A humane society would provide all those services for anyone who needs them,
just like it would provide quality medical and dental care and housing and
food. The story of the Lighthouse Music School is just one example of the
sickness of our society. 5 billion dollars for a wall!
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Sunday, December 23, 2018 11:41 AM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: one story about how services to the blind have
been stripped away
Remember the fellow who almost reaches the top of the steep hill, pushing a
large boulder ahead of himself, only to have it slip past him and roll back
down to the bottom, where he begins pushing all over again.
This seems to be the fate of those Americans who care about All Americans
rather than just those on top, or only of themselves.
In Washington State, we struggled for 7 years to gain a separate state agency
for the Blind. For a brief few years in the late 70's and early 80's, we
watched as our Blind population began receiving truly meaningful services. But
almost at once the struggle turned inward, causing our attention to be
diverted. Today, while still a separate agency, our programs have been forced
to curtail much needed services.
For the first time in it's history, the agency has been forced to go to "Order
of Selection", a Waiting List, in order to be certain it can provide the range
of needed services to a portion of those applying.
Now the agency is toying with the idea of ordering this Order of Selection for
its Independent Living, Older Blind Program. Imagine needing assistance that
will enable you to stay independent for a few more months or years, and being
told that you're being placed on a waiting list. And imagine that you just
turned 95 years of age. The average age of our clients is 84, with many well
into their 90's.
We struggle and fight, making small gains, only to see them snatched away by a
System that is primarily set up to serve the 1%.
Carl Jarvis
On 12/22/18, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
A story from the New York Times about how a music school for the blind
has lost its home, was posted to the email list of the ACB of New York
email list yesterday. I've copied the story below my explanation. The
reporter has no idea of the real story, of what the music school was
originally, and how symptomatic this is of what is happening all
around us.
When I was seven years old, my parents wanted me to have piano
lessons. But I had very poor vision, couldn't read music, so they
began searching for a resource. My parents were amazing people. My
father was a laborer who never graduated from high school. My mother
was very shy and had graduated from high school after taking a
business course. But she never worked. Before her marriage, she was
supported by her brother and sister. She had a disfigured eye with no
sight. Because of that, she didn't feel confident to try to find
employment. But when I was born, legally blind, they found a doctor
who could help me, and they did everything that they could to find the
resources that would allow me to live as fully as possible. So they
went searching for a way for me to learn to play the piano, and they
found The Lighthouse for the Blind in Manhattan. The Lighthouse had a
music school. This was in 1944.
The Lighthouse was housed in two old buildings on Manhattan's east side.
The
two little buildings were connected by an enclosed walkway on the
third floor of each building. I began with something called, "ear
training lessons", and moved onto piano lessons. No, I don't remember
what the ear training lessons consisted of, but I remember the teacher's
name, Mrs.
Jacobs. I remember sitting in a small room called, "the library", with
other youngsters, sitting around a table, all of us waiting for our
lessons.
There
were shelves with big braille books lining all the walls and one large
window. My first encounters with totally blind children were in that
music school library. All of us who took music lessons, were invited
to join the children's chorus which met on Saturday mornings. Just as
there were large print music scores, there were large print lyrics of
the songs we learned in Chorus, and of course, there was braille for
the children with no sight. I remember being amazed to watch their
hands, skimming along those pages of braille, reading those lyrics, as
quickly as I could read my print version.
And because of the chorus, my mother learned that there was a
children's recreation program in the afternoons on Saturday. Back then
recreation for boys and girls was separate. All of us children would
troop back across the bridge to the 59th Street building, and the
girls would take the elevator to the fifth floor where our recreation
program was held. We'd bring our lunch from home, eat it in the
lunchroom, and then participate in 4 hours of recreational activities
in the afternoon. That music school also provided lessons for adults
and many many years later in the early 90's, I knew a woman with whom
I'd been on trips to Ireland and Portugal, who was a member of the
Lighthouse women's chorus.
The Lighthouse provided recreation for children, teenagers, working
adults, and the elderly. It had a nursery school for blind children.
Its music school provided lessons for people at all levels of
expertise. The Lighthouse Drama Group included a few fully sighted
performers, and performed several plays a year for paying audiences
The agency operated summer camps for nursery school aged children, as
well as teenagers, working age adults, and the elderly. The agency
provided the traditional services like rehab teaching, rehabilitation
services, mobility instruction, job training, and later on computer
lessons. It had workshops in the old days and a men's residence, then
later, a residence for working women. It provided volunteer readers
for students. And there's probably more that I can't remember. Jose
Feliciano , I knew as a hunched over little ten year old kid, who
played the guitar without lessons, and attended the recreation
program.
But in the late 80's, the Lighthouse began to strip away services.
Interestingly, it had modernized its old buildings, then replaced the
modernized old buildings with a wholly new building. It had revamped
and modernized its adult recreation services. And then it began
rationalizing why the services were no longer needed. Recreation
services for the elderly were no longer needed because people could be
integrated into existing services for sighted people. The rehab
services that were reimbursed by the federal government remained.
Other services that had been free of charge, now had fees, because, it was
said, fees helped people keep their dignity.
So if you wanted help with learning to use a computer and you were not
a rehab client, you paid $60 an hour. And then all local services
ended as the agency metamorphozed into The Lighthouse International.
There was another multi service agency for the blind in Manhattan
called The Guild for the Jewish Blind. It never had quite the image
that The Lighthouse had, probably because the Lighthouse was started
by very wealthy protestants and a lot of theater and radio
personalities were involved with it in the early days. But the Guild
had many of the same services and, at one point, a much better
vacation camp for blind adults which, rather quickly, separated itself
into its own separate entity. But by the beginning of the twenty first
century, both agencies were moving in the same direction and
eventually they joined together. Their boards of directors joined. And
they changed their focus. Now, most of the money available to non
profit agencies in New York State was for agencies providing Community
Medicaid Services so that's what The Lighthouse/Guild does. It is
involved in a huge federal/state/counties bureaucracy which provides
very poor in home care for disabled old people on Medicaid. It
provides federally and state subsidized rehab services to blind people
as well.
Apparently, the Lighthouse Music School ended up being housed at the
Guild until now and here is the article which doesn't actdually
explain what happened to cause the Guild to decide to strip away the music
school.
School for Blind Musicians Is Evicted by Its Parent Charity from The
New York Times By COREY KILGANNON Get It was supposed to be a cheery
holiday performance in front of the large Christmas tree at the
Metropolitan Museum of Art, but the music school ensemble seemed to be
singing for its survival.. The school, which has served blind and
visually impaired musicians in Manhattan since 1913, finds its
existence imperiled by its own parent group -- a charitable
organization with a mission to help the blind. Singers were led into
place by volunteers or guide dogs, but before the music started, the
school's executive director, Dr. Leslie Jones, told the crowd inside
the museum's Medieval Sculpture Hall that the school would be
'separating' at the end of the month from its longtime parent entity,
Lighthouse Guild International. This was a cordial take on the
situation. The Lighthouse Guild sent a letter to students in June --
in large print, for the visually impaired -- notifying them that the
105-year-old school would no longer be part of the Guild's future and
that it must leave the Guild's building on West 64th Street.
'This decision was difficult because the school has been a part of the
fabric of Lighthouse Guild for over 100 years,' Dr. Alan Morse,
president of the Guild, wrote in the letter. Jillian Raquet, 24, who
sings in the vocal ensemble and volunteers at the school as a music
teacher on Saturdays, recalled getting the letter over the summer. 'To
find out in some dry letter that we have to look for a new home, it
just seemed like, 'Oh, we don't really care about you,' Ms. Raquet
said. Faced with an order to vacate by the end of December, school
officials will spend Christmas week packing up
12 grand pianos, its estimable Braille music library and other items,
presumably to go into storage. Ms. Jones declined to comment on the
situation, explaining that she did not want to jeopardize the school's
separation arrangements with the Guild. She referred requests for
comment to the Guild; a Guild spokeswoman said its officials would not
comment. Ms.
Jones did provide Dr. Morse's letter, which said that the school's
leaders must make organizational changes to 'direct our resources to
support and serve the largest number of people who are living with or
potentially facing vision loss. School volunteers and students said
the school, officially known as the Filomen M. D'Agostino Greenberg
Music School, was scrambling to find temporary space in Manhattan -- a
daunting challenge, given its limited budget and Manhattan's high
rents -- by late January to avoid canceling the spring semester. Ms.
Jones, they said, was scrambling to incorporate the school as a
nonprofit in order to organize its own finances and raise funds as
well as transfer its endowments and funding streams out of the Guild's
control. The school's revenue has come from its modest tuition, grants
and private fund-raising, as well as funding from the Guild, which
also provided space for the school. 'She's been trying to fight for
the future of the school and the survival of the school,' said David
Malkin, a lawyer in Manhattan, who helps the school with its
endowment. 'What's going to happen for them is uncertain,' he said of
the school. 'They're hoping they'll find a new home and sustaining
support to continue their mission. The school has been an unsung
staple of New York City arts circles for decades, including
20 years of performances at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and holiday
recitals at Midtown Manhattan office buildings. The blind teenage jazz
prodigy Matthew Whitaker is a student there and accomplished alumni
include the blind musician Jos? Feliciano, who is currently traveling
in Vienna but sent a statement recalling that the school helped him
learn music transcription and other skills. Mr. Feliciano called the
Guild's decision to no longer house the school 'callous. 'Perhaps they
don't care anymore,' he said. 'When you consider the school's benefits
and how important and meaningful it is to so many people, it's just
very sad. The school serves
120 students, children and adults of varying musical levels. All
students attend part time, for lessons, classes and other services,
including Braille music transcription. In addition to several
performance groups, the school has an archive of roughly 25,000
Braille and large-print musical scores that it said is second in size
only to the collection held by the Library of Congress. Losing their
home has been particularly upsetting for students, some of whom spoke
of their disappointment in the Guild, which has long promoted itself
as a beacon of hope and an advocate for the blind. 'The school has
been such an empowering place and it's just so painful to see these
students being sent a message that blind education doesn't matter, and
that the school is not worth keeping open and they have no say in any
of it,' said Leona Godin, a former student. For more than a century
the school was part of Lighthouse International, which in 2013 merged
with Jewish Guild Healthcare to form the Lighthouse Guild. The Guild
has also closed the Harriet and Robert Heilbrunn School for students
who are blind and have other severe disabilities. Its 33 workers were
laid off this month and its
53 students were placed in other schools. The music school is named
after its main benefactor, Filomen D'Agostino Greenberg, a self-taught
stock trader who died in 2000 when she was 101. Mr. Malkin is the
director of the Filomen M. D'Agostino Foundation, which donates
$100,000 a year to the school, and had served on the guild's board of
directors. But he said he resigned from the board because he was so disturbed
by its decision.
Regarding the students, he said, 'They are at risk for so many other
things, and to lose this resource and opportunity puts them even
greater at risk.
After the holiday concert on Wednesday, one student, Daniel Gillen,
24, tucked away his Braille choral music and picked up his long white
cane. He said he was hopeful that the school would find at least interim
space.
'We're not going to be left on the sidelines,' he said.. PHOTOS: Dalia
Sakas conducted a choral group of students, teachers and volunteers
from the Filomen M. D'Agostino Greenberg Music School on Wednesday at
the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Leaving the museum afterward were Lisa
Cantwell, left, 53, with her dog Louie, 3, and George Ashiotis, 71,
with his dog, Pike, 5. (PHOTOGRAPHS BY HIROKO MASUIKE/THE NEW YORK
TIMES).
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