
      BRAILLE MONITOR
Vol. 51, No. 11  December 2008
      Barbara Pierce, editor


      Published in inkprint, in Braille, and on cassette by

      THE NATIONAL FEDERATION OF THE BLIND

      Marc Maurer, president


      National Office
      1800 Johnson Street
      Baltimore, Maryland 21230
      telephone: (410) 659-9314
      email address: nfb@nfb.org
      Website address: http://www.nfb.org
      NFBnet.org: http://www.nfbnet.org
      NFB-NEWSLINE information: (866) 504-7300


      Letters to the president, address changes,
      subscription requests, and orders for NFB literature
      should be sent to the National Office.
      Articles for the Monitor and letters to the editor may also
      be sent to the National Office or may be emailed to bpierce@nfb.org.




Monitor subscriptions cost the  Federation  about  twenty-five  dollars  per
year. Members are invited,  and  nonmembers  are  requested,  to  cover  the
subscription cost. Donations should be made payable to  National  Federation
of the Blind and sent to:


      National Federation of the Blind
      1800 Johnson Street
      Baltimore, Maryland 21230-4998


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


ISSN 0006-8829
             2008 by the National Federation of the Blind
Vol. 51, No. 11                                          December 2008

      Contents

Convention Bulletin 2009

Of Disrepute and Dysfunction at the Eye Dog Foundation for the Blind
by Daniel B. Frye

NFB Protests Opening of Blindness in 37 States
by Barbara Pierce

A False Image of Blindness
by James Fetter

Are Protesters of Blindness Missing the Point?
by Rene Harrell

International Travel Still No Picnic for the Blind

Blind Aide Raises the Bar of Expectations
by Jordy Yager

Important Notice About Target Settlement

Distinguished Educator of Blind
Children Award for 2009
by Joyce Scanlan

The 2009 Blind Educator of the Year Award
by David Ticchi

Social Security, SSI, and Medicare Facts for 2009
by James McCarthy

Recipes

Monitor Miniatures


[LEAD PHOTO/CAPTION: The Jernigan Institute Members Hall decorated for the
holidays]
[PHOTO/CAPTION: The Detroit Marriott Hotel at the Renaissance Center]
                          Convention Bulletin 2009
                                 **********
      It is time to begin planning for the 2009 convention of the National
Federation of the Blind taking place at the Detroit Marriott, Renaissance
Center. It has been many years since we made a significant change in our
schedule, but we are doing so this year. Please pay close attention to the
dates and schedule so that you are not taken by surprise.
      Once again our hotel rates are the envy of all. For the 2009
convention they are singles and doubles, $62; for triples, $66, and for
quads, $68. In addition to the room rates there will be a tax, which at
present is 15 percent. No charge will be made for children under eighteen
in the room with parents as long as no extra bed is requested. Please note
that the hotel is a no-smoking facility.
      For 2009 convention room reservations you should write directly to
the Detroit Marriott Renaissance Center, 100 Renaissance Center, Detroit,
Michigan 48243, or call (313) 568-8000. The hotel will want a deposit of
$60 or a credit card number. If you use a credit card, the deposit will be
charged against your card immediately, just as would be the case with a $60
check. If a reservation is cancelled before June 1, 2009, $30 of the $60
deposit will be returned. Otherwise refunds will not be made.
      Guest-room amenities include cable television, coffee pot, iron and
ironing board, hair dryer, and high-speed Internet access-this last for a
fee. Wireless access is available in the lobby.
      The Marriott Renaissance Center has several restaurants: Forty-Two
Degrees North (open for breakfast, lunch, and dinner), Starbucks, Musashi
by BarOne (open for lunch), and Volt (open for lunch and dinner). In
addition Coach Insignia is an elegant restaurant at the top of the tower,
and on the Promenade level guests will find a food court. The hotel also
has a fitness center and day spa.
      The 2009 convention of the National Federation of the Blind will be a
truly exciting and memorable event, with an unparalleled program and
rededication to the goals and work of our movement. Make plans now to be a
part of it. The schedule this year is a full day shorter than we are
accustomed to. Preconvention seminars for parents of blind children and
other groups and set-up of the exhibit hall will take place on Friday, July
3, and adjournment will be Wednesday, July 8, following the banquet.
Convention registration and registration packet pick-up for those who
registered online will begin on Saturday, July 4, and both Saturday and
Sunday will be filled with meetings of divisions and committees, including
the Sunday morning annual meeting, open to all, of the board of directors
of the National Federation of the Blind.
      Immediately following the Motor City March for Independence-the Walk
for Opportunity, the general convention sessions will begin on Monday, July
6, and continue through the banquet on Wednesday, July 8. Note that
Tuesday, July 7, will include both morning and afternoon convention
sessions. Thursday, July 9 will be available for tours for those who enjoy
getting to know something about our convention city. To assure yourself a
room in the headquarters hotel at convention rates, you must make
reservations early. The hotel will be ready to take your call or deal with
your written request by January 1.
      Remember that as usual we need door prizes from state affiliates,
local chapters, and individuals. Once again prizes should be small in size
but large in value. Cash, of course, is always appropriate and welcome. As
a general rule we ask that prizes of all kinds have a value of at least $25
and not include alcohol. Drawings will occur steadily throughout the
convention sessions, and you can anticipate a grand prize of truly
impressive proportions to be drawn at the banquet. You may bring door
prizes with you or send them ahead of time (identifying the item and donor
and listing the value in print and Braille) to Mary Wurtzel, 1212 N. Foster
Avenue, Lansing, Michigan 48912, (517) 485-0326.
      The best collection of exhibits featuring new technology; meetings of
our special interest groups, committees, and divisions; the opportunity for
tours; the most stimulating and provocative
program items of any meeting of the blind in the world; the chance to renew
friendships in our Federation family; and the unparalleled opportunity to
be where the real action is and where decisions are being made--all of
these mean you will not want to miss being a part of the 2009 national
convention. We'll see you in Detroit in 2009.
                                ------------
[PHOTO/CAPTION: Pictured here are the attractive but unoccupied grounds of
the Eye Dog Foundation for the Blind training campus in south Phoenix. This
photograph was taken from just outside the property.]
[PHOTO/CAPTION: Visitors are urged to blow their horns for assistance when
they arrive at the locked gates of the Eye Dog Foundation campus.]
    Of Disrepute and Dysfunction at the Eye Dog Foundation for the Blind
                              by Daniel B. Frye
                                 **********
What would cause a committed core of volunteer puppy raisers working for
the Eye Dog Foundation for the Blind (EDF), a guide dog training school
based in Bakersfield, California, with training operations in Phoenix,
Arizona, to engage in a collective act of civil disobedience, declining to
return their animals for further training by the school? What extraordinary
circumstances would cause these volunteers to fear for their lives and
livelihoods and the safety of the puppies in their charge? Why would over
50 percent of the board of directors and three successive directors of
training and their support teams terminate their association with this
organization during the last two years? What administrative problems could
cause potential students to wait over a year for an application for
services, to be denied timely assistance managing their dogs' serious
medical problems, or to be denied the opportunity to purchase something as
simple as a replacement leash for a working EDF service animal? How is it
that a multi-million-dollar foundation that appeals to the general public
for funds to train guide dogs for the blind has not graduated a single
human-dog team during the last year? And what reputable organization would
be so insular in its operations that contact information for its governing
body is not available on request and most communications from the school's
own puppy-raising community, donors, and the media are fielded by legal
counsel instead of by the executive director?
The answers to these and other disturbing questions may be partially found
in the long and sordid story of the Eye Dog Foundation's history and
operations. Concerned members of the EDF volunteer puppy-raising community
initially contacted the Braille Monitor about this story. After examining
the facts, we concluded that the blind community, program volunteers,
donors, and appropriate oversight authorities across America deserve to
know about both the troubles and triumphs at EDF. In this way the
interested parties may become aware of the school's past and make informed
decisions about their association with it in the future. The details are
complicated, but here is what we know.
      According to Joey Etienne, the court-appointed EDF receiver for much
of 2007, the Eye Dog Foundation for the Blind, Incorporated, was founded by
Lequita McKay in 1952 to breed and train guide dogs for the blind. McKay
was apparently one of the earliest female attorneys licensed in California
to specialize in high-profile wills, trusts, and estates. She apparently
merged her passion for training guide dogs with her law practice,
persuading many of her clients over twenty years or more to donate to or
make generous bequests to EDF.
      By the middle to late 1960s, the EDF had amassed enough money to
start training and placing guide dogs with blind handlers. Etienne said
that, at some stage in the latter 1960s, McKay "somehow got crossways" with
the California Board of Guide Dogs for the Blind (the board), the only
governmental entity in the United States of its kind responsible for
licensing guide dog trainers and regulating guide dog schools operating in
the state. It is generally agreed that a settlement was reached between
McKay's Eye Dog Foundation and the board in about 1967 in which the board
relinquished regulatory jurisdiction over EDF in exchange for McKay's
commitment not to raise funds for EDF in California and to train guide dogs
outside the state. The school's corporate status and headquarters, however,
were permitted to remain registered in California.
      The EDF's work appears to have continued without public incident for
the next thirty-seven years or so. We talked with several current EDF
consumers, and, while Patricia Kepler and Petra Janes are presently
disappointed with various aspects of recent interactions with school
personnel, both report being generally satisfied with the quality of the
guide dogs they have received over the years.
       During this extended period of peace, a number of cultural patterns
of EDF's governance and day-to-day management emerged that foreshadowed
trouble and perhaps even enabled some of the more overt instances of
chicanery that have occurred in recent years. From 1967 through 1988, when
the EDF purchased its training campus in south Phoenix, Arizona, the school
remained a small concern compared to major guide dog schools elsewhere in
the country. In 1988 EDF abandoned its practice of providing in-home
training for a few students, and started offering a more conventional
course of study to guide dog classes at its newly acquired property in
Phoenix.
      According to Patrick Frase, EDF assistant executive director for
about two years before affairs at EDF began to unravel in 2006, the
school's small size and low public profile gave McKay an inordinate amount
of control. Frase explained that McKay manipulated the composition of the
EDF board so that it consisted of longtime friends and members of her
family. He reported that customary and transparent business practices such
as preparing annual reports and maintaining consistent meeting minutes did
not regularly occur. Frase confirmed that, with the approval of her board,
McKay sat on the EDF board while drawing an annual salary of between
$86,000 and $89,000 as the organization's executive director.
      Frase said he believes McKay may have used EDF for "suspicious if not
illegal personal tax advantages," and he reported that "red flags" were
raised for him when he saw how much money was spent, considering the small
number of dogs trained and graduated during his tenure. The Braille Monitor
has also learned from Wendy Wonderley, a former EDF board member who
ultimately resigned as a casualty of the organizational uproar soon to be
described, that under McKay's leadership, retiring employees of the school
(namely McKay herself; Ruby Bell, McKay's sister; and Lucille Gibbons, a
longtime McKay friend until the 2006 split) were entitled to receive
generous fringe benefits, including proceeds from a "profit-sharing
account," comprehensive medical coverage, and a lump sum bonus equivalent
to one half of their annual salaries. Wonderley commented that this was an
irresponsible fiscal policy for an organization the size of Eye Dog
Foundation (presently valued at somewhere between $7 and $10 million) to
adopt.
      Despite these allegations of wrong-doing and corruption, Frase
emphasized that he believes that McKay genuinely wanted to be of help to
blind people through the training of high-quality guide dogs, and he
believes that it was her positive motivation that allowed her to function
unscathed and unmasked at EDF during her fifty-five-year association with
the school. Mr. Frase's employment with EDF was ultimately terminated
because of his irreconcilable differences with McKay. Wendy Wonderley
confirmed, in terms more vague than those of Mr. Frase, her feeling that
McKay exercised an unusual degree of control over EDF, but she too believes
that McKay was sincerely committed to the mission of the school. Wonderley
put it succinctly when she said, "Lequita was a benign dictator."
      McKay's reign at Eye Dog Foundation seems to have come to an
unceremonious end during the autumn of 2006. According to Wendy Wonderley,
a series of rapid-fire EDF board transactions and legal skirmishes in the
Kern County Superior Court between the two factions of the school's board
of directors over the next twelve months resulted in Gwen Brown's wresting
control of the EDF board and the organization's executive directorship from
McKay and those loyal to her. Since the division on the EDF board and the
ensuing struggle for power were the genesis of the most recent round of
troubles, we will provide a brief chronology of events from September 2006
through September 2007.
      The following timeline has been provided largely by Wendy Wonderley,
but important dates have been confirmed by Joey Etienne and supporting
court documents. We also contacted Gwen Brown by telephone, but she
declined to be interviewed. Instead she wanted to talk only about who
prompted our decision to report this story before abruptly terminating the
telephone conversation. We repeatedly requested in writing an interview
with Ms. Brown through her legal counsel in California and Arizona. On
October 27 H. Steven Schiffres of Rosoff, Schiffres, and Barta, general
California counsel for the EDF, responded to an October 20 Braille Monitor
request for an interview, which listed potential interview topics with
Brown but did not ask specific questions or present evidence for comment as
would have been the case in an actual written interview. In his letter Mr.
Schiffres refused the interview and made few substantive statements, noting
that the Braille Monitor's October 20 inquiry did not offer details and
documentary evidence inviting a thorough response. Since our letter had
been only an invitation for an interview and not a written set of
interrogatories, his statement was technically correct. Nevertheless, his
statements will be included in this article when they are responsive to
claims critical of EDF and Brown. Finally, a statement from John D. Clark
Jr., EDF's legal counsel in Arizona, was submitted to the Braille Monitor
for publication. Apparently Clark has been employed to represent EDF only
in its effort to recover the dogs currently being housed by EDF volunteer
puppy raisers. Clark's statement is printed in full elsewhere in this
article.
      On September 23, 2006, both Gwen Brown, now executive director and
chairperson of the EDF board, and Wendy Wonderley were named to the EDF
board. Michael Hannon is a member of that board and an attorney licensed in
California. Several sources report that Hannon is Brown's spouse and
Wonderley said that Hannon nominated Brown to the school's board. According
to Wonderley, Brown received the support of all EDF board members except
McKay, who reportedly warned her colleagues that Brown's appointment would
be disastrous for EDF. Wonderley said that in retrospect she regrets her
support of Brown's nomination to the board.
      Wonderley said that on October 8, 2006, Brown called an emergency
board meeting. It is undisputed that at this meeting McKay resigned as EDF
executive director, but the parties differ about whether McKay's
resignation of her paid position included resignation from the school's
board.
      According to Schiffres's October 27 letter, the Brown faction of the
EDF board (Gwen Brown, Michael Hannon, and Lucille Gibbons) believed that
McKay resigned from both the executive directorship and her board position;
the McKay faction (Lequita McKay, Wendy Wonderley, and Louis Harris)
understood McKay to have resigned only her position as executive director,
while retaining her voting seat on the board.
      On October 21, 2006, the EDF board held another meeting, in which
four new board members were nominated, but none were elected because the
board was deadlocked. Squabbling continued about whether McKay had the
right to exercise her vote as an EDF board member.
      Wonderley reports that the McKay faction then filed a lawsuit against
EDF and the members of the Brown faction over whether McKay continued to
hold a seat on the EDF board, since a three-to-three split prevented
governance of the organization. Wonderley said that the McKay faction asked
the judge to dissolve the Foundation and to transfer its assets to Guiding
Eyes for the Blind in New York.
      On November 17, 2006, yet another EDF board meeting was convened, but
Ms. Wonderley said that she was not given notice of this gathering. She
says that, to support her and to deny the Brown faction a quorum, McKay and
Harris refused to attend this meeting. Wonderley said that during this
meeting she was voted off the board and that Brown was confirmed as EDF's
executive director. Naturally the McKay faction dismissed the actions of
the November 17 board meeting as illegal since a quorum was not present.
The McKay faction tried to overturn the decisions ratified at the November
17 meeting in their lawsuit.
      On December 21, 2006, the McKay faction of the EDF board filed an ex
parte application for appointment of receivership to neutralize the Brown
faction, who were making day-to-day decisions about the operation of the
school. A hearing before Judge Louis P. Etcheverry of the Kern County
Superior Court was scheduled for January 31, 2007. According to Wonderley,
failure of legal counsel for the Brown faction to file responses caused the
hearing to be continued to February 8.
      On February 8 Judge Etcheverry issued an Order for Appointment of
Receiver and Preliminary Injunction in favor of the requests that the McKay
faction had made to the court. In summary Judge Etcheverry ruled that
McKay's retirement as executive director did not operate to remove her from
the EDF board. The judge also confirmed the composition of the EDF board,
which included Wonderley as a board member, repudiating the EDF board's
actions of November 17, 2006. Finally, Judge Etcheverry placed EDF in the
hands of a receiver to evaluate what was needed to make the organization
functional.
      On February 21, 2007, Judge Etcheverry signed the official order
appointing Joey Etienne as EDF receiver. Wonderley reports that on the same
day Brown attempted to convene another EDF board meeting at which she
asserted her entitlement to a salary as executive director. Wonderley says
that she was again not given notice of this meeting. Receiver Etienne
confirms that he had to suspend Brown's EDF salary during the
organization's receivership.
      Etienne submitted his recommendations to the court on the future of
EDF on May 8, 2007. He recommended that the organization headquartered in
California be dissolved and that its assets be transferred to the Eye Dog
Foundation of Arizona created by McKay to manage some minor school matters,
which for all practical purposes existed on paper and had performed few
actual services. Because of the deadlocked board Etienne suggested that a
diverse group of Arizona advisors work with a nonprofit manager to create a
new board and establish a reconstituted foundation within the existing
framework of the articles of incorporation and bylaws of the Eye Dog
Foundation of Arizona. Finally, he recommended that he oversee the EDF
dissolution until a smooth transition to the Eye Dog Foundation of Arizona
could be achieved.
      On May 16, 2007, Judge Etcheverry entered a default judgment in favor
of the McKay faction of the EDF board. On June 11 the receiver's report was
accepted, but for reasons that remain unclear the case was transferred to
Judge Palmer of the Kern County Superior Court. Taking the opportunity to
persuade a different judge before Judge Etcheverry's default judgment was
officially registered, counsel for the Brown faction successfully argued
before Judge Palmer on July 11, 2007, to have the original default judgment
set aside. Several days later, on July 20, McKay unexpectedly died.
      Following McKay's death, the substantive grounds for the original
lawsuit no longer existed, so the impasse on the EDF board was broken. In
view of these developments, Judge Palmer directed the parties to settle at
a hearing on August 16. The court directed that the settlement should
relieve the receiver of his duties at a hearing on September 6 and that
control of the foundation should be passed back to the school's board. The
board was directed to replace McKay on the board in accordance with EDF's
bylaws.
      It appears that an unusual set of circumstances conspired to snatch a
legal victory on the merits of the case from the McKay faction of the EDF
board. Wonderley reports that the Brown faction quickly capitalized on
these developments and scheduled a board meeting for September 25. A quorum
was present. The EDF board moved to reinstate Brown as the school's
executive director, affirming its confidence in her by ratifying all the
actions she had tried to take during the past year. Jerome Washington and
Christopher Uboma, candidates supportive of Brown, were elected to the
board. Persuaded that she could no longer provide accountable oversight for
EDF and not wanting to be responsible for future decisions taken by the
Brown-dominated board, Wonderley tendered her resignation at the conclusion
of the September 25 meeting.
      In reviewing Brown's performance as EDF's executive director, we have
learned that three successive directors of training and most of their
support staff have left the school since September 2007. Manny Gonzales,
EDF director of training from February 11, 2006 to September 5, 2007, said
that he left a job and program he loved because of the micromanaging
harassment he received at Brown's hands. Specifically he said, "Gwen was
disrespectful of staff. She made unfounded and outlandish accusations
towards us. She was ignorant when it came to knowledge of guide dog
practices. She had no experience in assessing the O&M skills of blind
people, but she'd regularly presume to intercept and divert applications
from students. You couldn't reason with her; you couldn't talk to her."
Gonzales is a certified guide dog trainer through the state of California,
and he has a degree from New Zealand's Massey University in orientation and
mobility. Without exception, everybody with whom we spoke for this story
praised Gonzales's competence as a guide dog trainer. In concluding his
interview with us, Gonzales said, "Any self-respecting guide dog trainer
with any sense would now not remain at Eye Dog Foundation. What's happening
under Gwen Brown's leadership is a shame." Patti Savage, a respected puppy
coordinator with EDF from September 2004 through November 2006, grew weary
of working for Brown almost ten months before Gonzales decided to leave.
Among Savage's grievances against Brown were allegations that the acting
executive director interfered with her professional judgment to take dogs
in her care for special medical treatment and that staff were regularly
required to dip into their own pockets for operating cash because Brown
would not provide the needed funds.
      During the almost four months following Gonzales's departure, EDF had
no director of training, certified or otherwise. In the weeks after his
departure, Barbara Kuhns, EDF office administrator hired in July 2007 by
the receiver, and Paula Brown, EDF puppy coordinator, both left their jobs
and temporarily shut the Phoenix facility down. Kuhns said, "For the last
month of our employment, Paula and I would leave work together for fear of
our safety. Gwen was intimidating and created a threatening environment.
She regularly would tell Manny that she had somebody watching him."
According to Kuhns, both she and Savage left EDF still owed some back pay.
Representatives from the EDF volunteer puppy-raiser community told the
Braille Monitor that during this period they received little to no
communication from Brown about what was happening and that all puppy raiser
classes were suspended without notice.
      Bryan Young was hired to replace Gonzales as director of training on
December 15, 2007. While not certified as a guide dog trainer by
California, Young brought considerable experience, having worked for EDF
for several years in the middle 90s and with several other schools,
including Leader Dogs in Rochester Hills, Michigan.
      Young reported that problems existed for him and the school from the
beginning of his EDF employment. He said that his pay was often late,
sometimes issued on personal EDF checks and occasionally on more
conventional payroll checks. He also reported irregularities with the
deduction of state and Social Security taxes from his pay. Finally, Young
says that he has still not been paid for almost two weeks of work following
his abrupt decision to resign on July 4, 2008.
      Above and beyond these issues, Young told us that Brown tried to
micromanage the school, second guessing and failing to act on his
recommendations to release animals not suitable as guide dogs and refusing
to forward student applications to him when advised that dogs were almost
ready for placement. Additionally, Young said that Brown created
operational difficulties and safety hazards at the school when she took
actions, including canceling dog food deliveries to the campus and
terminating the school's cell phone services, which jeopardized the over-
heating alarm systems in the vans used to transport dogs for off-campus
training. Young explained that he ultimately spent his personal funds to
purchase food for the animals in his care. Both Young and Kuhns told us
that bills from many creditors were paid late or not at all.
      Counsel for Brown and EDF counter that significant administrative
disruptions occurred because of a delay in moving accounts back to the
control of EDF from the receiver, which may have resulted in some bills
being paid late. EDF counsel states that all creditors have been made whole
at this stage or that payments have intentionally not been honored for
cause, including breach of contract or nonperformance. Young says that he
is continuing to try to resolve his pay dispute with EDF, and Wonderley
says that EDF officials are declining to pay McKay's estate her retirement
entitlement.
      According to Young, as executive director Brown cultivated a terrible
and intimidating relationship with the staff. He said that Brown called
Michelle Tenny, puppy raiser coordinator under his charge, at all hours of
the night to let her know "just how replaceable" she was. Finally he
reported that at one stage during his seven-month employment he was
approached by a representative of a company who told him that Brown had
hired his firm to install surveillance equipment on campus. According to
Young, the company representative ultimately said that ethically he
couldn't be part of this bizarre assignment and left the property without
finishing the job.
      According to Young, in April 2008 Executive Director Brown hired Doug
Hunter as Young's supervisor. This relationship was short-lived, though,
because Hunter remained on staff for less than ten days. Young said that
Hunter told him, while being driven to the airport, that he didn't know if
he'd ever come back and that he couldn't get a commitment in writing from
Brown about the terms of his employment.
      Young and Tenny both abruptly resigned their positions with EDF on
Friday, July 4, 2008, when, as Young tells it, Brown was unresponsive to
his repeated requests for authorization to have an EDF dog receive
emergency medical care, which ultimately required surgery. Exasperated and
bewildered by the oppressive and hostile environment that Brown created,
Young said that he and Tenny "had simply put up with enough." In preparing
to close the Phoenix property for the second time in less than a year in
the absence of staff to operate it, Young told the Braille Monitor that he
contacted the volunteer puppy raisers whose dogs were in the school's
kennel to come and collect the animals for safe keeping until new staff
could be identified.
      In early August Brown hired Dexter Morin as EDF director of training.
Since Morin resigned his position on October 5, just as this story was
coming to our attention, we did not have an opportunity to interview him.
      According to DaCoda Whittemore, EDF assistant guide dog trainer and
facilities manager from August 12 to August 26, 2008, and several of the
school's volunteer puppy raisers, Morin, in his early twenties, was
recruited from Noah's Assistance Dogs in Crete, Nebraska, where he had
helped to train perhaps a handful of dogs. Ruth Dutton, an EDF volunteer
puppy trainer, told us that she had been in contact with Morin's former
supervisor, Mike Renner, after being alarmed at Morin's lack of experience,
and was advised that he was dedicated to the profession but was by no means
ready to assume the responsibilities of a lead guide dog trainer. Mike
Renner, director of Noah's Assistance Dogs, told the Braille Monitor that
in fact Morin was associated with his program briefly through the
AmeriCorps Program, but, when funding for this position was terminated, Mr.
Morin continued with the school as a volunteer. Mr. Renner confirmed that
"it would be quite a stretch" to expect Morin to function as director of
training for any reputable guide dog training facility. Denise Warner was
hired as Morin's puppy coordinator, and she remains employed at EDF at this
writing.
      Whittemore's description of her brief tenure at EDF mirrors the
pattern of discontent and concern expressed by Gonzales and Young. "Despite
having eight years of experience in the field of animal behavior science,
it became apparent that I was not going to be allowed to do anything. I
would fax ideas for on-campus improvements, but my communications were
ignored. I was told that I could not discuss anything about internal
operations at Eye Dog Foundation with anybody. I saw no generation or
meaningful preparation of working dogs at all while I was at Eye Dog
Foundation. I would caution those in the public about contributing to this
school without finding out what their money is really being used for. I
decided to leave this part-time job and pay full-time attention to my own
business."
      In response to the concerns of the volunteer puppy-raiser community
and others about the organization's ability to retain qualified staff,
counsel for EDF concede in their letter of October 27, 2008, that retaining
professional personnel is a difficult task. They further acknowledge that
"some turnover" in staff has occurred during the past year, but counsel
contends that the EDF board strive to identify qualified staff and that
currently no key positions are not staffed by competent individuals. This
claim is hard to accept since the only staff present at the Phoenix
property when we tried to tour the facility on Thursday, October 16, 2008,
was Denise Warner, puppy coordinator formerly under Morin, and a man called
Rick, who described himself as a grounds caretaker without any professional
background with service animals. We are unclear whether Warner's role has
changed since Morin's departure; she did claim to be qualified to train
guide dogs during the brief over-the-fence conversation we had with her.
Despite the invitation on the EDF Website to visit the campus, the staff
refused us admittance to the Phoenix property for a tour and instead
referred us to Brown in California to arrange any future visits.
[PHOTO/CAPTION: Puppy raiser Wallace Swerkes and his dog Kaiser]
[PHOTO/CAPTION: Puppy raiser Alice Wies and Litta]
      EDF has a devoted and passionate volunteer puppy-raiser community of
almost fifty people (spouses and family members included) working with
between twenty-four and twenty-nine dogs, who could potentially be trained
as guide dogs at the school. A puppy raiser agrees to raise a puppy for a
guide dog training facility for the first eighteen to twenty-four months of
its life, working on socializing and other basic skills before returning it
to the school for formal training. Those who undertake this investment of
time, love, and money are special and committed people who genuinely care
about animals and are dedicated to having their dogs matched with a blind
dog handler.
      In investigating this story, we met with puppy raisers of at least
eleven EDF dogs. All of these puppy raisers expressed an abiding desire to
raise their dogs to fulfill their mission as guides for blind people.
Despite (or perhaps because of) this common commitment, all eleven sets of
puppy raisers are resolved not to return their assigned animals to EDF
while they believe the school is unable to train adequately or care safely
for the dogs. Each of these puppy raisers has a compelling personal story
of deceit or promises broken by the EDF administration, but the bottom line
for each is that each is unwilling to jeopardize his or her investment of
time, energy, love, and money by returning a dog to what they believe is an
unsafe and unproductive situation. If circumstances were better at Eye Dog
Foundation or if alternative arrangements for the welfare and training of
the animals could be arranged, each puppy raiser told us that he or she
would gladly relinquish the animal for an objective evaluation and possible
successful training as a guide dog.
[PHOTO/CAPTION: Former EDF office administrator and volunteer puppy raiser,
Barbara Kuhns]
      Anna Thomasson, Diana Anderson, Gail Stouthamer, and Barbara Kuhns
have voluntarily assumed leadership on behalf of almost all the EDF puppy
raisers. They told the Braille Monitor that EDF puppy raisers were left to
manage the training of their dogs on their own for the almost four-month
period between the resignation of Gonzales and the hiring of Young in late
2007. They report that the administration gave them no notice of this staff
transition nor any direction about how they were to care for and train
their animals in the interim. Despite being alarmed by this development,
they all agreed to resume the bimonthly puppy raiser classes with Young
once he started working for EDF.
      In addition to the extended interruption in support from EDF during
the autumn of 2007, puppy raisers identified other general concerns during
2008, including frustration that trainer recommendations for release of
dogs deemed unsuitable to guide were not honored expeditiously, worries
that the school was not placing ready dogs with blind candidates, doubts
about the school's ability to care for its animals safely, anger that EDF
stopped providing regular heartworm and tick medications for the animals,
reservations about the low morale and stress of EDF training staff as a
result of their work environment, and annoyance at Executive Director
Brown's refusal to communicate regularly with them about their grievances.
      Following a January 2008 meeting in which Brown did come to Phoenix
to meet with the closely bonded community of EDF puppy raisers, she has
been unwilling to meet with them again, despite written requests that she
do so.
      After Young resigned as director of training in July 2008 and Brown
hired the unqualified Morin to take charge of the program, most of the
puppy raisers decided to stop attending puppy training classes because the
classes would not be effective and could be harmful to the animals. Even
so, puppy raisers continued to request a meeting with Brown to address the
deteriorating safety and training at the school. They say that their
requests were met with silence.
      In early October John Clark, an Arizona attorney that Brown hired to
secure the return of the EDF dogs, started issuing demand letters to most
members of the school's puppy-raiser community, threatening legal action if
the dogs were not returned in five days. Barbara Kuhns points out that the
capacity of the EDF kennels is about twenty, so, if everybody complied with
the request, the school would be unable to care for all of the dogs. At or
about the same time, Morin resigned his position as EDF director of
training, leaving only Denise Warner on campus to care for the dogs. In his
October 5 letter of resignation, Morin advised Brown that he was turning
over the remaining dogs (there were only two or three on campus at the
time) to the puppy raisers since Denise was not at the campus when he
decided to leave. Despite Morin's explanation of this action (an action
that previous trainers had taken when they terminated their EDF
employment), Thomasson and Anderson told us that Brown filed a police
report alleging that the dogs had been stolen from the property. Following
is the text of the demand letter that Clark sent to Anna Thomasson on
behalf of EDF. Since most of the letters were similar, we print this one
mostly to show the tone that the EDF adopted toward its volunteers. In
response we print a representative reply to a similar demand letter from
puppy raiser Gillian Roberts addressed to the EDF's executive director,
which clearly articulates the primary points that all of the puppy raisers
are making:
                                 **********
VIA CERTIFIED MAIL RETURN RECEIPT AND REGULAR MAIL
Anna Thomasson
Re: The Eye Dog Foundation Puppy Named Nisha
Dear Ms. Thomasson:
      I represent the Eye Dog Foundation (the "Foundation"). Pursuant to
the Puppy Raiser Agreement dated January 20, 2007, you were to provide
foster care for Nisha. A copy of the Agreement is enclosed.
      The Agreement clearly provides that Nisha is the property of the
Foundation. Further, in signing this bailment agreement, you undertook
certain obligations with respect to the puppy and the Foundation. I
understand that you have breached at least two parts of this Agreement. You
have not followed the instructions of the staff, and you have not attended
all the Training Classes.
      DEMAND IS HEREBY MADE that you immediately return Nisha to the
Foundation at its office at 8252 South 15th Avenue, Phoenix, AZ 85041. If
you cannot provide transportation for Nisha, call Dexter Morin or Denise
Warner at (602) 276-0051 to arrange transportation.
      Please be aware that you have a fiduciary duty to the Foundation.
Breach of that duty, such as by attempting to convert the dog to your
ownership or as conspiring with others to deprive the Foundation of its
property, could subject you to legal liability.
      You are also directed to return any of the Foundation's equipment
that you borrowed. Nisha and the equipment must be returned within, at the
most, five (5) days from the date of this letter to avoid any further
proceedings.
      If you have any questions regarding this demand letter, please write
me at the address set forth above. Do not discuss your concerns with Dexter
Morin or Denise Warner.
Very truly yours,
John D. Clark
Enclosure
                                ************
[PHOTO/CAPTION: Puppy raiser Gillian Roberts and her dog Noni]
October 4, 2008
Ms. Gwen Brown
Executive Director, Eye Dog Foundation
VIA CERTIFIED MAIL RETURN RECEIPT AND REGULAR MAIL
Dear Ms. Brown:
      I am writing as Noni's puppy raiser to notify you that the Eye Dog
Foundation (EDF) is in breach of its puppy raiser agreement with me.
Further, it has become clear from recent actions by EDF and its staff that
EDF cannot currently ensure the safety of the animals under its care. I
provide a remedy acceptable to me at the end of this letter. I would point
out that I am an experienced puppy raiser, having in the past raised dogs
for both Canine Companions for Independence and Guide Dogs for the Blind,
both well established and well respected organizations. Here are the facts
to support my concerns with EDF:
      First: I believe that EDF with its currently constituted board of
directors and staff is unable or unwilling to fulfill its publicly stated
mission of being "dedicated to giving guide dogs to the blind and visually
impaired at absolutely no cost to them" <http://www.eyedogfoundation.org>.
This mission is also a commitment to the volunteer puppy raisers who pour
love, time, and significant money into the care and preparation of a puppy
that they believe will be destined for that career. EDF has not graduated a
single guide dog team in more than a year, despite the fact that in the
spring of 2008 there were several dogs in the kennel ready to be teamed and
clients available for them.
      Second: EDF has been unable to retain qualified guide dog trainers.
In thirteen months, there has been complete turnover of training center
staff twice. This includes the loss of three fully-qualified guide dog
trainers. The staff currently at the training center is not qualified by
any measure recognized within the guide dog industry to be training these
dogs and is therefore not competent to run a program that will produce
guide dogs that can be safely placed with visually impaired partners.
      Third: The puppy raiser agreement requires me to attend classes once
per month. This implies that EDF will provide those classes and further
that those classes will be conducted by qualified trainers. From mid-
September 2007 to early March 2008, almost six months, EDF failed to
provide classes for the dogs. During the first four months of this period,
at considerable inconvenience to my husband and me, I continued with Noni's
training, including sessions with a number of professional trainers. At any
time that EDF has offered classes, I have eagerly attended in accordance
with our agreement and only missed class for valid reasons. I attended two
sessions with the new staff, during which my only contact was with Denise
Warner, puppy coordinator. It was apparent in those sessions that Ms.
Warner had absolutely no background with service dogs and no understanding
of appropriate training methods. Given that experience, I believe that
continuing training with Ms. Warner would be detrimental to Noni's
development as a guide dog.
      Fourth: EDF has signaled that it intends to unilaterally redefine
what constitutes a release of a dog. In the past, and as understood by the
current puppy raisers, the (qualified) director of training determined
whether a dog was to be released from the program. Despite this
understanding, which is reinforced by consistent past practice and
acknowledged by you, Ms. Brown, some of the puppy raisers have been told
that the rules have changed and that now you, Ms. Brown, and/or the board
must decide whether a dog is to be released from the program. Not only is
it impermissible to unilaterally change the terms of our agreement, but in
addition, to the knowledge of the puppy raisers, neither you, Ms. Brown,
nor any member of the board has the training that would qualify you or them
to determine whether a dog should be released from, or retained, in the
program.
      EDF has given clear indication that it does not intend to honor its
contractual obligation to allow puppy raisers the option to adopt the dog
they raised if ultimately someone (qualified or not) determines their dog
will be released from the program. My agreement states that "if the puppy
needs to have a career change, the first priority will be to place it with
an appropriate service organization. Second priority will be to place the
puppy with original raiser at no cost." In a meeting with approximately
thirty puppy raisers on January 12, 2008, you, Ms. Brown, affirmed our
understanding that we would have first rights to our dogs if they are
released from the program. When we asked for clarification of the puppy
raiser agreement regarding the potential placement with "an appropriate
service organization," you, Ms. Brown, once again assured us that
historically dogs have not been placed with other service organizations,
and they would be returned to us if they are released.
      Recent past conduct underscores EDF's new resistance to returning
released dogs to their puppy raisers. In mid-February, the former director
of training, Bryan Young, signaled that a number of dogs were to be
released from the program, yet four of those dogs were kept in EDF's
kennels for almost five months--until July 5--when they finally were
returned to puppy raiser homes.
      For EDF to direct that these highly intelligent dogs, raised in
family homes and accustomed to daily socialization, not be returned to
puppy raiser homes and instead be kept in a kennel after no longer being
deemed suitable for guide work is unconscionable and demonstrates a lack of
intent to fulfill EDF's contractual obligation to puppy raisers.
      Fifth: It has become clear that the staff at the training center does
not have the experience to control the dogs in their care. I know of one
recent incident in which one of the dogs at the center was sufficiently
injured in a dog fight to require veterinary care. From the information I
have, it is clear that staff inexperience was a major contributing factor.
I could not conscionably return Noni to an unsafe environment, nor do I
believe I would be legally required to do so.
      Sixth: On July 5, 2008, EDF abandoned Noni. She was boarding at the
training center, one of twelve dogs present, when the training staff
resigned and the center abruptly closed down. You, Ms. Brown, had cancelled
food orders for the center on June 30 when the center was out of food,
possibly leaving the dogs, both boarders and dogs which had been returned
to EDF, to starve. It was up to the training staff, acting on their own and
concerned for the dogs' welfare, to purchase food and arrange for care for
them, including one dog which required emergency life-saving surgery. We
were out of state and had to rely on two other puppy raisers to care for
her until we could return.
      I am committed absolutely to Noni's fulfilling her mission as a guide
dog. This is why I became involved in the program at EDF. However, I no
longer believe that EDF can deliver on its commitments, and, perhaps more
importantly, EDF cannot ensure her safety. To resolve this, I request that
EDF release Noni to a nationally recognized guide dog organization, or to
me on the understanding that I will make due diligence to donate her (with
no benefit to me) to an appropriate service dog organization. In either
case I will assume the cost and responsibility of delivering her to that
organization.
                                ************
Sincerely,
Gillian Roberts
CC:
Mr. John D. Clark, Jr, Attorney at Law
                                ************
      Finally, in accordance with a commitment to Clark and the EDF, we
print the following statement from the school about the puppy raisers'
failure to honor the demand letters. Here it is:
                                 **********
      1. The Eye Dog Foundation for the Blind is a nonprofit California
corporation that was established, as the name suggests, to provide guide
dogs for the blind. It is authorized to operate in Arizona.
      2. The Eye Dog Foundation for the Blind owns more than twenty-five
puppies that were placed under bailment contracts with parties who were to
raise the puppies, i.e., puppy raisers.
      3. Each of the Contracts clearly states that each of the dogs belong
to the Foundation, and gives no ownership rights whatsoever to any of the
puppy raisers. The puppy raisers merely had the right to raise these
puppies.
      4. The Contract also stipulates that the puppy raisers were required
to comply with the Foundation's directives regarding the puppies.
      5. Last week the Foundation directed each of the puppy raisers in
writing to return the Foundation's puppies to the Foundation within five
days.
      6. It now appears that the puppy raisers are refusing to comply with
the Foundation's directive to return the Foundation's puppies.
      7. The puppy raisers are apparently attempting to raise a number of
specious issues to divert attention away from their clear breaches of the
bailment contracts. None of these issues give the puppy raisers the right
to deprive the Foundation of its puppies, which is what the puppy raisers
are apparently attempting to do.
                                 **********
      Seemingly backed into a corner and with no access to legal
representation to fight against this multimillion dollar organization, the
EDF puppy raisers contacted the offices of the Attorneys General in both
Arizona and California. Receiving no satisfactory response from these
authorities, they then approached the Braille Monitor and the local ABC
affiliate in Phoenix to register their concerns and to attract attention to
the issues occurring at the school. Following is the text of the story
found on the Website of the local ABC affiliate in Phoenix that accompanied
the brief video spot that was also produced and aired in early October:
                                 **********
      A custody battle is brewing over twenty-five "service dogs in
training" in the Phoenix area. The future service animals are owned by the
Eye Dog Foundation for the Blind, a California-based nonprofit group that
operates a training center in Phoenix. But a large group of volunteers,
foster families that agreed to help raise the dogs, are refusing to return
them.
[PHOTO/CAPTION: Puppy raiser Dianna Anderson and her dog Kensi]
      "I couldn't feel comfortable handing this dog back to a foundation
that is not functioning and feel good about it," Diana Anderson said.
Anderson and twenty-five other volunteers entered into agreements with the
foundation to provide the dogs a home and bring them to training sessions
at the foundation's facility in south Phoenix.
      The goal of the foundation is to train the dogs and then place them
with the blind. But volunteers like Eldon Ploetz say the foundation is in
shambles, that dogs are not receiving the necessary training, and they
claim not a single dog has been placed with a blind person in more than a
year. Ploetz and his wife have helped raise and foster Kiesha, a German
shepherd.
      In late September Ploetz received a letter from the Eye Dog
Foundation's attorney stating, "DEMAND IS HEREBY MADE that you immediately
return Kiesha to the Foundation." The letter continues, "I understand that
you have breached at least two parts of this Agreement. You have not
followed the instructions of the staff, and you have not attended all
the Training Classes." Other volunteers received similar letters.
      But the volunteers claim the trainers are not properly certified, and
the ones that have been hired have not stayed on with the foundation.
Additionally, they say the Foundation had been shut down for weeks and they
have neglected the dogs.
      "We understand they cut off the food for the dogs that were in the
kennel," Ploetz said. Ploetz's wife said she would rather go to jail than
give Kiesha back to the foundation.
      "They are valid concerns," said DaCoda Whittemore, a former
operations manager who worked at the foundation's training facility for
only a week. Whittemore said the dogs are "absolutely" receiving better
care with the foster families, "not just because the management isn't
functioning properly, but there's no staff qualified at the foundation at
this point to be able to take and care for these dogs properly." Dexter
Morin, a former trainer at the facility, agreed with Whittemore, submitting
his resignation earlier this month.
      Before leaving, Morin turned over several dogs to the foster families
rather than leaving them alone at the training facility. In his resignation
letter, Morin wrote, "I contacted the puppy raisers to inform them of my
concerns of leaving the dogs on the premises without the guarantee that
they would be attended to." Morin goes on to say, "I in good conscience
turned them over to the puppy raisers for the safe keeping of the dogs."
      The Eye Dog Foundation and its attorney have declined our repeated
requests for an on-camera interview. In a statement to ABC 15, the
Foundation's attorney, John D. Clark, wrote, "The contract clearly states
that each of the dogs belong to the Foundation, and gives no ownership
rights whatsoever to any of the puppy raisers." The letter goes on to state
that "the Foundation directed each of the puppy raisers in writing to
return the Foundation's puppies to the Foundation within five days. It now
appears that the puppy raisers are refusing to comply with the Foundation's
directive."
                                 **********
      There you have the ABC story.  In an effort to resolve the impasse
amicably, EDF puppy-raiser leaders Anna Thomasson and Gail Stouthamer
initiated a dialogue with Clark to find a solution to the custody problem
acceptable to all parties. Among the suggestions that the puppy raisers
offered were to turn the dogs over to a functioning guide dog school
equipped to evaluate and train the dogs for guiding service if appropriate.
Optimism about resolution of this matter was briefly high among the puppy
raisers following signs of good-faith conversations with Clark, but he
abruptly ended the settlement talks after receiving a request from the
Braille Monitor to interview his client for this story.
      No further progress on resolving the standoff between concerned puppy
raisers and the foundation has been realized since Clark's retaliatory
measures against the puppy raisers for their decision to alert the Braille
Monitor to this story. Afraid of the financial and legal liability that
they will all face as a result of their collective decision to engage in
this act of civil disobedience in support of producing high-quality guide
dogs for blind consumers and for the welfare of the animals themselves,
puppy-raiser leaders say that they are nevertheless resolved to do the
right thing on principle. The puppy raisers are looking for legal
representation, but to date they have been unsuccessful in finding counsel
willing to advocate for them pro bono.
      Throughout this long ordeal some EDF puppy raisers have reported
feeling varying degrees of intimidation from and fear of Gwen Brown.
Thomasson, for instance, received several unidentified cell phone calls on
October 7, 2008, in which the caller, who Thomasson believes to have been
Brown, said, "Ok, Anna Thomasson. It's me and you, me and you and Barbara
Kuhns. We're going to go for it, okay? Me and you--you and me, okay?" Later
this same week Thomasson received an anonymous large envelope in the mail
which contained letters addressed to Gwen Brown that had been resealed with
tape. Another puppy raiser, who had initially agreed to be interviewed for
this story, called to insist that his name not be used for fear that Brown
or one of her "operatives" would somehow harm his family or the dog that he
had raised. Several sources for this story also report having had
conversations with Brown in which she has made threatening comments like,
"I can't wait until the Lord makes my enemies my footstools" and other
vague but pointed remarks. Finally, Anderson told the Braille Monitor that
she was quite disturbed when Brown ended an unpleasant telephone
conversation with her with the comment, "Oh, so you have children, do you?"
      Several EDF consumers told the Braille Monitor of instances of
nonresponsive or insensitive treatment at Brown's hands. Patricia Kepler of
Oregon said that Brown was unresponsive to the fact that her dog had been
injured on public transportation, and she explained that her dog was
offered no retraining or post-accident evaluation services. Instead, Robert
Torence of the Seeing Eye generously came out to help her work with her
dog. She says that both the Seeing Eye and Guide Dogs for the Blind have
been invaluable to EDF consumers since the school has essentially stopped
functioning. She also cited an instance in which Brown told her simply to
go to Pet Smart when she needed a replacement leash for her guide dog. "Of
course any responsible administrator of a reputable guide dog school knows
better than to recommend that a student use a pet leash for the taxing work
that a service animal performs," Kepler said. Finally, Veronica Elsea of
California told the Braille Monitor that she has been trying to get a guide
dog from EDF since July 2007, and she reports having received the
application only within the last few weeks.
      The final facet of this story involves allegations that Gwen Brown,
on behalf of EDF, attempted to make or made inappropriate withdrawals from
EDF of California and EDF of Arizona bank accounts. As previously reported,
Eye Dog Foundation of Arizona was a distinct entity from Eye Dog Foundation
of California that existed largely to manage minor Arizona-related matters
for the school. According to Eldon Ploetz, EDF puppy raiser and treasurer
of the Eye Dog Foundation of Arizona, Brown was never a member of the
governing board or a financial signatory on bank records of this small
Arizona entity. Ploetz accuses Brown of inappropriately withdrawing ten
thousand dollars from an Eye Dog Foundation of Arizona account, but he
acknowledges that, once the bank realized its error and asked her to return
the funds, she did so. Schiffres, on behalf of Brown and EDF, explains this
incident in his letter of October 27, 2008, as follows:
                                 **********
      Ms. Brown did withdraw $10,000 from an Eye Dog Foundation of Arizona
account at Wells Fargo Bank. She went to a Claremont branch of Wells Fargo
and filled out a withdrawal form (in the absence of having any available
checks) and presented appropriate identification. The bank teller (name
unknown) checked the bank's signature card records to confirm Ms. Brown's
authority to make the withdrawal. Ms. Brown advises that the teller
appeared also to have obtained the approval of the bank manager. The
withdrawal was thus approved, and Ms. Brown received $10,000. She used same
to pay counsel on behalf of Eye Dog Foundation for work performed on its
behalf.
      Approximately two weeks later the Wells Fargo branch manager called
Ms. Brown, advising her that she was not shown as a signatory on the
account and requesting that the monies be repaid. Ms. Brown's response was
that he should double-check his records because she was in fact an
authorized signer, as was confirmed by the teller. The manager then
responded that the names on the account were two other board members,
Ms. Wonderley and Mr. Harris, and he claimed Ms. Brown had never been a
signatory on the account.
      Although the bank manager's information that Ms. Brown lacked
authority to make a withdrawal on the subject account was incorrect, rather
than argue the point, Ms. Brown simply took the pragmatic approach. She
used her own personal funds to reimburse the Eye Dog Foundation of Arizona
account at Wells Fargo Bank in response to the Bank's request, thereby to
avoid even the appearance of impropriety. It was subsequently learned that
the receiver had apparently empowered Wendy Wonderley and Louis Harris to
take over control of that account, and they had presented the bank with
documentation that superseded the bank authorization for Ms. Brown to sign
on the account. This was not revealed to Ms. Brown at the time or to her
counsel; nor was the Bank subsequently informed by Ms. Wonderley or Mr.
Harris, or by the receiver, that upon extinguishing the receivership,
control of the account had reverted to Eye Dog Foundation's board, of which
Ms. Brown was its duly elected executive director. Had either notice been
provided, the entire episode would never have occurred.
                                 **********
      In the face of such contradictory information, the Braille Monitor is
unable to verify fully or accurately where the truth in this incident
actually lies, but we have records (minutes and the articles of
incorporation for the Eye Dog Foundation of Arizona) that show that Ms.
Brown was not a member of this organization's governing body. Nevertheless,
no doubt can exist that, while the Eye Dog Foundation of Arizona and the
Eye Dog Foundation of California were separate legal entities, these
organizations worked together in an allied cause. Subsequent to the
dissolution of the EDF receivership, Mr. Ploetz reports that Brown, in her
capacity as EDF executive director, has now entirely drained the Eye Dog
Foundation of Arizona bank account and has absorbed its resources into the
Eye Dog Foundation of California operation. Ploetz alleges that Brown had
no right to do this since she has never had anything to do with this
entity. He reports that he filed a criminal complaint with the IRS
regarding Brown's second Eye Dog Foundation of Arizona withdrawal in the
spring of this year. Without resources to operate the Eye Dog Foundation of
Arizona, Ploetz told us that its board dissolved the small Arizona-based
organization in the spring of 2008. In response to this second allegation,
Schiffres said, "Your letter references a pending IRS criminal probe into
Ms. Brown's alleged taking of funds from Eye Dog of Arizona ("EDA")
accounts. We are not aware of any such inquiry. However, we are unaware of
any claimed impropriety regarding said accounts by Ms. Brown. We therefore
must question the accuracy of your information."
      Both Ploetz and Wonderley tell the Braille Monitor that Brown also
attempted inappropriately to withdraw $30,000 from an EDF of California
account, but they both confirm that this attempted transaction was
ultimately blocked by the bank and that these funds were never taken.
Counsel for Ms. Brown, however, contradicts this claim and explains the
incident like this:
                                 **********
      Your letter references an attempted withdrawal of funds from Arizona
accounts. The true facts are as follows: As you are presumably aware,
several years ago the Eye Dog Foundation board was provided a statement of
resignation by Lequita McKay, executive director. The resignation was
understood to include her director position and a new executive director--
Ms. Gwen Brown--was voted in. Then Ms. McKay and her supporters on the
board claimed that she did not intend to resign as director, leading to a
board deadlock. This, in turn, led to a lawsuit and the imposition of a
receiver. Following Ms. McKay's death, which mooted the issue of board
deadlock, and the presentation of opposition proof and briefing, the court
held in favor of the Gwen Brown faction of the board and made an order
extinguishing the receivership. Unfortunately, the practical effects of the
suit, receivership, and elimination of the receivership, lasted much
longer. Several months passed during which we were unable to get court
orders signed for the reinstatement of the new board and Ms. Brown. The
result was a major dislocation of the Foundation's business. It is in this
context that this and your other questions must be considered.
      On a date subsequent to the receiver's appointment, Eye Dog
Foundation received a letter from Citibank advising of a maturing six-month
CD. Ms. Brown and another board member, Mr. Hannon, responded by going to
the Citibank branch in Upland with the intention of ascertaining Eye Dog
Foundation's available options for the handling of the CD precisely because
the account was at the time in receivership. They met and spoke to a
Ms. Hong and specifically advised her that the account was subject to the
receivership. Ms. Hong responded that notwithstanding what she was being
told by Ms. Brown and Mr. Hannon, there was "no hold" on the account. She
indicated she would have to contact her home office to obtain further
instructions. Ms. Brown believes that Mr. Hannon signed a document given to
him by Ms. Hong at that time. Ms. Hong stated that the document was needed
in order for her to make the home office inquiry. That was the extent of
the first visit to Citibank, which occurred on a Friday. The following
Monday or Tuesday Ms. Brown had a telephone conversation with Ms. Hong. Ms.
Hong this time advised that the account should have been blocked.
Consequently, Ms. Brown and Mr. Hannon thought the matter was resolved.
They gave Ms. Hong no instructions concerning the maturing CD because, upon
receiving the bank's confirmation that the CD was on hold, meant they had
no power or authority to act with regard to same. There was no attempt to
withdraw $30,000 from the Citibank account.
                                ************
[PHOTO/CAPTION: Litta, EDF puppy in training]
      This is what we know. The Braille Monitor has been careful in
reporting this story to keep our narration to facts or circumstances
confirmed by at least two people. What we personally believe as a result of
our investigation, however, could fill several more pages.
      Blind consumers, oversight authorities, and others interested in the
welfare of guide dogs should understand that the Eye Dog Foundation is
clearly in trouble. They currently have no dog trainers on staff who meet
industry standards for working with guide dogs. The qualified trainers that
they did employ have resigned, citing the hostile and oppressive work
environment created by Executive Director Brown, who seems to know little
about the day-to-day issues of guide dog instruction or practice. The
school has not issued a guide dog to a blind handler in well over a year.
The caring and conscientious EDF volunteer puppy-raising community is so
concerned about the absence of quality training and the general safety of
the dogs that they are engaged in an unprecedented act of civil
disobedience, willingly submitting themselves to legal jeopardy for their
principles. And the EDF governing board (an insular body indeed, in which
its members' contact details are not readily available to the public and
most of its members will not speak about their knowledge of events) is now
merely a rubber stamp for Brown, since all the members who disagreed with
the current administration have died or resigned in frustration. We note
that, to the best of our knowledge, no consumers have ever served on the
EDF board. This is a distressing situation to be sure. Finally, the EDF
operates under a dark shadow while it remains under investigation from the
California Attorney General and the IRS.
      Caveat emptor (let the buyer beware) should probably be the watch
phrase for those who have dealings with the Eye Dog Foundation in future.
Only time will tell what will happen with this organization. We sincerely
hope that matters can be resolved. The blind of America can only benefit
from a well-run guide dog school that specializes in the training of German
Shepherds, but at present the prospects for the foundation seem poor.
                                ------------
                         Consider a Charitable Gift

      Making a charitable gift can be one of the most satisfying
experiences in life. Each year millions of people contribute their time,
talent, and treasure to charitable organizations. When you plan for a gift
to the National Federation of the Blind, you are not just making a
donation; you are leaving a legacy that insures a future for blind people
throughout the country. Special giving programs are available through the
National Federation of the Blind (NFB).


Points to Consider When Making a Gift to the National Federation of the
Blind

Will my gift serve to advance the mission of the NFB?
Am I giving the most appropriate asset?
Have I selected the best way to make my gift?
Have I considered the tax consequences of my gift?
Have I sought counsel from a competent advisor?
Have I talked to the planned giving officer about my gift?

Benefits of Making a Gift to the NFB
   1. Helping the NFB fulfill its mission
   2. Receiving income tax savings through a charitable deduction
   3. Making capital gain tax savings on contribution of some appreciated
      gifts
   4. Providing retained payments for the life of a donor or other
      beneficiaries
   5. Eliminating federal estate tax in certain situations
   6. Reducing estate settlement cost

Your Gift Will Help Us
Make the study of science and math a real possibility for blind children
Provide hope for seniors losing vision
Promote state and chapter programs and provide information that will
educate blind people
Advance technology helpful to the blind
Create a state-of-the-art library on blindness
Train and inspire professionals working with the blind
Provide critical information to parents of blind children
Mentor blind people trying to find jobs
Your gift makes you a part of the NFB dream!
                                ------------
[PHOTO/CAPTION: Ed Morman and Ellen Ringlein picket the movie, Blindness.]
               NFB Protests Opening of Blindness in 37 States
                              by Barbara Pierce
                                ************
      When the NFB announced in late September that we planned to conduct
informational pickets at movie theaters across the nation when the Fernando
Meirelles adaptation of Jos Saramago's 1995 novel, Blindness, opened on
October 3, a wave of comment washed across the blindness listservs and into
the national press. Of course lots of folks cheered, but we also read lots
of comments ranging from Miramax's condescending expression of "sadness"
that we had so misunderstood its high-minded artistic statement of dismay
at the crudeness and barbarism of human nature to grumpy dismissals of our
outrage as childish tantrums. Many of our critics, particularly those in
the blindness community, criticized us for raising the subject only when
the film was about to open. These folks had forgotten, if they had ever
bothered to learn, that we passed a condemnatory resolution about the plans
for this film at our 2007 convention, soon after plans for its production
were announced. Miramax completely disregarded our objections at the time
and carried on with making the film.
      We began making plans to conduct informational pickets on October 3
everywhere we could find space to do so. On September 25 seven members of
the national staff went to see a preview screening of the film in
Baltimore. When the film ended, a Miramax employee asked if the group had
enjoyed the movie. They commented that it was not an experience one was
likely to enjoy. She agreed and volunteered that they were promoting it as
a horror film. The NFB members agreed that it was indeed pretty horrifying.
They went on to point out that its portrayal of blindness was hugely
inaccurate, a concept that obviously surprised the young woman.
      In fact, the film was exactly what anyone who had read the book might
have expected it to be. Clearly efforts to warn the public that the film
was damaging to blind people had to go forward.
      Affiliate presidents were encouraged to make protest plans. So in
seventy-two locations around the nation organizers ordered brochures and
picket signs from the national office. Volunteers rounded up sticks and
stapled the signs to them so that marchers had something to hold up. We
modified the national press release and circulated it to local media so
that they would know where to find blind people objecting to being depicted
as an allegory for everything that is depraved and base in human nature.
The Associated Press published a story on September 30 that was picked up
across the country. This is what it said:
                                ************
              Blind Activists Plan Protest of Movie, Blindness
                               by Ben Nuckols
                                ************
      Blind people quarantined in a mental asylum, attacking each other,
soiling themselves, trading sex for food. For Marc Maurer, who's blind,
such a scenario-as shown in the movie Blindness-is not a clever allegory
for a breakdown in society. Instead it's an offensive and chilling
depiction that Maurer fears could undermine efforts to integrate blind
people into the mainstream. "The movie portrays blind people as monsters,
and I believe it to be a lie," said Maurer, president of the Baltimore-
based National Federation of the Blind. "Blindness doesn't turn decent
people into monsters."
      The organization plans to protest the movie, released by Miramax
Films, at seventy-five theaters around the country when it's released
Friday. Blind people and their allies will hand out fliers and carry signs.
Among the slogans: "I'm not an actor. But I play a blind person in real
life." The movie reinforces inaccurate stereotypes, including that the
blind cannot care for themselves and are perpetually disoriented, according
to the NFB. "We face a 70 percent unemployment rate and other social
problems because people don't think we can do anything, and this movie is
not going to help-at all," said Christopher Danielsen, a spokesman for the
organization.
      Blindness director Fernando Meirelles, an Academy Award nominee for
City of God, was shooting on location Thursday and unavailable for comment,
according to Miramax. The studio released a statement that read, in part,
"We are saddened to learn that the National Federation of the Blind plans
to protest the film Blindness." The NFB began planning the protests after
seven staffers, including Danielsen, attended a screening of the movie in
Baltimore last week. The group included three sighted employees. "Everybody
was offended," Danielsen said.
      Based on the 1995 novel by Nobel Prize winner Jos Saramago,
Blindness imagines a mysterious epidemic that causes people to see nothing
but fuzzy white light-resulting in a collapse of the social order in an
unnamed city. Julianne Moore stars as the wife of an eye doctor (Mark
Ruffalo) who loses his sight; she feigns blindness to stay with her husband
and eventually leads a revolt of the quarantined patients.
      The book was praised for its use of blindness as a metaphor for the
lack of clear communication and respect for human dignity in modern
society.
      Miramax said in its statement that Meirelles had "worked diligently
to preserve the intent and resonance of the acclaimed book," which it
described as "a courageous parable about the triumph of the human spirit
when civilization breaks down."
      Maurer will have none of it. "I think that failing to understand each
other is a significant problem," he said. "I think that portraying it as
associated with blindness is just incorrect."
      The protest will include pickets at theaters in at least twenty-one
states, some with dozens of participants, timed to coincide with evening
showtimes. Maurer said it would be the largest protest in the sixty-eight-
year history of the NFB, which has 50,000 members and works to improve
blind people's lives through advocacy, education, and other ways.
      The film was the opening-night entry at the Cannes Film Festival,
where many critics were unimpressed. After Cannes Meirelles retooled the
film, removing a voice-over that some critics felt spelled out its themes
too explicitly. Meirelles told the Associated Press at Cannes that the film
draws parallels to such disasters as Hurricane Katrina, the global food
shortage, and the cyclone in Myanmar. "There are different kinds of
blindness. There's two billion people that are starving in the world,"
Meirelles said. "This is happening. It doesn't need a catastrophe. It's
happening, and because there isn't an event like Katrina, we don't see."
      Miramax is a division of The Walt Disney Company.
                                ************
      Between the AP story and the individual articles in papers across the
country covering local protests, hundreds of newspaper articles were
published, and more than fifty TV stories aired our position on this film.
We are pleased to report that, according to David Germain, AP movie writer,
"Miramax's Blindness, featuring Julianne Moore, Danny Glover, and Mark
Ruffalo in a nightmare tale about a plague of sightlessness, took in just
$2 million, averaging an anemic $1,185 in 1,690 theaters," during its all-
important first weekend. We don't wish to claim more effectiveness than is
justified. Clearly Blindness is an unsuccessful and disturbingly depressing
film in its own right, but it can't hurt that blind people across the
country stepped forward to register our anger at being used as an allegory
for all that is depraved and base in human nature. Lest you conclude that
we are making too much of the implications of this movie, here is an
accurate plot summary of the film:
                                ************
      Blindness is based on a novel of the same name by the Portuguese
writer Jos Saramago. The premise of the movie is that unnamed residents of
an unnamed city in an unnamed country suddenly and mysteriously become
blind. Those who experience the blindness see only a white glare, so the
blindness is sometimes called the "white sickness." The blindness is
contagious, and the government immediately quarantines the victims in an
abandoned and dilapidated mental asylum, with orders that anyone attempting
to leave is to be killed.
      The prisoners are given food and supplies, but deliveries are
inadequate and become increasingly irregular. The asylum also becomes
filthy because the blind inmates, as portrayed in the movie, cannot find
their way to the bathroom and simply relieve themselves on the floor or in
their own beds. Some of the inmates die from infection or disease or are
shot by guards when they try to escape or when they simply become
disoriented and wander too close to the fence.
      The inmates of Ward One, led by an ophthalmologist's wife, who can
still see but feigns blindness to remain with her husband, fare slightly
better than the rest; the implication is that this is solely because she
assists the blind, portrayed as being unable to do anything for themselves.
As food supplies dwindle, another group of blind inmates whose leader has
acquired a gun and dubbed himself "the King of Ward Three" begins to
terrorize the others. The armed clique in Ward Three hoards all the food,
extorting money and valuables from the other inmates and eventually
demanding sex with the women from other wards in exchange for allowing the
rest of the inmates to eat. One of the members of this clique who was born
blind and is not a victim of the white sickness knows how to read and write
Braille and is given the task of taking inventory of the valuables stolen
from the other inmates.
      When the women from Ward One go to ward three to exchange sex for
food, one of them is beaten to death as she is raped. The doctor's wife
later kills the King of Ward Three, but the man who was born blind takes
his place as leader of the armed gang and threatens to avenge the king by
killing the doctor's wife. Being blind, however, he is unable to shoot her,
and she escapes unharmed. The rest of the inmates finally decide to do
battle with the gang in Ward Three; just before the showdown someone sets a
pile of bedding alight, starting a fire that soon engulfs the entire
asylum. During the ensuing confusion the man who was born blind shoots
himself. When the surviving inmates, including the group led by the
doctor's wife, escape the burning asylum, they discover that no soldiers
are standing guard and they are free.
      Outside the makeshift prison everyone has become blind, and the city
has descended into total chaos. No government services or businesses are
functioning, and nomadic groups of mostly naked blind people wander through
the streets, squatting in abandoned houses and shops for shelter and taking
food where they can find it-including in rubbish heaps. There is no
electricity or running water, so the streets and buildings of the city are
as filthy as the asylum was. Dogs that people used to keep as pets have
gone wild and roam in packs, feeding on refuse and human corpses. The home
of the doctor and his wife, however, is intact, and their group sets up
residence there. The movie ends just as they regain their sight-as suddenly
and mysteriously as they had lost it.
                                ************
      We conclude this summary of the October 3 protest with two further
documents. The first is a review of the film. The second is a post to an
NFB listserv. It is only one of many on this topic, but it does a
remarkable job of articulating the views of blind protesters.
                                ------------
[PHOTO/CAPTION: James Fetter]
                         A False Image of Blindness
                               by James Fetter
                                ************
>From the Editor: James Fetter is a graduate student at Notre Dame
University. He is writing his dissertation, but the weekend after our
nationwide protest of the film, Blindness, he offered to write a book
review of Jos Saramago's novel on which the film is based. When Saramago
first won the Nobel Prize for this novel, I looked for a reviewer without
success. I was delighted to take James up on his offer. This is the result:
                                ************
Blindness
By Jos Saramago
Copyright 1995
Translated by Giovanni Pontiero
New York: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1995, 294 pp.  $22
                                ************
In the novel Blindness, which inspired a recently released movie by the
same name, Nobel laureate Jose Saramago uses blindness as a metaphor for
moral depravity, filth, and social collapse. In an unknown city full of
people who are never named, an inexplicable and incurable epidemic of
blindness strikes without warning, causing all but one of the city's
inhabitants to lose their sight. After an attempt to control the epidemic
by placing the infected in quarantine fails, complete social breakdown
quickly follows, and the newly blind inhabitants of the city wander
aimlessly, foraging for food and laying waste to their own city in the
process. This is the basic premise of Jos Saramago's novel entitled
Blindness, published not long before the author was awarded the Nobel Prize
for literature in 1998. Now that the movie Blindness, based on Saramago's
novel, has just been released nationwide, it is worth revisiting this novel
and the negative stereotypes of blindness Saramago propagates and
embellishes throughout its 294 pages.
With few exceptions the blind characters in Saramago's novel lose not only
their sight but also their ability to tend to their most basic bodily
needs, their courage in the face of intimidation, and their sense of
morality and decency. When the government attempts to stop the epidemic by
placing the infected in quarantine, the women are willing to be raped and
humiliated in order to obtain food from a gang of thugs in Ward 3 of the
dilapidated mental hospital in which the blind have been imprisoned. The
men, including the husbands of the female victims, more or less accept this
state of affairs and even encourage the women who protest to tolerate the
brutality to which they are subjected. The reign of terror is ended, not by
the blind, but by the sole sighted person in the facility, the wife of an
ophthalmologist, who decides to slip into Ward 3 while the thugs are raping
several other women and kills their leader with a pair of scissors.
The blind prisoners, as well as the blind residents of the city depicted
after the mental hospital burns to the ground and some prisoners escape,
have forgotten how to use the toilet, and they defecate in the streets,
which run with filth. They also routinely walk around on all fours while
navigating through an unfamiliar environment, and they either cannot, or
don't care to, wash themselves or their clothes. Except for the small group
of main characters led, of course, by the ophthalmologist's sighted wife,
they cannot organize themselves or collaborate on anything other than rape
and extortion.
Saramago's portrayal of those who were born blind or have been blind for
much of their lives is equally misleading. The only character born blind
and able to read Braille sides with the criminals and uses his literacy to
keep an inventory of their stolen goods and the women they have raped. He
even leads them for a time after the sighted woman kills their leader.
Aside from the Braille-reading criminal, Saramago's other scattered
references to the blind who lived among the sighted prior to the epidemic
depict us as unable to cross the street without sighted help and as lacking
the moral compass possessed by our sighted peers.
As should be clear even from these few details, Saramago's book is filled
with false images of blindness and the effect of this disability on those
who have it. Saramago portrays us as unable to care for ourselves and our
most basic bodily needs without sighted assistance, and he seems to think
that we would descend into depravity of the worst kind if left to our own
devices. By describing the blind in this fashion, Saramago reinforces
popular prejudices against us and adds a few of his own, namely the
implication that the blind tend toward crime and moral obtuseness.
To be fair, a scenario such as Saramago's would likely result in a great
deal of social dislocation, since those who lose their vision need time and
training to adapt to their new situation. Even those of us who are born
blind need to learn certain skills in order to be independent, and we would
sorely miss the absence of anyone who could drive a car, fly a plane, or
perform the few other tasks for which sight is required. Also one must keep
in mind that people imprisoned in a run-down mental hospital that lacks
several modern conveniences and the necessities for basic hygiene may lose
a certain amount of self-respect and the drive to improve their
circumstances.
Furthermore, Saramago did not write this book in order to vilify the blind.
His goal was to demonstrate the fragility of human society and, using
allegory, to show that basic human decency is, in his view at least, an
illusion and that it too would largely vanish, if society collapsed. In
light of recent disasters, such as Hurricane Katrina and the Asian Tsunami,
this message is worthy of serious consideration.
It is thus all the more unfortunate that Saramago chose to convey this
timely message by misrepresenting an entire group of people. Many of
Saramago's critics have praised him for writing convincing descriptions of
alternative realities which differ from our world in only one important
respect and for working out the consequences of these differences. By this
measure Blindness falls far short of the mark, and the only reason that
this work met with such critical acclaim is that the damaging stereotypes
Saramago employs in his narrative are so widespread as to be deemed common
knowledge. Thus, instead of challenging our assumptions about our fellow
man, as he is so often credited with doing, Saramago panders to widespread
erroneous assumptions about the blind, and in doing so, he treats us much
as he claims we would treat one another if left to ourselves.
                                ------------
               Are Protesters of Blindness Missing the Point?
                               by Rene Harrell
                                ************
      The following thoughtful letter by Rene Harrell appeared on our
teachers of blind children listserv on October 4, 2008. It has been
slightly edited for publication.
                                ************
      I think you have posed a philosophical question that the majority of
our society is asking in response to hearing that blind people take great
exception to their depiction in the movie. It waffles between "What's the
big deal?" and "You are missing the point." In fact, a movie reviewer who
writes for our local paper (the Colorado Springs Gazette) was quoted in an
article covering the protests yesterday making pretty much this point. To
quote the article directly, "Every person goes blind over the course of a
few days," Fibbs said of the film. "Society implodes overnight. That's the
point of the film--the frailty of mankind and our propensity for
inhumanity. It's a spiritual blindness, not a physical blindness, that the
film wishes to address." The author himself also denies that physical
blindness has any part to play in the over-arching meaning of his novel and
has said that protests against this film are "a display of meanness based
on nothing at all."
      I too have read the novel. I read it while in college after it was
first released in English. I personally am not a huge fan of his overall
literary style, but Saramago's overall tone and intent came through with
crystalline clarity. You could not walk away from that book without
understanding the over-arching allegory about the inner struggles and moral
frailty of humankind. In protests over this novel and this film I don't see
a denial of Saramago's allegory; I see a challenge to his metaphor.
      This seems to me a similar debate to the racial discourse over Joseph
Conrad's Heart of Darkness. While the literary style (and sheer volume) of
the two novels are vastly different, both books take aim at what is left
when the constructs of civilization are peeled away and all that is left is
humanity in its basest form. Both books use a metaphorical construct of the
other as the primary vehicle for plunging their readers into the
psychological process of human degeneration. For Conrad's contemporary
readers Africa was "the Dark Continent." Those who picked up his novel in
1902 or read it in its magazine form in 1899 would have had an immediate,
almost subconscious socially conditioned response to the setting of his
novel. Conrad was master of the written word with an uncanny perception of
humanity. He was also a white European male writing for an audience of
white Europeans. As such he understood the psychological impact that the
use of the other--in this case the African continent and the African people-
-would have. Conrad needed a metaphor and a symbol that would evoke a
primal emotive response from his readers as he contrasted the ideas of
primitiveness, savagery, barbarism, brutality, and evil with notions of
civilization, good, and morality in mankind. Even as Conrad projects a
great deal of ambiguity and direct juxtaposition of the light/good dark/bad
social and emotional contextual understanding of his day, he relied on the
profoundly racist social understanding of his day for his novel to work.
His novel at the time was a psychological thriller precisely because the
fear of Africans and the continent of Africa were so deep-seated and deep-
rooted that they could strike emotional chords of fear instantaneously and
subconsciously in the white colonialist readers who were the target
audience for this book. Intelligent, thoughtful literary critics in a post-
colonial Africa can be forgiven if they don't share the same emotive
response that Conrad was seeking in the writing of his novel, even if that
vastly different emotive response does not change the literary merit or the
larger themes at work in the novel.
      In the same way Saramago uses the other, in this case the blind, as
the necessary metaphorical vehicle he needs in order to evoke a specific
emotional and psychological response in readers as he crafts his statement
on bad and good in human civilization. Blindness is essential to Saramago
because the most crucial aspect in his degeneration and devolution of
humanity is disorientation. He uses the concept of disorientation
extensively as a literary technique (no one has names in the asylum, and
his punctuation style makes it very difficult to discern precisely who is
speaking) and in turn to further an emotional understanding of the
confusion, powerlessness, helplessness, degradation, and fear that come
from being disoriented. For this Saramago needs to play specifically on our
collective, deep-rooted societal understanding of blindness. A big part of
societal fears of blindness, even on a subconscious level, is the inability
to orient oneself and perceive and ascertain information without sight.
Saramago needs this automatically understood fear in order for his novel to
lay bare his version of humanity and to have his readers follow him. This
is why he needs his central character, the heroine of the book and the
literal eyewitness, to retain her sight. This is why no other metaphor of
dreaded disease such as leprosy, AIDS, or some made-up contagion that would
lead to a slow and horrific death would suffice. Saramago might have shown
humanity stripped bare, in panic over a contagious disease; it has been a
common plot device in many novels and films treating the issues he is
discussing. But none of those as a context works here because he is
exploiting a very specific sense of loss and powerlessness, disorientation
and fear that comes from the sighted culture's understanding and
presumptions about blindness. Saramago is not writing this novel for those
who are blind, nor does he display a knowledge and psychological
understanding of blindness and the implications of blindness from the
perspective of those who are actually blind. Instead he has written a novel
for the sighted, sharing their understanding and context of blindness. He
uses the other as a metaphorical construct that those who share in his
understanding will instantly recognize.
      Now from the perspective of the other comes a vastly different view.
They do not share the same emotive and automatic fear response that he has
carefully embedded in his novel. The other get to decide for themselves
whether their depiction is something to be shared or rejected; something
that is accurate or inaccurate. You cannot write about the other, using
them as an object necessary to transmit your themes successfully to your
readers, and then tell them they do not have a right to view your work
differently from the way you do. It doesn't mean they don't get it or that
they are missing the point. It is precisely by understanding your point
exactly and getting it fully that they are able to deconstruct the validity
of the author's literary construct, because the reality is that, if
blindness were not viewed the way it is by sighted society, the metaphor of
physical blindness as it relates to decivilization in this novel would
fail. It would not be a deep-seated psychological thriller making sighted
people aware of the animalistic nature within us all; it would be something
else. If the emotional and psychological response to blindness is necessary
to make this novel successful at conveying its point, then the blind have a
right to enter that conversation and respond to the view of themselves that
is portrayed.
      To dismiss these critiques and literary deconstructions as missing
the point or being overly PC is actually rejecting intellectual discourse
in favor of knee-jerk, defensive posturing. Saramago's response to the
blind protesting his novel and movie is a case in point. Saying that the
protesters are showing a "display of meanness with no point at all" is the
phrase of a man who is offended by the fact that others could be offended
by his work. He is then doing what he expects others not to do--be offended
rather than understanding. Second, by saying there is "no point at all" in
the response of the blind to his film and novel is to say he is neither
open nor receptive to the exact self-examination that his book is supposed
to lead to. The fact is that at the end of his novel people have their
sight restored as quickly as it left. The enduring hope in the goodness of
mankind then prevails for those sighted readers who can see themselves in
the journey from civilization to savage chaos and the regeneration of
mankind. What then is left for the blind reader who has been blind and will
remain blind long after the restoration of sight and civilization in his
novel? Why is the blind reader not supposed to see his humanity bound up in
the physically blind of the novel but only in the goodness and hope that
sight provides? Why is it okay for Saramago to ask his blind readers to
subject their sense of self to his depiction of their lives, but it is not
acceptable to ask Saramago to subject his sense of self to theirs?
      At the end of the day I can read his novel and understand why those
with sight don't get the big deal. While I personally have never been a big
fan of his literary style, I can even set aside myself and appreciate the
larger metaphor and the skillful mastery he displays as he makes it. I can
appreciate that critics, readers, and movie-goers feel that bogging
ourselves down in the minutiae of whether or not the blind can dress
themselves or find the bathroom is missing the point of what the novel and
film are trying to tell us. And to a degree the practical specifics are
missing the point. For the most part those reading his novel aren't
pondering whether or not blind people can dress themselves or even
necessarily believing that blind people can't dress themselves. But the
larger themes of his novel are absolutely tied to a broad, immediate, and
even subconscious emotional fear of the disorientation and disempowerment
of being blind. The feeling and fear that blindness leads to loss of
fundamental human capacity is absolutely necessary to this novel's plot
line and its larger themes being believable and understandable. From the
perspective of those who are actually blind, the blind themselves and those
with intimate knowledge and understanding of blindness have every right to
discourse about the accuracy of that metaphor and their feelings about
being used allegorically to make points that may or may not be related to
themselves.
      It is unfortunate that, rather than being open to this kind of
discussion, he simply dismisses the actions of the blind as angry
individuals with nothing better to do with their time. It is unfortunate
that those who dismiss the blind as missing the point demonstrate their own
lack of understanding of the point that the blind are protesting in the
first place. And unlike Africans in post-colonial Africa and African
Americans in the United States deconstructing the use of race in literature
or women discussing the view of feminism in twenty-first century American
politics, the blind make up such a small percentage of the population that
their collective voice is not always heard or respected at the table. All
the more reason for the blind to do whatever it takes to get their voice
heard and a seat at the table, even if it means protesting. Just some
random thoughts on a Saturday afternoon.
                                ------------
             International Travel Still No Picnic for the Blind
                                ************
      From the Editor: We in the United States have fought our share of
airline wars, and unfortunate incidents continue to occur with distressing
regularity at ticketing desks, with TSA screeners, in gate areas, and
onboard aircraft. Employees avoid speaking to us directly if they can find
anyone else to whom to address their questions. Cabin crew members take it
into their heads to check our ability to fasten the seat belt or suggest
moving us into or out of bulkhead seats. In short, when a blind passenger
gets to his or her destination using a domestic air carrier without having
experienced a frustrating or annoying incident, the event is worth
celebrating.
      It is useful, if dismaying, therefore to be reminded of how much
different things can be, particularly in the developing world. On October
16, 2008, I was copied on an exchange of email messages that remind us just
how far we must still travel before blind people can count on only the
degree of frustration and inconvenience that surround other international
airline passengers. The first message was written by Rami Rabby, who served
for a time as secretary of the National Federation of the Blind. The
response is from Larry Campbell, chief executive officer of the
International Council for the Education of People with Visual Impairment.
The letters are painfully self-explanatory. Here they are:
                                ************
[PHOTO/CAPTION: Rami Rabby]
From: Avraham (Rami) Rabby, Tel-Aviv, Israel
To: President Hu Jin Tao, People's Republic of China
                                ************
 Dear Mr. President,
      I am a blind person, retired from the diplomatic service of the U.S.
Department of State and now living in Israel. On September 16, 2008, I
traveled on an El-Al flight from Tel-Aviv to Hong Kong, where I joined a
small group of sighted American friends, all of us associated to a greater
or lesser degree with the Hadley School for the Blind, a highly renowned
international correspondence school for the blind, which operates a branch,
Hadley/China, in Fuzhou. Our threefold purpose was to participate in the
twentieth anniversary celebration of Hadley/China, to visit a number of
other schools and service agencies for the blind and disabled, and to spend
some time sightseeing. I write to you because, on one occasion at the Hong
Kong International Airport and on a second occasion at the Great Wall, I
was subjected to profoundly demeaning and humiliating treatment by
officials whose condescension toward the blind and low expectation of their
abilities were more egregious than any I have encountered elsewhere on my
extensive international travels.
      On the first occasion my fellow travelers and I were scheduled to fly
from Hong Kong to Fuzhou on Dragonair flight 660 at 8:50 a.m. on Sunday,
September 21. After boarding the aircraft, three of us, who were all
assigned to the same row, agreed that I would sit in the aisle seat.
Imagine my astonishment when one of the flight attendants ordered me to
move to the window seat because, she said, "blind people must sit by the
window." I asked why; she simply said that was the rule; so, in the absence
of any rational explanation, I declined to move. This exchange proved to be
just the beginning of an hour-long argument: I, on the one hand, repeatedly
asked for a rational explanation of the blind-by-the-window regulation,
while, on the other hand, all members of the crew, including the captain,
as well as other airport officials, adamantly refused to provide me with an
acceptable rationale. They did say the regulation was aimed at "the safety
of passengers," apparently ignoring the fact that I too was a passenger
with the same rights and safety needs as my sighted counterparts. I begged
the captain to call his superiors and ask them for a rational explanation,
but he repeatedly rejected my appeals and, instead, attempted in vain to
embarrass me by telling me that I was preventing all my fellow passengers
from reaching their destination, again ignoring the fact that I too was a
passenger and that a senseless regulation was preventing me too from
reaching my destination.
      Finally, at approximately 9:50 a.m., the captain said he had no other
option but to call the police, whereupon two officers of the Hong Kong
Police boarded the aircraft, forcibly lifted me out of my seat, and removed
me from the plane. Jim Fruchterman, a member of our group, documented the
incident with his camera and added a narrative of his own to the
photographs, before posting the story on his blog
(http://benetech.blogspot.com/2008/09/dragonair-hauls-rami-off-plane.html),
which I have attached for your review.
      Once I was in the passenger lounge, I asked the Dragonair staff to
contact the Israeli Consulate in Hong Kong (since I was traveling on my
Israeli passport) and, failing that, to notify the Israel Embassy in
Beijing of the incident. There was no answer at the consulate, and the
Dragonair staff refused to call the embassy. The Dragonair staff did
contact Omer Kurlender, El-Al's security manager at Hong Kong International
Airport, who promptly came to see me. It is with his encouragement that I
am writing this letter. However, more important, I also fell into
conversation with Mr. Alaric Youd, an officer of the Hong Kong Police, who
was the only person throughout this ordeal willing to say publicly what I
had suspected all along, namely, that the reason Dragonair insists that
blind passengers sit in window seats only is their fear that, in the case
of an emergency evacuation during takeoff or landing, a blind passenger
seated in an aisle seat would inevitably impede the rush of all sighted
passengers toward the exits. If this is not the reason for Dragonair's
blind-by-the-window regulation, please let me know what the real reason is.
May I take this opportunity to thank Officer Youd for his moral support and
to appeal to you and to the Hong Kong Police authorities that he not be
punished for his candor and honesty.
      Eventually the Dragonair staff told me they would schedule me on the
next flight to Fuzhou, this time on China Eastern Airlines. I wondered if
history was about to repeat itself, but, when I arrived at the China
Eastern Airlines counter, the reservationist immediately asked "Would you
like an aisle seat, a middle seat, or a window seat?" and added, "We have
no regulation about where blind passengers should sit."
      On the second occasion, on September 28, we were visiting the Great
Wall. Like most members of our group, I decided not to walk up the Great
Wall but rather chose the more leisurely transportation option of an
individualized cable seat, much akin to seats on ski lifts familiar to
blind skiers or to seats on ferris wheels, much loved by blind visitors to
fairgrounds throughout the world. However, upon arriving at the admission
gate, again imagine my astonishment when the gate agent barred my entry,
declaring, "No blind people allowed." Alleging here too that the issue was
one of safety, the officials in charge urged me to ride up the Great Wall
on what they called "the special cable car for the blind," which was
located some distance away. Having no alternative, I decided to try the so-
called special cable car for the blind, although I suspected this was
nothing more than a ruse by the officials at the Great Wall to get rid of
me; and indeed I was right. A sign at the embarkation point for the special
cable car for the blind read, "free cable car for leg-disabled." Not only
that, but the place was deserted, and the free cable car for leg-disabled
was not in operation, presumably pressed into service only when advanced
notice is given of the arrival of a disabled tourist.
      Mr. President, within the past three months China has staged what are
generally regarded as the most impressive Olympic and Paralympic Games
ever. While the whole world was watching, you showed us the best China has
to offer. However, the two experiences I have related to you lead me to
wonder if China's Olympic and Paralympic face was only its public face,
and, if behind that public face there lurks a hidden reality which, at
least for the blind and disabled, tells a different story far less
wholesome and far less welcoming.
      The fact is that the executives at Dragonair have no empirical
evidence, only false assumptions, that blind airline passengers in an
emergency evacuation would not be able to find the exits as quickly and
efficiently as their sighted counterparts. Surely any of the blind
Paralympics competitors could have convinced those executives that their
argument is deeply flawed. I myself would be happy to demonstrate to them
how fast the average blind person can move when necessary. And what about
emergency evacuations from an airline cabin plunged into darkness or
filling with smoke? In that situation blind passengers would not only move
faster than those around them but would be able to take charge and lead
fellow passengers to safety. But underlying Dragonair's blind-by-the-window
regulation is not only a false premise about the physical abilities of the
blind but a far more disturbing implication, namely, that the lives of
blind passengers are not as important as the lives of sighted passengers
and that their need for survival is somehow not as urgent.
      As for the exclusionary policy of the authorities at the Great Wall,
it too reflects outdated notions about blindness and blind people that are
utterly false and should be condemned by modern societies everywhere.
Behind the advice given to me to use the free cable car for leg-disabled is
the traditional thinking that blind persons not only have dysfunctional
eyes but dysfunctional legs too. Again one must ask how this myth still
survives in a country which has just concluded hosting the Paralympic
Games? Moreover, the free cable car for leg-disabled reflects that
pernicious tendency on the part of so many authorities always to opt for
segregative solutions rather than inclusive and integrative solutions when
seeking to accommodate the perceived needs of people with disabilities.
      Mr. President: it is my understanding that China has recently
ratified the International Convention on the Rights of Persons with
Disabilities. May I suggest that, if you wish to comply with the spirit of
that Convention, you immediately embark upon a national drive to eliminate
prejudice, discrimination, low expectation, and paternalism toward people
with disabilities from all public life in China and replace them with a
belief in the abilities of people with disabilities and with policies that
demand equality of opportunities for them in the mainstream of Chinese
society. I know that you have the capacity to do this because, during my
visit to the Shanghai World Financial Center, I detected notations in
Braille on the elevator panels of that magnificent building. All you now
need to do is to inculcate that same message of welcome, equal access, and
complete social integration in such unenlightened companies as Dragonair,
at such national monuments as the Great Wall, and everywhere else in your
otherwise wonderful country.
                                 ************
Sincerely,
Avraham (Rami) Rabby
CC:
Mr. Guy Kivetz, Spokesman, Political & Press Officer, Embassy of Israel,
Beijing
Omer Kurlender, Security Manager, El Al - Hong Kong and Seoul
Gary Oba, Consul, Consulate General of the United States of America,
Guangzhou
Larry Campbell, Chief Executive Officer, International Council for the
Education of People With Visual Impairment
Editor, The Economist
Marc Maurer, President, National Federation of the Blind, USA
Jane Connors, Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, United
Nations, Geneva
Maryanne Diamond, President, World Blind Union
Ms. Maureen C. Y. Tam, Chief Executive, The Hong Kong Society for the Blind

Penny Hartin, Chief Executive Officer, World Blind Union
United Press International
Editor, Wall Street Journal Asia
Chan Yau Chong, President, Hong Kong Union of the Blind
Charles Young, President, Hadley School for the Blind
Barbara Pierce, Editor, the Braille Monitor, National Federation of the
Blind, USA
Akiko Ito, Disabled Persons Unit, United Nations, New York
Associated Press
Dragonair (by fax)
                                ************
Email from Larry Campbell
                                ************
      Rami: Thanks for copying me on this. We need more people to speak out
when situations like this occur. You may be aware that a few years ago,
when Air Asia refused to board one of the members of our regional advisory
committee in Jakarta, I raised quite a stink that got the community of
disabled persons in Malaysia (and elsewhere in the region) really activated
and a protest rally in Kuala Lumpur (Air Asia's headquarters city), which
resulted in a significant change in Air Asia policy and a public apology
from the president of Air Asia for refusing to board blind passengers who
are not accompanied by a sighted person. (They still have a quota on the
number of unaccompanied blind passengers on a flight, which we later found
out about.)
      We were all feeling pretty good about the changes at Air Asia for a
few months when we conducted a training program in Vietnam and another low-
cost Asian carrier refused to board Sugio (another Indonesian) because he
was traveling alone. A sighted passenger stepped forward offering to
accompany Sugio and was told that was fine with the airlines, but he would
have to sign legal documents taking complete and full responsibility in
case anything happened. The man then backed off, and Sugio was not allowed
to board and had to stay and wait for a Garuda Indonesian flight to take
him home.
      In both cases, like you, these two were totally humiliated by the
treatment they received. I am afraid our protests in the second case got
nowhere, and we are still out of pocket for the additional airfare, to say
nothing of the way Sugio had to suffer through this ordeal. With low-cost
carriers springing up by the day, I feel like someone trying to press down
a bubble in an air mattress: you press it down in one place, and it pops up
in another. The UN Convention should be a tool we can use more effectively,
but this is really going to take a coordinated, consistent, and long-term
effort.
      As for the Great Wall story, that is a new one to me. Please do keep
me posted on this matter, and thanks again for sharing it with me.
                                ------------

[PHOTO/CAPTION: Stacy Cervenka]
                  Blind Aide Raises the Bar of Expectations
                               by Jordy Yager
                                ************
      From the Editor: The following story appeared in the Wednesday,
September 24, 2008, issue of the Hill, a staff publication serving Senate
and House employees in Washington. Stacy Cervenka is an active member of
the National Federation of the Blind. Here is the text of the profile:
                                   ************
      It seemed like a regular Capitol tour: Statuary Hall, the old Supreme
Court, the Capitol Rotunda, where John Trumbull's paintings, commissioned
in 1817, hang, depicting the signing of the Declaration of Independence and
the surrender of General Burgoyne and Lord Cornwallis. The only
irregularity to the tour was that it was unusually good, said one of
Senator Sam Brownback's (R-Kan.) sightseeing constituents. Well, that and
the fact that it was given by an aide to Brownback who is legally blind.
      Stacy Cervenka, twenty-eight, has been visually impaired her entire
life, but the condition has not stopped her from becoming Brownback's
newest legislative assistant and one of the best tour guides in the office.
The Minnesotan first came to the senator's office as an intern in 2004, and
the senator hired her full-time eighteen months later. "My first day as an
intern I was thinking that I would probably have to raise the bar of their
expectations," Cervenka said. "I thought, they're probably not going to
expect me to do much. They'll probably have me licking stamps or
something."
      Instead she was immediately sent to retrieve a chart from the
printing and graphics department for a presentation Brownback was to give
on the Senate floor. "I was like, 'Oh my gosh, I've only been here an hour;
I don't even know where that is,'" she recalled.
      But she stepped up to the task, completed it, and has continually
gained the trust and reliance of Brownback and her colleagues. Now she
handles a host of legislative issues, including abortion, bioethics,
education, disability rights, veterans' and Native American issues, crime
and prisons, and healthcare. Brownback's office is known for having
staffers and interns with atypical backgrounds. A fifth intern from the
American Association of People with Disabilities recently finished a stint,
and interns from Sudan, Korea, and Israel have also graced the three-term
senator's office. "I think the senator's office is always interested in
hiring a diverse crop of interns," Cervenka said.
      Cervenka admitted she was nervous when she first began giving tours,
which she did daily as a staff assistant. "I was kind of concerned about
how people would react to me when I said, 'Hi, I'm your tour guide; I'm
blind,'" she said. "I mean, I don't say that, but I do come out with my
cane, and I wondered whether they were going to say, 'Ugh, we don't really
want to go with you.'" Thankfully, the only reaction she ever received was
graciousness.
      For the most part Cervenka no longer gives tours, although she'll
still do it to honor a special request. For example, she recently led a
tour for a group of blind teenagers from the Teen Empowerment Academy at
the National Federation of the Blind. Cervenka is still known for giving
one of the best tours on the Hill, and this, combined with her legislative
work, has made her well-known.
      When she's not working on the Hill, she volunteers for several blind
groups across the country. At a recent National Federation of the Blind
event in Dallas, she told a young girl that she worked in Brownback's
office and would be leading them on a tour when they visited the Capitol
the following week. The blind girl turned to Cervenka and said, "Do you
know Stacy Cervenka, who works for Senator Brownback?"
      "It was really funny," Cervenka said.
      Cervenka travels to the Senate Hart Office Building by Metro,
navigating the streets and the halls, which she said are mostly blind-
friendly, with a cane. She has software on her computer that announces
every action aloud and a Braille display with pins that pop up and down
according to the letters in a word. "It's been really easy, and the office
has been really great about getting me everything I need," she said.
      In her more than two years on the Hill, Cervenka's fondest memory is
when U2 lead singer Bono came to Brownback's office to speak with him about
helping people with AIDS in Africa. "They had gotten done with the meeting,
and people were milling around. I stuck out my hand just to say 'hi,' and
he's all, 'Aw, give me a kiss!' and he threw his arms around me and gave me
a big kiss," Cervenka said.
      While she loves her current job, she fantasizes about traveling the
world, like Bono, in search of dynamic change. "My dream job would honestly
be as a reporter for National Geographic and to be in the middle of some
rebellion in Botswana, but I don't think that's where I'm going," she said.
      Cervenka doesn't pretend that her other senses give her superhuman
abilities, but she said they are quite fine-tuned, given her need to rely
on them more frequently than other people do. "I wouldn't say that I have
hearing like a dog. I use it to cross the street and to tell when people
are coming, but I wouldn't say that they're bat senses," she said.
      In her work on the Hill, Cervenka hopes she will be able to spread
the awareness that people with disabilities are just as capable, if not
more so, of handling workplace environments. "I get to meet people from a
lot of different fields and talk about the issues that they want to discuss
with the senator," she said. "They get to see me as a blind person working
in an office environment. I always hope, when they go back to Kansas or
wherever they're from and a blind person were to apply for a job, they
remember me and give that person a chance."
                            ---------------------
                  Important Notice About Target Settlement
                                ************
Attention Legally Blind Individuals Who Have Attempted to Visit Target.com
While in California Since February 7, 2003:
                                ************
      You may be entitled to payment of money as part of a settlement of a
lawsuit filed against Target concerning access to its Website. The
settlement has been granted preliminary approval by the court in charge of
the case. If you are a legally blind individual who tried to access
Target.com while in California at any time since February 7, 2003, you may
be eligible to be paid damages of up to $7,000. To find out more about the
settlement and to submit a claim, please go to <www.NFBtargetlawsuit.com>
and follow the instructions on this settlement Website. You may also
request a claim form from the Claims Administrator, whose contact
information is set forth below. Please provide your name, address, and
phone number when you contact the Claims Administrator. All claims must be
submitted on line by January 8, 2009, or by mail postmarked no later than
January 8, 2009. Late claims may be denied.
      All questions should be directed to the Claims Administrator. Please
do not contact Target Corporation concerning this settlement. Contact
information for Claims Administrator: NFB v. Target Claims Administrator,
RG2 Claims Administration LLC, P.O. Box 59479, Philadelphia, PA 19102-9479.
Phone number: (866) 742-4955.
                                ------------
[PHOTO/CAPTION: Joyce Scanlan]
                       Distinguished Educator of Blind
                           Children Award for 2009
                              by Joyce Scanlan
                                ************
>From the Editor: Joyce Scanlan chairs the committee to select the
Distinguished Educator of Blind Children for 2009.
The National Federation of the Blind will recognize an outstanding teacher
of blind children at our 2009 convention next July. The winner of this
award will receive an expense-paid trip to the convention, a check for
$1,000, an appropriate plaque, and an opportunity to make a presentation
about the education of blind children to the National Organization of
Parents of Blind Children early in the convention.
Anyone who is currently teaching or counseling blind students or
administering a program for blind children is eligible to receive this
award. It is not necessary to be a member of the National Federation of the
Blind to apply. However, the winner must attend the national convention.
Teachers may be nominated by colleagues, supervisors, or friends. The
letter of nomination should explain why the teacher is being recommended
for this award.
The education of blind children is one of our most important concerns.
Attendance at a National Federation of the Blind convention will enrich a
teacher's experience by affording him or her the opportunity to take part
in seminars and workshops on educational issues, to meet other teachers who
work with blind children, to meet parents, and to meet blind adults who
have had experiences in a variety of educational programs. Help us
recognize a distinguished teacher by distributing this form and encouraging
teachers to submit their credentials. We are pleased to offer this award
and look forward to applications from many well-qualified educators.
Please complete the application and attach the following:
1. A letter of nomination from someone (parent, coworker, supervisor, etc.)
   who knows your work;
2. A letter of recommendation from someone who knows you professionally and
   knows your philosophy of teaching; and
3. A letter from you discussing your beliefs and approach to teaching blind
   students. In your letter you may wish to discuss topics such as the
   following:
    4. What are your views about when and how students should use Braille,
       large print, tape recordings, readers, magnification devices,
       computers, electronic notetakers, and other technology?
    5. How do you decide whether a child should use print, Braille, or
       both?
    6. When do you recommend that your students begin instruction in the
       use of a slate and stylus or a Braille writer?
    7. How do you determine which students should learn cane travel (and
       when) and which should not?
    8. When should keyboarding be introduced?
    9. When should a child be expected to hand in print assignments
       independently?
                                ************
                      National Federation of the Blind
               Distinguished Educator of Blind Children Award
                              2009 Application
Deadline: May 15, 2009
Name: _______________________________________________________
Home address: _________________________________________________
City, State, Zip: ______________________________________________________
Phone: (H) ____________________ (W) ____________________________
Email: ______________________________________________________
School: ______________________________________________________
Address: _____________________________________________________
City, State, Zip: _________________________________________________
Use a separate sheet of paper and answer the following:
   1. List your degrees, the institutions from which they were received, and
      your major area or areas of study.
   2. How long and in what programs have you worked with blind children?
   3. In what setting do you currently work?
   4. Briefly describe your current job and teaching responsibilities.
   5. Describe your current caseload (e.g., number of students, ages,
      multiple disabilities, number of Braille-reading students).
Attach the three required letters to this application, and send all
material by May 15, 2009, to Joyce Scanlan, Chairperson, Teacher Award
Committee, 5132 Queen Avenue S, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55410, (612) 920-
0959.
                                ------------
[PHOTO/CAPTION: David Ticchi]
                  The 2009 Blind Educator of the Year Award
                               by David Ticchi
                                ************
      From the Editor: Dr. David Ticchi is president of the NFB of
Massachusetts and an experienced educator in his own right. He was named
Blind Educator of the Year in 1998. He chairs the 2009 blind educator of
the year award selection committee. This is what he says:
                                ************
      A number of years ago the Blind Educator of the Year Award was
established by the National Organization of Blind Educators (the educators
division of the National Federation of the Blind) to pay tribute to a blind
teacher whose exceptional classroom performance, notable community service,
and uncommon commitment to the NFB merit national recognition. Beginning
with the 1991 presentation, this award became an honor bestowed by our
entire movement. The change reflects our recognition of the importance of
good teaching and the impact an outstanding blind teacher has on students,
faculty, community, and all blind Americans.
      This award is presented in the spirit of the outstanding educators
who founded and have continued to nurture the National Federation of the
Blind and who, by example, have imparted knowledge of our strengths to us
and raised our expectations. We have learned from Dr. Jacobus tenBroek, Dr.
Kenneth Jernigan, and President Marc Maurer that a teacher not only
provides a student with information but also provides guidance and
advocacy. The recipient of the Blind Educator of the Year Award must
exhibit all of these traits and must advance the cause of blind people in
the spirit and philosophy of the National Federation of the Blind.
      The Blind Educator of the Year Award is presented at the annual
convention of the National Federation of the Blind. Honorees must be
present to receive an appropriately inscribed plaque and a check for
$1,000. Nominations should be sent to Dr. David A. Ticchi, 321 Harvard
Street, Unit 306, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02139. Letters of nomination
must be accompanied by a copy of the nominee's current rsum and
supporting documentation of community and Federation activity. All
nomination materials must be in the hands of the committee chairman by May
1, 2009, to be considered for this year's award. For further information
contact David Ticchi, (617) 530-9178.
                                ------------
[PHOTO/CAPTION: James McCarthy]
              Social Security, SSI, and Medicare Facts for 2009
                              by James McCarthy
                                ************
      From the Editor: Jim McCarthy is a government programs specialist for
the National Federation of the Blind. He concentrates on Social Security
issues and provides an annual summary of Social Security changes:
                                ************
      Once again we toast the passing of the old year while awaiting the
new one. Along with the inevitable best-of lists and retrospectives, this
inevitable passing of time is accompanied by annual adjustments to the
Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI), Supplemental Security Income
(SSI), and Medicare programs. The changes include new tax rates, higher
exempt earnings amounts, and SSDI and SSI cost of living increases, as well
as alterations to deductible and coinsurance requirements under Medicare.
In 2007 upper income Americans began facing larger Medicare Part B premiums
than the majority of us. Below are the updated facts for 2009.
                                ************
                                  Tax Rates
                                ************
      FICA and Self-Employment Tax Rates: The FICA tax rate for employees
and their employers remains at 7.65 percent. This rate includes payments to
the Old Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance (OASDI) Trust Fund of 6.2
percent and an additional 1.45 percent payment to the Hospital Insurance
(HI) Trust Fund, from which payments under Medicare are made. Self-employed
persons continue to pay a Social Security tax of 15.3 percent, which
includes 12.4 percent paid to the OASDI Trust Fund and 2.9 percent paid to
the HI Trust Fund.
      Ceiling on Earnings Subject to Tax: During 2008 the ceiling on
taxable earnings for contributions to the OASDI Trust Fund was $102,000.
For 2009 the maximum amount of taxable earnings rises to $106,800. All
earnings are taxed for the HI Trust Fund.
                                ************
                    Social Security Disability Insurance
                                ************
      Quarters of Coverage: Eligibility for Retirement, Survivors, and
Disability Insurance (RSDI) benefits is partially based on the number of
quarters of coverage earned by any individual during periods of work.
Anyone may earn up to four quarters of coverage in a single year. During
2008 a Social Security quarter of coverage was credited for earnings of
$1,050 in any calendar quarter. Anyone who earned $4,200 for 2008
(regardless of when the earnings occurred during the year) received four
quarters of coverage. In 2009 a Social Security quarter of coverage will be
credited for earnings of $1,090 during a calendar quarter. Four quarters
will be earned with annual earnings of $4,360.
      Trial Work Period Limit: The amount of earnings required to use a
trial work month is subject to annual increases. In 2008 the amount was
$670, and in 2009 it rises to $700. In cases of self-employment, a trial
work month can also be used if a person works more than eighty hours, and
this limitation on hours worked will not change unless expressly adjusted.
      Exempt Earnings: The monthly earnings exemption referred to as
Substantial Gainful Activity for blind people who receive disability
insurance benefits was $1,570 of gross earned income during 2008. In 2009
earnings of $1,640 or more per month, before taxes, for a blind SSDI
beneficiary will indicate substantial gainful activity once any unearned
(or subsidy) income is subtracted and all deductions for impairment-related
work expenses are applied.
      Social Security Benefit Amounts: All Social Security benefits are
increased by the largest cost of living adjustment (COLA) since 1982-5.8
percent beginning with checks received in January 2009. The precise
increase will vary based upon the amount each individual now receives.
                                ************
                        Supplemental Security Income
                                ************
      Standard SSI Benefit Increase: Beginning January 2009, the federal
payment amounts for SSI individuals and couples are as follows:
individuals, $674 per month; SSI couples, $1,011 per month. These amounts
are increased over the 2008 level of $637 per month for individuals and
$956 per month for SSI couples.
      Student Earned Income Exclusion: The Student Earned Income Exclusion
is adjusted each year. In 2008 the monthly amount was $1,550, and the
maximum yearly amount was $6,240. For 2009 these amounts increase to $1,640
per month and $6,600 per year. The SSI program applies strict asset
(resource) limits of $2,000 for individuals and $3,000 for SSI couples,
which can be changed only by Congress.
                                ************
                                  Medicare
                                ************
      Medicare Deductibles and Coinsurance: Medicare Part A coverage
provides hospital insurance to most Social Security beneficiaries. The
coinsurance payment is the charge that the hospital makes to a Medicare
beneficiary for any hospital stay. Medicare then pays the hospital charges
above the beneficiary's coinsurance amount.
      The Part A coinsurance amount charged for hospital services within a
benefit period of not longer than sixty days was $1,024 during 2008, with
an increase to $1,068 in 2009. From the sixty-first day through the
ninetieth day there is a daily coinsurance amount of $267 per day, up from
$256 in 2008. Each Medicare beneficiary has sixty lifetime reserve days
that may be used after a ninety-day benefit period has ended. Once used,
after any benefit period, these reserve days are no longer available. The
coinsurance amount to be paid during each reserve day used in 2009 is $534,
up from $512 in 2008.
      Part A of Medicare pays all covered charges for services in a skilled
nursing facility for the first twenty days within a benefit period that
follows a three-day in-hospital stay. From the twenty-first day through the
one hundredth day in a benefit period the Part A coinsurance amount for
services received in a skilled nursing facility will be $133.50 per day, up
from $128 per day in 2008.
      Most beneficiaries have no monthly premium charge for Medicare Part A
coverage. Those who become ineligible for SSDI cash benefits can continue
to receive Medicare Part A coverage premium-free for at least ninety-three
months, after the end of a trial work period. After that time the
individual may purchase Part A coverage. The premium rate for this coverage
during 2009 will be $443 per month. This is reduced to $244 for individuals
who have earned from thirty to thirty-nine quarters of Social-Security-
covered employment.
      In 2009 the Medicare Part B (medical insurance) deductible is $135,
as it was in 2008. This is an annual deductible amount. The Medicare Part B
monthly premium rate charged to each beneficiary for the year 2009 remains
at $96.40, making this the first year since 2000 that there has not been an
increase. For those receiving Social Security benefits, this premium
payment is deducted from your monthly benefit checks. Individuals who
remain eligible for Medicare, but are not receiving Social Security
benefits because of working, must pay the Part B premium directly on a
quarterly basis-one payment every three months. Like the Part A premiums
mentioned above, Part B is also available for at least ninety-three months
following the Trial Work Period assuming an individual wishes to have it
and, when not receiving SSDI, continues to make quarterly premium payments.

      Americans with higher incomes now pay higher Part B premium amounts,
based on their income. For singles the 2009 income threshold for higher
premium amounts is income that exceeds $85,000, and for couples filing
jointly the 2009 threshold is $170,000. It is estimated that 5 percent of
Americans are affected by these higher premium amounts mandated by the
Medicare Modernization Act. If you believe you may be affected, you should
contact the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). (The contact
information is given below.)
      Programs That Help with Medicare Deductibles and Premiums: Low-income
Medicare beneficiaries may qualify for help with payments. Assistance is
available through two programs-the QMB (Qualified Medicare Beneficiary
program) and the SLMB (Specified Low-Income Medicare Beneficiary program).
For the QMB program an individual's income cannot exceed 100 percent of the
Federal Poverty Guidelines, also called the Federal Poverty Level.
Individuals qualify for the SLMB program when income is greater than 100
percent, but less than 120 percent, of the Federal Poverty Guidelines. The
newest guidelines will be announced in February or March of 2009;
additionally, Alaska and Hawaii have higher amounts than are applicable to
forty-eight of the fifty states and the District of Columbia.
      Under the QMB program states are required to pay the Medicare Part A
(Hospital Insurance) and Part B (Medical Insurance) premiums, deductibles,
and coinsurance expenses for Medicare beneficiaries who meet the program's
income and resource requirements. Under the SLMB program states pay only
the full Medicare Part B monthly premium. Eligibility for the SLMB program
may be retroactive for up to three calendar months.
      Both the QMB and SLMB programs are administered by the Centers for
Medicare and Medicaid Services in conjunction with the states. The rules
vary from state to state, but the following can be said:
      Resources, such as bank accounts or stocks, may not exceed $4,000 for
one person or $6,000 for a family of two. Resources generally are things
you own. However, not everything is counted. The house you live in, for
example, doesn't count; and generally one car also doesn't count.
      If you qualify for assistance under the QMB program, you will not
have to pay:
 1. Medicare's hospital deductible amount, which is $1,068 per benefit
    period in 2009;
 2. The daily coinsurance charges for extended hospital and skilled nursing
    facility stays;
 3. The Medicare Medical Insurance (Part B) premium, which is $96.40 per
    month in 2009;
 4. The $135 annual Part B deductible;
The 20 percent coinsurance for services covered by Medicare Part B,
depending on which doctor you go to.
If you qualify for assistance under the SLMB program, you will be
responsible for the payment of all of the items listed above except for the
$96.40 monthly Part B premium.
      If you think you qualify but you have not filed for Medicare Part A,
contact Social Security to find out if you need to file an application.
Further information about filing for Medicare is available from your local
Social Security office or Social Security's toll-free number (800) 772-
1213.
      Remember that only your state can decide if you are eligible for help
from the QMB or SLMB program and also that the income and resource levels
listed here are general guidelines with some states choosing greater
amounts. Therefore, if you are elderly or disabled, have low income and
very limited assets, and are a Medicare beneficiary, contact your state or
local Medicaid office (referred to in some states as the Public Aid Office
or the Public Assistance Office) to apply. For more information about
either program, call the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS)
on its toll-free telephone number (800) 633-4227, or go online to
<http://www.cms.hhs.gov/ContactCMS>.
                                ------------
                                   Recipes
                                ************
      This month's recipes come from members of the NFB of Pennsylvania.
They thought briefly of collecting healthy recipes for holiday vegetables
and appetizers that you can graze on and never gain a pound. Then reality
set in, and they decided to provide their favorite holiday cookies and
desserts, reasoning that everyone loves to try a brand new cookie recipe.
So, if you are among the virtuous who can pass up tempting holiday treats,
you too can safely enjoy reading the following collection of Pennsylvania
favorites.
                                ************
                      Chocolate Chip Shortbread Cookies
                              by Pat Antonacci
                                ************
      Pat Antonacci is the wife of NFB of Pennsylvania President Jim
Antonacci. She is one of those people who are always in the background
helping to further the NFB's mission. Her father was a professional baker,
and these goodies are from his files.
                                ************
Ingredients:
1/2 cup butter, softened
1/2 cup sugar
1-1/4 teaspoons vanilla
1 cup flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup chocolate chips
                                ************
      Method: Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Beat butter and sugar in large
bowl until fluffy. Add vanilla. Combine flour and salt and add slowly. When
these are totally incorporated, stir in chocolate chips. Divide dough in
half and press each part into a greased eight-inch round cake pan. Bake
twelve minutes until edges are golden brown. Cool, remove from pans, and
cut.
                                ------------
                              Oatmeal Chippers
                              by Pat Antonacci
                                ************
Ingredients:
1/2 cup butter or margarine
1/2 cup shortening
1 cup sugar
1 cup brown sugar, firmly packed
2 eggs
1-1/4 teaspoon vanilla
2 cups sifted flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
2 cups quick-cooking rolled oats
1 6-ounce package semi-sweet chocolate morsels
1 cup chopped walnuts, optional
                                ************
      Method: Cream together butter and shortening. Gradually add sugars
and beat until light and fluffy. Beat in eggs and vanilla. Blend in sifted
dry ingredients, mixing thoroughly. Stir in oats, chocolate chips, and
nuts. Drop by rounded spoonfuls two inches apart onto greased baking sheet.
Bake in pre-heated 375-degree oven for nine to twelve minutes. Remove and
cool. Makes eight dozen.
                                ------------
                            Sour Cream Apple Pie
                              by Pat Antonacci
                                ************
Ingredients:
2 eggs
1 cup (8 ounces) sour cream
1 cup sugar
6 tablespoons all-purpose flour, divided
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup brown sugar, packed
3 cups cooking apples, peeled and chopped (Granny Smith preferred)
1 unbaked pie shell
3 tablespoons butter or margarine
                                ************
      Method: In large bowl beat eggs and sour cream. Stir in sugar and mix
well. Add salt and two tablespoons flour. Mix well. Stir in apples. Pour
into pie shell. Mix butter, brown sugar, and remaining four tablespoons of
flour to make crumbs and set aside. Bake pie for fifteen minutes at 375
degrees, then sprinkle crumb mixture on top and bake an additional twenty-
five minutes, till apples are tender when pierced with a table knife. Cool
on a rack and serve.
                                ------------
                           Holiday Touch Brownies
                       by Chuck and Esther Morgenstern
                                ************
      Chuck is the treasurer of the NFB of Pennsylvania, and Esther
operates her own Randolph-Sheppard vending stand.
                                ************
Ingredients:
1 package Betty Crocker brownie mix
3/4 cup Hershey's mint chocolate chips
3/4 cup walnuts, chopped
                                ************
      Method: Prepare brownies according to package directions, but add
mint chocolate chips and chopped walnuts. Bake as directed.
                                ------------
                         Gingerbread Cutout Cookies
                       by Chuck and Esther Morgenstern
                                ************
Ingredients:
1 box of gingerbread cake and cookie mix
1/4 cup hot water from tap
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons margarine or butter, melted
                                ************
      Method: Preheat oven to 375 degrees. In a medium bowl stir together
box of cake and cookie mix and one-fourth cup hot water. Stir in flour and
margarine or butter using spoon until homogeneous dough is formed. Divide
dough in half. Place half on a floured, cloth-covered surface. If dough is
too soft to roll, cover and refrigerate for about one hour. Roll dough to
one-eighth-inch thickness for crisp or one-fourth-inch for chewy cookies.
Cut into your favorite holiday shapes with floured cookie cutters. Place on
ungreased cookie sheet. Bake for six to nine minutes or until edges are
firm. Do not overbake. Cool one minute before removing from cookie sheet.
Decorate with prepared icing.
                                ------------
                             Butter Pecan Balls
                              by Connie Johnson
                                ************
      Connie Johnson is the secretary of the NFB of Pennsylvania and the
president of the Erie County Chapter. Connie is also employed full-time by
the Social Security Administration.
                                ************
Ingredients:
1 cup (2 sticks) butter or margarine, softened
1/2 cup sugar
1-1/2 teaspoons vanilla
1 cup pecans, chopped medium fine
2 cups sifted flour
Confectioner's sugar
                                ************
      Method: Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Put butter or margarine in
mixing bowl and mix until fluffy. Gradually add sugar and vanilla. Add
pecans and stir well. Add flour, a quarter cup at a time. Dough will be
stiff, but do not add liquid. Shape into one-inch balls and place one-and-a-
half inches apart on an ungreased cookie sheet. Bake for fifteen to
eighteen minutes, or until cookies have browned lightly around the edges.
While still warm, roll in confectioner's sugar. Yields five dozen cookies.
                                ------------
                        Crackle Top Molasses Cookies
                              by Connie Johnson
                                ************
Ingredients:
3/4 cup shortening
1 teaspoon soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons ground ginger
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 cup sugar
1/4 cup unsulphured molasses
1 large egg
2 cups sifted all-purpose flour
Granulated sugar
                                ************
      Method: Combine first five ingredients in mixing bowl. Gradually
blend in one cup sugar, mixing well after each addition. Beat in molasses
and egg. Stir in flour, a half cup at a time. Chill dough two to three
hours, overnight, or until dough is stiff enough to handle. Shape dough
into three-fourth-inch balls. Dip the tops in granulated sugar. Place balls
on a greased cookie sheet. Bake at 350 degrees for ten to twelve minutes or
until bottoms have browned lightly. Yields about three dozen cookies.
                                ------------
                        No-Bake Peanut Butter Cookies
                              by Connie Johnson
                                ************
Ingredients:
1 stick butter or margarine
2 cups sugar
1/2 cup water
Pinch salt
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup crunchy peanut butter
3 to 4 cups quick oats
                                ************
      Method: Combine first four ingredients and allow to boil for one-and-
a-half minutes. Add remaining ingredients and stir together. Drop by
teaspoonfuls onto wax paper. Cool and enjoy.
                                ------------
                               Pumpkin Muffins
                                by Lynn Heitz
                                ************
      Lynn Heitz is the first vice president of the NFB of Pennsylvania and
a two-time NFB national scholarship winner. She is employed with the Office
of Long Term Living of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
                                ************
Ingredients:
2 medium eggs
3 cups flour
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup milk
1 cup canned pumpkin
1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce
2 tablespoons sugar
4 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
1 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon ground allspice
                                ************
      Method: Mix all ingredients together. Fill muffin tin cups almost to
top. Bake at 325 degrees for twenty-five minutes. Makes about fifteen
muffins.
                                ------------
                             Pumpkin Cheesecake
                                by Lynn Heitz
                                ************
Ingredients:
1 9-inch pie shell
6 ounces cream cheese, softened
3/4 cup cooked pumpkin
2 medium eggs
1-1/2 cups sugar
1/4 cup flour
1/2 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
                                ************
      Method: Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Beat cream cheese, eggs, and
sugar together until mixture is smooth. Add pumpkin. Stir in flour, nutmeg,
and cinnamon. Beat well. Pour mixture into unbaked pie shell and bake one
hour or until table knife comes out clean when inserted in center.
                                ------------
                             Caramel Apple Tart
                                by Sue Wilcox
                                ************
      Sue Wilcox has been a volunteer reader at the NFB of Pennsylvania for
many years. She is a retired rehab counselor from the blindness system.
                                ************
Ingredients:
1 unbaked packaged refrigerated piecrust. (Let stand according to package
directions.)
1 tablespoon granulated sugar
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon finely shredded lemon peel
2 medium tart green apples, peeled, cored, and cut into 1/2-inch-thick
slices
1/2 cup caramel apple dip
1/2 cup pecans, chopped
1/4 cup apple jelly
Powdered sugar
                                ************
      Method: In a bowl combine granulated sugar, cinnamon, and lemon peel.
Add apple slices, tossing to coat. Place unfolded piecrust on a large
baking sheet. Spread caramel apple dip over crust to within two inches of
edges. Place apple mixture on top of caramel. Sprinkle with nuts. Fold
edges of crust two inches up and over apples, crimping edges as necessary.
Bake in preheated 425-degree oven twenty minutes or until crust is golden
brown and apples are just tender. Meantime, in a small saucepan melt apple
jelly over low heat. Brush melted jelly over entire tart and edges.
Sprinkle with powdered sugar. Bake for one hour. Serve warm. Makes eight
servings.
                                ------------
      Monitor Miniatures
                                ************
      News from the Federation Family
                                ************
                                ************
Elected:
      The Minnesota parents division held elections on Friday, October 10.
The results are as follows: president, Carrie Gilmer; vice president,
Brenda Johnson; secretary, Dorie Miller; treasurer, Phillip Richardson; and
board members, Jean Bening and Sue Kress.
      They also made plans to create a flyer about Minnesota Parents of
Blind Children, Saturday School, and Teen Night to insert in the affiliate
brochure and distribute to doctors' offices, diabetic and oncology clinics,
and hospitals. They formed a team to revive the division newsletter. They
plan to hold informal technology fairs for parents and students separately,
where parents can get informal, one-to-one help from NFB members throughout
the year in two-hour workshops without having to plan large seminars
dealing with the logistics of food, funding, childcare, etc. Finally, the
group has made plans for blind teens to mentor the students at Saturday
School. Minnesota parents are on the move!
                                ************
Elected:
      Elections for 2009 officers were conducted October 11 at the monthly
meeting of the Blackhawk Chapter of the NFB of Illinois. The results were
as follows: president, Bob Gardner; vice president, Lois Montgomery;
treasurer, Kathy Abbott; secretary, Donna Miles; and board members, Patrick
Olson, Don Carey, and Jay Blanchard.
                                ************
Imagination Fund March for Independence:
      Joe Ruffalo, Imagination Fund steering committee member and NFB of
New Jersey president, writes as follows: As you know, I love to keep it
simple. If you take the first letter from each of the words "Imagination
Fund," you make the word "IF."
IF we all tried harder to make contacts.
IF we all worked toward a plan.
IF we showed leadership in informing the public of our mission.
IF we concentrated on the same target.
IF we dreamed of our possibilities.
IF we keep believing, dreaming, and learning..
      The Imagination Fund gives everyone in our organization the
opportunity to make a difference. If you are ready to participate, register
now at <www.MarchForIndependence.org>.
Top Ten Teams in 2008
Greater Baltimore Chapter Team, $2,507
Idaho Lamplighters, $2,640
Ruff Ruff Pet Care, $2,665
Junior Blind Olympic Friends, $2,678.75
Minnesota Brass, $2,820
Team Mackenzie, $2,972.77
Mattie's Menehune Marchers, $3,045
Voice of the Diabetic Team, $4,485
Empowerment, $26,797
The Imaginators, $29,285
Top Twelve States in 2008 Contest
California, $7,820.75
Minnesota, $8,090
Iowa, $9,201
Ohio, $9,370
Illinois, $10,148
Virginia, $13,718
New Jersey, $14,274
Texas, $16,589
Florida, $16,747
Louisiana, $24,577
Colorado, $48,455
Maryland, $108,630.82
                                ************
Elected:
      The NFB of California held elections at its annual convention in
Irvine, California, on October 19, 2008. The following people were elected
to the board: president, Mary Willows; first vice president, Nicolas
Crisosto; second vice president, Robert Stigile; secretary, Shannon Dillon;
treasurer, Jonathan Lyens; and board members, Tiffany Manosh, Ever Lee
Hairston, and Lisamaria Martinez.
                                ************
Elected:
      The NFB of Ohio conducted its election of officers on November 2,
2008. Elected were president, J. Webster Smith; first vice president, Eric
Duffy; second vice president, Barbara Fohl; secretary, Deborah Kendrick;
treasurer, Sherry Ruth; and board members Crystal McClain and Bruce Peters.
By acclamation the Convention voted to confer the title of president
emerita upon retiring president Barbara Pierce, who served twenty-four
years as president and who had been a board member since the late
seventies.
                                ************
Job Available:
      The National Federation of the Blind of Ohio is accepting
applications for its position of director of field services. This person
will work closely with the affiliate president to carry out day-to-day
organizational duties. These will include but are not limited to working
with members of the legislature on matters of importance to the organized
blind; representing the NFB at meetings in the blindness field; assisting,
advising, and advocating for blind consumers and parents of blind children;
and offering support to NFB members and chapters across the state.
      Interested candidates should use access technology efficiently; write
effectively; be interested in the political process and issues in the
blindness field; have some experience working with people; travel
independently; and be able to use initiative, seek guidance, and
distinguish when to do which. The applicant chosen must be willing to
relocate to Columbus, Ohio.
      This is probably an entry-level position. To some degree it will come
to reflect the individual skills and interests of the person hired.
Applicants must understand and embrace the NFB's philosophy of blindness.
The candidate chosen will work closely with the NFB of Ohio president,
first vice president, and president emerita.
      The salary is negotiable, depending on experience, but is likely to
start at about $33,000. Benefits are included. Candidates are welcome to
apply until the position is filled. If interested, send rsum, cover
letter discussing strengths and significant experience, and the names and
contact information of two people with whom we can discuss your candidacy
to Dr. J. Webster Smith, P.O. Box 458, Athens, Ohio 45701-0458. Documents
may be emailed to <Jsmith1@ohiou.edu>. Those interested in discussing the
position with its previous holder may call Eric Duffy evenings at (614) 562-
5524 or J.W. Smith at (740) 592-6326.

                                ************
[PHOTO/CAPTION: Terry Bradshaw]
Terry Bradshaw to Serve as National Ambassador for Braille Literacy:
      The National Federation of the Blind announced November 3 that Terry
Bradshaw, Hall of Fame NFL quarterback and current football analyst and
cohost of FOX NFL Sunday, will serve as a National Ambassador for Braille
Literacy. As an ambassador Terry will help advance the NFB's Braille
Readers Are Leaders campaign, a national initiative to promote the
importance of reading and writing Braille for blind children and adults.
The Braille Readers Are Leaders campaign kicked off in July of 2008 with
the unveiling of the design of a commemorative coin to be minted in 2009 in
recognition of the two hundredth anniversary of the birth of Louis Braille
(1809-1852), the inventor of the reading and writing code for the blind
that bears his name.
      Dr. Marc Maurer, president of the National Federation of the Blind,
said: "The National Federation of the Blind is pleased to have Terry
Bradshaw as part of this historic initiative to bring Braille literacy to
all of the blind children and adults in America who need it. As one of the
most popular personalities in America, Terry Bradshaw will surely have a
huge impact as a national spokesperson for Braille literacy. There can be
no doubt that the ability to read and write Braille competently and
efficiently is the key to education, employment, and success for the blind.
Despite the undisputed value of Braille, however, only about 10 percent of
blind children in the United States are currently learning it. Society
would never accept a 10 percent literacy rate among sighted children; it
should not accept such an outrageously low literacy rate among the blind.
The Braille Readers Are Leaders campaign, with the support of influential
Americans like Terry Bradshaw, will reverse the downward trend in Braille
literacy and ensure that equal opportunities in education and employment
are available to all of the nation's blind."
      Terry Bradshaw said: "I am honored and pleased to serve as a national
ambassador for the Braille Readers Are Leaders campaign. I strongly believe
in the importance of literacy for everyone, and I am excited to help make a
difference in the lives of blind children and adults throughout the
country."
      For more information about the Braille Readers Are Leaders campaign
and the Louis Braille commemorative coin, please visit <www.braille.org>.
                                ************
Elected:
      The NFB of Washington conducted its affiliate elections on November
2, 2008, with the following results: president, Michael Freeman; first vice
president, Kris Lawrence; second vice president, Maria Bradford; secretary,
Don Mitchell; treasurer, Doug Johnson; and board members, Kyle Parrish and
Ben Prows serving two-year terms, and Gary Mackenstadt and Bob Sellers
serving one-year terms, replacing Maria Bradford and Doug Johnson.
                                ************
NFB Writers Division Contests for Youth and Adults:
      The dates for the 2009 Writers Division contests are January 1
through (postmarked) April 1. A great new feature this year is that, in
addition to our annual short story fiction and poetry contest for adults,
we have added a writing contest for youth. See all requirements below.
      The Youth Writing Contest is intended to promote Braille literacy and
excellence in creative writing. Entries will be judged on creativity and
quality of Braille. We are looking for creative writing in fiction and
poetry. This is a contest for students who use Braille. Entries must be
submitted in hand-embossed Braille, using either a slate and stylus or a
Braillewriter. No computer Braille entries will be considered. Submissions
must be Brailled by the entrant. Elementary students (K-5) may submit
contracted Braille, uncontracted Braille, or an acceptable combination of
the two. Students in higher grades will be expected to submit stories or
poetry in contracted Braille.
      There are six categories: elementary fiction, elementary poetry,
middle school fiction, middle school poetry, high school fiction, and high
school poetry. Elementary is K-5. Middle school is 6-8. High school is 9-
12.
      Three cash prizes will be awarded in each of the six categories.
First prize per contest is $25, second prize is $15, and third prize is $5.
Submissions for fiction may not exceed one thousand words. Poetry may not
exceed twenty lines. Authors may submit multiple entries, and all work must
be original and unpublished. Each entrant must provide an identical print
copy for possible publication.
      Entries must be accompanied by a cover sheet containing entrant's
name, address, phone, email, entry title, and school and grade of entrant.
Winners will be announced at our division meeting during the July 2009 NFB
national convention in Detroit, Michigan. Send all youth entries to Fred
Wurtzel, 1212 N. Foster, Lansing, Michigan, 48912.
      The NFB Writers Division adult short story and poetry contests will
take place during the same period as the youth contest: January 1 through
April 1. Top prize in each contest is $100, second prize is $50, and third
prize is $25. Winners will be announced at our division meeting during the
July 2009 NFB national convention in Detroit.
      Short stories can be up to 3,000 words and can be in any genre. All
work must be original and previously unpublished. If you wish to submit,
you are required to send a cover sheet listing all entry titles, name,
address, phone, and email (if available). All documents must be double
spaced, and, if you are sending hardcopy, documents cannot be handwritten.
The cost to submit a single story is $5.00. You can send either a check or
money order made out to the NFB Writers Division.
      Submissions may be hardcopy with check enclosed. Send these to Tom
Stevens, 1203 S. Fairview Road, Columbia, Missouri 65203. You may also
email submissions with cover letter to <cthls@earthlink.net>. Payment for
electronic submissions can be by PayPal if arrangements have been made by
then, so check the division Website, <http://www.nfb-writers-division.org>.
If you must mail the check, use Tom Stevens's address above.
      Entrants are invited to submit original poetry of up to thirty-six
lines. If you wish to submit, you must send a cover sheet listing all entry
titles, name, address, phone, and email (if available). All documents must
be double spaced and may not be handwritten. The cost is $5 for up to 3
poems. Send your check or money order made out to the NFB Writers Division.

      Send hardcopy submissions and checks by mail to Lori Stayer, 2704
Beach Drive, Merrick, New York 11566. You can also email submissions and
cover letters to <LoriStay@aol.com>. The entry fee can be paid using PayPal
if available or mailed to Lori at the above address.
                                ************
Elected:
      The NFB of Indiana conducted its convention October 31 to November 2,
2008. The Parents Division elected new officers as follows: president, Jan
Wright; vice president, Nancy Cole; secretary, Lisa Rodriguez; and
treasurer, Chris Hollingsworth.
                                ************
Congratulations:
      As we were going to press, we received the following announcement
circulated to the staff at the National Center for the Blind. It will be of
interest to everyone in the Federation family.
      On Thursday, November 6, 2008, Anne Taylor took her oath to become a
United States citizen. We have always been proud of Anne's many
accomplishments and contributions as the director of our International
Braille and Technology Center for the Blind, but this has to rank as a
personal milestone for this competent and personable native of Thailand.
May she prosper and continue her immeasurably valuable expertise and
commitment to our nation.
                                ************
Elected:
      The Illinois Association of Blind Students held its election of
officers and board during our fall business meeting in Bradley, Illinois,
at the state convention. The new board members are president, Aly
Slaughter; first vice president, Michelle Wesley; second vice president,
Brandi Winecki; secretary, Aricelli Avina; treasurer, Ronza Othman; and
board members, Debbie Stein and Cassandra Certeza.

                                ************
      In Brief
                                ************
      Notices and information in this section may be of interest to Monitor
readers. We are not responsible for the accuracy of the information; we
have edited only for space and clarity.
                                ************
Braille T-Shirts Available:
      Introducing Braille Tees--the clothing line that naturally raises
awareness and engages others in lively conversation. Braille Tees reveal
their message in uncontracted (Grade I) Braille so that beginning Braille
and nonBraille readers can follow letter by letter. Braille Tees come with
many sayings and in many styles and colors, and we print on only the best-
quality garments available on the market. We can put Braille on any
printable surface and also accommodate custom orders. A portion of every t-
shirt sold goes to charity, so call today to set up a fundraiser or sale,
and be sure to ask about wholesale pricing. For more information visit us
at <www.BrailleTees.com>, or call us toll-free at (877) 410-9866. You're
going to love these tees.
                                ************
[PHOTO/CAPTION: Leading the Way students raft down the Colorado River.]
[PHOTO/CAPTION: The 2008 Grand Canyon expedition team poses for a group
photo.]
Leading the Way Invites Applicants for 2009:
      If you knew one trip could change your life, would you take it? Last
summer twelve students, six of them blind or visually impaired, embarked on
a truly life-changing adventure: rafting the Grand Canyon. They spent two
weeks shattering expectations and using adversity to their advantage as
they explored science, culture, leadership, and service within the canyon
walls.
      Developed in partnership with world-renowned blind athlete Erik
Weihenmayer, the Leading the Way program teams high school and college
students who are blind, visually impaired, and sighted for an unparalleled
science, community service, leadership, and cultural adventure. In 2008 we
traveled to the Grand Canyon, the Inca Trail, and the Amazon. In 2009 we
are returning to the Grand Canyon and piloting our first group combining
students who are hard of hearing, deaf, and hearing on a trip to Costa
Rica.
      Not only an amazing experience for the participants themselves, each
Leading the Way expedition is paired with a social awareness and media
campaign used to educate a much broader constituency. These campaigns
provide a message of hope and inspiration while helping to break down
barriers, misconceptions, and prejudices about people with disabilities.
Leading the Way has been featured on CBS Sunday Morning, The Travel
Channel, ABC Nightline, and World News Tonight.
      To see if spots are still available on the 2009 Leading the Way
expedition, send an email to <leadingtheway@globalexplorers.org>.
Scholarship funds are available. To learn more about the program, go to
<www.globalexplorers.org> and click on Leading the Way under the main
photo.
                                ************
City Off Limits to Blind Thief:
      On October 6, 2008, the Edinburgh Evening News published the
following story:
      A blind shoplifter from Glasgow has been banned by a court from
entering Edinburgh city center. George Hamilton, forty-nine, reportedly
faces being locked up if he is found in any shops, bars, or restaurants in
the center of the capital over the next twelve months. The ban was handed
down when he made his latest appearance in court for shoplifting and the
sheriff heard he had ninety-six previous convictions.
      Hamilton, who lost his sight in 1990, relies on his heightened senses
of hearing, touch, and smell to carry out his thefts. He said: "I've been
banned from Marks & Spencer before for shoplifting, but not a whole city.
It's a pity-I liked Edinburgh."
                                ************
Back Magazine Issues Needed:
      I am a professor of animal behavior at Sacramento City College and of
perception at the University of California-Davis. I confront the many
interesting ways in which nonhumans might experience their worlds. I am
also an avid reader of science fiction. In recent years, because of my
studies in comparative perception, I have become fascinated with the
possibilities emerging from worlds in which the dominant sentient life form
resembles one of Earth's modern carnivores, such as lions, tigers, or
bears. For many years I have received Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact
and Asimov's Science Fiction in cassette format from the Library of
Congress's National Library Service. I have read scores of interesting
stories with themes involving anthropomorphic lions, wolves, bears, and
dolphins. Recently I embarked on a project to accumulate science fiction
materials that focus on nonhumans in science fiction to develop a
compendium of this material. Unfortunately I have not preserved the hard
copies of my past issues as an audio archive. Further, the older editions
of these magazines are not available through my local cooperating library.
      Therefore I would like to hear from readers who have back issues of
these magazines or know of others who might possess them. I am interested
in all back issues of both magazines, especially those produced before
2005. The format is not important. I can transcribe materials from both the
8-1/3 RPM flexible discs and the 15/16 IPS quarter-track Talking Book
formats issued by the Library of Congress. I am interested in procuring
them either temporarily or permanently. I would be willing to compensate
anyone for time and effort spent locating these potentially interesting and
valuable materials. Any assistance that anyone can provide would be greatly
appreciated.
      Contact Chris Tromborg, 217 Baja Avenue, Davis, California 95616;
(530) 753-2763; or <cttromborg@ucdavis.edu>.
                                ************
Music Lessons Available:
      You can learn to play your favorite musical instrument by ear with
Bill Brown's courses for the visually impaired. Because these courses use
no print or Braille, they are easy to use and give quick results. There are
courses for the piano, guitar, flute, violin, harmonica, and many other
instruments. These courses cost $39 each and are also available for free
checkout through the National Library Service. Now learning to play your
favorite musical instrument is easy. For more information call (888) 778-
1828 or visit the Website at <www.musicfortheblind.com>.
                                ************
                                ************
      Monitor Mart
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      The notices in this section have been edited for clarity, but we can
pass along only the information we were given. We are not responsible for
the accuracy of the statements made or the quality of the products for
sale.
                                ************
For Sale:
      I purchased a 32-cell BrailleNote with a Braille keyboard during a
convention special in 2005, including a disc drive, an AmbiCom wireless CF
card, and a 1-gig ATA card. I now wish to sell the unit and accessories
because another product fits my needs better. Its condition is great. I
allow the battery to discharge every time, which should keep it in good
order according to the manual, though it sometimes seems to show funny
percentages. This does not affect performance.
      This BrailleNote has Keysoft version 6.2, build 23, hardware revision
C, kernel version 6-6/24/2005, operating system-Windows CE, version 4.20.
Asking $2,000. HumanWare says that this unit is not eligible for a service
contract at this time. It would need to be evaluated to determine if it can
go back under warranty/service contract. The cost to evaluate the unit is
$145. Upgrading software to 7.5 would cost $585. If you want to do an SMA,
you must first be current; then you can purchase an SMA for $195. If you
are interested, email Beth at <fb-oe@cox.net>.
                                ------------
                                 NFB Pledge
      I pledge to participate actively in the efforts 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.


