You're welcome to use anything I write, anywhere you wish, Penny.
You were the person who first encouraged me to submit an article to
the Braille Forum. It was entitled, Imagine, and it went on to be
selected as the winner of the Ned Turner award. You had left the
Forum by the time the article ran, but it was there because of your
interest.
I suppose that if I were to leave the IL Program, which I dearly love,
I would do more short story and article writing. I get lots of
pleasure in the doing of it.
Carl Jarvis
On 4/26/18, Penny Reeder <penny.reeder@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Hi Carl, I enjoyed reading your piece from the June 2015 Washington
State publication. I hope it will be okay with you if I share it with
members of a committee I serve on for ACB. Ours is the membership
development committee that was formed last year as a component of
ACB's strategic planning exercise. Your points are exactly those we
need to communicate with affiliates and chapters who are struggling to
recruit and hold onto members.
Thanks.
Penny
On 4/26/18, Carl Jarvis <carjar82@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
With the recent passing of Sue Ammeter, my thoughts drifted back over
the years we had worked together to help build a strong, lasting
organization of blind men and women. I ran across this article from
the June 2015 WCB Newsline, the publication of the Washington Council
of the Blind.
Carl Jarvis
*******
From the Senior Side
By Carl Jarvis
The only birthday that ever bothered me was my fiftieth. I came to
know it was bothering me when I realized that I was talking far too
much about it, making
weird jokes and laughing too long and loud. I did not want to be
fifty. But my family threw me a, “Now we are six party”, with all the
pointy hats, the
noise makers, streamers, balloons, cake and ice-cream and flavored
popcorn. And my staff at the Orientation and Training Center had a
little party and
presented me with a three pound box of See’s chocolates. “You know,” I
told Cathy later, with a mouth full of chocolates, “Fifty isn’t all
that bad.” I
decided that at fifty I was old enough to look back and learn lessons
from life, and still young enough to put them to work. But that was
thirty years
ago. Even though it seems like only yesterday.
Today, as we have done for the past twenty years, Cathy and I continue
providing in-home services to older blind and low vision folks through
the Independent
Living Older Blind Program. At eighty, I am about the age of many of
our clients. And there is something about that which troubles me. Too
many of these
men and women seem to be simply sitting around, waiting. When we ask
what folks do during the day, what groups they are active in, what
interests they
have, what makes their lives meaningful, many merely shrug. They tell
us that they are worn out, too old, too blind.
When I was a boy, looking at my great grandma sitting hunched over in
her rocking chair, I guess I did think that we got to a place in life
where all we
had left to do was to wait to die. But now that I’m getting toward the
far side of life, I don’t buy it for a second.
We have clients in their nineties and even a few past one hundred, who
are active, contributing members of their families and communities.
What makes the difference? Is it a matter of physical health? Maybe,
but some of our more active clients are medical miracles, while some
of those sitting
on the side lines seem to be fine physical specimens.
I think the secret ingredient is called, “Purpose”. Some folks have
purpose in their lives while others appear to be purposeless. If this
is true for people,
the same holds true with organizations. Many organizations, once
brimming with energy and activity, have come to a place where they
just exist. It’s like
they’ve been around so long that they don’t know how to give up and go
away. But other organizations revitalize themselves year after year,
finding new
challenges, new members and new purpose for being.
Just like me, the Washington Council of the Blind (dating to its roots
in the organized blindness movement) is 80 years old this year. So I
ask myself,
“What about me, do I still have purpose in my life?” And what about my
organization, the WCB? Are we still on target? Do we still have the
passion and
the purpose to make meaningful differences in the lives of blind
people? Do we think about it? Talk with our friends about it? Discuss
the organizations
purposes at chapter meetings? If the answer is “no”, then just what is
our own purpose in WCB?
