In the summer of 1982, Madeline Peterson wrote the first Blindfold. The one-page monthly publication included recipes, member birthdates and Blind Dates (Center events). Like our services we want our newsletter to reflect the needs of our community. Twenty-six years later, the content is contemporary and full of interesting articles. We’ve responded to our members’ input by updating the look of the publication and changing the format to columns so it is easier for people with low vision to read. It’s available in alternative formats as well as by email and on our website.
We turn to our members again for input. Rising costs are something we all know too well these days. To publish and mail the Blindfold it costs the BVIC nearly a dollar a copy. It also requires volunteers to put together the mailing for 1,900 households. In a more eco friendly sense, we should be aware that 3,800 pieces of paper are used for the edition as well as the envelopes and labels.
If all the people who receive the Blindfold read it and enjoy it, then it is well worth the money and effort. As mentioned in earlier issues, people can eliminate some of the costs and use of resources by going green and receiving it by email, but we have received very little response from this suggestion. We do appreciate those of you who have been able to make the switch. Another option is to make the Blindfold a quarterly edition instead of bi-monthly. Let us know what you want. Tell us your suggestions. You can email us at vision@blindandlowvision.org, drop us a note, or call us at 649-3505.
The Tango Pilot Project for the Blind & Visually Impaired, which was proposed by Ingrid Tower and her Shall We Dance studio in Pacific Grove, has completed. It was a wonderful experience for all who joined in as dancers from our Board of Directors and other visually impaired members of the community. Ingrid’s enthusiasm for this project, her two exceptional instructors, Santiago and Richard, as well as volunteer dancers, made this an exiting and inclusive experience, one we hope the community will “embrace” for future classes. Although tango is
an exciting, emotional dance, it can be specially suited to those with little or no vision because a partner is always close to you, giving reassurance and stability when moving about a big crowded dance floor. It offers those who love ballroom dancing, but were afraid they could no longer participate, a chance to become one with their partner letting the music lead the way.
As a participant of this project, as well as a BVIC Board of Director, it rekindled the dancer within me from many years ago when I was not visually impaired. I was so disappointed when the project ended, I joined their regular classes and have been treated with respect and care by the other dancers. If you know someone who would like to try dancing again, or even for the first time, please contact me, Sonja Jackson, at 373-5738 and I’ll be happy to talk and encourage you to let your inner dancer out.
Vehicles Available as of 8/19/08
All vehicles have been smogged (if required) & a mechanic’s report has been completed. Call Russ Hatch for further details at 659-5360 or 594-1871.
Three years has been long enough,….Let’s all get together with family, friends, and associates for Country Store & Auction. Our famous FUNdraiser will be filled with great company, light refreshments, wine tasting and exciting auctions featuring items and services from our generous community. Our members who are visually impaired have been working hard creating beautiful crafts for the craft and bake sale. And yes, David Lloyd’s wonderful treats are back by popular demand. We promise they will be as delicious as ever.
Tickets for the raffle are only $1.00 each (need not be present to win). The grand prize is a beautiful BBQ donated by Built In Distributors. To purchase tickets complete the enclosed donation envelope, include your check or complete your credit card information and we will fill out your tickets and enter them in the raffle for you. There’s also a place on the envelope for you to include a tax-deductible donation to the BVIC. Remember, all proceeds from this event will benefit people in our own community who are blind or visually impaired.
COUNTRY STORE & AUCTION
November 1, 2008
11:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.
225 Laurel Ave, PG
Friday, September 19, 2008
18th Annual Lions Sight Conservation Charity Golf Tournament
Friday, Sept. 19th.
Rancho Canada Golf Club
Sponsored by the Monterey Host Lions.
For info call Joe Lomanto at 373-3106.
NEW ASSISTIVE DEVICES at the BVIC
Vertex Pro
The Vertex Pro is a new transportable desktop. The 17” LCD video magnifier is produced by Telesensory. There are many other wonderful features that make this unit worth seeing. Its adjustable split screen portioning of camera and computer images allows the user to accomplish tasks with ease. It is light weight (27 pounds), easy to fold and carry, and it has a built-in battery so it can be used anywhere. It even meets airline carry-on requirements. (Please call Moonset to schedule a demo).
ID mate Omni
ID mate OMNI is a portable "all-in-one" talking bar code scanner. The handheld unit can identify an item by scanning the product's bar code or UPC. The omni-directional scanner
can read codes in any direction. A database of over a million North American UPC's and descriptions gives people a huge head start in identifying items like groceries, cds, dvds, cans, bottles, clothing, and much more. With the ID mate OMNI, the user can quickly add additional voice recorded information to existing products or to items not found in the database. The user can also record, play, erase and organize messages in the memo mode. (Please call Robin to schedule a demo).
A Wonderful Website for Seniors with Vision Loss http://www.afb.org/seniorsitehome.asp
The American Foundation for the Blind (AFB) created AFB Senior Site to help older Americans and their family members cope with age-related eye diseases—a growing public health problem in this country.
Eye experts say that by the year 2030, rates of vision loss from diseases like age-related macular degeneration, glaucoma, and diabetic retinopathy are expected to double as the nation's 78 million baby boomers reach retirement age.
AFB Senior Site is designed to encourage aging adults with eye diseases to live independently and productively. The site connects seniors, family members, and caregivers to local services and showcases a wide range of assistive living products available to people with vision loss. It also contains information on the resources and tools needed to continue to read, shop, cook, manage finances, and go out with friends.
Visitors will also find inspiring video testimonials from seniors who have been recently diagnosed with eye diseases. Their compelling stories offer a positive outlook and help dispel fears about what living with vision loss means.
As our population grows older, there is increasing interest in how to age "successfully". Experts have long agreed that physical factors such as eating a healthy diet, exercising, seeing the doctor regularly, avoiding smoking and so on, all contribute to healthy aging. However, there is mounting evidence that supports the assertion that maintaining relationships and social connections as we age is of equal importance. In fact, some studies have shown that those who routinely socialize with others and participate in group activities seem to experience the same protective physical benefits as those who exercise regularly. Psychiatrist, author and Stanford professor, Dr. Irvin Yalom, calls this keeping our lives "peopled". Staying involved, engaging friends, remaining intimate, helping others, participating in groups, relating to and being with people on many different levels and in a variety of settings can help us maintain our perspective, express our feelings, share concerns and remind us that we're not alone - no matter what our age, disability or circumstance. Although getting around and accessing services may be more challenging as we age and cope with various physical limitations, it is still possible to maintain these vital connections. In the coming months I would like to highlight various programs in our community that provide opportunities for keeping our lives "peopled". In the meantime, don't forget the BVIC's support group on the third Wednesday of the month, as well as our weekly Tuesday luncheon and ceramic's class.
Where am I now? Remembering the Orientation in Orientation & Mobility
With vision, we have many cues to help us walk in a straight line, recognize changes in direction, realize how far or how little we have turned, and assess how much farther we may have to go to an objective. Without vision, walking a short distance may take us as long as it would take someone with vision to walk twice that distance. With limited vision, we may drift or make a slow gradual turn, change our course of direction completely without realizing it. Without vision, a home that we have lived in for years may suddenly seem to have corners, nooks and crannies that we never even noticed until we lost that vision. We may be unaware of making a turn in the den and end up on the patio instead of in the kitchen because we walked through the open space of the den the same way (we thought) that we did before we lost vision. We didn’t feel ourselves veering gradually in another direction. We didn’t realize that we sensed a large obstacle ahead and veered away from it, never turning back towards our original direction to detour around it and maintain our general direction.
With limited vision, we depend more on different types of auditory skills more than we may realize. There is an auditory skill that many people can develop with practice, which involves detecting a changing pitch in sound as one approaches, a large obstacle such as a wall or large truck parked in a driveway across the sidewalk. It manifests as a kind of vague feeling that “something is there” and causing the person sensing it to want to stop or pull back. For this reason, it used to be called “facial vision”. It is now understood to be part of the Doppler effect in which sound bounces off an obstacle causing changes in the pitch as one gets closer to (or further away from) an obstacle. In the orientation part of mobility instruction this is an auditory skill that is often taught because it is so useful in many settings. If you have ever seen a blind person in a crosswalk approaching a car pulled across the crosswalk that then veers to the side of the car and around it, you have witnessed the blind person using this auditory skill. With practice under supervision, a blindfolded sighted person can also develop this skill-unless he or she is severely hearing impaired. This skill can help a blind person avoid collisions with large obstacles, avoid some face-high obstacles the cane cannot detect, to detect when the building line is ending at the end of the block without touching the building, detect when there is an overhead over the sidewalk such as a theatre marquis or awning or low roof, and detect openings in a building line which lead to store entrances. In a way, similar to how someone with vision can use the straight edge of a building line on one side and a curb on the other to keep moving forward without veering to the right or left, many blinded individuals can “hear” a building line to help with straight-line walking. This can be further developed to hearing parallel traffic to walk past an open parking lot without veering into it, or to cross a street without veering into the parallel traffic. So learning to hone auditory and other types of sensory cues is one aspect of learning the orientation skills that enables a blind person to move forward in a straight line with skill and purpose.
Other ways in which sounds are useful include distinguishing the patterns of moving cars in relation to oneself - are the cars moving forward on my side, turning, moving left to right in front of me indicating a street up ahead? - as well as auditory cues about what is around or up ahead: Is there a group of people standing talking in front of me in this hall or on this sidewalk? Are there small children and dogs present? Have I passed the escalator in the department store yet? Is that the ding of the elevator arriving? Is that person talking to me or on his cell phone? Is that the automatic door in front of the grocery store entrance I hear? Is that high beeping sound a truck backing out a driveway up ahead of me?
Other sensory cues we use in O&M training include olfactory, thermal and/or kinesthetic cues. If I know I’m in the block with the bakery, and the bakery door stands open, I can smell when I’m near the entrance. I can also smell a bookstore, a tobacco shop, a hair salon, a restaurant, a leather store, popcorn wafting out of the movie theatre, laundry soap smells coming from a Laundromat, and a myriad of other olfactory cues depending on my own individual olfactory abilities. If I’m walking down the sidewalk in an old residential area on a sunny day, I may know when I’m near large trees because of the shade they create. I may also be alerted to the fact that I need to be extra careful about broken sidewalk that the old tree roots may have caused. If it is some time in the afternoon and the sun is shining directly and intensely on my face, more so than if I turn in any other direction, I may be able to surmise that I am walking generally in a westward direction. If I know my objective, such as the beach, is generally west of where I started, then I know I’m heading in the correct direction.
When people say, “Since I lost my vision my hearing has gotten better”, what they are really saying is that, “I focus on sound so much more since I lost my vision that I can use my hearing in ways I was not able to before”. The person’s technical ability to hear certain frequencies may not have changed at all, but that person’s ability to discriminate more subtle sounds and changes in frequency is more skilled because he or she is not distracted or dependent upon the myriads of visual cues sighted individuals are taking in all the time.
So, if a severely visually impaired or blind person wants to stay oriented as to where he or she is, and be able to intentionally plan how to get to an objective, orientation skills are absolutely necessary. There are skills we call “mental mapping skills” which do involve memory work, but also the ability to integrate sensory cues that one picks up as one is walking. If I have learned the order of the streets crossing Alvarado Street in downtown Monterey between Pearl Street and Del Monte as I walk on Alvarado, it is still helpful to know what landmarks or clues may be present in each block to identify that block. One block may be the only block with a tobacco store. The tobacco store may be in the block closest to the transit plaza. So, if I have been exploring the downtown area and I return to the block with the tobacco store, I know I am getting closer to the transit plaza. When I start hearing the bus sounds get louder as I move towards the transit plaza, I have another verification of orientation. If I get to an area where I hear less and less traffic near me, but I’m hearing more and more seagulls and sea lions, I know I may be getting close to Fisherman’s Wharf. I can still check with other pedestrians what street or store I am closest to, but there are cues I can find without talking to other pedestrians.
The mechanics of using a cane to learn to avoid obstacles and to detect the edges of steps and curbs are a valuable part of orientation and mobility training. Knowing one has learned to walk just about anywhere unfamiliar without bumping into things or falling over curbs or down steps, is part of achieving safe independent travel. Knowing one has learned how to choose and maintain a direction without usually getting lost is a valuable part of being able to walk independently without vision. Knowing one knows how to cross streets safely using alignment auditory skills and traffic cues, is wonderful. Knowing one actually knows how to get to stores, businesses, church, friends and other objectives without having to arrange transportation assistance is a great freedom.
The blind individual who is using a cane and walking independently down the street is using many skills all at one time. It takes focus, concentration, and alertness, to be a visually impaired pedestrian. It also takes determination, fortitude, and at times courage to cross streets, ask for information from the public, and face unexpected challenges and delays. Since so much mental work and concentration is involved, it also means knowing when you are too frazzled to make good street crossing decisions and it is time to take a taxi or accept a friend’s offer of a ride. Being a blind pedestrian means knowing how to stay calm when you realize you may be lost, so that you can think clearly and proceed to find landmarks, cues or solicit information from passersby to re-orient yourself. It means not allowing oneself to be so discouraged about a day of very difficult mobility challenges that one restricts one’s outside movement more. It means knowing that skill and the ability to think on one’s feet in real situations gets better with practice.
Date Change
The third Wednesday of the month from 3:30 until 4:30 will now be the gathering time for our Low Vision Support Group.
Everyone is welcome to drop in, either for a one time visit to see what we’re up to, or on a regular basis. There is no limit to the topics we cover and we are very open to suggestions of what might be useful for you.
September 17th, the third Wednesday from 3:30-4:30 our topic will be Louis Braille and how communication impacts your life. We’re fortunate to have Carolyn Craig as a strong advocate and student of Braille who is fast becoming an expert on not only the use of Braille, but also on the story of Louis Braille and Carolyn will be telling us about his life which led to the development of the writing system. We’ll also discuss communication, both verbal and non verbal and how it impacts our daily lives.
October 15th the topic will be Your Stories/What works for you. This month will be a chance for us to get to know each other and new members of the group. You can share your stories or not, it is often very helpful to see how someone else deals with a particular issue. Join us; you may get some interesting hints. For information, contact Jeannie or Janet at the Center at 649-3505.
Russ Hatch
I was born in Rochester, NY in 1939. My dad and mom farmed 40 acres of muck with a team of horses. No indoor plumbing and it was really cold on those minus 20 degree days. I attended a two-room schoolhouse, got to pull rope to ring the bell and stoke the stove. I worked in the family produce business through college. The Hatches were big in the EGG business. I graduated from the University of Rochester with a degree in Business in 1961. I then worked for Wards Natural Science Establishment, then transferred to Monterey in 1962 to manage the western branch on Cannery Row. I sold dead cats and marine life to schools (similar to Doc Ricketts' Lab). I started MCSI Water Systems 
Management in 1988. Now, I manage about 50 water systems along the Central Coast of California.
I joined the Old Capitol Lions Club in 1971. The local Lions purchased 225 Laurel Avenue, Pacific Grove, CA for the Blind Center in 1972 for $35,000. I joined the Blind Center Board in 1978 and have served in many capacities over the past 30 years. Kathy Henson, the previous Director of the BVIC, started accepting cars from friends to help support the Center and called it "Kathy's Cars" and I helped her sell them. About 1998 I formalized the car program by forming "Chariots for Charity", a registered charitable organization. We have sold over 500 cars, trucks, boats, motor homes, and a riding lawnmower over the past 10 years. All net proceeds have been donated to the Blind and Visually Impaired Center of Monterey County and other local charities. I hope to work with the Center at least another 30 years.
Relatives made more than 100 audio cassette tapes for their beloved aunt who lost her sight at midlife. The film soundtrack tapes of movies she had seen at the cinema were made with great care. They are offering these tapes to others hoping that someone can get pleasure from this labor of love. Some of the titles are Gigi, Road to Singapore, Arsenic and Old Lace, There’s No Business Like Show Business, I Remember Mamma, The Glen Miller Story, Oklahoma, Rebecca, and many more. Please call the BVIC if you are interested.