They weren't dumping them with the garbage. They were putting them in a neat
pile in the room where the garbage shoot was so that other people could find
them and read them. It was sort of like a free lending library. When I finished
reading them, I would put them back there for other people to find.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Roger Loran Bailey
(Redacted sender "rogerbailey81" for DMARC)
Sent: Wednesday, March 24, 2021 9:19 PM
To: blind-democracy <blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: My Admission
It makes me cringe to think that people would actually dump books with the
garbage. I am glad that you rescued them.
___
Charles Bukowski “For those who believe in God, most of the big
questions are answered. But for those of us who can't readily accept the
God formula, the big answers don't remain stone-written. We adjust to
new conditions and discoveries. We are pliable. Love need not be a
command nor faith a dictum. I am my own god. We are here to unlearn the
teachings of the church, state, and our educational system. We are here
to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds
and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.” ―
Charles Bukowski
On 3/24/2021 1:52 PM, Miriam Vieni wrote:
I never read mystery and detective stories and almost never suspense, never
Romance, never school fiction or young adult, almost never series. I read
fiction that emphasizes interpersonal relationships, contemporary fiction
some historical which often is contemporary as far as I'm concerned. I read
nonfiction books that I've hear about on podcasts or read about in articles
and some articles from The Nation and The New Yorker. I have been reading
books all of my life. My mother and my aunt read out loud to me. When I was
in school, I manipulated to spend most of my time in the sight conservation
resource room because I found the regular classroom time tedious. When I was
in the regular classroom, I had to sit in my seat, not talk to anyone, and
write spelling words over and over again. In the sight conservation
classroom, I was free to walk around, talk to other students, and choose any
of the large print books in the big cabinet to read. I read every one of
those books. In my apartment building, people left discarded books in the
room where the garbage shoot was located. I could read print books with a
magnifying glass. I used to scavenge those books and read them, everything
from children's books to Lolita. After I began working for IHB in 1962 and my
left eye, the one with better vision, began becoming more blurred and I was
having more difficulty reading print, Fred introduced me to talking books and
taught me to read braille. It took about 3 or 4 months to learn braille,
although learning to read fast enough to read a book, took a bit longer. I
read braille books from 1963 until 2007 when getting them up to the apartment
where I'd moved in 2006, began to be a problem, and I'd purchased a VR Stream
and begun buying books from Audible. I stopped getting books from Audible
when my hearing became too impaired to appreciate some of them and NLS was
getting most of the same books anyway, and almost as fast. That is changing
now. NLS book quality appears to be deteriorating and the acquisition is
slowing down. But there is Bookshare if I get desperate.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Wednesday, March 24, 2021 10:19 AM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: My Admission
Well, I should join the BARD chat list just so I could aunload. We use BARD
for our relaxation listening. So it's mostly adventure fiction. Strong
language and descriptions of wild passionate sex is okay since my rule of
thumb is if the descriptive passage takes longer than the actual act, I
exercise my "Advance" finger. But I do resent having a gushy Harlequin
Romance passed along as Adventure Fiction.
However the one thing that really cranks my chain is when I download two or
qthree books in a series, by date, only to have BARD put them on my cartridge
alphabetically.
But overall I am well satisfied with BARD for entertainment. For other sorts
of reading, informational, political, etc., I have an overabundance of
sources.
Carl Jarvis
On 3/23/21, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Well, I'll use the Blind Democracy list to confess my sin of
intolerance rather than the BARD Talk list although I suppose it is
obvious to all those poor victims of my intolerance how intolerant I
am.
1. I am intolerant of people who complain about seeing large numbers
of foreign language books in the up to the minute category, but have
no problem going through large numbers of books written for elementary
school age children. All those people, like Nolan, go on and on about
how great America is but resent those foreign books, in particular,
the Spanish language books, especially those produced by NLS. And
people wonder why so many people voted for Trump?
And for folks who say that it's no problem to go quickly through
books you don't want to read, yes, you can go through foreign language
books fast, but not children's books. You usually have to read a bit
of the description before you know that the book is written for
children of elementary school age and you need to see the phrase
"young adult" before you know that it is probably written for
teenagers.
But now for my real sin: I get that there are many books in the young
adult category that were put there because they're about teenagers but
they might be written on an adult level. But truly, how many normally
functioning adults enjoy reading children's books, even if that
article that Bill posted said that it's OK if adults like them?
Actually, the article said that they help explain complicated concepts
to people who may have problems understanding them and they help
people who don't particularly like to read, learn to like to read. But
on the BARD Talk list, there are all these blind adults who enjoy
reading children's books! Sorry, but I think that's weird.
I wonder if all of them are congenitally totally blind. I know two or
three of them who said that they like these books, are. I wonder if
any of them have now, or have had vision in the past.
Miriam
