THE BRAILLE MONITOR
Vol. 45, No. 3 April, 2002
Barbara Pierce, Editor


Published in inkprint, in Braille, and on cassette by

THE NATIONAL FEDERATION OF THE BLIND

MARC MAURER, PRESIDENT


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THE NATIONAL FEDERATION OF THE BLIND IS NOT AN ORGANIZATION
SPEAKING FOR THE BLIND--IT IS THE BLIND SPEAKING FOR THEMSELVES





ISSN 0006-8829

Louisville Site of 2002 NFB Convention!
**********
The 2002 Convention of the National Federation of the Blind will 
take place in Louisville, Kentucky, July 3-9. We will conduct the 
convention at the Galt House Hotel and the Galt House East Tower, 
together a first-class convention hotel. The Galt House Hotel, 
familiarly called the Galt House West, is at 140 N. Forth Street, 
Louisville, Kentucky 40202. The Galt House East Tower, or Galt 
House East, is at 141 N. Fourth Street, Louisville, Kentucky 
40202. Room rates for this year's convention are excellent: 
singles, doubles, and twins $57 and triples and quads $63 a 
night, plus tax. The hotel is accepting reservations now. A $60-
per-room deposit is required to make a reservation. Fifty percent 
of the deposit will be refunded if notice is given to the hotel 
of a reservation cancellation before May 29, 2002. The other 50 
percent is not refundable. For reservations call the hotel at 
(502) 589-5200.

Rooms will be available on a first-come, first-served basis. 
Reservations may be made to secure these rooms before May 29, 
2002, assuming that rooms are still available. After that time 
the hotel will not hold the block of rooms for the convention. In 
other words, you should get your reservation in soon.

Our overflow hotel is the Hyatt Regency at 320 W. Jefferson 
Street, Louisville, Kentucky 40202, phone (502) 587-3434.

Those who attended the 1985 convention can testify to the 
gracious hospitality of the Galt House. This hotel has excellent 
restaurants, first-rate meeting space, and other top-notch 
facilities. It is in downtown Louisville, close to the Ohio River 
and only seven miles from the Louisville Airport.

The 2002 Convention will follow a somewhat different schedule:
Wednesday, July 3 Seminar Day
Thursday, July 4 Registration Day
Friday, July 5 Board Meeting and Division Day
Saturday, July 6 Opening Session
Sunday, July 7 Tour Day
Monday, July 8 Banquet Day
Tuesday, July 9 Business Session
**********
Plan to be in Louisville.
The action of the convention will be there!


Vol. 45, No. 3 April, 2002

Contents

The Individual's Role in a Democracy
by Jacobus tenBroek

Half-Baked
by Karen Alexander

The 2002 Washington Seminar

Learning Braille as an Adult:
Read Until You Bleed
by Jerry Whittle

Getting Around Downtown Louisville
by Dennis Franklin

Making History in Louisville--Federation Style
by Lora J. Felty

2002 Convention Attractions

NFB Camp Preregistration Form

The Serious Work of Play
NOPBC-Sponsored Activities for Parents and Kids
by Barbara Cheadle

NOPBC 2002 Activities Preregistration

Hearing Enhancement and Spanish Translation
Available At National Convention
Spanish Translators Needed
by D. Curtis Willoughby

Recipes

Monitor Miniatures

Copyright (c) 2002 National Federation of the Blind

[LEAD PHOTO/CAPTION: February 28, 2002, will go down in Federation history as 
the day we could officially announce that we have met our goal of raising 
eighteen million dollars toward building the National Research and Training 
Institute for the Blind. The National Center staff took time out of another 
busy day to celebrate this impressive victory. Three sheet cakes are pictured 
here, each bearing one of the three exciting words, "Eighteen Million 
Dollars." Now the demanding work of fund raising continues since we have 
already experienced construction cost overruns. Then, of course, there is the 
challenge of meeting Institute operating expenses. But Thursday, February 28, 
was a day to savor our long-anticipated victory. ]

[PHOTO/CAPTION: Jacobus tenBroek]
The Individual's Role in a Democracy
by Jacobus tenBroek
**********
From the Editor: In the process of archiving many of the 
Federation's historical documents, we recently discovered a tape 
recording of the following speech which was the last in a series 
of lectures delivered at East Contra Costa College, probably in 
December of 1962. At the time Dr. tenBroek was the chairman of 
the California Social Welfare Board and Professor of Speech at 
the University of California at Berkeley. The tape is remarkably 
clear except that the recording system had not been turned on 
before Dr. tenBroek began speaking. As a result, the first few 
words are missing. The speech is remarkable for its clarity of 
thought and delivery. It has nothing to do with blindness, but it 
certainly demonstrates once again the clarity and elegance of the 
mind of the man who founded our movement and his deep commitment 
to equality for all citizens. From the sound of the applause, the 
audience must have been very large. Here is the speech:
**********
. . . Consideration handed down a landmark decision. That 
decision was reached in the case of Brown vs. Board of Education. 
"The Constitution," said the Supreme Court, "forbids segregation 
in public educational facilities. The schools must be racially 
integrated." The doctrine of "separate but equal" long held to 
govern such matters was repudiated. The new rule was to be put 
into effect by the states, not immediately as would normally have 
been the case, but, as the phrase goes, "with all deliberate 
speed," in the light of the local circumstances, educational and 
administrative.

The decision set off a chain reaction: manifestos were issued, 
declarations of Constitutional principles were propounded, joint 
resolutions were passed. In the southern states all branches of 
the government went into action. The legislatures adopted a 
packaged program. The mix in the ready-made package contained an 
assortment of laws for the control and closing of the public 
schools, for repealing compulsory attendance laws, for the 
assignment and distribution of pupils, for the revealing of 
present and past organizational membership by teachers, for the 
establishment of state sovereignty commissions, and for the 
frustration or annihilation of the National Association for the 
Advancement of Colored People [NAACP] and for state so-called 
interposition.

Where necessary, state constitutions were amended to sustain 
these enactments. Governors suited the words to the action and 
the action to the word. They railed against the Supreme Court. 
They planted themselves on the Tenth Amendment. They declared 
their states sovereign and independent. They publicly refused to 
drink, as they said, from the cup of genocide. Some of them even 
incited the mob a little. One called out the National Guard to 
keep nine colored children from attending a white high school. 
Another erected his person as a physical barrier to the admission 
of a colored university student.

In reviewing these laws and other actions, the state courts, with 
some doubts and minor exceptions, lined up with the other state 
officials rather than with their judicial superiors in 
Washington. Many old and some new constitutional questions were 
raised by these reactions in the southern states: is the Supreme 
Court the final interpreter of the Constitution, or may the 
states finally determine what powers are reserved to them for 
themselves? Could the states, following the model of Madison and 
Jefferson in the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions of 1798, 
constitutionally interpose to nullify what they consider to be 
flagrant, palpable, and deliberate violations of the Constitution 
by the federal government?

Is education a matter placed by the Tenth Amendment within the 
exclusive jurisdiction of the states, or are the clauses of the 
Fourteenth Amendment applicable? Was the Fourteenth Amendment, 
ratified at the close of the Civil War with the concurrence of 
federal troops, which established and protected those 
legislatures, constitutionally adopted? In the face of its fifth 
section, authorizing Congress to enforce it by appropriate 
legislation, could the Supreme Court order it carried into effect 
in the absence of statutory provision therefor? In the existing 
state of federal statutes, could the President execute the Court 
decree himself by the use of federalized National Guardsmen and 
regulars in the armed forces of the United States? Could a lower 
federal court properly issue an injunction against virtually the 
entire state of Mississippi? Was a governor criminally liable for 
violating it? Do private associations have a constitutional right 
to organize, to hold confidential their lists of members, and to 
solicit and conduct litigation in the federal courts for the 
purpose of establishing the equality of the races?

The events have been spectacular. Given the basic decision in the 
Brown case, however, the legal and constitutional questions have 
been less so. Some new constitutional law is emerging. No old 
constitutional law is being overturned. In this respect the most 
significant lesson to be learned from the post-decision episodes 
and arguments is the invincibility of constitutional error. No 
matter how often the doctrine of state interposition, for 
example, has been put down in our history, no matter how 
thoroughly repudiated by Congress, blasted by national executive 
action, finally disposed of by the courts, and buried by the 
Civil War itself, still is it disinterred and resurrected to 
reenact again its inevitable fate and be buried once more.

The flaming controversy to which Brown vs. Board of Education 
gave rise tends to obscure from the public view rather than to 
clarify its constitutional significance. Perhaps Brown vs. Board 
of Education does not match some of the more famous decisions of 
John Marshall or, say, Justice Mansfield's holding in the 
Somerset case freeing the slaves in England in 1776. Though it 
only carried out the original purpose of the Fourteenth 
Amendment, yet that purpose had been subverted and lost sight of 
in the intervening century, and the Brown decision therefore 
stands in the same tradition of creativeness with Marshall and 
Mansfield, and this comparison properly suggests the measure of 
the Brown decision.

1954 will not stand alone in the annals of the Warren court or in 
the constitutional history of this century. In April, 1962, the 
Supreme Court of the United States handed down another landmark 
decision. This one was reached in the case of Baker vs. Carr. The 
problem in that case is quite different from Brown vs. Board of 
Education, and yet in many ways it was quite similar. 
Apportionment of representation in the state legislatures was 
held to be a matter within the jurisdiction of the federal 
courts, and one upon which they would act. The doctrine that this 
type of controversy was nonjusticiable was repudiated. The 
representativeness of representatives in the state legislature, 
therefore, has been made a matter of federal constitutionality. 
However, in exactly and without necessarily excluding other 
factors such as geography and the economy, the state legislatures 
must represent the people. Remarkable disproportionality will no 
longer be tolerated. The nation will drag the states into the 
second half of the twentieth century, albeit screaming.

Country life and agricultural activity, sunk to a low estate in 
society and the economy, cannot maintain their erstwhile 
representative dominance in the state legislatures by the failure 
of their representatives to reapportion the legislatures. The 
industrial, the city, and the suburban masses must be given their 
due, or at least some part of it.

Neither in the Carr case nor in the Brown do we see the Supreme 
Court of the United States blazing a trail of social or political 
progress. Boldly pioneering on the frontiers of democracy is 
rarely if ever the judicial role. Indeed these two landmark 
decisions are not at all inconsistent with the theory of the 
judicial lag--the theory, that is, that the courts confirm 
progress; they do not create it. Progress in race relations and 
in adjusting legislative apportionment to the profound 
reorganization of life and redistribution of the population of 
the states have long since, as Hamlet said, fallen out of joint 
with the time, grossly and shockingly so. What was needed was 
drastic action to bring or make possible progress in these areas 
to the point where the judges lagging normally behind events 
could see it without looking backward.

But what branch of the government could take the action? Aye, 
there was the rub. Congress could not. It was held immobile in 
the field of race relations by seniority-conferred power on 
southerners in the committees of the House and by the rules of 
procedure in the Senate. Likewise immobile were the state 
legislatures, where the agricultural interests would not, could 
not indeed be expected to, proceed self-moved to the destruction 
of their own power and their own strategic position.

With the legislative branches of government hamstrung and 
impotent, with the executive constitutionally sidelined in the 
absence of statutory direction and authority, with no issue at 
stake of nullifying affirmative action taken by coordinate 
departments of the national government, with the problems being 
only those of state action and inaction and national corrective 
power, the Supreme Court was born, or at least grew up, to be the 
one to set the matter right. The time is still out of joint, but 
it is less so now.

However, for this occasion our interest in these two cases does 
not derive from the role of leadership assumed by the court or 
the factors that stimulated and made that role possible, or even 
from the importance of these decisions in the life of the nation. 
Our interest derives from another source, from the constitutional 
chords that were struck by the court. What were these? What was 
the constitutional limitation or directive? I have already 
indicated it was contained in the Fourteenth Amendment. Oddly 
enough, California was the last state to ratify the Fourteenth 
Amendment, and this occurred only very recently. The Amendment 
was adopted at the close of the Civil War. It was put into effect 
in 1868. It was not until 1959, five years after the Brown 
decision, that California finally signified its approval of the 
Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. As 
we Californians contemplate southern resistance to the Brown 
decision, we might remind ourselves that racist politics played a 
considerable part in our original rejection of the Fourteenth 
Amendment.

What is the great constitutional engine in the Fourteenth 
Amendment, which served as the propulsive force in the Brown and 
Carr cases? It is the seminal, the pervasive, the multifaceted, 
the much-misunderstood, the much espoused, the much-criticized 
notion of equality. "All men are created equal," proclaimed the 
Declaration of Independence. All men? well not quite all--not 
Negro slaves, owned by Jefferson among others, not Indians, not 
taxed and not part of the community. Not the deprived and down-
trodden generally, or at least not just yet. Yet this one phrase 
and proposition sounded the death knell of slavery. That self-
evident truth of Jefferson's Preamble eventually made the whole 
institution untenable. It became the piercing cry of the 
abolitionist, who linked it with and gave it primacy over the 
privileges and immunities of national citizenship and the due 
process protection of life, liberty, and property. These are the 
source, the foundation, the content, and the rationale of the 
first section of the Fourteenth Amendment.

So ninety years after the Declaration of Independence Jefferson's 
self-evident truth finally made its way explicitly into the 
Constitution. The form was slightly altered. It gave emphasis to 
the protection element in the concept of equality: due and full 
protection of all men in their natural rights. "Nor shall any 
state deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal 
protection of the law." Those are the words that were put into 
the Fourteenth Amendment. Any person? The equal protection of the 
laws? Well, not quite any person, not quite full protection--not 
just yet, anyhow. Indians still were not taxed, and by the 
amendment itself they were not to be counted. Slavery had been 
abolished. Its badges and indicia, the long social aftermath of a 
previous condition of servitude, remained to rack the century 
that lay ahead. The deprived, the destitute, the diseased, the 
degraded--for moral pestilence and physical pestilence in 
Milton's phrase "leaped forth into the world like two twins 
cleaving together." And race prejudice, "that other sturdy 
pestilence," in Justice Douglas's phrase, formed a third sibling 
to the other two. These also were not contemplated by the 
constitutional command or, better, were not reached by its 
administration.

Today, another ninety years later, after having been for nearly a 
century lost and forgotten or shamelessly subverted by the 
separate-but-equal stratagem, equal protection is again emerging 
from its relative latency to strike down some of these vestiges, 
to uproot some of these conditions. "No state shall deny to any 
person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws," 
chorused all voices on the Supreme Court in unison in school 
desegregation cases. "No state shall deny to any person within 
its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws," said a 
majority of voices on the Supreme Court in the apportionment-of- 
representation case. And so no state shall. Any person? The equal 
protection of the laws? Well, not quite any person, not quite 
full protection--at least not just yet, anyhow.

Beyond the desegregated schools are the schools still segregated. 
Beyond them hotels, restaurants, theaters, swimming pools, parks, 
beaches, transportation facilities, housing, policing, 
protection, voting, and so on. Beyond these are other instances 
and institutions of race prejudice aimed at the blacks and those 
aimed at other colored people, and those aimed at some of the 
whites. As a part of race prejudice, minority status, and many 
other social and physical factors as well, there is poverty, and 
there are the victims of poverty. The task of equality indeed is 
not now done, in truth is never done.

American political and constitutional assumptions and goals, 
liberty, the dignity of the human person, the right of private 
property, security, equality intermingle and overlap. They also 
are fluid and variable in content. To the extent that they are a 
living reality in a developing democracy, they are constantly 
growing, maturing, and changing. Every generation, every decade 
is a formative period in the constitutional life of the nation. 
Moreover, emphasis on the various elements has shifted at 
different periods in our history in the documents which have 
embodied and expressed the different movements, forces, and 
times, and among the prominent political writers and speakers.

Equality was the dominant note in the Declaration of 
Independence. Property assumed relatively a stronger position in 
the Constitution. During the nineteenth century, when fortune and 
geography gave the nation military safety and free land and the 
open frontier gave individuals a sense of economic safety, 
security was taken for granted, and liberty was elevated to a 
primary position. "When the traditional foundations of culture 
crumble," wrote Ralph Henry Gabriel in connection with the impact 
of the world depression of the 1930's and the hot and cold wars 
of the 1940's, "when government by law gives way to government by 
irresponsible force, the preoccupation with liberty as an end in 
itself is replaced by a new search for security: mental, social, 
economic, and even physical."

Tension can be endured, indeed can be felt, only so long. 
Eventually, though men live on the threshold of international 
doomsday, the less spectacular but nevertheless urgent and 
pressing social, economic, and humanitarian problems of the 
nation force their way back into the nation's attention. When 
that happens, considerations of equality move again to the 
forefront. In some measure this is the constitutional story of 
the 1950's and the early 1960's in the United States of America.

Any institution or doctrine of importance and vitality has its 
foes as well as its friends, its detractors as well as its 
supporters. Such in any event has been the history of the 
doctrine of equality. Its contemporary experience too has been of 
this character. Those with an adversary or only an adverse 
interest, those who have or fancy they have any advantage in a 
system of inequality, those with contradictory social 
philosophies, those who think that the observable differences 
among men are relevant to this problem: all have been articulate 
in formulation of their opposition.

Read, for example, these choice passages from a Congressional 
speech by Frances Wilkinson Pickens delivered way back in 1836 in 
the course of the debate on the power of Congress to abolish 
slavery in the District of Columbia. Many of you will remember 
that Pickens was the governor of South Carolina at the time Fort 
Sumter was fired upon. These sentiments are at one with others 
heard then and now from white supremacists, who intone their 
refusal "to drink from the cup of genocide," as they say. "What 
was the meaning?" inquired Pickens of the author of the 
Declaration of Independence, "as he spoke the proposition that 
all men are created equal. Was it meant that all men are created 
equally strong and of equal size? Surely not. Was it meant that 
all men were born free? From the days of the child in the 
bulrushes up to the present day there never was an infant wrapped 
in swaddling clothes that was born free. Was it meant that all 
men were born with equal rights and equal destiny? From the time 
it was declared that the iniquities of some should be visited 
unto the third and fourth generations," said Pickens, "from the 
days of Moses and the children of Israel, the history of mankind 
proclaims that there is an elect and chosen few, made the 
peculiar receptacles of the favors and blessings of an all-wise 
and all-pervading providence."

This is the world as we find it," said Pickens, "and it is not 
for us to war upon destiny." "What then," continued Pickens, "was 
the meaning? It was intended to declare the abstract truth that 
all men were born equally entitled to political privileges. Let 
us look into this as practical legislators. Throw man back into 
his state of savage existence, proclaim his physical and brutal 
propensities triumphant and himself lord of the recesses of the 
wilderness, and then this abstract truth may have some practical 
bearing. But let him accumulate property, let his intellectual 
attributes triumph over his brutal nature, make him civilized, 
and send him forth erect in the image of his maker with the light 
of reason and benevolence beaming from his countenance. Then his 
great character is that he becomes a social being. Organize him 
into society to act with his fellow man and then proclaim the 
abstract truth that all men are equal as a great and fundamental 
doctrine to be practically acted upon, and you do nothing more or 
less than raise his hand against every other man and every other 
man's hand against him. And, instead of it becoming a doctrine 
full of light and peace to a world sleeping in darkness and 
bondage, it becomes a doctrine of universal discord, confusion, 
and ruin." So says Mr. Pickens.

Intellectuals, in that day as in this, joined the clamor against 
the doctrine of equality, though perhaps they may have spoken 
from different motives. Have you seen an essay, for example, by 
Aldous Huxley entitled, "The Idea of Equality?" It might better 
have been entitled, "The Very Idea of Equality." In it Mr. Huxley 
makes some very strong and, as I think, some very strange 
statements. "That all men are created equal," says Huxley, "is a 
proposition to which at ordinary times no sane human being has 
ever given his assent. A man who has to undergo a dangerous 
operation does not act on the assumption that one doctor is just 
as good as any other. Editors do not print every contribution 
that reaches them, and when they require civil servants, even the 
most democratic governments make a careful selection among their 
theoretically equal subjects."

Huxley finds the original assumptions of the theory of democracy 
to be these: "That reason is the same and entire in all men and 
that all men are naturally equal. To these assumptions are 
attached several corollaries," says Huxley, "that men are 
naturally good as well as naturally reasonable, that they are the 
products of their environment, that they are indefinitely 
educable, and the main conclusions derivable from these 
assumptions and corollaries," says Huxley, "are the following: 
that the state ought to be organized on democratic lines, that 
the governor should be chosen by universal suffrage, that the 
opinion of the majority on all subjects is the best opinion, that 
education should be universal and the same for all citizens."

"The primary assumptions," concludes Huxley, "are almost 
certainly false. Reason is not the same in all men. Human beings 
belong to a variety of psychological types, separated one from 
another by irreducible differences. Men are not the exclusive 
products of their environment. A century of growing democracy has 
shown," says Huxley, "that the reform in institutions and the 
spread of education are by no means necessarily followed by 
improvements in individual virtue and intelligence. At the same 
time," says Huxley, "biologists have accumulated an enormous mass 
of evidence tending to show that physical peculiarities are 
inherited in a perfectly regular and necessary fashion. Body 
being indissolubly connected with mind, this evidence would 
almost be enough in itself to prove that mental peculiarities are 
similarly heritable. Mental idiosyncracies are inherited in 
exactly the same way as physical idiosyncracies": so says Mr. 
Huxley.

The attacks upon the doctrine of equality by Pickens and by 
Huxley, which are typical of many, if not almost all others, are 
infected with a common fallacy. They are classic examples of the 
straw-man technique. If you set up a man of straw instead of a 
real one and you make him the target of your artillery, you can 
easily blow him down. Having stripped the doctrine of equality of 
its essential qualities, having stood up in its place a flimsy 
substitute without the strengths of the genuine article, the task 
of demolition is easy enough.

Contrary to Huxley, the doctrine of equality does not claim or 
assume that one doctor, one applicant for civil service 
positions, one speech, or one essay is as good as any other. 
Indeed the speech of Pickens and the essay of Huxley make it 
quite clear that some are not very good at all. Contrary to 
Pickens and Huxley, the doctrine of equality does not claim or 
assume that reason is the same in all men, whether entire or not, 
or that they are equally or innately reasonable, or that they are 
equally or innately good and virtuous. Contrary to Huxley, the 
doctrine of equality does not claim or assume that men are more 
or less the products of their environment than of their heredity 
or that they are equally or indefinitely educable or that the 
opinions of the majority on all subjects are necessarily the 
best.

The most important fact about the doctrine of equality is that it 
presupposes that men are not the same, but that they are 
different, different in knowledge, different in wisdom, different 
in mental capacity, different in physical attributes, different 
in motivation, different in environment, different in heredity, 
different in moral qualities. We must emphasize the similarities 
among men and disregard the differences.

Let me state in summary and fairly categorical form the three 
definitions of equality which have evolved in democratic systems 
and have had particular applications in the United States. These 
might be captioned 1) the natural-rights definition, 2) the 
classification definition, and 3) the one-for-one definition--the 
natural-rights, the classification, the one-for-one. The first, 
the natural rights, is that contained in the Declaration of 
Independence, in the Constitutional arguments of the 
abolitionists, and therefore also in the original purpose of 
section one of the Fourteenth Amendment.

In the Declaration of Independence and in abolitionist 
constitutional theory, the concept of equality was integrally 
linked to four other common elements in western democratic 
theory: 1) unalienable rights, 2) the institution of government 
to protect these rights, 3) government by the consent of the 
governed, and 4) the right of the people to change government 
when it fails to fulfill its purpose and to change it either by 
peaceful means or by revolution.

Thus, in the Declaration of Independence and in abolitionist 
usage and later as underlying the Thirteenth Amendment and as 
embodied in the Fourteenth Amendment, the clause had almost 
exclusively a substantive character: protection of men in their 
fundamental or natural rights was the basic idea. Equality was a 
modifying condition. The clause was a confirmatory reference to 
the affirmative duty of government to protect men in their 
natural rights. This established its absolute and substantive 
character, though the use of the word "equal" seems to give it a 
comparative form. Equal denial of protection, that is, no 
protection at all, is accordingly a denial of equal protection. 
The requirement of equal protection of the laws in the Fourteenth 
Amendment cannot be met unless the protection of the laws is 
given. And to give the protection of the laws to men in their 
natural rights was the sole purpose in the creation of 
government.

This being so, the phrase, "No state shall deny," becomes a 
simple command "each state shall supply," and the whole clause is 
thus understood to mean, "Each state shall supply the protection 
of the laws to men in their natural rights, and the protection 
shall always be equal to all men." It was because the protection 
of the laws had been denied to some men, the Negro slaves, that 
the word "equal" was used.

The second definition of equality, the classification definition, 
contrasts sharply with the natural-rights definition. It is 
flexible and practical. In a sense it is procedural rather than 
substantive. It makes no reference to particular rights such as 
life, liberty, and property, which must be protected by 
government in all circumstances and at all times and for all 
people. The contrast here is between general legislation, which 
applies without qualification to all persons, and special 
legislation, which applies to a limited class of persons.

Now what groupings and what classifications can be made by the 
legislature or by the public without violating the requirement of 
equality? The answer to this question was provided in the famous 
old San Francisco laundrymen's case, Yick Wo vs. Hopkins. "The 
equal protection of the laws," said Justice Matthews in that 
case, "is a pledge of the protection of equal laws. Moreover, 
though the law itself be fair on its face and impartial in 
appearance, yet, if it is applied and administered by public 
authority with an evil eye and an unequal hand so as practically 
to make unjust and illegal discriminations between persons in 
similar circumstances material to their rights, the denial of 
equal justice is still within the prohibition of the 
Constitution."

Class legislation, discriminating against some and favoring 
others, is prohibited. But legislation which in carrying out a 
public purpose is limited in its application, if within the 
sphere of its operation it affects alike all persons similarly 
situated, is not within the amendment. Thus in the Chinese 
laundryman case itself, if the purpose of the San Francisco 
ordinance, in drawing a line of distinction between laundries in 
wooden buildings and those in brick or stone buildings, had been 
fire control and prevention (and that in a city plagued by many 
fires and several times nearly wiped out by conflagration), the 
purpose would have been constitutional and the application 
properly related to it.

The purpose, however, was to drive the Chinese out of business. 
Since most of them operated within wooden buildings, the 
classification was closely related to the purpose of driving them 
out of business, but the purpose itself was discriminatory and 
forbidden. These were unjust and illegal discriminations between 
persons in similar circumstances material to their rights. The 
public had proceeded with an evil eye and an unequal hand.

This is the very doctrine applied in Brown vs. Board of 
Education. The law that shielded the Chinese alien in California 
in the 1880's at long last in the 1950's came to protect the 
Negro citizen everywhere in the nation. The law initially 
developed in a case involving a business or an occupation was 
held three quarters of a century later to be good enough for 
education too. "If the purpose in segregating the races in 
schools is the maintenance of white supremacy and the continued 
subordination of the Negro," held the Supreme Court of the United 
States in the Brown case, "the purpose itself is discriminatory 
and forbidden by the Constitutional command of equality, and this 
is so, even though the classification might be scrupulously 
related to the purpose. If the purpose of the public school 
system is education, then the purpose is desirable and 
constitutional. But the segregation classification is unrelated 
to it. Since the public has the same need for an educated 
citizenry regardless of race, and all children regardless of race 
have the same need for education and the same potential for 
benefitting from it, separate educational facilities," concluded 
the court, "are inherently unequal."

The third definition of equality, the numerical or one-for-one 
definition is in many ways a particular instance of the 
classification definition. This definition so far has only 
emerged in the realm of political participation. Its most common 
form is the slogan, "One man, one vote." Here universal suffrage 
is not claimed as an absolute right. Some exclusions from the 
franchise, for example, are familiar to all of us: aliens, (for 
me) children, mental defectives, convicted felons, those falling 
below a minimum standard of literacy and understanding of 
institutions of government. Certain grounds for exclusion from 
the ballot have been prohibited by the Constitution itself. "The 
right of citizens of the United States to vote," says the 
Fifteenth Amendment, "shall not be denied or abridged by the 
United States or by any state on account of race, color, or 
previous condition of servitude." The Nineteenth Amendment added 
sex to this list of prohibited grounds.

By a state constitutional amendment of 1960 the state of 
Louisiana excluded these three groups from the ballot: persons 
who have lived with another in common law marriage within the 
preceding five years, persons who have given birth to an 
illegitimate child within the preceding five years, persons who 
have been proved to be or who have acknowledged themselves to be 
the fathers of illegitimate children within the preceding five 
years. (Whether the acknowledgement was within the five years or 
the birth is not indicated.) The obvious purpose of these 
provisions is to bar the Negro. As such they violate the 
Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. 
However, if they were merely non-discriminatory good-character 
requirements, would they then meet the touchstone of the 
Constitution? The courts have not yet said the answer, but there 
would still be equal-protection problems in the provision even if 
they were not discriminatory against the Negro.

The one-man, one-vote proposition comes down to this. There are 
few differences among men which may be taken into account when 
considering their right to participate in the suffrage, and those 
differences that may be taken into account must be carefully 
scrutinized for their relevance to the purpose of the suffrage. 
This in substance was the formula employed by the Supreme Court 
in the recent case of Baker vs. Carr. Its novelty in that case 
was its application federally to a state dilution of the right to 
an equal ballot, which had hitherto been held immune to federal 
correction. The voter in an agricultural county had a vote which 
counted far more than the vote of the voter in the urban county. 
The gross disproportion of representation to voting population 
was claimed to be arbitrary and capricious and therefore 
offensive to the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth 
Amendment. "A citizen's right to a vote free of arbitrary 
impairment by state actions," said the Supreme Court, "is a right 
secured by the Constitution of the United States."

Now let me recapitulate briefly. I have pointed to the recent and 
spectacular re-emergence of equality as a Constitutional and 
political ideal in America and the violence of the resistance to 
that trend. I marked the main path of the history of the concept 
in this country beginning with its primacy in the Declaration of 
Independence, its transformation by the abolitionists into the 
principal tenet in the crusade leading to the freeing of the 
slaves and the extirpation of the institution of human bondage, 
and its eventual incorporation into the Constitution by way of 
section one of the Fourteenth Amendment. I have portrayed and 
commented upon the main lines of intellectual and interested 
attack upon the concept, and I have detailed the definitions 
whose application has made it a living reality in the field of 
human rights and fundamental freedoms.

I should like now in the time remaining, after having thus spoken 
of constitutional progress, to identify a large field of 
significant constitutional failure. It may be that this will be 
the field in which the next great constitutional advance will 
occur, though as of today I see few signs that this will be the 
case.

I refer to the general field of poverty and the social and public 
programs which have been set in motion to relieve its distress 
and to restore its victims. Strikingly, racial and ethnic 
minorities are principal occupants of this field. True, they do 
not dwell there alone. There are Caucasians in great numbers who 
are socially and economically marginal, who are disabled, sick, 
aged, unskilled, under-skilled, unemployed, bewildered, confused, 
and lost. But the incidence of poverty and deprivation is higher 
by far among the racial and ethnic minorities than among the 
Caucasian majority. Today one-and-a-quarter million Californians 
are non-white, about eight percent of the total population. 
Negroes are the largest and fastest-growing segment. They 
constitute about 6 percent of the population. About 1 percent are 
Japanese Americans, and another 1 percent are Chinese or Filipino 
Americans. About 4 percent of the California population is made 
up of first- or second-generation Mexican-Americans. Compare 
these data with the fact that roughly 60 percent of the aid-to-
needy-children-program recipients in the state of California is 
made up of Negro and Mexican-Americans, and you will see 
immediately that there is an intimate relationship between 
minority status and deprivation.

Historically the meaning and character of welfare programs in 
California has been profoundly affected by the size and character 
of racial minorities in the state. Discrimination against them in 
governmental welfare programs and, even worse, the perversion of 
welfare Constitutional and statutory concepts and provisions to 
control and exclude them have had an immeasurable, but a very 
great, impact on our welfare ideas and institutions. Enslavement 
and control of the Indian through the use of the traditional 
indenture system and vagrancy provisions, in California; 
exclusion and control of the Chinese through public health, 
welfare, safety, and morals notions and provisions, in 
California; attacks upon the present-day aid-to-needy-children 
program, caring for children--a high percentage of whom are of 
Mexican-American and Negro parentage with different cultural 
mores and standards of conduct with respect to sex and marriage, 
in California: all these have further compounded historical 
confusion with respect to the purposes of welfare. All these have 
accustomed Californians to associate welfare with punitive, 
repressive, discriminatory, and exclusionary goals and 
instruments, as well as, or side-by-side with, relief and 
rehabilitation.

Whatever might be said about California in other respects, 
legally it has never been a melting pot. California has not been 
a rich amalgam of affirmative elements drawn from the widely 
varied backgrounds and cultures of the people who have composed 
the population. That is not to say that the Mexican and the 
Negro, the native Indian and the Oriental have not left their 
marks upon our California's legal system. That they have done in 
abundance. But the marks, however, have been the provisions of 
exclusion, not of incorporation, the legal manifestations of 
hostility and discrimination, not the test and affirmation of 
equality and constitutional principle. In short, Anglo-Saxon 
precepts and institutions in California did not flexibly yield to 
or selectively adapt the alien customs and ideas which abounded 
in their presence. Instead they built a series of protective 
barriers designed to isolate and keep pure the strain within.

The powers of the Constitution which have been invoked 
historically to deal with racial minorities and with the poor of 
all races have been the police powers, not the general welfare 
powers. The police powers are those that deal with maintaining 
order, preventing vice and crime, securing safety, and protecting 
health and morals. When problems of poverty are handled under 
these police powers of the Constitution, poverty comes to be 
equated with disease, with immorality, and with disorder. Indeed 
historically these have proven to be inseparable conditions. The 
constitutional powers of police have generally been called upon 
to protect one part of the community against another, the 
comfortable against the needy.

A classic illustration is to be found in the famous, or rather 
infamous, case of New York vs. Milne, decided by the United 
States Supreme Court in 1837. "It is as competent and necessary 
for a state," said the justices in that case, "to provide 
precautionary measures against (now listen to this) the moral 
pestilence of paupers and vagabonds (and possibly convicts) as it 
is to guard against the physical pestilence which may arise from 
unsound and infectious articles imported or from a ship the crew 
of which may be laboring under an infectious disease." 
Accordingly, the court held valid a New York statute designed to 
exclude the poor and the unwanted brought to New York from other 
states or foreign countries. The statute was found to be a 
regulation of police, not of commerce, and therefore within the 
power of the state.

So by this doctrine the constitutional power of the states to 
deal with the poor is the police power to preserve public order 
and to quarantine contagion, to protect morals, and to maintain 
safety. And poverty entails constitutional, no less than social, 
degradation. Financial, physical, and mental well-being are tests 
of entitlement to constitutional rights. Welfare programs founded 
in these conceptions and sustained by this power focus on 
problems of behavior, utilize instruments of coercion and 
restraint, and are oriented towards keeping the peace and 
maintaining public order. They are designed to safeguard the 
health, safety, morals, and well-being of the fortunate in the 
community, rather than directly to improve the lot of the 
unfortunate.

"Well," you may say, "this case was decided a long time ago." But 
these ideas survive to plague us today. You've all heard of 
Newberg. While California yielded the headlines to Newberg, this 
was not from lack of the same merit. In word and deed California 
did not lag far behind Newberg. Blood typing and lie detector 
testing of aid-to-needy-children mothers about the paternity of 
their offspring; night raiding, with or without probable cause 
and constitutional safeguards; night-arresting ANC mothers caught 
with men in the home: these have been discussed in California 
more than done, but they have been done with alarming frequency.

In one county the full powers of a municipal court judge and a 
district attorney were combined to institute criminal non-support 
charges against aid-to-needy-children mothers--not the fathers--
but the mothers, to find them guilty or plead them guilty, to 
place them on probation and threaten them with jail if thereafter 
they applied for or received aid to needy children, or if they 
failed to go to work, no matter what their state of health or the 
need of the children for their full-time attention. In another 
county aid-to-needy-children mothers found guilty or pleaded 
guilty to welfare fraud, because payments were made to them when 
there was an undisclosed man in the home, were put on probation 
conditioned on their refraining from having relations with men to 
whom they were not married. One county district attorney urged 
sterilization of fathers who create multiple families and show 
deliberate unwillingness to support them, and of ANC mothers who 
continue to bear illegitimate children. The same authority even 
thought that it might be intelligent of the legislators to give 
some thought to euthanasia.

Discontinuance of aid for illegitimates, jailing the mothers or 
declaring the home unsuitable and removing the children, 
punitively withholding aid for six months from mothers found 
cohabiting, sentencing the children of mothers illegally 
receiving aid to six months without aid, working wayward fathers 
during the day and locking them up during the night, legalizing 
voluntary abortions, providing birth control information to 
relief recipients: all of these are among milder remedies 
proposed. Fingerprinting and photographing aid applicants of all 
categories have also been officially sponsored programs.

Let me give one example somewhat more in detail. Effective March 
10, 1960, there appeared this language in the ordinance book of 
one of our California counties. "The Board of Supervisors do 
ordain as follows: section one, no person shall resort to any 
office building or to any room, used or occupied, in connection 
with or under the same management as any cafe, restaurant, soft 
drink parlor, liquor establishment or similar business; or to any 
public park; or to any of the buildings therein; or to any vacant 
lot; or to any room, rooming house, lodging house, residence, 
apartment house, hotel, house trailer; or to any street or 
sidewalk for the purpose of having sexual intercourse with a 
person to whom she or he is not married."[laughter] I guess that 
wasn't this county since you don't have many sidewalks out 
here.[more laughter] The attached sanctions were a $500 fine and 
six months in jail. Now, as you can see, the coverage of this 
ordinance is comprehensive.[laughter] All conceivable places in 
towns, city, and park are on the list of possible locations. In 
fact, so far as I can see, only the fields and irrigation ditches 
are not included.[prolonged laughter]

Equally engulfing are the elements of the crime. The city fathers 
were not content with prohibiting the commission of the act 
itself. Resorting to the specified places for the purpose of 
committing the act was made the crime. Nor need the purpose be 
shared by both parties. An intent in the mind of either of them 
is sufficient. In this county it almost seems a gleam in the eye 
of youth, summer or winter, or the lightly turning fancy in the 
spring is no mere topic of song, jest, or poem. It is a heading 
on the arrest blotter of the district attorney's office.

Almost needless to say, the application of the ordinance was not 
so sweeping as its geography and psychology: quite the contrary. 
Its application was selective and discriminatory. Only the aid-
to-needy-children mothers and those found with them knew its 
penal sanctions. The methods of enforcement were those associated 
with the law of crimes: investigation on nothing more than 
suspicion or gossip, detectives operating in teams, night raids, 
simultaneous approaches to the back and the front of the house, 
guns conspicuously displayed on hips, securing entry, inmates 
interrogated at length and notes taken, the entire house searched 
without any particular care to secure permission, men and 
sometimes aid-to-needy-children mothers hauled off to jail in the 
middle of the night. All of this in the presence of the children, 
to many of whom this must have been a most unhappy experience, if 
not a traumatic one.

All of this too in the presence of the constitutions of state and 
nation providing for the rights of individuals, the privacy and 
security of residents and their persons, houses, papers, and 
effects. All of this in the presence of the Fourteenth Amendment 
declaring, "No state shall deny to any person within its 
jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." Any person? The 
equal protection of the laws? Well not quite any person, not 
quite the equal protection of the laws--not just yet anyhow.

Justice Robert Jackson in Edwards vs. California, the 1941 
counterpart of the Milne case of a century ago, felt the impulse 
and found the words to capture the constitutional hopes of the 
underprivileged. "Does indigence," he asked, "constitute a basis 
for restricting the freedom of citizens as crime or contagion 
warrants its restriction? We should say now," he answered and in 
no uncertain terms, "that a man's mere property status, without 
more, cannot be used by a state to test, qualify, or limit his 
rights as a citizen of the United States. Indigence in itself is 
neither a source of rights nor a basis for denying them. The mere 
state of being without funds is a neutral fact constitutionally 
an irrelevance, like race, creed, or color. Such distinctions," 
he said, "are a short-sighted blow at the security of property 
itself. For property can have no more dangerous, even if 
unwitting, enemy than one who would make its possession a pretext 
for unequal or exclusive civil rights." What is most striking 
about this statement is not its eloquence, though that is 
priceless. What is most striking is that it was a minority 
opinion. It could not command the acquiescence or support of a 
majority of the justices of the Supreme Court of the United 
States.
 
The task that lies ahead is to elevate this doctrine from a 
minority plea to a majority command, to transform it from a 
promise into a reality. When in addition it is enshrined in the 
hearts of Americans as well as in the edicts of their government, 
then will the constitutional law of the land truly be brought to 
the people of the nation. Thank you.
**********
**********
[PHOTO/CAPTION: Karen Alexander under sleepshades during the CCB Christmas-
tree-cutting expedition]
Half-Baked
by Karen Alexander
**********
From the Editor: Those who have graduated from NFB adult training 
centers tell lots of funny stories and laugh about their student 
days. But their small struggles and victories often get lost in 
all the talk about the important skills landmarks they have 
passed and the profound philosophical discoveries they have made 
for themselves. Karen Alexander is currently a student at the 
Colorado Center for the Blind. She does not yet have the 
perspective on her experience there that she will acquire when 
she can look back at the entire experience, but she certainly 
does have a bird's eye view of and appreciation for the day-to-
day challenges facing students in these demanding programs. In 
the following article she captures the frustrations and 
exultation of her days at the Colorado Center and the anxiety of 
her struggle to remain there long enough to acquire all the 
training she needs. The article is reprinted from the Spring 2002 
issue of the Buckeye Bulletin, the publication of the NFB of 
Ohio. Here it is:
**********
"Karen, your assignment today is to cross Alamo Street and go to 
the corner of Main and Prince. Get a receipt from the shop there 
and bring it back to me," said Sumara. I gulped and grinned half-
heartedly. Sumara, my orientation and mobility instructor at the 
Colorado Center for the Blind (CCB), an NFB adult rehabilitation 
training center, was more confident in my travel skills than I. 
Sensing my nervousness, she firmly encouraged me by saying, "Ah, 
you can do it!" and dismissed me.

Stunned that my first solo crossing a major street while wearing 
sleep shades was finally confronting me, I grabbed my cane and 
stumbled out of her office. I proceeded to the front desk and 
signed myself out by typing on the Brailler. Gulping my last 
taste of security, I found the front doors and clacked my way 
out. It was a nice day for December--a little windy, but the sun 
kept trying to appear through the clouds. Sunlight can be an 
important part of orienting oneself while traveling. As I walked 
along the side street, the sporadic sun rays gave me 
unenthusiastic warmth and comfort. Telling myself that this 
wasn't “Mission Impossible” didn't make a difference to my 
nervousness because I knew I was on travel assignment.

But I knew that being at CCB was therapeutic for me. The program 
and the staff were helping me to trust myself again. I knew my 
self-confidence was beginning to return. But even though I had 
been there for several months, traveling under sleep shades was 
difficult. There were other students like me who were legally 
blind. They seemed to take to traveling under sleep shades like 
ducks to water. It seemed to me I was able to quack like a duck 
and waddle like a duck, but I dreaded putting my webbed foot in 
the water, not like a duck. Learning to travel was not easy. It 
seemed the other student ducklings could waddle to their pools of 
water and enthusiastically jump in. I on the other hand waddled 
around the banks of the pond, dreading to get splashed.

But it is the other ducks that make the difference. The students 
at CCB encourage each other. Not a day goes by that one does not 
hear the words, "You can do it!" or "Look what you've learned!" 
When students go from Grade I Braille to Grade II, the staff 
announce it over the school's P.A. system, and cheers are heard 
all over the school. Hearing those cheers is part of what changes 
people and reinforces their confidence. The philosophy classes 
are run by the staff to challenge the way we view and approach 
life as blind people. The wisdom taken from articles in the 
Braille Monitor, from Kernel Book Stories, and from the life 
experiences of the staff is important to hear. Perspective and 
wisdom come from those who walk the walk and not just talk the 
talk.

Unfortunately too many wounded blind people can spout NFB 
philosophy but do not apply it in their lives. They remain 
unchanged and lost in comfortable prisons that protect their egos 
and pride. Not that they are arrogant, they are just fearful of 
taking that step of faith to make life-changing decisions. I 
truly think that deep in their hearts they do not believe the 
philosophy will work for them. When meeting these wounded people, 
I say to myself, "Don't tell the world what NFB philosophy is; 
show the world by using the philosophy in your life."

It is encouraging to participate in a school run by the blind for 
the blind. Students see others like themselves successfully 
living their lives. Those who only talk the talk are missing an 
amazing opportunity to change and better their lives. Because of 
CCB staff and students I can say with confidence, "Quack, quack, 
I will learn to swim like a duck."

Well, that day I fondly remember as facing my Alamo was exactly 
as successful as the original Alamo. Instead of crossing at the 
corner of Alamo and Prince, I turned the corner and found another 
corner. Of course that is the one I crossed. I had traveled a way 
down the street when I came to the conclusion that I had blown 
it. I turned around and retraced my steps. I was frustrated and 
scared.

Cars and trucks were zipping by me, and, as I walked over a 
bridge, a train passed underneath it. When I am wearing sleep 
shades, something about the sound of trains and trucks drives me 
crazy. I decided to sit on the ledge there at the bridge and have 
a good cry. A man came and asked if he could help me, but I waved 
him off. I just wanted to calm down. I knew I wasn't in danger. I 
knew I could retrace my steps. I just hated the feeling of being 
vulnerable and so awkward in traveling under sleep shades.

I said a little prayer, but my shaken and wounded ego was still 
reluctant to return. The train had sped by, and there was a lull 
in the traffic. Coming out of my self-absorption, I heard a 
beautiful sound: a cane tapping the cement of the sidewalk. I 
called out, and to my delight it was one of the students from 
CCB. She gave me a hug and let me cry for a while. I decided to 
allow myself to be rescued and followed her on her route. When we 
were close to the school, I heard Sumara calling my name. She was 
looking for her little wandering duckling. I joked about the 
incident and said that I had faced my Alamo and lost. Sumara 
said, "Ah, Karen, you're more than able to cross that street," 
and walked with me back to the building.

Well you know, she was right. At my next attempt I crossed the 
street and found the bath and candle shop even though I (heavy 
sigh) got lost in the parking lot of a bank. A woman kept trying 
to help me, but I was doggedly determined to find that sidewalk. 
I straightened myself up and said with pride, "I am a student at 
the Colorado Center for the Blind and am on a travel assignment. 
I am all right." After watching me for five minutes, she shouted 
out in exasperation that the sidewalk was in front of me. Trying 
to appear dignified, I gladly accepted the information and found 
the sidewalk. Sometimes it is good to accept help even if it is 
not looked for. This was definitely a grace-growing experience.

At the shop I purchased some inexpensive scented soaps for 
Sumara. It was Christmas time and the day before I was to leave 
for home on school break. I was going to place the gift on her 
desk to prove triumphantly I had done the assignment. But I met 
Sumara on my way back and decided to give her the gift right 
then. When I gave her a description of the parking lot incident, 
she put it into perspective. She reminded me that it takes time 
and practice to learn skills. I was too hard on myself and needed 
to relax. Thinking over what she had said, I waddled after her 
and wondered how one relaxes when facing the crossing of a busy 
street under sleep shades.

When the school day was over, I walked to the light rail train 
and got on. I spotted an empty seat and sat down with a satisfied 
grunt. My sleep shades were resolutely stored in my backpack, and 
my long white cane was faithfully beside me. I was thinking of 
what I needed to get done before going to the airport the next 
day. My regular stop was Broadway Station, where I would get on 
the bus to Cherry Creek Tennis and Sailing Club apartments. CCB 
leases apartments there for students to live in. The complex is 
huge with gigantic buildings encircling a small lake. In the 
middle is a fountain that shoots water four stories high. When I 
first saw them, they reminded me of huge dinosaurs encircling a 
geyser. I now lovingly call the complex Jurassic Apartments.

While riding the light rail, I relaxed. I thought of the day I 
had had. Even though my success crossing Alamo had not gone the 
way I wanted, I had done it. For a first-time solo crossing, it 
hadn't been that bad an experience. I had crossed a major street 
while under sleep shades and using a cane, something I never 
dreamt I could do. What an accomplishment! I began to dream of 
the things I could accomplish and places I could go.

I remembered my feeling of losing independence as I began to lose 
my sight--the pity in the voices of the doctors, family, and 
friends. I knew they cared for me, but I could not imagine life 
without sight. Most of them probably couldn't either. Eventually 
my eyesight diminished, and I chose to give up driving. By making 
that choice, I felt I had given up my freedom. Crossing major 
streets and going places became frustrating and fear-filled. In 
the sunlight I couldn't see the streetlights. I was afraid to 
cross streets that I had known since childhood. I felt like an 
invalid, worthless to others and myself. Freedom became a memory.

My thoughts were interrupted when I heard the announcement that 
the train was approaching Evans Station. The next stop would be 
Broadway Station, my stop. I checked to make sure my backpack and 
cane were ready to grab quickly. I began to make a mental 
checklist of what I needed in order to finish my Christmas 
shopping. I wanted to go to Sam's Club when I got back to Ohio to 
pick up some gifts. I began to plan how to arrange a ride to the 
store when it suddenly dawned on me that I could go to Sam's Club 
in Denver. The light-rail train stop after Broadway Station was 
Alameda Station. I had been told that the commercial complex 
where Sam's Club was located was near the station.

In fact, the train stopped right behind K-Mart, which was one of 
the stores in the complex. It was then I decided to go to Sam's 
Club. I became excited by the thought of trying to do something 
on my own. I had been to Sam's Club but had not gone by this 
route. This was an exciting decision. It was like the days when I 
used to drive a car. I would hear about a store or some place I 
was interested in visiting. I would get general directions and go 
by myself to find the spot. I didn't labor over each detail. I 
knew the major streets in the area and would find the location.

My heart began to beat faster as the light rail approached, 
stopped, and then left Broadway Station. I had made up my mind. I 
was going to do it. The train approached and then stopped at 
Alameda. I got off and looked around, and my heart sank. It 
seemed I was not exactly behind K-Mart. I was at a station stop, 
and across the street was a parking lot. But I trusted the 
information I had and crossed over to the parking lot. To my joy 
and the health of my heart, on the other side of the parking lot 
across the street was a building that I knew must be the back of 
K-Mart. When I got to the street, I heard the sound of traffic to 
my left. I knew I had found Alameda.

I traveled down to the major intersection. My long white cane was 
faithfully finding the bumps and curbs. I wasn't afraid. I knew 
how to cross the street. The training I had received under sleep 
shades now paid off and gave me confidence to cross a street that 
I would never have considered crossing before my training. When 
the parallel traffic took off, I crossed the street. I then 
hunted for the driveway that would lead me into the complex and 
eventually to Sam's Club. It was a thrilling moment. I could take 
care of myself. I could do what I wanted to do on my own. The 
wind was blowing through my hair, and I felt as if it was a 
Yorkshire Chocolate Mint moment. I was independent!

I walked through that complex and found Sam's Club, and I was 
able to purchase some gifts. But I will never forget the thrill 
of that moment of independence. The crossing of Alamo under sleep 
shades will never compare to that experience. But the crossing of 
Alamo gave me the confidence and skills to go by myself to Sam's 
Club that day.

I am now halfway through my program, and it's been a fight to get 
the funding needed for my independence training. It seems that 
those who work at the Ohio Bureau of Services for the Visually 
Impaired (BSVI) do not understand why I need training. They 
believed that, since I have some sight, I wouldn't need an 
intensive training program. I was told that I was intelligent, 
that I could figure out and learn on my own the skills I needed 
to return to school and then the work force.

When I arrived at CCB, BSVI had committed to paying for two 
months of training. I had tried to communicate with my counselor 
my need to complete the full program. I needed to become literate 
again by learning Braille. I needed to learn alternative 
techniques and organization and personal skills to deal with the 
loss of my sight. But most of all I needed to grow in confidence. 
She didn't respond positively to my point of view.

I am fortunate to have NFB advocates in Ohio who really care 
about people. Barbara Pierce and Eric Duffy are treasures that we 
dearly appreciate and love. They work hard. From helping blind 
parents keep their babies to wrestling with city metro bus 
drivers who refuse to announce stops, they have made a difference 
in many people's lives.

I had a staffing at the end of November with my instructors and 
BSVI counselor. The staffing conference was done using a 
speakerphone in order for my counselor to participate. It was 
useful and gratifying for me to hear the comments of the CCB 
staff regarding my progress. The last two months had been 
profoundly challenging, and I was deeply thankful for the 
opportunity to be at the CCB and participate in the adult 
rehabilitation program. I hoped we were able to communicate to my 
counselor some part of the progress I had been making, but she 
did not think I needed the full training program and said she 
could not justify paying the additional money needed to complete 
the program.

From the beginning Barbara and Eric had supported and encouraged 
my choice for independence training. When the two months were 
almost completed at CCB, they helped convey my desire and need 
for additional training at CCB to BSVI supervisors. Because of 
them I gained three more months of training.

The frustration I now face is that the more progress I make, the 
more clearly I realize the true distance I still need to go. 
First of all, if I am going to make a success of college courses, 
I must be fluent in reading and writing Braille. I must be 
literate in order to complete my undergraduate degree and 
successfully re-enter the working world. Frankly, though I am 
making progress, I am not there yet. I believe blind students 
should be able to take their own notes, not depend on sighted 
note-takers. I must also have reasonable command of JAWS and the 
computer programs I will need to do my work. I am not yet quick 
or confident in any of these areas.

In addition, if I am to travel efficiently to and from campus, 
around the university, and in my personal circles, I want to 
master cane travel thoroughly. I now have almost within my grasp 
the ability to use a cane with a facility that is virtually 
unknown outside of the community of people trained at NFB 
centers. I am still some distance from achieving this degree of 
independence, but it is coming.

I am beginning to understand that the confidence in all areas of 
my life that I am gaining here at the Center will sustain me 
wherever I go in future. One of the most important things this 
program does is to allow me to look my fear of blindness in the 
face and realize that it does not have to mean the end of my 
useful life. With the skills I am beginning to master, I can 
become a productive citizen and create a fruitful life for 
myself.

I fear it is unlikely that I will ever have another opportunity 
to be part of a program like this one. Therefore I believe 
strongly that I need to complete the six-to-nine-month program 
now, before I have to face the academic demands of college and 
the challenge of traveling independently around Ohio and wherever 
else my career leads me.

I am thankful that BSVI has believed in me thus far, but I hope 
they can understand why I feel compelled to point out my pressing 
need for full support. The sad truth is that I am now nearing the 
condition of being half-baked, and like a cake beginning to rise 
in the oven, I fear that I will fall flat if I am forced to move 
on to the next stage of my life without full mastery of and 
confidence in the skills I have begun to learn. I am working as 
hard as I know how to, but acquiring life-changing skills and 
attitudes does take time.

I hope my training will allow family, friends, and those who work 
in the Bureau of Services for the Visually Impaired to see what 
can happen to those who complete NFB training programs so that 
other blind people can have the same opportunity that I have had. 
I give many thanks to my family, friends, and church who have 
supported me with their prayers, encouragement, and finances. I 
thank the BSVI for their financial support. I thank the National 
Federation of the Blind for its belief in me, and I thank the 
students and staff at the CCB, who are making a difference in 
their own lives as well as mine.
**********
**********
[PHOTO/CAPTION: Those at the Sunday-afternoon-briefing head table were (left 
to right) James McCarthy, NFB Assistant Director of Governmental Affairs; 
Diane McGeorge, President of the NFB of Colorado and coordinator of seminar 
arrangements; Joanne Wilson, Commissioner of the Rehabilitation Services  
Administration; NFB President Marc Maurer; and James Gashel, NFB Director of 
Governmental Affairs.]
[PHOTO/CAPTION: As usual it was standing room only at the kick-off briefing 
for the 2002 Washington Seminar.]
The 2002 Washington Seminar
**********
From the Editor: Nearly 500 Federationists gathered in 
Washington, D.C., beginning Friday, February 1, for the 2002 
Washington Seminar of the National Federation of the Blind. The 
first event of the week was the mid-winter conference sponsored 
by the National Association of Blind Students. Joanne Wilson, 
Commissioner of the Rehabilitation Services Administration, 
keynoted the day-long conference on Saturday, and Ever Lee 
Hairston, First Vice President of the NFB of New Jersey, spoke at 
the banquet that evening. As always the conference was inspiring 
to the students who came from across the country to take part and 
to get to know other members of NABS.

Sunday saw tours of the National Center for the Blind and several 
workshops and committee and division meetings. The newest of 
these was a workshop for those interested in writing their own 
Individualized Plan for Employment. It was conducted by the 
National Association of Blind Rehabilitation Professionals.

Late that afternoon the first briefing of the Washington Seminar 
took place. President Maurer discussed a number of current issues 
of interest to the gathering. Then Jim Gashel and Jim McCarthy of 
the NFB's Governmental Affairs Department described and briefly 
discussed the three legislative issues about which we would be 
talking to Members of Congress during the week. The fact sheets 
and legislative memorandum were available in print and on 
cassette, so participants had been talking about the issues all 
weekend. Here are the documents that we took to Capitol Hill:
**********
**********
Legislative Agenda of Blind Americans

Priorities for the 107th Congress, Second Session
**********
Public policies and laws affecting blind people have a profound 
impact throughout our entire society. Most people know someone 
who is blind, and seventy-five thousand Americans become blind or 
visually impaired every year. The blind population in the United 
States is estimated to exceed 1.1 million with several million 
more classified as visually impaired. In addition, the social and 
economic consequences of blindness directly touch the lives of 
each blind person's family members, co-workers, and friends.

Public policies and laws that result from misconceptions or lack 
of information about blindness are often more limiting than the 
loss of eyesight itself. This is why we have formed the National 
Federation of the Blind. The Federation's leaders and the vast 
majority of its members are blind, but anyone is welcome to join 
in the effort we are making to win understanding and equality in 
society.

Our priorities for the second session of the 107th Congress 
reflect an urgent need for action in three key areas of vital 
importance to the blind. (For an explanation of these issues, 
please see the attached fact sheets.)

1. Congress should enact mandated increases in the earnings limit 
for blind people, under Title II of the Social Security Act, 
similar to those enacted for seniors in 1996. This proposal would 
help reduce the harsh work disincentive of the Social Security 
earnings limit as it now affects blind beneficiaries.

2. Congress should amend Title XVIII of the Social Security Act 
to include Medicare coverage for rehabilitation services provided 
to older blind individuals. This proposal would ensure that older 
blind Medicare beneficiaries have access to the critical 
rehabilitation services they need to remain independent and in 
their homes, rather than being forced into costly long-term care 
facilities.

3. Congress should pass legislation requiring publishers of 
elementary and secondary textbooks to provide electronic copies 
which are capable of producing texts in specialized formats, 
including Braille. This proposal would provide textbooks 
simultaneously in print and Braille editions, assuring that no 
student, blind or sighted, is left behind.
**********
People who are blind are asking for your help to address these 
priorities in the present session of Congress. By acting in 
partnership with the National Federation of the Blind, each 
member of Congress can help build better lives for the blind, 
both today and in the years ahead. The legislative actions 
recommended in this memorandum will benefit the blind, but they 
will also help create a better future for all Americans.
**********
**********
PROMOTING WORK AND FAIRNESS FOR THE BLIND

COMMON-SENSE WORK INCENTIVES FOR BLIND
SOCIAL SECURITY BENEFICIARIES
**********
Pending Bills
H.R. 498, "Blind Empowerment Act," by Congressman Robert Ehrlich, 
S. 682, "Blind Persons Earnings Equity Act," by Senator John 
McCain
**********
Purpose
To amend title II of the Social Security Act to increase the 
level of earnings under which no blind individual is determined 
to have demonstrated an ability to engage in substantial gainful 
activity for purposes of determining disability.
**********
Background
By increasing the Social Security earnings limit in 1996, 
Congress provided a powerful incentive for seniors age sixty-five 
and older to work. Advocates for this change made the case that 
seniors would continue to work, earn, and pay taxes since they 
could do so without fearing loss of income from Social Security. 
Now the need for a higher earnings limit for the blind is even 
more compelling because of an all-or-nothing penalty for working 
above it. However, Congress has disregarded this fact in the case 
of the blind while encouraging seniors to work by removing the 
earnings limit altogether.
As a result, earnings exceeding $15,600 for a blind person who is 
age sixty-four or younger cause the complete loss of Social 
Security benefits until that individual attains age sixty-five. 
At that point there is no limit on the amount that same 
individual can earn. This is the inequity that now exists.
**********
Existing Law
Like "retirement age," "blindness" is specifically defined in the 
Social Security Act and can be readily determined. By contrast 
"disability" is not precisely defined and is determined on the 
basis of an "inability to engage in substantial gainful 
activity," a highly complex and rather subjective determination.

Although blindness is precisely defined, monthly benefits are not 
paid to all persons who are blind but only to those whose 
earnings (from work) are below the annually adjusted earnings 
limit. Personal wealth arising from all sources, except present 
work, is not counted as earnings and does not affect eligibility. 
Only work is penalized, and recognition of this fact led to the 
increased earnings limit for seniors and its eventual 
elimination. The situation for seniors prior to 1996 is precisely 
the same for blind people today.
**********
Need to Remove Work Disincentives
An increase in the earnings limit would be cost-beneficial. With 
a seventy-four-percent unemployment rate, the vast majority of 
working-age individuals who are blind are already beneficiaries. 
Providing them with a meaningful work incentive would allow them 
to become taxpayers as well. Members of Congress supported 
raising the exempt earnings threshold for seniors, and it is only 
appropriate that they do the same for blind people of working 
age. The chance to work, earn, and pay taxes is a constructive 
and valid goal for senior citizens and blind Americans alike.

Increasing the earnings limit will allow blind people to work 
without being penalized financially for doing so, providing more 
than 100,000 blind beneficiaries with a powerful work incentive. 
At present a blind individual's earnings must not exceed a strict 
monthly limit of $1,300. When earnings exceed this threshold, the 
entire sum paid to a primary beneficiary and dependents is 
abruptly withdrawn after a trial work period. The economic risk 
resulting for a blind head of household is far greater than any 
economic benefit derived.

When a blind person finds work, there is absolutely no assurance 
that earnings will replace the amount of lost disability benefits 
after taxes and work expenses are paid. Usually they do not. 
Therefore few beneficiaries can actually afford to attempt 
substantial work. Those who do often sacrifice income and the 
security of a monthly check.
**********
Action Needed
Congress should enact mandated increases in the earnings limit 
for blind people similar to those enacted for seniors in 1996. 
This proposal would be a step towards equity for blind people and 
reduce the harsh work disincentive policy now in effect. Under 
this proposal blind individuals would eventually be able to work 
and earn up to $30,000 without fearing the loss of benefits.

Legislation for this purpose has been introduced as H.R. 498 by 
Congressman Robert Ehrlich and S. 682 by Senator John McCain. 
These bills enjoy broad bipartisan support with 251 members of 
the House and 30 Senators as cosponsors.

Please support blind Americans by cosponsoring H.R. 498 or S. 682 
and request action on this legislation before this session is 
adjourned.
**********
**********
MEDICARE EQUITY FOR OLDER BLIND PERSONS
**********
Pending Bills
H.R. 2674, "The Medicare Coverage Equity Act for the Blind," by 
Congressman Martin Frost
**********
Purpose:
To amend Title XVIII of the Social Security Act to permit state 
rehabilitation agencies serving blind persons age fifty-five and 
older to be reimbursed by Medicare.
**********
Existing Law:
The Medicare program--Title XVIII of the Social Security Act--
provides health insurance coverage for people age sixty-five and 
older and for persons who have received Social Security 
Disability Insurance cash benefits for at least two years. This 
program pays for reasonable and necessary services to prevent 
illness, maintain health, and restore functioning after injury or 
disease. Part A of Medicare--Hospital Insurance--covers hospital 
services. Part B--Supplementary Medical Insurance--covers a wide 
range of outpatient services such as physician's services; 
physical, occupational, and speech therapy; mental health 
services; a variety of rehabilitation services; the purchase of 
durable medical equipment (including wheel chairs); and home 
health care services. Despite Medicare's coverage of these and 
many more services, coverage of rehabilitation services for older 
blind individuals is not included.

Chapter II of Title VII of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, as 
amended, authorizes grants to designated state vocational 
rehabilitation agencies to provide independent living 
rehabilitation services to older persons who are blind and 
visually impaired. These services include visual screening; 
independent living skills training, such as orientation and 
mobility and daily living skills; and other appropriate 
rehabilitative services needed for older individuals to live 
independently. This program is currently funded at $25 million 
for fiscal year 2002. While funding has grown significantly in 
recent years, the program will only serve approximately five 
percent of those in need.
**********
Need for Legislation
Costs associated with age-related vision loss are substantial. 
For example, the Alliance on Aging Research reports that visual 
impairment is one of the top four reasons why seniors lose their 
independence, contributing to medical and long-term care costs of 
$26 billion annually. In addition, the Framingham Eye Study 
(ongoing) reports that eighteen percent of all hip fractures 
among seniors can be attributed to age-related vision loss. At 
$35,000 for treatment and care in each case, the total annual 
cost attributable to hip fractures due to visual impairment 
exceeds $2 billion.

Rehabilitation services for older blind persons teach safe 
travel, daily living skills, and use of adaptive aids and 
devices. Individuals who receive these services are able to 
continue living independently in their own homes and communities. 
This is consistent with the goals of Medicare. By receiving these 
services covered by Medicare, seniors who become blind can regain 
self-reliance and self-worth. This will allow them to remain 
active and valued members of their communities for as long as 
possible. Without these services older blind individuals often 
become dependent and isolated.

Recent growth in the appropriation made for the Title VII Chapter 
II program shows that Congress recognizes a significant need to 
be met. At $25 million annually, these funds are helping to lay 
the foundation for a state-administered service delivery system. 
However, current and future appropriations are not likely to be 
large enough to pay the entire cost of services for the growing 
population of seniors who become blind. The solution is to permit 
state agencies which already serve older blind people to be 
eligible for reimbursement of direct service costs from Medicare.
**********
Proposed Legislation
Congress should amend Title XVIII of the Social Security Act to 
include Medicare coverage for rehabilitation services provided to 
older individuals who are blind. This proposal is designed to 
ensure that older blind Medicare beneficiaries have access to 
critical rehabilitation services. H.R. 2674, introduced by 
Congressman Martin Frost, would do this. Efforts are underway for 
similar legislation to be introduced in the Senate. The proposed 
amendments define rehabilitation services as those services 
furnished or supervised by a designated state vocational 
rehabilitation agency to an older blind individual under Chapter 
II of Title VII of the Rehabilitation Act and approved pursuant 
to regulations issued by the Department of Health and Human 
Services.

The state vocational rehabilitation agency or other provider 
chosen by the beneficiary and supervised by the state would 
provide services. The term, "older individual who is blind" means 
"an individual age fifty-five or older whose severe visual 
impairment makes competitive employment difficult to attain but 
for whom independent living goals are feasible." This is 
identical to the definition currently in Chapter II of Title VII 
of the Rehabilitation Act.

As with Chapter II of Title VII, only state vocational 
rehabilitation agencies could receive payment for services 
provided in this program. This approach uses a well-established 
and accountable system for the delivery of rehabilitation 
services to older blind Medicare beneficiaries while also 
allowing beneficiaries to exercise choice when selecting among 
service providers. Title XVIII allows hospitals, community 
rehabilitation centers, home healthcare centers, and other 
entities enrolled as Medicare service providers to receive 
payment for services. Under this proposal state vocational 
rehabilitation agencies could also enroll as Medicare service 
providers. Once approved by a state Medicare carrier, these 
agencies could submit claims and receive payment for the 
rehabilitation services they provide.

Please support blind Americans by cosponsoring H.R. 2674 or its 
Senate companion, when introduced, and request action on this 
legislation before this session is adjourned.
**********
**********
[PHOTO/CAPTION: Representatives of the Connecticut affiliate visited with 
Senator Dodd in his office. This picture appears on Senator Dodd's Web site. 
Left to right are Jim Gashel, NFB of Connecticut President Betty Woodward, 
Senator Dodd,  Junerose Killian, and Gary Allen.]

ACCESS TO INSTRUCTIONAL MATERIALS

LEAVING NO BLIND CHILD BEHIND
**********
Background
In the mid-nineteenth century states established centralized 
schools for the blind to educate blind and visually impaired 
students. To support this, Congress authorized the American 
Printing House for the Blind (APH) in Louisville, Kentucky, to 
produce educational materials in alternative formats, including 
Braille. Today APH continues to fulfill this function, receiving 
annual appropriations for this purpose.

In the 1960's blind children first began to attend schools in 
their home communities in significant numbers, and today the vast 
majority do so. As a result Braille, audio, and large-print books 
must be obtained or created by any local school district having 
one or more blind children. Converting printed instructional 
materials into "specialized formats" such as Braille is often 
time-consuming, labor-intensive, and costly, taking six or more 
months and several thousand dollars to complete. Relying on APH 
alone cannot fulfill the need. Therefore it is the exception--not 
the rule--for blind students to have access to required textbooks 
at the same time as their sighted classmates.
**********
Existing Law

The Americans with Disabilities Act, the Individuals with 
Disabilities Education Act, and other federal laws clearly 
establish the policy that individuals with disabilities are 
entitled to equal treatment in all areas of society. However, the 
successful implementation of these laws does not occur without 
clear, specific, and practical standards and systems in place to 
anticipate accessibility needs. Currently there are no federal 
laws that create standards to facilitate the production of 
textbooks in Braille.

Twenty-six states have responded to this need by requiring 
publishers to provide electronic copies of print editions of 
textbooks. However, no consistent file format is used among the 
states, and the electronic copies provided by publishers are 
frequently not usable for Braille reproduction at all. Therefore 
inconsistent and often conflicting state requirements place 
burdensome obligations on publishers without efficiently 
facilitating more timely production of books in accessible 
formats. An agreed-upon, uniform electronic file format would 
reduce the burden to publishers and significantly reduce the cost 
of creation, while helping to provide materials to blind students 
at the same time they are provided to others.
**********
Proposed Legislation
Congress should enact the "Instructional Materials Accessibility 
Act," which has been negotiated by textbook publishers, the 
National Federation of the Blind, and other affected groups. This 
legislation will ensure that blind and visually impaired students 
will not be left behind in having the textbooks they need in a 
form they can use.

Prepared for introduction in Congress, the draft legislation 
would:

* require state plans to ensure that students who are blind or 
visually impaired have access to instructional materials in 
formats they can use at the same time the materials are provided 
to students who can see;

* develop a uniform electronic file format for instructional 
materials prepared by publishers;

* require publishers to produce a copy of each textbook in the 
uniform electronic file format and furnish it to a National 
Instructional Materials Access Center for distribution to 
schools; and

* fund capacity-building initiatives to assist state and local 
educators in using electronic files supplied by publishers. 
**********
Benefits and Cost

The principal benefit of this legislation will be a uniform 
electronic file format. This will allow rapid creation of 
textbooks in the desired format for each student, sighted or 
blind. For students who read Braille, their books can be 
presented through the use of synthetic speech or stored and read 
with small computers, which display Braille dots.

Without this legislation local school districts will continue to 
bear the burden and cost of converting printed books into 
Braille. However, modern technology can now support shifting much 
of this responsibility to publishers without placing an undue 
burden on them. This legislation does not remove the school's 
responsibility to provide materials but will institute a shared 
burden between the schools that teach the children and the 
publishers that create the books. This will be the effect of 
having a uniform electronic file format and national distribution 
center.

This shared obligation between school and publisher has been 
carefully crafted with publishers fully engaged in the effort to 
create it. The cost anticipated and authorized to operate the 
National Distribution Center will be $1 million annually, with $5 
million needed to fund training and technical assistance programs 
for local schools. Although publishers have agreed to provide 
electronic books, nothing can happen without federal legislation 
to establish procedures and create the Center.

Introduction of the "Instructional Material Accessibility Act" is 
expected to occur early in the second session of the 107th 
Congress. Anticipating this, members are being asked to become 
original cosponsors and to request prompt enactment of this bill.

Please support blind Americans by cosponsoring the "Instructional 
Materials Accessibility Act" and request action on this 
legislation before this session is adjourned.
**********
**********
[PHOTO/CAPTION: Jerry Whittle speaking from Braille notes]
Learning Braille as an Adult:
Read Until You Bleed
by Jerry Whittle
**********
From the Editor: Jerry Whittle has taught Braille at the 
Louisiana Center for the Blind for over fifteen years now, and he 
has learned a lot about his calling. Among other things he knows 
what works and what doesn't for adults trying to master this 
invaluable code. In the following article he describes frankly 
what one has to do to gain reading speed as an adult. Here is 
what he says:
**********
For the past fifteen years, while teaching Braille at the 
Louisiana Center for the Blind, I have had the opportunity to 
work with some excellent Braille readers. Over thirty of them 
read Braille at rates exceeding three hundred words a minute. The 
average college student reads print at between two and four 
hundred words a minute. I also timed two students who read 
Braille at a rate exceeding five hundred words a minute. All of 
these students, except one, read Braille using both hands, 
starting the line with the left hand and finishing it with the 
right while the left tracks down to the next line. One reader who 
exceeds three hundred words a minute using only one hand reads in 
a most unorthodox style. He turns the book so that he can use his 
entire right index finger to read down the line in the direction 
of his stomach, quickly snapping the hand up to the next line. 
All of these excellent Braille readers learn Braille either in 
preschool or in first grade. None of those exceeding three 
hundred words a minute learn to read as an adult or even in upper 
elementary school or high school.

Over the same period I have also timed many Braille readers 
between two and three hundred words a minute and many more 
between one hundred and two hundred words a minute. Most of these 
people use only one hand, are eighteen to twenty years old, or 
have learned Braille in grammar school.

This recounting of reading rates brings me to the point of this 
article. During my fifteen years of teaching Braille, I have 
observed that no student who came to the Center as an adult and 
did not know Braille previously exceeded eighty words a minute 
during the six to nine months of training. Several students who 
did not know Braille when they entered the Center achieved more 
than sixty words a minute during their training--all excellent 
achievements; however, most, if not all, of the students who 
learned Braille at the Center did not increase their reading 
speed after leaving the program. If anything, many of them lost 
some of their speed even though most of them vowed to work hard 
and improve on the foundation they had built at the Center.

Let it be understood that all of these students were diligent and 
dedicated to improving their Braille literacy, and many of them 
are quite bright; however, the demands of life after Center 
training prevented them from increasing their reading rates. 
Moreover, since most of them needed to read a minimum of thirty-
five pages a day in order to increase--about two hours a day of 
concentrated effort--most of them lost speed.

Thus one can conclude that once a person has achieved a rate of 
sixty words a minute, he or she must dedicate two hours or more 
each day to make increases. The problem does not lie in the lack 
of dedication or enthusiasm or in an unwillingness to work 
sedulously to accomplish this goal. The problem is that hardly 
anyone facing the press of life's demands can find the time to 
read that much each day.

An active social life, the demands of a job or of academics, 
child-rearing, and many other demands make it virtually 
impossible to improve the reading rate. This point has not been 
substantiated from studies but from sixteen years of observation 
and commiseration with former students who are sometimes 
exasperated because they cannot seem to improve.

The answer to this problem appears to be finding a way to work on 
Braille reading in a concentrated way for a prolonged period of 
time--three to six months. Fortunately, I can make this 
observation because two of my former students convinced their 
counselors to sponsor them at the Center for periods of six weeks 
and three months to do just that. The first student, aged thirty-
seven, learned the Braille code at the Center and reached a rate 
of forty words a minute before graduation.

He went back to work and did not increase his reading rate; in 
fact, it dropped to twenty-seven words a minute. After convincing 
his counselor that his ability to read was very important to him 
in his work, he returned to the Center for six weeks of intensive 
reading. He started by reading thirty-five pages a day between 
the hours of eight A.M. and five P.M. with occasional breaks. He 
continued to read steadily and began to build speed; therefore he 
increased his reading goals to fifty pages a day. After six weeks 
he increased his reading rate to sixty-seven words a minute.
Another student, aged twenty-one, had learned Braille in our 
summer training program at the age of thirteen. She returned to 
the adult training program at eighteen and increased her reading 
rate to ninety-two words a minute before graduation. She attended 
college and maintained a very active social life; thus her 
reading rate diminished to approximately sixty words a minute. 
Recognizing how much she needed to increase her speed in order to 
read aloud fluently, she convinced her counselor to allow her to 
return to the Center for three months after graduation from 
college.

She, like the other student, read steadily from eight to five 
with appropriate breaks, and she read one hundred pages a day at 
first. She also read at night when she did not complete the one-
hundred page goal during class hours. She began to increase 
steadily, and she increased her page goal to one hundred fifty 
pages a class day. She maintained a high degree of motivation 
throughout the three-month period. At the end of three months she 
had more than doubled her reading rate to one hundred twenty-
three words a minute. Incidentally, she reached an ideal reading 
rate to read aloud, and, for the first time in her life, she read 
a paper she had prepared in Braille before an audience of over 
two hundred people--a lifelong dream.

Without a doubt, the answer for someone who has learned Braille 
as an adult and who has not exceeded sixty to eighty words a 
minute is to find a way to dedicate three to six months of 
intense reading in a place where Braille books are readily 
accessible. One of the advantages of coming back to the Louisiana 
Center for the Blind is that we have a substantial collection of 
Braille books on every subject; students are apt to read more if 
they can find books to their liking. After observing this 
intensive dedication to reading for a prolonged period, I am 
convinced that this is the answer for blind people who have 
learned Braille as adults and who have been frustrated because 
they cannot find the time or the readily-accesible Braille 
library to improve reading rates.

Furthermore, the old myth about Braille reading being slow can 
also be dispelled. No person, Braille or print reader, who has 
learned to read as an adult can gain high reading rates without 
prolonged, sustained reading. Like the blind student trying to 
gain speed as an adult, a print reader will need the same type of 
regimen to attain adequate literacy skills. In other words, the 
problem is not the method; it is finding the time in a demanding 
adult schedule to read the number of pages necessary to go beyond 
the sixty-word-per-minute plateau.

With research analysis perhaps we can prove scientifically that 
these conclusions are true and find better strategies to improve 
Braille literacy for hundreds of adults who have the motivation 
but find it difficult to budget the time. Literacy is extremely 
important for every blind person, for it means cultural 
enrichment, upward mobility, and future employment. With this 
research analysis, perhaps rehabilitation counselors will be 
convinced of the importance of extra months of training, 
concentrating on reading speed for motivated users of Braille who 
have had the misfortune to learn Braille later in life.
 **********
**********
Have you considered leaving a gift to the National Federation of 
the Blind in your will? By preparing a will now, you can assure 
that those administering your estate will avoid unnecessary 
delays, legal complications, and substantial tax costs. A will is 
a common device used to leave a substantial gift to charity. A 
gift in your will to the NFB can be of any size and will be used 
to help blind people. Here are some useful hints in preparing 
your will:
• Make a list of everything you want to leave (your estate).
• Decide how and to whom you want to leave these assets.
• Consult an attorney (one you know or one we can help you find).
• Make certain you thoroughly understand your will before you 
sign it.
**********
For more information contact the National Federation of the 
Blind, Special Gifts, 1800 Johnson Street, Baltimore, Maryland 
21230-4998, (410) 659-9314, fax (410) 685-5653.
**********
*********
[PHOTO/CAPTION: The skyline of Louisville]
Getting Around Downtown Louisville
by Dennis Franklin
**********
From the Editor: Dennis Franklin is First Vice President of the 
Kentucky affiliate and a long-time Louisville resident. Here he 
takes the time to conduct a walking tour of the area around our 
headquarters hotel. This is what he says:
**********
Getting around downtown Louisville is relatively easy with a few 
simple directions. The streets are laid out in a grid pattern 
running either north/south or east/west. Traveling south on 
Fourth Street from the Galt House, you cross these streets: Main, 
Market, Jefferson, Liberty, Muhammad Ali Boulevard, Chestnut, and 
Broadway. Traveling east on any of these streets from Fourth 
Street, you cross Third, Second, First, Brook, Floyd, and 
Preston. Traveling west, you cross Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, and 
Eighth.

If you were doing all this traveling, what might you see along 
the way? Let's walk south along the east side of Fourth Street. 
After we cross Main, we come to a trolley stop, where we could 
board a trolley going to the Riverfront Wharf, which I will tell 
you more about later. Continuing south, just before we reach 
Market Street, we pass Kunz's Restaurant, a longtime favorite for 
lunch and dinner. Before crossing Market Street, we can turn left 
and travel one block east, cross Third Street, and arrive at the 
Old Spaghetti Factory.

Crossing Market Street on the east side of Fourth Street brings 
us to the Kentucky International Convention Center, which covers 
that entire block. Crossing Jefferson, we find the Hyatt Regency 
Hotel. Continuing south across Liberty Street, we pass an office 
tower and a Dooley's Bagels and come to the entrance of the 
Galleria. This downtown shopping center lies on both sides of 
Fourth Street with a glassed-in atrium crossing above the street 
to connect the two sides. In the Galleria you will find Dillard's 
Department Store, a card shop, a candy store, and CVS pharmacy. 
There is also a food court with several choices for your dining 
pleasure.

Passing through the Galleria and crossing Muhammad Ali Boulevard 
brings us to the Seelbach Hotel, located on the west side of 
Fourth Street. Continuing south on the east side of Fourth 
Street, just before you reach Chestnut Street is a Walgreen's 
Drug Store. A half block after crossing Chestnut Street, we pass 
the Palace Theater and then come to the Theater Square area, 
where several restaurants particularly good for lunch can be 
found. Beyond Theater Square and before you reach Broadway is the 
Brown Hotel with its restaurant, the English Grill, where a local 
favorite, the famous Hot Brown, was created.

Another way to travel Fourth Street is using the Toonerville II 
Trolley, which is free. It operates on weekdays from 7:15 a.m. to 
11:00 p.m. and on Saturday from 9:30 a.m. to 11:00 p.m. It 
travels along Fourth Street from the Galt House to Theater 
Square, except that on its southward trip it travels along Third 
Street between Liberty and Muhammad Ali Boulevard, and on its 
northward trip it travels along Fifth Street between Muhammad Ali 
Boulevard and Liberty Street. After 10:30 a.m. every other 
trolley leaving Theater Square circles the Riverfront Wharf 
instead of going to the Galt House. If you want to go to the 
Riverfront Wharf, you can board this Trolley at any northbound 
trolley stop, up to and including Main Street. You can ask the 
driver if he is going to the Galt House or the Riverfront Wharf, 
to be sure you are boarding the one you want.

The Belle of Louisville is docked on the wharf at the foot (north 
end) of Fourth Street. Just east of the Belle is the Star of 
Louisville, which offers daily dinner cruises. Continuing east, 
we find Joe's Crab Shack, featuring excellent seafood in a casual 
atmosphere. Just past Joe's we arrive at the Waterfront Park, a 
large open space, where festivals or fireworks sometimes take 
place, but it's always a nice place to take a walk or let the 
kids enjoy the playground equipment.

As I said earlier, you can reach this area on the trolley or, if 
you prefer, you can walk. Go to the north end of Fourth Street on 
the lobby level of the Galt House, go down the steps, and follow 
the pedestrian walkway, which passes under I-64, and down more 
steps to the Wharf.

Now let's travel west on Main Street. On the north side, just 
west of Fifth Street, is the Kentucky Center for the Arts. 
Continuing across Sixth Street are a couple of blocks of restored 
nineteenth-century buildings. After crossing Seventh Street and 
going about a half block further, we come to the Louisville 
Science Center, which boasts many interactive displays for young 
and old alike. After crossing both Eighth and Main Streets, we 
find the Louisville Slugger Museum. Be sure to check out the 
world's largest bat, located outside this building.

By traveling east on the south side of Main Street, about a half 
block from Fourth Street, we come to Actors Theater of 
Louisville. About six blocks farther east, on the north side of 
Main Street is Slugger Field, the home of the Louisville 
Riverbats.

You can also reach any of these points of interest on the Main 
Street Trolley, which is also free and which can be boarded at 
any trolley stop along Main Street (westbound) or Market Street 
(eastbound) between Tenth Street and Clay Street. This trolley 
operates on weekdays from 6:45 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. and weeknights 
from 6:30 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. when the Riverbats play at home and 
on Saturdays 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.

Unfortunately we do not yet have schedule information for the 
Kentucky Center for the Arts, Actors Theater, the IMAX Theater at 
the Louisville Science Center, or the Riverbats; but we should 
have the schedules at our information tables during the 
convention. Y'all come!
**********
**********
[PHOTO/CAPTION: Churchill Downs]
Making History in Louisville--Federation Style
by Lora J. Felty
**********
From the Editor: Lora Felty was a 1992 NFB scholarship winner. 
She now serves as Secretary of the NFB of Kentucky and President 
of the affiliate's NAPUB Division. She works as an itinerant VI 
teacher in Ashland, Kentucky. She clearly knows a good deal about 
the history of the Bluegrass State. This is what she has to say 
about the site of the 2002 convention:
**********
As you already know, the 2002 annual convention of the National 
Federation of the Blind will be held in Louisville, Kentucky, 
July 3 through 9. But before you visit our wonderful city, here 
are a few interesting historical tidbits that might encourage you 
to dig below the surface and learn more about Louisville.

First of all, the site of our convention, the Galt House Hotel, 
has a rich history of its own in the city of Louisville. The 
original Galt House was established in 1834 on the northeast 
corner of Second and Main Streets and was Louisville's best-known 
hostelry during the nineteenth century. This Galt House played 
host to such notables as Charles Dickens and U.S. Generals Grant 
and Sherman. Dickens wrote of his stay at the Galt House that he 
and his companions had been "as handsomely lodged as though we 
had been in Paris." And it was at the Galt House during the Civil 
War where Generals Sherman and Grant met to plan the invasion 
that eventually led to the "March to the Sea." After being host 
to such historic figures, the first Galt House was destroyed by 
fire in 1865 and was replaced in 1869 by an even larger and 
grander Galt House, located at the northeast corner of First and 
Main. Due to financial difficulties, this hotel closed in 1919. 
The building was demolished in 1921. Finally the third Galt 
House, on Fourth Street and River Road, was built in 1973 as a 
part of the Riverfront Urban Renewal Project. The Galt House East 
opened in 1984. These two hotels make up our convention site.

Now that you know the history of your outstanding accommodations 
in our city, let's take a look at the city itself and some of its 
history. Louisville is currently Kentucky's second largest 
metropolitan area. It was settled in 1778, prior to Kentucky's 
statehood in 1792. During George Rogers Clark's exploration of 
the territory northwest of the Ohio River, Clark and his men were 
accompanied by a group of Kentucky settlers who traveled down the 
Ohio River from Pittsburgh. The settlers stopped at the Falls of 
the Ohio, where they intended to make a new life for themselves. 
So was born the city of Louisville. Its name, bestowed in 1779, 
honors French King Louis XVI and his support of the American 
Colonies in their struggles against England.

In the beginning, growth of Louisville was slow, but the 
Louisiana Purchase of 1803, which created an open waterway to the 
mouth of the Mississippi, was the catalyst for future growth of 
the area. This would be a natural outlet for the agricultural 
products of Kentucky. Boats carrying cargo traveled down the Ohio 
River to Louisville, where they had to be unloaded in order to 
navigate the falls. Cargo was carried by wagon beyond the falls 
and then re-loaded onto the boats.

By 1811 the arrival of the steamboat paved the way for Louisville 
to prosper further, but with progress came certain civic 
difficulties. Due to increased river traffic, Louisville became 
host to numerous rowdy boatmen. Gambling halls and brothels 
flourished near the waterfront. Finally in 1828 Louisville was 
granted city status. This allowed the city to establish local 
government and law enforcement to control the bawdy activities of 
the thriving riverfront district. The Portland Canal around the 
falls opened, making circumnavigation of the falls possible.
In the mid-1800's transportation shifted from water to rail. 
Louisville played an important role in this transition as well. 
Railways linked Louisville to Kentucky's capital city, Frankfort, 
and Lexington, both east of Louisville; however, it was the 
completion of the Louisville and Nashville Railroad in 1859 that 
connected Louisville with railroads to the Deep South. This link 
offered new opportunities for transporting goods. It is ironic 
that only two years later all transportation, both water and 
rail, was cut off to the South by the Civil War.

Being a border city in a slave state with strong commercial ties 
to both the North and South made the years of the war difficult 
ones for Louisville. The city attempted a neutral stance but 
could not maintain the status quo in the slavery state of 
Kentucky. Since Union army recruits outnumbered those for the 
Confederate army three to one, Louisville became a major military 
supply center, as well as a base of operations for the Union 
army. Also Louisville was home to nineteen military hospitals, 
one of which was located at the Kentucky School for the Blind. 
Amazingly enough, though, Louisville survived the war unscathed 
and actually prospered after the war.

During the pre-Civil War era the bleak educational opportunities 
for blind children in Kentucky began to change for the better. At 
the request of Bryce M. Patton, Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe of the 
Perkins Institute for the Blind in Massachusetts visited Kentucky 
to demonstrate effective ways to teach blind children. Mr. 
Patton's brother Otis had been a student of Mr. Howe's. They 
presented a proposal for a school for blind children to the state 
legislature, and as a result the Kentucky School for the Blind 
(KSB) was established in 1842. KSB was the sixth school for the 
blind established in the United States and the third publicly 
funded school.

In its early years the school moved to several locations in the 
city before arriving at its present location on Frankfort Avenue 
in East Louisville in 1855. The original KSB building was a 
prominent city landmark, designed in the Greek Revival 
architectural style, which boasted a cupola on top. Later, in 
1884 a separate school for black children was established on the 
KSB campus, and in 1954 the two schools were racially integrated. 
The first Boy Scout Troop for blind youth was established at KSB 
in 1911 only one year after the beginning of the Boy Scout 
movement in America. Also in 1945 KSB became the first school in 
Kentucky to establish a wrestling team, and in 1961 KSB won the 
first Kentucky Invitational Wrestling Tournament. In 1966 KSB was 
proud to win the state championship wrestling tournament.

Finally, in 1967, after standing for over 100 years, the original 
KSB structure was demolished to make way for the modern campus 
that exists today. However, the cupola that stood atop the 
original school building has been refurbished. It was dedicated 
in May of 1999 and now holds a prominent position at the front of 
the KSB campus.

A further historic development enriching the lives of the blind 
was the establishment of the American Printing House for the 
Blind (APH) in 1858 by trustees of the Kentucky School for the 
Blind. These men recognized the importance of producing materials 
locally, and they recognized the need for a central publishing 
house for embossed materials for use by blind school children. 
This led the Kentucky General Assembly to establish the American 
Printing House for the Blind as a private, nonprofit institution. 
Originally it was located in rooms at the Kentucky School for the 
Blind, but as the Civil War encroached, the school was 
commandeered as a Union hospital. This slowed down the growth of 
the institution; however, private funds kept it going from 1860 
to 1865.

In 1879 grants from the U.S. government established the American 
Printing House for the Blind as the largest producer in the world 
of educational materials for blind children. In 1932 the official 
adoption of Braille as the standard embossed code made production 
of materials more efficient because there was no further need to 
produce materials in several different codes. Later APH added a 
recording studio and in 1928 produced the Reader's Digest and in 
1959 Newsweek in Talking-Book format. Other items such as writing 
utensils, math aids, and various educational tools followed.
APH is now located next door to the Kentucky School for the Blind 
on Frankfort Avenue. Several additions to the facility have been 
made over the years. One of the most recent additions is the APH 
Museum, which opened in October of 1994. The museum houses 
educational materials for the blind and artifacts that span the 
history of embossed printing.

In addition to the developments regarding education for the blind 
during the latter part of the nineteenth century, Louisville as a 
whole underwent substantial growth in commerce and industry. In 
the twentieth century such companies as General Electric, the 
Ford Motor Corporation, and United Parcel Service brought further 
enterprise to Louisville. As the twentieth century drew to a 
close, the workforce in the city began to shift from blue collar 
to white collar. Large corporations located their headquarters in 
Louisville. Some of these include Humana, Inc.; Capital Holding; 
and Kentucky Fried Chicken.

Now that you have a general history of the city as well as the 
developments in Louisville specific to the blind, it's important 
to learn a bit about Louisville's most famous tradition. On the 
first Saturday in May the eyes of the world look to Louisville's 
Churchill Downs for the world-renowned Run for the Roses, 
otherwise known as the Kentucky Derby. This is one of the most 
famous horse races in the world.

Churchill Downs was established by Colonel M. Lewis Clark in 
1875, and the first Kentucky Derby was run on May 17 that year. 
Clark chose the track site three miles from the city center 
because he could lease this land from his uncles, John and Henry 
Churchill. In the 1890's a new grandstand was built on the 
western side of the track. It was encompassed by the imposing 
twin spires that have come to symbolize the Kentucky Derby, as 
well as Churchill Downs itself. The twentieth century brought 
notoriety to Churchill Downs, and the Kentucky Derby grew into 
"the greatest two minutes in sports."

This is only a glimpse of the city of Louisville's vibrant 
history. We of the National Federation of the Blind of Kentucky 
look forward to hosting you in 2002, when we will continue to 
make our own history--Federation style.
**********
**********
[PHOTO/CAPTION: The exhibit hall is one of the most popular convention 
attractions. Pictured here are a number of folks checking out the Independent 
Living Aids display.]
2002 Convention Attractions
**********
From the Editor: Every year's National Convention is an 
absolutely unique event. The agenda items, the exhibits, the new 
friends and business acquaintances: all these give each 
convention its own character and significance. Some activities 
lend a luster to the convention in part because they do take 
place every year and provide helpful fixed points in the whirl of 
events. In this category are the meetings of the Resolutions 
Committee and the Board of Directors, the annual banquet, and the 
many seminars and workshops of the various divisions and 
committees. Here is a partial list of activities being planned by 
a number of Federation groups during the 2002 Convention, July 3 
through 9. Presidents of divisions, committee chairpeople, and 
event presenters have provided the information. The pre-
convention agenda will list the locations of all events taking 
place before convention registration on Thursday, July 4. The 
convention agenda will contain listings of all events taking 
place beginning that day.
**********
**********
The Agriculture and Equestrian Interest Group
by Fred Chambers
**********
Growing by leaps and bounds, we are organizing to become an 
official division of the National Federation of the Blind. You 
are invited to be at the founding meeting for the Agriculture and 
Equestrian Division. Come elect officers, snack on local produce, 
network, share stories, and meet some locals. Kentucky is one of 
the eighteen states with an AgrAbility Project. You'll hear from 
advisors and participating farmers. Learn about resources you can 
tap into to start or expand a career in agriculture's myriad 
fields. Find out more about AgrAbility by visiting 
<www.agrabilityusa.org>.

Always a highlight and a bargain, our Louisville agriculture and 
equestrian tour is on Sunday, July 7, 1:00 to 6:00 p.m. We're 
still finalizing details, but count on horses as a major feature. 
Our past tours have included horseback riding and touring 
stables, carriage barns, thoroughbred ranches, urban organic 
farms, microbreweries, and much more. Send your $20 deposit to 
President Diane Starrin.

In the event of a sellout, deposits from the unlucky will be 
refunded. Reservations will be accepted up to Monday, June 17, 
2002. Keep reading the Braille Monitor for developments. The 
total tour price should be under $50. As usual, prices are 
subject to change. We will try our best to satisfy all 
respondents. To make your reservations, send a check or money 
order made out to Starrin Enterprises in the amount of $20 for 
each tour participant. Be sure to include phone, address, and e-
mail address, as well as your particular areas of interest.
**********
President, Rancher, and Riding Instructor
Diane Starrin
Starrin Enterprises
1042 Hawthorne Street
Redding, California 96002
Phone: (530) 223-9084
**********
Tour Coordinator and Aquaculturist
Fred Chambers
Phone: (760) 505-8500
e-mail: <regenerative@earthlink.net>
**********
**********
BLIND, Inc., Karaoke Night
by Joyce Scanlan
**********
This year, at the National Convention in Louisville, don't miss 
your chance to witness a rare and riveting karaoke performance by 
none other than vocalist extraordinaire Dr. Marc Maurer! Will he 
sing country? Broadway? Disco? Swing? Rap? Come find out for 
yourself on Wednesday, July 3, from 8:00 to midnight, at Karaoke 
Night! This fun-filled event is hosted by BLIND, Inc., and 
admission is only $5. There will be door prizes galore, as well 
as the best karaoke around by Federationists from all over the 
country--and maybe even a performance by you. Come join us.
**********
**********
Blind Industrial Workers of America
by Ken Staley
**********
The Blind Industrial Workers of America will conduct its business 
meeting on Friday, July 5, at the 2002 convention.
**********
**********
[PHOTO/CAPTION: Kids enjoy a Braille version of the game Twister at the 
Braille Carnival.]
The Kenneth Jernigan Braille Carnival for Children
Back by Popular Demand
by Melody Lindsey
**********
Once again the National Organization of Parents of Blind Children 
will host a Braille Carnival for children between the ages of 
five and twelve. This exciting and entertaining event will take 
place on Wednesday, July 3, from 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 noon.
The activities of the Braille Carnival are designed to promote 
curiosity about Braille and the many fun and creative ways in 
which it can be used. Both sighted and blind kids will discover 
fun games and activities. In addition, there will also be 
activities for children with multiple disabilities.

In order to make this event successful, we need affiliates, 
chapters, and organizations to sponsor activities at the 
carnival. If you are interested in doing this, please contact 
Melody Lindsey, coordinator of the Braille Carnival, at (616) 
388-2686. The deadline for requesting space for an activity is 
June 17, 2002, or when all spaces are filled.

We can't wait to show you how much fun Braille can be. Don't miss 
your opportunity to participate in this creative event 
highlighting the advantages of reading and writing Braille. Come 
with lots of energy and enthusiasm for working with kids.
**********
**********
Braille Carnival Buddies Needed
by Robin House
**********
Once again the Braille Carnival is coming to the 2002 National 
Convention of the National Federation of the Blind in Louisville, 
Kentucky. Plans are already underway to ensure a quality event. 
But we need your help. The Braille Carnival offers many 
activities for blind and sighted children to explore while their 
parents attend meetings. Think about it; wouldn't you prefer to 
be at the Braille Carnival? We are looking for good people to be 
role models and buddies for these children from 9:00 a.m. to 
12:00 noon on Wednesday, July 3.

Braille Carnival buddies are responsible for guiding children 
through the maze of games and activities at the Braille Carnival. 
State affiliates and divisions sponsor unique Braille activities 
for children. Games of chance and skill will challenge children 
of all ages and their buddies. The purpose of the Braille 
Carnival is to increase Braille awareness in fun and creative 
ways.

If you are available and interested in being a buddy to a child 
or children at the Braille Carnival, please contact Robin House 
at (314) 524-7308 or by e-mail at <RobinLHous@aol.com>. If you 
enjoy working with children, this is a great opportunity, 
rewarding to all participants. More details will be provided to 
those who reply, including an organizational meeting prior to the 
Braille Carnival.

The Braille Carnival is sponsored by the National Organization of 
Parents of Blind Children, a division of the National Federation 
of the Blind.
**********
**********
Committee on Associates
by Tom Stevens
**********
The Committee on Associates will meet on Friday evening, July 5, 
to hear how a cotton picker gained upward mobility. The Committee 
will also consider goals for 2003. Y'all come!
**********
**********
Correspondence Committee
by Jerry Whittle
**********
Newsletter editors and others interested in editing are cordially 
invited to this meeting. We often discuss the nuts and bolts of 
editing such as sentence structure, formatting, effective fonts, 
grammar and punctuation, and graphic design. Everyone with 
editing responsibilities is encouraged to attend.
**********
**********
Deaf-Blind Division
by Joseph Naulty
**********
As has been the case during the past several years, the Deaf-
Blind Division will conduct both a seminar for those interested 
in deaf-blind issues and a general business meeting at this 
year's convention. The seminar will take place Friday evening, 
July 5, from 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. The business meeting will 
occur at the same time on Sunday evening, July 7. Election of 
officers will take place during this meeting, but Joseph Naulty 
will not be a candidate for President. Please come and help 
determine the division's leadership for the coming term of 
service.
**********
**********
Diabetes Action Network Seminar
by Ed Bryant
**********
At the 2002 convention of the National Federation of the Blind in 
Louisville, Kentucky, our Diabetes Action Network will have its 
seminar and business meeting on Saturday, July 6, from 7:00 to 
9:00 p.m.

Our keynote speaker will be podiatrist Dr. Kenneth B. Rehm, DPM, 
whose practice is limited to diabetes and the feet--which is also 
the subject of his presentation. There will be plenty of time for 
your questions.

Once again we will have our "Make the President Pay" diabetes 
quiz game, and I will give a nice donation to the division for 
each right answer. Our seminar is free and open to the public. 
Its room location will be posted in the Agenda (which is provided 
when you register for the convention).
**********
**********
[PHOTO/CAPTION: Andrew Wai of Pennsylvania examines tactile artwork on the 
wall of the exhibit hall.]
Educators of Blind Children
by Gail Wagner
**********
If you will be attending the National Convention, let's get 
together and chat. We will have an informal, quick get-together 
Thursday, July 4, in the morning to see who is attending and to 
share stories. Contact Gail Wagner, <swagkat@worldnet.att.net>, 
if you plan on coming. At the Galt House Hotel, contact Gail 
Wagner's room for more details on time and location. Hope to see 
you there.
**********
**********
Ham Radio Group
by D. Curtis Willoughby
**********
In accord with long-standing tradition, the first meeting of the 
2002 convention will be the Emergency Preparedness Seminar 
conducted by the NFB Ham Radio Group. The seminar will be held at 
7:30 a.m. on Wednesday, July 3. We will discuss frequencies to be 
used during the convention, especially those to be used in the 
event of an emergency call-out. We will also discuss those 
architectural features of the convention hotels and other 
information that NFB hams need to know if an emergency response 
is necessary.

Any Louisville hams willing to do a little frequency scouting 
before the convention are asked to contact Curtis Willoughby, 
KA0VBA (303) 424-7373, <ka0vba@dimensional.com>.

The Ham Radio Group has a service project to serve the Federation 
by handling the distribution of the special FM receivers to allow 
hearing-impaired conventioneers to hear a signal directly from 
the public address system, which is much easier to understand 
than the sound that normal hearing aids pick up in a meeting. 
These same receivers are used to allow Spanish speakers (those 
who do not understand English fluently) to hear a Spanish 
translation of the convention and the banquet.

We will take some time at the Emergency Preparedness Seminar to 
prepare for this project as well. It is important that all Group 
members willing to help come to the seminar. The annual business 
meeting of the NFB Ham Radio Group will be held at noon on 
Monday, July 8.
**********
**********
Human Services Division
by Julie Deden
**********
If you work in a human services field or are interested in a 
career in the area of human services, do not miss the divisional 
meeting to be held on Friday, July 5, from 1:30 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. 
Some of the topics to be discussed will include unusual careers 
in the profession, professional testing for licensure, 
administering psychometric tests, finding an internship in 
graduate school, management principles, and much more. We look 
forward to seeing you there.
**********
**********
International Braille and Technology Center
Technology Seminars for Everyone
by Curtis Chong, NFB Director of Technology
**********
The International Braille and Technology Center for the Blind is 
pleased to announce that we will sponsor technology-related 
seminars at the 2002 convention of the National Federation of the 
Blind. These seminars are designed to appeal to computer users 
with a wide range of skills and experience. There will be 
presentations for beginners, intermediate users, and people who 
really want to delve into highly specific technical issues. The 
seminars will be held on Wednesday, July 3. In all there will be 
eight ninety-minute sessions, each of which will be held in one 
of two rooms. Everyone is welcome.

Here is the tentative schedule. Please remember that the final 
schedule will appear in your pre-convention agenda, which you 
will be able to get once you check into the Galt House Hotel.
SESSIONS 1 and 2: 8:30 to 10:00 a.m.

Configuring Windows for Screen-Access Programs (beginning and 
intermediate users)

Getting Linux to Talk (advanced and highly technical users)
SESSIONS 3 and 4: 10:30 to noon

Making E-Mail More Speech-Friendly (for beginning users of 
Outlook Express and Microsoft Outlook e-mail programs)

The Ins and Outs of Sound Forge and CD Mastering (advanced users)
SESSIONS 5 and 6: 1:00 to 2:30 p.m.

A Beginner's Guide to Books On-Line (beginning and intermediate 
users)

An Internet Adventure (intermediate and advanced users)
SESSIONS 7 and 8: 3:00 to 4:30 p.m.

Braille Translation and Formatting (for serious users of Duxbury 
for Windows Braille translation software)

NFB-Net Training Seminar (for beginning and intermediate users)
**********
**********
Job Seekers Take Notice
**********
Once again Job Opportunities for the Blind (JOB), BLIND, Inc., 
the Colorado Center for the Blind, the Louisiana Center for the 
Blind, and JOB employer partners will sponsor the annual Job Fair 
and JOB seminar at the NFB convention in Louisville. Bring your 
resume (at least fifteen copies) and job-hunting ideas to the 
convention and learn how to get the job of your dreams.
Because the opening gavel for the convention is on Saturday, July 
6, this year, we have had to change the order of these two 
events. The Job Fair will be on Wednesday, July 3, from 2:00 to 
5:00 p.m., with registration beginning at 1:30 p.m. The JOB 
Seminar will be on tour day, Sunday, July 7, from 1:00 to 4:00 
p.m., with registration beginning at 12:30 p.m. Job seekers 
should dress for success in jackets and ties for men and business 
suits or dresses for women. Also they should ensure that resumes 
are current.

This year we are using a new system. BLIND, Inc., has overall 
responsibility for coordinating the Job Fair and seminar, with 
specific responsibilities for the Job Fair handled by the 
Louisiana Center for the Blind and seminar by the Colorado Center 
for the Blind. Invitations have gone out to employers, and the 
agenda for the JOB Seminar is under construction.

If you have ideas or suggestions for the seminar, please contact 
Dick Davis, Assistant Director for Employment Programs at BLIND, 
Inc. His phone numbers are (612) 872-0100 and (800) 597-9558, or 
you can e-mail him at <ddavis@blindinc.org>.
**********
**********
Louisiana Center for the Blind Players Present
by Jerry Whittle
**********
The Louisiana Center for the Blind Players present First Step 
Forward, an original play about a blind minister who works in a 
homeless shelter in New Orleans. Tickets for both evening 
performances on Friday evening, July 5, are $5, and all proceeds 
go to support the summer training program for blind children at 
the Louisiana Center for the Blind.
**********
**********
National Association of the Blind
in Communities of Faith
by Robert Parrish
**********
It is hard to believe that another annual convention of the 
National Federation of the Blind is fast approaching. The 
leadership of the National Association of the Blind in 
Communities of Faith is hard at work making plans for division 
activities.

Over the past few years the Communities of Faith Division has 
held a seminar encouraging blind people to become fully included 
in their faith communities. At these seminars topics ranging from 
"getting beyond healing" to "angels of mercy and healing" have 
been addressed. These seminars have proven to be outstanding as 
well as informative. The seminar for this year will be no 
exception.

The topic this year is "Being Empowered and Progressive." We 
chose this theme because, while blind people are a part of 
various faith groups and traditions, they often lack the tools 
and confidence to give service to the community and its 
activities. Actually, a few days ago a member of this division 
from West Virginia commented on the fact that many blind people 
wish to teach Sunday school but lack the skills and tools to do 
so. The seminar for this year will address such questions as 
these. Our hope is that blind people from every faith tradition 
will be more effective and empowered in whatever religious 
activities they pursue.

Communities of Faith will also be taking leadership in the 
convention devotionals. As is the case with the seminar, please 
consult your convention bulletin for times and location. These 
interfaith devotionals are open to all. I am looking for 
participants. If you can sing, play, do liturgical dance, preach, 
chant, or engage in any other worshipful activity, please feel 
free to call me. My phone number is (919) 250-0998.

I hope that you will all have the best convention yet and hope 
that you will have the opportunity to be with us during the 
Communities of Faith activities. See you in Louisville.
**********
**********
The National Association of Blind Entrepreneurs
by Marie Cobb
**********
The National Association of Blind Entrepreneurs will conduct a 
seminar on Wednesday, July 3, featuring people who have been 
successful in their own businesses. We will also have a session 
on the importance of funding and mentoring during and after the 
establishment of a new business.

Registration will begin at 8:15 a.m., and the session will start 
promptly at 9:00 a.m. We will aim at adjourning by 4:00 p.m. We 
will have some very interesting business owners from whom we have 
never heard. Some of them have rather unusual occupations.
**********
**********
National Association of Blind Lawyers
by Scott LaBarre
**********
As the Louisville Convention draws near, we in the National 
Association of Blind Lawyers are preparing to have some great 
activities in the city that hosts some famous horse race or 
other. First I would like to invite all of you to join us in 
Louisville to take part in the largest meeting of blind lawyers 
and legal professionals held anywhere in the country. The 
National Association of Blind Lawyers will meet Friday, July 5, 
2002, from 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. at the Galt House in downtown 
Louisville as part of the sixty-second annual convention of the 
National Federation of the Blind.

We will discuss many exciting topics on that afternoon. Speaking 
from their expertise, lawyers will give an update on the current 
status of laws affecting the blind. We will hear reports on 
various advocacy matters in which the Federation has been 
involved throughout the last year. We expect that officials from 
the American Bar Association, Kentucky Bar Association, and 
Louisville Bar Association will address the group about what's 
new and exciting in the organized bar of the nation and of 
Kentucky. Experienced practitioners will offer strategies on how 
best to conduct various types of cases.

We will share strategies and techniques about how to secure the 
best possible job in the legal field. We expect to hear from on-
line legal research company representatives, in particular those 
from West Group, about the latest developments in on-line 
research and how the blind can access this important research 
tool. We will have a discussion about the recent challenges being 
brought against the ADA, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, 
IDEA, and other similar federal laws. We expect to have guest 
speakers from the United States Department of Justice, Equal 
Employment Opportunity Commission, and other federal agencies. 
This and much, much more will take place at our annual meeting in 
Louisville.
**********
Reception
**********
As NABL President I am also pleased to announce that we will be 
hosting our fifth annual reception after the NABL meeting for 
blind lawyers, law students, and legal professionals. This 
reception will give us the opportunity to get to know each other 
and share ideas. Blind law students will be able to learn how 
their predecessors did it. Practicing professionals will learn 
new tips from their colleagues.

With our regular meeting, the mock trial, and the reception, the 
National Association of Blind Lawyers plans to be busy in 
Louisville. Make your plans now and join us there.
**********
**********
Mock Trial
by Scott LaBarre
**********
The National Association of Blind Lawyers will sponsor the Fifth 
Annual Mock Trial at the 2002 Convention. This trial will reenact 
a recent Federation case. Federation lawyers will be pitted 
against each other arguing the merits of the two positions. We 
will relive the Norwegian Cruise Lines case from last year in 
which two Federationists, Joy and Robert Stigile of California, 
were told that they had to sign waivers releasing NCL from all 
liability, have a non-disabled person cruise with them in their 
cabin, obtain extra insurance, and have a doctor certify that 
they could travel. Keep in mind that this was supposed to be 
their honeymoon cruise.

A lawsuit was filed in the United States District Court for the 
Southern District of Florida. This case was never tried to a jury 
because the parties negotiated a conclusive settlement, but the 
mock trial will assume that the case eventually went the whole 
route. Watch the fireworks go up as your favorite Federation 
lawyers strut their legal stuff.

You, the audience, will serve as the jury. This year's trial 
promises to be as entertaining and thought-provoking as the past 
trials. A nominal charge of $5 per person will benefit the 
National Association of Blind Lawyers. The trial will take place 
on Thursday afternoon, July 4, at 4:30 p.m. somewhere in the 
convention hotel. Consult the convention agenda for the exact 
room.
**********
**********
National Association of Blind Merchants
by Kevan Worley
**********
Wednesday afternoon, July 3, at a time and place known only to a 
few dozen Federation Merchants, a secret assembly line will form 
at the Galt House Hotel to fill variety grab bags of snacks and 
candy. Yes, the Snack Pack is back, and conventioneers can 
purchase them at the Merchants' table beginning Thursday, July 4, 
in the Exhibit Hall. Get the energy you need and the goodies you 
like for only $5, and while you're at our table, we will give you 
a free drink, and you can buy a drawing ticket for the $1000 
drawing at the banquet Monday evening, July 8. 

The annual meeting of the National Association of Blind Merchants 
will take place Friday afternoon, July 5, at 1:00. Check the 
convention agenda for location. This year registration for our 
division meeting will begin approximately thirty minutes after 
adjournment of the Board of Directors meeting. If you are 
involved in the Randolph-Sheppard Program or operate a similar 
business, you won't want to miss this merchants' meeting.
On Sunday, July 7, from 7:00 until 8:30 pm, we invite you to our 
second annual Randolph-Sheppard Reception. Socialize, network, 
and learn more about Randolph-Sheppard opportunities. Check the 
convention agenda for location.
**********
**********
National Association of Blind Musicians
by Linda Mentink
**********
The National Association of Blind Musicians will hold a seminar 
Wednesday afternoon, July 3. This year we hope to have a 
conducting workshop.

Plans are not yet final for our annual meeting. It will be 
Thursday evening, July 4, at 7:00, with an opportunity to renew 
your membership or join for the first time beginning at 6:30. We 
will discuss starting a Web page, get an NLS update from Debbie 
Brown, and conduct elections.

Our annual Showcase of Talent will take place Saturday evening, 
July 6, beginning at 8:00. If you wish to participate, please 
follow these guidelines: (1) Sign up by 12:00 noon on the day of 
the Showcase. (2) Perform one number, no longer than four 
minutes. (3) If you are using a taped accompaniment, please have 
it cued up. Do not sing with the artist; you will be cut off 
while performing. (4) If you need an accompanist, please make 
arrangements before the Showcase. If you wish to register for the 
Showcase before the convention, contact Linda Mentink: 1740 
Tamarack Lane, Janesville, Wisconsin 53545-0952; telephone: (608) 
752-8749; e-mail: <lmentink@ticon.net>.

Membership dues are $5 per year. If you wish to renew your 
membership or become a member before the convention, please make 
your check payable to NABM and send it to Bee Hodgkiss, 1117 
Marquette, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55403.
**********
**********
National Association of Blind Office Professionals
by Lisa Hall
**********
The National Association of Blind Office Professionals will 
conduct its annual meeting on Wednesday, July 3, at the Galt 
House Hotel. Please consult your pre-convention agenda for room 
location. Registration will begin at 6:30 p.m., and the meeting 
begins at 7:00 p.m.

This year we will conduct election of officers, so please think 
about whom you would like to elect as your leaders for the coming 
year. We will have a chance to talk about office issues and other 
topics. The agenda is on its way to being put together, so now 
come one and all, and let's have a wonderful time.

Membership dues are $5. If anyone needs more information about 
our division, please contact Lisa Hall, President, National 
Association of Blind Office Professionals, 9110 Broadway, Apt. 
J-102, San Antonio, Texas 78217, or call her at (210) 829-4571, 
leave a voice mail at (210) 228-5161, or send an e-mail to 
<lehtex@concentric.net>. If you have MSN Messenger installed on 
your computer, you are welcome to add this information to your 
contact list. My address is <lehtex@concentric.net>, the same as 
my real e-mail address. See everyone at the 2002 NFB Convention 
in Louisville, Kentucky.
**********
**********
The National Association of Blind Piano Tuners
by Don Mitchell
**********
The annual meeting of the National Association of Blind Piano 
Tuners will be held on Friday, July 5, at 3:00 p.m. Please 
consult your convention agenda for room location. Annual dues are 
$10. If you are unable to attend our meeting, you may send your 
dues to Connie Ryan, Treasurer, 56 N. Extension Road, Apartment 
107, Mesa, Arizona 85201, home phone: (480) 890-8061, e-mail: 
<connie.ryan@gsa.gov>.
**********
**********
The National Association of Blind Rehabilitation Professionals
by Shawn Mayo
**********
The National Association of Blind Rehabilitation Professionals 
Division will hold our meeting Saturday, July 6, from 7:30 p.m. 
to 10:00 p.m. This year's program will include tips on grant-
writing, discussion of the reauthorization of the Rehabilitation 
Act, a look into how the workforce centers are affecting 
rehabilitation, and many more critical issues. Come help guide 
rehabilitation.

Due to our huge success at the Washington Seminar, the National 
Association of Blind Rehabilitation Professionals will once again 
conduct our "Write Your Own IPE" Workshop on Friday, July 5, from 
6:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. Whether you are a student who is writing 
or amending your IPE, a rehabilitation counselor, or an advocate 
wanting to inform others back in your state, this seminar is for 
you! Items covered include history of the Rehabilitation Act, 
clarification of laws and federal directives, explanations of the 
rights and responsibilities for both the customer and counselor, 
plus much more. We will have time to discuss specific concerns. 
Be sure to bring writing materials.

Please preregister with Shawn Mayo, President, NABRP, by calling 
(612) 872-0100, or e-mail her at <smmayo@att.net> (Please put IPE 
in the subject line.) The registration fee of $5 can be paid at 
the seminar.

Space is limited to twenty-five. If you are unable to 
preregister, you may register at the time of the seminar and will 
be able to attend, space permitting.
**********
**********
[PHOTO/CAPTION: Shawn Mayo and President Maurer make a bet during the student 
division meeting.]
National Association of Blind Students
by Angela Wolfe
**********
The National Association of Blind Students will be having our 
annual student division meeting on Thursday, July 4, from 7:00 
p.m. to 10:00 p.m. We will also be hosting Monte Carlo Night on 
Sunday, July 7, from 8:00 p.m. until midnight. This year it will 
be bigger and better than ever. Come support the students and have 
fun at the same time.
**********
**********
National Association of Guide Dog Users
by Gigi Firth
**********
As has become traditional, the National Association of Guide Dog 
Users will hold two meetings: a business meeting and the popular 
seminars, "A Guide Dog In Your Life." The business meeting will 
take place from 6:00 to 10:00 p.m. on Wednesday, July 3. 
Registration will occur from 6:00 to 7:00 p.m., and the meeting 
will begin promptly at 7:00. All division officers and board 
members are up for re-election this year. The seminar night will 
be Saturday, July 6, also from 6:00 to 10:00 p.m. Roughly from 
6:00 to 8:00 p.m. we will hold a seminar for those interested in 
learning more about working with guide dogs. From 8:00 to 10:00 
p.m. will be the seminar for experienced guide dog handlers. Of 
course everyone is welcome at both seminars, and it is always 
helpful for new people to have veteran guide dog users on hand to 
share their experiences. We are still finalizing details of the 
meetings, but there is sure to be something to appeal to everyone 
with an interest in guide dogs. We look forward to a great crowd 
at both the business meeting and the seminars.
**********
**********
National Association to Promote the Use of Braille
by Nadine Jacobson
**********
It's already time for our National Convention, and that means it's 
time for our splendid annual NAPUB meeting. For those who are new 
to the convention, NAPUB stands for the National Association to 
Promote the Use of Braille. The meetings we have each year are 
full of information, excitement, and enthusiasm.

This year the meeting will be held on Friday, July 5, at 7:30 p.m. 
We will be sharing results of the Braille Readers Are Leaders 
contest as well as discussing the Unified English Braille Code 
(UEBC) and many other matters. This is the place to be for people 
who want to be informed about Braille. We have some new Braille 
products to talk about and show to all the members. We look 
forward to seeing all of you there.

If you have any questions about the meeting or if you would like 
to have time on the agenda, please contact Nadine Jacobson, 5805 
Kellogg Avenue, Edina, Minnesota 55424, telephone: (952)927-7694, 
e-mail: <nadine.jacobson@visi.com>.
**********
**********
[PHOTO/CAPTION: Three kids take advantage of the wide range of toys in NFB 
Camp.]
NFB Camp: It's More than Child's Play
by Carla McQuillan
**********
During convention week children between the ages of six weeks and 
twelve years are invited to join in the fun and festivities of NFB 
Camp. NFB Camp offers more than just childcare; it is an 
opportunity for our blind and sighted children to meet and develop 
lifelong friendships. Our activity schedule is filled with games, 
crafts, and special performances designed to entertain, educate, 
and delight. If you are interested in having your children 
participate in this year's program, please complete and return the 
registration form provided. Preregistration with payment on or 
before June 15, 2002, is mandatory for participation in NFB Camp. 
Space is limited, and each year some families have to be turned 
away.

About the Staff: NFB Camp is organized and supervised by Carla 
McQuillan, the executive director of Main Street Montessori 
Association, operating two schools, parent-education courses, and 
a teacher-training program. Carla is the mother of two children, 
the President of the National Federation of the Blind of Oregon, 
and a member of the Board of Directors of the National Federation 
of the Blind.

Michelle Ros is this year's activities director for NFB Camp. 
Michelle is a Montessori teacher employed by Main Street 
Montessori Association. Carla and Michelle will supervise a staff 
of experienced childcare workers and volunteers.

Activities and Special Events: The children are divided into 
groups according to age: infants and toddlers, preschoolers, and 
school-aged children. Each camp room is equipped with a variety of 
age-appropriate toys, games, and books; and children will enjoy 
daily art projects. Blind teens will come in to read stories in 
Braille, and we will sing, dance, and play instruments with blind 
singer/songwriter Daniel Lamonds. In addition, the school-aged 
children will make excursions to local attractions of interest. On 
the final day of NFB Camp we will conduct a big toy sale--brand 
new toys at bargain prices.

Banquet Night: NFB Camp will provide dinner and activities during 
the banquet. The cost for banquet activities is $15 per child in 
addition to other camp fees.

NFB Camp will be open during general convention sessions, division 
and committee meeting day, and the evening of the banquet. Plenty 
of teens are always available to babysit during evening and 
lunchtime meetings. The schedule this year will be as follows:
**********
Wednesday, July 3, 8:30 a.m.-5:30 p.m.
(You are responsible for lunch)
Thursday, July 4, Camp is closed.
Friday, July 5, 8:30 a.m.-5:30 p.m.
(You are responsible for lunch)
Saturday, July 6, 9:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m.
 and 1:30 p.m.-5:30 p.m.
(You are responsible for lunch)
Sunday, July 7, 8:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m.
Monday, July 8, 8:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m.
and 1:30 p.m.-5:30 p.m.
(You are responsible for lunch)
Tuesday, July 9, 8:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m.
and 1:30-5:30 p.m.
(You are responsible for lunch)
**********
These times may vary, depending on the timing of the actual 
convention sessions. NFB Camp will open thirty minutes before the 
beginning gavel and close thirty minutes after session recess.
**********
Fees: for the entire Week (not including banquet), first child 
$80, siblings $60 each. By the day, each child (does not include 
banquet), $20, banquet, $15 per child.
**********
Please use the NFB Camp preregistration form provided.
**********
**********

NFB CAMP PREREGISTRATION FORM
Completed form and fees must be received on or before June 15, 
2002.
**********
Parent's Name__________________________________________________
Address________________________________________________________
City ____________________ State ____ Zip _______ Phone ________
**********
Child(ren)'s Name(s)
________________________________Date of Birth _________ Age ____
_______________________________ Date of Birth _________ Age ____
_______________________________ Date of Birth _________ Age ____
**********
Include description of any disabilities/allergies we should know 
about:
_________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________
**********
Who, other than parents, is allowed to pick up your child?
_________________________________________________________________
**********
Per Week: $80 first child; $60 siblings, # of children _____, $ 
________
(Does not include banquet)
Per Day:$20 per child per day, # days ____ x $20/child$ ________
(Does not include banquet)
**********
Banquet: $15 per child,   # of children _____ x $15 $ _______
Total Due $ ________
**********
Make checks payable to and return forms to National Federation of 
the Blind of Oregon, 5005 Main Street, Springfield, Oregon 97478, 
(541) 726-6924
**********
**********
National Federation of the Blind in Computer Science
by Curtis Chong
**********
This year's meeting of the National Federation of the Blind in 
Computer Science (NFBCS) will be held on Friday, July 5, from 1:00 
p.m. to 5:00 p.m. at the Galt House Hotel in Louisville, Kentucky. 
Computer novices should be forewarned that program items at these 
meetings tend to be more than a little technical. However, for 
many of us they are nonetheless quite fascinating. Here is a 
preliminary list of topics to be discussed at the meeting:
1. A growing number of blind computer programmers are moving into 
the world of Java. We will therefore feature a panel of blind 
programmers talking about their experiences creating and testing 
Java programs.

2. We will hear from Hewlett-Packard and learn about an innovative 
yet accessible technology it is developing for a blind person 
using a screen-access program to interact with the control panel 
of an HP printer. While nothing has been released to the general 
market yet, some of the testing--done in part with our 
International Braille and Technology Center for the Blind--looks 
quite promising.

3. Macromedia, makers of the Flash product (used on many Web sites 
to display animated pictures) and Dream Weaver (a Web-development 
tool) will, by the time of our meeting, have some exciting news to 
share about its efforts to promote accessibility to its software. 
Heretofore Flash has been an unpleasant word when one considers 
access by the blind to many Web sites.

4. We should also be hearing from Microsoft, which continues to be 
a major player in our technological lives. It will, we hope, 
update us on its continuing efforts to ensure access to the 
products it develops.

As I say, this is but a preliminary list. Other items will almost 
certainly be added to the program as the time of the meeting 
approaches. And remember, this is the year to elect NFBCS officers 
and Board members.

For more information about NFBCS and its upcoming meeting, contact 
Curtis Chong, President, National Federation of the Blind in 
Computer Science, 1800 Johnson Street, Baltimore, Maryland 21230, 
phone (410) 659-9314, extension 349, e-mail <CChong@nfb.org>.
**********
National Organization of Blind Educators
**********
by Sheila Koenig
**********
The National Organization of Blind Educators seminar offers an 
excellent opportunity for teachers and would-be teachers to 
network with blind people who are teaching in a wide range of 
grades and subjects. Though differences exist in classroom 
activities, all teachers share some fundamental professional 
duties. How do we manage student behavior? How do we assess 
student progress? How do we assert equal footing with our 
colleagues? During our seminar on Friday afternoon, July 5, you 
will have the opportunity to discuss the strategies and 
alternative techniques that enable blind people to be successful 
teachers. If you are interested in teaching as a career, please 
join us.
**********
**********
National Organization of the Senior Blind
by Christine Hall
**********
The National Organization of the Senior Blind will hold its annual 
division meeting on Thursday evening, July 4, from 6:30 to 10:00 
p.m. Please plan to be there at 6:30 because we will be 
registering people and collecting annual membership dues of $5. We 
want to get your name and address on our mailing list so you can 
receive our great newsletter and other announcements and 
publications as they become available.

We are beginning to put together our agenda, and judging from past 
experience--if I am not having a senior moment--our meeting will 
be filled with creative ideas, new information, and lots of fun, 
including hearing our proposed new theme song. If you have any 
questions regarding the senior division or the annual division 
meeting, contact Christine Hall, President, (505) 268-3895; Ray 
McGeorge, Vice President, at (303) 321-4268; or Paul Dressell, 
Treasurer, at (513)481-7662.
**********
**********
Public Employees Division
by John Halverson
**********
The Public Employees Division will meet again this year in 
Louisville. Please check the agenda for time on Friday, July 5, 
and location. This should prove to be an exciting meeting. Our 
main speaker is Sandra Williams, the Affirmative Action Officer 
for the City of Louisville. Sandra Williams happens to be blind.
During last year's convention Federationists working for Social 
Security met to discuss problems and concerns. As a result letters 
to regional Social Security Commissioners were written. We will 
discuss the positive results of our efforts. Finally, blind Social 
Security employees are being promoted to Claims Representative. We 
will have a discussion of how these promotions happened.

If you have ideas for additional agenda items and want to 
contribute to our meeting, please email me at 
<Johnh50@earthlink.net>. See you in Louisville.
**********
**********
Science and Engineering Division
by John Miller
**********
Come participate in the Science and Engineering Division 
activities at the National Convention in Louisville. Once again 
our division meeting appears in the convention agenda at a 
different time from the NFB in Computer Science Meeting so that 
people may choose to attend both. Our meeting will spotlight how 
blind people use scientific instrumentation independently. Also 
come learn about the innovative science careers that division 
members are pursuing right now.

RSVP for the Science and Engineering Networking Breakfast 7:00 
a.m. Saturday, July 6. Contact John Miller for the Networking 
Breakfast location. To RSVP, contact John Miller by e-mail: 
<jmiller@ucsd.edu>, phone: (858) 587-3975, or mail: 8720 Villa La 
Jolla Drive 118, La Jolla, California 92037.
**********
**********
Social Security Seminar
by James McCarthy
**********
An outreach seminar, "Social Security and Supplemental Security 
Income: What Applicants, Advocates, and Recipients Should Know," 
will take place on Sunday afternoon, July 7. The purpose of this 
seminar, which will be conducted by the National Federation of the 
Blind, is to provide information on Social Security and 
Supplemental Security Income benefits for the blind, including 
recent developments such as the Ticket to Work and Expedited 
Reinstatement. Seminar presenters will be Jim McCarthy, Assistant 
Director of Governmental Affairs for the National Federation of 
the Blind, and his wife Terri Uttermohlen, also an NFB member and 
a training and technical assistance liaison employed by Virginia 
Commonwealth University to provide training and technical 
assistance to work incentives specialists as part of a nationwide 
project.
**********
**********
[PHOTO/CAPTION: Blind and sighted teens get ready for the scavenger hunt. Left 
to right, they are Tracy Yeager (VA); Michelle Povinelli (VA); Stephanie 
Povinelli (VA); Richard Solis (TX); and Thomas Panaro (NJ).]
Teen Hospitality Room
by Gail Wagner
**********
Attention all teens! This year at convention we will again have 
our Teen Hospitality Room. This is a great place for all teens 
ages twelve to eighteen, blind or sighted, to get together, hang 
out, meet friends, play games, eat, listen to music, and just have 
fun.

The location will be a suite in the East Tower. It will be open on 
July 4 in the afternoon, July 5 in the afternoon, July 6 at noon 
and again in the evening, and July 8 and 9 at the noon hour. While 
at the convention, contact Gail Wagner's room for more 
information.

Adults--we need your help to monitor the room while it is open. 
Please contact Gail Wagner (505) 237-0544 or e-mail 
<swagkat@worldnet.att.net> if you can volunteer a few hours to 
chaperon discreetly.
Hope to see you there.
**********
**********
Travel and Tourism Group
by Stephanie Scott
Do you have dreams of traveling to exotic places? Well the Travel 
and Tourism Group wants to make your dreams a reality. Come meet 
with like-minded people at the NFB National Convention in 
Louisville at the Galt House Hotel, Wednesday, July 3, 2002, from 
5:00 to 6:00 p.m. We will discuss the development of a 
constitution for a division, election of the Board of Directors, 
and travel destinations. For more information call (404) 759-5513, 
or e-mail <STEPHANIELSCOTT@AOL.COM>.
**********
**********
Writers' Division
by Tom Stevens
**********
The NFB Writers Division will meet on Friday afternoon, July 5. We 
will have another stimulating program. The Division will also 
present a two-hour seminar during the afternoon of Wednesday, July 
3, on the subject of "Communication: The Cutting Edge for 
Persuasion and Motivation." We will feature a high-octane speaker; 
be alert for further announcements.
**********
**********
[PHOTO/CAPTION: The Ryan family from New Jersey walk down a hall at convention. 
Left to right they are younger brother James, mother Valerie, Conner using his 
cane, and father Edward.]
[PHOTO/CAPTION: Kirt Manwaring of Utah explores the open mouth of an alligator 
while his sister Kelsie watches.]
[PHOTO/CAPTION: Federationists of all ages including the very young enjoy 
dancing at hospitality night.]
The Serious Work of Play
NOPBC-Sponsored Activities for Parents and Kids
by Barbara Cheadle
**********
From the Editor: One of the most exciting strands of programming 
at NFB conventions today is the range of opportunities for 
families of blind children. The National Organization of Parents 
of Blind Children is planning another extraordinary group of 
seminars, workshops, discussions, and family activities for 
Louisville this summer. Here is the rundown as described by 
division president Barbara Cheadle:
**********
The average person might find this title a little exaggerated. But 
wildlife experts and early childhood professionals know better. 
Those lion cubs on television, who look so cute as they 
ferociously stalk and pounce on Mother's twitching tail, are 
developing, through play, the skills they will need for life in 
the wild. How well they learn these skills as they tumble, growl, 
and play their little cub games may mean the difference one day 
between a full stomach and starvation.

Although our culture has evolved far beyond the need for children 
to develop hunting and gathering skills for survival, play 
continues to be fundamental to the normal physical, emotional, and 
social development of our species. Serious? You bet it is! Through 
play children develop strength, muscle control, and dexterity; 
they learn what they can (and cannot) do with their bodies. 
Manipulation of toys lays the foundation for the myriad of 
physical skills needed in everyday life and on the job--skills 
like zipping a coat, using a hanger, unclogging a drain, using a 
power drill, unlocking a door, and yes, even typing on a computer 
keyboard. Playing house gives children a chance to practice the 
roles they will someday play as moms and dads. Playing with clay, 
cutting, pasting, and drawing pictures stimulates the imagination 
and encourages creativity. Outdoor games provide a foundation for 
good physical health and exercise habits, and team sports teach 
essential skills in working with others to achieve common goals--a 
crucial ability in today's business world.

Blind kids need this wide range of play experiences every bit as 
much as sighted kids. They need to run; crawl; jump; climb; slug, 
pitch, or bounce a ball; ride a bike; karate punch; and do 
cartwheels too. Do art, play tug-o-war, climb a rock wall--why 
not? But that's the rub. Too many times the answer to the question 
"Why not?" is "No, you can't." More often than not, that "No" is 
rooted in ignorance, low expectations, overprotection, 
misconceptions about blindness, or simply--in the face of so many 
educational needs--not enough time.

Well, the NOPBC will brook no why-not excuses this year at the 
2002 NFB Convention. Dr. Ralph Bartley, Superintendent of the 
Kentucky School for the Blind, has generously offered the full use 
of the campus (located just minutes from the convention hotel)--
including two gyms, a track, art classrooms, and a playground--for 
a full afternoon (2:00 to 6:00 p.m.) of play for the whole family 
on Wednesday, July 3.

But like all good recreation events this day will begin with a 
warm-up activity. Wednesday, July 3, seminar day, will begin with 
the usual NOPBC seminar general session at 9:00 a.m. (registration 
at 8:00 a.m.) in the Galt House Hotel. As was the case for the 
past two years, kids are invited to attend the first forty-five 
minutes of the general session to hear other blind youth speak 
about their experiences in sports or arts. At 9:45 a.m. the 
session will break briefly to allow children and youth ages four 
and up to depart for the Braille Carnival, also conducted in the 
hotel in a nearby meeting room.

As soon as that transition is complete, the general session will 
continue with lively presentations from blind adults, parents, and 
early childhood teachers about how to include blind and blind 
multiply-disabled children and youth in the full, rich range of 
play, recreation, and artistic activities available to their 
sighted peers. Among our guest speakers will be a representative 
from the Visually Impaired Preschool Services (VIPS) of 
Louisville. Parents will recognize the VIPS Newsletter as the 
source of many good articles reprinted in Future Reflections over 
the years.

At noon the general session and the Braille Carnival will 
adjourn. Parents will pick up children at the Braille Carnival or 
child-care (NFB Camp), then gather at the hotel entrance to board 
buses for the short ride--about two miles--to the Kentucky School 
for the Blind campus. This is not a field trip for the kids alone. 
The activities on the campus are for the entire family--all 
children, including teens, must be accompanied by a responsible 
adult.

On campus everyone will gather in the cafeteria for a box lunch 
and to review the afternoon's choices. Activities for the family 
are divided into four main catagories: Play in Early Childhood, 
Recreation and Sports, Arts and Crafts, and Cooking 
Demonstrations.

Play in Early Childhood: Stations, everyone-play stations, that 
is. Co-sponsored by the Louisville-based Visually Impaired 
Preschool (VIPS) program, this activity features interactive play 
stations for parents, babies, and toddlers. Parents will also have 
the opportunity to discuss early movement and travel with Joe 
Cutter, noted pediatric O&M specialist. [Note: This is not a 
childcare program. However, we have arranged for volunteers to 
provide limited childcare services on campus for babies of parents 
who wish an hour or two free to enjoy the other afternoon 
activities with their older children.]

Recreation and Sports: Dads, this is your kind of day. There will 
be something fun to do for everyone--kids and adults, blind or 
sighted. Although there will be some lecture opportunities 
discussing adaptations for P.E., for example, the real emphasis is 
on doing. Relay races, water fights, tug-o-war, a goal-ball 
clinic, track events, and maybe even a rock-climbing wall are just 
some of the many games and activities planned for the day. Oh, and 
to add to the fun and to create an equal playing field for all, 
sleepshades (blindfolds) will be provided for everyone. The events 
will be organized and conducted by blind adults and college 
students skilled in the various recreational activities. Again 
this activity requires that children be accompanied by a family 
member or other responsible adult. Debbie Bacon, a blind woman 
with extensive experience in organizing youth-enrichment programs 
for the Society for the Blind in Sacramento, will coordinate the 
recreation programs with assistance from Kenny Jones, former coach 
at the Kentucky School for the Blind, and Marla Palmer, NOPBC 
board member and recreation specialist.

Arts and Crafts: Coordinated by Angela Wolf, President of the 
National Association of Blind Students, this program is designed 
to provide a challenging art activity to kids approximately ages 
six and up. Angela Wolf, herself blind from birth, has directed 
art programs for blind children at the summer Buddy Program at the 
Louisiana Center for the Blind. Unlike the recreation activities, 
in this activity we will ask that parents leave their kids under 
the direction of Angela; her assistant, art teacher Amy Rich; and 
other volunteers. While the kids are busy doing art, parents can 
talk about art with blind artists such as sculptor Steve Handschu 
and participate in a presentation about art and tactile 
representations of art from Art Education for the Blind.

Cooking Demonstrations: An important component of play at a 
certain stage in a child's development is playing house. Of course 
kids and parents have to believe that homemaking skills, such as 
cooking, are practical and possible for blind people. In these 
demonstrations blind homemakers (two men and two women) will cook 
or bake a recipe from scratch while parents and kids watch and ask 
questions. The best part? Everyone gets to sample the product at 
the end.

The activities will begin at 2:00 p.m. and conclude with a wrap-up 
session back in the cafeteria at 5:30 p.m. Buses will depart for 
the hotel at 6:00 p.m. Water, drinks, and snacks will be available 
for children and adults throughout the afternoon. A nurse will 
also be on duty throughout the afternoon, compliments of the 
Kentucky School for the Blind. To the greatest extent possible we 
want to include all children in the recreation and art activities. 
This means it is crucial that parents preregister for this year's 
seminar. If your child has special needs and you are not certain 
whether he or she can participate in the activities of the day, 
please advise us immediately. To the extent that we have the 
resources and volunteers to do so, we will provide alternative 
activities if parents have preregistered and advised us of their 
child's special needs in advance.

Full as the day has been, it's not over yet. At 8:00 p.m. back at 
the hotel families can gather to talk and unwind at the NOPBC-
sponsored Family Hospitality. Teens can wrap the day up with 
special discussion groups at 8:30 p.m. (registration at 8:00 
p.m.). There will be a discussion group for blind teen women, one 
for blind teen men, and one for sighted siblings and children 
(teens) of blind parents. These kids-only--no parents allowed--
groups will be led by experienced volunteer youth leaders.
**********
Fees:
NOPBC Activities Fees:
$15, one adult plus child or children
$25, two adults plus child or children
$35, three adults (e.g., parents and grandparent) plus child or 
children
$10, one adult
If you preregister and mail payment by June 1, 2002, you can take 
$5 off your fee for early registration. The fee includes NOPBC 
membership and all activities associated with the Family Seminar 
Day on July 3: Braille Carnival, bus transportation, box lunch, 
snacks, activities at the Kentucky School for the Blind campus, 
Family Hospitality, and Teen Discussion Groups. It also includes 
all other NOPBC-sponsored workshops throughout the week. The NOPBC 
Activities Fee does not include NFB Convention registration, which 
is $10 per person (adult or child), or NFB Camp fees.
**********
NOPBC Schedule of Events for the rest of the week:
**********
Thursday, July 4
Cane Walk: This session will be repeated twice: 9:00-10:30 a.m. 
And 11:00 a.m.-12:30 p.m. Parents of blind kids of all ages 
(babies to teens), teachers, and blind kids can get hands-on 
experience in using a cane in the hotel under the guidance of 
volunteer instructors from the Louisiana Tech/Louisiana Center for 
the Blind O&M program and other volunteers. Joe Cutter, pediatric 
O&M specialist, will provide the demonstration for parents of pre-
school children.
**********
2:00 – 6:00 p.m. Teen Activity Room sponsored jointly by NOPBC and 
Blind Industries and Services of Maryland (BISM).
**********
Friday, July 5
1:00-5:00 p.m. Parent Power: NOPBC Annual Meeting.
**********
6:30-8:30 p.m. Follow-up Discussion Group for Blind Teen Women.
**********
Saturday, July 6
7:00-10:00 p.m. Creating the Perfect IEP: What Does the Law (IDEA) 
Require? An intensive workshop looking at the requirements of IDEA 
and how parents may use this information to write the best 
possible IEP for their child. There will also be some discussion 
about the IEP and transition planning for older youth.
**********
Sunday, July 7
2:00-6:00 p.m. Walking the Talk: Why Blind Kids Need to Use Canes. 
Drop-in anytime discussion group for parents, blind kids, and 
teachers. Joe Cutter, instructor and discussion leader. Videos, 
literature, cane demonstrations, questions and answers.
**********
2:00-6:00 p.m. Technology in the Classroom. This workshop will be 
repeated three times: 2:00-3:00, 3:30-4:30, and 5:00-6:00. Braille 
teachers team up with technology experts to discuss how and when 
to introduce various technology devices to blind and low-vision 
students. When should students learn to use an electronic 
notetaker? Computers? What is the role of low (or old) technology, 
such as the slate and stylus and Braille writer? When and how 
should students learn to use tactile graphics? How do students, 
teachers, and parents decide which device is best for what tasks?
**********
2:00-4:00 p.m. Beginning Braille for Parents. Drop-in anytime and 
get a free Braille lesson or demonstration. Discuss Braille-
instruction problems and solutions. Pick up literature: Braille 
contraction charts, sample Braille IEP goals, activities to 
promote Braille from the Braille Is Beautiful program, etc.
**********
2:00-6:00 p.m. Braille Storybook Hour. This activity for blind and 
sighted youngsters will be repeated three times: 2:00-3:00, 3:30-
4:30, and 5:00-6:00 p.m. Modeled after the Maryland Parents of 
Blind Children program, this storybook hour features a blind 
Braille reader, multiple copies of print-Braille storybooks for 
blind and sighted children to follow along in, Braille Buddies 
(Braille reading teens or adults), and an activity related to the 
theme of the storybook. The theme? Hats. The story time begins 
with a discussion of how different people read (print and 
Braille). Children are encouraged to read along silently or, if 
not yet readers, find the page numbers and turn the pages. After 
the story and a discussion about the story, children can look at 
and try on a whole table-full of different kinds of hats. This is 
not childcare for the afternoon. However, parents who are 
attending one of the above NOPBC-sponsored workshops may leave a 
child for one session with a responsible older sibling or a 
Braille Buddy, provided enough volunteers are available to assist.
**********
NOPBC 2002 Activities Preregistration
**********
Deadline: Must be postmarked no later than June 15, 2002
Because of the special activities on the campus of the Kentucky 
School for the Blind, we strongly urge families to preregister. 
We will take registrations at the door as we have space, but 
unless you preregister, we cannot guarantee that you will be able 
to participate in the activities of your choice.
**********
Adult Name (Please include first/last name and indicate 
relationship, e.g., parent, grandparent, guardian, teacher.)
1.
2.
3.
4.
Address
City, State, Zip
Telephone
E-mail
Please list children attending the Braille Carnival (BC), ages 4 
and up, and/or the Kentucky School for the Blind activities (all 
ages) (KSBA).
Name
Birth date
Vision & any other disabilities
Note: Please note any special needs or accommodations.
Example: Sally Doe. Jan 4, 94. Sally has albinism. Low vision, 
sensitive to light. Uses sunscreen. Will attend BC and KSBA.
**********
Fee enclosed. Make checks payable to NOPBC.
$15 for one adult plus child/children
$25 for 2 adults plus child/children
$35 for 3 adults (parents plus grandparent or other family member) 
plus child/children
$10, one adult
**********
$5 off, early registration (mail payment by June 1, 2002)
Full refund available if requested before June 28, 2002, or under 
special circumstances.
**********
The NOPBC Activities Fee includes NOPBC membership and all 
activities associated with the Family Seminar Day on July 3: 
Braille Carnival, bus transportation, box lunch, snacks, 
activities at the Kentucky School for the Blind campus, Family 
Hospitality, and Teen Discussion Groups. It also includes all 
other NOPBC-sponsored workshops throughout the week. The NOPBC 
Activities Fee does not include NFB Convention registration, which 
is $10 per person (adult or child), or NFB Camp fees.
**********
Mail Registration and Payment to:
NOPBC Preregistration
c/o Marla Palmer
442 West Creekview Drive
Centerville, Utah 84014
**********
Questions? Contact:
Barbara Cheadle, President, NOPBC
Day: (410) 659-9314 ext. 360
Evening: (410) 737-2224
E-mail: BCheadle@nfb.org
Fax: (410) 685-5653
**********
**********
[PHOTO/CAPTION: Curtis Willoughby staffs the FM equipment table at convention.]
Hearing Enhancement and Spanish Translation
Available At National Convention
Spanish Translators Needed
by D. Curtis Willoughby
**********
From the Editor: Curtis Willoughby is a member of the NFB's 
Research and Development Committee and head of our Ham Radio 
Interest Group. Here is his announcement:
**********
Again this year at National Convention we will offer special 
arrangements for severely hearing-impaired people attending 
convention sessions and the banquet. This will consist of 
transmission of the public address system signal over a special 
short-range radio transmitter for the severely hearing-impaired. A 
Spanish language service will also be offered to Spanish-speaking 
people who cannot easily understand English. The special receivers 
required for these services will also be provided.

In cooperation with several state affiliates (notably Colorado, 
Louisiana, Utah, and Virginia), the NFB will provide special 
receivers for these special transmissions to those needing them. 
Receiver-lending will be managed by the Ham Radio Group and will 
be operated from a table just outside the meeting room. A deposit 
of $25, cash only, will be required of anyone wishing to check out 
one of the Federation's receivers. The deposit will be returned if 
the receiver is returned to the check-out table in good condition 
by adjournment or within thirty minutes of adjournment of the last 
convention session. Batteries for the receiver will be provided. 
Upon request, anyone checking out a Federation receiver will be 
given a miniature earbud loudspeaker-type earphone to use with the 
receiver.

Along with explaining what will be available, it is important that 
we explain what will not be available. The miniature earbud 
loudspeaker-type earphone will be the only kind of earphone 
offered. No means of connection to a hearing aid will be available 
from the check-out table. The receiver does not have a built-in 
loudspeaker. The receiver requires a 1/8-inch earphone plug, in 
case you want to use your own earphone(s), neck loop, adapter 
cable, etc. You are advised to arrange for such things well ahead 
of arriving at the convention. While earphones and even neck loops 
are sometimes available in the exhibit hall, you cannot be certain 
of getting one there.

Many severely hearing-impaired people already use radio systems 
that employ FM radio signals to carry the voice from a transmitter 
held by the person speaking to a receiver in the hearing aid. Many 
such hearing-aid systems can be tuned to receive the Federation's 
special transmitters. In this case the hearing-impaired person may 
simply tune his or her own receiver to receive the Federation's 
transmitter and will not need to check out a Federation receiver.
The transmitter for the hearing-impaired will be connected to the 
PA system so that the signals from the head table and the aisle 
mikes will be transmitted on channel 36 (74.775 MHz narrow band 
FM). (People must not operate their personal transmitters on 
channel 36 or on channel 38, because that would interfere with the 
reception by others.) This means that folks wishing to use their 
own receivers (rather than checking out one of the Federation's 
receivers) need to have their personal receivers arranged so that 
they can switch between their personal channels and channel 36. 
Some people may need to purchase replacement or additional 
receivers.

We are publishing this announcement now to allow as much time as 
possible for those interested to make the necessary arrangements 
before convention. It is detailed enough so that any audiologist 
who works with this type of equipment will know exactly what 
capabilities a person's FM hearing system must have to work with 
the Federation's system at convention.

Even if you do not use an FM hearing aid, you may be able to 
purchase a neck loop or an adapter cable to couple the signal from 
a Federation receiver directly to your hearing aid. Your 
audiologist should also be able to help you do this.

The service for Spanish speakers will be similar, except that a 
live Spanish translator will speak over a separate transmitter on 
channel 38 (75.275 MHz narrow band FM). We do not expect people to 
bring their own receivers for the Spanish service, unless they are 
also hearing-impaired and use an FM hearing-aid system.

Norm Gardner from Utah will be coordinating the Spanish language 
interpreters, and he would appreciate hearing from anyone willing 
to volunteer to interpret. Please call him prior to convention at 
(801) 224-6969, or send him e-mail at <norm@brlcenter.org>.

Finally, if other state affiliates or chapters are interested in 
purchasing this type of equipment for use in state and local 
meetings, we encourage them to purchase equipment compatible with 
that which we are using and to allow it to be used in the pool of 
equipment that the Ham Radio Group administers at national 
convention. I, Curtis Willoughby, would like to help you choose 
equipment compatible with that the NFB is using. I may also be 
able to help you get the good prices the NFB has been getting. You 
may contact me at (303) 424-7373 or <ka0vba@dimensional.com>.

The Federation is pleased to offer these services to our severely 
hearing-impaired colleagues and to our Spanish-speaking 
colleagues, and we hope and believe that it will again 
significantly improve their convention experience.
**********
**********
Recipes
**********
This month's recipes come from members of the National Federation 
of the Blind of Massachusetts.
**********
Mum's Sweet and Sour Slaw
by Mary Ann Lareau
**********
Mary Ann Lareau is the secretary of the NFB of Massachusetts.
**********
Ingredients:
Dressing
1/2 cup honey
1/4 cup cider vinegar
2 teaspoons salt (optional)
2/3 cup salad oil
Salt and pepper to taste
Slaw
1/2 small head green cabbage, shredded
1/2 small head red cabbage, shredded
1/2 medium onion, finely chopped
1/2 green pepper, sliced thinly
1/2 red pepper, sliced thinly
1/2 yellow pepper, sliced thinly
2 medium carrots, shredded
1 6-ounce can of crushed pineapple
**********
Method: In a small saucepan combine honey, vinegar, and salt. Heat 
to combine thoroughly. Transfer to small bowl and allow to cool to 
room temperature. Add oil and whisk thoroughly. In a large bowl 
combined prepared vegetables and toss with dressing. Refrigerate 
at least three hours before serving. Serves six to eight.
**********
**********
Holiday Recipe – Irish Bread
by Thomas P. Duffy, Jr.
**********
Tom Duffy is a member of the NFB of Massachusetts Board of Directors and editor 
of the affiliate newsletter. He dug deep into his family recipe files to come 
up with this favorite for the holiday season or for just about any time. Irish 
bread is an Irish traditional favorite which is enjoyed today around the world. 
It can be served at breakfast or with afternoon tea. When served warm, it 
tastes great with butter. Marmalade or strawberry jam adds an extra touch 
during the holiday season. It is a very easy item to bake, and people make 
slight variations from the original. The recipe used here uses oranges, which 
can be omitted if preferred. Give it a try.
**********
Ingredients:
3 cups flour
4 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup sugar
3/4 stick butter or margarine
1 egg
1 cup milk or 1/2 cup milk and 1/2 cup orange juice plus 1 teaspoon finely 
grated orange rind
1 cup raisins
(Instead of just 1/2 cup orange juice and the rind, place a whole orange in the 
blender and add the resulting juice and rind to the ingredients.)
**********
Method: Sift dry ingredients into large bowl. Cut in butter using a pastry 
blender or two knives used scissor-fashion until mixture looks like corn meal. 
Add raisins and stir until they no longer stick together. Beat egg, juice, and 
milk together and add to dry ingredients. Mix well. If the batter is too dry, 
add a little more milk or juice. Pour batter into well-greased and floured 
loaf-pan. Bake at 375 degrees for forty-five to fifty minutes.

Traditionally Irish families bake large numbers of small Irish breads for the 
holiday season. These are often given to friends and relatives. Just wrap each 
in foil and place a colorful bow on top. Remember, Irish breads can be frozen 
and later reheated or toasted in the toaster oven.
**********
**********
Esther's New England Corn Chowder
by Phil and Claire Oliver
**********
The Olivers are long-time members of the Federation. Both are members of the 
state Board of Directors. This is an old family recipe they would like to 
share.
**********
Ingredients
6 large potatoes
1 medium onion
1 16-ounce can creamed corn
1 16-ounce can whole corn
1 13-ounce can evaporated milk
1-2 tablespoons butter
**********
Method: Peel and cube potatoes. Boil in just enough salted water to cover 
potatoes. Saute onions in butter until soft, add to potatoes. Cook until water 
has been reduced to one-half its original volume. Add all corn to mixture. Do 
not drain corn.

Salt and pepper to taste. Add milk five to ten minutes before serving. Serves 
six to eight people
**********
**********
Pork Chops with Cumin Rice
by Gloria Evans
**********
Gloria Evans is First Vice President of the NFB of Massachusetts.
**********
Ingredients:
3 lean, center-cut pork chops, 1/2-inch thick
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
Salt and pepper to taste
1/3 cup each chopped onion and green pepper
1/4 cup uncooked rice
1 cup boiling chicken broth
1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
1/4 teaspoon cumin
**********
Method: Season chops with salt and pepper. Brown in vegetable oil in skillet 5 
minutes on each side over moderate heat. Remove chops from pan and set aside. 
In a casserole dish place all remaining ingredients. Pour drippings from pan 
over mixture. Place chops on top and bake at 350 degrees covered for thirty-
five minutes. Fluff rice mixture lightly with fork before serving.
**********
**********
Chicken Scampi
by Gloria Evans
**********
Ingredients:
1 1/2 boneless whole chicken breasts, cut into bite-size pieces
4 tablespoons lemon juice
1 tablespoon chopped parsley
2 garlic cloves, minced
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/4 teaspoon basil
1/4 teaspoon oregano
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1 teaspoon dry mustard
1/2 cup seasoned bread crumbs
**********
Method: Mix chicken pieces well with all ingredients except for the bread 
crumbs. Cover and place in refrigerator for two hours. Remove from 
refrigerator, place in casserole dish, and top with bread crumbs. Place 
uncovered in 350-degree oven and bake for fifteen minutes. Oblong casserole is 
best. Serve over cooked rice or noodles. Serves four.
**********
**********
[PHOTO/CAPTION: Priscilla Ferris]
Microwave Fudge
by Priscilla A. Ferris
**********
Priscilla Ferris is President of the NFB of Massachusetts. She has 
submitted recipes to the Monitor as a member of several divisions 
and hopes that you will now enjoy this very easy but delicious 
fudge recipe.
**********
Ingredients:
18 ounces semi-sweet chocolate morsels
1 13-ounce can of condensed milk
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 cup chopped nuts
**********
Method: Prepare 8-inch pan by lining it with waxed paper, making 
sure that the paper across the bottom is smooth and that the paper 
reaches up the sides for removing later. Place morsels and milk in 
a microwave-safe bowl. Heat for two minutes, stirring after one 
minute. Be sure that all morsels are melted. Remove and add 
vanilla. Stir to be sure that all ingredients are mixed well. Add 
the nuts and mix. Pour into prepared pan. Refrigerate until set. 
Lift fudge from pan using the waxed paper edges. Cut into pieces 
of desired size and enjoy. Any flavored morsel may be substituted, 
and the nuts are optional.
**********
**********
Monitor Miniatures
**********
Comments Needed:
Jerry Whittle has asked us to carry the following announcement:
Samples 1 and 2 of the Unified English Braille Code (UEBC) are now 
available for assessment by consumers of Braille.  Sample 1, 
featuring the literary portion of the proposed code changes, was 
distributed at the NFB convention in Philadelphia last summer.  
Many people may also have received sample 1 in the mail.  If you 
would like to receive a Braille copy of sample 1 and fill out a 
questionnaire with your comments about the proposed changes, 
please contact Kim Charlson, Braille and Talking Book Library, 
Perkins School for the Blind, 175 North Beacon Street, Watertown, 
Massachusetts 02472, work phone (617) 972-7249, e-mail 
<kimcharlson@earthlink.net>.

A Braille copy of Sample 2, featuring the Math and Science changes 
in the code, may be obtained from Eileen Curran, National Braille 
Press, 88 St. Stephen Street, Boston Massachusetts 02115, work 
phone (617) 266-6160, ext. 17; e-mail: <ecurran@nbp.org>.
For print copies of both Sample 1 and 2, contact Frances Mary 
D'Andrea, 100 Peachtree Street, Suite 620, Atlanta, Georgia 30303, 
Phone: (404) 525-2303, E-mail: <literacy@afb.net>.
Please be sure to fill out the questionnaire and mail it to the 
specified address.  At the NFB Convention in Louisville, July 
2002, special presentations will be made about the proposed 
changes in the Unified English Braille Code.
**********
Brailler Repair:
We have been asked to carry the following announcement:
Do you have a Brailler that needs repair? Frank Levine, master 
mechanic, can get your Brailler up and running. Complete Braille 
Writer repair services available. Specializing in Perkins 
Braillers. Reasonable rates, fast turnaround. For more information 
call Frank Levine (770) 432-7280, or e-mail <frankleen@juno.com>.

**********
Summer Braille Music Intensive for College Students:
We have been asked to carry the following announcement:
The National Resource Center for Blind Musicians will hold a 
one-week course in Braille music and technology at Agnes Scott 
College in Decatur, Georgia, for students already studying music 
in college. Program dates are July 13 to 21, 2002. Topics will 
include sight reading and learning repertoire from Braille, taking 
down dictation, and ways to produce theory assignments in print. 
This is in response to the requests of older students for an 
opportunity for several hours a day of concentrated study so that 
they will be able to keep up in classes.

Students should consider this program only if they are already in 
college or will be starting in the fall of 2002, are fluent 
readers of Grade II Braille, have some computer experience, have 
good independence and mobility skills, have had several years of 
music lessons, and understand the importance of theory and Braille 
music. Cost of the one-week intensive is $900; partial 
scholarships are available. The program is being offered in lieu 
of the Resource Center's usual Summer Institute for Blind College-
Bound Musicians in Connecticut, which will be offered in 2003.
For information about the Summer Intensive for college students, 
or if you are a younger student or a teacher seeking guidance 
about resources and preparing for future programs, please contact 
David Goldstein at (203) 366-3300, or by e-mail at 
<102730.163@compuserve.com>.

**********
Stars and Stripes Pin:
We have been asked to carry the following announcement:
This wonderful, one-of-a-kind collectible is now available from 
Christiansen Designs, creator of the world's first line of Braille 
jewelry, which many have grown to love. In cast brass, this lapel 
pin is just $15 and can be seen on the <www.braillejewelry.com> 
Web site. The pin is about one-inch wide and seven-eighths of an 
inch high. It looks like a waving flag on a flagpole with stars 
and stripes that can be felt. On the flag are the letters "USA" in 
Braille. Visa and MasterCard accepted. Questions can be asked and 
orders placed by calling (802) 295-2486 or by e-mailing 
<kim.christiansen@valley.net>. If you have a store or are an 
organization looking for fund-raising opportunities, be sure to 
ask about selling Christiansen products.
**********
Elected:
At its January meeting the Seattle Chapter of the NFB of 
Washington elected new officers for the coming year. They are 
Josie Armantrout, President; Dan Frye, First Vice President; Bo 
Donaho, Second Vice President; Renee West, Secretary; Doug 
Johnson, Treasurer; and Kris Lawrence and Jacob Struiksma, Board 
Members.
**********
[PHOTO/CAPTION: Michelle Wright]
In Memoriam:
We received the following sad news from William Harmon, President 
of the NFB of Nevada:

A great number of you who attended our 1999 National Convention in 
Atlanta probably remember a presentation given by a delightful 
young scholarship winner from Las Vegas named Michelle Wright. She 
talked about her adjustment to blindness and her long struggle 
with serious health problems. She also described the tremendous 
obstacles that she had to surmount as she worked to become 
accustomed to what for her was a completely different way of 
living. Her presentation was very positive and highly inspiring, 
and everyone who heard what she had to say that day was moved.

In the course of less than a decade this courageous young woman 
had to change her college major, her career goals, and her general 
perspective on life as well as cope with a life-threatening 
disease. Yet she did what she had to do. At times, when many would 
have given up and stayed at home depending on the generosity of 
the social welfare system, Michelle completed her education and 
began a career as a licensed social worker. She also discovered 
the National Federation of the Blind and in a very short time made 
a significant contribution to its ongoing effort to change what it 
means to be blind. In August of 1998, when some in the Nevada 
affiliate walked out in anger, Michelle stayed and promised that 
she would help rebuild the organization. She kept her promise. She 
served as our state treasurer and worked diligently to recruit new 
members and to spread the word about our programs and philosophy.
Unfortunately, over the years her health problems became worse: 
her body rejected the kidney she had received a few years earlier, 
and she had to endure treatments several times a week while 
waiting for another kidney. She maintained her work schedule as 
long as she could and continued to work for the NFB of Nevada. But 
on the morning of Sunday, December 2, 2001, three days after a 
fall, she lost her hard-fought battle to stay alive. The National 
Federation of the Blind of Nevada lost a dedicated fighter for the 
cause, and I lost a dear friend. We all loved her, and we will 
miss her. Michelle was deeply devoted to the NFB, and she was 
proud to tell people that she was a Federationist. May she rest in 
peace, may her family be comforted, and may all of us carry on 
with her work.
**********
For Sale:
We have been asked to carry the following announcement:
Braille 'n Speak 2000, including case and charger, for sale. We 
seek $600 or best offer. If interested, call Terri Uttermohlen, 
phone: (410) 433-3465, or e-mail her at <thefur@earthlink.net>.
**********
The Resume Workshop:
We have been asked to carry the following announcement:

TECSO, Inc., developer of educational software for the blind and 
visually impaired, is launching its newest product, the Resume 
Workshop, which can generate professional-quality resumes and 
cover letters, no matter how new you are to computers.
* Built-in accessibility using text-to-speech narration. Fully 
interactive and easy-to-use tutorial on CD-ROM.
* Sample resumes and complete walkthrough. Tell Me More feature 
with contextual information.
* In-depth discussion tricks.
* Onscreen narrated preview screens.
* Pre-formatted resume output styles.
* Automated print and export functions.

Place your order now. The cost is $29.95. Contact TECSO, Inc., 
toll-free in North America: (866) 590-4218, phone: (514) 590-4218, 
e-mail: <info@tecso.com>, <www.tecso.com>.
**********
Attention Those Interested in Refurbished Computers from the Texas 
Center for the Physically Impaired:

We have been asked to carry the following announcement:

During the last several months the Texas Center for the Physically 
Impaired has received an unusually large number of requests for 
computers for the blind. We have missed some of our telephone 
messages, and both training material and computers have become 
lost or damaged in the mail.

We have also been forced to suspend action on new requests until 
after July 1, 2002. This will give us a chance to provide a 
computer for those who are now on the waiting list. When we start 
accepting requests in July, we will ask for a $100 donation for a 
Pentium I computer with Windows 98, a demo copy of Window-Eyes, 
and a computer training tutorial by Dean Martineau.
We regret that we must postpone delivery to those on the list now 
and cannot accept any new requests until after July 1, but we are 
preparing and shipping the computers as fast as we can. If anyone 
on our computer waiting list has not received the training 
tutorial cassettes or computers that have been shipped, please 
call so that we can send replacements. Contact Texas Center for 
the Physically Impaired, Bob Langford, (214) 340-6328. We are 
sorry for any inconvenience.
**********
Free NFB-NEWSLINE Posters:
NFB-NEWSLINE(®) announces the availability of NFB-NEWSLINE(r) 
posters. These colorful posters measure sixteen by twenty inches. 
The toll-free number, 1-888-882-1629 is displayed prominently, and 
there is additional space to add local contact information for 
NFB-NEWSLINE.

Please help place these posters at any local agency for the blind, 
senior citizen center, library for the blind, or anywhere else 
those who can no longer read newspaper print and who would benefit 
from this service might learn about it. For more information or to 
place an order, contact Mrs. Peggy Chong at the National Center 
for the Blind. Call (410) 659-9314, ext. 356.
**********
Free Jobline® Posters:
Jobline®, the way to access America's Job Bank using any 
touch-tone telephone, announces the availability of Jobline® 
posters. These colorful posters measure sixteen by twenty inches. 
The toll-free number for Jobline®, 1-800-414-5748, is displayed 
prominently along with the simple instructions for using this 
service. Jobline® is available to anyone looking for a job.

Please help place these posters throughout your community. 
Although this program was developed for blind people, it quickly 
became apparent that anyone seeking employment can benefit from 
this valuable service. For more information or to place an order, 
contact Mr. Cobb at the National Center for the Blind. Call (410) 
659-9314, ext. 371.
**********
For Sale:
We have been asked to carry the following announcement:

I have for sale an American Printing House for the Blind portable, 
four-track tape recorder, including headphones and plug-in power 
supply. In addition to regular features, it also has settings for 
tone, balance, and pitch. Asking $25 plus $5 shipping.

I also have a Captek #1420 Digi-Voice scientific calculator. It 
serves higher math, engineering, and physics functions. It is 
fully programmable and can be fully voiced or partially voiced. 
Hardly used. Original retail $400, now selling for $100.
For more information on these items, contact Dorothy Piel, (201) 
599-1860, 287 N. Fairview Avenue, Paramus, New Jersey 07652, e-
mail: <DeeDeePiel@sol.com>.
**********
Italian Dolomite Trek for Women July 27-August 2, 2002:
Erik Weihenmayer has asked us to carry the following announcement:
World T.E.A.M. Sports invites women of all backgrounds and 
abilities to join us on this exciting six-day trek through the 
Dolomites of northern Italy. We will travel along the Via Ferrate 
(Iron Route) through the Brenta region, a magnificent range of 
bold rock towers and spires, splendid cliffs and knife-edged 
ridges.

The climbing will be challenging but very doable for novices. We 
encourage able-bodied and disabled women of all backgrounds and 
experience to participate. Unfortunately, however, the trails are 
not wheelchair-accessible.

World T.E.A.M. Sports brings individuals with and without 
disabilities together to undertake unique athletic events 
throughout the world to encourage, promote, and develop 
opportunities in sports for all people. Our team-oriented athletic 
events coupled with medical and educational outreach programs 
stimulate the power of learning through participation.
For more information about this amazing opportunity please contact 
Jenni Gaisbauer at (704) 370-6070 or 
<jgaisbauer@worldteamsports.org>.
**********
New BEP Web Site Launched:
We have been asked to carry the following announcement:

The Rehabilitation Research and Training Center on Blindness and 
Low Vision at Mississippi State University has created a new 
Business Enterprise Program (BEP) Web site: 
<www.blind.msstate.edu/bep/bep.html>. The Web site includes 
business resources, state program contacts, membership 
organizations and associations, legislative links, and a marketing 
video highlighting different types of facilities located 
throughout the country.
**********
Deep Sea Fishing Club:
We have been asked to carry the following announcement:

Join the Helen Keller Fishing Club for a day of fishing. The club 
is now scheduling trips aboard boats for the 2002 season from 
ports along the North and South Shores of Long Island. This unique 
club is entering its fifty-fourth season and is known to be the 
only deep sea fishing club in the United States for men and women 
who are blind, visually impaired, or deaf-blind.

If you would like to accompany the club for a day of fishing and 
excitement or want information on becoming a member of the club, 
contact Walter Bach at Helen Keller Services for the Blind, (718) 
522-2122, extension 347, days or evenings.
**********
For Sale:
We have been asked to carry the following announcement:

I have a one-year-old Braille Blazer for sale for $1400, including 
shipping. It is in excellent condition, and I have all the 
instruction manuals and tapes. If you are interested, contact 
Glenn Levine, member of the San Diego chapter, (760) 839-2601.
**********
Recipes and Recipe Search Service:
We have been asked to carry the following announcement:

The Recipe of the Month Club is a new service providing all the 
recipes you want. For $25 a year you get five recipes a month in 
the format of your choice--Braille, cassette, large print, 
computer disk, or e-mail. You also get unlimited recipe search and 
transcription service. Need a recipe in Braille or other format? 
Let me know, and I'll find it and send it to you. Or send the 
print copy to me, and I'll transcribe it.

To join, send a check or money order (or Pay Pal credit card 
through the Internet) for $25 payable to Maureen Pranghofer to 
Recipe of the Month Club, 4910 Dawnview Terrace, Golden Valley, 
Minnesota 55422. Any questions: contact me at (763) 522-2501 or e-
mail <maureen72@mediaone.net> or <maureensmusic@attbi.com>.
**********
For Sale:
We have been asked to carry the following announcement:
Braille ‘n Speak 2000 for sale, asking $600.

Fuller Brush products for sale. Book is available on tape. Free 
gift just for inquiring.

I would also like to know where I could buy 3-by-5-inch cards with 
six holes and where I could get 3-by-5-inch cards for Rolodex with 
two holes. Please contact Alice Cresco, (718) 545-1529, (212) 374-
8035, or cell: (917) 940-2356.
**********
Candle in the Window:
We have been asked to carry the following announcement:

Many of us seem to focus almost exclusively on our work, and feel 
guilty when we think about our play--those things we do just 
because we enjoy them. Candle in the Window, a small national 
non-profit organization with the aim of building both individual 
skills and a sense of community among persons with visual 
impairments, welcomes blind people with varied experiences to join 
them at its sixteenth annual conference entitled "The Way We Play: 
Recreation and Social Interaction of Blind People." We aim to 
address such questions as what encourages/discourages us from 
being playful? How can we better interact with sighted people in 
social situations? How can we develop a more playful spirit? In 
addition to provocative presentations and stimulating discussions, 
there will be plenty of time for swimming, hiking, eating, 
singing, quiet reflection, and just plain hanging out.

The conference will take place from Wednesday, July 24, through 
the morning of Sunday, July 28, at the Kavanaugh Life Enrichment 
Center, just outside of Louisville, Kentucky. The cost is $230 
($15 discount if we receive a $35 non-refundable deposit by June 
15); limited scholarships and payment plans are available.

For additional information, contact Peter Altschul at (202) 
234-5234, e-mail: <atschu@erols.com> Kathy Szinnyey at (502) 
895-0866, e-mail: <fredkate@iglou.com> or Jonathan Ice at (319) 
298-2919, e-mail: <jkice@ccr.net >.
**********
**********
NFB PLEDGE
**********
I pledge to participate actively in the effort of the National 
Federation of the Blind to achieve equality, opportunity, and 
security for the blind; to support the policies and programs of 
the Federation; and to abide by its constitution.
**************
**************
The National Association of Blind Students (NABS)

NABS is a division of the National Federation of the Blind. 
Established in 1967, NABS is an organization of blind high school, 
college, and graduate students dedicated to securing equality and 
opportunity for all blind students. Through advocacy and 
collective action we work to maintain high standards and 
expectations of education for blind students across the country as 
we address relevant issues that face us. Such issues include 
Disabled Students Services offices, relationships between 
consumers and state rehabilitation agencies, and validation of 
standardized gateway tests such as the GRE and LSAT.

NABS has a listserv to which we encourage students and parents of 
blind children to subscribe. Just send a message to 
<listserv@nfbnet.org>. Leave the subject line blank and write, 
“subscribe nabs-l” in the body of the message. NABS also offers 
a semi-annual publication, The Student Slate, which contains 
articles written by blind students about their experiences because 
of blindness. We invite students to submit articles.

In addition we meet twice a year—at National Convention and 
Washington Seminar. At both the annual meeting and seminar we 
discuss current issues of concern to blind students and hear from 
fellow Federationists about their success in academia, which often 
comes with hard work and a sound Federation philosophy. We invite 
everyone to join us at these meetings. They are not only 
insightful but full of energy.

The NABS board consists of nine positions. The offices and the 
people currently serving are as follows: Angela Wolf, President; 
Jason Ewell, First Vice President; Thomas Phillip, Second Vice 
President; Kimberly Aguillard, Secretary; Brook Sexton, Treasurer; 
and Rod Barker, Robin House, Stacy Cervenka, and Allison Hilliker, 
Board Members.
****************
****************
Have you made your campaign pledge yet? We need everyone’s help. 
Please take this opportunity to complete your pledge form. Without 
you our job will be just that much harder.

The Campaign to Change What It Means to Be Blind
Capital Campaign Pledge Intention
Name:                                                             
                                           
Home Address:                                                     
                                       
City, State, and Zip:                                             
                                        
Home Phone: __________________ Work Phone: _______________________
E-mail address:                                                   
                                         
Employer:                                                         
                                           
Work Address:                                                     
                                        
City, State, Zip:                                                 
                                          
To support the priorities of the Campaign, I (we) pledge the sum 
of $________.
My (our) pledge will be payable in installments of $ __________ 
over the next ____ years (we encourage pledges paid over five 
years), beginning _________, on the following schedule (check 
one): 
__ annually,   __ semi-annually,   __   quarterly,    __  monthly
I (we) have enclosed a down payment of $ ________________
___ Gift of stock: _____________________ shares of _____________
___ My employer will match my gift.
Please list (my) our names in all Campaign Reports and on the 
Campaign Wall of Honor in the appropriate Giving Circle as 
follows:

__ I (We) wish to remain anonymous.
Signed: ________________________________ Date: __________________
 

 
 


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