Carl,
My old computer is driving me to drink. Jaws 18 was a problem. There was an
upgrade to it yesterday. I naively thought the upgrade would make it more
stable. Instead, I keep losing Jaws, if I go to a word document, if I go to the
internet. It behaves if I stay in my Outlook email program. I am distraught, to
say the least! But please keep trying to stay in touch, anyway.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Wednesday, April 12, 2017 1:28 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: [blind-de
new computer giving me headache. we're in arizona enjoying sun and warmth. be
back in quilcene april 22.
carl jarvis
On 4/5/17, Carl Jarvis <carjar82@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Looks like many of us blind folk have experienced some of the same
"superior Helper" attitudes.
Carl Jarvis
On 4/5/17, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
There's a whole long, disgusting history of IQ tests. But what they
test is whether one has been exposed to certain kinds of information
and has managed to learn it. All of us who received rehab services,
were given some sort of IQ test at one time or another. I think I
tesed 121 or 125. Whatever it was, and it was when I was about
eighteen years old, I was disappointed. I think my cousin tested 150.
Well, he had normal eyesight and attended a fancy college so of
course he tested higher. Much later, I discovered that it was like
any other test and had little to do with innate ability and a lot to
do with opportunity to learn whatever it was that the test was
testing. Then I began reading really distressing books about the
eugenics movement, particularly the book about the case in which they
used that normal girl, something Buck, to prove that she, her baby,
and her mother were mentally retarded when, in fact, they were
nothing of the sort, just poor and powerless. I've never attended a
rehab center, however. A few years after I graduated from high
school, the Commission here, began requiring that all blind high
school graduates attend a summer rehab program if they were to be
sponsored for college. I don't think I would have liked being in a
rehab center much. I did attend a recreation program for blind youngsters.
Later
in life, I went on several trips arranged for blind travelers. I had
real difficulties with the attitudes displayed toward blind people by
the sighted people who were supposed to be assisting them, especially
as an adult who was paying a good deal of money for my traveling
experience and was treated in such a patronizing and superior manner
by the sighted people who were with us. And I really could not
conceal all of my resentment of their attitudes. But today on the
blindness list, I resent the superior attitudes of the tech savvy
blind people who act superior to those of us who aren't good at
technology. And I resent the attitude on the BARD Talk list that we
are supposed to grovel and be grateful to the point that we never
sound critical of NLS, or the Jaws list where there is actually a
rule that list members may not say anything critical about Freedom
Scientific. I also resent the assumption of the advocacy
organizations that the blind people who count, the only ones they are
really representing, are the young, competent blind people who are
gainfully employed. Huge numbers of blind people have never been able
to find jobs. And the majority of those who do, find them within the
blindness system. If they're not working for agencies for the blind,
they're working for technology companies that specialize in blind
products. In other words, blind people can work, but usually, it's in
protected and segregated environments. The rest have found jobs in
government. The rare blind person has been able to find employment in
corporate America. And there's this hierarchy among the blind with
people with top jobs in blindness agencies and government, who run
the advocacy agencies and say that they represent, "The Blind". Well,
one sector of the blind whom they don't represent, is the newly blind
elderly, and another group that gets little attention, except for
NFB's concern about sheltered workshops, are the people who are not
only blind, but mentally disabled.
So I guess what I'm saying is that the Blind Community has its own
class system.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Roger ;
Loran Bailey (Redacted sender "rogerbailey81" for DMARC)
Sent: Wednesday, April 05, 2017 4:13 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: [blind-democracy] Re:
[blind-democracy]
Re:
[blind-democracy] Re: [blind-democracy] Re: [blind-democracy] Re:
[blind-democracy] RE: [blind-democracy] Re: [blind-democracy] RE:
[blind-democracy] Re: [blind-democracy] RE: [blind-democr
Read The Mismeasure of Man by Stephen J. Gould. It does a pretty good
job of debunking IQ tests. The upshot is that they try to measure a
wide variety of human abilities and propensities and try to give all
of them one number and that just does not provide much information. I
think that what was actually being measured in my case was that I am
a lifelong fanatic reader and my personal compulsion to learn
everything. That kind of prepares one for test taking. When I first
registered with the rehab agency my eyesight was decreasing and I
might very well have been legally blind, but I was still driving a
car. They had apparently contracted with Goodwill Industries for
testing and they sent me to Goodwill for my first round of testing. I
did get all of those dexterity tests and balance tests and so forth,
but also an IQ test. I knew enough about IQ tests that even though
they didn't tell me that it was an IQ test I knew it anyway. My
tester looked at what I produced and mumbled the word impressive. By
the time I got in the rehab center my eyesight had deteriorated to
the point that I couldn't tell one person from another by looking at
them. They declared my earlier test results invalid for two reasons.
One was my further loss of eyesight. The other was that my results
were on the extremes of the bell curve, both extremes and that did
not seem likely to them. They didn't elaborate, but I knew instantly
which ones were on which extreme. I am sure that I flunked everything
physical and aced everything that was on paper, including the IQ
test. They decided they had to do it all over again.
This time I couldn't take any tests on paper so I wasn't quite sure
when they sneaked in the IQ test, but at a later time someone told me
when it was probably administered and I think he was probably right.
It would have been when a staff psychologist seemed to be playing
trivial pursuit with me.
He
asked me various questions for a long time and I answered them. Most
were either just asking me a question for which I had to come up with
my own answer or asking multiple choice questions. I know I did very
well except for when he asked me who wrote Faust. I couldn't
remember. Again, lots of reading did a lot toward my impressing those
people so much. The guy I finally asked for my IQ score said that out
of every hundred people I was smarter than at least 99 of them. I
took note of the words at least. My own feel for how well I did makes
me think that it was probably well above that.
That does qualify me for Mensa, but I am not very interested in joining.
That would be like seeking out a grand falloon. If you read Cat's
Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut you will find out that a grand falloon is a
forced association of people who have nothing in common with each
other. Vonnegut uses the Daughters of the American Revolution as an
example. Mensa would most likely be another place where I would be
considered a nonconformist. Sorry, I don't think that an IQ of 120
qualifies one for Mensa, but, despite the impression people who want
to brag about their IQs want to give, IQ is highly malleable. Your IQ
might very well have changed by now to qualify you.
On 4/5/2017 11:26 AM, Carl Jarvis wrote:
Roger,
Funny thing is that West Virginia in 1989 sounded very much like
Washington State in 1965. The first several days I was attending
the Center, I was put through a battery of tests, including an IQ
test, a Preference Test, a Dexterity Test, and several exams by the
two on-contract psychiatrists. Most of the tests were designed to
see if I could do repetitious tasks quickly and accurately enough to
work at the Light House for the Blind. The IQ test, I figure, was
to see if I were dumb enough to buy the Bull Shit these pseudo
professionals dished out. The policy was to not tell clients their
IQ scores. I'll spare you the circular thinking that brought them to that
conclusion.
but ten years later I got a look at my records and saw that I scored
120. This means that I was above average at passing their biased
test despite the fact that I was blind and the test was a standard
IQ test for all White, Middle Class Men. I keep myself from busting
my buttons with pride by telling myself that if I attempted to join
the Mensa, they would pat me on the head and help me to the door.
In 1965, we were in transition. Programs in Blind Rehabilitation
were based on the Medical Model, and often we were still referred to
as, Patients. And most of our treatment was clearly based on
"Doctor knows best" mentality. Given the mind set of the
professionals in blind rehab back in the days you attended the
training, nonconformist was a high compliment. And of course, if
they had your IQ, they figure they would all be CEO's of some
Fortune 500 corporation. The people who worked on me, providing
rehab services, as well as the people I worked with during my
career, were mostly good, kind people who wanted to do a good
job...within the limits set for them by the System. But their real
goal was to rise to become a supervisor or even a program director.
They based much of their accomplishments on whether they moved
closer to their advancement goals, rather than on how their
accomplishments moved the clients toward reaching their goals.
After being promoted to Assistant Director for Field Services, and
doing the job for 3 years, I sat down with the Director and asked
for my old job back. "But Carl" she said, "I'm retiring in another
5 years, and you would easily advance to my position as Director".
I told her that I had gone to work in the field to work with people,
not to push papers and jockey with peoples bent on advancing at all cost.
I enjoyed my work as a rehab teacher, and took the administrator
position in the OTC on the understanding that I would be in direct
contact with the students. I met with every student several times
during their training, trouble shooting problems, giving my support
as they planned their goals, and constantly directed my staff to
always keep their students dreams as their bottom line. During my
time in the Center, only one staff member promoted up to an
assistant director. That was me. And it was the wrong move. When
I was back in the OTC, having worn down the Director's resistance,
it was like returning home after a long separation. Some of those
staff members just retired, and one is now the OTC administrator.
All of these folks had come to believe that meeting the needs and
helping to support the goals of their students was far better than any
promotion.
Even when the VRC's were given bigger pay raises, the Center staff
stayed true to their work. In that sense they were a room full of
nonconformists. They actually made their bottom line serving their
clients, ahead of reaching for the brass ring.
Carl Jarvis
On 4/4/17, Roger Loran Bailey <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
It was the West Virginia Rehabilitation Center in 1989. Another
interesting tidbit, throughout my life I have occasionally heard
the word nonconformist. It has only been occasionally though. While
I was at that rehab center pretty much every day some staff member
or another had to comment on my being a nonconformist. After I left
I went back to only hearing it occasionally and never in reference
to me. I also heard them comment frequently on my high IQ. Finally
I asked one what my IQ was anyway. I figured out when it was being
tested, but no one had ever told me what the results were. The one
I asked didn't either. I asked him right after he had said that
with my IQ I should be rich by now, so he questioned my motivation.
Well, I have certainly never been motivated to be rich, but I have
my own set of motivations. I am sure that he would have called my
motivations a lack of motivation. In answer to my question he said,
"let's put it this way, out of every 100 people you are smarter
than at least ninety-nine of them." I used my own knowledge of
statistics to figure out that was 129 or above. I said, "Well, if
so it never has done me any good." I supposed that was further
confirmation to him of his diagnosis of lack of motivation. If
nonconformist means not fitting in then I suppose that in that
rehab center I was a nonconformist. I certainly did not feel like I
fit in there very well. I suspect that if I used that ninety-ninth
percentile IQ score to join Mensa I would find another milieu where I
would be considered a nonconformist.
On 4/4/2017 6:19 PM, Carl Jarvis wrote:
Roger,
What Center did you attend? Sounds like one out of the early 50's.
Actually, the training center in Seattle back in 1965, when I
attended, had some pretty decent students. Except for one staff
person, the "Therapists" who taught us "blindness skills" were
quick to remind us that they were the "Professionals" and we were
the Patients. We had on staff a psychiatric social worker, who
worked overtime to find just how our pathetic condition was
affected by our inept sexual mores. Alice Olson was the only
decent member of the staff. Alice was blind. She also had a
blind twin sister. She was not a Therapist. She was an
instructor. She taught Braille, typing and daily living skills.
Alice was a task master, hunting us down and walking us to class,
while the therapists all sat in the staff break room drinking coffee and
complaining about their students.
By the time I became director of the training center, we had long
since cleaned house and installed some cutting edge instructors.
If you will allow me a moments bragging, I would tell you that
from
1984 until 1993, I had the finest, most effective program for
newly blinded adults in the nation. Okay, bragging is over. We
were good, and we had many success stories. But of course I can
scare up some very angry former students, too. As good a program
as we had, we knew that one size did not fit all.
I tried to instill in my staff the belief that we were effective
only if we were constantly changing and growing. Sadly, this was
not in the tradition of programs that found the Truth Everlasting,
and set it in concrete.
Today I stay out of direct contact with the programs I used to direct.
I left 24 years ago, and the world is much different.
Carl Jarvis
On 4/4/17, Roger Loran Bailey <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
At least I'm not alone. I went into rehab with a severe paucity
of adult living skills myself. It was not that I had never
learned adult living skills. It was just that most of them were
rather useless in my new condition. Then I had to face the other
blind people who were contemptuous of me for not being as
functional as they were without regard to the fact that I was
brand new to this blindness stuff. The rehab center taught me
some things, but most of these living skills I had to figure out
on my own and I am still figuring out some even now.
On 4/4/2017 11:33 AM, Carl Jarvis wrote:
Well Miriam, one thing your story points out, whether East,
West, North or South, as a nation we are run by our prejudices.
And no, your story is not something out of Blind History. It is
Right Now History in the Making. While your story is far
different from mine, overall, there are some very distinct
similarities. Yours is a story I encountered over and over
while working in the Orientation and Training Center.
In my situation blindness or vision loss was never discussed.
Despite my difficulties in school, on the play field, and in my
social life(almost Monkish in nature), I was treated as fully
sighted and expected to behave as such. So my dad taught me to
drive. This was as much a testimony to his courage as to my own
success. I learned from our lessons that I would never be safe
on the road. I never did drive, probably out of fear for my own
life as much as for others.
But I did teach my second wife to drive...although I seldom
mention it because she is such a lousy driver.
Anyway, it's very hard for a gangly young teenager to ask a girl
out on a date, knowing that he would also need to tell her that
he would be picking her up on the bus. I did some group dating,
but until my first wife and I began dating seriously, I never
took a girl out alone. But back to my growing up. The positive
side of not discussing my vision was that I was expected to do
all the same chores that anyone else in the family did. I
learned to wash and dry and put away the dishes, prepare the
food for meals, and cook. I learned to do my own laundry by the
age of 12, and have done it...along with Cathy's and the kids,
ever since. I mowed lawns, baby sat, and did odd jobs including
picking beans and strawberries for spending money.
Much of this was prior to becoming blind in my left eye at 17,
but I hadn't used that weak eye much prior to the retina detachment.
It was a very new experience to bring adult students into the
OTC who had been so sheltered that they had no adult daily
living skills and no social skills. I still chuckle at the
woman, a social worker, who asked me, "How can you expect to
rehabilitate people who have never been habilitated?"
During my entire career with the Department, it was the same story.
Parents and families driven by guilt, disappointment, anger
toward their family member. This left the blind person feeling
rejected, inferior and useless. And now the family shoved that
pathetic lump of a human being into my arms saying, "Do
something!" I have more stories than there is space to tell.
Most of these people moved on into the real world and managed to
survive...sort of.
Some became alcoholics or drug dependent. Some adapted and put
up a shell of normalcy over their damaged Being. But a very
few, like yourself, had the drive and the inner courage and
determination to make the best life they could. And in so doing
they also have begun to put a new face on what it is to be blind.
What we do is an uphill struggle. Like our political beliefs,
we are few in number. We are like the spawning Salmon trying
again and again to leap the rapids and find a safe haven
upstream. We may never reach it, but it's in our Nature to keep trying.
Have I mentioned before that I really respect you for your
strength in the face of a world that has crushed so many of our
blind brothers and sisters?
Carl Jarvis
On 4/3/17, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Carl,
Interesting. Well, let me tell you a short story of my path
to social work and what it was like when I got there. My mother
was really worried about what kind of work I could do when I grew up.
After all, I was this handicapped child, legally blind. She had
reason to be worried. I'd been thrown out of the nursery school
I attended after I fell down the cement stairs in the front of
the building. The sun was shining on them in such a way that
there were no shadows and I didn't have depth perception. So
she asked the only person she knew who had an education and
might no the answer, our family doctor who also was a family friend.
Dr.
Weinstein looked into the matter and suggested that I might
become a social worker. I was, maybe, twelve or thirteen years
old. He explained that social workers helped people. So it was
decided. I thought that would be a good thing to do.
I
was
absolutely sure that I could not get married, have children, or
run a household. After all, my mother never taught me to do any
household chores except to shell peas. So I latched onto that
goal and never let go.
What
Dr.
Weinstein didn't know was that schools of social work in and
around New York City weren't exactly delighted to welcome
legally blind students. The most prestigeous was at Columbia
University.
It was called The New York School of Social Work. Back in 1959,
it was perfectly acceptable to refuse someone on the basis of
blindness and they did. Adelphi School of Social Work said
they'd accept me if I managed to find my own field placements
because they couldn't guarantee me any. Field placements were
the heart and soul of social work education. N Y U said if I
proved that I could find a job and work for one year, they'd
consider accepting me. I think, perhaps the Social Work School
at Hunter College accepted me unconditionally. But then
someone, maybe a legally blind sociology professor of mine,
maybe the recreation director at the Lighthouse, told me that I
should apply to a school away from New York so that I would
have to leave home and could learn to live on my own. That's
how I ended up at the University of Michigan.
Interestingly,
they accepted me on the basis of my interview at Columbia which
had refused me. But what I wanted to do was counseling or
psychotherapy so I wanted a concentration in psychiatric social
work. The person in charge of that program refused me on the
basis of my blindness. By the way, back then, I had a lot of
useable vision. I was not using a cane and I was reading print
with a magnifying glass. Anyway, they insisted that I take the
rehabilitation sequence. That was the only way I'd get a
fellowship.
It
was
probably the only way I got in. The rehab agency where they
placed a group of us was dreadfully backward. The workers were
called agents, not counselors. All they cared about was getting
jobs for the least disabled clients so they could get raises
which were based on the number of closures they got. The School
of Social Work placed students there because they thought that
we, and our supervisor, who the school also provided, could be
agents of change. It was truly an insane idea. I begged them
for a psychiatric field placement for the second year, but the
head of the psychiatric sequence said she would only permit me
to have one that wasn't certified. Instead, they offered me a
family service agency which would have been fine if I'd had a
good supervisor and was allowed the kind of cases which
permitted me to learn to do counseling. Those were white,
middle class clients and they were given to experienced staff
members. I learned a lot about race segregation and poverty
that year because the agency gave me the cases that they
considered worthless and hopeless. So actually, I got a real
social work education that year, not the shortcut to becoming a
psychotherapist that I might have gotten if I weren't visually
impaired.
When I graduated, I could have gotten supervisory jobs and, in
one case, a director's job, if I'd been willing to work in
northern Michigan or down South. The guy at the Lighthouse
wanted me to take the job as director of a tiny agency for the
blind in some southern state or other. I wanted to live and
work in New York. The family agencies in New York didn't want
me, even with a family agency placement. Of course they didn't.
I was blind and they probably figured out what the agency in
Yipsilanti was really like. I worked for 2 days in a little
family agency in Patterson, NJ and quit because there was no
way I could do that commute, and I didn't want to live in Patterson.
The New York State Commission for the Blind put pressure on the
New York Sstate Dept. of Mental Health to hire me in an
after-care clinic for people just released from mental hospitals.
This wasn't what I had in mind, but the location was OK. Only
the director of that clinic didn't want me there and when it
was my turn to get one of the offices with real walls, a real
door, and a window, they wouldn't let me have it because they
said it was too far for me to walk. I did walk back there to
the bathroom several times a day, however. So I stayed in my
office at the front with dividers rather than walls and no
windows. When I left, where do you suppose I went? I went where
they all wanted me to go, to the Industrial Home for the Blind
which was a miserable place to be. There are other things that
happened like how no one wanted to hire me when I thought I'd
return to work when my older daughter was five, and when a
former classmate of mine, who was the head of social services
at an agency for mentally ill people, refused to hire me because of my
disability.
But eventually, I did work on my own, for 30 some odd years in
adoptions. And even then, disability caused difficulties. But
social work? It didn't practice what it preached when it came
to accepting people into its ranks.
Miriam .
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Carl ;
Jarvis
Sent: Monday, April 03, 2017 8:37 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: [blind-democracy] RE:
[blind-democracy]
Re:
[blind-democracy] RE: [blind-democracy] Re: [blind-democracy]
NY
meeting:
‘End US embargo of Cuba! Get out of Guantánamo!’
Miriam, (second try)
Back in the 50's and 60's I recall declaring that there were
three types of people who were totally self centered, self
serving, and stuck up.
They
were Marines, Texans and Social Workers.
I knew decent young guys graduating from high school who
enlisted in the Marine Corps and when they finished their four
year hitch, they couldn't keep their shirts buttoned because
the buttons seemed to burst off their chests. I met people
from Texas who were so pleased with themselves that they
preferred a full length looking glass over another human being.
But
the worst, the very, very worst of all were the Social Workers.
I know that they had to have been born just like everyone else
was born. First nasty, disgusting sex, followed by great
labor pains...now it's called contractions, and then there they
were, babies. But Social Workers seem to have simply
materialized at some point, as new adults. 23 years or 25
years old, proudly presenting their Masters Degree from Stanford, Yale
or Princeton.
And in that piece of paper rested all of the wisdom and New
World Thinking. The young social workers of that time even
looked down their noses at the old social workers. Blessed
with Absolute Truth, they went forth to damage the children of
the world. And they weren't any much better with older adults,
either. I often wanted to ask, but was far too polite, if it
weren't difficult to work all day with a corn cob up their butt.
Over the years I have become so much wiser and far more tolerant.
I have met some down right decent Marines. In fact my
Brother-In-Law was such a creature. And so is my eldest
son-in-law. Then I met some really nice young adults, a group
of them traveling together. They were a bit nervous about
coming so far out west, thinking there was great lawlessness out here.
We met at a conference and I fell in love with all of the
young women...I was between wives at the time, and I asked them
from whence they came.
"Texas!" they beamed proudly.
Later I even had a male friend from Texas. I think the
difference is that these people were, "From" Texas.
Finally, after holding firm to my belief that Social Workers
were really Goblins who grew in the corn patch and took on
Humanoid bodies, I finally met a few who did alter my long
established belief. I even hired a Social Worker for my staff.
She was, and still is, a cracker jack of a woman.
I
hired her as one of two Braille Instructors. But her real job
was to pull folks out of their crappy attitudes. She was
amazing at it.
Yup. I've come a long, long way toward open acceptance of
everyone...well, almost everyone. In fact, that list is far
too long to post here.
Carl Jarvis
