ended sooner except for the dreams of the poets. And when the Northern
> troops went down to Richmond, through the bloody miles that barred the way,
> they carried with them the Battle Hymn of the Republic and Harriet Beecher
> Stowe. It was Uncle Tom and little Eliza who fired the shots and led the
> charges that broke the Southern lines. Never mind that neither Scott nor
> Stowe told it exactly as it was. What they said was believed, and believing
> made it come true.
> To the question IS LITERATURE AGAINST Us, there can be no unqualified
> response. If we consider only the past, the answer is certainly yes. We
> have
> Conventional fiction, like conventional history, has told it like it isn't.
> Although there have been notable exceptions, 23 the story has been
> monotonously and negatively the same.
> If we consider the present, the answer is mixed. There are signs of change,
> but the old stereotypes and the false images still predominate-and they are
> reinforced and given weight by the writings and beliefs of many of the
> "experts" in our own field of work with the blind.
> If we turn to the future, the answer is that the future-in literature as in
> life-is not predetermined but self-determined. As we shape our lives,
> singly
> and collectively, so will we shape our literature. Blindness will be a
> tragedy only if we see ourselves as authors see us. The contents of the
> page, in the last analysis, reflect the conscience of the age. The
> structure
> of literature is but a hall of mirrors, giving us back (in images slightly
> larger or smaller than life) exactly what we put in. The challenge for us
> is
> to help our age raise its consciousness and reform its conscience. We must
> rid our fiction of fantasy and imbue it with fact. Then we shall have a
> literature to match reality, and a popular image of blindness to match the
> truth, and our image of ourselves.
> Poetry is the song of the spirit and the language of the soul. In the drama
> of our struggle to be free-in the story of our movement and the fight to
> rid
> the blind of old custodialism and man's ancient fear of the dark-there are
> epics which cry to be written,and songs which ask to be sung. The poets and
> novelists can write the words, but we must create the music.
> We stand at a critical time in the history of the blind. If we falter or
> turn back, the tragedy of blindness will be great, indeed. But, of course,
> we will not falter, and we will not turn back. Instead, we will go forward
> with joy in our hearts and a song of gladness on our lips. The future is
> ours, and the novelists and the poets will record it. Come! Join me on the
> barricades, and we will make it come true!
> FOOTNOTES
> 1. Ernest Bramah, "Best Max Carrados Detective Stories", p. 6.
> 2. Arthur Conan Doyle, "Sir Nigel", p. 102.
> 3. Victor Hugo, "The Man Who Laughs", p. 316.
> 4. Isabel Ostrander, "At One-Thirty: A Mystery", p. 6.
> 5. Baynard Kendrick, "Make Mine Maclain", dust jacket.
> 6. Ibid., p. 43.
> 7. Bramah, op. cit., p. 7.
> 8. John Milton, "The Portable Milton", pp. 615-616.
> 9. Friedrich Schiller, "Complete Works of Friedrich Schiller", p. 447.
> 10. Rudyard Kipling, "Selected Prose and Poetry of Rudyard Kipling", p.
> 131.
> 11. Ibid., p. 156.
> 12. Ibid., p. 185.
> 13. Rosamond Lehmann, "Invitation to the Waltz", p. 48, quoted in Jacob
> Twersky, "Blindness in Literature".
> 14. Jessica L. Langworthy, "Blindness in Fiction: A Study of the Attitude
> of
> Authors Towards Their Blind Characters," "Journal of Applied Psychology",
> 14:282, 1930.
> 15. Twersky, op. cit., p. 15.
> 16. Ibid., P. 47.
> 17. Robert Louis Stevenson, "Treasure Island", p. 36.
> 18. "The Life of Lazatillo de Tormes", summarized in Magill's
> "Masterplots", p. 2573.
> 19. Laura E. Richards, "Melody", pp. 47-48.
> 20. John G. Morris, "The Blind Girl of Wittenberg", p. 103.
> 21. Reverend Thomas J. Carroll, "Blindness: What It is, What It Does, and
> How to Live With It". This entire book deals with the concept of blindness
> as a "dying," and with the multiple "lacks and losses" of blindness.
> 22. American Foundation for the Blind, Inc., "A Step-by-Step Guide to
> Personal Management for Blind People". This entire book is taken up with
> lists of so-called "how to" details about the routines of daily living for
> blind persons.
> 23. There is a tenth theme to be found here and there on the shelves of
> literature-a rare and fugitive image that stands out in the literary gloom
> like a light at the end of a tunnel. This image of truth is a least as old
> as Charles Lamb's tale of "Rosamund Gray", which presents an elderly blind
> woman who is not only normally competent but normally cantankerous. The
> image is prominent in two of Sir Walter Scott's novels, "Old Mortality" and
> "The Bride of Lammamoor", in both of which blind persons are depicted
> realistically and unsentimentally. It is evident again, to the extent at
> least of the author's knowledge and ability, in Wilkie Collin's "Poor Miss
> Finch", written after Collins had made a serious study of Diderot's "Letter
> on the Blind" (a scientific treatise not without its errors but remarkable
> for its understanding). The image is manifest in Charles D. Stewart's
> "Valley Waters", in which there is an important character who is blind-and
> yet there is about him no aura of miracle nor even of mystery, no brooding
> or mischief, no special powers, nothing in fact but naturalness and
> normality. Similarly, in a novel entitled "Far in the Forest", H. Weir
> Mitchell has drawn from life (so he tells us) a formidable but entirely
> recognizable character named Philetus Richmond "who had lost his sight at
> the age of fifty but could still swing an axe with the best of the
> woodsmen."
> Back to top
> BIBLIOGRAPHY
> American Foundation for the Blind, Inc., "A Step-by-Step Guide to Personal
> Management for Blind People", New York, 1970.
> Barreyre, Gene, "The Blind Ship", New York, Dial, 1926.
> Bramah, Ernest, "Best Max Carrados Detective Stories", New York, Dover,
> 1972.
> Bronte, Charlotte, "Jane Eyre", New; York, Dutton, 1963.
> Caine, Hall, "The Scapegoat", New York, D. Appleton and Company, 1879.
> Carroll, Reverend Thomas J., "Blindness: What It Is, What It Does, and How
> To live With It", Boston, Toronto, Little, Brown and Company, 1961.
> Chaucer, Geoffrey, "Canterbury Tales", Garden City, translated by J.U.
> Nicolson, 1936.
> Collins, Wilkie, "Poor Miss Finch", New York, Harper and Brothers, 1902.
> Conrad, Joseph, "The End of the Tether", Garden City, Doubleday, 1951.
> Corey, Paul, "The Planet of the Blind", New York, Paperback Library, 1969.
> Craig, Dinah Mulock, "John Halifax, Gentleman", New York, A.L. Burt, nd.
> Davis, William Stems, "Falaise of the Blessed Voice", New York, The
> Macmillan Company, 1904.
> Dickens, Charles, "Barnaby Rudge", New York, Oxford University Press, 1968.
> -----, "Cricket On the Hearth", London, Oxford University Press, 1956.
> Diderot, Denis, "Lettre sur les Avengles", Geneva, E. Droz, 1951.
> Doyle, Arthur Conan, "Sir Nigel", New York, McClure, Philips and Company,
> 1906.
> Gide, Andre, "La Symphonie Pastorale", Paris, Gallimard, 1966.
> Glaspell, Susan, "The Glory of the Conquered", New York, Frederick A.
> Stokes
> Company, 1909.
> Hugo, Victor, "The Man Who Laughs", New York, Grosset and Dunlap, nd.
> Kendrick, Baynard, "Make Mine Maclain", New York, Morrow, 1947.
> Kipling, Rudyard, "Selected Prose and Poetry of Rudyard
> Kipling", Garden City, Garden City Publishing Company, 1937.
> Kingsley, Charles, "Westward Ho!", New York, J.F. Taylor and Company, 1899.
> Lamb, Charles, "The Tale of Rosamund Gray and Old Blind Margaret", London,
> 1798.
> Langworthy, Jessica L., "Blindness in Fiction: A Study of the
> Attitude of Authors Toward their Blind Characters," "Journal of Applied
> Psychology", 14:282, 1930.
> Lawrence, D.H., "England, My England and Other Short Stories", New York, T.
> Seltzer, 1922.
> Lehmann, Rosamond, "Invitation to the Waltz", New York, 1933.
> "Life of Lazarillo de Tormes", 1553, summarized in Magill,
> Frank Nathen, "Magill's Masterplots", New York, Salem Press, 1964.
> London, Jack, "The Sea Wolf", New York, Grosset and Dunlap, 1904.
> Ludlow, James M., "Deborah, A Tale of the Times of Judas Maccabaeus", New
> York, Fleming H. Revell Company, 1901.
> Lytton, Bulwer, "The Last Days of Pompeii", Garden City, International
> Collectors Library, 1946.
> Maeterlinck, Maurice, "The Plays of Maurice Maeterlinck", translated by
> Richard Hovey, New York, Duffield, 1908.
> Marryat, Frederick, "The Little Savage", New York, E.P. Dutton and Company,
> 1907.
> Milton, John, "Paradise Lost", New York, Heritage Press, 1940.
> -----, "The Portable Milton", New York, Viking Press, 1949.
> Mitchell, H. Weir, "Far in the Forest", New York, Century Company, 1899.
> Morris, John G., "The Blind Girl of Wittenberg", Philadelphia, Lindsay and
> Blakison, 1856.
> Ostrander, Isabel, "At One-Thirty: A Mystery", New York, W.J. Watt, 1915.
> Richards, Laura E., "Melody", Boston, Estes and Lauriat, 1897.
> Sachs, Hans, "Der Eulenspiegel mit den Blinden".
> Schiller, Friedrich, "William Tell", translated by Robert
> Waller Deering, Boston, Heath, 1961.
> -----, "Don Carlos, Infant of Spain", translated by Charles E. Passage, New
> York, Ungar Publishing Company, 1959.
> Scott, Sir Walter, "Old Mortality", London, Oxford University Press, 1925.
> -----, "The Bride of Lammamoor", London, Oxford University Press, 1925.
> Shakespeare, William, "King Lear", New Haven, Yale University Press, 1947.
> Sophocles, "Oedipus Rex", translated by Robert Fitzgerald and Dudley Fitts,
> New York, Harcourt Brace, 1949.
> -----, "Oedipus at Colonnus", translated by Charles R.
> Walker, Garden City, Anchor Books, 1966.
> Stagg, Clinton H., "Thornley Colton, Blind Detective", New York, G. Howard
> Watt, 1925.
> Stevenson, Robert Louis, "Treasure Island", Keith Jennison large-type
> edition, New York, Watt, nd.
> -----, "Kidnapped", New York, A.L. Burt, 1883.
> Stewart, Charles D., "Valley Waters", New York, E.P. Dutton and Company,
> 1922.
> Twersky, Jacob, Blindness in Literature, New York, American Foundation for
> the Blind, 1955.
> Wells, H.G. "The Country of the B at d," Strand Magazine, London, 1904.
> West, V. Sackville, The Dragon in Shallow Waters, New York, G.P. Putnam's
> Sons, 1922.
> Back to top
>
>  upon
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: stylist [mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Lynda
> Lambert
> Sent: Monday, February 17, 2014 7:27 AM
> To: Writer's Division Mailing List
> Subject: Re: [stylist] Blind or Visually Impaired Authors; RE: New Book,
> blindness on TV
>
> Donna and Bill,
> How I appreciate your conversation and insight into this interesting musing
> on how blindness becomes the lens through which art and literature
> originate
> and flourish.
>
> What a nice group of informative pieces on the authors.
> I have saved it and will go back on a day when I can spend some quality
> time
> on it, and put some thought into it. Today is dedicated to working on, and
> rehearsing, two presentations that I have written - doing the timing, etc.
> on them to make sure they flow for my audience.   Doing lectures and
> conference presentations is something I really enjoy.
>
> At this time, I am deeply involved in another major project. A video is
> being produced that will accompany our two-person exhibition - Vision and
> Revision: Two Artists with Limited Sight, Not Limited Vision- The video
> will
> show my work from inception and planning stage, through completion and
> gallery installation. We did the final photography for it over the weekend.
> Two of my colleagues from the English Department did the voice over's of my
> writings that will take the viewer actually into the process and the
> thoughts I experience when working with my hands on the pieces. Little by
> little, all the pieces are coming together to bring this project to the
> public when the show opens on March 7th. And, while that show is being put
> together for one gallery, I am already working with the personnel at the
> second gallery where it will open on April 14th - multi-tasking is
> something
> that is not optional in my world.  I work on shows anywhere from one to
> four
> years in advance - and on many levels at the same time with gallery
> personnel.
>
> Have a very productive day everyone!  I am off to "practice" my talk and do
> the tweaking necessary.
> Lynda
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Applebutter Hill" <applebutterhill at gmail.com>
> To: <meekerorgas at ameritech.net>; "'Writer's Division Mailing List'"
> <stylist at nfbnet.org>
> Sent: Sunday, February 16, 2014 4:20 PM
> Subject: Re: [stylist] Blind or Visually Impaired Authors;RE: New Book,
> blindness on TV
>
>
>> Bill,
>> Donna Hill here. I don't know about Homer, and neither does anyone else.
>> His
>> blindness and even his existence as the one writer of the works
>> attributed to him is a matter of some controversy in the academic
>> world. For proof of his blindness, lines from his poetry are used,
>> which isn't quite enough for me. Homer as a blind poet is more
>> important to me as a cultural myth.
>>
>> Milton, though he wrote his best work without sight,  was
>> well-educated and well-known prior to blindness. The most remembered
>> line he wrote about blindness doesn't say much for adapting -- approx
>> "those serve too who only stand and wait." I found a great bio of him
>> on poets.org, which I will place at the end of this message.
>>
>> Thurber lost sight in one eye in an accident in childhood which
>> apparently led to losing sight in the other later in life. He had
>> enough sight to enlist in the military and function as a cartoonist for
> the NewYorker.
>> Here
>> is something from an article from Slate.com about him (after a
>> collection of his letters was released) that discusses the effect of
>> his blindness on his work.
>> Block quote
>> The tragedy of James Thurber.
>>
>> James Thurber's tragedy.
>> By
>> Wilfrid Sheed
>>
>> SEPT. 18 2003 3:33 PM
>>
>> At the age of 15 or so, I picked up The Thurber Carnival and realized
>> that I'd found my Pied Piper; I wanted to be James Thurber. I would
>> follow those sentences anywhere. But Thurber, The New Yorker writer
>> and cartoonist (author, famously, of "The Secret Life of Walter
>> Mitty"), had just passed his peak and was already descending into the
>> total blindness that would embitter him and impair his writing. So,
>> The Thurber Carnival was the perfect place to start, and it still is:
>> It contains Thurber's essence and the best work he did in his
>> pre-blind years-his cartoons and fables and those deadly little "casuals"
>> from
>> The New Yorker in which husbands and wives drove each other
>> absolutely, unconditionally crazy, while huge silent dogs looked on
>> like Buddhas, patiently waiting for the human race to come to its
>> senses, or not, as the case may be.
>>
>> Now we have The Thurber Letters, collected by Harrison Kinney and
>> Rosemary Thurber, to give us a fuller picture of the man. Most people
>> would, I suppose, if faced with the grim choice, prefer to take their
>> chances as blind writers rather than as deaf composers. Homer, the
>> Cyclops of literature, did OK.
>> And
>> Milton got a great poem out of blindness. But Thurber's letters seem
>> to me inexpressibly sad, perhaps because one can perceive the
>> blindness setting in slowly-and, having seen the back of his
>> biography, one also knows that there will be no great poems, so to
>> speak, deriving from it.
>>
>> ...
>>
>> Thurber, like many enlisted men, had seen "Paree," and it had given
>> all his pieces a lick of sophistication new to American humor. In
>> effect, he and his whole generation had used Paris as a species of
>> finishing school where country boys like Cole Porter and Ernest
>> Hemingway could major in sophistication before bringing some home with
>> them. There was never any question of anyone going back to the farm,
>> of course, and so in the mid-'20s a bunch of these boys decided to
>> start a magazine right there-and not just any old magazine, but the
>> most sophisticated damn magazine in the whole world: "Not for the old
>> lady in Dubuque," as its first issue trumpeted sophomorically. The New
>> Yorker did turn out to be the most sophisticated magazine in the
>> world, and the British in particular went nuts trying to imitate it.
>>
>> http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/books/2003/09/blind_wit.html
>> Block quote end
>>
>> Joyce had problems with his vision (iritis & glaucoma) starting in
>> childhood when he needed thick glasses to read. He had numerous
>> operations for it; he died during an operation, but I'm not sure if it
>> was another one on his eyes.  In one letter he describes himself as
>> having been "incapacitated"
>> for
>> a week from the iritis, but I don't know if he meant by the pain of
>> the condition or because he wasn't adapted to living nonvisually. I
>> haven't found any references to his using any adaptations such as
>> Milton did when he dictated his later poetry.
>>
>> Here are some snippits from an old Atlantic Monthly article on Joyce's
>> literary contribution in which his vision is mentioned and
>> appropriately enough the influence it had on his writing. I included
>> the first quote to show how much he was passing as sighted, or how
>> little his visual problems were holding him back in his early years. The
> URL's at the end.
>>
>> Block quote
>> The Atlantic Monthly
>>
>> James Joyce
>> By Harry Levin
>> December, 1946
>> ... At University College he had specialized in Romance Languages, and
>> had shown such proficiency that there had been talk of a
>> professorship. During his hardest years on the Continent, before a
>> benefactor endowed his literary work, he worked as a commercial
>> translator and as a teacher in a Berlitz school.
>>
>> ...
>> It is a striking fact about English literature in the twentieth
>> century that its most notable practitioners have seldom been
>> Englishmen. The fact that they have so often been Irishmen supports,
>> Synge's belief in the reinvigorating suggestiveness of Irish popular
>> speech. That English was not Joyce's native language, in the strictest
>> sense, he was keenly aware; and it helps to explain his unparalleled
>> virtuosity. But a more concrete explanation is to be discerned among
>> his physical traits, one of which we normally classify as a serious
>> handicap. Joyce lived much of his life in varying states of
>> semi-blindness.
>> To
>> preserve what eyesight he had, he underwent repeated operations and
>> countermeasures. A schoolboy humiliation, when he broke his glasses
>> and failed to do his lessons, is painfully recollected in the Portrait
>> and again in Ulysses.
>> His writing tends more and more toward low visibility; his imagination
>> is auditory rather than visual. If the artist is a man for whom the
>> visible world exists, remarked George Moore, then Joyce is essentially
>> a metaphysician; for he is less concerned with the seeing eye than
>> with the thinking mind.
>>
>> We may add that he is most directly concerned with the hearing ear.
>> Doubtless the sonorities of Homer and Milton are intimately connected
>> with their blindness.
>> It is scarcely coincidental that Joyce, almost unique among modern
>> prose writers in this respect, must be read aloud to be fully
>> appreciated. In addition to his linguistic aptitude, and in
>> compensation for his defective vision, he was gifted with an
>> especially fine tenor voice. Professional singing was one of the
>> possible careers he had contemplated. His singer's taste inclined
>> toward Opera and bel canto, romantic ballads and Elizabethan airs: not
>> music but song, he liked to say. His poems except for a few excursions
>> into Swiftian satire, are songs; lyrics which, without their musical
>> settings look strangely fragile. Yeats, upon first reading them,
>> praised Joyce's delicate talent, and shrewdly wondered whether his
>> ultimate form would be verse or prose.
>> Operating
>> within the broader area of fiction, he was to retain the cadenced
>> precision of the poet. Above all he remained an accomplished listener,
>> whose pages are continually animated by the accurate recording of
>> overheard conversation.
>>
>> ...
>>
>> His pangs of composition have recently been described by Philippe
>> Soupault as "a sort of daily damnation: the creation of the Joycean
>> world. The perverse ingenuity of these later experiments has been
>> deplored more frequently than deciphered. A long series of
>> misunderstandings with the public inevitably reinforced those early
>> vows of silence, exile, and cunning. Inhibited from writing naturally
>> of natural instincts, Joyce ended by inventing an artificial language
>> of innuendo and mockery. In Finnegans Wake he drew upon his linguistic
>> skills and learned hobbies to contrive an Optophone--an instrument
>> which, for the benefit of the blind, converts images into sounds. Out
>> of it come, not merely echoes of the past, but warnings of the future.
>> Mr. Earwicker's worldly misfortunes are climaxed by a lethal
>> explosion: "the abnihilisation of the etym."
>> Pessimists may interpret this enigma as the annihilation of all
>> meaning, a chain reaction set off by the destruction of the atom.
>> Optimists will stress the creation of matter ex nihilo--and trust in
>> the Word to create another world.
>>
>> http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/95sep/links/levi.htm
>> Block quote end
>>
>> Now for the Milton bio
>> Block quote
>> John Milton
>>
>> John Milton was born in London on December 9, 1608, into a
>> middle-class family. He was educated at St. Paul's School, then at
>> Christ's College, Cambridge, where he began to write poetry in Latin,
>> Italian, and English, and prepared to enter the clergy.
>>
>> After university, however, he abandoned his plans to join the
>> priesthood and spent the next six years in his father's country home
>> in Buckinghamshire following a rigorous course of independent study to
>> prepare for a career as a poet. His extensive reading included both
>> classical and modern works of religion, science, philosophy, history,
>> politics, and literature. In addition, Milton was proficient in Latin,
>> Greek, Hebrew, French, Spanish, and Italian, and obtained a
>> familiarity with Old English and Dutch as well.
>>
>> During his period of private study, Milton composed a number of poems,
>> including "On the Morning of Christ's Nativity," "On Shakespeare,"
>> "L'Allegro," "Il Penseroso," and the pastoral elegy "Lycidas." In May
>> of 1638, Milton began a 13-month tour of France and Italy, during
>> which he met many important intellectuals and influential people,
>> including the astronomer Galileo, who appears in Milton's tract
>> against censorship, "Areopagitica."
>>
>> In 1642, Milton returned from a trip into the countryside with a
>> 16-year-old bride, Mary Powell. Even though they were estranged for
>> most of their marriage, she bore him three daughters and a son before
>> her death in 1652.
>> Milton later married twice more: Katherine Woodcock in 1656, who died
>> giving birth in 1658, and Elizabeth Minshull in 1662.
>>
>> During the English Civil War, Milton championed the cause of the
>> Puritans and Oliver Cromwell, and wrote a series of pamphlets
>> advocating radical political topics including the morality of divorce,
>> the freedom of the press, populism, and sanctioned regicide. Milton
>> served as secretary for foreign languages in Cromwell's government,
>> composing official statements defending the Commonwealth. During this
>> time, Milton steadily lost his eyesight, and was completely blind by
>> 1651. He continued his duties, however, with the aid of Andrew Marvell
>> and
> other assistants.
>>
>> After the Restoration of Charles II to the throne in 1660, Milton was
>> arrested as a defender of the Commonwealth, fined, and soon released.
>> He lived the rest of his life in seclusion in the country, completing
>> the blank-verse epic poem Paradise Lost in 1667, as well as its sequel
>> Paradise Regained and the tragedy Samson Agonistes both in 1671.
>> Milton oversaw the printing of a second edition of Paradise Lost in
>> 1674, which included an explanation of "why the poem rhymes not,"
>> clarifying his use of blank verse, along with introductory notes by
>> Marvell. He died shortly afterwards, on November 8, 1674, in
>> Buckinghamshire, England.
>>
>>
>>
>> http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/707
>> Block quote end
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: stylist [mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Cheryl
>> Orgas & William Meeker
>> Sent: Sunday, February 16, 2014 9:59 AM
>> To: 'Writer's Division Mailing List'
>> Subject: Re: [stylist] Blind or Visually Impaired Authors;RE: New
>> Book, blindness on TV
>>
>> Linda,
>>
>> Blind or visually impaired authors Homer, John Milton, James Joyce,
>> and James Thurber come to mind first.  That they were known for their
>> works rather than their blindness is to me a measure of their success.
>>
>> Several authors have written novels without using common vowels, such
>> as the letter "E."  So how about a novel or short story depicting a
>> blind character without using the word "blind?"  That is, describing
>> them and their actions including alternative techniques and letting
>> the reader figure out that they are blind.
>>
>> Or how about a novel or short story written without  visual descriptions.
>> That is, using only descriptions of sounds, textures, tastes, and
>> feelings?
>>
>> I can think up these ideas, but I lack the skill, drive, and
>> self-disclipline to execute them.  So have fun.
>>
>>
>> Bill Meeker
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: stylist [mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Lynda
>> Lambert
>> Sent: Saturday, February 15, 2014 6:59 AM
>> To: newmanrl at cox.net; Writer's Division Mailing List
>> Subject: Re: [stylist] Low expectations of the blind; RE: New Book,
>> blindness on TV
>>
>> This conversation is making me begin to think about some authors I
>> taught in the past in Humanities and English courses.  Now that I am
>> "aware" of blindness, which I was NOT at all in the past, I am
>> wondering how I would interpret the literature of a blind author. I
>> taught Bourges and I never
>> knew he was blind!   I am thinking that now, if I go back to read his
>> work,
>> I will interpret many things in a different way.  I taught the "Book
>> of Sand" every semester!  Hmmmm.  Now it makes even more sense as an
>> exampe lof of Postmodernism which was the focus it had for me at the
>> time.  WOW, this is beginning to be a revelation to me.  I know that
>> many of the artists I taught were blind or visually impaired, but
>> their work was not generally explored through that lens.
>> I am going to begin looking much deeper into this for my own research
>> - if anyone has any more information on artists and writers who
>> are/were blind I would love to hear from you as I begin my own little
>> research project on this matter.
>>
>> I am re-learning how to do Power Point presentations now. Normally,
>> this is how I lectured but until now, I could not have done it again.
>> I know now, that I can do it, it's just going to take awhile for me to
>> teach myself again.  I am scheduled to do two presentation at Slippery
>> Rock University of PA in March - I'll use my milestone to give me
>> verbal "cues" as I am speaking, for these presentations. But, I want
>> to begin to develop some presentations using power point and I am sure
>> I can do it again - I just need to have the time and put in the work
>> to accomplish it.  I have always loved doing lectures and
>> presentations and I want to do them again - so I am gonna work on it!
>>
>> Lynda
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: "Robert Leslie Newman" <newmanrl at cox.net>
>> To: "'Writer's Division Mailing List'" <stylist at nfbnet.org>
>> Sent: Friday, February 14, 2014 11:22 PM
>> Subject: [stylist] Low expectations of the blind;RE: New Book,
>> blindness on TV
>>
>>
>>> Hi you all, this has been an interesting conversation:
>>>
>>> Here is another generalization that many around the world have
>>> developed over the eons: Blindness is the most God awful, feared
>>> physical condition that mankind can experience.
>>>
>>> I had read and heard this forever, from the mouths of people on the
>>> street, to what I've learned in a variety of college classes..though,
>>> over the past couple of decades blindness has been pushed down to
>>> third place. Guess what has eclipsed being blind as the most feared?
>>> Aids and cancer. And hey, I can believe that these two physical
>>> conditions are far worse...after all, either one of these two monster
>>> conditions can kill you!!! (Though, there are some who feel that
>>> blindness is a living death. And yeah, if you allow it to rule! And
>>> this is where the NFB has done the world a great service...as in we
>>> have developed a philosophy, built a framework of alternative
>>> techniques, and influenced the making of a wide variety of tools that
>>> in combination...will allow most of us to reduce the effects of
>>> blindness, down to  a level whereby most of us can say with an honesty
>>> level of 100%, 100%, that the loss of sight is not a major impediment
>>> to living a successful and happy life. No...the true problem we face
>>> is more the ignorance and the lack of information about the human
>>> potential to successfully live with blindness is the toughest
>>> impediment to being blind. MMM, go figure? [Being blind isn't the
>>> problem, living in a world of ignorance is.]
>>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: stylist [mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of
>>> Applebutter Hill
>>> Sent: Friday, February 14, 2014 9:10 PM
>>> To: 'Writer's Division Mailing List'
>>> Subject: Re: [stylist] New Book, blindness on TV
>>>
>>> Lynda,
>>> At 70, I should certainly hope you (or anyone) would have developed a
>>> healthy level of skepticism. *grin*
>>>
>>> I know that black people face prejudice and low expectations, but I
>>> think the fact that white people enslaved them to actually do
>>> something, makes that low level quite a bit higher than for blind
>>> people. We aren't deemed capable of planting a field, keeping up a
>>> household or even caring for children -- as the incident in the
>>> Midwest a few years ago shoed, when a child was removed shortly after
>> birth from its blind parents.
>>>
>>> Our traditional purpose is to give the average person something they
>>> can look at and say, "Well, I may have problems, but at least I'm not
>> blind."
>>> We
>>> also have traditionally provided them with opportunities to do good
>>> deeds.
>>> Expecting us to no longer be helpless fundamentally changes how they
>>> see themselves.
>>>
>>> Your post reminds me of a story I heard from a blind woman who was
>>> accepted to grad school. Her aunt was furious that she had stolen the
>>> position from someone who could really benefit from it. The belief was
>>> that anything that a blind person accomplished was just another
>>> example of the kindness of strangers in elevating a pitiful person and
>>> helping them feel better about themselves. BTW, she has a doctorate in
>>> law. I heard many similar stories when I was writing about Braille
>>> literacy -- they weren't on topic at the time, and I had hoped to
>>> gather some of the things people told me into articles about some of
>>> these more subtle things that are going on to this day, but it never
>>> happened.
>>> Donna
>>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: stylist [mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Lynda
>>> Lambert
>>> Sent: Friday, February 14, 2014 6:31 PM
>>> To: Writer's Division Mailing List
>>> Subject: Re: [stylist] New Book, blindness on TV
>>>
>>> Donna, yes, the expectations for blind people are very low.  I believe
>>> that is why blind people as a group are the highest educated of all
>>> people with disabilities, yet, they are the lowest employed people of
>>> all the groups.
>>> This says it all - we are not expected to be smart, able, or willing
>>> to succeed at anything more than very low levels.
>>> This is my own thoughts on it and I recognize I am quite skeptical
>>> about it
>>> - but heck, I am 70 years old now, so I guess I can blame it on my age.
>>> I think we have to work so far beyond what other people have to do to
>>> find success at so many things. And, this is also true of black
>>> people.  I do not know this from a distance, or from reading books on
>>> the subject which of course I do all the time. I know it personally,
>>> because my son is black and his family is black - they are very highly
>>> educated professionals - she a physician, he a psychologist.  At every
>>> level, black people still face very low expectations and racism - and
>>> I think blind people are very close to the same in the general view of
>>> the ST"STUPID public. I agree with you. They are ver STUPID, but we
>>> won't tell them that, just yet. lol
>>>
>>> Lynda
>>> ----- Original Message -----
>>> From: "Applebutter Hill" <applebutterhill at gmail.com>
>>> To: "'Writer's Division Mailing List'" <stylist at nfbnet.org>
>>> Sent: Friday, February 14, 2014 3:34 PM
>>> Subject: Re: [stylist] New Book, blindness on TV
>>>
>>>
>>>> Lynda,
>>>> Like you've noticed with your sister and the key, sighted people will
>>>> not accept anything we do as anything other than a fluke or a miracle.
>>>> Even faced with a clear description of the usefulness of other
>>>> senses, they somehow still have to brush anything aside that
>>>> conflicts with what they kno ... Blindness is essentially
>>>> insurmountable. I think of it as being similar to the days when a few
>>>> nutheads were trying to explain to the human race that the world is
>>>> not
>> flat.
>>>>
>>>> Coincidentally, I just got an e-mail from a rehab counsellor in PA,
>>>> who I reached out to on Linked In -- I offer them a free e-book
>>>> version of my novel and explain why I think it has value for them and
>>>> their clients. I mention the issue of dealing with low expectations.
>>>> This man said that, as
>>>
>>>> a
>>>> person who used to work with BVI and now works with other
>>>> disabilities, he believes that the issue of low expectations is much
>>>> worse for those with vision loss. I have always felt that way, but I
>>>> don't have the credentials to say so. It meant a lot to me to hear
>>>> that
>>> from someone.
>>>>
>>>> You hit on the reason behind my removing all references to blindness
>>>> from my online book descriptions; it's a taboo. Just imagine someone
>>>> getting my book and not knowing that the heroine is blind and has a
>>>> guide dog. They will have to read through at least a page before it
>>>> becomes clear to them. Some will be angry with me, because I didn't
>>>> warn them. Some, I hope, will have gotten hooked by something else in
>>>> the story and read it anyway. It's fiction, so they don't have to
>>>> change their stupid belief systems, but I hope they will have a bit
>>>> of an adjustment  in spite of themselves.
>>>> Donna
>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>> From: stylist [mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Lynda
>>>> Lambert
>>>> Sent: Friday, February 14, 2014 9:18 AM
>>>> To: Writer's Division Mailing List
>>>> Subject: Re: [stylist] New Book, blindness on TV
>>>>
>>>> It's a Friday morning snow storm here - a beautiful day outside. Time
>>>> to get some coffee and begin my day, but first I wanted to drop a not
>>>> on your discussion which is so interesting to me.
>>>>
>>>> I think Bridgit really hit it - unless a sighted person has had a lot
>>>> of time together with a blind person, they are really clueless and
>>>> they could care less about knowing positive things.  They still live
>>>> with the mentality of the question they have asked themselves and
>>>> each other for years, "Would you rather lose your sight, or your
>> hearing?".
>>>> To sighted people losing sight or hearing is the worst case scenario
>>>> they can think of and they are not about to look any closer into
>>>> either of the two life-challenges.  And, as Henrietta, experienced,
>>>> even close family members really don't understand how we do things.
>>>> Not really.  They watch us, but we are a mystery to them even though
>>>> they have been around us many times over the years.
>>>> Occasionally there is some little revelation that they grasp, but I
>>>> think it is very rare.
>>>>
>>>> A couple years ago I went on a short 5 hour trip with my sister.
>>>> When we arrived at our cousin's home, we had instructions to locate
>>>> her house key and let ourselves in because they were away on vacation
>>>> and we would have their home to stay in.  My sister retrieved the
>>>> key, as instructed.  She began to try to open the door.  She fiddled
>>>> around for quite awhile with the key and the lock in the door - yet,
>>>> she could not get it open. She tried turning the key around, tried
>>>> going faster, slower, but no luck.  Finally,
>>>
>>>> I
>>>> quietly said to her, "Give me the key and let me see what I can do."
>>>> She snickered and said "Oh, sure, you are going to open the door that
>>>> you can't even see!"  I took the key from her, felt the key, and
>>>> inserted it into the door's lock slowly. Then, I put my left had on
>>>> the door, just above the lock, so I could FEEL any movement the lock
>>>> would make.  And, I leaned very close to the lock, and I listened.
>>>> Very quickly, as I slowly turned the key, I felt the vibration of it
>>>> moving, and I heard the click as it was disengaged.  I smiled, and
>>>> handed over the key to her, and said, "The door is open."  She loudly
>>>> proclaimed, "I cannot believe it! A blind person could open the door
>>>> and I couldn't."
>>>>
>>>> I smiled at her and said, "You could not open the door because you
>>>> were using only your eyes. I opened it because I could feel it and
>>>> hear it moving."  To her it was something very weird that I had
>>>> actually opened up the door that she had struggled with and could not
>>>> get the job done.  I think in her mind it was a lucky accident even
>>>> though I explained why it happened.  Most sighted people do not think
>>>> we can do much of anything, no matter what we achieve - honestly,
>>>> that is what I think. So, for most sighted people to read about a
>>>> blind hero in a fictional account, I say, "Dream on!"  I think the
>>>> interest level for a sighted person to even read a book through is
>>>> really a stretch unless that person is really on a mission to learn
>>>> more about blindness and diversity and inclusion. Maybe in a
>>>> literature course, where it would be included in the required
>>>> reading, but on their own, I think the chances are quite slim.  But,
>>>> then, as I write this I am optimistic enough to think I see a "movie"
>>>> that could be made that would be exciting to them. Who knows? I sure
>>>> don't.  Why is it that we are constantly told we are "amazing" when
>>>> we do things that are high level achievements for anyone at all?  Why
>>>> is it that some people droll all over us about how inspiring we are
>>>> and how tragic it is that we
>>> lost our sight?
>>>> I just smile at them and say, "NO, not really! It is just who I am
>>>> and who
>>>
>>>> I
>>>> have always been."  That usually leaves them speechless and the
>>>> conversation ends.  Write on! Lynda
>>>>
>>>> ----- Original Message -----
>>>> From: "Applebutter Hill" <applebutterhill at gmail.com>
>>>> To: "'Writer's Division Mailing List'" <stylist at nfbnet.org>
>>>> Sent: Thursday, February 13, 2014 9:07 PM
>>>> Subject: Re: [stylist] New Book, blindness on TV
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> Great story!
>>>>> Donna
>>>>>
>>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>>> From: stylist [mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of
>>>>> Henrietta Brewer
>>>>> Sent: Thursday, February 13, 2014 7:32 PM
>>>>> To: Writer's Division Mailing List
>>>>> Subject: Re: [stylist] New Book, blindness on TV
>>>>>
>>>>> You guys make me laugh. You're right, Sighted people can't imagine
>>>>> the blind being the hero. At Christmas, when the power was out in
>>>>> our town, I had twenty five or thirty people here most days. We had
>>>>> a generator so we had a few lights but not in more then half the
>>>>> house.
>>>>>
>>>>> I didn't think much of it while everyone was here. Though I was
>>>>> tired of doing all the fetching because no one could find anything
>>>>> in the dark.
>>>>> When
>>>>> everyone left and I was cleaning house, I saw how difficult it was
>>>>> for our guests. They had only a flashlight in the bathroom and their
>>>>> bedroom and nothing was where it should be.
>>>>>
>>>>> they all mention now, that they will call me in any black out. But
>>>>> it took reality to get even family to realize that a blind person
>>>>> can be helpful in a black out. lol Henrietta On Feb 13, 2014, at
>>>>> 12:10 AM, Bridgit Pollpeter
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> When I wrote a short mystery story for a detective fiction class I
>>>>>> took at university, I made my main character blind, which is the
>>>>>> first time I did this. Anyway, at one point, the house the two main
>>>>>> characters are sleeping in goes up in flames, and the blind
>>>>>> character navigates them out of the house. Using his other senses,
>>>>>> he makes it out the front door. I did do some research before
>>>>>> writing the scene, but mostly based it off my own knowledge of what
>>>>>> a blind person might do in that particular situation. When
>>>>>> critiqueing our stories, a classmate said, to my face, it wasn't
>>>>>> believeable that a blind person could do that and I should change
>>>>>> that scene. Another classmate, to my surprise, said who better than
>>>>>> a blind person to navigate through a situation where sight wouldn't
>>>>>> be much help because of the smoke, and that by smell and feeling
>>>>>> heat, surely a blind person would be able to navigate just as well,
>>>>>> if not better, than a sighted person. After considering this point,
>>>>>> the first person half-heartedly agreed. My point being that I agree
>>>>>> with Chris that even though these stories are being written by
>>>>>> blind people, most of the sighted world can't, or won't, buy a
>>>>>> blind person doing the things we make them do, living as
>>>>>> independent, active,
>>> vital people.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Bridgit
>>>>>>
>>>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>>>> From: stylist [mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of
>>>>>> Chris Kuell
>>>>>> Sent: Wednesday, February 12, 2014 7:47 AM
>>>>>> To: Writer's Division Mailing List
>>>>>> Subject: Re: [stylist] New Book, blindness on TV
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Donna,
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I'm generally skeptical by nature, but I really hope they do a good
>>>>>> job with this show. It's exactly what we've been talking about
>>>>>> here--an opportunity to crush the stupid stereotypes and let the
>>>>>> public see a guy who is interesting, and just happens to be blind.
>>>>>> If it does a good job, and if the public enjoys it, it could open
>>>>>> the door to more blind characters in the
>>>>>>
>>>>>> arts. Personally, I feel certain that the reason books like yours
>>>>>> and mine aren't getting read by agents and traditional publishers
>>>>>> is because we have blind protagonists. An agent, or more likely, an
>>>>>> agent's assistant reads my query and thinks--a blind protagonist?
>>>>>> Nobody is going to buy that. It's too outside mainstream experience.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Hopefully, the times, they are a changing.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> chris
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>> Writers Division web site
>>>>>> http://writers.nfb.org/
>>>>>> stylist mailing list
>>>>>> stylist at nfbnet.org
>>>>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/stylist_nfbnet.org
>>>>>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info
>>>>>> for
>>>>>> stylist:
>>>>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/stylist_nfbnet.org/bpollpeter%40h
>>>>>> o
>>>>>> tm
>>>>>> ai
>>>>>> l.com
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>> Writers Division web site
>>>>>> http://writers.nfb.org/
>>>>>> stylist mailing list
>>>>>> stylist at nfbnet.org
>>>>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/stylist_nfbnet.org
>>>>>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info
>>>>>> for
>>>>> stylist:
>>>>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/stylist_nfbnet.org/gary.brewer%40
>>>>>> c
>>>>>> om
>>>>>> cast.net
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> Writers Division web site
>>>>> http://writers.nfb.org/
>>>>> stylist mailing list
>>>>> stylist at nfbnet.org
>>>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/stylist_nfbnet.org
>>>>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info
>>>>> for
>>>>> stylist:
>>>>>
>>>>
>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/stylist_nfbnet.org/applebutterhill%4
>>> 0gmail
>>>>> .com
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> Writers Division web site
>>>>> http://writers.nfb.org/
>>>>> stylist mailing list
>>>>> stylist at nfbnet.org
>>>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/stylist_nfbnet.org
>>>>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info
>>>>> for
>>>>> stylist:
>>>>>
>>>>
>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/stylist_nfbnet.org/llambert%40zoomin
>>> ternet
>>>> .net
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Writers Division web site
>>>> http://writers.nfb.org/
>>>> stylist mailing list
>>>> stylist at nfbnet.org
>>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/stylist_nfbnet.org
>>>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
>>>> stylist:
>>>>
>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/stylist_nfbnet.org/applebutterhill%4
>>> 0gmail
>>>> .com
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Writers Division web site
>>>> http://writers.nfb.org/
>>>> stylist mailing list
>>>> stylist at nfbnet.org
>>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/stylist_nfbnet.org
>>>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
>>>> stylist:
>>>>
>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/stylist_nfbnet.org/llambert%40zoomin
>>> ternet
>>> .net
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Writers Division web site
>>> http://writers.nfb.org/
>>> stylist mailing list
>>> stylist at nfbnet.org
>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/stylist_nfbnet.org
>>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
>>> stylist:
>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/stylist_nfbnet.org/applebutterhill%4
>>> 0gmail
>>> .com
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Writers Division web site
>>> http://writers.nfb.org/
>>> stylist mailing list
>>> stylist at nfbnet.org
>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/stylist_nfbnet.org
>>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
>>> stylist:
>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/stylist_nfbnet.org/newmanrl%40cox.ne
>>> t
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Writers Division web site
>>> http://writers.nfb.org/
>>> stylist mailing list
>>> stylist at nfbnet.org
>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/stylist_nfbnet.org
>>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
>>> stylist:
>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/stylist_nfbnet.org/llambert%40zoomin
>>> ternet.net
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Writers Division web site
>> http://writers.nfb.org/
>> stylist mailing list
>> stylist at nfbnet.org
>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/stylist_nfbnet.org
>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
>> stylist:
>>
> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/stylist_nfbnet.org/meekerorgas%40ameritech
>> .net
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Writers Division web site
>> http://writers.nfb.org/
>> stylist mailing list
>> stylist at nfbnet.org
>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/stylist_nfbnet.org
>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
>> stylist:
>>
> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/stylist_nfbnet.org/applebutterhill%40gmail
>> .com
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> ----
>
>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Writers Division web site
>> http://writers.nfb.org/
>> stylist mailing list
>> stylist at nfbnet.org
>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/stylist_nfbnet.org
>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
>> stylist:
>>
> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/stylist_nfbnet.org/llambert%40zoominternet
> .net
>>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Writers Division web site
> http://writers.nfb.org/
> stylist mailing list
> stylist at nfbnet.org
> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/stylist_nfbnet.org
> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
> stylist:
> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/stylist_nfbnet.org/newmanrl%40cox.net
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Writers Division web site
> http://writers.nfb.org/
> stylist mailing list
> stylist at nfbnet.org
> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/stylist_nfbnet.org
> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
> stylist:
> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/stylist_nfbnet.org/shawn.d.jacobson%40hud.gov
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 2
> Date: Tue, 18 Feb 2014 08:41:06 -0500
> From: "Jacobson, Shawn D" <Shawn.D.Jacobson at hud.gov>
> To: 'Writer's Division Mailing List' <stylist at nfbnet.org>
> Subject: Re: [stylist] Low expectations of the blind; RE:  New Book,
> 	blindness on TV
> Message-ID:
> 	<8838F3FB8A7BB044AA6DE247E617C6F20101DAA204 at ELANNEPV117.exh.prod.hud.gov>
> 	
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>
> On the other hand, when I attended the Iowa School for the Blind, we had
> what I would call a subculture.  We had our own variant of baseball (played
> in stairwells).  We also had our own traditions arising from being in the
> institution.  The culture was less about blindness (per se) than about where
> we lived and about being isolated from the outside world.
>
> Shawn
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: stylist [mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Bridgit
> Pollpeter
> Sent: Sunday, February 16, 2014 11:12 AM
> To: 'Writer's Division Mailing List'
> Subject: Re: [stylist] Low expectations of the blind; RE: New Book,
> blindness on TV
>
> I don't think we can refer to blindness as a culture. A culture has a
> language, customs, often a religion, etc. very distinct things specific to a
> particular group. Blindness doesn't have any of this. As blind people, we
> participate in various cultures. Being blind and using different methods and
> tools doesn't equate to a culture. We grow up and live in and choose to join
> a culture, and some of us happen to be disabled. A blind person who is
> Native American or Hungarian or middle eastern doesn't share the same
> culture as I do because we are blind. We are all part of unique and diverse
> cultures, blindness not being part of it. Blindness may color our world view
> based on the psychological and societal ramifications of bliefs held within
> a certain culture, but blindness itself has nothing to do with culture.
>
> Bridgit
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: stylist [mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Applebutter
> Hill
> Sent: Saturday, February 15, 2014 12:50 PM
> To: 'Writer's Division Mailing List'
> Subject: Re: [stylist] Low expectations of the blind;RE: New Book, blindness
> on TV
>
>
> Lynda,
> Well stated. Just because you can read the words in a book doesn't mean you
> can appreciate the references and meanings. You end up enjoying it and
> interpreting it from the point of view you have developed from your
> experience in your own culture. It's kind of like an extension of the idea
> of  running into a word or historical or literary reference that's
> unfamiliar to you. You can read on and even get a lot out of the book, but
> you will have missed something. It's also like going back to a book you
> enjoyed as a kid and finding things in it that you didn't notice the first
> time. Your experiences and the breadth of your knowledge give you tools that
> enable you to come closer to understanding what the writer has put into the
> work.
>
> As for blind  writers, we all start out as part of our cultures  -- white,
> Latino, African-American, Asian, native American, mixed race; middle-class,
> rich or poor; Christian, Jewish, Moslem, Hindi, atheist; Southern Western
> and so on.
>
> How integrated into society our families are as a whole makes a huge
> difference as well; new immigrants and refugees vs. the DAR, for instance.
> Most blind people grow up sighted and learned something about blindness from
> the beliefs and practices of our native culture. but blindness subjects all
> of us to a certain level of marginalization, regardless of our success. We
> grow to see our specific culture through our experiences as blind people.
> Our response to this marginalization, however, differs widely. In part this
> is due to the culture we live within, and in part it depends on our
> individual emotional make-up. It also depends on whether or not we have
> accepted the place in our culture given to "the blind." There are also blind
> people who grew up in homes and communities that are more enlightened than
> most and don't experience the same level of marginalization as most of us.
> Hopefully, our NFB children fall into this group. This is not to say that
> they don't experience discrimination and ignorance, but they deal with it
> from a more secure, less gut-wrenching place than most.
>
> One of the most significant differences between other marginalized
> minorities and the blindness community is that we are a scattered minority.
> Most blind people are the only blind people in their families.
> This separation is not generally the case with other minorities. In the
> oppression of women and blacks, for instance, it would be highly unusual to
> find a woman who didn't have day to day contact with other women; same for
> blacks, religious minorities and economic status.
>
> Gays come closer to this situation than any other group, but the reality of
> their sexual preference drives them to find each other in a way that
> blindness does not. Also, their ability to "pass" allows them access to
> social, educational and employment opportunities we don't have.
>
> The fact that blindness as a culture is not as cohesive as being part of
> other minorities may make looking for a predominant blindness perspective in
> the work of blind writers more difficult . In the NFB, we have developed our
> own culture and identity and there are shared perspectives upon which each
> of us base our individual beliefs. As strong as we are and as much as we
> have accomplished, however, we represent a small portion of the blindness
> community as a whole. I wonder if it isn't that way with other civil rights
> movements. There is a radicalized minority within the minority which leads
> the way. Blind writers don't all share this perspective.
>
> Anyway, I will be interested in hearing what you think after a
> re-examination of the work of blind writers. Donna
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: stylist [mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Lynda
> Lambert
> Sent: Saturday, February 15, 2014 8:20 AM
> To: Writer's Division Mailing List
> Subject: Re: [stylist] Low expectations of the blind;RE: New Book, blindness
> on TV
>
> It would be done the same way we interpret the writings or art of different
> cultural groups. If you do not study the culture of the artist/writer then
> you do not really have a grasp of meanings, influences, and psychology in
> the work they produce.
>
> For instance, when I taught African American Literature, the students had to
> study the various African influences in the work - the "why" the writer has
> chosen different themes, and trace those themes back in their history.
>
> I taught Puerto Rican art/literature, and Native American art/writing - and
> to understand these more fully, my students were required not only to spend
> the semester in the classroom studies, but to actually go on trips to those
> locations to explore the landscape, the culture, the psychology of the
> culture, the music, dance, customs, etc.  Without looking deeply into the
> culture we cannot even begin to look through a different lens when reading
> or observing the art of that person.
>
> My African American friend was my very close colleague. Once we were at a
> conference together and we went into a laughing fit one night in our hotel
> room when we began to realize that SHE had a more Greek Worldview , and my
> worldview was more African!
>
> We are far more than a blind person - that is just who we are externally at
> this moment. But, we are all the generations of our ancestors, we have deep
> roots in the past and if we do not explore those things then we remain
> ignorant of who we really are and how we got to where we are today.
>
> When I walk in the woods, on the ridge behind my home, and hear the waters
> of the creek below me - I hear my great grandmother walking beside me. She
> is Native American and I am very aware of her presence in my life today.
> When I first visited Austria and Germany, I looked around at the people who
> live there, and I saw ME.  My sister and I looked at each other and she
> said, "All of these people here look just like us. I see us in all of their
> faces."
>
> So I think that is why I embraced my own sight loss so quickly because I
> realize I am far more than what I appear to be at a momentary glance. As are
> we all. We carry our ancestors inside of us and they guide us in our life
> journey in all that we do.
>
> Lynda
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "justin williams" <justin.williams2 at gmail.com>
> To: "'Writer's Division Mailing List'" <stylist at nfbnet.org>
> Sent: Saturday, February 15, 2014 8:01 AM
> Subject: Re: [stylist] Low expectations of the blind;RE: New Book, blindness
> on TV
>
>
>> How would ou have looked at an author who is blind differently or an
>> artist who is blind differently?
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: stylist [mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Lynda
>> Lambert
>> Sent: Saturday, February 15, 2014 7:59 AM
>> To: newmanrl at cox.net; Writer's Division Mailing List
>> Subject: Re: [stylist] Low expectations of the blind; RE: New Book,
>> blindness on TV
>>
>> This conversation is making me begin to think about some authors I
>> taught in the past in Humanities and English courses.  Now that I am
>> "aware" of blindness, which I was NOT at all in the past, I am
>> wondering how I would interpret the literature of a blind author. I
>> taught Bourges and I never
>> knew he was blind!   I am thinking that now, if I go back to read his
>> work,
>> I will interpret many things in a different way.  I taught the "Book
>> of Sand" every semester!  Hmmmm.  Now it makes even more sense as an
>> exampe lof of Postmodernism which was the focus it had for me at the
>> time.  WOW, this is beginning to be a revelation to me.  I know that
>> many of the artists I taught were blind or visually impaired, but
>> their work was not generally explored through that lens. I am going to
>
>> begin looking much deeper into this for my own research
>> - if anyone has any more information on artists and writers who
>> are/were blind I would love to hear from you as I begin my own little
>> research project on this matter.
>>
>> I am re-learning how to do Power Point presentations now. Normally,
>> this is how I lectured but until now, I could not have done it again.
>> I know now, that I can do it, it's just going to take awhile for me to
>
>> teach myself again.  I am scheduled to do two presentation at Slippery
>
>> Rock University of PA in March - I'll use my milestone to give me
>> verbal "cues" as I am speaking, for these presentations. But, I want
>> to begin to develop some presentations using power point and I am sure
>
>> I can do it again - I just need to have the time and put in the work
>> to accomplish it.  I have always loved doing lectures and
>> presentations and I want to do them again - so I am gonna work on it!
>>
>> Lynda
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: "Robert Leslie Newman" <newmanrl at cox.net>
>> To: "'Writer's Division Mailing List'" <stylist at nfbnet.org>
>> Sent: Friday, February 14, 2014 11:22 PM
>> Subject: [stylist] Low expectations of the blind;RE: New Book,
>> blindness on TV
>>
>>
>>> Hi you all, this has been an interesting conversation:
>>>
>>> Here is another generalization that many around the world have
>>> developed over the eons: Blindness is the most God awful, feared
>>> physical condition that mankind can experience.
>>>
>>> I had read and heard this forever, from the mouths of people on the
>>> street, to what I've learned in a variety of college classes..though,
>
>>> over the past couple of decades blindness has been pushed down to
>>> third place. Guess what has eclipsed being blind as the most feared?
>>> Aids and cancer. And hey, I can believe that these two physical
>>> conditions are far worse...after all, either one of these two monster
>
>>> conditions can kill you!!! (Though, there are some who feel that
>>> blindness is a living death. And yeah, if you allow it to rule! And
>>> this is where the NFB has done the world a great service...as in we
>>> have developed a philosophy, built a framework of alternative
>>> techniques, and influenced the making of a wide variety of tools that
>
>>> in combination...will allow most of us to reduce the effects of
>>> blindness, down to  a level whereby most of us can say with an
>>> honesty level of 100%, 100%, that the loss of sight is not a major
>>> impediment to living a successful and happy life. No...the true
>>> problem we face is more the ignorance and the lack of information
>>> about the human potential to successfully live with blindness is the
>>> toughest impediment to being blind. MMM, go figure? [Being blind
>>> isn't the problem, living in a world of ignorance is.]
>>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: stylist [mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of
>>> Applebutter Hill
>>> Sent: Friday, February 14, 2014 9:10 PM
>>> To: 'Writer's Division Mailing List'
>>> Subject: Re: [stylist] New Book, blindness on TV
>>>
>>> Lynda,
>>> At 70, I should certainly hope you (or anyone) would have developed a
>
>>> healthy level of skepticism. *grin*
>>>
>>> I know that black people face prejudice and low expectations, but I
>>> think the fact that white people enslaved them to actually do
>>> something, makes that low level quite a bit higher than for blind
>>> people. We aren't deemed capable of planting a field, keeping up a
>>> household or even caring for children -- as the incident in the
>>> Midwest a few years ago shoed, when a child was removed shortly after
>> birth from its blind parents.
>>>
>>> Our traditional purpose is to give the average person something they
>>> can look at and say, "Well, I may have problems, but at least I'm not
>> blind."
>>> We
>>> also have traditionally provided them with opportunities to do good
>>> deeds. Expecting us to no longer be helpless fundamentally changes
>>> how they see themselves.
>>>
>>> Your post reminds me of a story I heard from a blind woman who was
>>> accepted to grad school. Her aunt was furious that she had stolen the
>
>>> position from someone who could really benefit from it. The belief
>>> was that anything that a blind person accomplished was just another
>>> example of the kindness of strangers in elevating a pitiful person
>>> and helping them feel better about themselves. BTW, she has a
>>> doctorate in law. I heard many similar stories when I was writing
>>> about Braille literacy -- they weren't on topic at the time, and I
>>> had hoped to gather some of the things people told me into articles
>>> about some of these more subtle things that are going on to this day,
>
>>> but it never happened. Donna
>>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: stylist [mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Lynda
>>> Lambert
>>> Sent: Friday, February 14, 2014 6:31 PM
>>> To: Writer's Division Mailing List
>>> Subject: Re: [stylist] New Book, blindness on TV
>>>
>>> Donna, yes, the expectations for blind people are very low.  I
>>> believe that is why blind people as a group are the highest educated
>>> of all people with disabilities, yet, they are the lowest employed
>>> people of all the groups. This says it all - we are not expected to
>>> be smart, able, or willing to succeed at anything more than very low
>>> levels. This is my own thoughts on it and I recognize I am quite
>>> skeptical about it
>>> - but heck, I am 70 years old now, so I guess I can blame it on my
> age.
>>> I think we have to work so far beyond what other people have to do to
>>> find success at so many things. And, this is also true of black
>>> people.  I do not know this from a distance, or from reading books on
>>> the subject which of course I do all the time. I know it personally,
>>> because my son is black and his family is black - they are very
> highly
>>> educated professionals - she a physician, he a psychologist.  At
> every
>>> level, black people still face very low expectations and racism - and
>>> I think blind people are very close to the same in the general view
> of
>>> the ST"STUPID public. I agree with you. They are ver STUPID, but we
>>> won't tell them that, just yet. lol
>>>
>>> Lynda
>>> ----- Original Message -----
>>> From: "Applebutter Hill" <applebutterhill at gmail.com>
>>> To: "'Writer's Division Mailing List'" <stylist at nfbnet.org>
>>> Sent: Friday, February 14, 2014 3:34 PM
>>> Subject: Re: [stylist] New Book, blindness on TV
>>>
>>>
>>>> Lynda,
>>>> Like you've noticed with your sister and the key, sighted people
>>>> will not accept anything we do as anything other than a fluke or a
>>>> miracle. Even faced with a clear description of the usefulness of
>>>> other senses, they somehow still have to brush anything aside that
>>>> conflicts with what they kno ... Blindness is essentially
>>>> insurmountable. I think of it as being similar to the days when a
>>>> few nutheads were trying to explain to the human race that the world
>
>>>> is not
>> flat.
>>>>
>>>> Coincidentally, I just got an e-mail from a rehab counsellor in PA,
>>>> who I reached out to on Linked In -- I offer them a free e-book
>>>> version of my novel and explain why I think it has value for them
>>>> and their clients. I mention the issue of dealing with low
>>>> expectations. This man said that, as
>>>
>>>> a
>>>> person who used to work with BVI and now works with other
>>>> disabilities, he believes that the issue of low expectations is much
>
>>>> worse for those with vision loss. I have always felt that way, but I
>
>>>> don't have the credentials to say so. It meant a lot to me to hear
>>>> that
>>> from someone.
>>>>
>>>> You hit on the reason behind my removing all references to blindness
>
>>>> from my online book descriptions; it's a taboo. Just imagine someone
>
>>>> getting my book and not knowing that the heroine is blind and has a
>>>> guide dog. They will have to read through at least a page before it
>>>> becomes clear to them. Some will be angry with me, because I didn't
>>>> warn them. Some, I hope, will have gotten hooked by something else
>>>> in the story and read it anyway. It's fiction, so they don't have to
>
>>>> change their stupid belief systems, but I hope they will have a bit
>>>> of an adjustment  in spite of themselves. Donna -----Original
>>>> Message-----
>>>> From: stylist [mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Lynda
>>>> Lambert
>>>> Sent: Friday, February 14, 2014 9:18 AM
>>>> To: Writer's Division Mailing List
>>>> Subject: Re: [stylist] New Book, blindness on TV
>>>>
>>>> It's a Friday morning snow storm here - a beautiful day outside.
>>>> Time to get some coffee and begin my day, but first I wanted to drop
>
>>>> a not on your discussion which is so interesting to me.
>>>>
>>>> I think Bridgit really hit it - unless a sighted person has had a
>>>> lot of time together with a blind person, they are really clueless
>>>> and they could care less about knowing positive things.  They still
>>>> live with the mentality of the question they have asked themselves
>>>> and each other for years, "Would you rather lose your sight, or your
>> hearing?".
>>>> To sighted people losing sight or hearing is the worst case scenario
>
>>>> they can think of and they are not about to look any closer into
>>>> either of the two life-challenges.  And, as Henrietta, experienced,
>>>> even close family members really don't understand how we do things.
>>>> Not really.  They watch us, but we are a mystery to them even though
>
>>>> they have been around us many times over the years. Occasionally
>>>> there is some little revelation that they grasp, but I think it is
>>>> very rare.
>>>>
>>>> A couple years ago I went on a short 5 hour trip with my sister.
>>>> When we arrived at our cousin's home, we had instructions to locate
>>>> her house key and let ourselves in because they were away on
>>>> vacation and we would have their home to stay in.  My sister
>>>> retrieved the key, as instructed.  She began to try to open the
>>>> door.  She fiddled around for quite awhile with the key and the lock
>
>>>> in the door - yet, she could not get it open. She tried turning the
>>>> key around, tried going faster, slower, but no luck.  Finally,
>>>
>>>> I
>>>> quietly said to her, "Give me the key and let me see what I can do."
>
>>>> She snickered and said "Oh, sure, you are going to open the door
>>>> that you can't even see!"  I took the key from her, felt the key,
>>>> and inserted it into the door's lock slowly. Then, I put my left had
>
>>>> on the door, just above the lock, so I could FEEL any movement the
>>>> lock would make.  And, I leaned very close to the lock, and I
>>>> listened. Very quickly, as I slowly turned the key, I felt the
>>>> vibration of it moving, and I heard the click as it was disengaged.
>
>>>> I smiled, and handed over the key to her, and said, "The door is
>>>> open."  She loudly proclaimed, "I cannot believe it! A blind person
>>>> could open the door and I couldn't."
>>>>
>>>> I smiled at her and said, "You could not open the door because you
>>>> were using only your eyes. I opened it because I could feel it and
>>>> hear it moving."  To her it was something very weird that I had
>>>> actually opened up the door that she had struggled with and could
>>>> not get the job done.  I think in her mind it was a lucky accident
>>>> even though I explained why it happened.  Most sighted people do not
>
>>>> think we can do much of anything, no matter what we achieve -
>>>> honestly, that is what I think. So, for most sighted people to read
>>>> about a blind hero in a fictional account, I say, "Dream on!"  I
>>>> think the interest level for a sighted person to even read a book
>>>> through is really a stretch unless that person is really on a
>>>> mission to learn more about blindness and diversity and inclusion.
>>>> Maybe in a literature course, where it would be included in the
>>>> required reading, but on their own, I think the chances are quite
>>>> slim.  But, then, as I write this I am optimistic enough to think I
>>>> see a "movie" that could be made that would be exciting to them. Who
>
>>>> knows? I sure don't.  Why is it that we are constantly told we are
>>>> "amazing" when we do things that are high level achievements for
>>>> anyone at all?  Why is it that some people droll all over us about
>>>> how inspiring we are and how tragic it is that we
>>> lost our sight?
>>>> I just smile at them and say, "NO, not really! It is just who I am
>>>> and who
>>>
>>>> I
>>>> have always been."  That usually leaves them speechless and the
>>>> conversation ends.  Write on! Lynda
>>>>
>>>> ----- Original Message -----
>>>> From: "Applebutter Hill" <applebutterhill at gmail.com>
>>>> To: "'Writer's Division Mailing List'" <stylist at nfbnet.org>
>>>> Sent: Thursday, February 13, 2014 9:07 PM
>>>> Subject: Re: [stylist] New Book, blindness on TV
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> Great story!
>>>>> Donna
>>>>>
>>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>>> From: stylist [mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of
>>>>> Henrietta Brewer
>>>>> Sent: Thursday, February 13, 2014 7:32 PM
>>>>> To: Writer's Division Mailing List
>>>>> Subject: Re: [stylist] New Book, blindness on TV
>>>>>
>>>>> You guys make me laugh. You're right, Sighted people can't imagine
>>>>> the blind being the hero. At Christmas, when the power was out in
>>>>> our town, I had twenty five or thirty people here most days. We had
>
>>>>> a generator so we had a few lights but not in more then half the
>>>>> house.
>>>>>
>>>>> I didn't think much of it while everyone was here. Though I was
>>>>> tired of doing all the fetching because no one could find anything
>>>>> in the dark. When everyone left and I was cleaning house, I saw how
>>>>> difficult it was for our guests. They had only a flashlight in the
>>>>> bathroom and
> their
>>>>> bedroom and nothing was where it should be.
>>>>>
>>>>> they all mention now, that they will call me in any black out. But
>>>>> it took reality to get even family to realize that a blind person
>>>>> can be helpful in a black out. lol Henrietta On Feb 13, 2014, at
>>>>> 12:10 AM, Bridgit Pollpeter
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> When I wrote a short mystery story for a detective fiction class I
>
>>>>>> took at university, I made my main character blind, which is the
>>>>>> first time I did this. Anyway, at one point, the house the two
>>>>>> main characters are sleeping in goes up in flames, and the blind
>>>>>> character navigates them out of the house. Using his other senses,
>
>>>>>> he makes it out the front door. I did do some research before
>>>>>> writing the scene, but mostly based it off my own knowledge of
>>>>>> what a blind person might do in that particular situation. When
>>>>>> critiqueing our stories, a classmate said, to my face, it wasn't
>>>>>> believeable that a blind person could do that and I should change
>>>>>> that scene. Another classmate, to my surprise, said who better
>>>>>> than a blind person to navigate through a situation where sight
>>>>>> wouldn't be much help because of the smoke, and that by smell and
>>>>>> feeling heat, surely a blind person would be able to navigate just
>
>>>>>> as well, if not better, than a sighted person. After considering
>>>>>> this point, the first person half-heartedly agreed. My point being
>
>>>>>> that I agree with Chris that even though these stories are being
>>>>>> written by blind people, most of the sighted world can't, or
>>>>>> won't, buy a blind person doing the things we make them do, living
>
>>>>>> as independent, active,
>>> vital people.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Bridgit
>>>>>>
>>>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>>>> From: stylist [mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of
>>>>>> Chris Kuell
>>>>>> Sent: Wednesday, February 12, 2014 7:47 AM
>>>>>> To: Writer's Division Mailing List
>>>>>> Subject: Re: [stylist] New Book, blindness on TV
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Donna,
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I'm generally skeptical by nature, but I really hope they do a
>>>>>> good job with this show. It's exactly what we've been talking
>>>>>> about here--an opportunity to crush the stupid stereotypes and let
>
>>>>>> the public see a guy who is interesting, and just happens to be
>>>>>> blind. If it does a good job, and if the public enjoys it, it
>>>>>> could open the door to more blind characters in the
>>>>>>
>>>>>> arts. Personally, I feel certain that the reason books like yours
>>>>>> and mine aren't getting read by agents and traditional publishers
>>>>>> is because we have blind protagonists. An agent, or more likely,
>>>>>> an agent's assistant reads my query and thinks--a blind
>>>>>> protagonist? Nobody is going to buy that. It's too outside
>>>>>> mainstream experience.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Hopefully, the times, they are a changing.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> chris
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>> Writers Division web site
>>>>>> http://writers.nfb.org/
>>>>>> stylist mailing list
>>>>>> stylist at nfbnet.org
>>>>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/stylist_nfbnet.org
>>>>>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info
>>>>>> for
>>>>>> stylist:
>>>>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/stylist_nfbnet.org/bpollpeter%40
>>>>>> h
>>>>>> o
>>>>>> tm
>>>>>> ai
>>>>>> l.com
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>> Writers Division web site
>>>>>> http://writers.nfb.org/
>>>>>> stylist mailing list
>>>>>> stylist at nfbnet.org
>>>>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/stylist_nfbnet.org
>>>>>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info
>>>>>> for
>>>>> stylist:
>>>>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/stylist_nfbnet.org/gary.brewer%4
>>>>>> 0
>>>>>> c
>>>>>> om
>>>>>> cast.net
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> Writers Division web site
>>>>> http://writers.nfb.org/
>>>>> stylist mailing list
>>>>> stylist at nfbnet.org
>>>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/stylist_nfbnet.org
>>>>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info
>>>>> for
>>>>> stylist:
>>>>>
>>>>
>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/stylist_nfbnet.org/applebutterhill%
>>> 4
>>> 0gmail
>>>>> .com
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> Writers Division web site
>>>>> http://writers.nfb.org/
>>>>> stylist mailing list
>>>>> stylist at nfbnet.org
>>>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/stylist_nfbnet.org
>>>>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info
>>>>> for
>>>>> stylist:
>>>>>
>>>>
>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/stylist_nfbnet.org/llambert%40zoomi
>>> n
>>> ternet
>>>> .net
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Writers Division web site
>>>> http://writers.nfb.org/
>>>> stylist mailing list
>>>> stylist at nfbnet.org
>>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/stylist_nfbnet.org
>>>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info
>>>> for
>>>> stylist:
>>>>
>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/stylist_nfbnet.org/applebutterhill%
>>> 4
>>> 0gmail
>>>> .com
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Writers Division web site
>>>> http://writers.nfb.org/
>>>> stylist mailing list
>>>> stylist at nfbnet.org
>>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/stylist_nfbnet.org
>>>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info
>>>> for
>>>> stylist:
>>>>
>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/stylist_nfbnet.org/llambert%40zoomi
>>> n
>>> ternet
>>> .net
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Writers Division web site
>>> http://writers.nfb.org/
>>> stylist mailing list
>>> stylist at nfbnet.org
>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/stylist_nfbnet.org
>>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
>>> stylist:
>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/stylist_nfbnet.org/applebutterhill%
>>> 4
>>> 0gmail
>>> .com
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Writers Division web site
>>> http://writers.nfb.org/
>>> stylist mailing list
>>> stylist at nfbnet.org
>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/stylist_nfbnet.org
>>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
>>> stylist:
>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/stylist_nfbnet.org/newmanrl%40cox.n
>>> e
>>> t
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Writers Division web site
>>> http://writers.nfb.org/
>>> stylist mailing list
>>> stylist at nfbnet.org
>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/stylist_nfbnet.org
>>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
>>> stylist:
>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/stylist_nfbnet.org/llambert%40zoomi
>>> n
>>> ternet.net
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Writers Division web site
>> http://writers.nfb.org/
>> stylist mailing list
>> stylist at nfbnet.org
>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/stylist_nfbnet.org
>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
>> stylist:
>>
> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/stylist_nfbnet.org/justin.williams2%40
> gmai
>> l.com
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Writers Division web site
>> http://writers.nfb.org/
>> stylist mailing list
>> stylist at nfbnet.org
>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/stylist_nfbnet.org
>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
>> stylist:
>>
> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/stylist_nfbnet.org/llambert%40zoominte
> rnet
> .net
>>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Writers Division web site
> http://writers.nfb.org/
> stylist mailing list
> stylist at nfbnet.org http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/stylist_nfbnet.org
> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
> stylist:
> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/stylist_nfbnet.org/applebutterhill%40g
> mail
> .com
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Writers Division web site
> http://writers.nfb.org/
> stylist mailing list
> stylist at nfbnet.org http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/stylist_nfbnet.org
> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
> stylist:
> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/stylist_nfbnet.org/bpollpeter%40hotmai
> l.com
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Writers Division web site
> http://writers.nfb.org/
> stylist mailing list
> stylist at nfbnet.org
> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/stylist_nfbnet.org
> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
> stylist:
> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/stylist_nfbnet.org/shawn.d.jacobson%40hud.gov
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 3
> Date: Tue, 18 Feb 2014 11:37:09 -0500
> From: "Lynda Lambert" <llambert at zoominternet.net>
> To: "Writer's Division Mailing List" <stylist at nfbnet.org>
> Subject: Re: [stylist] Blind or Visually Impaired Authors,	new books
> 	and more &:  Is Literature Against us? NFB Speech
> Message-ID: <253D9227934B43A1A57A85D67E37CBB5 at Lambert>
> Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1";
> 	reply-type=original
>
> I finally read this conference presentation this morning.  It is fantastic.
>
> I can think of a variety of other references and situations found in
> literature besides the ones he talks about here.  While I was listening to
> this speech, I was envisioning the art works throughout history that support
>
> his examples. One very strong image that came to my mind was Caravaggio's
> paintings, circa 1602 of the blinding of Saul.  We see in more than one
> version, the moment that Christ appeared to him in a blinding light.  All of
>
> the people around him were blinded as well as Saul. t the instant he was
> struck blind.  such  powerful paintings are forever embedded in my mind from
>
> studies I did decades ago. The paintings of all ages that show the idea of
> blinding and blindness are unforgetable and illuminating.  Here we can
> connect the dots that with the sudden blindness comes a change so dramatic
> and profound.  In the literature, the images remain as clearly to us - the
> images come alive and we believe what we have read in the text if we are
> deep readers and are engaged in the stories.  When you stand before
> Caravaggio's paintings in the churches in Europe where they hang, you can
> feel the disaster that has taken place in the stories, and you can  hear the
>
> terror and the screams of the people there in that scene. The same for the
> literature , because they are universal themes that are for people of every
>
> age and for all times.
>
> I really appreciate the time it took for you to find this speech and I have
>
> copied it for later reference when I am able to look more deeply into it.
>
> What a brilliant mind I can see behind the text here in this speech!   I
> really loved reading this today.  Isn't scholarship and deep research
> exciting!!!
> Thank you so much! Lynda
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Jacobson, Shawn D" <Shawn.D.Jacobson at hud.gov>
> To: <newmanrl at cox.net>; "'Writer's Division Mailing List'"
> <stylist at nfbnet.org>
> Sent: Tuesday, February 18, 2014 8:20 AM
> Subject: Re: [stylist] Blind or Visually Impaired Authors, new books and
> more &: Is Literature Against us? NFB Speech
>
>
>> This brings back memories.  I remember reading "Blindness is Literature
>> Against us" in braille at the Iowa Braille School.  This was back in the
>> early '70's when being a Federationist could get you in trouble, so you
>> had to hide Federation literature under the bed.
>>
>> Anyway, thanks for reminding us.
>>
>> Shawn
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: stylist [mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Robert
>> Leslie Newman
>> Sent: Monday, February 17, 2014 10:07 AM
>> To: 'Writer's Division Mailing List'
>> Subject: Re: [stylist] Blind or Visually Impaired Authors, new books and
>> more &: Is Literature Against us? NFB Speech
>>
>> Hey you all, here is more on the topic of blind authors, the blind as
>> portrayed on TV, in books, etc. This is a Kenneth Jernigan banquet speech
>> and it hits at more of this present theme of ours:
>> Blindness: Is Literature Against Us?
>> An Address Delivered by Kenneth Jernigan
>> President, National Federation of the Blind
>> At the Banquet of the Annual Convention
>> Chicago, July 3, 1974
>> History, we are told, is the record of what human beings have done;
>> literature, the record of what they have thought. Last year I examined
>> with
>> you the place of the blind in history-not just what we have done but what
>> the historians have remembered and said we have done. The two, as we
>> found,
>> are vastly different.
>> This year I would like to talk with you about the place of the blind in
>> literature. How have we been perceived? What has been our role? How have
>> the
>> poets and novelists, the essayists and dramatists seen us? Have they
>> "told
>> it like it is," or merely liked it as they've told it?
>> With history there is at least a supposed foundation of fact. Whatever
>> the
>> twisting or omission or misinterpretation or downright falsehood, that
>> foundation presumably remains-a tether and a touchstone, always subject
>> to
>> reexamination and new proof. Not so with literature. The author is free
>> to
>> cut through facts to the essence, to dream and soar and surmise. Going
>> deeper than history, the myths and feelings of a people are enshrined in
>> its
>> literature. Literary culture in all its forms constitutes possibly the
>> main
>> transmission belt of our society's beliefs and values-more important even
>> than the schools, the churches, the news media, or the family. How, then,
>> have we fared in literature?
>> The literary record reveals no single theme or unitary view of the life
>> of
>> the blind. Instead, it displays a bewildering variety of images-often
>> conflicting and contradictory, not only as between different ages or
>> cultures, or among the works of various writers, but even within the
>> pages
>> of a single book.
>> Yet, upon closer examination the principal themes and motifs of
>> literature
>> and popular culture are nine in number and may be summarized as follows:
>> blindness as compensatory or miraculous power, blindness as total
>> tragedy;
>> blindness as foolishness and helplessness; blindness as unrelieved
>> wickedness and evil; blindness as perfect virtue; blindness as punishment
>> for sin; blindness as abnormality or dehumanization; blindness as
>> purification; and blindness as symbol or parable.
>> Let us begin with blindness and compensatory powers. Suppose one of you
>> should ask me whether I think there is any advantage in being blind; and
>> suppose I should answer like this: "Not an advantage perhaps: still it
>> has
>> compensations that one might not think of. A new world to explore, new
>> experiences, new powers awakening; strange new perceptions; life in the
>> fourth dimension." How would you react to that? You would, I suspect,
>> laugh
>> me out of the room. I doubt that a single person here would buy such
>> stereotyped stupidity. You and I know from firsthand experience that
>> there
>> is no "fourth dimension" to blindness-no miraculous new powers awakening,
>>
>> no
>> strange new perceptions, no brave new worlds to explore. Yet, the words I
>> have quoted are those of a blind character in a popular novel of some
>> time
>> back. (I don't know whether the term has significance, but a blind
>> "private
>> eye," no less.)
>> The association of blindness with compensatory powers, illustrated by the
>> blind detective I have just mentioned, represents a venerable tradition,
>> reaching back to classical mythology. A favorite method of punishment
>> among
>> the gods of ancient Greece was blinding-regarded apparently as a fate
>> worse
>> than death-following which, more often than not, the gods so pitied the
>> blinded victim that they relented and conferred upon him extraordinary
>> gifts, usually the power of prophecy or some other exceptional skill.
>> Thus,
>> Homer was widely regarded as having been compensated by the gift of
>> poetry.
>> In the same way Tiresias, who wandered through the plays of Sophocles,
>> received for his blindness the gift of prophecy.
>> The theme of divine compensation following divine retribution survived
>> the
>> passage of the ages and the decline of the pagan religions. Sir Arthur
>> Conan
>> Doyle (one of the most eminent novelists of the last century, and the
>> creator of Sherlock Holmes) conjured up a blind character with something
>> of
>> Holmes's sleuthing talents, in a book entitled Sir Nigel. This figure is
>> introduced as one who has the mysterious ability to detect by hearing a
>> hidden tunnel, which runs beneath the besieged castle. His compensatory
>> powers are described in a conversation between two other people in the
>> novel:
>> "This man was once rich and of good repute [says one], but he was
>> beggared
>> by this robber lord who afterwards put out his eyes, so that he has lived
>> for many years in darkness at the charity of others."
>> "How can he help in our enterprise if he be indeed blind?" [asks his
>> companion.]
>> "It is for that very reason, fair Lord, that he can be of greater service
>> than any other man. For it often happens that when a man has lost a
>> sense,
>> the good God will strengthen those that remain. Hence it is that Andreas
>> has
>> such ears that he can hear the sap in the trees or the cheep of the mouse
>>
>> in
>> its burrow . . ."2
>> The great nineteenth-century novelist Victor Hugo, in The Man Who Laughs,
>> reflected the view of a host of modern writers that blindness carries
>> with
>> it a certain purity and ecstasy, which somehow makes up for the loss of
>> sight. His blind heroine, Dea, is portrayed as "absorbed by that kind of
>> ecstasy peculiar to the blind, which seems at times to give them a song
>> to
>> listen to in their souls and to make up to them for the light which they
>> lack by some strain of ideal music. Blindness," says Hugo, "is a cavern
>> to
>> which reaches the deep harmony of the Eternal."3
>> Probably it is this mystical notion of a "sixth sense" accompanying
>> blindness that accounts for the rash of blind detectives and
>> investigators
>> in popular fiction. Max Carrados, the man who talked of living in the
>> "fourth dimension," first appeared in 1914 and went on to survive a
>> number
>> of superhuman escapades through the nineteen twenties. In 1915 came
>> another
>> sightless sleuth-the remarkable Damon Gaunt, who "never lost a case."4 So
>>
>> it
>> is with "Thornley Colton, Blind Detective," the brainchild of Clinton H.
>> Stagg; and so it is with the most illustrious of all the private eyes
>> without eyes, Captain Duncan Maclain, whose special qualities are set
>> forth
>> in the deathless prose of a dust jacket:
>> "Shooting to kill by sound, playing chess with fantastic precision, and,
>> of
>> course, quickening the hearts of the opposite sex, Captain Maclain has
>> won
>> the unreserved admiration of reviewers."5
>> Even the author is carried away with the genius of his hero: "There were
>> moments," he writes, "when powers slightly greater than those possessed
>> by
>> ordinary mortals seemed bestowed on Duncan Maclain. Such moments worried
>> him."6
>> They might worry us, as well; for all of this mumbo jumbo about abnormal
>> or
>> supernatural powers doesn't lessen the stereotype of the blind person as
>> alien and different, unnatural and peculiar. It makes it worse.
>> Not only is it untrue, but it is also a profound disservice to the blind;
>> for it suggests that whatever a blind person may accomplish is not due to
>> his own ability but to some magic inherent in blindness itself. This
>> assumption of compensatory powers removes the blind person at a stroke of
>> the pen from the realm of the normal-the ordinary, everyday world of
>> plain
>> people-and places him in a limbo of abnormality. Whether supernormal or
>> subnormal does not matter-he is without responsibility, without rights,
>> and
>> without society. We have been conned into this view of second-class
>> status
>> long enough. The play is over. We want no more of magic powers and
>> compensations. We want our rights as citizens and human beings-and we
>> intend
>> to have them!
>> It is significant that, for all his supposed charm and talent, Maclain
>> never
>> gets the girl-or any girl. The author plainly regards him as ineligible
>> for
>> such normal human relationships as love, sex, and marriage. Max Carrados
>> put
>> it this way in replying to an acquaintance who expressed great comfort in
>> his presence: "Blindness invites confidence," he says. "We are out of the
>> running-for us human rivalry ceases to exist."7
>> This notion of compensatory powers-the doctrine that blindness is its own
>> reward-is no compliment but an insult. It robs us of all credit for our
>> achievements and all responsibility for our failings. It neatly relieves
>> society of any obligation to equalize conditions or provide opportunities
>>
>> or
>> help us help ourselves. It leaves us in the end without the capacity to
>> lead
>> a regular, competitive, and participating life in the community around
>> us.
>> The blind, in short, may (according to this view) be extraordinary, but
>> we
>> can never be ordinary. Don't you believe it! We are normal people-neither
>> especially blessed nor especially cursed-and the fiction to the contrary
>> must come to an end! It is not mumbo jumbo we want, or magical powers-but
>> our rights as free people, our responsibilities as citizens, and our
>> dignity
>> as human beings.
>> Negative as it is, this image of compensatory powers is less vicious and
>> destructive than some others which run through the literature of fiction
>> and
>> fantasy. The most damaging of all is also the oldest and most persistent:
>> namely, the theme of blindness as total tragedy, the image summed up in
>> the
>> ancient Hebrew saying, "The blind man is as one dead." The Oedipus cycle
>> of
>> Greek tragic plays pressed the death-in-life stereotype to its farthest
>> extreme. Thus, in "Oedipus Rex", in which the king puts out his own eyes,
>> the statement occurs: "Thou art better off dead than living blind." It
>> remained, however, for an Englishman, blind himself, to write the last
>> word
>> (what today would be called "the bottom line") on blindness as total
>> disaster. John Milton says in Samson Agonistes:
>> Blind among enemies, worse than chains, Dungeon, or beggary, or decrepit
>> age!... Inferior to the vilest now become of man or worm; the vilest here
>> excel me, They creep, yet see; I, dark in light, exposed To daily fraud,
>> contempt, abuse, and wrong, Within doors, or without, still as a fool, In
>> power of others, never in my own; Scarce half I seem to live, Dead more
>> than
>> half.... a moving grave.8
>> What is most striking about this epic poem is not the presence of the
>> disaster concept (that might have been expected) but the fact that Milton
>>
>> of
>> all people was the author. His greatest writing (including "Paradise
>> Lost")
>> was done after his blindness. Then why did he do it? The answer is
>> simple:
>> We the blind tend to see ourselves as others see us. Even when we know to
>> the contrary, we tend to accept the public view of our limitations. Thus,
>>
>> we
>> help make those limitations a reality. Betrayed by the forces of
>> literature
>> and tradition, Milton (in his turn) betrayed himself and all others who
>> are
>> blind. In fact, he actually strengthened and reinforced the
>> stereotype-and
>> he did it in spite of his own personal experience to the contrary. The
>> force
>> of literature is strong, indeed!
>> The disaster concept of blindness did not stop with Milton. "William
>> Tell",
>> the eighteenth-century play by Schiller, shows us an old man, blinded and
>> forced to become a beggar. His son says:
>> Oh, the eye's light, of all the gifts of Heaven the dearest, best! ...
>> And
>> he must drag on through all his days in endless darkness! . . To die is
>> nothing. But to have life, and not have sight-Oh, that is misery indeed!9
>> A century later the disaster concept was as popular as ever. In Kipling's
>> book, The Light That Failed, no opportunity is lost to tell us that
>> blindness is worse than death. The hero, Dick Heldar, upon learning that
>> he
>> is to become blind, remarks: "It's the living death .... We're to be shut
>>
>> up
>> in the dark ... and we shan't see anybody, and we shall never have
>> anything
>> we want, not though we live to be a hundred." 10 Later in the book, he
>> rages
>> against the whole world "because it was alive and could see, while he,
>> Dick,
>> was dead in the death of the blind, who, at the best, are only burdens
>> upon
>> their associates." 11 And when this self-pitying character finally
>> manages
>> to get himself killed (to the relief of all concerned), the best Kipling
>> can
>> say of him is that "his luck had held till the last, even to the crowning
>> mercy of a kindly bullet through his head." 12
>> Joseph Conrad, in "The End of the Tether", kills off Captain Whalley by
>> drowning, as a fate much preferable to remaining alive without sight. In
>> D.H. Lawrence's "The Blind Man", there is a war-blinded casualty named
>> Maurice, whose total despair and misery are unrelieved by any hint of
>> future
>> hope; and Rosamond Lehmann, in her novel "Invitation to the Waltz", goes
>> Lawrence one better- or, rather, one worse. Her war-blinded hero,
>> although
>> he appears to be living a respectable life, is portrayed as if for all
>> practical purposes he were a walking corpse. He leads, we are told, "a
>> counterfeit of life bred from his murdered youth." And when he brings
>> himself somehow to dance with a former sweetheart, it is a sorry
>> spectacle:
>> "She danced with him," says the author, "in love and sorrow. He held her
>> close to him, and he was far away from her, far from the music, buried
>> and
>> indifferent. She danced with his youth and his death." 13
>> For writers such as these, the supposed tragedy of blindness is so
>> unbearable that only two solutions can be imagined: either the victim
>> must
>> be cured or he must be killed. A typical illustration is Susan Glaspell's
>> "The Glory of the Conquered", of which an unkind critic has written: "It
>> is
>> a rather easy solution of the problem to make her hero die at the end of
>> the
>> book, but probably the author did not know what else to do with him." 14
>> Let us now leave tragedy and move to foolishness and helplessness. The
>> blind
>> man as a figure of fun and the butt of ridicule is no doubt as old as
>> farce
>> and slapstick. In the Middle Ages the role was regularly acted out on
>> festive holidays when blind beggars were rounded up and outfitted in
>> donkey's ears, than made to gibber and gesticulate to the delight of
>> country
>> bumpkins. Reflecting this general hilarity, Chaucer (in "The Merchant's
>> Tale") presents a young wife, married to an old blind man, who deceives
>> him
>> by meeting her lover in a tree while taking the husband for a walk. The
>> Chaucerian twist is that the old man suddenly regains his sight as the
>> couple are making love in the branches-whereupon the quick-witted girl
>> explains that her amorous behavior was solely for the purpose of
>> restoring
>> his sight. Shakespeare is just as bad. He makes the blinded Gloucester in
>> "King Lear" so thoroughly confused and helpless that he can be persuaded
>> of
>> anything and deceived by any trick. Isaac, in the Old Testament, is duped
>>
>> by
>> his son Jacob, who masquerades as Esau, disguising himself in goatskins,
>> and
>> substituting kid meat for the venison his father craves-all without a
>> glimmer of recognition on the part of the old man, who must have taken
>> leave
>> of the rest of his senses as well as his sense of sight.
>> An unusually harsh example of the duping of blind people is found in the
>> sixteenth-century play "Der Euienspiegel mit den Blinden". The hero meets
>> three blind beggars and promises them a valuable coin to pay for their
>> food
>> and lodging at a nearby inn; but when they all reach out for the money,
>> he
>> gives it to none of them, and each supposes that the others have received
>> it. You can imagine the so-called "funny ending." After they go to the
>> inn
>> and dine lavishly, the innkeeper demands his payment; and each of the
>> blind
>> beggars thereupon accuses the others of lying, thievery, and assorted
>> crimes. The innkeeper-shouting "You people defraud everyone!"--drives the
>> three into his pigsty and locks the gate, lamenting to his wife: "What
>> shall
>> we do with them, let them go without punishment after they have eaten and
>> drunk so much, for nothing? But if we keep them, they will spread lice
>> and
>> fleas and we will have to feed them. I wish they were on the gallows." 15
>> The play has a "happy ending," but what an image persists of the
>> character
>> of those who are blind: criminal and corrupt, contagious and
>> contaminated,
>> confounded and confused, wandering homeless and helpless in an alien
>> landscape. Their book of life might well be called "Gullible's Travels."
>> The helpless blind man is a universal stereotype. In Maeterlinck's play,
>> "The Blind", all of the characters are portrayed as sightless in order to
>> make a philosophical point; but what emerges on the stage is a ridiculous
>> tableau of groping, groaning, and grasping at the air.
>> One of the very worst offenders against the truth about blindness is the
>> eminent French author of our own day, Andre Gide, in "La Symphonie
>> Pastorale". A blind reviewer of the novel has described it well: "The
>> girl
>> Gertrude at fifteen, before the pastor begins to educate her, has all the
>> signs of an outright idiot. This is explained simply as the result of her
>> blindness .... [Gide] asserts that without physical sight one cannot
>> really
>> know the truth. Gertrude lives happily in the good, pure world the pastor
>> creates for her .... Gertrude knows next to nothing about the evil and
>> pain
>> in the actual world. As a sightless person she cannot consciously know
>> sin,
>> is blissfully ignorant, like Adam and Eve before eating of the forbidden
>> fruit. Only when her sight is restored does she really know evil for what
>>
>> it
>> is and recognize sin. Then, on account of the sinning she has done with
>> the
>> pastor without knowing it was sinning, she is miserable and commits
>> suicide."16
>> In literature not only is blindness depicted as stupidity but also as
>> wickedness, the very incarnation of pure evil. The best-known model is
>> the
>> old pirate "Blind Pew," in Stevenson's "Treasure Island". When the young
>> hero, Jim Hawkins, first encounters Pew, he feels that he "never saw a
>> more
>> dreadful figure" than this "horrible, soft-spoken, eyeless creature"; and
>> when Pew gets the boy in his clutches, Jim observes that he "never heard
>> a
>> voice so cruel, and cold, and ugly as that blind man's." 17
>> A much earlier version of the wicked blind man theme is seen in the
>> picaresque romance of the sixteenth century, "Lazatillo de Tormes".
>> Lazarillo is apprenticed as a guide to an old blind man, who is the very
>> personification of evil.
>> "When the blind man told the boy to put his ear to a statue and listen for
>>
>> a
>> peculiar noise, Lazarillo obeyed. Then the old man knocked the boy's head
>> sharply against the stone, so his ears rang for three days......"18
>> Throughout the ages the connection between blindness and meanness has
>> been
>> very nearly irresistible to authors, and it has struck a responsive note
>> with audiences--audiences already conditioned through folklore and fable
>> to
>> believe that blindness brings out the worst in people. Given the casual
>> cruelty with which the blind have generally been treated, such villainous
>> caricatures have also provided a convenient excuse and justification.
>> After
>> all, if the blind are rascals and rapscallions, they should be handled
>> accordingly- and no pity wasted.
>> Alternating with the theme of blindness as perfect evil is its exact
>> reverse: the theme of blindness as perfect virtue. On the surface these
>> two
>> popular stereotypes appear to be contradictory; but it takes no great
>> psychological insight to recognize them as opposite sides of the same
>> counterfeit coin. What they have in common is the notion that blindness is
>>
>> a
>> transforming event, entirely removing the victim front the ordinary
>> dimensions of life and humanity.
>> Blindness must either be the product of sin and the devil or of angels
>> and
>> halos. Of the latter type is Melody, in Laura Richards' novel of the same
>> name: "The blind child," we are told, "touched life with her hand, and
>> knew
>> it. She knew every tree of the forest by its bark; knew when it
>> blossomed,
>> and how .... Not a cat or dog in the village but would leave his own
>> master
>> or mistress at a single call from Melody." 19 She is not merely virtuous;
>> she is magical. She rescues a baby from a burning building, cures the
>> sick
>> by her singing, and redeems alcoholics from the curse of drink.
>> It is passing strange, and what is strangest of all is that this absurd
>> creature is the invention of Laura Richards, the daughter of Samuel
>> Gridley
>> Howe, a pioneer educator of the blind. Like Milton, Mrs. Richards knew
>> better. She was betrayed by the forces of tradition and custom, of
>> folklore
>> and literature. In turn she betrayed herself and the blind, and gave
>> reinforcement to the stereotype. Worst of all, she doubtless never knew
>> what
>> she had done, and thought of herself as a benefactor of the blind and a
>> champion of their cause. Ignorance is truly the greatest of all
>> tragedies.
>> The sickest of all the romantic illusions is the pious opinion that
>> blindness is only a blessing in disguise. In "The Blind Girl of
>> Wittenberg",
>> by John G. Morris, a young man says to the heroine: "God has deprived you
>>
>> of
>> sight but only that your heart might be illuminated with more brilliant
>> light." Every blind girl I know would have slapped his face for such
>> insulting drivel; but the reply of this fictional female is worse than
>> the
>> original remark: "Do you not think, sir," she says, "that we blind people
>> have a world within us which is perhaps more beautiful than yours, and
>> that
>> we have a light within us which shines more brilliantly than your sun?"
>> 20
>> So it goes with the saccharine sweet that has robbed us of humanity and
>> made
>> the legend and hurt our cause. There is Caleb, the "little blind seer" of
>> James Ludlow's awful novel, "Deborah". There is Bertha, Dickens'
>> ineffably
>> sweet and noble blind heroine of "The Cricket on the Hearth", who comes
>> off
>> almost as an imbecile. There is the self-sacrificing Nydia, in "The Last
>> Days of Pompeii"; and there is Naomi, in Hall Caine's novel, "Scapegoat".
>> But enough! It is sweetness without light, and literature without
>> enlightment.
>> One of the oldest and cruelest themes in the archives of fiction is the
>> notion of blindness as a punishment for sin. Thus, Oedipus was blinded as
>>
>> a
>> punishment for incest, and Shakespeare's Gloucester for adultery. The
>> theme
>> often goes hand in hand with the stereotype of blindness as a kind of
>> purification rite--an act which wipes the slate clean and transforms
>> human
>> character into purity and goodness. So Amyas Leigh, in Kingsley's
>> "Westward
>> Ho", having been blinded by a stroke of lightning, is instantly converted
>> from a crook to a saint.
>> Running like an ugly stain through many of these master plots- and,
>> perhaps,
>> in a subtle way underlying all of them-is the image of blindness as
>> dehumanization, a kind of banishment from the world of normal life and
>> relationships. Neither Dickens' blind Bertha, nor Bulwer-Lytton's Nydia,
>> when they find themselves in love, have the slightest idea that anybody
>> could ever love them back- nor does the reader; nor, for that matter, do
>> the
>> other characters in the novels. Kipling, in a story entitled "They,"
>> tells
>> of a charming and apparently competent blind woman, Miss Florence, who
>> loves
>> children but "of course" cannot have any of her own. Kipling doesn't say
>> why
>> she can't, but it's plain that she is unable to imagine a blind person
>> either married or raising children. Miss Florence, however, is magically
>> compensated. She is surrounded on her estate by the ghosts of little
>> children who have died in the neighborhood and have thereupon rushed to
>> her
>> in spirit. We are not meant to infer that she is as crazy as a hoot
>> owl--only that she is blind, and therefore entitled to her spooky
>> fantasies.
>> The last of the popular literary themes is that which deals with
>> blindness
>> not literally but symbolically, for purposes of satire or parable. From
>> folklore to film the image recurs of blindness as a form of death or
>> damnation, or as a symbol of other kinds of unseeing (as in the maxim,
>> "where there is no vision, the people perish)." In this category would
>> come
>> H.G. Well's classic "The Country of the Blind"; also, "The Planet of the
>> Blind", by Paul Corey; and Maeterlinck's "The Blind". In the short story
>> by
>> Conrad Aiken, "Silent Snow, Secret Snow," blindness becomes a metaphor
>> for
>> schizophrenia.
>> In virtually all of these symbolic treatments, there is an implied
>> acceptance of blindness as a state of ignorance and confusion, of the
>> inversion of normal perceptions and values, and of a condition equal to
>> if
>> not worse than death. The havoc wrought upon the lives of blind people in
>> ages past by these literary traditions is done, and it cannot be undone;
>> but
>> the future is yet to be determined. And that future, shaped by the
>> instrument of truth, will be determined by us. Self-aware and
>> self-reliant-neither unreasonably belligerent nor unduly self-effacing-we
>> must, in a matter-of-fact way, take up the challenge of determining our
>> own
>> destiny. We know who we are; we know what we can do; and we know how to
>> act
>> in concert.
>> And what can we learn from this study of literature? What does it all
>> mean?
>> For one thing, it places in totally new perspective the pronouncements
>> and
>> writings of many of the so-called "experts" who today hold forth in the
>> field of work with the blind. They tell us (these would-be
>> "professionals,"
>> these hirelings of the American Foundation for the Blind and HEW, these
>> pseudoscientists with their government grants and lofty titles and
>> impressive papers) that blindness is not just the loss of sight, but a
>> total
>> transformation of the person.
>> They tell us that blindness is not merely a loss to the eyes, but to the
>> personality as well-that it is a "death," a blow to the very being of the
>> individual. They tell us that the eye is a sex symbol, and that the blind
>> person cannot be a "whole man"-or, for that matter, presumably a whole
>> woman
>> either. They tell us that we have multiple "lacks and losses." 21
>> The American Foundation for the Blind devises a 239 page guidebook22 for
>> our
>> personal management," with sixteen steps to help us take a bath, and
>> specific techniques for clapping our hands and shaking our heads. We are
>> given detailed instructions for buttering our bread, tying our shoes, and
>> even understanding the meaning of the words "up" and "down." And all of
>> this
>> is done with federal grants, and much insistence that it is new discovery
>> and modern thought.
>> But our study of literature gives it the lie. These are not new concepts.
>> They are as unenlightened as the Middle Ages. They are as old as Oedipus
>> Rex. As for science, they have about as much of it as man's ancient fear
>> of
>> the dark. They are not fact, but fiction; not new truths, but medieval
>> witchcraft, decked out in modern garb-computerized mythology. What we
>> have
>> bought with our federal tax dollars and our technology and our numerous
>> government grants is only a restatement of the tired old fables of
>> primitive
>> astrology and dread of the night.
>> And let us not forget NAC (The National Accreditation Council for
>> Agencies
>> Serving the Blind and Visually Handicapped). When the members of NAC and
>> its
>> accredited minions try to act as our custodians and wardens, they are
>> only
>> behaving in the time honored way of the Elizabethan "keepers of the
>> poor."
>> When they seek to deck us out in donkey's ears and try to make us gibber
>> and
>> gesticulate, they are only attempting what the country bumpkins of 600
>> years
>> ago did with better grace and more efficiency.
>> We have repudiated these false myths of our inferiority and helplessness.
>>
>> We
>> have rejected the notion of magical powers and special innocence and
>> naivete. Those who would try to compel us to live in the past would do
>> well
>> to look to their going. Once people have tasted freedom, they cannot go
>> back. We will never again return to the ward status and second-class
>> citizenship of the old custodialism. There are many of us (sighted and
>> blind
>> alike) who will take to the streets and fight with our bare hands if we
>> must
>> before we will let it happen.
>> And we must never forget the power of literature. Revolutions do not
>> begin
>> in the streets, but in the libraries and the classrooms. It has been so
>> throughout history. In the terrible battles of the American Civil War,
>> for
>> example, the writers and poets fought, too. When the Southern armies came
>>
>> to
>> Bull Run, they brought with them Sir Walter Scott and the image of life
>> he
>> had taught them to believe. Ivanhoe and brave King Richard stood in the
>> lines with Stonewall Jackson to hurl the Yankees back. The War would have
>> ended sooner except for the dreams of the poets. And when the Northern
>> troops went down to Richmond, through the bloody miles that barred the
>> way,
>> they carried with them the Battle Hymn of the Republic and Harriet
>> Beecher
>> Stowe. It was Uncle Tom and little Eliza who fired the shots and led the
>> charges that broke the Southern lines. Never mind that neither Scott nor
>> Stowe told it exactly as it was. What they said was believed, and
>> believing
>> made it come true.
>> To the question IS LITERATURE AGAINST Us, there can be no unqualified
>> response. If we consider only the past, the answer is certainly yes. We
>> have
>> Conventional fiction, like conventional history, has told it like it
>> isn't.
>> Although there have been notable exceptions, 23 the story has been
>> monotonously and negatively the same.
>> If we consider the present, the answer is mixed. There are signs of
>> change,
>> but the old stereotypes and the false images still predominate-and they
>> are
>> reinforced and given weight by the writings and beliefs of many of the
>> "experts" in our own field of work with the blind.
>> If we turn to the future, the answer is that the future-in literature as
>> in
>> life-is not predetermined but self-determined. As we shape our lives,
>> singly
>> and collectively, so will we shape our literature. Blindness will be a
>> tragedy only if we see ourselves as authors see us. The contents of the
>> page, in the last analysis, reflect the conscience of the age. The
>> structure
>> of literature is but a hall of mirrors, giving us back (in images
>> slightly
>> larger or smaller than life) exactly what we put in. The challenge for us
>>
>> is
>> to help our age raise its consciousness and reform its conscience. We
>> must
>> rid our fiction of fantasy and imbue it with fact. Then we shall have a
>> literature to match reality, and a popular image of blindness to match
>> the
>> truth, and our image of ourselves.
>> Poetry is the song of the spirit and the language of the soul. In the
>> drama
>> of our struggle to be free-in the story of our movement and the fight to
>> rid
>> the blind of old custodialism and man's ancient fear of the dark-there
>> are
>> epics which cry to be written,and songs which ask to be sung. The poets
>> and
>> novelists can write the words, but we must create the music.
>> We stand at a critical time in the history of the blind. If we falter or
>> turn back, the tragedy of blindness will be great, indeed. But, of
>> course,
>> we will not falter, and we will not turn back. Instead, we will go
>> forward
>> with joy in our hearts and a song of gladness on our lips. The future is
>> ours, and the novelists and the poets will record it. Come! Join me on
>> the
>> barricades, and we will make it come true!
>> FOOTNOTES
>> 1. Ernest Bramah, "Best Max Carrados Detective Stories", p. 6.
>> 2. Arthur Conan Doyle, "Sir Nigel", p. 102.
>> 3. Victor Hugo, "The Man Who Laughs", p. 316.
>> 4. Isabel Ostrander, "At One-Thirty: A Mystery", p. 6.
>> 5. Baynard Kendrick, "Make Mine Maclain", dust jacket.
>> 6. Ibid., p. 43.
>> 7. Bramah, op. cit., p. 7.
>> 8. John Milton, "The Portable Milton", pp. 615-616.
>> 9. Friedrich Schiller, "Complete Works of Friedrich Schiller", p. 447.
>> 10. Rudyard Kipling, "Selected Prose and Poetry of Rudyard Kipling", p.
>> 131.
>> 11. Ibid., p. 156.
>> 12. Ibid., p. 185.
>> 13. Rosamond Lehmann, "Invitation to the Waltz", p. 48, quoted in Jacob
>> Twersky, "Blindness in Literature".
>> 14. Jessica L. Langworthy, "Blindness in Fiction: A Study of the Attitude
>>
>> of
>> Authors Towards Their Blind Characters," "Journal of Applied Psychology",
>> 14:282, 1930.
>> 15. Twersky, op. cit., p. 15.
>> 16. Ibid., P. 47.
>> 17. Robert Louis Stevenson, "Treasure Island", p. 36.
>> 18. "The Life of Lazatillo de Tormes", summarized in Magill's
>> "Masterplots", p. 2573.
>> 19. Laura E. Richards, "Melody", pp. 47-48.
>> 20. John G. Morris, "The Blind Girl of Wittenberg", p. 103.
>> 21. Reverend Thomas J. Carroll, "Blindness: What It is, What It Does, and
>> How to Live With It". This entire book deals with the concept of
>> blindness
>> as a "dying," and with the multiple "lacks and losses" of blindness.
>> 22. American Foundation for the Blind, Inc., "A Step-by-Step Guide to
>> Personal Management for Blind People". This entire book is taken up with
>> lists of so-called "how to" details about the routines of daily living
>> for
>> blind persons.
>> 23. There is a tenth theme to be found here and there on the shelves of
>> literature-a rare and fugitive image that stands out in the literary
>> gloom
>> like a light at the end of a tunnel. This image of truth is a least as
>> old
>> as Charles Lamb's tale of "Rosamund Gray", which presents an elderly
>> blind
>> woman who is not only normally competent but normally cantankerous. The
>> image is prominent in two of Sir Walter Scott's novels, "Old Mortality"
>> and
>> "The Bride of Lammamoor", in both of which blind persons are depicted
>> realistically and unsentimentally. It is evident again, to the extent at
>> least of the author's knowledge and ability, in Wilkie Collin's "Poor
>> Miss
>> Finch", written after Collins had made a serious study of Diderot's
>> "Letter
>> on the Blind" (a scientific treatise not without its errors but
>> remarkable
>> for its understanding). The image is manifest in Charles D. Stewart's
>> "Valley Waters", in which there is an important character who is
>> blind-and
>> yet there is about him no aura of miracle nor even of mystery, no
>> brooding
>> or mischief, no special powers, nothing in fact but naturalness and
>> normality. Similarly, in a novel entitled "Far in the Forest", H. Weir
>> Mitchell has drawn from life (so he tells us) a formidable but entirely
>> recognizable character named Philetus Richmond "who had lost his sight at
>> the age of fifty but could still swing an axe with the best of the
>> woodsmen."
>> Back to top
>> BIBLIOGRAPHY
>> American Foundation for the Blind, Inc., "A Step-by-Step Guide to
>> Personal
>> Management for Blind People", New York, 1970.
>> Barreyre, Gene, "The Blind Ship", New York, Dial, 1926.
>> Bramah, Ernest, "Best Max Carrados Detective Stories", New York, Dover,
>> 1972.
>> Bronte, Charlotte, "Jane Eyre", New; York, Dutton, 1963.
>> Caine, Hall, "The Scapegoat", New York, D. Appleton and Company, 1879.
>> Carroll, Reverend Thomas J., "Blindness: What It Is, What It Does, and
>> How
>> To live With It", Boston, Toronto, Little, Brown and Company, 1961.
>> Chaucer, Geoffrey, "Canterbury Tales", Garden City, translated by J.U.
>> Nicolson, 1936.
>> Collins, Wilkie, "Poor Miss Finch", New York, Harper and Brothers, 1902.
>> Conrad, Joseph, "The End of the Tether", Garden City, Doubleday, 1951.
>> Corey, Paul, "The Planet of the Blind", New York, Paperback Library,
>> 1969.
>> Craig, Dinah Mulock, "John Halifax, Gentleman", New York, A.L. Burt, nd.
>> Davis, William Stems, "Falaise of the Blessed Voice", New York, The
>> Macmillan Company, 1904.
>> Dickens, Charles, "Barnaby Rudge", New York, Oxford University Press,
>> 1968.
>> -----, "Cricket On the Hearth", London, Oxford University Press, 1956.
>> Diderot, Denis, "Lettre sur les Avengles", Geneva, E. Droz, 1951.
>> Doyle, Arthur Conan, "Sir Nigel", New York, McClure, Philips and Company,
>> 1906.
>> Gide, Andre, "La Symphonie Pastorale", Paris, Gallimard, 1966.
>> Glaspell, Susan, "The Glory of the Conquered", New York, Frederick A.
>> Stokes
>> Company, 1909.
>> Hugo, Victor, "The Man Who Laughs", New York, Grosset and Dunlap, nd.
>> Kendrick, Baynard, "Make Mine Maclain", New York, Morrow, 1947.
>> Kipling, Rudyard, "Selected Prose and Poetry of Rudyard
>> Kipling", Garden City, Garden City Publishing Company, 1937.
>> Kingsley, Charles, "Westward Ho!", New York, J.F. Taylor and Company,
>> 1899.
>> Lamb, Charles, "The Tale of Rosamund Gray and Old Blind Margaret",
>> London,
>> 1798.
>> Langworthy, Jessica L., "Blindness in Fiction: A Study of the
>> Attitude of Authors Toward their Blind Characters," "Journal of Applied
>> Psychology", 14:282, 1930.
>> Lawrence, D.H., "England, My England and Other Short Stories", New York,
>> T.
>> Seltzer, 1922.
>> Lehmann, Rosamond, "Invitation to the Waltz", New York, 1933.
>> "Life of Lazarillo de Tormes", 1553, summarized in Magill,
>> Frank Nathen, "Magill's Masterplots", New York, Salem Press, 1964.
>> London, Jack, "The Sea Wolf", New York, Grosset and Dunlap, 1904.
>> Ludlow, James M., "Deborah, A Tale of the Times of Judas Maccabaeus", New
>> York, Fleming H. Revell Company, 1901.
>> Lytton, Bulwer, "The Last Days of Pompeii", Garden City, International
>> Collectors Library, 1946.
>> Maeterlinck, Maurice, "The Plays of Maurice Maeterlinck", translated by
>> Richard Hovey, New York, Duffield, 1908.
>> Marryat, Frederick, "The Little Savage", New York, E.P. Dutton and
>> Company,
>> 1907.
>> Milton, John, "Paradise Lost", New York, Heritage Press, 1940.
>> -----, "The Portable Milton", New York, Viking Press, 1949.
>> Mitchell, H. Weir, "Far in the Forest", New York, Century Company, 1899.
>> Morris, John G., "The Blind Girl of Wittenberg", Philadelphia, Lindsay
>> and
>> Blakison, 1856.
>> Ostrander, Isabel, "At One-Thirty: A Mystery", New York, W.J. Watt, 1915.
>> Richards, Laura E., "Melody", Boston, Estes and Lauriat, 1897.
>> Sachs, Hans, "Der Eulenspiegel mit den Blinden".
>> Schiller, Friedrich, "William Tell", translated by Robert
>> Waller Deering, Boston, Heath, 1961.
>> -----, "Don Carlos, Infant of Spain", translated by Charles E. Passage,
>> New
>> York, Ungar Publishing Company, 1959.
>> Scott, Sir Walter, "Old Mortality", London, Oxford University Press,
>> 1925.
>> -----, "The Bride of Lammamoor", London, Oxford University Press, 1925.
>> Shakespeare, William, "King Lear", New Haven, Yale University Press,
>> 1947.
>> Sophocles, "Oedipus Rex", translated by Robert Fitzgerald and Dudley
>> Fitts,
>> New York, Harcourt Brace, 1949.
>> -----, "Oedipus at Colonnus", translated by Charles R.
>> Walker, Garden City, Anchor Books, 1966.
>> Stagg, Clinton H., "Thornley Colton, Blind Detective", New York, G.
>> Howard
>> Watt, 1925.
>> Stevenson, Robert Louis, "Treasure Island", Keith Jennison large-type
>> edition, New York, Watt, nd.
>> -----, "Kidnapped", New York, A.L. Burt, 1883.
>> Stewart, Charles D., "Valley Waters", New York, E.P. Dutton and Company,
>> 1922.
>> Twersky, Jacob, Blindness in Literature, New York, American Foundation
>> for
>> the Blind, 1955.
>> Wells, H.G. "The Country of the B at d," Strand Magazine, London, 1904.
>> West, V. Sackville, The Dragon in Shallow Waters, New York, G.P. Putnam's
>> Sons, 1922.
>> Back to top
>>
>> upon
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: stylist [mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Lynda
>> Lambert
>> Sent: Monday, February 17, 2014 7:27 AM
>> To: Writer's Division Mailing List
>> Subject: Re: [stylist] Blind or Visually Impaired Authors; RE: New Book,
>> blindness on TV
>>
>> Donna and Bill,
>> How I appreciate your conversation and insight into this interesting
>> musing
>> on how blindness becomes the lens through which art and literature
>> originate
>> and flourish.
>>
>> What a nice group of informative pieces on the authors.
>> I have saved it and will go back on a day when I can spend some quality
>> time
>> on it, and put some thought into it. Today is dedicated to working on,
>> and
>> rehearsing, two presentations that I have written - doing the timing,
>> etc.
>> on them to make sure they flow for my audience.   Doing lectures and
>> conference presentations is something I really enjoy.
>>
>> At this time, I am deeply involved in another major project. A video is
>> being produced that will accompany our two-person exhibition - Vision and
>> Revision: Two Artists with Limited Sight, Not Limited Vision- The video
>> will
>> show my work from inception and planning stage, through completion and
>> gallery installation. We did the final photography for it over the
>> weekend.
>> Two of my colleagues from the English Department did the voice over's of
>> my
>> writings that will take the viewer actually into the process and the
>> thoughts I experience when working with my hands on the pieces. Little by
>> little, all the pieces are coming together to bring this project to the
>> public when the show opens on March 7th. And, while that show is being
>> put
>> together for one gallery, I am already working with the personnel at the
>> second gallery where it will open on April 14th - multi-tasking is
>> something
>> that is not optional in my world.  I work on shows anywhere from one to
>> four
>> years in advance - and on many levels at the same time with gallery
>> personnel.
>>
>> Have a very productive day everyone!  I am off to "practice" my talk and
>> do
>> the tweaking necessary.
>> Lynda
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: "Applebutter Hill" <applebutterhill at gmail.com>
>> To: <meekerorgas at ameritech.net>; "'Writer's Division Mailing List'"
>> <stylist at nfbnet.org>
>> Sent: Sunday, February 16, 2014 4:20 PM
>> Subject: Re: [stylist] Blind or Visually Impaired Authors;RE: New Book,
>> blindness on TV
>>
>>
>>> Bill,
>>> Donna Hill here. I don't know about Homer, and neither does anyone else.
>>> His
>>> blindness and even his existence as the one writer of the works
>>> attributed to him is a matter of some controversy in the academic
>>> world. For proof of his blindness, lines from his poetry are used,
>>> which isn't quite enough for me. Homer as a blind poet is more
>>> important to me as a cultural myth.
>>>
>>> Milton, though he wrote his best work without sight,  was
>>> well-educated and well-known prior to blindness. The most remembered
>>> line he wrote about blindness doesn't say much for adapting -- approx
>>> "those serve too who only stand and wait." I found a great bio of him
>>> on poets.org, which I will place at the end of this message.
>>>
>>> Thurber lost sight in one eye in an accident in childhood which
>>> apparently led to losing sight in the other later in life. He had
>>> enough sight to enlist in the military and function as a cartoonist for
>> the NewYorker.
>>> Here
>>> is something from an article from Slate.com about him (after a
>>> collection of his letters was released) that discusses the effect of
>>> his blindness on his work.
>>> Block quote
>>> The tragedy of James Thurber.
>>>
>>> James Thurber's tragedy.
>>> By
>>> Wilfrid Sheed
>>>
>>> SEPT. 18 2003 3:33 PM
>>>
>>> At the age of 15 or so, I picked up The Thurber Carnival and realized
>>> that I'd found my Pied Piper; I wanted to be James Thurber. I would
>>> follow those sentences anywhere. But Thurber, The New Yorker writer
>>> and cartoonist (author, famously, of "The Secret Life of Walter
>>> Mitty"), had just passed his peak and was already descending into the
>>> total blindness that would embitter him and impair his writing. So,
>>> The Thurber Carnival was the perfect place to start, and it still is:
>>> It contains Thurber's essence and the best work he did in his
>>> pre-blind years-his cartoons and fables and those deadly little
>>> "casuals"
>>> from
>>> The New Yorker in which husbands and wives drove each other
>>> absolutely, unconditionally crazy, while huge silent dogs looked on
>>> like Buddhas, patiently waiting for the human race to come to its
>>> senses, or not, as the case may be.
>>>
>>> Now we have The Thurber Letters, collected by Harrison Kinney and
>>> Rosemary Thurber, to give us a fuller picture of the man. Most people
>>> would, I suppose, if faced with the grim choice, prefer to take their
>>> chances as blind writers rather than as deaf composers. Homer, the
>>> Cyclops of literature, did OK.
>>> And
>>> Milton got a great poem out of blindness. But Thurber's letters seem
>>> to me inexpressibly sad, perhaps because one can perceive the
>>> blindness setting in slowly-and, having seen the back of his
>>> biography, one also knows that there will be no great poems, so to
>>> speak, deriving from it.
>>>
>>> ...
>>>
>>> Thurber, like many enlisted men, had seen "Paree," and it had given
>>> all his pieces a lick of sophistication new to American humor. In
>>> effect, he and his whole generation had used Paris as a species of
>>> finishing school where country boys like Cole Porter and Ernest
>>> Hemingway could major in sophistication before bringing some home with
>>> them. There was never any question of anyone going back to the farm,
>>> of course, and so in the mid-'20s a bunch of these boys decided to
>>> start a magazine right there-and not just any old magazine, but the
>>> most sophisticated damn magazine in the whole world: "Not for the old
>>> lady in Dubuque," as its first issue trumpeted sophomorically. The New
>>> Yorker did turn out to be the most sophisticated magazine in the
>>> world, and the British in particular went nuts trying to imitate it.
>>>
>>> http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/books/2003/09/blind_wit.html
>>> Block quote end
>>>
>>> Joyce had problems with his vision (iritis & glaucoma) starting in
>>> childhood when he needed thick glasses to read. He had numerous
>>> operations for it; he died during an operation, but I'm not sure if it
>>> was another one on his eyes.  In one letter he describes himself as
>>> having been "incapacitated"
>>> for
>>> a week from the iritis, but I don't know if he meant by the pain of
>>> the condition or because he wasn't adapted to living nonvisually. I
>>> haven't found any references to his using any adaptations such as
>>> Milton did when he dictated his later poetry.
>>>
>>> Here are some snippits from an old Atlantic Monthly article on Joyce's
>>> literary contribution in which his vision is mentioned and
>>> appropriately enough the influence it had on his writing. I included
>>> the first quote to show how much he was passing as sighted, or how
>>> little his visual problems were holding him back in his early years. The
>> URL's at the end.
>>>
>>> Block quote
>>> The Atlantic Monthly
>>>
>>> James Joyce
>>> By Harry Levin
>>> December, 1946
>>> ... At University College he had specialized in Romance Languages, and
>>> had shown such proficiency that there had been talk of a
>>> professorship. During his hardest years on the Continent, before a
>>> benefactor endowed his literary work, he worked as a commercial
>>> translator and as a teacher in a Berlitz school.
>>>
>>> ...
>>> It is a striking fact about English literature in the twentieth
>>> century that its most notable practitioners have seldom been
>>> Englishmen. The fact that they have so often been Irishmen supports,
>>> Synge's belief in the reinvigorating suggestiveness of Irish popular
>>> speech. That English was not Joyce's native language, in the strictest
>>> sense, he was keenly aware; and it helps to explain his unparalleled
>>> virtuosity. But a more concrete explanation is to be discerned among
>>> his physical traits, one of which we normally classify as a serious
>>> handicap. Joyce lived much of his life in varying states of
>>> semi-blindness.
>>> To
>>> preserve what eyesight he had, he underwent repeated operations and
>>> countermeasures. A schoolboy humiliation, when he broke his glasses
>>> and failed to do his lessons, is painfully recollected in the Portrait
>>> and again in Ulysses.
>>> His writing tends more and more toward low visibility; his imagination
>>> is auditory rather than visual. If the artist is a man for whom the
>>> visible world exists, remarked George Moore, then Joyce is essentially
>>> a metaphysician; for he is less concerned with the seeing eye than
>>> with the thinking mind.
>>>
>>> We may add that he is most directly concerned with the hearing ear.
>>> Doubtless the sonorities of Homer and Milton are intimately connected
>>> with their blindness.
>>> It is scarcely coincidental that Joyce, almost unique among modern
>>> prose writers in this respect, must be read aloud to be fully
>>> appreciated. In addition to his linguistic aptitude, and in
>>> compensation for his defective vision, he was gifted with an
>>> especially fine tenor voice. Professional singing was one of the
>>> possible careers he had contemplated. His singer's taste inclined
>>> toward Opera and bel canto, romantic ballads and Elizabethan airs: not
>>> music but song, he liked to say. His poems except for a few excursions
>>> into Swiftian satire, are songs; lyrics which, without their musical
>>> settings look strangely fragile. Yeats, upon first reading them,
>>> praised Joyce's delicate talent, and shrewdly wondered whether his
>>> ultimate form would be verse or prose.
>>> Operating
>>> within the broader area of fiction, he was to retain the cadenced
>>> precision of the poet. Above all he remained an accomplished listener,
>>> whose pages are continually animated by the accurate recording of
>>> overheard conversation.
>>>
>>> ...
>>>
>>> His pangs of composition have recently been described by Philippe
>>> Soupault as "a sort of daily damnation: the creation of the Joycean
>>> world. The perverse ingenuity of these later experiments has been
>>> deplored more frequently than deciphered. A long series of
>>> misunderstandings with the public inevitably reinforced those early
>>> vows of silence, exile, and cunning. Inhibited from writing naturally
>>> of natural instincts, Joyce ended by inventing an artificial language
>>> of innuendo and mockery. In Finnegans Wake he drew upon his linguistic
>>> skills and learned hobbies to contrive an Optophone--an instrument
>>> which, for the benefit of the blind, converts images into sounds. Out
>>> of it come, not merely echoes of the past, but warnings of the future.
>>> Mr. Earwicker's worldly misfortunes are climaxed by a lethal
>>> explosion: "the abnihilisation of the etym."
>>> Pessimists may interpret this enigma as the annihilation of all
>>> meaning, a chain reaction set off by the destruction of the atom.
>>> Optimists will stress the creation of matter ex nihilo--and trust in
>>> the Word to create another world.
>>>
>>> http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/95sep/links/levi.htm
>>> Block quote end
>>>
>>> Now for the Milton bio
>>> Block quote
>>> John Milton
>>>
>>> John Milton was born in London on December 9, 1608, into a
>>> middle-class family. He was educated at St. Paul's School, then at
>>> Christ's College, Cambridge, where he began to write poetry in Latin,
>>> Italian, and English, and prepared to enter the clergy.
>>>
>>> After university, however, he abandoned his plans to join the
>>> priesthood and spent the next six years in his father's country home
>>> in Buckinghamshire following a rigorous course of independent study to
>>> prepare for a career as a poet. His extensive reading included both
>>> classical and modern works of religion, science, philosophy, history,
>>> politics, and literature. In addition, Milton was proficient in Latin,
>>> Greek, Hebrew, French, Spanish, and Italian, and obtained a
>>> familiarity with Old English and Dutch as well.
>>>
>>> During his period of private study, Milton composed a number of poems,
>>> including "On the Morning of Christ's Nativity," "On Shakespeare,"
>>> "L'Allegro," "Il Penseroso," and the pastoral elegy "Lycidas." In May
>>> of 1638, Milton began a 13-month tour of France and Italy, during
>>> which he met many important intellectuals and influential people,
>>> including the astronomer Galileo, who appears in Milton's tract
>>> against censorship, "Areopagitica."
>>>
>>> In 1642, Milton returned from a trip into the countryside with a
>>> 16-year-old bride, Mary Powell. Even though they were estranged for
>>> most of their marriage, she bore him three daughters and a son before
>>> her death in 1652.
>>> Milton later married twice more: Katherine Woodcock in 1656, who died
>>> giving birth in 1658, and Elizabeth Minshull in 1662.
>>>
>>> During the English Civil War, Milton championed the cause of the
>>> Puritans and Oliver Cromwell, and wrote a series of pamphlets
>>> advocating radical political topics including the morality of divorce,
>>> the freedom of the press, populism, and sanctioned regicide. Milton
>>> served as secretary for foreign languages in Cromwell's government,
>>> composing official statements defending the Commonwealth. During this
>>> time, Milton steadily lost his eyesight, and was completely blind by
>>> 1651. He continued his duties, however, with the aid of Andrew Marvell
>>> and
>> other assistants.
>>>
>>> After the Restoration of Charles II to the throne in 1660, Milton was
>>> arrested as a defender of the Commonwealth, fined, and soon released.
>>> He lived the rest of his life in seclusion in the country, completing
>>> the blank-verse epic poem Paradise Lost in 1667, as well as its sequel
>>> Paradise Regained and the tragedy Samson Agonistes both in 1671.
>>> Milton oversaw the printing of a second edition of Paradise Lost in
>>> 1674, which included an explanation of "why the poem rhymes not,"
>>> clarifying his use of blank verse, along with introductory notes by
>>> Marvell. He died shortly afterwards, on November 8, 1674, in
>>> Buckinghamshire, England.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/707
>>> Block quote end
>>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: stylist [mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Cheryl
>>> Orgas & William Meeker
>>> Sent: Sunday, February 16, 2014 9:59 AM
>>> To: 'Writer's Division Mailing List'
>>> Subject: Re: [stylist] Blind or Visually Impaired Authors;RE: New
>>> Book, blindness on TV
>>>
>>> Linda,
>>>
>>> Blind or visually impaired authors Homer, John Milton, James Joyce,
>>> and James Thurber come to mind first.  That they were known for their
>>> works rather than their blindness is to me a measure of their success.
>>>
>>> Several authors have written novels without using common vowels, such
>>> as the letter "E."  So how about a novel or short story depicting a
>>> blind character without using the word "blind?"  That is, describing
>>> them and their actions including alternative techniques and letting
>>> the reader figure out that they are blind.
>>>
>>> Or how about a novel or short story written without  visual
>>> descriptions.
>>> That is, using only descriptions of sounds, textures, tastes, and
>>> feelings?
>>>
>>> I can think up these ideas, but I lack the skill, drive, and
>>> self-disclipline to execute them.  So have fun.
>>>
>>>
>>> Bill Meeker
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: stylist [mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Lynda
>>> Lambert
>>> Sent: Saturday, February 15, 2014 6:59 AM
>>> To: newmanrl at cox.net; Writer's Division Mailing List
>>> Subject: Re: [stylist] Low expectations of the blind; RE: New Book,
>>> blindness on TV
>>>
>>> This conversation is making me begin to think about some authors I
>>> taught in the past in Humanities and English courses.  Now that I am
>>> "aware" of blindness, which I was NOT at all in the past, I am
>>> wondering how I would interpret the literature of a blind author. I
>>> taught Bourges and I never
>>> knew he was blind!   I am thinking that now, if I go back to read his
>>> work,
>>> I will interpret many things in a different way.  I taught the "Book
>>> of Sand" every semester!  Hmmmm.  Now it makes even more sense as an
>>> exampe lof of Postmodernism which was the focus it had for me at the
>>> time.  WOW, this is beginning to be a revelation to me.  I know that
>>> many of the artists I taught were blind or visually impaired, but
>>> their work was not generally explored through that lens.
>>> I am going to begin looking much deeper into this for my own research
>>> - if anyone has any more information on artists and writers who
>>> are/were blind I would love to hear from you as I begin my own little
>>> research project on this matter.
>>>
>>> I am re-learning how to do Power Point presentations now. Normally,
>>> this is how I lectured but until now, I could not have done it again.
>>> I know now, that I can do it, it's just going to take awhile for me to
>>> teach myself again.  I am scheduled to do two presentation at Slippery
>>> Rock University of PA in March - I'll use my milestone to give me
>>> verbal "cues" as I am speaking, for these presentations. But, I want
>>> to begin to develop some presentations using power point and I am sure
>>> I can do it again - I just need to have the time and put in the work
>>> to accomplish it.  I have always loved doing lectures and
>>> presentations and I want to do them again - so I am gonna work on it!
>>>
>>> Lynda
>>> ----- Original Message -----
>>> From: "Robert Leslie Newman" <newmanrl at cox.net>
>>> To: "'Writer's Division Mailing List'" <stylist at nfbnet.org>
>>> Sent: Friday, February 14, 2014 11:22 PM
>>> Subject: [stylist] Low expectations of the blind;RE: New Book,
>>> blindness on TV
>>>
>>>
>>>> Hi you all, this has been an interesting conversation:
>>>>
>>>> Here is another generalization that many around the world have
>>>> developed over the eons: Blindness is the most God awful, feared
>>>> physical condition that mankind can experience.
>>>>
>>>> I had read and heard this forever, from the mouths of people on the
>>>> street, to what I've learned in a variety of college classes..though,
>>>> over the past couple of decades blindness has been pushed down to
>>>> third place. Guess what has eclipsed being blind as the most feared?
>>>> Aids and cancer. And hey, I can believe that these two physical
>>>> conditions are far worse...after all, either one of these two monster
>>>> conditions can kill you!!! (Though, there are some who feel that
>>>> blindness is a living death. And yeah, if you allow it to rule! And
>>>> this is where the NFB has done the world a great service...as in we
>>>> have developed a philosophy, built a framework of alternative
>>>> techniques, and influenced the making of a wide variety of tools that
>>>> in combination...will allow most of us to reduce the effects of
>>>> blindness, down to  a level whereby most of us can say with an honesty
>>>> level of 100%, 100%, that the loss of sight is not a major impediment
>>>> to living a successful and happy life. No...the true problem we face
>>>> is more the ignorance and the lack of information about the human
>>>> potential to successfully live with blindness is the toughest
>>>> impediment to being blind. MMM, go figure? [Being blind isn't the
>>>> problem, living in a world of ignorance is.]
>>>>
>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>> From: stylist [mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of
>>>> Applebutter Hill
>>>> Sent: Friday, February 14, 2014 9:10 PM
>>>> To: 'Writer's Division Mailing List'
>>>> Subject: Re: [stylist] New Book, blindness on TV
>>>>
>>>> Lynda,
>>>> At 70, I should certainly hope you (or anyone) would have developed a
>>>> healthy level of skepticism. *grin*
>>>>
>>>> I know that black people face prejudice and low expectations, but I
>>>> think the fact that white people enslaved them to actually do
>>>> something, makes that low level quite a bit higher than for blind
>>>> people. We aren't deemed capable of planting a field, keeping up a
>>>> household or even caring for children -- as the incident in the
>>>> Midwest a few years ago shoed, when a child was removed shortly after
>>> birth from its blind parents.
>>>>
>>>> Our traditional purpose is to give the average person something they
>>>> can look at and say, "Well, I may have problems, but at least I'm not
>>> blind."
>>>> We
>>>> also have traditionally provided them with opportunities to do good
>>>> deeds.
>>>> Expecting us to no longer be helpless fundamentally changes how they
>>>> see themselves.
>>>>
>>>> Your post reminds me of a story I heard from a blind woman who was
>>>> accepted to grad school. Her aunt was furious that she had stolen the
>>>> position from someone who could really benefit from it. The belief was
>>>> that anything that a blind person accomplished was just another
>>>> example of the kindness of strangers in elevating a pitiful person and
>>>> helping them feel better about themselves. BTW, she has a doctorate in
>>>> law. I heard many similar stories when I was writing about Braille
>>>> literacy -- they weren't on topic at the time, and I had hoped to
>>>> gather some of the things people told me into articles about some of
>>>> these more subtle things that are going on to this day, but it never
>>>> happened.
>>>> Donna
>>>>
>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>> From: stylist [mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Lynda
>>>> Lambert
>>>> Sent: Friday, February 14, 2014 6:31 PM
>>>> To: Writer's Division Mailing List
>>>> Subject: Re: [stylist] New Book, blindness on TV
>>>>
>>>> Donna, yes, the expectations for blind people are very low.  I believe
>>>> that is why blind people as a group are the highest educated of all
>>>> people with disabilities, yet, they are the lowest employed people of
>>>> all the groups.
>>>> This says it all - we are not expected to be smart, able, or willing
>>>> to succeed at anything more than very low levels.
>>>> This is my own thoughts on it and I recognize I am quite skeptical
>>>> about it
>>>> - but heck, I am 70 years old now, so I guess I can blame it on my age.
>>>> I think we have to work so far beyond what other people have to do to
>>>> find success at so many things. And, this is also true of black
>>>> people.  I do not know this from a distance, or from reading books on
>>>> the subject which of course I do all the time. I know it personally,
>>>> because my son is black and his family is black - they are very highly
>>>> educated professionals - she a physician, he a psychologist.  At every
>>>> level, black people still face very low expectations and racism - and
>>>> I think blind people are very close to the same in the general view of
>>>> the ST"STUPID public. I agree with you. They are ver STUPID, but we
>>>> won't tell them that, just yet. lol
>>>>
>>>> Lynda
>>>> ----- Original Message -----
>>>> From: "Applebutter Hill" <applebutterhill at gmail.com>
>>>> To: "'Writer's Division Mailing List'" <stylist at nfbnet.org>
>>>> Sent: Friday, February 14, 2014 3:34 PM
>>>> Subject: Re: [stylist] New Book, blindness on TV
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> Lynda,
>>>>> Like you've noticed with your sister and the key, sighted people will
>>>>> not accept anything we do as anything other than a fluke or a miracle.
>>>>> Even faced with a clear description of the usefulness of other
>>>>> senses, they somehow still have to brush anything aside that
>>>>> conflicts with what they kno ... Blindness is essentially
>>>>> insurmountable. I think of it as being similar to the days when a few
>>>>> nutheads were trying to explain to the human race that the world is
>>>>> not
>>> flat.
>>>>>
>>>>> Coincidentally, I just got an e-mail from a rehab counsellor in PA,
>>>>> who I reached out to on Linked In -- I offer them a free e-book
>>>>> version of my novel and explain why I think it has value for them and
>>>>> their clients. I mention the issue of dealing with low expectations.
>>>>> This man said that, as
>>>>
>>>>> a
>>>>> person who used to work with BVI and now works with other
>>>>> disabilities, he believes that the issue of low expectations is much
>>>>> worse for those with vision loss. I have always felt that way, but I
>>>>> don't have the credentials to say so. It meant a lot to me to hear
>>>>> that
>>>> from someone.
>>>>>
>>>>> You hit on the reason behind my removing all references to blindness
>>>>> from my online book descriptions; it's a taboo. Just imagine someone
>>>>> getting my book and not knowing that the heroine is blind and has a
>>>>> guide dog. They will have to read through at least a page before it
>>>>> becomes clear to them. Some will be angry with me, because I didn't
>>>>> warn them. Some, I hope, will have gotten hooked by something else in
>>>>> the story and read it anyway. It's fiction, so they don't have to
>>>>> change their stupid belief systems, but I hope they will have a bit
>>>>> of an adjustment  in spite of themselves.
>>>>> Donna
>>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>>> From: stylist [mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Lynda
>>>>> Lambert
>>>>> Sent: Friday, February 14, 2014 9:18 AM
>>>>> To: Writer's Division Mailing List
>>>>> Subject: Re: [stylist] New Book, blindness on TV
>>>>>
>>>>> It's a Friday morning snow storm here - a beautiful day outside. Time
>>>>> to get some coffee and begin my day, but first I wanted to drop a not
>>>>> on your discussion which is so interesting to me.
>>>>>
>>>>> I think Bridgit really hit it - unless a sighted person has had a lot
>>>>> of time together with a blind person, they are really clueless and
>>>>> they could care less about knowing positive things.  They still live
>>>>> with the mentality of the question they have asked themselves and
>>>>> each other for years, "Would you rather lose your sight, or your
>>> hearing?".
>>>>> To sighted people losing sight or hearing is the worst case scenario
>>>>> they can think of and they are not about to look any closer into
>>>>> either of the two life-challenges.  And, as Henrietta, experienced,
>>>>> even close family members really don't understand how we do things.
>>>>> Not really.  They watch us, but we are a mystery to them even though
>>>>> they have been around us many times over the years.
>>>>> Occasionally there is some little revelation that they grasp, but I
>>>>> think it is very rare.
>>>>>
>>>>> A couple years ago I went on a short 5 hour trip with my sister.
>>>>> When we arrived at our cousin's home, we had instructions to locate
>>>>> her house key and let ourselves in because they were away on vacation
>>>>> and we would have their home to stay in.  My sister retrieved the
>>>>> key, as instructed.  She began to try to open the door.  She fiddled
>>>>> around for quite awhile with the key and the lock in the door - yet,
>>>>> she could not get it open. She tried turning the key around, tried
>>>>> going faster, slower, but no luck.  Finally,
>>>>
>>>>> I
>>>>> quietly said to her, "Give me the key and let me see what I can do."
>>>>> She snickered and said "Oh, sure, you are going to open the door that
>>>>> you can't even see!"  I took the key from her, felt the key, and
>>>>> inserted it into the door's lock slowly. Then, I put my left had on
>>>>> the door, just above the lock, so I could FEEL any movement the lock
>>>>> would make.  And, I leaned very close to the lock, and I listened.
>>>>> Very quickly, as I slowly turned the key, I felt the vibration of it
>>>>> moving, and I heard the click as it was disengaged.  I smiled, and
>>>>> handed over the key to her, and said, "The door is open."  She loudly
>>>>> proclaimed, "I cannot believe it! A blind person could open the door
>>>>> and I couldn't."
>>>>>
>>>>> I smiled at her and said, "You could not open the door because you
>>>>> were using only your eyes. I opened it because I could feel it and
>>>>> hear it moving."  To her it was something very weird that I had
>>>>> actually opened up the door that she had struggled with and could not
>>>>> get the job done.  I think in her mind it was a lucky accident even
>>>>> though I explained why it happened.  Most sighted people do not think
>>>>> we can do much of anything, no matter what we achieve - honestly,
>>>>> that is what I think. So, for most sighted people to read about a
>>>>> blind hero in a fictional account, I say, "Dream on!"  I think the
>>>>> interest level for a sighted person to even read a book through is
>>>>> really a stretch unless that person is really on a mission to learn
>>>>> more about blindness and diversity and inclusion. Maybe in a
>>>>> literature course, where it would be included in the required
>>>>> reading, but on their own, I think the chances are quite slim.  But,
>>>>> then, as I write this I am optimistic enough to think I see a "movie"
>>>>> that could be made that would be exciting to them. Who knows? I sure
>>>>> don't.  Why is it that we are constantly told we are "amazing" when
>>>>> we do things that are high level achievements for anyone at all?  Why
>>>>> is it that some people droll all over us about how inspiring we are
>>>>> and how tragic it is that we
>>>> lost our sight?
>>>>> I just smile at them and say, "NO, not really! It is just who I am
>>>>> and who
>>>>
>>>>> I
>>>>> have always been."  That usually leaves them speechless and the
>>>>> conversation ends.  Write on! Lynda
>>>>>
>>>>> ----- Original Message -----
>>>>> From: "Applebutter Hill" <applebutterhill at gmail.com>
>>>>> To: "'Writer's Division Mailing List'" <stylist at nfbnet.org>
>>>>> Sent: Thursday, February 13, 2014 9:07 PM
>>>>> Subject: Re: [stylist] New Book, blindness on TV
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>> Great story!
>>>>>> Donna
>>>>>>
>>>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>>>> From: stylist [mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of
>>>>>> Henrietta Brewer
>>>>>> Sent: Thursday, February 13, 2014 7:32 PM
>>>>>> To: Writer's Division Mailing List
>>>>>> Subject: Re: [stylist] New Book, blindness on TV
>>>>>>
>>>>>> You guys make me laugh. You're right, Sighted people can't imagine
>>>>>> the blind being the hero. At Christmas, when the power was out in
>>>>>> our town, I had twenty five or thirty people here most days. We had
>>>>>> a generator so we had a few lights but not in more then half the
>>>>>> house.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I didn't think much of it while everyone was here. Though I was
>>>>>> tired of doing all the fetching because no one could find anything
>>>>>> in the dark.
>>>>>> When
>>>>>> everyone left and I was cleaning house, I saw how difficult it was
>>>>>> for our guests. They had only a flashlight in the bathroom and their
>>>>>> bedroom and nothing was where it should be.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> they all mention now, that they will call me in any black out. But
>>>>>> it took reality to get even family to realize that a blind person
>>>>>> can be helpful in a black out. lol Henrietta On Feb 13, 2014, at
>>>>>> 12:10 AM, Bridgit Pollpeter
>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> When I wrote a short mystery story for a detective fiction class I
>>>>>>> took at university, I made my main character blind, which is the
>>>>>>> first time I did this. Anyway, at one point, the house the two main
>>>>>>> characters are sleeping in goes up in flames, and the blind
>>>>>>> character navigates them out of the house. Using his other senses,
>>>>>>> he makes it out the front door. I did do some research before
>>>>>>> writing the scene, but mostly based it off my own knowledge of what
>>>>>>> a blind person might do in that particular situation. When
>>>>>>> critiqueing our stories, a classmate said, to my face, it wasn't
>>>>>>> believeable that a blind person could do that and I should change
>>>>>>> that scene. Another classmate, to my surprise, said who better than
>>>>>>> a blind person to navigate through a situation where sight wouldn't
>>>>>>> be much help because of the smoke, and that by smell and feeling
>>>>>>> heat, surely a blind person would be able to navigate just as well,
>>>>>>> if not better, than a sighted person. After considering this point,
>>>>>>> the first person half-heartedly agreed. My point being that I agree
>>>>>>> with Chris that even though these stories are being written by
>>>>>>> blind people, most of the sighted world can't, or won't, buy a
>>>>>>> blind person doing the things we make them do, living as
>>>>>>> independent, active,
>>>> vital people.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Bridgit
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>>>>> From: stylist [mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of
>>>>>>> Chris Kuell
>>>>>>> Sent: Wednesday, February 12, 2014 7:47 AM
>>>>>>> To: Writer's Division Mailing List
>>>>>>> Subject: Re: [stylist] New Book, blindness on TV
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Donna,
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I'm generally skeptical by nature, but I really hope they do a good
>>>>>>> job with this show. It's exactly what we've been talking about
>>>>>>> here--an opportunity to crush the stupid stereotypes and let the
>>>>>>> public see a guy who is interesting, and just happens to be blind.
>>>>>>> If it does a good job, and if the public enjoys it, it could open
>>>>>>> the door to more blind characters in the
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> arts. Personally, I feel certain that the reason books like yours
>>>>>>> and mine aren't getting read by agents and traditional publishers
>>>>>>> is because we have blind protagonists. An agent, or more likely, an
>>>>>>> agent's assistant reads my query and thinks--a blind protagonist?
>>>>>>> Nobody is going to buy that. It's too outside mainstream experience.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Hopefully, the times, they are a changing.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> chris
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>>> Writers Division web site
>>>>>>> http://writers.nfb.org/
>>>>>>> stylist mailing list
>>>>>>> stylist at nfbnet.org
>>>>>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/stylist_nfbnet.org
>>>>>>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info
>>>>>>> for
>>>>>>> stylist:
>>>>>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/stylist_nfbnet.org/bpollpeter%40h
>>>>>>> o
>>>>>>> tm
>>>>>>> ai
>>>>>>> l.com
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>>> Writers Division web site
>>>>>>> http://writers.nfb.org/
>>>>>>> stylist mailing list
>>>>>>> stylist at nfbnet.org
>>>>>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/stylist_nfbnet.org
>>>>>>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info
>>>>>>> for
>>>>>> stylist:
>>>>>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/stylist_nfbnet.org/gary.brewer%40
>>>>>>> c
>>>>>>> om
>>>>>>> cast.net
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>> Writers Division web site
>>>>>> http://writers.nfb.org/
>>>>>> stylist mailing list
>>>>>> stylist at nfbnet.org
>>>>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/stylist_nfbnet.org
>>>>>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info
>>>>>> for
>>>>>> stylist:
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/stylist_nfbnet.org/applebutterhill%4
>>>> 0gmail
>>>>>> .com
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>> Writers Division web site
>>>>>> http://writers.nfb.org/
>>>>>> stylist mailing list
>>>>>> stylist at nfbnet.org
>>>>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/stylist_nfbnet.org
>>>>>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info
>>>>>> for
>>>>>> stylist:
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/stylist_nfbnet.org/llambert%40zoomin
>>>> ternet
>>>>> .net
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> Writers Division web site
>>>>> http://writers.nfb.org/
>>>>> stylist mailing list
>>>>> stylist at nfbnet.org
>>>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/stylist_nfbnet.org
>>>>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
>>>>> stylist:
>>>>>
>>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/stylist_nfbnet.org/applebutterhill%4
>>>> 0gmail
>>>>> .com
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> Writers Division web site
>>>>> http://writers.nfb.org/
>>>>> stylist mailing list
>>>>> stylist at nfbnet.org
>>>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/stylist_nfbnet.org
>>>>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
>>>>> stylist:
>>>>>
>>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/stylist_nfbnet.org/llambert%40zoomin
>>>> ternet
>>>> .net
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Writers Division web site
>>>> http://writers.nfb.org/
>>>> stylist mailing list
>>>> stylist at nfbnet.org
>>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/stylist_nfbnet.org
>>>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
>>>> stylist:
>>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/stylist_nfbnet.org/applebutterhill%4
>>>> 0gmail
>>>> .com
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Writers Division web site
>>>> http://writers.nfb.org/
>>>> stylist mailing list
>>>> stylist at nfbnet.org
>>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/stylist_nfbnet.org
>>>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
>>>> stylist:
>>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/stylist_nfbnet.org/newmanrl%40cox.ne
>>>> t
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Writers Division web site
>>>> http://writers.nfb.org/
>>>> stylist mailing list
>>>> stylist at nfbnet.org
>>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/stylist_nfbnet.org
>>>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
>>>> stylist:
>>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/stylist_nfbnet.org/llambert%40zoomin
>>>> ternet.net
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Writers Division web site
>>> http://writers.nfb.org/
>>> stylist mailing list
>>> stylist at nfbnet.org
>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/stylist_nfbnet.org
>>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
>>> stylist:
>>>
>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/stylist_nfbnet.org/meekerorgas%40ameritech
>>> .net
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Writers Division web site
>>> http://writers.nfb.org/
>>> stylist mailing list
>>> stylist at nfbnet.org
>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/stylist_nfbnet.org
>>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
>>> stylist:
>>>
>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/stylist_nfbnet.org/applebutterhill%40gmail
>>> .com
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> ----
>>
>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Writers Division web site
>>> http://writers.nfb.org/
>>> stylist mailing list
>>> stylist at nfbnet.org
>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/stylist_nfbnet.org
>>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
>>> stylist:
>>>
>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/stylist_nfbnet.org/llambert%40zoominternet
>> .net
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Writers Division web site
>> http://writers.nfb.org/
>> stylist mailing list
>> stylist at nfbnet.org
>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/stylist_nfbnet.org
>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
>> stylist:
>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/stylist_nfbnet.org/newmanrl%40cox.net
>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Writers Division web site
>> http://writers.nfb.org/
>> stylist mailing list
>> stylist at nfbnet.org
>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/stylist_nfbnet.org
>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
>> stylist:
>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/stylist_nfbnet.org/shawn.d.jacobson%40hud.gov
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Writers Division web site
>> http://writers.nfb.org/
>> stylist mailing list
>> stylist at nfbnet.org
>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/stylist_nfbnet.org
>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
>> stylist:
>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/stylist_nfbnet.org/llambert%40zoominternet.net
>>
>
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 4
> Date: Tue, 18 Feb 2014 11:44:37 -0500
> From: "Lynda Lambert" <llambert at zoominternet.net>
> To: "Writer's Division Mailing List" <stylist at nfbnet.org>
> Subject: Re: [stylist] New Book, blindness on TV
> Message-ID: <70459D802F2C4A1F884098F17FC28C48 at Lambert>
> Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1";
> 	reply-type=original
>
> flat?  Here be Dragons!
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Applebutter Hill" <applebutterhill at gmail.com>
> To: "'Writer's Division Mailing List'" <stylist at nfbnet.org>
> Sent: Monday, February 17, 2014 8:39 PM
> Subject: Re: [stylist] New Book, blindness on TV
>
>
>> Apparently, there was a recent survey that found that 26 percent of
>> Americans did not know that the Earth goes around the Sun. That's
>> different
>> than believing it doesn't, but it's still a sobering commentary on the
>> general level of awareness.
>>
>> Although, I must say, the part I'm standing on certainly does feel flat.
>> *grin*
>> Donna
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: stylist [mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Homme,
>> James
>> Sent: Monday, February 17, 2014 1:21 PM
>> To: Writer's Division Mailing List
>> Subject: Re: [stylist] New Book, blindness on TV
>>
>> Hay. The world is flat. I'm stickin' to that story.
>> Jim
>>
>>
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: stylist [mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of
>> Applebutter
>> Hill
>> Sent: Friday, February 14, 2014 3:35 PM
>> To: 'Writer's Division Mailing List'
>> Subject: Re: [stylist] New Book, blindness on TV
>>
>> Lynda,
>> Like you've noticed with your sister and the key, sighted people will not
>> accept anything we do as anything other than a fluke or a miracle. Even
>> faced with a clear description of the usefulness of other senses, they
>> somehow still have to brush anything aside that conflicts with what they
>> kno
>> ... Blindness is essentially insurmountable. I think of it as being
>> similar
>> to the days when a few nutheads were trying to explain to the human race
>> that the world is not flat.
>>
>> Coincidentally, I just got an e-mail from a rehab counsellor in PA, who I
>> reached out to on Linked In -- I offer them a free e-book version of my
>> novel and explain why I think it has value for them and their clients. I
>> mention the issue of dealing with low expectations. This man said that, as
>>
>> a
>> person who used to work with BVI and now works with other disabilities,
>> he
>> believes that the issue of low expectations is much worse for those with
>> vision loss. I have always felt that way, but I don't have the
>> credentials
>> to say so. It meant a lot to me to hear that from someone.
>>
>> You hit on the reason behind my removing all references to blindness from
>>
>> my
>> online book descriptions; it's a taboo. Just imagine someone getting my
>> book
>> and not knowing that the heroine is blind and has a guide dog. They will
>> have to read through at least a page before it becomes clear to them.
>> Some
>> will be angry with me, because I didn't warn them. Some, I hope, will
>> have
>> gotten hooked by something else in the story and read it anyway. It's
>> fiction, so they don't have to change their stupid belief systems, but I
>> hope they will have a bit of an adjustment  in spite of themselves.
>> Donna
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: stylist [mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Lynda
>> Lambert
>> Sent: Friday, February 14, 2014 9:18 AM
>> To: Writer's Division Mailing List
>> Subject: Re: [stylist] New Book, blindness on TV
>>
>> It's a Friday morning snow storm here - a beautiful day outside. Time to
>> get
>> some coffee and begin my day, but first I wanted to drop a not on your
>> discussion which is so interesting to me.
>>
>> I think Bridgit really hit it - unless a sighted person has had a lot of
>> time together with a blind person, they are really clueless and they
>> could
>> care less about knowing positive things.  They still live with the
>> mentality
>> of the question they have asked themselves and each other for years,
>> "Would
>> you rather lose your sight, or your hearing?".  To sighted people losing
>> sight or hearing is the worst case scenario they can think of and they
>> are
>> not about to look any closer into either of the two life-challenges.
>> And,
>> as Henrietta, experienced, even close family members really don't
>> understand
>> how we do things. Not really.  They watch us, but we are a mystery to
>> them
>> even though they have been around us many times over the years.
>> Occasionally there is some little revelation that they grasp, but I think
>>
>> it
>> is very rare.
>>
>> A couple years ago I went on a short 5 hour trip with my sister.  When we
>> arrived at our cousin's home, we had instructions to locate her house key
>> and let ourselves in because they were away on vacation and we would have
>> their home to stay in.  My sister retrieved the key, as instructed.  She
>> began to try to open the door.  She fiddled around for quite awhile with
>> the
>> key and the lock in the door - yet, she could not get it open. She tried
>> turning the key around, tried going faster, slower, but no luck.  Finally,
>>
>> I
>> quietly said to her, "Give me the key and let me see what I can do."  She
>> snickered and said "Oh, sure, you are going to open the door that you
>> can't
>> even see!"  I took the key from her, felt the key, and inserted it into
>> the
>> door's lock slowly. Then, I put my left had on the door, just above the
>> lock, so I could FEEL any movement the lock would make.  And, I leaned
>> very
>> close to the lock, and I listened.  Very quickly, as I slowly turned the
>> key, I felt the vibration of it moving, and I heard the click as it was
>> disengaged.  I smiled, and handed over the key to her, and said, "The
>> door
>> is open."  She loudly proclaimed, "I cannot believe it! A blind person
>> could
>> open the door and I couldn't."
>>
>> I smiled at her and said, "You could not open the door because you were
>> using only your eyes. I opened it because I could feel it and hear it
>> moving."  To her it was something very weird that I had actually opened
>> up
>> the door that she had struggled with and could not get the job done.  I
>> think in her mind it was a lucky accident even though I explained why it
>> happened.  Most sighted people do not think we can do much of anything,
>> no
>> matter what we achieve - honestly, that is what I think. So, for most
>> sighted people to read about a blind hero in a fictional account, I say,
>> "Dream on!"  I think the interest level for a sighted person to even read
>>
>> a
>> book through is really a stretch unless that person is really on a
>> mission
>> to learn more about blindness and diversity and inclusion. Maybe in a
>> literature course, where it would be included in the required reading,
>> but
>> on their own, I think the chances are quite slim.  But, then, as I write
>> this I am optimistic enough to think I see a "movie" that could be made
>> that
>> would be exciting to them. Who knows? I sure don't.  Why is it that we
>> are
>> constantly told we are "amazing" when we do things that are high level
>> achievements for anyone at all?  Why is it that some people droll all
>> over
>> us about how inspiring we are and how tragic it is that we lost our
>> sight?
>> I just smile at them and say, "NO, not really! It is just who I am and who
>>
>> I
>> have always been."  That usually leaves them speechless and the
>> conversation
>> ends.  Write on! Lynda
>>
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: "Applebutter Hill" <applebutterhill at gmail.com>
>> To: "'Writer's Division Mailing List'" <stylist at nfbnet.org>
>> Sent: Thursday, February 13, 2014 9:07 PM
>> Subject: Re: [stylist] New Book, blindness on TV
>>
>>
>>> Great story!
>>> Donna
>>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: stylist [mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of
>>> Henrietta Brewer
>>> Sent: Thursday, February 13, 2014 7:32 PM
>>> To: Writer's Division Mailing List
>>> Subject: Re: [stylist] New Book, blindness on TV
>>>
>>> You guys make me laugh. You're right, Sighted people can't imagine the
>>> blind being the hero. At Christmas, when the power was out in our
>>> town, I had twenty five or thirty people here most days. We had a
>>> generator so we had a few lights but not in more then half the house.
>>>
>>> I didn't think much of it while everyone was here. Though I was tired
>>> of doing all the fetching because no one could find anything in the
>>> dark.
>>> When
>>> everyone left and I was cleaning house, I saw how difficult it was for
>>> our guests. They had only a flashlight in the bathroom and their
>>> bedroom and nothing was where it should be.
>>>
>>> they all mention now, that they will call me in any black out. But it
>>> took reality to get even family to realize that a blind person can be
>>> helpful in a black out. lol Henrietta On Feb 13, 2014, at 12:10 AM,
>>> Bridgit Pollpeter
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> When I wrote a short mystery story for a detective fiction class I
>>>> took at university, I made my main character blind, which is the
>>>> first time I did this. Anyway, at one point, the house the two main
>>>> characters are sleeping in goes up in flames, and the blind character
>>>> navigates them out of the house. Using his other senses, he makes it
>>>> out the front door. I did do some research before writing the scene,
>>>> but mostly based it off my own knowledge of what a blind person might
>>>> do in that particular situation. When critiqueing our stories, a
>>>> classmate said, to my face, it wasn't believeable that a blind person
>>>> could do that and I should change that scene. Another classmate, to
>>>> my surprise, said who better than a blind person to navigate through
>>>> a situation where sight wouldn't be much help because of the smoke,
>>>> and that by smell and feeling heat, surely a blind person would be
>>>> able to navigate just as well, if not better, than a sighted person.
>>>> After considering this point, the first person half-heartedly agreed.
>>>> My point being that I agree with Chris that even though these stories
>>>> are being written by blind people, most of the sighted world can't,
>>>> or won't, buy a blind person doing the things we make them do, living
>>>> as independent, active, vital people.
>>>>
>>>> Bridgit
>>>>
>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>> From: stylist [mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Chris
>>>> Kuell
>>>> Sent: Wednesday, February 12, 2014 7:47 AM
>>>> To: Writer's Division Mailing List
>>>> Subject: Re: [stylist] New Book, blindness on TV
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Donna,
>>>>
>>>> I'm generally skeptical by nature, but I really hope they do a good
>>>> job with this show. It's exactly what we've been talking about
>>>> here--an opportunity to crush the stupid stereotypes and let the
>>>> public see a guy who is interesting, and just happens to be blind. If
>>>> it does a good job, and if the public enjoys it, it could open the
>>>> door to more blind characters in the
>>>>
>>>> arts. Personally, I feel certain that the reason books like yours and
>>>> mine aren't getting read by agents and traditional publishers is
>>>> because we have blind protagonists. An agent, or more likely, an
>>>> agent's assistant reads my query and thinks--a blind protagonist?
>>>> Nobody is going to buy that. It's too outside mainstream experience.
>>>>
>>>> Hopefully, the times, they are a changing.
>>>>
>>>> chris
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Writers Division web site
>>>> http://writers.nfb.org/
>>>> stylist mailing list
>>>> stylist at nfbnet.org
>>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/stylist_nfbnet.org
>>>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
>>>> stylist:
>>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/stylist_nfbnet.org/bpollpeter%40hot
>>>> m
>>>> ai
>>>> l.com
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Writers Division web site
>>>> http://writers.nfb.org/
>>>> stylist mailing list
>>>> stylist at nfbnet.org
>>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/stylist_nfbnet.org
>>>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
>>> stylist:
>>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/stylist_nfbnet.org/gary.brewer%40co
>>>> m
>>>> cast.net
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Writers Division web site
>>> http://writers.nfb.org/
>>> stylist mailing list
>>> stylist at nfbnet.org
>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/stylist_nfbnet.org
>>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
>>> stylist:
>>>
>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/stylist_nfbnet.org/applebutterhill%40gmail
>>> .com
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Writers Division web site
>>> http://writers.nfb.org/
>>> stylist mailing list
>>> stylist at nfbnet.org
>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/stylist_nfbnet.org
>>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
>>> stylist:
>>>
>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/stylist_nfbnet.org/llambert%40zoominternet
>> .net
>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Writers Division web site
>> http://writers.nfb.org/
>> stylist mailing list
>> stylist at nfbnet.org
>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/stylist_nfbnet.org
>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
>> stylist:
>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/stylist_nfbnet.org/applebutterhill%40gmail
>> .com
>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Writers Division web site
>> http://writers.nfb.org/
>> stylist mailing list
>> stylist at nfbnet.org
>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/stylist_nfbnet.org
>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
>> stylist:
>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/stylist_nfbnet.org/james.homme%40highmark.
>> com
>>
>> ________________________________
>>
>> This e-mail and any attachments to it are confidential and are intended
>> solely for use of the individual or entity to whom they are addressed. If
>> you have received this e-mail in error, please notify the sender
>> immediately
>> and then delete it. If you are not the intended recipient, you must not
>> keep, use, disclose, copy or distribute this e-mail without the author's
>> prior permission. The views expressed in this e-mail message do not
>> necessarily represent the views of Highmark, its diversified business, or
>> affiliates.
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Writers Division web site
>> http://writers.nfb.org/
>> stylist mailing list
>> stylist at nfbnet.org
>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/stylist_nfbnet.org
>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
>> stylist:
>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/stylist_nfbnet.org/applebutterhill%40gmail
>> .com
>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Writers Division web site
>> http://writers.nfb.org/
>> stylist mailing list
>> stylist at nfbnet.org
>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/stylist_nfbnet.org
>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
>> stylist:
>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/stylist_nfbnet.org/llambert%40zoominternet.net
>>
>
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 5
> Date: Tue, 18 Feb 2014 12:37:27 -0600
> From: "Cheryl Orgas & William Meeker" <meekerorgas at ameritech.net>
> To: "'Writer's Division Mailing List'" <stylist at nfbnet.org>
> Subject: [stylist] FW:  Blind or Visually Impaired Authors
> Message-ID: <003501cf2cd8$79a02450$6ce06cf0$@ameritech.net>
> Content-Type: text/plain;	charset="iso-8859-1"
>
> Not sure if this got through the first time.
>
> Bill Meeker
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Cheryl Orgas & William Meeker [mailto:meekerorgas at ameritech.net]
> Sent: Monday, February 17, 2014 1:34 PM
> To: 'Applebutter Hill'
> Subject: RE: [stylist] Blind or Visually Impaired Authors;RE: New Book,
> blindness on TV
>
> Donna,
>
> Thank you so much for your work unearthing these illuminating articles
> about
> the authors I mentioned.  I am enjoying them a lot.
>
> Thurber was one of my favorite writers since I was a teenager.  When I read
> print I read and reread the "Thurber Carnival."  In addition to "The Secret
> Life of Walter Mitty," "The Night the Bed Fell" makes me laugh every time I
> read it.
>
> James Joyce is one of my favorite authors too.  I agree with the article
> statement that he is best read out loud. I highly recommend Alexander
> Scourby's superb reading of Ulysses, DB19994.  I don't know an other man
> who
> can read a female part as convincingly as Scourby reads Molly Bloom.  And
> Leopold Bloom's encounter with The Blind Stripling captures perfectly a
> sighted man's interior dialogue around meeting a blind person at a street
> corner.  The description of The Blind Stripling responding to the encounter
> I think captures the dignity in the blind man's demeanor and hints at what
> he may be feeling.  Every year I look forward to attending an annual
> Bloom's
> Day event in Madison, Wisconsin and hearing different people read excerpts
> from Ulysses.
>
> While I can't yet get my brain around Finnegan's Wake, Patrick Horgan reads
> it, DB21424, adeptly.
>
>
> And I haven't read Milton, but Paradise Lost is downloaded and waiting to
> be
> read.
>
>
> Thanks again for increasing my understanding of these authors and giving me
> enjoyment at the same time.
>
>
> Bill Meeker
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Applebutter Hill [mailto:applebutterhill at gmail.com]
> Sent: Sunday, February 16, 2014 3:21 PM
> To: meekerorgas at ameritech.net; 'Writer's Division Mailing List'
> Subject: RE: [stylist] Blind or Visually Impaired Authors;RE: New Book,
> blindness on TV
>
> Bill,
> Donna Hill here. I don't know about Homer, and neither does anyone else.
> His
> blindness and even his existence as the one writer of the works attributed
> to him is a matter of some controversy in the academic world. For proof of
> his blindness, lines from his poetry are used, which isn't quite enough for
> me. Homer as a blind poet is more important to me as a cultural myth.
>
> Milton, though he wrote his best work without sight,  was well-educated and
> well-known prior to blindness. The most remembered line he wrote about
> blindness doesn't say much for adapting -- approx "those serve too who only
> stand and wait." I found a great bio of him on poets.org, which I will
> place
> at the end of this message.
>
> Thurber lost sight in one eye in an accident in childhood which apparently
> led to losing sight in the other later in life. He had enough sight to
> enlist in the military and function as a cartoonist for the NewYorker. Here
> is something from an article from Slate.com about him (after a collection
> of
> his letters was released) that discusses the effect of his blindness on his
> work.
> Block quote
> The tragedy of James Thurber.
>
> James Thurber's tragedy.
> By
> Wilfrid Sheed
>
> SEPT. 18 2003 3:33 PM
>
> At the age of 15 or so, I picked up The Thurber Carnival and realized that
> I'd found my Pied Piper; I wanted to be James Thurber. I would follow those
> sentences anywhere. But Thurber, The New Yorker writer and cartoonist
> (author, famously, of "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty"),?had just passed
> his peak and was already descending into the total blindness that would
> embitter him and impair his writing. So, The Thurber Carnival was the
> perfect place to start, and it still is: It contains Thurber's essence and
> the best work he did in his pre-blind years?his cartoons and fables and
> those deadly little "casuals"
> from
> The New Yorker in which husbands and wives drove each other absolutely,
> unconditionally crazy, while huge silent dogs looked on like Buddhas,
> patiently waiting for the human race to come to its senses, or not, as the
> case may be.
>
> Now we have The Thurber Letters, collected by Harrison Kinney and Rosemary
> Thurber, to give us a fuller picture of the man. Most people would, I
> suppose, if faced with the grim choice, prefer to take their chances as
> blind writers rather than as deaf composers. Homer, the Cyclops of
> literature, did OK. And Milton got a great poem out of blindness. But
> Thurber's letters seem to me inexpressibly sad, perhaps because one can
> perceive the blindness setting in slowly?and, having seen the back of his
> biography, one also knows that there will be no great poems, so to speak,
> deriving from it.
>
> ...
>
> Thurber, like many enlisted men, had seen "Paree," and it had given all his
> pieces a lick of sophistication new to American humor. In effect, he and
> his
> whole generation had used Paris as a species of finishing school where
> country boys like Cole Porter and Ernest Hemingway could major in
> sophistication before bringing some home with them. There was never any
> question of anyone going back to the farm, of course, and so in the
> mid-'20s
> a bunch of these boys decided to start a magazine right there?and not just
> any old magazine, but the most sophisticated damn magazine in the whole
> world: "Not for the old lady in Dubuque," as its first issue trumpeted
> sophomorically. The New Yorker did turn out to be the most sophisticated
> magazine in the world, and the British in particular went nuts trying to
> imitate it.
>
> http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/books/2003/09/blind_wit.html
> Block quote end
>
> Joyce had problems with his vision (iritis & glaucoma) starting in
> childhood
> when he needed thick glasses to read. He had numerous operations for it; he
> died during an operation, but I'm not sure if it was another one on his
> eyes.  In one letter he describes himself as having been "incapacitated"
> for
> a week from the iritis, but I don't know if he meant by the pain of the
> condition or because he wasn't adapted to living nonvisually. I haven't
> found any references to his using any adaptations such as Milton did when
> he
> dictated his later poetry.
>
> Here are some snippits from an old Atlantic Monthly article on Joyce's
> literary contribution in which his vision is mentioned and appropriately
> enough the influence it had on his writing. I included the first quote to
> show how much he was passing as sighted, or how little his visual problems
> were holding him back in his early years. The URL's at the end.
>
> Block quote
> The Atlantic Monthly
>
> James Joyce
> By Harry Levin
> December, 1946
> ... At University College he had specialized in Romance Languages, and had
> shown such proficiency that there had been talk of a professorship. During
> his hardest years on the Continent, before a benefactor endowed his
> literary
> work, he worked as a commercial translator and as a teacher in a Berlitz
> school.
>
> ...
> It is a striking fact about English literature in the twentieth century
> that
> its most notable practitioners have seldom been Englishmen. The fact that
> they have so often been Irishmen supports, Synge's belief in the
> reinvigorating suggestiveness of Irish popular speech. That English was not
> Joyce's native language, in the strictest sense, he was keenly aware; and
> it
> helps to explain his unparalleled virtuosity. But a more concrete
> explanation is to be discerned among his physical traits, one of which we
> normally classify as a serious handicap. Joyce lived much of his life in
> varying states of semi-blindness.
> To
> preserve what eyesight he had, he underwent repeated operations and
> countermeasures. A schoolboy humiliation, when he broke his glasses and
> failed to do his lessons, is painfully recollected in the Portrait and
> again
> in Ulysses.
> His writing tends more and more toward low visibility; his imagination is
> auditory rather than visual. If the artist is a man for whom the visible
> world exists, remarked George Moore, then Joyce is essentially a
> metaphysician; for he is less concerned with the seeing eye than with the
> thinking mind.
>
> We may add that he is most directly concerned with the hearing ear.
> Doubtless the sonorities of Homer and Milton are intimately connected with
> their blindness.
> It is scarcely coincidental that Joyce, almost unique among modern prose
> writers in this respect, must be read aloud to be fully appreciated. In
> addition to his linguistic aptitude, and in compensation for his defective
> vision, he was gifted with an especially fine tenor voice. Professional
> singing was one of the possible careers he had contemplated. His singer's
> taste inclined toward Opera and bel canto, romantic ballads and Elizabethan
> airs: not music but song, he liked to say. His poems except for a few
> excursions into Swiftian satire, are songs; lyrics which, without their
> musical settings look strangely fragile. Yeats, upon first reading them,
> praised Joyce's delicate talent, and shrewdly wondered whether his ultimate
> form would be verse or prose.
> Operating
> within the broader area of fiction, he was to retain the cadenced precision
> of the poet. Above all he remained an accomplished listener, whose pages
> are
> continually animated by the accurate recording of overheard conversation.
>
> ...
>
> His pangs of composition have recently been described by Philippe Soupault
> as "a sort of daily damnation: the creation of the Joycean world. The
> perverse ingenuity of these later experiments has been deplored more
> frequently than deciphered. A long series of misunderstandings with the
> public inevitably reinforced those early vows of silence, exile, and
> cunning. Inhibited from writing naturally of natural instincts, Joyce ended
> by inventing an artificial language of innuendo and mockery. In Finnegans
> Wake he drew upon his linguistic skills and learned hobbies to contrive an
> Optophone--an instrument which, for the benefit of the blind, converts
> images into sounds. Out of it come, not merely echoes of the past, but
> warnings of the future. Mr. Earwicker's worldly misfortunes are climaxed by
> a lethal explosion: "the abnihilisation of the etym."
> Pessimists may interpret this enigma as the annihilation of all meaning, a
> chain reaction set off by the destruction of the atom. Optimists will
> stress
> the creation of matter ex nihilo--and trust in the Word to create another
> world.
>
> http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/95sep/links/levi.htm
> Block quote end
>
> Now for the Milton bio
> Block quote
> John Milton
>
> John Milton was born in London on December 9, 1608, into a middle-class
> family. He was educated at St. Paul's School, then at Christ's College,
> Cambridge, where he began to write poetry in Latin, Italian, and English,
> and prepared to enter the clergy.
>
> After university, however, he abandoned his plans to join the priesthood
> and
> spent the next six years in his father's country home in Buckinghamshire
> following a rigorous course of independent study to prepare for a career as
> a poet. His extensive reading included both classical and modern works of
> religion, science, philosophy, history, politics, and literature. In
> addition, Milton was proficient in Latin, Greek, Hebrew, French, Spanish,
> and Italian, and obtained a familiarity with Old English and Dutch as well.
>
> During his period of private study, Milton composed a number of poems,
> including "On the Morning of Christ's Nativity," "On Shakespeare,"
> "L'Allegro," "Il Penseroso," and the pastoral elegy "Lycidas." In May of
> 1638, Milton began a 13-month tour of France and Italy, during which he met
> many important intellectuals and influential people, including the
> astronomer Galileo, who appears in Milton's tract against censorship,
> "Areopagitica."
>
> In 1642, Milton returned from a trip into the countryside with a
> 16-year-old
> bride, Mary Powell. Even though they were estranged for most of their
> marriage, she bore him three daughters and a son before her death in 1652.
> Milton later married twice more: Katherine Woodcock in 1656, who died
> giving
> birth in 1658, and Elizabeth Minshull in 1662.
>
> During the English Civil War, Milton championed the cause of the Puritans
> and Oliver Cromwell, and wrote a series of pamphlets advocating radical
> political topics including the morality of divorce, the freedom of the
> press, populism, and sanctioned regicide. Milton served as secretary for
> foreign languages in Cromwell's government, composing official statements
> defending the Commonwealth. During this time, Milton steadily lost his
> eyesight, and was completely blind by 1651. He continued his duties,
> however, with the aid of Andrew Marvell and other assistants.
>
> After the Restoration of Charles II to the throne in 1660, Milton was
> arrested as a defender of the Commonwealth, fined, and soon released. He
> lived the rest of his life in seclusion in the country, completing the
> blank-verse epic poem Paradise Lost in 1667, as well as its sequel Paradise
> Regained and the tragedy Samson Agonistes both in 1671. Milton oversaw the
> printing of a second edition of Paradise Lost in 1674, which included an
> explanation of "why the poem rhymes not," clarifying his use of blank
> verse,
> along with introductory notes by Marvell. He died shortly afterwards, on
> November 8, 1674, in Buckinghamshire, England.
>
>
>
> http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/707
> Block quote end
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: stylist [mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Cheryl Orgas
> & William Meeker
> Sent: Sunday, February 16, 2014 9:59 AM
> To: 'Writer's Division Mailing List'
> Subject: Re: [stylist] Blind or Visually Impaired Authors;RE: New Book,
> blindness on TV
>
> Linda,
>
> Blind or visually impaired authors Homer, John Milton, James Joyce, and
> James Thurber come to mind first.  That they were known for their works
> rather than their blindness is to me a measure of their success.
>
> Several authors have written novels without using common vowels, such as
> the
> letter "E."  So how about a novel or short story depicting a blind
> character
> without using the word "blind?"  That is, describing them and their actions
> including alternative techniques and letting the reader figure out that
> they
> are blind.
>
> Or how about a novel or short story written without  visual descriptions.
> That is, using only descriptions of sounds, textures, tastes, and feelings?
>
> I can think up these ideas, but I lack the skill, drive, and
> self-disclipline to execute them.  So have fun.
>
>
> Bill Meeker
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: stylist [mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Lynda
> Lambert
> Sent: Saturday, February 15, 2014 6:59 AM
> To: newmanrl at cox.net; Writer's Division Mailing List
> Subject: Re: [stylist] Low expectations of the blind; RE: New Book,
> blindness on TV
>
> This conversation is making me begin to think about some authors I taught
> in
> the past in Humanities and English courses.  Now that I am "aware" of
> blindness, which I was NOT at all in the past, I am wondering how I would
> interpret the literature of a blind author. I taught Bourges and I never
> knew he was blind!   I am thinking that now, if I go back to read his work,
> I will interpret many things in a different way.  I taught the "Book of
> Sand" every semester!  Hmmmm.  Now it makes even more sense as an exampe
> lof
> of Postmodernism which was the focus it had for me at the time.  WOW, this
> is beginning to be a revelation to me.  I know that many of the artists I
> taught were blind or visually impaired, but their work was not generally
> explored through that lens.
> I am going to begin looking much deeper into this for my own research - if
> anyone has any more information on artists and writers who are/were blind I
> would love to hear from you as I begin my own little research project on
> this matter.
>
> I am re-learning how to do Power Point presentations now. Normally, this is
> how I lectured but until now, I could not have done it again. I know now,
> that I can do it, it's just going to take awhile for me to teach myself
> again.  I am scheduled to do two presentation at Slippery Rock University
> of
> PA in March - I'll use my milestone to give me verbal "cues" as I am
> speaking, for these presentations. But, I want to begin to develop some
> presentations using power point and I am sure I can do it again - I just
> need to have the time and put in the work to accomplish it.  I have always
> loved doing lectures and presentations and I want to do them again - so I
> am
> gonna work on it!
>
> Lynda
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Robert Leslie Newman" <newmanrl at cox.net>
> To: "'Writer's Division Mailing List'" <stylist at nfbnet.org>
> Sent: Friday, February 14, 2014 11:22 PM
> Subject: [stylist] Low expectations of the blind;RE: New Book, blindness on
> TV
>
>
>> Hi you all, this has been an interesting conversation:
>>
>> Here is another generalization that many around the world have
>> developed over the eons: Blindness is the most God awful, feared
>> physical condition that mankind can experience.
>>
>> I had read and heard this forever, from the mouths of people on the
>> street, to what I've learned in a variety of college classes..though,
>> over the past couple of decades blindness has been pushed down to
>> third place. Guess what has eclipsed being blind as the most feared?
>> Aids and cancer. And hey, I can believe that these two physical
>> conditions are far worse...after all, either one of these two monster
>> conditions can kill you!!! (Though, there are some who feel that
>> blindness is a living death. And yeah, if you allow it to rule! And
>> this is where the NFB has done the world a great service...as in we
>> have developed a philosophy, built a framework of alternative
>> techniques, and influenced the making of a wide variety of tools that
>> in combination...will allow most of us to reduce the effects of
>> blindness, down to  a level whereby most of us can say with an honesty
>> level of 100%, 100%, that the loss of sight is not a major impediment
>> to living a successful and happy life. No...the true problem we face
>> is more the ignorance and the lack of information about the human
>> potential to successfully live with blindness is the toughest
>> impediment to being blind. MMM, go figure? [Being blind isn't the
>> problem, living in a world of ignorance is.]
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: stylist [mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of
>> Applebutter Hill
>> Sent: Friday, February 14, 2014 9:10 PM
>> To: 'Writer's Division Mailing List'
>> Subject: Re: [stylist] New Book, blindness on TV
>>
>> Lynda,
>> At 70, I should certainly hope you (or anyone) would have developed a
>> healthy level of skepticism. *grin*
>>
>> I know that black people face prejudice and low expectations, but I
>> think the fact that white people enslaved them to actually do
>> something, makes that low level quite a bit higher than for blind
>> people. We aren't deemed capable of planting a field, keeping up a
>> household or even caring for children -- as the incident in the
>> Midwest a few years ago shoed, when a child was removed shortly after
> birth from its blind parents.
>>
>> Our traditional purpose is to give the average person something they
>> can look at and say, "Well, I may have problems, but at least I'm not
> blind."
>> We
>> also have traditionally provided them with opportunities to do good
>> deeds.
>> Expecting us to no longer be helpless fundamentally changes how they
>> see themselves.
>>
>> Your post reminds me of a story I heard from a blind woman who was
>> accepted to grad school. Her aunt was furious that she had stolen the
>> position from someone who could really benefit from it. The belief was
>> that anything that a blind person accomplished was just another
>> example of the kindness of strangers in elevating a pitiful person and
>> helping them feel better about themselves. BTW, she has a doctorate in
>> law. I heard many similar stories when I was writing about Braille
>> literacy -- they weren't on topic at the time, and I had hoped to
>> gather some of the things people told me into articles about some of
>> these more subtle things that are going on to this day, but it never
>> happened.
>> Donna
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: stylist [mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Lynda
>> Lambert
>> Sent: Friday, February 14, 2014 6:31 PM
>> To: Writer's Division Mailing List
>> Subject: Re: [stylist] New Book, blindness on TV
>>
>> Donna, yes, the expectations for blind people are very low.  I believe
>> that is why blind people as a group are the highest educated of all
>> people with disabilities, yet, they are the lowest employed people of
>> all the groups.
>> This says it all - we are not expected to be smart, able, or willing
>> to succeed at anything more than very low levels.
>> This is my own thoughts on it and I recognize I am quite skeptical
>> about it
>> - but heck, I am 70 years old now, so I guess I can blame it on my age.
>> I think we have to work so far beyond what other people have to do to
>> find success at so many things. And, this is also true of black
>> people.  I do not know this from a distance, or from reading books on
>> the subject which of course I do all the time. I know it personally,
>> because my son is black and his family is black - they are very highly
>> educated professionals - she a physician, he a psychologist.  At every
>> level, black people still face very low expectations and racism - and
>> I think blind people are very close to the same in the general view of
>> the ST"STUPID public. I agree with you. They are ver STUPID, but we
>> won't tell them that, just yet. lol
>>
>> Lynda
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: "Applebutter Hill" <applebutterhill at gmail.com>
>> To: "'Writer's Division Mailing List'" <stylist at nfbnet.org>
>> Sent: Friday, February 14, 2014 3:34 PM
>> Subject: Re: [stylist] New Book, blindness on TV
>>
>>
>>> Lynda,
>>> Like you've noticed with your sister and the key, sighted people will
>>> not accept anything we do as anything other than a fluke or a miracle.
>>> Even faced with a clear description of the usefulness of other
>>> senses, they somehow still have to brush anything aside that
>>> conflicts with what they kno ... Blindness is essentially
>>> insurmountable. I think of it as being similar to the days when a few
>>> nutheads were trying to explain to the human race that the world is
>>> not
> flat.
>>>
>>> Coincidentally, I just got an e-mail from a rehab counsellor in PA,
>>> who I reached out to on Linked In -- I offer them a free e-book
>>> version of my novel and explain why I think it has value for them and
>>> their clients. I mention the issue of dealing with low expectations.
>>> This man said that, as
>>
>>> a
>>> person who used to work with BVI and now works with other
>>> disabilities, he believes that the issue of low expectations is much
>>> worse for those with vision loss. I have always felt that way, but I
>>> don't have the credentials to say so. It meant a lot to me to hear
>>> that
>> from someone.
>>>
>>> You hit on the reason behind my removing all references to blindness
>>> from my online book descriptions; it's a taboo. Just imagine someone
>>> getting my book and not knowing that the heroine is blind and has a
>>> guide dog. They will have to read through at least a page before it
>>> becomes clear to them. Some will be angry with me, because I didn't
>>> warn them. Some, I hope, will have gotten hooked by something else in
>>> the story and read it anyway. It's fiction, so they don't have to
>>> change their stupid belief systems, but I hope they will have a bit
>>> of an adjustment  in spite of themselves.
>>> Donna
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: stylist [mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Lynda
>>> Lambert
>>> Sent: Friday, February 14, 2014 9:18 AM
>>> To: Writer's Division Mailing List
>>> Subject: Re: [stylist] New Book, blindness on TV
>>>
>>> It's a Friday morning snow storm here - a beautiful day outside. Time
>>> to get some coffee and begin my day, but first I wanted to drop a not
>>> on your discussion which is so interesting to me.
>>>
>>> I think Bridgit really hit it - unless a sighted person has had a lot
>>> of time together with a blind person, they are really clueless and
>>> they could care less about knowing positive things.  They still live
>>> with the mentality of the question they have asked themselves and
>>> each other for years, "Would you rather lose your sight, or your
> hearing?".
>>> To sighted people losing sight or hearing is the worst case scenario
>>> they can think of and they are not about to look any closer into
>>> either of the two life-challenges.  And, as Henrietta, experienced,
>>> even close family members really don't understand how we do things.
>>> Not really.  They watch us, but we are a mystery to them even though
>>> they have been around us many times over the years.
>>> Occasionally there is some little revelation that they grasp, but I
>>> think it is very rare.
>>>
>>> A couple years ago I went on a short 5 hour trip with my sister.
>>> When we arrived at our cousin's home, we had instructions to locate
>>> her house key and let ourselves in because they were away on vacation
>>> and we would have their home to stay in.  My sister retrieved the
>>> key, as instructed.  She began to try to open the door.  She fiddled
>>> around for quite awhile with the key and the lock in the door - yet,
>>> she could not get it open. She tried turning the key around, tried
>>> going faster, slower, but no luck.  Finally,
>>
>>> I
>>> quietly said to her, "Give me the key and let me see what I can do."
>>> She snickered and said "Oh, sure, you are going to open the door that
>>> you can't even see!"  I took the key from her, felt the key, and
>>> inserted it into the door's lock slowly. Then, I put my left had on
>>> the door, just above the lock, so I could FEEL any movement the lock
>>> would make.  And, I leaned very close to the lock, and I listened.
>>> Very quickly, as I slowly turned the key, I felt the vibration of it
>>> moving, and I heard the click as it was disengaged.  I smiled, and
>>> handed over the key to her, and said, "The door is open."  She loudly
>>> proclaimed, "I cannot believe it! A blind person could open the door
>>> and I couldn't."
>>>
>>> I smiled at her and said, "You could not open the door because you
>>> were using only your eyes. I opened it because I could feel it and
>>> hear it moving."  To her it was something very weird that I had
>>> actually opened up the door that she had struggled with and could not
>>> get the job done.  I think in her mind it was a lucky accident even
>>> though I explained why it happened.  Most sighted people do not think
>>> we can do much of anything, no matter what we achieve - honestly,
>>> that is what I think. So, for most sighted people to read about a
>>> blind hero in a fictional account, I say, "Dream on!"  I think the
>>> interest level for a sighted person to even read a book through is
>>> really a stretch unless that person is really on a mission to learn
>>> more about blindness and diversity and inclusion. Maybe in a
>>> literature course, where it would be included in the required
>>> reading, but on their own, I think the chances are quite slim.  But,
>>> then, as I write this I am optimistic enough to think I see a "movie"
>>> that could be made that would be exciting to them. Who knows? I sure
>>> don't.  Why is it that we are constantly told we are "amazing" when
>>> we do things that are high level achievements for anyone at all?  Why
>>> is it that some people droll all over us about how inspiring we are
>>> and how tragic it is that we
>> lost our sight?
>>> I just smile at them and say, "NO, not really! It is just who I am
>>> and who
>>
>>> I
>>> have always been."  That usually leaves them speechless and the
>>> conversation ends.  Write on! Lynda
>>>
>>> ----- Original Message -----
>>> From: "Applebutter Hill" <applebutterhill at gmail.com>
>>> To: "'Writer's Division Mailing List'" <stylist at nfbnet.org>
>>> Sent: Thursday, February 13, 2014 9:07 PM
>>> Subject: Re: [stylist] New Book, blindness on TV
>>>
>>>
>>>> Great story!
>>>> Donna
>>>>
>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>> From: stylist [mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of
>>>> Henrietta Brewer
>>>> Sent: Thursday, February 13, 2014 7:32 PM
>>>> To: Writer's Division Mailing List
>>>> Subject: Re: [stylist] New Book, blindness on TV
>>>>
>>>> You guys make me laugh. You're right, Sighted people can't imagine
>>>> the blind being the hero. At Christmas, when the power was out in
>>>> our town, I had twenty five or thirty people here most days. We had
>>>> a generator so we had a few lights but not in more then half the house.
>>>>
>>>> I didn't think much of it while everyone was here. Though I was
>>>> tired of doing all the fetching because no one could find anything
>>>> in the dark.
>>>> When
>>>> everyone left and I was cleaning house, I saw how difficult it was
>>>> for our guests. They had only a flashlight in the bathroom and their
>>>> bedroom and nothing was where it should be.
>>>>
>>>> they all mention now, that they will call me in any black out. But
>>>> it took reality to get even family to realize that a blind person
>>>> can be helpful in a black out. lol Henrietta On Feb 13, 2014, at
>>>> 12:10 AM, Bridgit Pollpeter
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> When I wrote a short mystery story for a detective fiction class I
>>>>> took at university, I made my main character blind, which is the
>>>>> first time I did this. Anyway, at one point, the house the two main
>>>>> characters are sleeping in goes up in flames, and the blind
>>>>> character navigates them out of the house. Using his other senses,
>>>>> he makes it out the front door. I did do some research before
>>>>> writing the scene, but mostly based it off my own knowledge of what
>>>>> a blind person might do in that particular situation. When
>>>>> critiqueing our stories, a classmate said, to my face, it wasn't
>>>>> believeable that a blind person could do that and I should change
>>>>> that scene. Another classmate, to my surprise, said who better than
>>>>> a blind person to navigate through a situation where sight wouldn't
>>>>> be much help because of the smoke, and that by smell and feeling
>>>>> heat, surely a blind person would be able to navigate just as well,
>>>>> if not better, than a sighted person. After considering this point,
>>>>> the first person half-heartedly agreed. My point being that I agree
>>>>> with Chris that even though these stories are being written by
>>>>> blind people, most of the sighted world can't, or won't, buy a
>>>>> blind person doing the things we make them do, living as
>>>>> independent, active,
>> vital people.
>>>>>
>>>>> Bridgit
>>>>>
>>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>>> From: stylist [mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of
>>>>> Chris Kuell
>>>>> Sent: Wednesday, February 12, 2014 7:47 AM
>>>>> To: Writer's Division Mailing List
>>>>> Subject: Re: [stylist] New Book, blindness on TV
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Donna,
>>>>>
>>>>> I'm generally skeptical by nature, but I really hope they do a good
>>>>> job with this show. It's exactly what we've been talking about
>>>>> here--an opportunity to crush the stupid stereotypes and let the
>>>>> public see a guy who is interesting, and just happens to be blind.
>>>>> If it does a good job, and if the public enjoys it, it could open
>>>>> the door to more blind characters in the
>>>>>
>>>>> arts. Personally, I feel certain that the reason books like yours
>>>>> and mine aren't getting read by agents and traditional publishers
>>>>> is because we have blind protagonists. An agent, or more likely, an
>>>>> agent's assistant reads my query and thinks--a blind protagonist?
>>>>> Nobody is going to buy that. It's too outside mainstream experience.
>>>>>
>>>>> Hopefully, the times, they are a changing.
>>>>>
>>>>> chris
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> Writers Division web site
>>>>> http://writers.nfb.org/
>>>>> stylist mailing list
>>>>> stylist at nfbnet.org
>>>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/stylist_nfbnet.org
>>>>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info
>>>>> for
>>>>> stylist:
>>>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/stylist_nfbnet.org/bpollpeter%40h
>>>>> o
>>>>> tm
>>>>> ai
>>>>> l.com
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> Writers Division web site
>>>>> http://writers.nfb.org/
>>>>> stylist mailing list
>>>>> stylist at nfbnet.org
>>>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/stylist_nfbnet.org
>>>>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info
>>>>> for
>>>> stylist:
>>>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/stylist_nfbnet.org/gary.brewer%40
>>>>> c
>>>>> om
>>>>> cast.net
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Writers Division web site
>>>> http://writers.nfb.org/
>>>> stylist mailing list
>>>> stylist at nfbnet.org
>>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/stylist_nfbnet.org
>>>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info
>>>> for
>>>> stylist:
>>>>
>>>
>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/stylist_nfbnet.org/applebutterhill%4
>> 0gmail
>>>> .com
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Writers Division web site
>>>> http://writers.nfb.org/
>>>> stylist mailing list
>>>> stylist at nfbnet.org
>>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/stylist_nfbnet.org
>>>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info
>>>> for
>>>> stylist:
>>>>
>>>
>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/stylist_nfbnet.org/llambert%40zoomin
>> ternet
>>> .net
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Writers Division web site
>>> http://writers.nfb.org/
>>> stylist mailing list
>>> stylist at nfbnet.org
>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/stylist_nfbnet.org
>>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
>>> stylist:
>>>
>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/stylist_nfbnet.org/applebutterhill%4
>> 0gmail
>>> .com
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Writers Division web site
>>> http://writers.nfb.org/
>>> stylist mailing list
>>> stylist at nfbnet.org
>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/stylist_nfbnet.org
>>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
>>> stylist:
>>>
>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/stylist_nfbnet.org/llambert%40zoomin
>> ternet
>> .net
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Writers Division web site
>> http://writers.nfb.org/
>> stylist mailing list
>> stylist at nfbnet.org
>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/stylist_nfbnet.org
>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
>> stylist:
>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/stylist_nfbnet.org/applebutterhill%4
>> 0gmail
>> .com
>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Writers Division web site
>> http://writers.nfb.org/
>> stylist mailing list
>> stylist at nfbnet.org
>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/stylist_nfbnet.org
>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
>> stylist:
>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/stylist_nfbnet.org/newmanrl%40cox.ne
>> t
>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Writers Division web site
>> http://writers.nfb.org/
>> stylist mailing list
>> stylist at nfbnet.org
>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/stylist_nfbnet.org
>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
>> stylist:
>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/stylist_nfbnet.org/llambert%40zoomin
>> ternet.net
>>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Writers Division web site
> http://writers.nfb.org/
> stylist mailing list
> stylist at nfbnet.org
> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/stylist_nfbnet.org
> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
> stylist:
> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/stylist_nfbnet.org/meekerorgas%40ameritech
> .net
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Writers Division web site
> http://writers.nfb.org/
> stylist mailing list
> stylist at nfbnet.org
> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/stylist_nfbnet.org
> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
> stylist:
> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/stylist_nfbnet.org/applebutterhill%40gmail
> .com
>
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Subject: Digest Footer
>
> _______________________________________________
> stylist mailing list
> stylist at nfbnet.org
> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/stylist_nfbnet.org
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> End of stylist Digest, Vol 118, Issue 25
> ****************************************
>